Clients often come to therapy with their suffering. It torments a person and forces him to experience certain situations over and over again, to go in circles. It is difficult to work, to think about something else, “being caught up in experience” narrows a person’s world and his consciousness, as if “taking away his will.” By turning to a psychologist, a person hopes to get rid of suffering, not knowing exactly how this can happen (and indeed don't have to know). In the client’s imagination, the psychologist may be endowed with “special knowledge” that he can share for money. Or the belief that there is so much of it (knowledge) that you can’t convey it in one meeting. In contrast to these expectations, I would like to explain how changes in a client become possible. I’ll start with the fact that a psychologist deals with the psyche. The psyche is all the processes that occur in the head between a stimulus and a reaction to it. The child’s psyche is poorly developed and the stimulus is immediately followed by a reaction. As they grow up, parents pass on to their children how their psyche works and the children develop their own psyche, which does some work before giving a reaction, that is, doing something. For example, you want to eat. Your psyche helps you understand this (realize hunger, navigate where you are now and whether it is possible to eat, how it can be done, what exactly you would eat, etc.). With a deficit of mental work in this situation, a person may feel irritated and, for example, shout at someone without recognizing the need, like a baby reacting to discomfort. You can observe how the psyche works. To do this, pay attention to your “inner voice”. What is it like, what does it do? Does it help you focus on something, helps you navigate your own feelings and the feelings of other people, the environment? Does he explain, console? Great! You can cope with life's tasks faster and more effectively, are more resistant to uncertainty and stress, and, most likely, behave more appropriately to the situation. What if the inner voice is mostly silent? Or does it not help you get your bearings, but only calls you to action, evaluates, and prompts? In this case, most likely, you are poorly aware of your own needs, fantasize a lot, draw the wrong conclusions, and your actions do not lead to the result you wanted. When working with a psychotherapist, your inner voice changes. Instead of commands or accusations, he begins to help with orientation: - What do I see now? - My partner is screaming. And instead of fantasizing about how he hates me, I’d rather ask why he’s screaming. - What’s wrong with me? body?- I hold my breath and tense my muscles. And when I try to breathe and relax my muscles, the physical, bodily “I feel bad” is replaced by “so I’m making myself feel bad.”- How do I feel when they shout at me?- I feel fear and anger, because I don’t want to hear it. Observing these processes allows one to first develop an interest in oneself, in “how my suffering works,” and then makes it possible to recognize the authorship of this suffering, to begin to notice “how I create my suffering directly now.”Working as a psychotherapist can be compared in this part to training. It helps to focus on something, and, gradually, becomes the client’s inner voice. That is why the work on changes is not quick. If for thirty or forty years the inner voice helped little, and was even an enemy, then it would be strange to change this in five, six or even ten hours. That is why psychotherapy is planned to last from six months. Thus, we can say that the orienting function of the psyche turns out to be the most deficient. This is not surprising in the age of wild speeds. Parents have no time to ask questions, wait for answers, they themselves are full of anxiety and show their children an example of quick decisions, instant assessment of the situation and conclusions, and even actions. Mental suffering, like any other symptom, is the price to pay for the desire to run without stopping and the betrayal of the “inner voice.”».