The most difficult situations in people's lives. Overcoming difficult life situations

In the life of each of us there arise difficult life situations, and we all react to troubles in our own way and look for a way out of a difficult situation in different ways. Some people make peace and adapt, “go with the flow.” Others are looking for a way out of a difficult life situation through actions aimed at overcoming problems and troubles. Someone withdraws into himself and, instead of trying to somehow overcome the difficulty, prefers not to notice it. And many, cursing fate, only complain about a difficult life and, in fact, without solving any problems, fall into depression.

It is possible to generalize the behavior of people in difficult situations and describe ways to overcome difficulties using the transformation strategies that are used in these situations: coping (adaptation and overcoming), protection and worry. But before we talk about them in detail, a few words about the concept of “difficult life situation.”

This is how the concept of “difficult life situation” is interpreted by one of the Federal Laws of the Russian Federation - “ Difficult life situation- this is a situation that directly disrupts a person’s life, which he is not able to overcome on his own" This law also provides several examples of difficult life situations - illness, disability, orphanhood, unemployment, insecurity and poverty, lack of a specific place of residence, abuse, conflicts, loneliness, etc.

Russian psychotherapist, Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk, who studies aspects of difficult life situations, suggests understanding them as situations of impossibility, in which a person is faced with the difficulty of realizing the internal needs of his life (aspirations, motives, values, etc.).

A difficult life situation is always characterized by a discrepancy between what we want (to achieve, do, etc.) and what we can. Such a discrepancy between desires and abilities and capabilities prevents the achievement of goals, and this entails the emergence of negative emotions, which signal the emergence of a difficult situation. A developing person, mastering and learning the world around him, but not having sufficient life experience, inevitably encounters something unexpected, unknown and new. Using your own abilities and capabilities in a given situation may not be sufficient and therefore may cause disappointment. And any difficult life situation leads to disruption of activities, deterioration of existing relationships with people around us, gives rise to worries and bad emotions, causes various inconveniences, which can have negative consequences for personal development. Therefore, a person should know as much as possible about possible options and paths.

Behavioral techniques that people most often use in difficult situations

Defense techniques are a group of maladaptive (behaviors that contribute to the occurrence of severe mental distress) reactions to difficulties: depression, silent resignation, depression, as well as avoidance of difficult life situations and suppression of thoughts about the cause and source of the difficulty.

Overcoming - actions aimed at achieving success, changing and overcoming difficulties. They are associated with the expenditure of energy and with certain efforts; involve intense thought aimed at solving a difficult situation, a high level of mental self-regulation, searching for the necessary information and involving other people in solving the problem.

By persistently transforming any difficult situation, a person changes greatly, but often these changes are unconscious and unintentional. However, sometimes a situation requires a conscious change in its characteristics, only in this case can prosperity and overcome difficulty. In this case, changing personal properties and attitudes to a difficult situation becomes the main strategy or an important component of another strategy.

TECHNIQUES OF ADAPTATION

Adaptation to the basic aspects of the situation (social attitudes, social norms, rules of business relations, etc.). Having mastered this technique, a person freely enters the world of morality and law, labor, culture, and family relationships. Under normal social conditions, this technique predetermines success. For example, it helps to get used to new working conditions (in this case, the person successfully completes the probationary period) or in case of moving to a new place of residence. However, if a person got into a difficult life situation, in a situation of upheaval, when something has changed dramatically, where new rules have not yet taken shape, and the old ones no longer apply - this technique will not help.
Adapting to the characteristics and needs of others will be of great importance in situations of social upheaval. The study of this technique has shown that it is most often used during crisis stages of social development. Next to it is another method of adaptation - taking care of maintaining existing social contacts and establishing new social contacts.
Choose a role for yourself and behave in accordance with it. People use this technique in situations where the source of experiences and difficulties is their personal qualities and characteristics of their own character (for example, self-doubt or shyness), which do not allow them to freely adapt to new living conditions, ask for help, etc. This technique involves the conscious use of an identification mechanism. A person chooses a certain model of behavior to emulate; it could be a movie hero or a book character who personifies confidence, or a friend who has this missing quality. In a difficult life situation, he tries on the role of this character: he begins to behave differently, his gait and manner of speaking change, his speech becomes convincing, he even begins to feel differently. Since he does not completely identify himself with the chosen role, but only “plays it,” he attributes all his failures and awkwardness to the chosen character, and not to himself. This helps to avoid embarrassment, be freer from the opinions of others, and not reduce your self-esteem when you make mistakes. With the right choice of role, it helps to cope with a difficult situation that arises in communication, and also causes tangible changes not only in behavior, but also in one’s own life values and attitudes.
A frequently used form of adaptation is identifying oneself with more fortunate people or identifying with serious and influential associations and organizations. People who have suffered disappointments and failures, who consider themselves a failure, sometimes resort to this technique. By identifying with a successful subject, they seem to add special abilities to themselves, and by becoming an employee of an influential and authoritative organization, they not only get the opportunity to feel like they belong to it and talk about “our successes,” but also actually begin to feel strong and act more successfully and confident.
The technique of identifying the limits of one’s own capabilities is usually used when there is a sudden change in life circumstances. The most striking example is a person becoming disabled. Finding themselves in such a difficult life situation, people are forced to dramatically change their established way of life. At first they learn about their capabilities. Like a person walking through a swamp testing the waters, they analyze the extent of their remaining abilities and try to make up for what they have lost. It is worth noting that those who find themselves in unknown or complicated conditions also resort to door-to-door tactics.
Forecasting and anticipating events. This technique is used by people who have already had sad experiences of failure or who are expecting the imminent onset of an approaching difficult life situation (for example, a layoff at work, an upcoming operation, or the death of a sick relative). Anticipatory sadness or preconceived notions have adaptive value and allow a person to mentally prepare for possible difficult experiences and make a plan to avoid unfortunate circumstances. Like any other technique for coping with a difficult situation, anticipatory coping, depending on a particular situation, can be both useful and harmful.

(+) An example of the productive use of anticipatory coping is the experience often used in some foreign hospitals in preparing young patients for the intended operation. Medical staff, under the guidance of a qualified psychologist, organize special role-playing games, during which the operation situation is played out. Such psychological preparation reduces children's fear of surgery and significantly speeds up their recovery.

(-) A clear example of a clearly unproductive anticipatory coping is the so-called “St. Lazarus symptom”; psychologists identified it when working with some relatives of HIV-infected people. It consists in such an attitude towards the patient, as if he were already dead and mourned (sometimes it comes to the point that family members avoid all communication with the sick person, openly collecting money for the wake and preparing for his funeral).

AUXILIARY METHODS OF SELF-PRESERVATION IN DIFFICULT LIFE SITUATIONS

These are methods of dealing with emotional disruptions that, according to the subject, occur in connection with insurmountable difficult situations.

This is an escape from a difficult situation. It occurs not only in a physical, but also in a purely psychological form - by suppressing thoughts about the situation and internal alienation from it (this could be a refusal of promotions or other tempting offers). For people who have experienced a large number of different failures and disappointments, such avoidance of dubious connections and situations often becomes a personal trait. For them, this is the “last line of defense.”
Denial and non-acceptance of a traumatic, overwhelming and tragic event is another common self-preservation technique. Finding yourself in a difficult life situation and facing tragedy, non-acceptance and denial of it, a person builds a psychological barrier to the penetration of this traumatic and destructive event into his inner world. He gradually digests it in small doses.

Technicians overcoming difficulties with the help of adaptation and transformation, they can be both secondary and basic for a person, both situationally specific and characteristic. Situation-specific ones are: “resistance”, “adjusting one’s expectations”, “hope”, “taking advantage of a chance”, “self-affirmation”, “identifying with the destinies and goals of other people”, “relying on other people”, “delaying gratification of one’s own” needs”, “manifestation of aggression in the form of action or unfounded criticism”, etc.

TECHNIQUES USED IN CASES OF FAILURE

Here are the techniques that people use when... overcoming difficult life situations there is no longer any way to solve them. That is, a person who finds himself in an unpleasant situation has made every effort to somehow solve it, but the problem remains unresolved and he has no choice but to simply admit that he failed. He experiences this defeat as a collapse of personality, because he set himself a difficult task, put in so much effort, hoped, and even saw its solution as part of his future life. If a person has not experienced serious setbacks and failures before this time, he is overly vulnerable. In such a situation, a person tries in any way to maintain or restore a good attitude towards himself, a sense of his own well-being and dignity.

Most often in such cases, people try to devalue failure by using psychological defense mechanisms that help reduce the burden of emotional experiences and do not require them to painfully reconsider their attitude towards themselves. Among such techniques are:

Depreciation of an object. Unable to find way out of a difficult situation, in this case, having failed to achieve an important goal (get married, go to college, defend a dissertation, etc.), a person reduces its importance. Thus, he devalues his failure (“ Do I need this??», « This is not the most important thing in life") and writes the difficult situation into his biography as an insignificant episode.
Adjusting your hopes and aspirations. Since failure is an unpleasant and difficult event for most people, depriving a person of what he needs, he can resort to adjusting his hopes and expectations. This often leads to minimizing needs. Of course, this method saves you from failures, smoothes out unpleasant sensations and experiences, but it impoverishes the future and does not in any way increase self-respect as an individual.
Acceptance is the acceptance of a situation as it really is. In psychology, this technique is sometimes called “patience” or even more often they use the phrase “let go of the situation” (i.e., stop actions that are not bringing results to change a difficult situation). This is not a silent response to difficult life circumstances, but a conscious decision made after analyzing the life situation and comparing one's own difficult situation with the even worse situation of other people. This technique may be applicable in situations of disability or serious illness.
Positive interpretation of your situation. This technique is similar to the previous one. It consists in using comparison options: people compare themselves with someone who is in an even more precarious position (“comparison goes down”), or remember their merits and successes in other areas: “Yes, I didn’t succeed, but then…” (“the comparison goes up”). Remember, one of the heroines of E. Ryazanov’s popular film “Office Romance” had the following defensive phrases: “ I live outside the city, but close to the train», « My husband had a stomach ulcer, but Vishnevsky himself performed the operation" and so on.

In the life of each of us there are difficult life situations. Even in the most tranquil times we face difficulties. For one it is a search for a job or a change of place of residence, for another it is one’s own illness or the illness of a loved one, divorce or the passing of loved ones. This is how it has always been and will always be. Difficult life situations arise in the lives of children and adults, entire families and nations.

This article provides techniques and techniques that largely relate to adaptation to circumstances that can no longer be changed. There are opinions that such techniques indicate a passive strategy and an inability to cope with one’s life. But in reality, everything is not so simple, because sometimes temporary adaptation acts as a wise strategy for surviving a difficult life situation, taking into account life prospects with their real features.

The simplest example is that a probationary period when hiring dictates to a person the rules of the game, to which he must adapt in order to get a job in a good place and be accepted into a new work team. He knows when it is better to remain silent, refuses self-affirmation and certain forms of behavior in favor of his future.

However, everyone has the right to independently choose those techniques and strategies from their repertoire that will help them get out of a difficult life situation. We are not always able to change everything. The most we can do is to take a sober look at the situation, direct maximum efforts to change what can be improved, and find ways to coexist with what cannot be changed.

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Each person reacts differently to terrible news, a difficult life situation, be it a serious illness of a loved one or oneself, betrayal, divorce, loss, conflict at work, in the family or with a friend. But for everyone this is an unpleasant surprise, maybe even a stab in the back. Such an event is a crisis for a person and his family; it completely changes life. It can become a stage of development, or it can become a step towards regression or stopping, or it can destroy the entire established way of life. In any case, after such news, life is divided into “before” and “after”.

How to cope with this and withstand the “blows of fate”, how to build your life to solve the problem with the least losses, where to get the strength to withstand, move forward and continue living? What to do at such a shocking stage.

Principles of survival during a crisis

1. Support. Seek and find support from loved ones in your family and friends. Feeling supported, you will feel stronger and more secure. And you will already be a support for children and elderly parents (and not only), because your confidence, calmness and sanity are so important to them.

And if such a situation happened to a friend, how to help and how to support? It is impossible to help with advice or general phrases. You need to be there, even if there is a feeling that you are not doing anything useful. Very often it is enough to say: “I know that you are hurt, I am here, I am nearby.” Healing begins when there is someone to be silent about troubles with or to grieve together.

3. Do not hide what happened from family members. Nothing ruins a relationship more than an intra-family secret or secret. And besides this, it takes a lot of strength, which is so necessary at this difficult moment. A secret creates a feeling of anxiety, others still feel that something is wrong, they may have a feeling of guilt, rejection (they are not trusted), etc.

4. Don’t hide a difficult situation from your friends. Friendship is not only for shared leisure time; it is not for nothing that they say that a friend is known in trouble. With a friend you have the opportunity to speak out, with him you can be weak and defenseless, he will not judge and will understand everything. A friend will always help and provide support. Friendship is a colossal resource.

5. Stay grounded in reality using common sense and facts. Fear has big eyes, you can imagine anything. Fear paralyzes and prevents you from analyzing and acting correctly in the current situation. Panic is more dangerous than the worst diagnosis or terrible news. At the same time, there is no need to be careless about what happened (everything will resolve itself). You shouldn’t create additional horror, but you shouldn’t embellish the situation either.

6. Cry. If you feel tears coming, cry. (Even if you know that men don’t cry!) Tears relieve emotional stress, cleanse the soul, reduce the pain of emotional wounds, and help you accept what happened. Uncrysted tears continue their destructive work inside the psyche and undermine health.

7. Stay positive. A crisis situation raises from the bottom of the psyche all the difficult situations experienced - grievances, betrayal, conflicts, fears. “It’s already not easy for me, but here’s this! For what?" The main thing is not to go into negativity, cursing everything and everyone, not to enter the state of victim, and wait for the situation to be resolved with your hands down. This is an opportunity to take an active position, take the solution to all the problems of your life into your own hands, and at the same time deal with past traumatic situations. And ask yourself the right question - not “why do I need all this?”, but “why is this situation given?”

But this can be done no earlier than intense grief and sorrow turn into less intense feelings of sadness and sadness. The pain and shock of what happened does not go away quickly. We need to give ourselves time. There must be a process of burning out.

8. Understand what is happening to me. A difficult life situation greatly undermines the resource; all efforts are spent on somehow calming down and finding a way out. And when there is no strength, everything that was slightly annoying before, a little in the way, begins to cause unbridled aggression, a conflict or quarrel can arise out of nothing. The fear of one’s own powerlessness, the inability to control oneself and the situation grows. As a result, exaggerated importance is attached to what is not worth a damn. It’s not for nothing that they say “trouble does not come alone.” There is only one way out - to understand what is happening to you and accept this state - not to fight it either. Explain to others (you can without going into details - if you don’t want) that this is a difficult period in your life. If necessary, politely apologize. As soon as you stop fighting with yourself and those around you, you will have more strength and it will be easier to remain calm.

9. Understand that any situation is an acquired experience. And a crisis situation also means getting rid of illusions. Epiphany can be bitter, but it is a meeting with reality, a person begins to understand what is really happening. The realization comes that not everything in life can be fixed, you can only survive it. All you have to do is accept it all and move on with your life.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross scale

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, an American psychologist of Swiss origin, proposed a scale - the stages of a difficult, traumatic life situation. This scale helps you determine what is happening to you at the moment and what the next stage will be. If you don't get stuck and allow yourself to go to the end and complete this experience.

1. Shock, blow, shock. Sudden loss of strength.

2. Denial, rejection. - "No, it can not be!"

3. Anger and rage. Irritation and rage. Urgent search for the culprit.

4. Fear and depression. The onset of depression is associated with increased feelings of shame and guilt. There is almost no energy, the resource drops to a minimum.

5. Sadness, sadness. Crucial feelings that heal the psyche. The first sign of acceptance.

6. Acceptance. A difficult event and a changed situation are taken for granted. The world has changed, and this no longer causes protest and confrontation. Energy begins to increase, strength arrives.

7. Farewell. There is a letting go of what the time has come to say goodbye to. With the illusion of another life, with dreams, plans, hopes that were “before” and have sunk into oblivion.

8. Search for meaning and return. Everything that happened begins to make sense. The past experience is integrated and woven into the overall fabric of life. From that moment on, it becomes something you can rely on. It becomes your property and part of your identity. You have become more mature.

9. Clarity and peace in the soul. The understanding came that the world around had changed and became different, but did not collapse. Something is gone forever, I had to say goodbye to something - some plans, illusions, dreams, my ideas about how it should be. Life crises are stages of development and maturation, necessary changes in order to live on. Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

We give out advice left and right that there is a way out of any unpleasant situation, and even more than one. We tune in to the positive and try to console others that not everything is as bad as it seems at first glance. But when we ourselves are overwhelmed by troubles that are approaching from all sides, the advice that we ourselves offered looks simply ridiculous and helpless.

What to do in a difficult life situation where you see only one dead end? There are effective tips on what to do in this case.

1. First of all, try to calm down and stop. There is no need to quickly rush headlong into the pool and take incomprehensible actions that can lead to even bigger problems. You need to pause and decide where you are and how you ended up in this position. Take time to reflect on why it turned out the way it did and not something completely different. When you can find the entrance, then you will find the exit in one moment.

2. Effective advice on how to get out of a dead end is to get rid of the emotions overwhelming you at that moment. Fear, anger, and disappointment prevent you from concentrating normally in the face of a problem. Often our negative emotions, which acquire enormous proportions, we make mountains out of molehills and see absolutely no way out, just a dead end. If you want to smash something to smithereens - do it, you want to scream and swear - go ahead, give vent to your anger, do not hold destructive energy within yourself.

3. When you are overcome by complete devastation, only then bright thoughts will begin to come into your head and everything will become clearer from a different angle. Make yourself a tea with lemon and ginger, or brew some hot coffee; energy drinks will help your brain work faster. Take a piece of paper and start writing down absolutely all ideas for getting out of a deadlock situation, even the most absurd ones; in such cases, all means are good.

4. Do not think alone, seek help from your comrades and loved ones who have not turned away in difficult times. There is a proverb: “One head is good, but two are better.” Perhaps they will offer their own options that will be useful to you, because sometimes you know better from the outside.

5. The next step will be a full analysis of the proposed ideas. Weigh up all the pros and cons. Make three thorough plans to get out of a crisis situation. Plan A and B are the most effective, and plan C is a backup. Clearly thought-out scenarios with several options give a much higher percentage of success than just one.

6. In a difficult life situation, gather your strength and spirit and begin to put your anti-crisis plan into action. By going step by step, without stepping back, you will achieve what you want and get out of the troubles surrounding your life, and the understanding of what to do will come by itself.

7. In difficult times, people who care about you and to whom you are very dear will help you survive misfortunes. Don't push them away or isolate them from your society, let them help you. You can even ask them for help yourself, in such situations you understand who the most devoted and faithful people are.

8. In our lives, we rely a lot on circumstances, while understanding that they do not promise anything good. You can't do that. We create our own destiny, so pull yourself together and don’t let circumstances get the better of you.

9. Another effective way to get out of a deadlock situation is to exclude people with. In every person’s environment, there will definitely be a person who will exaggerate and lower your faith in yourself. Such people do not see happiness and positive aspects; they have only negativity around them. If possible, avoid them, do not let them lower your self-esteem, otherwise you will panic and give up.

10. When you're in trouble, look for something that will motivate you while you get out of the situation. Strive to communicate with those who believe in you and know that you can withstand any blow.

11. In difficult moments, you should not be afraid to take risks and think about mistakes, every person has them. It would be stupid to sit idly by. Every mistake you make will be a lesson from which you will gain useful and necessary information.

12. Don't listen to those who say they know how best to live and be. They will constantly remind you and poke you about your past mistakes. Send them away from you, let them hang noodles on the ears of others, losers just like them. This is your life and only you can decide whether you can get out of trouble or not. Believe in yourself and you will succeed. You are not a loser, but a winner!

In life you have to face a lot of different problems. It's an endless chain of ups and downs. It seems that in most cases the problem can be overcome, but not everyone quickly gets back on their feet after a serious failure. Sometimes it hurts too much. But keeping going is incredibly important. Here are five useful tips that will help you cope with a traumatic experience more easily and teach you to look forward to the future with confidence.

Remember the difficult moments in life

It may seem like a bad idea, but it's not that simple - thoughts of failure bring sadness, but at the same time they help you understand that you can cope with any difficulty. You were able to continue living. Usually it seems that the problem has ruined life forever, so remembering similar disasters is very important. You become stronger with every new experience. Allow yourself to draw strength from your past, it is your invaluable luggage.

Write or tell me how you feel

Abstract yourself from the situation

It can be difficult to make rational decisions when you find yourself in the middle of a problem. Of course, you shouldn’t run away from difficulties either, but you also don’t need to plunge headlong into a difficult situation - this way you lose the ability to normally weigh all the arguments and sensibly assess your situation. This happens much more often than I would like to admit. Try to abstract yourself in every difficult situation and think about everything that is happening calmly. Take a break. If you have tense family members or colleagues around you, spend some time alone with yourself. Sometimes all that is needed to solve a problem is just a little respite and a break to think.

Remind yourself that you are not alone

It’s so easy to withdraw into yourself and feel completely alone, but remembering that someone who absolutely loves you is nearby is much more difficult. Sometimes that person isn't around in real life, but you can find support online. No matter who you are, there are people who care, who are ready to listen and support. Sometimes strangers can understand you better than you can understand yourself. They have also had similar problems, they understand your emotions. Perhaps someone is in the same situation as you right now. Just find this person.

Accept the situation and become stronger

No matter how difficult it may be, you should accept the situation and come to terms with what happened - it’s still impossible to change the past. It doesn't matter who is to blame for what happened. Just accept what happened and move on. Now you have new experience that will help you deal with the same problem next time. You will be stronger and will not repeat your mistake. Life goes on, time never stands still, the main decision you can make is the decision to move on. Don't look back to the past, everything has already happened. Just consider that your character is now stronger and be proud of yourself. You went through a difficult moment, but it does not define you or your entire life. Learn a life lesson from it and don't dwell on that memory again. There is a completely new life ahead of you, not connected with this problem.

This is how the concept of “difficult life situation” is interpreted by one of the Federal Laws of the Russian Federation - “ Difficult life situation - this is a situation that directly disrupts a person’s life, which he is not able to overcome on his own" This law also provides several examples of difficult life situations - illness, disability, orphanhood, unemployment, insecurity and poverty, lack of a specific place of residence, abuse, conflicts, loneliness, etc.

A difficult life situation is always characterized by a discrepancy between what we want (to achieve, do, etc.) and what we can. Such a discrepancy between desires and abilities and capabilities prevents the achievement of goals, and this entails the emergence of negative emotions, which signal the emergence of a difficult situation. A developing person, mastering and learning the world around him, but not possessing sufficient life experience, it is inevitable to encounter something unexpected, unknown and new. Using your own abilities and capabilities in a given situation may not be sufficient and therefore may cause disappointment. And any difficult life situation leads to disruption of activities, deterioration of existing relationships with people around us, gives rise to worries and bad emotions, causes various inconveniences, which can have negative consequences for personal development. Therefore, a person should know as much as possible about possible options and paths.

Behavioral techniques that people most often use in difficult situations

Defense techniques are a group of non-adaptive (behaviors that contribute to the occurrence of severe mental distress) reactions to difficulties: depression, silent resignation, depression, as well as avoidance of difficult life situations and suppression of thoughts about the cause and source of the difficulty.

Overcoming - actions aimed at achieving success, changing and overcoming difficulties. They are associated with the expenditure of energy and with certain efforts; involve intense thought aimed at solving a difficult situation, high level mental self-regulation, searching for the necessary information and involving other people in solving the problem.

TECHNIQUES OF ADAPTATION

Adaptation to the basic aspects of the situation(social attitudes, social norms, rules of business relations, etc.). Having mastered this technique, a person freely enters the world of morality and law, labor, culture, and family relationships. Under normal social conditions, this technique predetermines success. For example, it helps to get used to new working conditions (in this case, the person successfully completes the probationary period) or in case of moving to a new place of residence. However, if a person got into a difficult life situation, in a situation of upheaval, when something has changed dramatically, where new rules have not yet been formed, and the old ones no longer apply - this technique will not help.
Adapting to the characteristics and needs of others will be of great importance in a situation of social upheaval. The study of this technique has shown that it is most often used during crisis stages of social development. Next to it is another method of adaptation - taking care of maintaining existing social contacts and establishing new social contacts.
Choose a role for yourself and behave in accordance with it. People use this technique in situations where the source of experiences and difficulties are their personal qualities and properties of their own character (for example, self-doubt or shyness), which do not allow them to freely adapt to new living conditions, ask for help, etc. This technique involves the conscious use of an identification mechanism. A person chooses a certain model of behavior to emulate; it could be a movie hero or a book character who personifies confidence, or a friend who has this missing quality. In a difficult life situation, he tries on the role of this character: he begins to behave differently, his gait, his manner of speaking, his speech becomes persuasive, he even begins to feel differently. Since he does not completely identify himself with the chosen role, but only “plays it,” he attributes all his failures and awkwardness to the chosen character, and not to himself. This helps to avoid embarrassment, be more free from opinions of others and do not lower your self-esteem when you make mistakes. With the right choice of role, it helps to cope with a difficult situation that arises in communication, and also causes tangible changes not only in behavior, but also in one’s own life values and attitudes.
A frequently used form of device is identifying oneself with more fortunate people or identifying with serious and influential associations and organizations. People who have suffered disappointments and failures, who consider themselves a failure, sometimes resort to this technique. By identifying with a successful subject, they seem to add special abilities to themselves, and by becoming an employee of an influential and authoritative organization, they not only get the opportunity to feel like they belong to it and talk about “our successes,” but also actually begin to feel strong and act more successfully and confident.
Technique for identifying the boundaries of your own capabilities, as a rule, is used when there is a sudden change in life circumstances. The most striking example is a person becoming disabled. Finding themselves in such a difficult life situation, people are forced to dramatically change their established way of life. At first they learn about their capabilities. Like a person walking through a swamp testing the waters, they analyze the extent of their remaining abilities and try to make up for what they have lost. It is worth noting that those who find themselves in unknown or complicated conditions also resort to door-to-door tactics.
Foretelling and anticipating events. This technique is used by people who have already had a sad experience of failure or who are expecting the imminent onset of an approaching difficult life situation (for example, a layoff at work, an upcoming operation, or the death of a sick relative). Anticipatory sadness or preconceived notions have adaptive value and allow a person to mentally prepare for possible difficult experiences and make a plan to avoid unfortunate circumstances. Like any other technique for coping with a difficult situation, anticipatory coping, depending on a particular situation, can be both useful and harmful.

(+) An example of the productive use of anticipatory coping is the experience often used in some foreign hospitals in preparing young patients for a planned operation. Medical staff, under the guidance of a qualified psychologist, organize special role-playing games, during which the operation situation is played out. Such psychological preparation reduces children's fear of surgery and significantly speeds up their recovery.

AUXILIARY METHODS OF SELF-PRESERVATION IN DIFFICULT LIFE SITUATIONS

These are methods of dealing with emotional disruptions that, according to the subject, occur in connection with insurmountable difficult situations.

This is escape from a difficult situation. It occurs not only in a physical, but also in a purely psychological form - by suppressing thoughts about the situation and internal alienation from it (this may be a refusal promotions, from other tempting offers). For people who have experienced a large number of different failures and disappointments, such avoidance of dubious connections and situations often becomes a personal trait. For them, this is the “last line of defense.”
Denial and rejection, a traumatic, overwhelming and tragic event is another common self-preservation technique. Finding yourself in a difficult life situation and facing tragedy, non-acceptance and denial of it, a person builds a psychological barrier to the penetration of this traumatic and destructive event into his inner world. He gradually digests it in small doses.

TECHNIQUES USED IN CASES OF FAILURE

Depreciation of an object. Unable to find way out of a difficult situation, in this case, having failed to achieve an important goal (get married, go to college, defend a dissertation, etc.), a person reduces its importance. Thus, he devalues his failure (“ Do I need this??», « This is not the most important thing in life") and writes the difficult situation into his biography as an insignificant episode.
Adjusting your hopes and aspirations. Since failure is an unpleasant and difficult event for most people, depriving a person of what he needs, he can resort to adjusting his hopes and expectations. This often leads to minimizing needs. Of course, this method saves you from failures, smoothes out unpleasant sensations and experiences, but it impoverishes the future and does not in any way increase self-respect as an individual.
Acceptance is the acceptance of a situation as it really is. In psychology, this technique is sometimes called “patience” or even more often they use the phrase “let go of the situation” (i.e., stop actions that are not bringing results to change a difficult situation). This is not a silent response to difficult life circumstances, but a conscious decision made after analyzing the life situation and comparing one's own difficult situation with the even worse situation of other people. This technique may be applicable in situations of disability or serious illness.
Positive interpretation of your situation. This technique is similar to the previous one. It consists in using comparison options: people compare themselves with someone who is in an even more precarious position (“comparison goes down”), or remember their merits and successes in other areas: “Yes, I didn’t succeed, but then…” (“the comparison goes up”). Remember, one of the heroines of E. Ryazanov’s popular film “Office Romance” had the following defensive phrases: “ I live outside the city, but close to the train», « My husband had a stomach ulcer, but Vishnevsky himself performed the operation" and so on.

The simplest example is probationary period for employment dictates to a person the rules of the game, to which he must adapt in order to get a job in a good place and be accepted into a new work team. He knows, when is it better to remain silent, refuses self-affirmation and certain forms of behavior in favor of his future.

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