Are we overstimulated?
– Our nervous system is designed for a limited number of stimuli and loads. Neurobiologically, we are descendants of savannah people who walked a lot, didn’t work that much, and had strong social bonds in groups of up to 150 people. Harsh light, noise, air pollution, deadlines on which our lives depend every time, standing in traffic jams, bad food are just a fragment of what we are subject to every day. In addition, everyone adds their own individual problems. The effect is that I see a lot of people who are extremely overloaded physically and mentally. They regenerate poorly because they often use the best coping strategies. And if you don’t take care of your psyche, it wears out just like your body. And at some point we wake up depressed, burnt out, nothing makes us happy. I have the impression that a large part of the middle class lives on such autopilot. I assume that people less privileged than the middle class have it even harder.
Can we help each other?
– I often ask patients about this and hear: “I eat, drink, sleep, go to sports, to the doctor, take supplements. What else should I do?” This shows how helpless we are when it comes to taking care of ourselves. We know how to achieve success and earn money (some people succeed, others don’t), but we have little idea what emotional care or mental development means. Taking care of yourself is associated with going to the gym, to the doctor and taking supplements.
And when it doesn’t help?
– Such people go to therapy offices, but most often they are in crisis: their relationships are falling apart, they are losing their job, their health, their children are not talking to them or they feel that they simply cannot go on any longer.
What do they expect?
– A visit to the office is supposed to resemble a visit to a car repair shop: they imagine that I will connect the patient to a computer that will tell us where the fault is, I will recommend tightening the screw and you can move on. At full speed and medium quality fuel.
What do you tell them?
– That you can’t get out of the crisis of burnout, depression, and anxiety disorders just by going to yoga. Life and the values on which it was based must be changed.
These are the stories of people in their fifties?
– You don’t have to be 50 to experience burnout. Yes, today’s 50-year-olds entered the 1990s in a specific cultural context, with expectations of success and hopes of conquering the world. Many believed that work was the meaning of their lives, but very few thought about its costs. There are those who still cling to it, but just as many have already crashed on the reefs of the dream of success – losing their health, relationships, and sometimes their fortunes. But that doesn’t mean that 20-30-year-olds don’t have challenges, they’re just different. For young adults, the lack of prospects and the fear of failure are a painful experience of entering adulthood; millennials have lost many ideals and often hope for a decent life and work. In general, they are more susceptible to anxiety and depressive disorders, they are really experiencing a climate catastrophe that the older generation continues to deny…
…we haven’t experienced things like this before.
– I took my final exams in 1994 and it was not a time without worries (after the fall of communism, capitalism began), but maintaining my well-being was not particularly complex. Nobody just knew the word.
At the turn of the century, there were still remnants of support in patterns, although they too have become obsolete before our eyes. But basically the world seemed relatively predictable. In addition, there was a lack of young staff, we had much greater opportunities for promotion. When we entered adulthood, no one showed us what it meant to take care of our own lives, take care of balance, how to make important decisions, and get along with other people, either in company teams or with partners. We were taught how to do business, that what counts in life is cunning and the ability to “get things done”. Only the last 10-15 years have seen the development of therapeutic culture in Poland, with all its advantages and disadvantages. People absorb a lot of knowledge in great confusion because we feel that we lack the tools to manage our lives wisely.
The common experience is the confrontation with an increasingly unpredictable world in which, in order to live safely and happily, one must be constantly on the move, constantly reinventing oneself, and reacting to changing circumstances. In which less and less situations in relationships or professional life happen as they used to. It is worth realizing that we must constantly struggle with the outside world to remain in even moderate mental and physical health.
Are we facing crises?
– For centuries, the main way to deal with a crisis in any form in Poland was drinking. For over a dozen years, people have been doing compulsive shopping or practicing sports. It is not without reason that we have such an extensive culture of marathons, triathlons and gyms. On the one hand, it is very good that people move, but we must not forget that it can be a tension regulator, a way to reduce emotional pressure. Sport is a great tool when we can’t cope with problems, the feeling of being lost, and the feelings that bother us.
What other escape strategies are there?
– First of all, there are those that work and those that don’t work. A job you can’t leave, psychoactive substances, compulsive sex, undergoing therapy for years, constant improvement can also be an escape from the hardships of life. A person is able to use absolutely any known activity to disconnect from himself and not have to deal with his own problems.
Therapy as an escape?
– I used to think that psychotherapy connects people with life and their interior. Now I know that not always. In the office you can simply sit as if in a refuge and not take on the challenges of everyday life, because you are constantly in therapy and in the process.
How has it become increasingly difficult to enjoy it in today’s world?
– You need to be attuned to pleasure, have a feeling body, a calm head. A tense body and a stressed psyche do not have access to experiencing any sensual stimulation and pleasure related to food, sex, dancing… In such a state, the only thing that can be done is to introduce a strong anesthetic stimulus, e.g. alcohol, or a strong stimulating stimulus, e.g. sports or orgasm.
Or enjoy shopping.
– Capitalism has equated consumption with pleasure, but this is a fraud. They try to convince us that it is only available thanks to money. A whole industry of spending free time and planning rest has been created. Shopping causes the production of dopamine, we are excited for a moment, but it passes quickly and at the end of the month it may even turn out to be quite problematic for the budget. Enjoyment is a competence that must be learned. If we rush to eat even the best dish, we catch great music with our ears – we won’t appreciate it anyway.
People don’t trust themselves that they can do it themselves, look at a beautiful forest or a sunset?
– Because they can’t! There are so many conditions to be met to enjoy the sunset that it is better to go shopping and wine.
That’s why the generation of 40-50-year-olds are very, how to say, good consumers, maybe even exemplary?
– We entered adult life in the 1990s, when the cult of work and consumerism reigned supreme. We tasted the perfect mixture. But millennials are also great consumers, and Zetkas are doing great. We simply consume different things, Iksy – luxury cars, if they can afford it, Zetki – sneakers worth PLN 2,000, if their parents can afford it.
I would like to go back to constant stress.
– He leaves many of us at the breaking point. It burns us out physically and destroys us mentally, we pursue life with the last of our strength. Women somatize chronic stress relatively faster and begin to suffer from infertility, migraines, and autoimmune diseases, but this does not bypass men, who also suffer from cardiovascular diseases, depression, etc.
They escape to work because they think that their main duty towards the family is to provide material goods. A man is just supposed to bring money, not be at home. For many, it was not enough, it did not fit the image of masculinity, which was based on doing, not being. They rarely notice that their presence at home as full family members, with their emotions and attitudes, is absolutely necessary.
Coming back to escapes – it’s often alcohol and occasional sex.
– From a sexological perspective, stress is absolutely the number one factor that burdens sexual life. Even hypertension or diabetes, which are very debilitating especially in old age, are less devastating.
Stress makes us age faster. If a stressed-out 20-year-old has sex to relieve stress before an exam, there’s a good chance he’ll do well. If a stressed-out 40-year-old woman tries to do the same before an important presentation, she may be in for a nasty surprise.
Let alone a 40-year-old. I recently talked to a sexologist who talked about the increasing problems of this group.
– For hundreds of years, men have been told that their sexual life proves their masculinity. And for some time now they have had to confront emancipating women who are starting to have expectations of them, including in sex. Not everyone is ready for this and says: “OK, I’m withdrawing.” But this has serious consequences for self-esteem.
You often hear in your office about loneliness in a relationship. Is she related to the internship?
– Rather, we are aware of what we are missing. Our parents often lived in empty, disconnected relationships, sometimes violent. But no one questioned it then. And 40-50-year-olds don’t want to live like that, we just don’t know how to do it better. 30-year-olds grew up in slightly different times, they have more knowledge and tools, and 20-year-olds generally say: if I have to be alone in a relationship, I don’t want such a relationship; I will take care of my friends. There is a growing gap between what we have at home and what we think we could have. It used to be that only women dealt with such problems, but now mature men also come and say that they need to start dealing with their relationships. They don’t want to wait until the children leave the house and it turns out that they have nothing to talk about with their partner.
For years, the cultural pattern assumed that after a certain point, you don’t really have to do anything in a relationship, it lasts.
– But is it only about “having someone”, as the culture has been telling us so far? For a long time, marriage was not for love or happiness, but to guarantee a stable arrangement that gave the woman a place with the man and he was taken care of at home. Now this is changing a lot because we are starting to understand the true importance of relationships in our lives. How much we lose if we don’t have closeness, is that money, of course, gives comfort, but it does not guarantee that someone will love you. And we start to think about what we do in relationships, what coping strategies we implement.
Example please.
– A couple is arguing, one screams, the other runs away in silence. They both cope as they have coped all their lives, especially as children. Probably screaming was ignored, you had to really stamp your foot for your parents to notice that something was happening, or there was no other way to express anger or criticism at home, only attack. And the latter was probably coping with a hostile environment through silence and disappearance – silence means that you are not there, that you are protecting yourself in a world where, for example, alcohol dominates. Such a couple does not necessarily hate each other, they usually do not understand what is happening to them. The good thing is that they are reaching out for help more and more often.
Marta Niedźwiecka is a psychologist, co-author of the best-selling book “Slow Sex”. Since 2019, she has been running her own psychological podcast “O zmierzchu”, recently her new book, which is a recording of the first season of the podcast, was published.
