Notes from a psychologist: tension

For me, it was essential to understand that a person has to live in tension. It is this tension that gives you the ability to survive and develop.

Over the years of working as a psychotherapist, I have become convinced that the tension that gives life and the tension that leads to its destruction are two very different tensions.

When a child is screaming, crawling, or learning to walk. When a woman is undergoing super–tension while giving birth to a child. When we set a goal and go to meet it, overcoming internal obstacles, stereotypes, and fears. All this is constructive tension – the tension of life.

Remember when you were experiencing super tension while waiting for the first intimacy with a loved one? This extra tension will always be the joy of your life.

Do you remember your university exams? Who prepared for them in advance? Everyone prepared on the last night. It is also a super tension that everyone will carry with joy in their hearts throughout their lives.

This tension carries a source of energy, desire and intention to penetrate one’s future.

But there is a tension that will never become an incentive to live. This tension is destructive. And it can be deadly.

So, what kind of tension should we avoid, prevent, and, most importantly, continue to seek help to stop it?

This tension destroys the internal balance. It breaks all existing regulatory systems, among which the main one is the immune system. Immunity, as a self–regulatory function of internal metabolism (biological, chemical, physiological, physical, mental and social), either refuses to fulfil its purpose or destroys itself. In case of refusal – death. In the case of self–devouring, all autoimmune diseases, among which cancer, is the least humanly controllable to overcome.

I suggest that you get acquainted with the types of tension, the appearance of which should encourage you to seek help.

1. The tension is neurotic. At first glance, this is a tension of unknown origin, without cause and effect. You are simply in a constant tremor and feel a kind of muscle clamp. You often feel an internal trembling and a constant expectation of something irreversible that you cannot change. This tension is neurotic. It is cumulative. When it appears, it is unnoticeable. When it is already on the surface, it takes complete control of the situation in life. This tension is hard and frightening to live with, but it can do nothing but spoil the joy of life. The way out is psychotherapy.
2. Stressful tension. Such tension includes divorce, loss, crisis, and problems. This tension always appears suddenly. It is its strength. It knocks you out and makes you fall into a somnambulistic, semi–hypnotic state. You feel like you’re out of it, like you’re dreaming. It’s better to be anywhere and with anyone but yourself. You seem to live with yourself and watch yourself but from the outside. You are lost, and each part of you contradicts the other. You live in constant expectation that everything is about to end. But it doesn’t. Under the best circumstances, this tension will disappear along with the reasons that caused it. But if a crisis or problem is gone, but the tension remains, you should see two specialists – a neurologist or a therapist and a psychotherapist.
3. Tension of uncertainty. This tension is ambivalent. On the one hand, you expect joy. On the other hand, you are expecting trouble. It is almost impossible to determine what, when and how. These feelings of polarity, where you simultaneously fall into joy and grief, are exhausting and impossible to overcome. The duration of such tension leads to uncertainty and, over time, a sense of fear of prospects and the future. The solution is all development programmes. But when ambivalence is very active, you should take hormone tests and see a psychotherapist.
4. The tension of addiction. It is a terrible tension because you feel it every time you get into a relationship where you get what you want, but then, unnoticed, you are demanded an exorbitant price for what you have already used. This cruel tension can destroy the psyche because you lose the most important thing – the right to be yourself. The more this tension increases, the less chance you have of getting out of it, and the worse the addiction becomes. The way out is a radical change in life.

All these tensions form the meanings of the terrible event our psyche is experiencing – the war. We should not hope that it will somehow pass us by. As my Client told me, resources and war are incompatible concepts. It is destruction, exhaustion, narrowing of prospects and almost complete inability to manage the situation of one’s own life. Therefore, I ask you – to seek help before the tension starts to eat you up from the inside.

Take care of yourself for victory!