“Interest in sex has disappeared”: psychologists reveal the topics of appeals from Russians

If you look at the forum of one of the psychological assistance services to the population, the majority of citizens’ requests are related to “personal problems” – a total of 4,515 messages. Next in terms of frequency of requests is the forum thread “Psychological health” (depressive conditions, panic attacks, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue) (3272 requests). Approximately equal numbers of Muscovites are concerned about problems on the topics “Relationships in the family” and “Relationships in couples” (about 3000). As it turned out, people are much less worried about situations related to the categories “Work” and “Children”.

In the first group, Muscovites complain, for example, about their anger, tearfulness, that they are “completely confused,” about a “midlife crisis,” and “something is going wrong.” Someone asks psychologists “how to become more carefree”? Others describe the contradictions tearing them apart from within: “I compare myself with others, I consider myself unworthy; the feeling that I was late in life everywhere,” “Shame for my existence, missed opportunities, lack of faith in change and internal powerlessness.” “At work everyone thinks I’m calm, like a boa constrictor, but everything makes me angry. This anger is so strong that I can’t sleep well, my chest begins to feel tight, and I don’t know how to deal with it correctly.”

On the topic “Psychological health” you can see real cries of the soul, which clearly require prompt assistance from specialists. Here are examples of the latest requests by date: “I’m devastated. It feels like I feel nothing but endless emptiness. Only notes of sadness interrupt this emptiness. Sadness for the people close to me, whom I disappoint and hang as a burden on them. Is there meaning in my life?

“I never see support from my husband and teenage daughter. I look after everyone, take care of them, but no one takes care of me. It seems that I am only needed as a servant/cleaning lady etc., I don’t feel their love and care. And, apparently, it got stuck in my head that this stress began to result in panic attacks. I began to fear that it was the heart, etc.”

“I stopped sleeping for a very long time, I just can’t sleep because I’m afraid. “Everything annoys me, well, almost, basically, I’m only calm when I’m alone, or with a close friend, everyone else causes me wild aggression with every move and advice.”

Let us note that psychological service workers respond to requests directly on the forum, which will certainly help to understand themselves and their lives and other people who find themselves in a similar difficult situation, but do not dare to seek the help of a specialist. By the way, throwing out your troubles on the forum pages is also one of the methods of self-help. As psychologists say, even if a person simply describes his situation on paper, he will feel better.

In short, now there are a huge number of formats – face-to-face and online, questions and answers on forums, telephone conversations, Skype, etc., to resort to professional help from psychologists.

Practicing psychologists say that the topics and tone of appeals to them have changed in recent years, and these changes cannot but disturb them.

“Conflicts have become more acute, there is more violence in families, division, hostility,” family psychologist Svetlana Pleshakova told MK. – This, for example, is the exacerbation of all the old, long-standing conflicts between relatives, which flare up with renewed vigor. On the other hand, there is an increase in anxiety, depression, leading to insomnia, decreased energy in people, lack of sex life (due to loss of interest in it) – when people no longer care about it. This can also be a tendency to find fault with one’s body, when a person seeks out more and more new shortcomings in himself.

Very often, all these problems arise in people against the backdrop of a developing dependence on news. There is a term “doomscrolling” – an obsessive desire to search for, scroll through negative news. A typical situation becomes when people do not communicate, do not have a romantic dinner by candlelight, but instead everyone sits in their own news, and then they begin to discuss them, be indignant, argue, etc. The consequences of doomscrolling can be an increase in anxiety, tension, the emergence of various addictions (this is a sharp change in one’s mental state with the help of chemicals or behavioral patterns (that is, behavioral scenarios)) – for example, going on a binge, becoming dependent on a particular food etc.

Unfortunately, it often happens that a dispute starts over different points of view on some news or event, and then people get personal, start throwing insults, and remembering all the past grievances. And they no longer remember what started the conflict.

Often women come to me and complain about their husbands: “I can’t deal with him anymore, he has become more picky, aggressive, and started abusing alcohol,” and she has several more children, and each has their own problems. Or women complain that their husband comes and stares at the computer, or that their adult son doesn’t want to work and also sits on the computer, and when he is distracted from it, he communicates aggressively. Or, for example, a woman says that she is tired of household chores, work, and such life in general, but in her family no one pays attention to this, everyone thinks that this is normal. A psychologist can help her develop a behavior strategy so that she can maintain her mental health in such conditions.

As for children, parents come with the following problems: children have begun to study worse, they behave more aggressively, they respond sharply to their parents, they close themselves off from everyone, they demand to “get behind them,” and there is more misunderstanding. It is clear that there have always been complaints about such situations with children, but now there are more conflicts. Conflicts can arise literally out of nowhere.

I would like to especially note that violence, whether emotional, physical, or even financial, which is increasingly “unwinding” and gaining momentum in families, should under no circumstances be tolerated; it must be interrupted at its very beginning. Nowadays, there are many different free psychological services and foundations where you can turn. In general, from the point of view of psychology, any manipulation, violence in communication, the desire to humiliate another, to command him – these are all manifestations of psychological or mental illness.

We must also remember that accumulated reactions to long-term stress can trigger various serious diseases – both acute and chronic. The “contribution” of severe stress as a provoking factor is now often observed in strokes, heart attacks, etc.

– The demand for psychologists has increased by a third over the past year, but are there enough of them?

– There are a lot of psychologists being “stamped” now; another question is that there are few good ones. A specialist may have many different diplomas, but this does not indicate his professional suitability and qualities. The most important thing is for a person to feel non-judgmental acceptance, understanding and respect from the psychologist. Dialogue, a sincere desire to understand another, is generally the basis of any emotional-resource relationship for a person with a healthy psyche, starting from relationships with a spouse, children, relatives, friends, and ending with professional help from a psychologist or any person in the helping professions.