One needs systematic work

Both stress excessive activation and traumas are to be worked through. The way to do it quickly and efficiently is described in my books “Objects in the Body” (Ermoshin, A., 1999, 2004, 2007, 2013), “Geometry of Emotions (2008, 2013), “Phobias, Disappointments, and Losses” (2010, 2011, 2014). We will recapitulate the key moments in this book as well. The general algorithm of work in its updated version is adduced in the Introduction.

In order to “harness’ stress and return the body to its peace, one needs to perform a series of tasks. To restore the balanced functioning of sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system and brain, one has to do a number of self-regulation episodes by the method of psychocatalysis where each of these episodes brings you closer to the normal condition.

In this book, we will focus on the cases connected with education, and we will analyse only a couple of cases of general de-neurotisation and de-traumatisation.

Setting oneself free from stress and trauma when working with languages

We will concentrate our attention on the following aspects:

– Working through the consequences of the first encounter with a foreign language and the stress of the early stages of developing linguistic competence:

– Traumas and reactions connected with the perception of the language.

– Traumas and reactions connected with the attempts to speak and with practice in general.

– Working through the traumatic experience of communication with teachers.

– Working through basic neuroticism with its roots in personal history.

– Working through the negative influence of the ancestral and national experience.

Stress of the first encounter

The first encounter with a new language is dumbfounding. There is nothing to hold on to when you try to understand it. All you have is the sound, which does not make any sense.

Ta-ta-ta

This is how Italians describe the sound of the Russian speech: “Ta-ta-ta.”

There is yet another phenomenon: when we are faced with something big, even if it’s breathtakingly beautiful, it can make you feel dizzy. One feels unwell primarily because of the amount of the new information. A big exhibition can cause such a state. One needs time to get a grip, calm down, and then “consume’ it step-by-step.

Hit by a ball in the stomach

Lyubov describes her first encounter with the language as being hit by a ball in the stomach. The ball bounced back. She did not have time to react and couldn’t catch it. The feeling of tension remained.

Some years later, being an adult, she returns to this topic, she understands that she could have taken in the language not as one big ball, but as many little ones. The tension goes away²².

Almost everyone experiences the stress of different intensity at the beginning of learning a language. This stress is written into our psychosomatic contour, even years later, as a kind of “background.” That is why many people, even when they already have linguistic experience, try to avoid situations when they have to speak or understand. Here are a couple of examples.

A plate in the forehead

Datse sees her fear of making a mistake as plates in the upper part of the forehead. She had to “stand on them’ with her attention to make them melt²³.

Feeling tense

Another participant of the seminar whose name is Eugenia, confesses: “I do not allow myself to make any mistakes. I don’t speak: I feel embarrassed, I feel tense and lost. I create this stiffness myself as I don’t let myself say anything unless I know it perfectly well.” The importance of the task is much higher! Communication has the highest priority, as well as the resolution of any practical issues; it’s not a competition or exhibition of linguistic achievement.

This conversation sets the beginning of working through the fear of making a mistake²⁴.

Along with stress, traumas can also be possible. I will describe a couple of cases together with the way we worked through them. This will prepare us for further work together.

In the introduction, I mentioned that a conversation with an English teacher killed my interest towards Italian. Here is a short summary of this story.

The rooster is killed

When I was learning Italian and was feeling quite enthusiastic about it, I told one English teacher about it. She started saying that learning English was much more important, necessary, and more promising.

After this conversation, I suddenly felt that my interest towards Italian seemed to have died out. The textbook, which I thought was so nice and lively, lost its magic.

I began my internal observations to find out what had exactly happened because of this conversation. Italian had been developing as an energetic rooster in my stomach; it actively absorbed everything that had to do with this language: words, expressions, intonations, etc. What did I see with my inner vision? The rooster was killed!

I had to take the dagger out of the rooster, bring it back to life, and learn this lesson: language teachers can experience some sort of jealousy; do not tell everyone about your success, do not share too much! Share your achievements only with those who can feel genuinely happy for you! (If there are such people.)

When your skills become advanced, then you can tell everyone!

“No matter how much effort you put into this, you will never speak like a Russian”

A participant of the seminar in Moscow, her name is Svetlana, has been trilingual with Russian, Ukrainian, and Arabic though Russian has never been her primary language. She has been carrying a phrase once said by a teacher whose opinion was very important to Svetlana: “No matter how much effort you put into this, you will never speak like a Russian.”

We confirm the situation.

“Where did that phrase go and what does it look like inside?”

“It’s like a splinter in my heart.”

“What is your plan: will you continue carrying it or have you had enough of it?”

“Of course, I’ve had enough.”

“Then observe what is happening.”

“It has fallen into pieces and come out as bubbles through the top of my head.”

“It looks like it has left you the same way it came in. Quite often people seem surprised that everything negative comes out through the head, the top of it. It’s like a hatch, which opens up, and then everything that got inside by mistake comes out.”

“The wound on my heart is healing.”

“It sometimes happens that closer to the end of the healing process, there’s the sensation that someone touched the wound with a brush, and then everything smoothed.”

Svetlana draws another breath. I ask her:

“Where is the new understanding of the situation? You speak Russian very well, and with every new day, you will speak even better.”

“It’s like a light-coloured cloudlet above me.”

“Isn’t it time this cloudlet came where it belongs, to your suffering heart?”

Svetlana observes how the cloudlet envelops her, gets absorbed by her skin, and then reaches her heart.

Svetlana feels calm. She opens her eyes²⁵.

What do we do to update the state we are in?

Here is a template for such kind of work. In order to work with the discovered unnecessary formations, we use the following questions: “Is there anything that prevents me from speaking the language I need? Where is it? What does it look like?”

If there is anything that seems disturbing, you will find it in a particular place and in the form of a particular object.

Then you decide if you want to keep nurturing it or it is time to stop. If you choose to stop and you do not want to nurture it anymore, then you observe how it dries out to its original state: whatever came from outside will stay, and whatever you added to yourself will be taken back. The rest of the “foreign object’ goes away the same way it came in. You will calm down.

When you calm down, it means that you observe the redistribution of energy on your body. Your arms and legs get warmer and have a pleasant heaviness; your head feels lighter, and the forehead cools down; your chest and stomach feel free, if before that you experienced any heaviness or compression; and they fill in if they used to seem empty. At the end of this process, you make sure that the place where trauma used to be is clean and calm. “The wound’ has healed, everything has smoothed, and there is no “scar’, no “inflammation’ left.

However, you need to be able to distinguish between the two classes of the condition: trace stress due to the lack of competence, which easily melts during observation; and the injury itself, that is: consequences of fright, ridicule, etc. In such cases, one needs to observe how the feeling that has damaged this person in the first place leaves the body.

Another step is looking for the necessary experience in the space around you. The goal of this experience is to help you develop a new attitude to what used to hurt you: it may look like a little cloud above your head of some sort of condensation inside your head, and then it goes in the form of light, fog, or a more concentrated stream to the damaged place.

Remove the splinter and move on

As for the lack of tact or stupidity of other people that often hurt sensitive people, then there is an old Russian saying for that, even if you don’t sow fools, there’ll be enough of them for the next hundred years. A certain percentage of people of this kind always exist among us. Sometimes, there are more of them, sometimes there are fewer, but they always exist. It is silly to expect that one can live a long life without meeting foolishness or evil. It is more practical to understand how different people are and that it is impossible to expect everyone to treat you nicely and with tact, even if you try to treat everyone this way. Moreover, if you got hurt, do not dwell on your pain, remove that splinter as soon as possible, get wiser and move on!

Now, you can address difficult situations in a mature and business-like manner. No one can keep you from increasing your competence!

You may have already succeeded in doing this part of work following the instructions. Just in case, there is a brief algorithm presented in a more structured way.