Is it her personality?

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Question:

Good day doctors, I would like an explanation on the behavior of the woman that helps me with my domestic chores. Ever since she’s step foot in my house, she is constantly venting and bad-mouthing her in-laws in an obsessive and repetitive way. When her in-laws are dead, she finds another person to hate: the sister-in-law! Ignoring the fact that this sister-in-law (after various arguments I assume) is the same sister that helps her buy groceries! After complaining about every single relative possible, now she is arguing against another woman that, like me, uses her for her domestic service.

I know this woman quite well and we hang out quite often; it irritates me to have to listen to negative things about her. I realized after a while that the domestic worker needs to always hate someone. She is extremely touchy and sensitive to a point that if you are making eye contact or observing her for any reason, she can be so irritated that she cries. She has very childish attitudes (even if she is past 50 years old) in a way that if she breaks only a glass (which can happen to everyone) she tends to hide it.

I would like to know if she has some sort of disorder or if it is just part of her personality. I am baffled and I don’t know how to deal with her anymore, even if until now I’ve adopted a friendly behavior.

Thank You.

Answer:

Dear Anna, Unfortunately instructions on how to interact or deal with people do not exist, and in particular people like the one that you’ve described. From your mail it is clear that some of the characteristics of your worker definitely makes the relationship between you two difficult, but what is not clear is the reason you keep letting her work at your house. Being extremely touchy and sensitive (and therefore unable to deal with being observed by others), trying to hide his/her own errors, and individualizing a “scapegoat” that she can direct all of her rage and use it to “explain to herself” all that is wrong with her life, are signs of a deep psychological disorder.

If you’d like to form a hypothesis (surely a very risky one seeing how little elements there are to base it on), you can say that she is a person that is excessively insecure, that is strongly afraid of being criticized and judged and therefore became extremely critical and aggressive towards others. If we look back on your relationship with this person, my advice is to take her how she is, keeping in mind that at the roots of her behavior there is surely a psychological ailment.

And if you are unable to tolerate her talking bad about your friend anymore you have all the rights to tell her; in any ways, keep in mind that anyone of your statements can become a form of aggression for this woman. If it is not already like this, you can become one of the people that she talks bad about with someone else. Hope that this was able to help, best wishes.

Answer:
Manuela Biagi, Psychologist
Question:
Anna, 54 years old
Publication Date:
10/31/2006 

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Fear of Depression

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Question:

After 6 years away studying, I came back to my city and living in a bad moment of my life. My moods are constantly changing, up and down, and I am nervous, and feels like my wing has been clipped… My morals are extremely low… will I sink into depression?

I now tend to isolate myself and not talk to anyone. I am scaring myself.

Answer:

Dear Manuela,

Having past 6 years away from the city that you live certainly means the construction of a social context in which you are comfortable in; the first of your young adulthood, it is important and significant because of the people that you’ve encounter as well as for the internal formations that took place. Because of this, having left everything can have a feeling of uprooting with a sense of emptiness and disorientation that can explain your constant up and down mood swings. Also due to having lost the strong anchor that you’ve had before and not having found that yet, you can feel like a fluttering balloon that has no control of where it goes and have the sensation that you’ve lost the right equilibrium.

There’s also the need to understand whether the environment that you’ve returned to is still suitable for you and how much you’ve grown in this 6 years somewhere else. Maybe you expected to come back and find everything how you’ve left them but instead they’ve changed, and the reason not being other than you’ve changed and you see things differently than you otherwise would. It can also be the disappointment that follows when you exit from childhood, when you have responsibilities, after studying, to compose yourself like an adult like looking for a job. And if you already have one, it would be the responsibility of having to work and make a plan for your life that is not based on dreams and desires. At this time, you are face with the limitations of reality and at the same time need to be open for possibilities because resources can present themselves at unexpected times and you need to realize it when it happens. Do not ever feel like your wings are clipped.

If the loss that we are talking about including a physiological effect, it is a sign and also a stimulus to pursue new guidelines to follow, create new relational networks with people, and even discover new places within your city that you were not aware of before. It was not mentioned that whether or not returning to your city also means returning to your family and this, on an unconscious level, can represent a form of regression that tends to destabilize you. Specifically if your parents, more or less knowingly, began to treat you like the child that they have then instead of the young women that you’ve become.

Consider the signals that your emotions are sending you, bring yourself to your actual current situation without fear, but instead, consider them important messages that you need to understand better and therefore to make choices more adequate to your purpose and to your goals. Listen to them, eventually through guided routines, you can rekindle your motivations and your resources will present themselves. Remember, both your motivations and resources are urged and they emerge with an incredible amount of strength when there is a destination, a purpose, and a goal to achieve. Maybe it is this that they are signaling to you the symptoms that you are describing: what you want in respect of what you already have and are they enough? What are the directions in obtaining what you want? With what means can you arrive to your purpose and your goal?

Best wishes.

Answer:
Patrizia Napoleone, Psychotherapist
Question:
Emanuela, 25 anni
Publication Date: 10/09/2006

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Fear of exams

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Question:

Hello, I am a 20 years old student that currently studies at a university. My problem is that I am experiencing blocks with my study. I study, I prepare, but I am terrorized by exams. When I know that an exam is imminent, whether near or far, I start to sweat and I feel a heavy weight oppressing my stomach. 

The closer the exam, the worse I become, sometimes I even break down in tears. I’ve re-arranged all of my exams for this but the last incident was evident. I prepared great before the exam, but when I arrived at the university to take the exam I felt pretty much absent-minded. I could not bring myself close to the classroom and I went away tearing. What can this be? Is there a cure? 

Who can I turn for help? Thank you for responding.

Answer:

Dear Emanuele, I want to reassure you immediately that there is a solution for what you are going through. Your problem, specifically the mental block before taking an exam, enters into the categories of disorders, or anxiety neurosis. However, it can also be attributed to low self-esteem, or lack of trust in self. I would like to suggest to you to not focus all of your attention, your worries, your life, and yourself only on the problem: “how do I overcome this mental block with my study.” Instead, I think, it is important that you ask yourself, if the study block might be hiding something other problems. That it is trying to hint at something unconscious.

Therefore, choose to site with a psychotherapist that can facilitate a solution not only for the study block but also so that you can live knowingly, with better self-esteem, trust, and self-determination. I hope in this hasty response I was able to help. In any case, I hope you find the best way to live and to make your life function. 

Best wishes. 

Answer:

Silvano Forcillo, Psychotherapist

Question:

Emanuele, 20 years old

Publication Date: 05/19/2008

Loneliness in Relationship

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Question:

Dear Doctor Zampiron,

I ask genuinely for you to take a look at a husband that repeatedly visited sites from swingers to those for homosexual regardless of consequences. Every time that I discover him continuing this foul act he assures me that it is only a virtual contact and he promised me he would not do it again… but instead he repeatedly violates this promise. 

He tells me that he loves me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I am very disappointed that I lost trust; I feel nothing besides full of rage. From one of your TV interviews, you’ve said that it is necessary to communicate but I continue to ask for clarifications while he stays in deep silence in a way that it offends me. 

I am known to be an intelligent person that since the first offense, I tried to have an open mind without being judgmental. Please help me because I want to save this relationship… to the point that I would like to have a direct consultation. Thank you.

Answer:

Dear Stella,

I understand your delusion and the rage that you have when you knew, when you realized and feels “loneliness” in a couple’s relationship. I am on the understanding that, the most important aspect for a good, complete, satisfying, and serene communication between people is principally based on the ability to listen openly for comprehension and to support each other in case of great difficulties. 

It is necessary that between the people themselves to stabilize a relationship based on trust and on security and the transparency in certain situations when it comes down to feelings and emotional experiences. 

In this case, the person who is betrayed of trust and transparency of feelings usually suffers from rage and delusion from the offense, the betrayal that is received from the other.

Rage, delusion, and betrayal comes, like this, lives in even and especially in the relationship of couples when the emotional stability, for some reason, needs to change. Referring to your situation, Stella, I can deduce that your husband, while loving you, discovered an interest, a sexual desire that he wants to satisfy but he is ashamed or have negative feelings and emotions within himself. 

These can be the main reason for your partner to act through denying the problem itself and not allowing for a cleared and transparent conversation with you on this topic, compromising instead the stability and the feelings of the relationship between a couple.

Best wishes.

Answer:

Maria Zampiron, Psychotherapist

Question: 

Stella, 42 years old

Publication Date: 02/16/2009

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