tisdag 25 september 2012

Hopplöshet – vardagsmat för många ryssar..

I dag i MT skriver Marilyn Murray, amerikansk psykolog om den hopplöshet som många ryssar, både vuxna och barn känner eller har känt över sin barndom och sin situation - som ofta fått svåra konsekvenser för deras livsval..
Läs hela artikeln här. 


I am very aware that all of us carry our parent's pain. This is especially true in countries that were formerly ruled by the Soviet system and that endured the wrath of World War II. One of my Russian students said: "We live in a country covered with a blanket of fear. Many of us were raised by parents and grandparents who became emotionally unstable from fear. They self-medicated with alcohol, food or by keeping busy taking care of others."
These children were told that their lives would always be difficult and they must learn how to simply survive. But what happens when a person feels they have no options other than a life of pain, fear and deprivation?
The answer was confirmed in a recent class that consisted of 34 professionals.
  • Olga, a psychologist, said that when the Soviet system fell, her father was hopeful and excited about the possibility of Russia becoming a truly democratic country. He was eager to start his own business with his wife by his side. Gradually, he and Olga's mother became successful as they worked in their small kiosk selling rotisserie chicken. But they could not avoid pressure from the local mafia and corrupt officials. Eventually, criminals seized their business. When Olga was 27, she found her father in a blood-filled bathtub with slit wrists.
  • A young man named Timur shook visibly as he shared the most difficult experience of his life. His beloved grandmother, who had raised him, was distraught over the failure of the Soviet system. Almost everything she valued was now gone: The strong, powerful motherland that she grew up in was disintegrating, her life savings were now worthless, and her small pension that during Soviet times was enough to provide her with food for a month, now only supplied enough for a few days. Her alcoholic husband was dead, and her only daughter had been killed by a drunk driver. While she loved her grandson, this love was not powerful enough to repel the overarching feelings of hopelessness that enveloped her. She hanged herself on the fence in front of her village cottage. Timur, 16, found her when he arrived home after school and had to cut her down. He wept as he told us how he struggled with her dead weight while blinded by his tears.
  • Igor was 11 and was beaten with a belt almost daily by his violent, alcoholic father. His mother stopped trying to intervene years before because that would only divert his rage onto her. One night after an excessively vicious beating, Igor felt he was not able to endure the pain any longer. Seeing no other way out, he took his Pioneer scarf and after securing it around his neck, tied it onto the balcony railing of their little second-story apartment. He then slipped over the railing. But his scarf was made of silken-type fabric, and the knots did not hold. He fell to the ground — heavily bruised but still alive. 
....
These people are ordinary Russians. If you saw them walking on the street, riding on the metro or shopping in a store, there would be nothing strange or different about them. They represent an average cross section of Russians: people who inherited a conflicting, contradictory legacy from parents and grandparents who lived 70 years in the Soviet system. The Soviet period was an amalgamation of stability and fear, confidence and confusion, love and resentment, pride and shame, joy and despair.
....
Those who had made serious attempts stated that as their feelings of hopelessness, despair and of having no other options increased, the reality of suicide intensified.
When asked what they needed as children to remove this torment, their replies all contained something similar to this: "I desperately needed parents who not only loved me, but who were genuinely concerned about my health and safety. And I really needed for them to love and respect each other."

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