Students at the classes for future moms
—It happens that young girls between the age of fifteen and seventeen look for an advice online. They get pregnant, the parents aren’t in the know, they’re scared and don’t know what to do. How would you develop a conversation with such patients?
—The clue is hidden in your question. A woman has no support. And my job is to become her support line. Maybe for some time, like three years, but it will help her to grow stronger.
She has no support. And my job is to become her support line. Maybe a temporary one, for three years, but it will help her to grow stronger
Or, direct her to the “Life” Center. But not just give advice and let her go… For example, I currently have three girls in antenatal care. One of them has a psychiatric diagnosis and everyone in her family is against her becoming a mom. The second girl also has a disability, epilepsy, but she gave birth. Everyone working in our women’s care clinic support her by collecting all the necessary things. But not only needful things can give her a footing. Because what’s the real problem? The real problem is that no one supports her. A young woman comes for a consultation and we discuss what we can do, like, “let’s look at all options…” Pregnancy is not a problem. The problem is that she found herself in this situation, yet no one showed support for her. So, you begin to think what organization you can direct her to and what kind of help to provide; so that she always knows that she can turn to us at any time and receive help.
—Sure, material assistance also gives moral support. This gives a sense that you have support and understanding, you aren’t alone and you’ll receive help—like moral support or even food handouts
—Yes. Once my beloved doctor Elena Yurievna told me: “Katya, this girl needs an iron supplement. But we don’t have any.” Margarita Nikolaevna, a mother of six—she’s from a military family and her husband is also in the military service—turned to her patients. “Someone needs iron supplement here, who has any?” And so, in their Novaya Izhora settlement, they pulled everything together—some clothes, iron supplements, all of that in just two days. So, we gave everything to that girl. She is under my antenatal supervision. I asked her to check back with me and let me know how things are. Because, sometimes she doesn’t answer her phone when I call her. And I begin to worry—is everything all right with her? Of course, this is not very professional for a psychologist to worry this much. Re-coordinate and then—just move on with life. You should feel somewhat detached. Because when you’re emotionally involved, it gets hard. But it’s easier for me when I know that everything’s fine with her.
—We just smoothly arrived at our next question. What helps you as a psychologist and as a human being to restore your internal resources and replenish strength?
—It’s a double-natured situation. I will answer as a psychologist at first. I study all the time, attend competitions, and exhibit all my cases, which I take to my pre-abortion counseling, at classes for expectant moms and dads, and smoking cessation classes. Anywhere I go I bring my cases and manuals. It helps me to avoid burnout, because I see that the community where I was studying accepts me and values my work. We also have psychotherapy groups for psychologists. Because some of our cases are really very difficult. As for simple human contact and a vent out, I have a weekly Confession and Communion. My spiritual father blessed me to do it weekly. It helps. My confessor helps me. Sometimes I rush to see my local priest Fr. Dionisy and say, “Batiushka, I’m in such and such situation, I don’t know what to do…” I seek Fr. Dionisy’s advice about my work. My father confessor is Fr. Vladimir from the same church. I go to confession and take Communion—and keep on working. Sometimes, when I encounter dreadful situations, it throws me off balance. Doubts creep in; why did I say this and why did I do that… The enemy muddles my mind. Of course, recognition is important to me as a psychologist. But without God, I am nothing. I have even noticed that after taking Communion, my patients consent to keep their pregnancy more often. It was surprising to observe this, so I told my priest about it. He explained: “Katia, after you have Communion, your word goes out like a shot for seven straight days.” Thus, he advised me to confess and receive communion more often. There is a really fine line between the executioner and the rescuer.
—We have a front line we all know about, where our soldiers defend our Motherland. But there is also another one—quiet and invisible, where we fight for…
—Souls.
—The souls, yes, of the unborn children. It’s practically another war. And you are truly a fighter there, along with the rest of psychologists of pre-abortion counseling.
—With God’s help!
—I know it’s incredibly difficult. Those who work the hot line for crisis-pregnant women have a long recovery period.
—Yes. And if I cannot get hold of my psychotherapy community, then the only resource left for me is my priest. So yes, that’s true. Because sometimes you are ready to come and off-load a bucket of that gruesome stuff, all those accumulated sensations and emotions left by strangers… But wait, why strangers! They are not strangers. As you work with them, you begin to grow accustomed to and even to worry about this person. So, then you bring all this stuff to the priest and say: “I’m sorry, batiushka” and you just dump it all on him (laughs). And it makes me feel better. But there is no other way to avoid burn out. Or, say, you stand during the service, praying, “O Mother of God, help me! Tell me, guide me how not to drop on the floor right here!” To be honest, I go to church with my children, so I don’t always have the opportunity to pray like that.
Studies at classes for future moms —How do you build a conversation with a woman who says that she came only because someone sent her to you, that she had already decided everything, and all she wants is to simply check a box saying she visited you?
—To check a box? Okay, not a problem. I typically have them visit me for five consecutive meetings. When a woman comes with the mood of, “Get lost, I don’t need anything except for the piece of paper my doctor made me take,” then I should stretch a time frame. The thing is that each crisis period has its own time frame. Here, there is this thing—a formal-informal and a closed-opened kind of contact. A formal contact is when “I will listen to everything you tell me, but I will remain unconvinced, just give me that piece of paper.” A closed contact is the manifestation of direct aggression, the shifting of responsibility: “Well, but you are a psychologist, can’t you understand that I only need a piece of paper?! I don’t know why the doctor has sent me here, just give me the piece of paper and leave me alone. “A closed form of contact frequently indicates the rejection of pregnancy or a trauma associated with childbearing. So, our task in the case of a closed form is to give them time for pregnancy awareness and for making a decision. It is time to learn what opportunities, not only problems, the motherhood can present. In order to make this decision, a woman must have an appointment with the psychologist not earlier than ten days after pregnancy was assessed.
Before this, we can’t work with awareness, because the woman is at a stage of shocking information acceptance. And she needs these ten days for this phase to change to an awareness stage. Most likely, around three days have passed since she has learned about it. And, more than likely, the woman goes through the stage of pregnancy denial. She assumes: This is it. I have no idea how to live now, my hair turned gray when I saw those two bars. And she doesn’t know what to do with this news. She’d rather I stopped meddling in her affairs. But not so soon, my dear! According to the guidelines I am using, I have ten days with you, from the moment of official pregnancy diagnosis issued by a physician until the moment you are accepted for a consultation. If you all you need is a “piece of paper” from me—good. Then, you have to pass such and such a test today. I can’t do it any other way, sorry—it’s all because of my practice guidelines. So, come again on such and such a day. Sure, you think I’m a silly creature. Yeah right, I’m an awful psychologist. But you have to bear with me. Again—it’s all of those practice guidelines, the regulatory documents... Thus, I am playing a waiting game until the first stage transitions to another, which allows me to work with her. But if she shouts at me, “Give me that paper!”—it won’t work.
—Did I understand you correctly that the process of going through a crisis situation that has to do with unplanned pregnancy has the same stages as grief acceptance: denial, anger, pain, bargaining, and acceptance?
—Yes. These are all the same stages. As I have said before, unplanned pregnancy is an abnormal crisis. Our consciousness processes it harder than the death of a person.
Unplanned pregnancy is an abnormal crisis. Our consciousness processes it harder than a person’s death
Someone has died—and you get busy taking care of things in connection with this, you arrange a funeral, and you are already grieving. As for abortion, you kill a living person yourself, yet no one in their sane mind wants to be a murderer. As if it’s not enough that you got pregnant, you also don’t know what to do about it. Not only that—if you kill your baby, then yes, you bury him in a sense, and you are responsible for this. Nobody wants to be guilty of someone’s death. But we still live with this guilt. Unconsciously, as a flashback, but it’s still there. For example, someone can’t understand why, once she smells the hospital, she begins to shiver and panic. This person doesn’t understand this, but this episode was already lodged in her subconscious.
This is the kind of trauma that will later grow into a mental illness. Who among such people will seek help? No one. Their relatives will. Like when a girl’s mother says —something’s wrong with my girl. She can neither sleep nor eat and her hands are all crusty. When our body produces an excessive amount of cortisol, it first causes skin problems. But cortisol is only blocked by insulin, so, after a while, we have a hormonal imbalance—anything from diabetes to thyroid diseases. So, it’s one heck of a story there. If you bury someone and had funeral service for him, it means you have done something for this person. But in the case of abortion—what can you do? You’ve done it all already—by killing your baby. So, these are two different situations. No matter what, you will still relive this loss. Because it is a loss. Unlike in the event of prenatal mortality, when the mother wanted to get pregnant, it’s when we have things to talk through with her. When a woman has lost the baby she wanted, she can stop grieving. In our case, a woman can’t—she has only herself to blame.
—We often hear that women don’t want to give birth because of financial problems, that the government should support them, and that life is too expensive these days… But according to my observations, the rich don’t give birth more often than the rest.
—No, this isn’t about financial prosperity. We hit a huge layer of problems here. It’s attitude to motherhood—what was her mother like. How she sees herself in the role of a mom. Her general attitude to children. If a woman had many abortions, she doesn’t understand why this child should be better than those others? She no longer sees them as children. Or, look at her attitude to her own mother: She was a drunkard and so she hates her. As a result, such women are very much afraid of getting pregnant. Even if they want to have children and give birth, their conscience is overpowered by a different dominant idea and pregnancy is rejected simply because they don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother. A woman doesn’t want to be like her mother. Yes, she loved her mother, but her mother derided her and made her stand on buckwheat husks till her knees were bleeding. If mom didn’t like something, she’d kick her out of the flat to stand outside, as if her daughter were some stray kitten. These are real stories told by my patients.
—In other words, motherhood on its own is acting as a trigger, right?
—Yes. She doesn’t know how to behave in certain situations. She’d say: “I will never do this to my child, but I am afraid of myself, I don’t know how to behave at all.” So, we have to teach them everything at our motherhood classes. There are family and societal norms. One family has this for a norm, whereas another family has something else… We have to tell some simple, elementary things and explain certain situations drawing on the example of other mothers—how they survived their mothers’ wrongful behavior and became amazing mothers at the same time. We explain how they overcame the challenges and where they learned this, what families and what kind of women helped them in this process. It is also necessary to give them the opportunity to learn about the experience of other women, albeit traumatic, but to hear opinions of others, and also to teach things. A woman isn’t afraid of motherhood per se—she is afraid that she doesn’t know how to do it. And it is usually enough just to teach them mothering skills. There are no bad mothers—but, as the result of some circumstances, there are not quite good ones. She is a mom—so she is already great, because she gave birth, and she didn’t kill her baby.
She is a mother—she is already great, as she birthed a baby instead of killing him
We have a breastfeeding class for those who don’t understand how to nurse. We have one instructor and then there is another one, who will come to you in the evening, if necessary. You don’t understand how to do this or that? Don’t worry, it will take some time. After all, your baby won’t be ready for school right away either. I am going to teach them everything. No one teaches us at school how to birth babies or how to be a mom. There is nothing like, “you are bad” or “you are good.” My job is to undermine attitude towards abortion and then a woman makes the decision. I support them just the same as I support my own children by helping them to build up experience. During this period, a young mother herself is like a child, not knowing what to do.
—How about measures, other than legislative, that you would like to see in the near future, so that fewer women chose abortion and would not fear giving birth? Maybe we should introduce lessons at schools, so that women could learn about the very beginnings of life—not at the time of pregnancy, but having received basic mothering skills in childhood?
—It is necessary to strengthen the whole institution of the family. Unfortunately, we have lost our traditions. We have no traditions of parenthood, marriage, help and support in the family, traditions of doing a common task as a family once a week. Why are we short of children? Because we don’t know what to do with them.
—In my opinion, succession of generations is also long gone. Of course, seventy years of a godless regime had their adverse effect...
—Yes, you’re right. What were the children doing before? The girls were sewing and embroidering. As for the boys, they carved wood. For example, they made the so-called “birds of happiness” that you can see here at my office. It was interesting to do things together with mom and dad. This is a tradition, not some sporadic action. We attend church. Not just church—it’s the tradition that comes first, when we aren’t separated, with everyone surfing the net, each sitting in his own corner, no! It’s when we are all engaged in a common cause. It’s when adults pass on their knowledge to children. For example, learning how to pickle cucumbers. Your child is sitting next to you and you tell him: “Now, sweetie, come on, take the lids apart.” And he is doing it together with his mother. Or: “Kids, let’s learn today how to carve birds. Let’s learn to do this or that handiwork today. “
—Overall, what do you think—has the situation improved, compared to the period when you have just begun working here?
—We don’t have fewer abortions. It’s gotten better in terms of support and we have more resources. I have options available where I can direct pregnant women, or things to show them—like the consequences of abortion, for example. As for me personally, I have more opportunities to support women. I must have the resources to “humanize” the child—be it a single bean model or a mock-up. There must be a physician I can rely on, who won’t say, “Oh, it’s nonsense, you will give birth again.” It should be someone who will reinforce what I am saying here.
Let’s say, a woman will hear several times that she can get uterine scar and this may result in endometriosis. This, in turn, may cause cancer at the age of forty. Not only will she hear it here, at the psychologist’s office, but also in the doctor’s office and in the department where she will be “scraped out.” And her opinion will change, because she heard it from three different professionals. It happens even this way. For example, someone receives a negative medical test. And what does he do? He’s looking for ways to back it with proofs from other medical organizations. In one place, he will be told: “It’s cancer.” Then, another clinic will confirm it and then yet another specialist will say the same thing. And this person will go and receive treatment.
But if he learns of this test result from only one doctor, he won’t take it seriously. What if he’s retested at for-profit clinic, where he’s told they found nothing and he’s good to go—imagine the damage they have done! He stopped the treatment, so his disease would become chronic and incurable, and he would be eventually living out his last days. By comparison, he could otherwise get proper diagnostics and adequate evaluation, accept this difficult news, and then stop grieving. It sets him on the right track, as he will receive therapy and continue to live well knowing that the disease won’t get worse. In this case, his quality of life won’t be diminished. Quality of life suffers when a person fails to act. It is the same with abortion. The decision is made not to do anything with the information about the abortion. The decision not to act and do nothing is overall the worst decision ever. When someone decides for me and I simply accept it. For example, when women say: “I am going to have an abortion for medical reasons.” And then she hands over the responsibility for its consequences to others.
In conclusion, I would like to say that every life matters. Whether it is an unborn person, or an adult who has been informed of his disease or received any other “crisis” information. In any of those cases, it is important that you are to decide what you are going to do with this information. When a person believes that, “No way!”—this isn’t about him, and he buries his head in the sand like an ostrich, the problem isn’t going anywhere. What you need to do is to sit down and evaluate all the pros and cons. Even fatal diseases have their advantages. You begin to look at life differently.
—It’s really a very interesting thought that every life has value and every person is here for a reason. And even if he dies immediately after birth, it means that he was needed here for some reason...
—At this point in time, at the given moment and for the given situation.
—And for this particular person.
—You see, even if something really bad happens, you need this information for something. What if you have received this negative experience and in the future you can help someone else in a similar situation. Or, as you have gained some experience, you find something new for yourself. Maybe it’s something that has to do with your personality, because we often know who we really are, but we are reluctant to accept it. And so, our disease is what makes us think about it. For example, if you get sick because you eat too much. Or, there could be other manifestations: It happened because you behaved a certain way. You had promiscuous sexual relations, so now you have a sexually transmitted disease. This is also a manifestation of a power that stops you, protecting you from even more terrifying consequences. Nothing happens without a reason. I also understand one thing: In pre-abortion counseling, every life matters. Regardless of whether a woman has an abortion or keeps her child, this child is already a living person. We must fight for every tiny life, for every successful pregnancy, regardless of any crisis situation. Because this will surely affect her future pregnancies, her perception of her child and herself, as well as her partner. It will also affect how you are going to define yourself, and your children, in terms of your attitude to abortions. Our job as specialists is, firstly, to undermine the opinion that abortion is a norm and a means of contraception. Secondly, we are to give a woman an opportunity to make this choice, and to make the right one, so that it wouldn’t later develop into a mental disorder or some other state that she won’t be able to manage.
—Thank you for this conversation! I myself would also like to add the wish that in your practice, you would see more of those women who have already made up their minds to give birth, but they need your professional help to psychologically adapt to their new condition.
—Thank you! This is truly important.
