“As long as we live, we are vulnerable” – And that’s better than we think. Germany’s best-known psychologist Stefanie Stahl explains how we transform negative beliefs into positive ones – and what is behind her new idea of psycho-entertainment.
BRIGITTE: Ms. Stahl, your new book is called “Who we are – how we perceive, feel and love”. And I thought, that’s exactly what each of us is individual.
Stephanie Stahl: No, it’s not so individual. We humans have similar, standardized structures of our psyche worldwide, just as we also have similar physical structures.
What do we all have in common?
We all actually only have four basic psychological needs around which our lives revolve from morning to night. There is our need for attachment, in the sense of belonging, not just in the sense of a love relationship. The second basic need is our desire for control and autonomy, we want to influence our lives. Control always means security, the opposite of control is powerlessness and being at the mercy. The third need is the desire to increase and protect our self-esteem. And the fourth basic need is that we all like to have good feelings and want to avoid bad feelings. Ultimately, these four needs determine our entire psychological existence. And when you understand that, you understand a lot.
These basic needs often seem to be related, especially when they are not being met. Example: I like someone, I ask him or her out, but the other person is not interested. Now my self-esteem is hurt, I have bad feelings…
…the need for attachment is frustrated, as is my need for control because things are not going the way I would like them to at the moment.
In short: it went badly all around. Her book is subtitled Everything You Should Know About Psychology. Why is it important for me to know exactly what I’m frustrated about now?
Nobody would ask: Why should I concern myself with my body? Psyche affects us in a very specific way, and it’s important that you understand yourself a bit. Specifically, using this example: When I experience this rejection, it is very exciting to know what the problem actually was. Does it have something to do with me and my behavior that I experienced this rejection? Or does it mainly have something to do with the other person? And how do I deal with the rejection: Is my self-esteem collapsing now or can I get over it? We often make the mistake of thinking that we are insufficient, otherwise we wouldn’t be rejected. We take it as a personal self-esteem insult when we don’t get the recognition and attention that we want from a certain person. And often we don’t reflect that, for various reasons, that other person might not even be able to give that to us. And that’s also what it’s about: to look at what really is my responsibility and what responsibility I have to leave with the other person.
However, it often seems that people do not recognize their own part in difficult situations. I remember a case study from your book of a woman who kept throwing tantrums over something other people allegedly did to her.
Elke, as I called her, had a neighbor who one day put up a garden fence that blocked Elke’s view. Elke was very upset about that, because in her head it immediately became: I’m not respected, I’m not important, I’m not asked. As she is very reluctant to conflict, she did not bring this up with her neighbors, but rather vented her anger on her husband, as she so often did – she would not have dared to do it to anyone else. In our conversation, Elke realized that her husband only has a representative role. And she realized that her anger has nothing to do with what happened outside, but with how she was raised and raised. It had nothing to do with the fence, but with very old beliefs and imprints – “I’m not important, I’m not asked” – from her childhood, which she now projected onto this situation.
What else do we do to make life difficult for ourselves?
There are – like Elke – overadjusted people who are very afraid of conflict and always do everything possible to avoid being rejected. And there is the supposed opposite, people who tend to be too autonomous, who say: I don’t need you all, I can do best on my own. Both have in common that they do a lot to avoid getting hurt. In order not to fail. Your goals are defined negatively: it is not about achieving something, but about not suffering something. The problem is that such avoidance goals can never be achieved. Because as soon as I have escaped a situation in which I could have been injured, the next one comes along. As long as we live, we are also vulnerable.
And some people are more afraid of these injuries than others.
Yes. And the fact that some people are so vulnerable has nothing to do with their old life in the here and now, but with the fact that they have already experienced a lot of rejection in their childhood. This feeling of rejection is like a permanent wound. And then it only takes a grain of salt to make this wound – “I’m worth nothing, nobody wants me” – burn again.
When I realize that the problem is imprints from my childhood: has the biggest step already been taken or is the most difficult thing still to come?
It is a huge step to really recognize that this old way of life says nothing about me and my worth. Just something about how I was raised, about how my parents were a little overwhelmed in one way or another. That can be an insanely big realization. And then it’s about training to stop identifying with those old messages and make them the basis of my actions.
And how do you train that?
By catching myself again and again when I’m triggered in the old program. If something happens and I automatically think again: “I’m not valuable, I’m not important”, I have to stop myself, take a step outside of myself and look from the outside: Did I just interpret a relatively neutral situation as against me, because I subconsciously expect that because of my negative beliefs? Or if the situation was really objectively negative for me: Does that say something about me or rather about how the other person is wired? For example, instead of thinking: “I’m not good enough, that’s why I’m being treated badly”, I could also think instead: “He has bad manners and an impossible tone.”
How do I find new positive beliefs? Standing in front of the mirror and saying “I’m great” can’t be the only thing.
No, it’s not that simple. New beliefs have to be realistic and they have to be internally acceptable to me. If I can’t accept “I’m great” for myself, then it’s not an appropriate phrase for me. But maybe, for example: “I suffice.” And new beliefs should not only take place in the head, but should be linked to positive feelings: For example, you can imagine sitting with friends or walking your dog on the beach. One should therefore imagine as many situations as possible in which one is sufficient and the old belief is not correct at all.
People go to therapy for years to get rid of old imprints. When you read your books – especially The Child Within You Must Find Home, which has sold millions of copies – you get the impression that it’s no big deal and can basically be done with a few self-reflecting exercises.
We have to differentiate between mental illness and what I call “normal disorders”. My books are therapy for all normally disturbed people. Everyone has life situations that they find difficult, everyone has life situations that they can’t handle. Everyone has life crises. They are not a case for the psychotherapist, it’s about reflecting on a few things for yourself and putting a few things in the right place. You can see from the success of this book that it works. A lot of people have developed it further, and they recommend it, the book thrives on word-of-mouth propaganda. And above all, I appeal to people’s self-healing powers and personal responsibility. It can’t be the plea of us psychologists: You absolutely need a psychologist.
You are now Germany’s best-known psychologist, who now even does stage shows in large halls. What’s your secret?
My colleague Lukas Klaschinski and I did the “Normally Disturbed” tour this year, and next year we also want to do a show for the new book. We do psycho-entertainment, which means we explain psychology in an entertaining way, interacting with the audience so that ideally everyone learns something and is well entertained. We do something like Eckart von Hirschhausen for psychology.
Could you imagine working as a psychotherapist again someday?
I do psychotherapy in my podcast “Steel but heartily”, these are all real conversations. Overall, however, I withdrew from it because it ties me up too much in terms of deadlines. But of course I can imagine that. It’s what I can and have learned.
Stephanie Stahl
Stefanie Stahl (58) is a psychologist and therapist and lives in Trier. Her psychological guides and non-fiction books on self-esteem, relationship skills and inner imprints sell millions of copies, her book “The child in you must find a home” has been number one on the bestseller list of paperback non-fiction books almost continuously since it was published in 2015. “Who we are” (384 pages, 22 euros, Kailash) has just been published.