Language of communication is what distinguishes humans from animals. Although there are some species of mammals, such as dolphins, that actively use sound signals to communicate with each other. However, dolphins do not have abstract thinking, and it develops only thanks to language.
Language enables a person to communicate, which influences the emergence of a feeling of attachment, primarily to the one who cares for him. Thanks to communication and attachment, people adapt to each other. There is a direct connection between the satisfaction of needs, communication through expressive behavior in childhood (hunger - crying, a sweet smile of a baby - the love of mother and father for him), and a sense of security in the body later.
Neuroscientist Stephen Porges has described attachment in a very interesting way through the lens of polyvagal theory. He hypothesized about the lines of defense that a person uses in times of danger. Moreover, to an emotional threat, such as screaming, verbal abuse, or, for example, when an infant does not receive love and affection from its mother, a person reacts in the same way as to a physical threat.
Our choice of defensive response is linked to the vagus nerve. It is the longest cranial nerve, with branches that run (“wander”) throughout the body. It is part of the parasympathetic nervous system and sends signals to the brain and spinal cord and back. Interestingly, it is connected to the skeletal muscles of the face, middle ear, and larynx, and therefore plays a crucial role in the process of facial expression, hearing, speaking, and swallowing.
When we feel we are in danger, Porges believes, we first engage the ventral vagal complex for social engagement. A very young and dependent infant attempts to engage or appease others primarily through voice and facial expressions.
It smiles at its mother, calls out, laughs. If this does not work (the child fails to attract attention or appease the one who cares for it), then the ventral vagal complex is turned off and the sympathetic nervous system is activated: attack, fight, run away or flatter. That is, a person either fights with danger, fights, enters into battle (attacks), or runs away from danger, avoids important decisions, or becomes invisible, freezes, tries not to breathe and not to think, or obligingly appeases someone (flatters). For example, an attempt to become loved is flattery.
To flatter means to act helpfully, to please others, not to think about your own needs, but to care only about the well-being of others.
If the above defenses do not work, the dorsal vagal system is activated and the person experiences dissociation and does not experience or ignores bodily sensations. When a person is sure that he cannot change or avoid extremely unpleasant external circumstances, he makes an unconscious decision, based on the vagal system, that it is better to “not be” and not to witness what is happening or should happen. (Schnakenberg, 2021, p.19-20) The main task of therapy is to help find a connection between traumas and contact with oneself, others and the World, to restore the ability to feel oneself.
The Verbal Self is found in the Little Professor, C1. When a child translates his feelings into language, language becomes a supporting reality: historical, social, cultural. The Little Professor teaches ways to be understood and to understand oneself.
That is, if another person does not understand me, it causes a wild fear in the Child's Ego-state that it does not belong to this society, which means it will not survive.
During my language work experience at a refugee health center in Norway, in the first month I attended the initial consultation with a nurse who introduced the Norwegian health care system and found out what specialists a person needs. Such nurses are trained and can provide first aid in a crisis.
Usually, a translator is invited to such a consultation. He is hired only from an agency approved by the state, and he also signs a confidentiality contract. The translator is not present in person. He is called by phone at a pre-arranged time.
The interpreter is told who is present in the room, he introduces himself and also says that he respects confidentiality, and translates in the first person.
I have been present at many initial consultations, and I have witnessed people telling me that it was impossible to translate, that I would not be understood. There was pain, despair, and a sense of helplessness in the voice.
The second point in working with a translator is his intonation of voice. It was sad to hear when a person talked about the horrors of war, and perhaps the translator translated correctly, but in a cheerful, calm voice. And this caused disgust, and contact was lost. When there is no emotion in the voice that the client wanted to convey, when this emotion is not named, contact and trust in the specialist is lost instantly. Very rarely were there talented translators who paused and imitated the intonations of the clients. At the same time, when the translator spoke in a cheerful and happy voice about what the nurse was saying, sympathy was lost. And even though the person understood well what was being discussed during the consultation, contact was lost through mechanical translation and the translator's indifference.
The third reason why Ukrainians often refused from the psychological help was that foreign psychologists could not offer confidentiality. A translator is a third party, and not everyone wants their story to be heard by outsiders, even if a confidentiality agreement has been signed.
However, many studies have proven the effectiveness of working in a foreign language with PTSD. Studies have shown that people who speak two or more languages change their perception of the world depending on which language the person speaks. And personal likes and dislikes can also depend on the language in which you are addressed. (Borodytska, 2011, p.45)
That is, when a person communicates in a foreign language, they have a parallel internal dialogue with translation into their native language, and transactions can fall into both the Parent Ego-state and the Child Ego-state.
In working with trauma, it is important for the client to integrate their experience. When there is an opportunity to speak a foreign language, even if it is a basic or intermediate level of proficiency in another language, it helps to tell the story out loud and at the same time distance themselves from it. That is why it is so important to use the opportunity to know your native and non-native languages. At the same time, another language also helps the therapist not to immerse himself in terrible events, and to be in the position of a container and understand what is happening to the client.
That is, when processing trauma, a foreign language helps to distance oneself from the situation, and foreign words can also help to experience those childhood insults against parents that are difficult to talk about in one's native language, since when translated into a foreign language, these words are no longer so offensive.
One of the life hacks for dealing with a client’s negative transference is to switch to a foreign language. The use of another language can be a buffer between the client’s Parent and Child Ego-States. Negative transference is an unconscious and instantaneous process.
The therapist’s switch to a foreign language, whether the client understands it or not, and no matter what the therapist says, brings the client back to reality. Later, clients will admit that the therapist’s voice reminded them of a very unpleasant person or situation in the past, but because the therapist started speaking in a different language, the client turns on the Adult Ego State and separates the past and the present. (Fowlie and Sills, 2022, p. 239).
That is, the second language is a buffer between the Child and Parent Ego-States, and helps to turn on the Adult Ego-State.
One of the most painful conflicts for Ukrainians right now is the language conflict. Language is a trigger in the collective unconscious, and the conflict around language is racketeering. It leads to nothing, there are no constructive changes. Fanita English identified three functions of the racketeering feeling:
1. The function of replacing other hidden feelings that are trying to express themselves. Especially when some feelings remain forbidden.
2. Function of pressure release, since a person is unable to admit and realize hidden feelings.
3. The “request” function from the racket that he is looking for stimulation. When a person seeks stroking, but cannot ask for it directly. (English, 2021, pp. 142-143)
Ukrainians have experienced oppression on linguistic and national grounds for the past 350-400 years. Over the past 150 years, the First World War, the Holodomor, repressions, the Second World War, repressions, and dictatorship have taken place. Historically, this is a fairly short period of time. Nowadays, language has become a tool of oppression, bullying, and harassment. Mother Tongue is to remain in the identity in which a person spoke all his life. Switching to another language is to abandon the past identity and build a new identity. The most difficult existential question when we lose our footing is Who Am I?
Propaganda, a foreign story introduced to govern. Any propaganda. To abandon the language once and for all is a loss. Someone grew up on Ukrainian fairy tales, and someone grew up on Russian fairy tales, cartoons, films.
Many therapists have noticed that it is easier to speak in your native language during regression.
Identification comes from the Adult Ego-state. Self from the Child Ego-state.
Fascism according to Karpman's triangle is an aggressor. Millions of people in the post-Soviet space have experienced repression and persecution, an experience that is not told to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
This is a very fine line: how not to catch a hot potato and not fall into fascism in Karpman's triangle.
It's not just about language. Through language conflict, we allow ourselves to project identification. We shame, we say bad words, we hate, we show immense anxiety of destruction, we feel sadness and forbid ourselves to grieve.
With the help of reproaches, you can manipulate and project your feelings onto another person.
Behind the racketeering language conflict lies the experience of transgenerational trauma, the history of many generations. The trauma wants to be experienced. The trauma breaks out.
Language conflict is a parasite, an avoidance of responsibility, a power play of power, and allows us to distract ourselves from what really hurts.
Several generations were oppressed. Many did not know they were being oppressed.
Radical psychiatry tells us that alienation = pressure + confusion.
Therefore, it is extremely important to study the history of our family, our country, and world processes and realize that we were oppressed. That the Ukrainian language caused a deep sense of inadequacy because it was a threat to life.
Pressure + Awareness = Anger
Awareness determines the movement from psychological dependence to autonomy.
Awareness + Contact = Action + Liberation.
That is why it is so important to pay attention to personal history therapy, to take into account political and economic realities, as well as cultural dynamics. (Eds. Fowlie and Sills, 2022, pp. 248-249).
So, great deception comes with great pressure.
And therefore, deception + oppression = alienation.
Alienation from each other and from one's traumatic experiences is the result of psychological and social conflicts when a person acts out what was done to them.
At the same time, we can be able to express ourselves in different ways, consciously change our thinking and worldview through knowledge of languages. A new language allows us to change our scenario, abandon prohibitions: Don't be, Don't think, Don't achieve. Change the drivers Try Hard and Be Perfect. Change your life position to I'm OK and You’re OK. Change your life scenario and take the resources of your Family, which survived in extremely difficult conditions.
That is, linguistic integration can also occur in a relationship with a therapist, or with another significant person who speaks a foreign language, when a person expresses their thoughts and talks about themselves in a foreign language and is accepted.
For me personally, switching to Ukrainian is a process. I read more in Ukrainian, I automatically switch to Ukrainian when I am spoken to in Ukrainian. I can learn Ukrainian, listen, write notes. At the same time, I can already apply the peculiarities of English and Norwegian, cultural traditions of the West and the East, and integrate the experience that I have thanks to linguistic expansion.
Now I have many clients from the occupied regions of Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Some are comfortable speaking Russian, some want to speak Surzhyk, and some are switching to Ukrainian.
I allow myself to speak and think in the language that is easier, that automatically comes to mind. Sometimes I think in English, and then translate into Russian. Since I lived in an English-speaking country for 11 years, and I have been communicating with my husband in English for 13 years, where English is not my native language and not my husband's native language. At the same time, we have mutual understanding, although it took me several years to learn to ask, "What do you mean?", before getting offended. I learned to pause, clarify, and react differently.
Learning a third foreign language gives you the understanding and acceptance that speaking in a language other than your native language is uncomfortable, especially at the beginning.
– it helps you overcome the fear of being misunderstood and not understanding the Other.
– it is a long process that lasts several years.
It is precisely in caring for oneself, when there is a physical sense of security, that our Self can develop, manifest itself, expand, and change.