I can’t teach anybody Arestovich’s method because it’s individualized. It’s not a happy pill. It’s hard work. You have to identify your own personal problem and solve that specific problem.
Example. I’m a slow thinker. I come up with great, funny, profound comebacks a week after the conversation took place. I get easily disoriented, especially by something negative. In a crisis, I can follow directions beautifully, in a calm and composed way. But I can’t come up with what to do unless I have a chance to think.
The neoliberal administrator probably sensed this in me. Or maybe he tries this trick on everybody. He invited me for a positive conversation about something I wanted but opened with the worst possible scenario that has never even been discussed. Normally, I’d be thrown off by the swiftness and the negativity. But today I wasn’t. I had solved my problem and could now come up with a looping, soothing argument on the spot. And it worked.
The method consists in finding out why you are how you are and doing something about it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thank you! This is already quite insightful. My issue is that I latch onto any hint that I suck or did something wrong, so it’s super easy to make me feel like everything is my fault, and whatever I dislike or am wronged by, that I actually deserved it all (gee, thanks, Mom, for this great psychological gift). The way I usually combat this is by moving the center off myself. When I argue on behalf of other people, like my colleagues or students, I’m very effective. On my own behalf, I am unfortunately too easily disarmed.
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What if one’s issue as a teacher is lack of assertiveness, probably based on memories of super quiet, mousy persona during one’s own days as a student?
I have no problem with the stage of identification, yet “doing something about it” is another matter. It is hard to think of working tactics instead of shaming oneself “you’re around 40 already, grow up”
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Problems love living in our heads. They don’t want to go away. At some level, we don’t want them to go away either because we are used to them.
One of the most common defense mechanisms problems use to remain in our heads is “I know precisely what my problem is and what caused it but it’s still not going away.”
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Once you know what the problem is and what caused it, it will go away. Since it hasn’t, then you don’t.
A small hint: zero psychological problems are born in the classroom.
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Covid tactics help Russian totalitarism:
// Moscow will introduce control over those liable for military service using QR codes. Information about this was sent to state-owned companies, according to telegram channels citing a source from a subsidiary of Sberbank.
Well, no wonder. The technology justified itself during the previous terror, it is absurd not to apply it during the current one. It remains only to develop criteria according to which the male (by the way, and not only male) population will be required to receive the coveted QR code at the State Services, and present it at the first request of the patrol. No code – detention until clarification and a fine. Green QR code – temporarily free. Red – the patrol immediately puts the citizen face down in Sobyanin’s tiles and calls for transport. Half an hour to change clothes, the right to one call – and the car is already taking you to the place where you will make the last heroic feat in your life.
The original post in Russian is here:
https://el-murid.livejournal.com/5234208.html
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