Since childhood, people learn how ‘to forget’, ‘to stop worrying’
by Leliana Parvulescu – Psiholog
Valentina Nicolae – Psiholog
Six months after his father’s death, Ciprian started playing the slot machines. He needed something to make him feel strong.
The first time he walked into the gambling room as it was on his way home and he did not want to go back there. He played a small amount, looked at one strawberry on the screen, then two and finally three. He had a winning line. For the first time in a few months, he felt like a champion. He had the upper hand over something, anything.
Ciprian had a good financial situation, he was making enough at his job he declined to give more details about. In other words, it was not the need for money that pushed him to playing. Moreover, he said that he did not even like this activity – ‘I am going there to relieve myself from the stress at home, from disappointments.’
For the case medical history, I asked him to think of an instance in his life when he felt defeated or when he lost something very important. His answer came quickly – when his father passed away. His death came after a long battle with a serious and incurable disease.
Ciprian tries to save him but the recovery chances are minimal during the final stages. He felt helpless.
Gambling is a strategy for Ciprian to cope with his father’s death. This activity provides him with the opportunity to feel like a winner, he needs it very much in order to compensate for feeling crushed.
The coping mechanisms are strategies that are used instinctively or not by a person in order to alleviate, avoid or find a remedy for the physical and psychical negative effects of a situation being faced with.
Some of these mechanisms help with decreasing the psychical tension and with a better adjustment to the environment requirements; on the contrary, some others lead to increasing the negative effects of an event. Hence, the coping mechanisms are neither good nor bad in themselves – their efficiency lies in the timing and the duration of their use.
The term comes from the English ‘to cope’, which means to ‘handle it, to carry it off well in a difficult situation.’ Since childhood, people learn how ‘to forget’, ‘to stop worrying’. Some of them are simpler, like having your attention distracted by something, and others more complex, usually subconscious. The moment they become subconscious, these mechanisms escape from the voluntary control and they will turn harmful.
‘Sometimes, I play and do not care about consequences’, he told me. This phrase is a perfect definition of the mechanism he uses, which is the spacing. According to Lazarus, one of the first who approached the issue of stress and coping in research, the spacing mechanism is an avoiding strategy that involves the feeling of being aware of a problem and adopting a completely passive attitude towards it.
The passivity towards the difficult circumstance he was in, as well as the severe feeling of helplessness and control loss made Ciprian turn to the helpline for the gambling addicts. ‘I am like in a dream – go home, take the money, play it, lose it, borrow some and play again. I wake up when I have no money left.’
During our meetings, I pointed the patient to other coping mechanisms, with positive effects, namely the confrontation – this requires an active attitude, which leads to solving the situation by relieving the conscience from guilt and helplessness – and the social support – that means to turn to his life partner and his mother to find some relief.
Two months after our first conversation, Ciprian managed to gain control over gambling. Today, he only goes to the casino very rarely and spends visibly smaller amounts than before.
As a conclusion, I urge you to turn to help when you have a problem or you confront with a difficult situation.
Consider it normal to have moments in your life that are more difficult to cope with and thus you will be one step closer to a solution. The ‘Helpline, Responsible Gaming’ team is happy to give you the best support!
