Nacho Coller: "Humor is therapeutic and helps us relativize"

A tireless conversationalist who knows how to generate optimism and good vibrations around him That's right. Nacho Coller (Valencia, 1969), a psychologist and professor who combines his professional facet as a clinical psychologist with multiple immersions in the Spanish media scene.

Interview with Nacho Coller

We have met with him to talk about his personal and work life, to learn about his vision of the profession of psychologist and his present and future plans. Today we talk with the great Nacho Coller.

Bertrand Regader: Nacho, your work as a clinical psychologist already has a history of more than 20 years. You are one of the most recognized psychotherapists in Spain, and yet it seems that you are always training and embarking on new projects. Is it this vital attitude that led you to want to dedicate yourself to clinical practice?

Nacho Coller: To tell you the truth, the attitude I had 20 years ago towards the profession is nothing like the one I present now; In those years, insecurity and fear prevented me from doing many of the things I do now. Criticism anguished me and I also thought that other psychologists were better than me.

So imagine, on the one hand, the desire that he had to eat the world and do things, and on the other, the brake on my brain as a result of my Darth Vader and of me Dark Side of the Force. In my case and based on personal work, vital experiences of all kinds and the much I have learned from my patients, he has won the cool part, the part that adds up and that takes risks. My Darth Vader keeps talking, but he tries to ignore it.

b. R.: What are for you the three necessary virtues to treat clinical cases? And how have you managed to develop your talent in each of these facets?

Being a good human bug, being well formed and accepting one's own limitations and imperfections. I don't understand being a good psychologist without being good people, without being a good person. Be up to date in training, read, study, train, ask when you don't know and make an effort and persevere. Adapting a phrase from the great Bertrand RussellI would say that psychotherapy has to be guided by love and based on knowledge. A third virtue is recognizing our own psychological and emotional limitations. Psychologists also cry, get depressed, have anxiety and suffer like the rest of the staff. The important thing is to accept our mistakes and work on them to improve. How can we ask a patient to make an effort to change if we are not capable of doing so? To develop the virtues I try to be clear about my vital project; recognize my limitations and know how to ask for help, accept my many imperfections, try to do my best help the people around me and lastly, surround myself with good people who bring balance and value to my life. The people with dyes, those who remain, those who see the world under kilos of dandruff, the further away, the better.

Even so, and being more or less clear about what you want, with a positive mood, leading a life balanced or at least try and have good people around, one is not free from disorders psychological.

b. A.: Have you ever talked about the bad times you experienced in the past.

Yeah. Note that I have had a depression that I narrate in this article: nachocoller.com/depresion-un-perro-negro-y-un-psicologo-sorprendido/ 

If you only knew the number of colleagues who have publicly and privately congratulated me on this act of sincerity and supposed bravery.

With the psychological disorders there is a lot of stigma and psychologists combine the linking verbs to be, to be and to seem with the word well or perfect, what an obligation and what a roll not to allow yourself to be an imperfect person. In addition, there are colleagues by profession who sell who are mega-happy and who have the method to have full-time control of thoughts and emotions (how much harm does selling fallacies). Notice that when I had depression I lived it in silence and with a lot of shame and now I am a teacher in the field of depression, precisely.

A depressed psychologist like me, ugh! I had a terrible time, no, the following, in addition to sadness, guilt came together. Writing the article was balsamic, it helped me to banish the posturing of 'everything is going well' and 'I can handle everything' and being able to tell others: “well yes, I have also had depression! something happens?". I know from the number of messages I have received in public and private that this post has helped more than one colleague, especially the youngest, to apologize for feeling bad. And the best? You should see the faces of many people who come to the office for the first time anxious and depressed when I tell them that I also had depression. I tell them about the article and I encourage them to read it, that you can get out of there, that it's normal, that anyone can fall, even the psychologist who is there in front of you with a half-smile and who seems Superman, also had his dose of kryptonite.

b. A.: In addition to your professional facet as a therapist, you are one of the most followed psychologists on social networks. In fact, you were recently named by our digital magazine as one of the 12 biggest 'influencers' in the field of mental health. What is your main motivation when it comes to taking care of your social networks?

Wow! I assure you that the main one is to enjoy and have a good time; The day I stop laughing and enjoying my work as a clinician, publishing articles, participating in some media or teaching classes, I will ask myself what the hell is wrong with me; It will surely mean that I have lost my way. And I would lie to you if I don't add another motivational factor to keep doing things and it is none other than personal ego and a certain vanity.

Knowing that my work is liked and has social recognition is cool. I am very happy to know that with my contributions I can help some people to make their lives a little more fun and safer. And if I also get a smile from the staff, goal accomplished.

b. A.: We recently saw you starring in a TEDx talk in Valencia. How did that possibility come about?

My experience in TEDx It was fantastic and from an intellectual point of view one of the challenges that has squeezed my brain cells the most. It seems like an easy matter once you see the video, but preparing something original, with your own style and without copying, with more than 300 people in attendance and knowing that what you say will be recorded and can be used against you... (laughs). It was a huge challenge and very rewarding.

The story arose after a conversation with the licensee of TEDxUPValencia, Arrogant Bethlehem and with Cesar Gomez Mora (an excellent preparer). We talk about anger, about the loss of control that we have in the car, about the smoke sellers and about the excesses in the messages of the Taliban of positive psychology and there began the history of the Neanderthal inside. The video came later.

b. A.: Those of us who know you know that you combine your experience of many years with a remarkable sense of humor. Do you think humor can help during therapy? Do we have to dramatize life?

I do not understand living life without humor and laughter. Humor is therapeutic, it helps to relativize, de-dramatize and distance yourself from problems. In my office, they cry, nothing else was missing, and sometimes we cry (on more than one occasion tears have flowed and that they keep coming out, this will mean that I'm still alive), but I assure you that if we put the scale, there are more laughs than crying. It is surprising how we are able to use humor even in extreme situations.

b. A.: We read an incisive article on your blog in which you defend the role of the psychologist with respect to other professionals, such as 'coaches'. This is a controversial matter and from the different Colleges of Psychologists they begin to face these forms of intrusion. What do you think should be the position of psychologists regarding this?

I am very angry with this issue. Our professional group is somewhat peculiar, when we see a colleague who stands out, who appears on TV in a debate or in an interview, we begin to criticize him and wonder about which school he belongs to or that he is not one of the mine; let's go straight to the mistake. I can't imagine two traumatologists doing the same as us or two psychiatrists or two lawyers.

In the rest of professions there is respect towards the partner, in ours there is not in general. I am telling you this, because while we psychologists are with criticism and we continue to fuck it with cigarette papers and exclusively anchored in pathology, in problems and in that there are things that we do not have to say or do in consultation because that is what the brainy university manual indicates, an untrained group has come that has caught us with the step changed. A group that, taking refuge in the fallacy that everyone can be happy if they wish, in the "if you want you can" and the infinite power of the mind to improve life; with the wind in favor of media pressure that you have to be happy at all costs (the self-help industry moves 10,000 million dollars a year in the USA) and Taking advantage of a certain legal loophole, they sell happiness from everything for a hundred and sell personal development without having the slightest background in psychology studies (the Degree, of course). this).

It makes me very sad to see a lot of psychologists prepared, with excellent training, with a great desire to work and to contribute their grain of sand to the improvement of society, that they see them hard to find a job space and that a guy or girl arrives who is a good communicator, with some life experience refusal of which he will later take advantage of to sell himself, that he uses some words of powerpoint or sugar motto and that he sells smoke and takes the cat the water. We psychologists are not doing something right, and I think we have to do an exercise in self-criticism. We are in a society of image, of perfect photographs and it must be recognized that many coaches, mentors, companions and tarot readers handle images very well. Psychologists not only go to the photo, to the static, we go to the X-ray, which is more precise, and we go to the film, which is more complete. By the way, psychologists work on personal growth; In fact, I usually do it in consultation, we are not only in pathology. You don't play with mental health and the coaching it is neither more nor less than a tool of psychology.

b. A.: Is it so difficult to be happy? Or have we been made to believe that happiness is a consumer good?

If by happiness we mean living in congruence with your values ​​and with your vital project, being good people, show attitudes of generosity with the people around you and accept that from time to time one will be evil; You can get to be happy, yes. But of course, accepting that suffering is not going to disappear, that we cannot control everything, that we are not supermen and that on many occasions we are going to lose battles for our own inability to face challenges or conflicts, or because sooner rather than later life will give us news that will make us suffer, sometimes suffer a lot.

When I hear people who go through life saying that they are mega-happy or happy at all times, it gives me teeth, I can't stand them. Just like those people who make complaints an art and a means to manage life give me a certain grimace.

b. A.: You've been “on tour” lately with Miguel Ángel Rizaldos, Iñaki Vázquez and Sònia Cervantes. What is this experience as a speaker contributing to you personally and professionally?

Our profession is very individual and lonely, and meeting a group of colleagues with whom you share the stage and that they see life and psychology in a very similar way to yours comforts. Professionally, it gives me continuous learning from the best and personally, I take new challenges, new experiences, lots of laughs and good friends to continue traveling, and for many years that may take the suitcase.