Different people come to serve in the army. Each with their own story. By collecting information about who lived how, in what situations, and how they reacted to this or that event in their lives and in general, from the conversation a more or less objective idea of ​​the personality is formed, which you study as a psychologist, commander, political officer, and so on, according to a list of officials in the army, in order to understand how to work with subordinates, taking into account the individual characteristics of a given comrade. While talking with one serviceman, I came across a dead end in the conversation. Having previously studied the psychodiagnostic material on this young guy, a number of questions arose that led to his relationship with his parents. But as soon as I asked about his parents and clarified how things were going at home, the person I was studying became withdrawn. He looks at one point and is silent. He answers questions reluctantly. A couple more leading questions on the topic of family and friends and he began to cry. He himself could not express in words or describe the past, he just cried. I sincerely showed sympathy and suggested not to bring up the past. I offered to end the conversation and go to his unit, but he said that he wanted to tell his case and talk it out to me. He nevertheless spoke out, which was less like a story and more like silent nods of his head in response to my questions, and at the same time he cried sobbingly . I felt sorry for him, but it was already necessary to continue, since it was necessary to find out the severity of what happened, or rather to understand the depth of the trauma, in order to understand who came to serve and how to work with him further. The previous experience that affected his emotional state during our conversation went back to childhood, at about the age of five, where before his eyes, his father beat his mother under strong alcoholic intoxication. There were scandals, beatings and everything in front of the child. It is very difficult. I had a feeling of gratitude to the guy who told me his experience. I expressed my feelings, sympathy for his situation and thanked him for his trust, for sharing his personal with me, so to speak, opening up to me. Now everything is fine in the soldier’s family. My father recovered from alcohol addiction, my mother gave birth to two more brothers, and they bought a house. But the past still makes itself felt. Trauma is trauma. I suggested looking at all his difficult experiences, fear, unpleasant memories and other negative thoughts about the experience with a feeling of gratitude and not regret or guilt, as if to turn the minus into a plus. He suggested that he imagine that in the future, when he builds a relationship and starts a family, he will know how not to behave. And this is a valuable experience, expensive, difficult and therefore valuable. Then we talked about the relationship between men and women, about how sometimes it is not easy to understand a woman with the mind, then we laughed. I told a couple of funny family stories from my life. We shook hands, I heard words of gratitude and offered to come to me at any working time if you just wanted to talk about any topic. I assessed his state, before and after the conversation, as positive, and besides, he himself indicated his ease , as if he had lifted “a stone from his soul.” For myself, I also learned a couple of interesting points about my family. About the fact that when sorting things out and switching to elevated tones, I immediately pull myself together and postpone our, albeit minor, quarrels for later. I don’t want the child to listen or see this. I prefer that he learn a model of love, family and relationships, the kindest, “correct”, positive one, looking at my wife and me. The case described above was published with the permission of the serviceman with whom the work was carried out. Thank you for attention.