It is not our injuries that define us, but how we try to overcome them.

 

Every day is a test for the psyche, every day is a continuous burden of thinking about what to do and how to act correctly, how to protect children and the country, how not to lose faith and common sense in the ocean of fear for your world, which destroys the senselessness of war every day.

Challenges of survival at all levels, darkness and cold, which, apart from pain, must be lived daily – these are our realities.

The realities of the country, which they chose to demonstrate the demonic power of the aggressor, are senseless in the war, without logic, without mind, destroying our mental health with the tests of modernity.

And there is an ordinary person in this! Each little person with his own difficulties and needs, pains and anxieties for his life. What to do to endure?
As a psychologist who has been living in a war for 9 months, I understand that we are overcoming our long-standing fear – the fear of death, moderately but surely.
When even children say: “I’m not afraid anymore, if I die, it will be so.” I think with horror that in 10 years the children who are now mourning their parents will become adults and full of rage in the country of the aggressor and hardened in the traumas of war. Therefore, we all must endure for ourselves and for the future.

So, how to hold on, perhaps, all the tips have been described, but I will take the liberty of identifying the accents that are relevant for this stage of living the war.

1. Oddly enough, but it is worth thinking about the future, about how you want to arrange your life, about the resources that you need to get for this future, about the support that you need to find. We can think that we might be killed tomorrow, but it is thoughts about the future that allow us to structure and overcome internal chaos from unpredictability and uncertainty.

2. Record even small, but still, achievements inside yourself, as if to determine your strength of survival. I was able to do it, I withstood it, I overcame it, I coped with it: such seemingly insignificant confessions form the overall picture of survival – I will survive! It’s like a step-by-step program that analyzes and defines the next difficulty on its own, as just a step that moves you forward, and not as a mountain that cannot be overcome.

3. If possible, edit complex emotions as quickly as possible: if angry, it is safe to aggress, if pain, get sick, if sadness, then sum it up. Do not accumulate emotions, because in order to contain them, the psyche needs a lot of strength, and this provokes exhaustion and constant fatigue. Safe editing of emotions is the best way to save emotions.

Summing up, I want to note that a person can withstand a large number of trials of fate and from this become more difficult and stronger as soon as he begins to track reactions, give them the right to be and draw conclusions from each experience.

With Faith in the Strength of Ukraine and Victory!
@Victoria Nazarevich 2022