You can always find a way to help you maintain your emotional state. If you hear bullets flying near you, look at the blue sky. It is one of the colors of your country and the best sedative. If you are overworked, reduce information noise, stop constantly updating the news feed, take it three times a day like medicine.
The truth is that not everyone can control themselves. Especially, during the war. It exhausts you physically and psychologically. And although the psyche is able to adapt to any hardship, it is extremely difficult to endure daily hostilities in your home country. Then psychologists come to your rescue – people whose work requires peace of their own soul, the ability to understand other people without breaking them, help them change their lives.
Tetiana Yermolayeva is a volunteer psychologist, head of the crisis service in Dnipro and the Dnipropetrovsk region. A journalistic conversation with her is a small introduction to a unique profession which is not for everyone. Perhaps it is natural to be able to listen, advise, support in conditions of continuous threat to life and health, the probability of losing comrades in arms, long strain that often exceeds the limits of human capabilities.
To be a psychologist at war is to constantly face human pain. Experience it personally. It’s very hard. But some time passes and a call comes. A person calls and says: “Thank you, you saved my life.” At such a moment, the psychologist feels really happy.
Oleksandr Razumny, Dnipro
6.07.2022
Video is prepared within the project “Countering Disinformation in Southern and Eastern Ukraine” funded by the European Union
