"The unconscious is still reacting"

How to cope with stress from war if you live in a peaceful country. Interview with the psychologist Agnes Kraus

What to do these days to people living under a peaceful sky, but also experiencing stress from the fact that war is going on very close? How to help others and keep yourself? We talked about this with the Tallinn psychologist Agnes Kraus.

- Some admit that, once again observing the video of the funeral of a Ukrainian soldier or new bombing, they perceive this without any emotions. How do you explain this?

- The psyche thus protects against negativity. But our unconscious, it reacts anyway. People are sometimes saved that they try not to watch these videos, not to include news, everyone has enough other loads in life, everyone needs to survive somehow. And this is normal: a person must solve his problems. Each of us has some financial obligations, children, our own parents, and there will not be enough strength for everything.

- A real story: a woman constantly gets from a relative living in the war zone, terrible news and video and perceives it as an accusation.

- We always want to share our pain in order to at least slightly relieve our psychological stress, and it hurts another for a loved one or it is a shame that he has better conditions. It’s like with an inheritance - one more, the other is less, and one has a feeling of resentment, the other has a feeling of guilt.

- How to react, so as not to offend a person who is so bad?

- The first rule of the psychotherapist is not to take an alien problem. Otherwise, we feel bad, we ourselves need psychotherapy. Naturally, from such news we are uncomfortable, and not everyone understands, sharing them, that the other is not obliged to experience this pain just as much.

Even a psychotherapist cannot continuously perceive other people's experiences, during a conversation he should focus on content and work, and not immerse himself in emotions.

- People who have visited “there” will probably need psychotherapy?

- Most, of course, yes. Now there are a lot of rehabilitation centers that support and offer help. But I must say that everyone needs psychotherapy these days. When the war began, the number of visits to psychologists, psychotherapists increased significantly. Moreover, people come with problems, it would seem, to the war that are not related: personal, workers, children's. But the fact that before they did not worry before is now acquiring a completely different color. A person often does not even realize that he is in a negative field.

- What to do to us, civilians, with guilt from the fact that this does not happen to us?

- Just accept the fact that some had a life in this way, for others - otherwise. And it is very important to understand that we cannot “get sick” with other people's problems, otherwise we ourselves will need to be treated. Remaining in a neutral state, we are able to navigate in the situation, calmly support those who are or visited the combat zone. This may sound strange, but we don’t need the surgeon to experience the same pain like us during the operation, otherwise he cannot cope with his task. We need not to get sick of the problem of another, but to understand it, these are different things.

- What can we do to support the victims of the war?

- We can show empathy, sympathy and understanding, say: I understand that you feel that you are scared, that you have an uncertain future, that you are in a dead end situation, you cannot make a decision - stay there or move to another place. That is, to call aloud the negative feelings that another person experiences. In psychotherapy, this is called the technique of reflection of feelings.

- Often, especially in the first months, people wrote on social networks that they cry when they watch the news, plunge into the same emotions, but in the end they feel their impotence.

- If it is very difficult, it’s better not to look. If tears, spilled emotions help later put themselves in order, let them look. The main thing is to understand: in order to calm the other, we ourselves must remain in the resource state. People tell us about the horrors of war so that we understand how bad they are, and we, being in a depressed state, cannot demonstrate it to them, and we are loaded more and more, wanting to get a reverse reaction, sympathy, understanding. You just need to remain calm: when we are in a neutral state and do not take an alien problem, we do not live by it, we can save ourselves, fully engage in our lives, and support another.

- How can you help yourself if you do not feel anything about the war?

- But do not feel, we must support and help. Our task is not to experience the same emotions as people who are in the center of this cyclone, but to be useful to them. For themselves and for our environment, and for those who need it. And the calmer we are, the better our brain works, it is not oppressed by emotions, and our actions will be more effective.