eleventh day of war in ukraine: Deaths in failed civilian evacuations. Putin sows terror against civilians to surrender the capitals. The artillery crushes railway tracks and highways turning them into dead-end traps… they are some of today’s headlines.
The present triggers our anxiety. First it was the pandemic, then the economic crisis with the skyrocketing price of electricity and gasoline, and now a war that we could never imagine.
As a consequence, anguish and anxiety in the face of uncertainty take over many of us and, although we are immensely lucky not to be living in person this Russia’s unlimited invasion of Ukrainethe news that reaches us from Kiev and its surroundings begins to take its toll on us on a psychological level.
This sum of factors can cause anguish, anxiety, depression, insomnia… A reality that surpasses us. How does the war in Ukraine affect us psychologically and how can we deal with it? The experts answer.
The consequences of the war in the world
We want to be informed but we are affected by what we see and hear as soon as we pick up the phone, turn on the news or walk into a bar. Broken families, thousands of people leaving their homes, births in the subway while bombs are heard in the distance, power struggles…
The journalist Alvaro Alvarado reports that after Russia’s bombing of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, the main searches on Google were “potassium iodide”, “iodine pills” and “what to do in the face of a nuclear attack” . As a consequence, certain media report on what to do in the face of a nuclear attack, generating alarmism and some psychosisfactors that directly threaten mental health.
post vietnam syndrome
From Somos Mandarina, Center for Psychology and Psychiatry, they detail that the Vietnam War (1964-1973) left some 700,000 veterans who have required some type of psychological help: “The so-called post-Vietnam syndrome was diagnosed with high frequency in the 1970s and this fact was one of the important factors for the American Psychiatric Association to include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (PSDT) as one of the pathologies in the 1980 DSM-III (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edited by the American Psychiatric Association).
Somos Mandarina assures that in any war, the children who experience it, on a psychological level, can suffer from regressive behaviorhigh levels of anxiety, panic attacks in the face of slight separations from the figure of security, generalized anxiety, alterations in self-concept and self-esteem, behavioral and sleep disorders, desensitization (very common in child soldiers) in order to maintain such high levels of violence and hatred or very high risk of sexual abuse.
A serious and multiple alteration
The aforementioned experts assure that a war is a serious and multiple alteration. “It is a social alteration because we take society to its greatest possible disorganization. A cultural alteration, since treasured historical values are lost and even, on occasion, a uprooting of culture and an imposition of a new“, they state. And they assure that it is also a economic disruptionsince the existing economic infrastructure is destroyed to implant a new one that responds to obtaining profits and the most powerful classes.
“Is a environmental alterationas cities are destroyed and polluted… and a alteration in the public health of the country and the worldsince the treatments needed by the country’s patients are altered, routine tests and services are altered with serious consequences in the short, medium and long term,” they conclude.
In short, a war leads human beings to contexts of great tension, loss and multiple duels with the consequent consequences on their mental health. It priority for those who live it is survival.
This is how the war in Ukraine affects us
We mentioned before that news about ukraine They can directly affect our mental health. We feel sad, angry, frustrated or lonely in the face of uncertainty and we are afraid.
“In recent times we have gone through various situations in which we have felt various emotions and one of them is fear,” they explain from Psicotravesia, a portal for psychologists and psychotherapists who reflect on mental health. They state that those fears are like a big monster that makes us feel small and does not allow us to do what we want. In some cases, we want to run away or get rid of the situations that generate that emotion in us and it may even end up generating more fear and anxiety.
Fear, a fundamental emotion for our survival
“Fear is a very important emotion for our survival. Its positive intention is to protect us from dangers, which can be based on reality or be irrational and imagined. They can be anchored in the present, be very connected to something from our past or with what what we think will happen in the future”, explains Agustina Pérez Rioja, a psychologist specializing in emotional development, psycho-emotional well-being and professional coaching.
He adds that we have all felt fear because it is one of the most basic emotions in our emotional world. Moreover, feeling fear activates our most archaic and animal system that allows us to survive and limits our ability to think. However, many times we run away from this emotion: we do not want to feel fear because it breaks our calmscrambles our apparently balanced life and makes us feel insecure.
From Psicotravesia they also assure that feeling fear is not bad, it is a human emotion and the sign that there is something valuable for us that is in danger at that time. “When we become aware of what is happening and accept our fears is when we can face it and see the possibilities that present themselves“, they conclude.
How to deal with fear
- Accept and normalize your fear: You have to talk about war openly, without it being a taboo subject. But although fear is a necessary emotion for life, the experts consulted agree that when it dominates us, it prevents us from expanding and opening ourselves to all the possibilities of life. Therefore, exploring our fears is essential for personal growth and emotional healing.” The issue here is not fear itself, warns Pérez Rioja, but what we do with fear: our interpretation, our decisions and the course of action that we choose when we feel this emotion. The answer is not not to feel afraid, the fear will come and go. It is not about stopping being afraid but about continuing despite feeling that fear. “The key is to understand that you are afraid, but what you are not your fear It can help you build a broader perspective and incorporate new situations and scenarios.”
- Learn well and contrast: make sure you don’t believe hoaxes or lies.
- Don’t hold on to bad news: In this sense, experts recommend being informed but with control, limiting the hours of consumption so as not to become obsessed. That is, don’t hold on to bad news.
- Train your mind: It is the key to expecting the best from every situation.
- Talk about it with family and friends: it is healthy that in your environment it is known that you feel fear. You can choose to speak and write to get them out of yourself and begin to see them as something manageable and nothing extraordinary.
Photos | Pexels, Series ‘This is us’, Telecinco, Movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’