War and pandemic, how to defend ourselves from fears
It’s war, Russia is invading Ukraine and there is talk of nuclear safety, a nightmare none of us can even imagine. What has always been averted has ended up imposing itself on our view, as strong and powerful as a war requires it to be. We remain incredulous at what is happening and inevitably our memory takes us back to all those wars we have read about, which we witnessed as spectators from the sofa at home in front of the television. But what is war? War is a conflict, in its primordial meaning it means exerting a coercive force on someone with the aim of possessing, of taking, of reducing the other to a state of total subjection.
War, the first trigger is fear
Certainly we do not want to talk about war from a socio-political point of view, but it is certainly possible to evaluate the impact that war causes on the individual. “Fear is the first emotion that assails us– explains the Dr. Eugenie Alderisio psychotherapist in Milan and Novara and consultant of the portal Mustela Formazioneinfanzia.it – exactly as it does a war, it assails. And it is precisely inherent in the concept of assault that fears are undermined, first of all the atavistic terror of death, because we can do nothing towards it. Eternal in its expression, death is incessant throughout the history of humanity and finds its maximum expression in the concept of war. An experience that recurs now, after the fear and anguish experienced in two years of the pandemic.
War, fear and helplessness cause suffering
Alongside fear, it also makes its way in this circumstance an experience of powerlessnessanother condition that hurts us because it too presupposes the impossibility of carrying out an action, of defending oneself and the consequent submission to someone or something. Fear and helplessness generate moods of great sufferingwhich, in turn, is a harbinger of daily pathologies advanced by the individual as defensive tools for the survival of the same. Discomfort, anxiety, depression, fear are the main states to which we are all exposed, for over two years due to the uncertainty triggered by the pandemic event with related diseases such as: sleep, eating, relationship disorders. When everything around us explodes and leaves only devastation, it enters our bodies as if they were small splinters capable of generating great pain and helplessness terrifies us.
Explosions, assaults, shots, barrels enter the brain
Scenes of explosions, assaults, gunshots, roars, bangs, all destructive elements that belong to the semantics of war and that in equal measure enter the brain and they are linked to the concept of death. War is outside but also within us. So what to do in the face of a war that is not only there, as if “there” represented for us here, surviving. War is around us, in us. Our every inner conflict is war. War between the parties, between ourselves, between us and the world. Young people who explode their own anger, violence towards the other, the neighbor, the similar or the different “. Intolerance, greed, malice, what should we do? “
War, how to save us from wars?
How can we save ourselves from our own and other people’s wars? “We have a single tool that certainly does not solve but helps to manage our internal states. The word. Talking with the other means teaching but also learning, knowing, knowing and knowledge makes everything more acceptable, digestible, simple. Sharing with the other, even down there where there are no more words but barrels, allows us to lighten ourselves and the acceptance of our fears through an emotional mirroring through the other who lives the same painful emotions as us, we can resume living , to be alive “.
The activity of the EMDR Association in favor of the Ukrainians
In this very delicate moment too the EMDR Europe Association stands alongside Ukrainian psychotherapists. In the current context, the mobilization of mental health professionals also comes with concrete actions. The EMDR Europe association, effective and elective therapy for post-traumatic disorders and other mental conditions and all its members, are ready to provide specialized psychological help and support to bring relief to people from Ukraine fleeing their country. At the same time EMDR is providing tools for Ukrainian therapists to work with the population to give them support in the situations they are experiencing firsthand. The EMDR Europe association, recommended by the World Health Organization, represents 38 national associations from all over Europe and more than 30,000 psychotherapists specializing in EMDR.