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I have been living and working in central Ukraine since the very beginning of the full-scale war. Outwardly, life now appears almost indistinguishable from pre-war times: home, work, family, sports, friends, education, rest. But that’s only on the surface.
The loss of primitive absolutes – the belief that tomorrow will come and resemble today – has changed life forever. Recovery from this realization came closer to summer. But as early as March 2, I began offering crisis support – though to whom more, myself or others? Soon after, patients began returning to resume therapy interrupted by the war. The calendar still holds the records of those events. Memory does not.
Back in March 2022, patients spoke about trying to place their experiences and the events occurring around them. Now, we almost never talk about the war. As if current matters – day-to-day life – are all I or my patients live by.
Themes of relationships with parents, partners, suffering from illnesses, and childhood events that influence adult life today – this is what my patients talk about. Only occasionally do some speak of the pain of children and families dying daily, of fear of mobilization, or anger toward our government.
Perhaps we all lack the words and meanings to speak of ourselves within the war. Perhaps denial shields us from the horrific parts of reality, where death is always close.
From here, I will speak only of myself, because these are my reflections and feelings. Perhaps, if I can say something about myself, I will find a way to hold the thoughts of my patients in our shared space, to offer them refuge and meaning, in the words of Ronald Britton.
However, Britton speaks of “refuge” in the Bionian sense of a container; I mean refuge as a meeting place of both interlocutors’ contexts. So, the question arises: what in the combination of my context and my patients prevents the creation of such a refuge for both of us in therapy? And how can we build it?
I lean here on the concept of unformulated