The invasion of Ukraine has been going on for several days. Cities located not far from the Polish border are bombed. “The war so close has the right to scare us. Helping gives a sense of agency and this reduces anxiety. However, it is better to be careful not to abuse yourself – then the help will be effective for a short time, and in a moment we will need help ourselves – until one day we will start to wonder whether it is worth living in such a world at all – says the remark of Iza Barton-Smoczyńska, a psychologist-traumatologist from the Dialog Therapy Center.
- War is a situation in which we should be afraid, it is a natural reaction, it is supposed to arouse anxiety and fear, because it carries a threat – says psychologist Iza Barton-Smoczyńska
- We should do everything we can to tame this fear, so that we can focus on making a realistic assessment of the situation and adapting to it – he explains
- So let us not be ashamed of the fact that we are afraid. If we do not feel fear, it means that we have become unreal somehow – adds Barton-Smoczyńska
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PAP: Let’s start with explaining: what is anxiety?
Iza Barton-Smoczyńska, psychologist-traumatologist: It is a reaction to a situation that evokes very strong emotions, it is our body’s natural response to a threat. It appears so that we can better prepare for action, that we can “organize” energy for this action. Anxiety is a very strong stimulation that we feel throughout the body – it is a stronger heartbeat, felt muscle tension, rapid breathing. This stimulation (mobilization) forces us to analyze the reality, see the threat and take the best action for us. Generally, therefore, fear – although it is an unpleasant sensation – is to serve us.
Unfortunately, when it’s too big, too intense, it may not be adaptive. The situation is sudden, we lose control and we are unable to regain it, because, for example, we do not know which information sources we should believe or the information is contradictory or simply beyond our head, we do not accept it, we are against them. And the situation requires us to act. Fear is supposed to help us in this, but when it is too intense, too sudden, flooding, we act instinctively, impulsively. The limbic system becomes overactive.
War is a situation in which we should be afraid, it is a natural reaction, it is supposed to arouse anxiety and fear because it is a threat. However, we should also be able to do something about this fear, use it, use it as a reason to act. The trouble is, he sometimes pushes us into surrogate activities.
Then what?
In such a situation, we should do everything to tame this fear so that we can focus on making a realistic assessment of the situation and adjusting to it. It takes a moment to pause, reflect, make a decision: should I give someone a refuge at home now? Should I require it from myself despite the fact that I am afraid? Maybe my action should go in a different direction, e.g. support someone with a hot meal or make a donation to change the situation of refugees or those who are fighting for their country?
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If we do not answer this question consciously, our reactions may be automatic, e.g. out of fear of what may happen, we will buy all flour, sugar, and gasoline in the feeling that it will ensure our safety. Meanwhile, we will not protect ourselves at all, but we will take what they need from others and cause additional anxiety. It is very difficult to realistically assess whether what I feel is a signal anxiety, that is, it tells me that something may happen but it is for the future, or whether it is an object (automatic) anxiety that means crossing my boundaries when I have to act automatically and without thinking, according to the principle: attack or run. I have to be able to distinguish what this fear is, analyze reality and define what needs to be done.
To sum up: fear in its original meaning is to be a signal to us that it may be. what we have been doing so far is not effective and we need to change something to survive. It is the energy that is supposed to make us correct our actions, although it will not give us an answer as to what exactly to do.
From anxiety a short path to panic. When are we talking about it?
Panic is a very intense panic disorder, with strong somatic symptoms, characterized by the belief that something very bad is about to happen, that I will go mad or die. Panic as an experience disconnects us from reality, then we focus only on ourselves. It usually lasts about 20 minutes and is often associated with the belief that we are in a situation of total life threat.
Most often, when we say that people panic, we mean acting under the influence of fear, which narrows down the assessment of reality, i.e. irrational focus on security – refueling, stocking or watching information all the time so as not to miss any information about what happens in war – because it gives me a sense of control.
But even this is sometimes not enough not to feel fear …
Fear in such a situation means that we are running out of control, our actions turned out to be insufficient, so we have to do something else. The only question is whether we will regain peace and a sense of control by acting in the same way, e.g. by throwing ourselves into helping despite the fact that we have too little strength for it or we are unable to do it. That is why the right choice is so important. It does not always have to be going to the border with sandwiches and hot tea for refugees, maybe it is enough to build a stable relationship with your children who will later meet a friend from Ukraine at their school and e.g. my child, taken care of by me, to whom I explained what it is about war, how to deal with emotions, will be able to talk to this child. And this will make the other one regain a sense of security. You can help that way too.
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Many people wonder if it is normal that we feel such emotions in connection with this situation – after all, this is not our war.
Poles have experienced a lot in their history. How can you not be afraid in such a situation? So let us not be ashamed of the fact that we are afraid. If we do not feel fear, it means that we have become unreal somehow. We know the war from history lessons, from the accounts of our families, we still live with its consequences, we remember the stories of our grandparents who lost someone. War is to be feared because it is a threat. But you should not succumb to this fear, you have to treat it as a signal to become active, to check your resources, to be able to realistically assess the situation. In connection with what is happening in Ukraine, we now have a threat of war for us. So we should consider what we can realistically do and what we are not able to change. And we have to accept it, even if we don’t agree.
Emotions related to the outbreak of war, with the fact that people are dying, are natural, but we have no direct influence on it.
Nevertheless, we really want to do something. How not to go crazy with these emotions?
If we feel very involved, we must remember to take care of ourselves as well. For example, break away from an internet portal and go for a walk. Because by investing in ourselves, we will be able to help better in the next step. Taking care of yourself means not only avoiding dangerous situations or controlling the sources of danger, but also investing in your internal and external resources, because thanks to them we will be able to better assess the situation in which we are and be able to react to what is real, provide help, which is most needed.
What do you mean by resources?
The inner resource that each of us has is the ability to deal with stress, or the knowledge we can give to others to help them cope better. These are all kinds of competences, skills and abilities that may be useful now.
External resources, on the other hand, are something that I can spend on helping others, e.g. money that I give to those who know how to manage them, because I do not know what is most needed by whom. An external resource is also to offer legal or medical advice, knowledge about something that I have and can put to good use. So I can tame fear in such a way that I control information about the war, but also by taking actions that change the situation of those who need something.
Some, however, are afraid of their emotions related to the war and, to avoid them, cut themselves off from all information. They feel that when this is outside of them, they won’t get upset about it. Where are the reactions so different?
The anxiety associated with war can have very different reasons, and we superimpose our experiences on it. The situation we find ourselves in opens our inner pocket into which we hide our various wounds, experiences, and difficult things. Each of us has such a pocket. This sudden situation, which takes away our feeling of control, causes things to spill out of this pocket of ours. Seeing fleeing, frightened, despairing people, we start to remember our various experiences, not necessarily one-to-one. For example, the fact that as a child we ran away from home, not before the war, but from the abusive parent. Or we are reminded of a difficult experience that also involved a lot of fear and loss of control. Then we react in two ways: to what is happening now and to our history in the past.
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This makes our daily functioning difficult, because when, for example, a child comes up to us at such a moment and asks if there will also be a war, we are afraid of this question and our emotions. And even if we tell him that it will not happen, the child will hear: “There will be no war,” but will see our anxiety. That is why it is so important that when we lose or limit our control, we start by naming our emotions that we have for war and think about what it does to me.
It is difficult considering that we are just after the pandemic, which was also a challenge for us …
That’s true. The pandemic also cost us a lot, took us away tomorrow, taught us humility, made us think if we could control everything. We felt the fragility of life, the impermanence of happiness, and now the next challenge comes right away. Therefore, we must be especially careful in the steps we take, not to force ourselves to do things that are too difficult for us, to think about whether what I do will help me in anything.
And again we have to answer the difficult questions of children …
Unfortunately, we have to deal with it, we cannot avoid such a conversation. But to take good care of him, we need to understand what exactly he means when he asks us if there is going to be a war. Is it afraid of this war, of what will happen to us, will we be safe? Does he not understand what is happening and just needs an explanation of what war is and why it is. It is important to explain it to him because he will now have to deal with a lot of surprising information, a lot of scared people, and he needs to know what to do about it.
It is also worth realizing that this is just the beginning, we will probably have many more experiences and emotions related to this war …
That’s true. One of the basic emotions in a crisis situation is fear and fear. But right next to them is anger and anger when we feel our boundaries are crossed, disagreement with it – this is already evident from the words or actions that people take.
There is also a kind of sadness, depression and melancholy, because this situation confronts us with loss – it can be seen in anxieties about the future when people say: what will happen, how will I lose my loved ones, when I lose my home, I will have to emigrate. They are already projecting a loss, although it is not there yet, and maybe it will not be at all.
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Then what? How to talk to someone who is talking about it?
Ask what he is most afraid of, is it real and to what extent? Had he experienced such fear before, and how did he deal with it? What can we do for him that he needs?
On the one hand, we feel that we are needed, but on the other hand, we live a normal life, our children go to school, we laugh, and we meet our friends. And we start to wonder if it’s okay, if we can do it. How Can I Deal With My Guilt?
As psychologists, we observe such a phenomenon, we even call it the survivor’s guilt syndrome. When something as moving as this war happens in front of our eyes, someone dies next to us, someone fights for life, he has to make very dramatic choices between whether to stay and fight, or run away with a younger child, and leave the other, an adult, who cannot leave – it is difficult for us to comprehend. These are extremely difficult morally and emotionally dilemmas. If we see it from the standpoint of a safe observer, there is an irrational sense of guilt that I am better off. This feeling is very often seen in people who have suffered a tragedy. Sometimes it is she who is behind the motivation to do something for those who have it harder. It is worth considering whether this is a good starting point for helping, because quite often such an emotion appears in people who have a lot of trouble thinking about myself: I have the right to my own needs, I am a valuable person. They blame themselves for being worse off.
If someone has such inclinations, he should wonder why such a thought arose in him, where did he get it from? Because if he bases his helping or his daily activities on such an emotion, he will constantly run away from something that is behind him and what scares him. Or else he will not be active at all, and that will be his way of standing up to what is happening.
If I avoid doing something that is terrible for me, if I act for anxiety, impulsively, blindly and overuse myself, my help will be effective in the short term, because in a moment I will be without strength alone and one morning I will not be able to get out of bed because I will wondering if it is even worth living in such a world.
So how do you manage your emotions?
We must take into account that we are usually not mentally prepared for such events. What is more, they “fall” on us in various life situations – then we are not always in our best life or professional condition, sometimes even in times of crisis and personal tragedies. And we still have to deal with it all. Most often, in the face of an event like war, many of our problems fade, but we still have to take them into account, because this fear likes to spread and can start to act in a generalized way.
What does it mean?
That we are starting to fear life. It is worth checking if others feel the same, if it turns out that we react more strongly, that is, this is the moment when we should take care of ourselves, not spend all our time thinking about war, because it exhausts our resources and also weakens our ability to help others. In order to help others, we must ourselves be in good shape.
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On the other hand, helping gives us a sense of community, which is what can be seen in recent days in Poland and in the world – we work together, we cooperate, we do not share, we do not compete. This makes our anxiety a little lower, because we feel part of something bigger, we help together at the school we go to, the hospital where we work or the commune where we live. It gives you a sense of agency. Although we have no direct influence on the situation in Ukraine, we can define our circle of influence and focus on it.
When should we turn to a specialist?
Too much anxiety will lead to automatism, even rigidity of action. If we notice such a pattern of action in ourselves or someone close to us, it is worth taking a closer look at it. There are also physiological signals, because anxiety will trigger certain specific vegetative reactions: muscle tension, increased heart rate, not being able to take a deep breath. Our body, and specifically the limbic system, determines our adaptation – when we are directly exposed to danger, it gives us clear signals. For now, we only have a threat perspective, so we have to use this rational part of functioning, e.g. by talking. You should make sure that this fear does not grow to very high levels and that you do not focus on it too much, because it will limit our view of the world. And when we only watch it through the tunnel, we will not be able to see our situation in the broader perspective of our own life history and that of our family. We will not be able to talk about what we are going through, and this, as we know, is destructive and closes us to help.
But how to do it?
First of all, talk, because emotions are subject to interpretation, if they are verbalized, that is, translated into words, then we can control them. With a very high level of anxiety, we lose the ability to verbalize emotions and we need to take care of such a person and help her calm down. Perhaps it is in this state – emotional narrowing, terror, lack of any resources – that refugees come to us. Because they couldn’t have planned this escape, then they stood in lines for hours, not knowing when it would end. Their insecurity is very acute. These people are affected by acute crisis stress that is not individual and is also caused by the other person, and then we ask ourselves why it happened. It is easier for us to adapt to processes that are of natural origin, such as flood, fire or earthquake, because we do not have to wonder why it happened, how it happened.
The feelings faced by people who have experienced warfare are very close to the situation of interpersonal violence – if someone has such experiences that a loved one has failed or abused him, it will be additionally more difficult for him to understand the war, because this is another person who harm. In addition, those who have fled Ukraine feel a great deal of guilt that they are safe and that they have left their relatives there, feel inferior and abandoned. Therefore, if we have to talk to them, we must tell them directly that what they did was not run away, but protect the children, so that others could invest their attention and time in the fight, that they did something very good in this way. It is important that they hear it from the people who take it, because it will make them feel that they are not alone.
When the fear is so strong that talking alone is not enough, how can you tell?
When we observe the intensity of this anxiety throughout most of the day, week, we cannot distinguish periods when it is greater or less. When on a scale from zero to one we are between 7 and 10 most of the day. When anxiety forces us to behave in a certain way, repeating the same actions over and over again, and they do not bring relief anyway, when the rhythm of the day and night is disturbed – it’s time to take advantage of with help. And there is nothing embarrassing about it, it is worth doing it as soon as possible.
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How to control your nerves when, for example, while at work, I receive another terrible news?
Trying to control yourself in such a situation is a bit against the tide, because emotions are a natural response to stressful situations. If the content of the message raises our disagreement, frightens us, gives us a sense of injustice, mastering it is a very energy-consuming strategy, and the emotions will come back.
So let’s try to find a way to express them – maybe there is someone I can talk to or there is some activity that will help me stabilize, e.g. listening to quiet music, a short walk in a nearby park, going out for a coffee, looking at photos of loved ones. Breaking away for a moment and relieving this emotion will allow us to return to the activity that was interrupted.
The key is to name this emotion and try to understand it. Ask yourself, when you ask a child, where the voice of this fear came from in us, tell yourself about it. Maybe not necessarily during work, but give yourself the right to this emotion, not reject it.
In the long term, however, we can control most emotions if we can recognize and name them, if we don’t avoid them and learn to regulate them. This can be done by looking for a balance in everyday life, e.g. through various types of psychological training, but also through self-control, i.e. talking to yourself, but also to others about your own emotions and emotions of other people. This allows us to normalize our emotions, because then we see that not only we are experiencing it.
But what to do with the person who has panicked?
The most important thing is to be with this person, to give them some isolation and peace as much as possible. Remember that a panic attack ends quickly, contrary to the belief of the person experiencing it. We tell her that every emotion will finally end and that we will be with her as long as the situation requires it. It is worth trying to direct this person’s attention to the reality they are in, because in panic we are in tunnel vision, we are not here and now. “Logging in” to reality is something that can silence fear. So let’s try to draw this person’s attention to something that is happening in the environment, e.g. you hear this cat meowing, I wonder what he wants? Because if that person starts listening to their auditory or visual analyzers, they will come back to reality and then see that there is no danger they are imagining. You can also give her something to drink so that she can fully feel her body, then it will be easier to settle her here and now.
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We must remember that people who come to us from the war zone have a lot of traumatic experiences that may come back to them. Sounds and smells can cause those emotions to come back. This can happen up to a month or more after it happened. Then, if we have the opportunity to create a safe atmosphere for this person and strengthen it in access to reality, then for most of these intrusive images will slowly blur. For those who don’t, take action as soon as possible. Many psychologists are involved in helping you to prevent PTSD, which is one of the most common negative consequences of being exposed to such an invasive situation.
In terms of emotions, what can we expect in a few days when this current anxiety wears off?
We will start asking about values such as identity, freedom, truth, and justice. Now we are at the basic level, this is an emergency, crisis situation. Its basic activity is to regain a sense of security, shake off after losing the possibility to decide about your life, after losing the objects of love. About two weeks after such an event, more red emotions will appear, i.e. anger, harm, a sense of injustice and the need to be effective here too. As soon as the situation permits, we will want to talk more about it and we will start to think about the type of opposition, because there is no consensus on what has happened.
Author: Monika Wysocka, PAP.
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