Invaluable psychological help from Bulgaria to the Ukrainians at the epicenter of the war
A Ukrainian woman who has lived in Bulgaria for years and is a psychologist supports the online support of her compatriots who are at the epicenter of the war. Every day, Irina Mykhailoshenko gives advice remotely from Veliko Tarnovo to Ukrainians who use it from bomb shelters and shelled properties.
Irina has been living in Veliko Tarnovo with her family for years. Prior to the pandemic, she traveled and taught at the Institute of Deep Psychology and Psychoanalysis in Kyiv. The war separated her from her 25-year-old daughter Lena, her sister and father, who remained in Kyiv.
“My daughter is in a bomb shelter in Kyiv now. I offer to go back a few times, but she refused and said: I want to stay in my city. Yesterday my daughter lost her friend from the bombing. Her friend also died on the street“She said.
While talking to Irina, she contacts Tonya, who in the first days of the war was taken with her family to a village around Kyiv, as the house was destroyed. He says tanks pass around them and are shot at every day.
Irina applies the methods of crisis therapy to her compatriots, so they manage to overcome the shock of the war.
“We need to distinguish between stress and crisis. Stress is daily, and a crisis is such an event as war that one can go through. A complete blockage occurs. Here is the role of the crisis therapist, who must point out the way to overcome – maybe through emotion, through physical activities, creatively. Many Ukrainians choose to stay at home because it gives them the feeling that they are fighting and alive! And those who leave the country become more vulnerable, they develop a sense of guilt that they left relatives there, that their friends have died“she must.
Irina has submitted her contacts to the Embassy of Ukraine in Bulgaria and is ready to provide free psychological support to her compatriots.
See more in our correspondent’s report.
Like the Facebook page HERE