Today is a turning point
Let’s have a look at what’s going on. Psychologists believe that in a state of emergency, the fifth, twelfth, and twenty-first days are critical for the psychological state. These are the days of mental breakdown. These are the days the brain reaches a new level of perception of the situation. It’s true. I had such a breakdown only yesterday.
The first three days were hellish. Total devastation of the nervous system, mental fatigue, numbness, slowed reactions, loss of body functions, complete apathy, and unwillingness to move. I don’t know if we had eaten anything during those three days. During those three days, my wife lost five kilograms of weight. It’s easier for me, but those three days deducted ten years from my lifespan.
And then comes the breakdown. To me, it happened yesterday. I woke up hungry. My body has adapted to the new conditions. My mental state has changed.
That’s it. This day is the turning point for all of our mental states. You should understand one thing. Remaining in complete depression and torturing yourself up to a preinfarction syndrome won’t help anyone. And no one will be worse off if you stay active and energetic.
Yes, empathy is necessary, but it does not mean that you need to bring yourself to nervous exhaustion. Quite the opposite.
It’s already clear that this situation won’t be resolved in a couple of days. Putin has decided to destroy and conquer everything, so we must stay collected, active, and healthy, both physically and mentally.
First, be sure to take care of yourself. This is your mental health’s first line of defence. I’m talking about mandatory teeth brushing, showering, personal hygiene, and laundry. You should be comfortable. You should remain calm. You should remain organized. It has been noticed a hundred times: as soon as a person stops shaving and brushing teeth, the end is nigh. Instantly, in the blink of an eye, they hit rock bottom and completely lose themselves. They cease being human. They become a spineless pile, incapable of anything.
Thus, here is a daily routine for you: brush your teeth, wash your clothes, shave — if you do shave, of course. That is the law!
Next up.
There are only two modes of action: the “I can influence the situation”, and the “I can not influence the situation”.
Those who can and are lucky to have something to do now — are already busy. This message is not for them. As for those who can not — find something to do! It does not matter what you’ll end up doing, even the smallest task helps.
Now, put the phone down. Get up from the couch. Get out of the dead hole of constantly updating news feeds that you still can’t influence, and commit this day to the physical world around you. Once again, your preinfarction syndrome won’t be of any use whatsoever.
Get up, turn off all the news for a few hours — and just tidy up the flat. Or your basement. Or your bomb shelter. Or where you are right now. Use your hands. Prepare food. Do the dishes. Do something.
Make an arrangement with your neighbours — fill your bath with water, so that you will have a water supply for two apartments, whereas their bath will remain open for both families. Just wrap the plug tight with a cloth, otherwise, the water will leak in two days.
If the situation allows it, just go outside and stand there for a moment, marvelling at the sun.
Make the final decision: “that’s it, I stay here, no matter what happens”, or “that’s it, I evacuate the family” — these days everyone makes their own decisions — but make it final.
And you will feel how the strings twisted into a tight knot inside you immediately come undone.
Uncertainty is the main source of fear. The last thing you need right now is to become a traumatized, news-crushed, utterly depressed creature. Stop scrolling the feed, sighing, and taking tons of sedatives.
By the way, you actually need to take sedatives. Before sleep. We all need healthy sleep. We need to clean and reboot our brains. Otherwise, we will follow a direct path to mental breakdown and death.
Given that your immediate survival and the survival of your loved ones do not depend on continuous monitoring of the news feed, nothing bad will happen if you catch up with the general situation not right now, not online, but in a few hours.
The enemy columns will get scorched, regardless of whether you read about it right away, or in three hours; the helicopters will be shot down; the shelling will still go on somewhere; the war will continue. But you will get out of your depressive episode and nervous exhaustion. And you will feel the stem of resoluteness growing inside you, becoming harder to unbalance.
And you will get stronger. Glory to Ukraine!
Ukrainian Text by Arkadiy Babchenko, Ukrainian blogger and military journalist., translation in English by Ukrainianvancouver team – Mar 02, 2022