Psychologist’s notes: tension and numbness

The war has once again opened the doors of our homes with its boot and sirens shouting death to us.

Once again, we have entered the bottom of our inner tension and numbness, from which there is nowhere to escape. After so many days of the war, we have eliminated it, but this is not the case. The tension has not disappeared. Even more. With each such arrival of war in our home, the tension rises higher and higher. And this tension and its strength will determine the quality of our entire sensual life in the future.

We are all doomed to become characters and witnesses to this terrible combination of tension and the rare reaction of our bodies to it – numbness. In nature, numbness occurs at the moment of transition from life to death, when the victim is already in the hands of his killer, and there is no way out. Numbness blocks pain, keeping the tension in its highest power of manifestation, and accompanies a painless transition to death.

In times of war, tension and numbness is a terrible state. The Ukrainian war of liberation has its specific manifestations and will probably write a new psychology of numbness for all those who have no idea how to live while dying.

So, the first thing observed among Ukrainians is the time of numbness, measured by the duration of air raids, hailstorms, artillery shelling, launched missiles and the terrible sounds of air defence and missile defence systems. That is the beginning and the end. Why do Ukrainians neglect bomb shelters? Because there, you are doomed to listen to the frozen silence of war. This silence destroys. It is tense and does not allow you to relax. You are numb in anticipation. And as soon as the time of anxiety expires the listening, fixed to the maximum, ends.

The saddest part of all this is that living in this state of “air alert” without any hint of awareness creates a tension for which there are no tools to overcome or prevent and no cure. Thus, the combination of the threat of a missile attack and its duration would suggest that numbness determines the strength of tension and its likely consequences.

What are the consequences?

1. Death. Do you remember the photo from Bucha that went around the world? A boy stands by his mother’s grave in the yard of his own house. Later it became known that his mother could not withstand the stress. It is a terrible death. The woman’s death is a war crime because she was exhausted by the shelling that lasted for hours.
2. Escape. For example, if a victim who is already under the clutches of her bloodthirsty killer is lucky enough and her killer is distracted, then this is her last chance for life. It’s a scanty one, but if you use it, you can stay alive. The likelihood of this outcome is minimal, but it does occur in war. They say russians are not attentive…
3. Destruction. Long–term tension. Lack of opportunity to relax. The complete or partial failure to satisfy the basic needs for sleep, food, movement, safety and life activity, which the enemy is now trying to implement in the lives of Ukrainians by taking away the right to light and heat, destroys the mental perception of reality and can lead to mental disorders.
4. Doom. In war, certain things such as heroism, a sense of duty, compassion, and altruism often emerge. Their purpose is to overcome the internal state of doom. When active hostilities cease or are “frozen”, this feeling wins. It’s like an air raid warning that takes up much of everyone’s time. But the time that doom can take away can range from the life expectancy of one person to hundreds of years of existence of generations of a nation. Something went wrong once upon a time that free Ukraine was lucky to escape the oppression of the khan but was unlucky to escape the hell of muscovy.

So, numbness is the body’s response to acute stress. You can avoid all these consequences if you work with numbness in time.

Each of us must act because the body relieves tension only in action.

At the state level. For Ukraine, actions to disintegrate muscovy are the nation’s task because the collapse of muscovy will happen when the actions of muscovites lose their meaning for each of us.

 

Image: contemporary art