‘- Can I take a picture of you?
– Oh, no-no-no …
– You look good! Let’s take a photo together with the whole group?
– I don’t know, somehow it’s not convenient. I don’t like to be photographed, I always look bad … (starts to run away).
– Well, then tell me about your classes in the group. Is this the “Children and War” program?
– I am very pleased! After leaving the scene of the fighting, I was shaken, and everything was like in a fog. I came to the group meeting, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire, but I was confused, I don’t know what to write. The butterfly technique helped me, we studied this. And the horrible sounds in my head, especially at night, I could not sleep. Explosions, screams. I also overcame it. You see, I’m telling you and I’m not crying, and I couldn’t do that before … I’m not crying for life. Our group coaches are our teachers. They taught me how to calm down and put my thoughts in order. And those horrible sounds also ceased to be in my head.
This is a piece of a short conversation between the leader and psychologist of our “Helping Hand for Ukraine” project, Iryna Sukhova with Olena, a member of the group on the program “Children and War. Teaching Recovering Techniques”, who was evacuated from Mariupol, Donetsk region, to Drohobych, Lviv region. And this is a common situation – adults (unlike children) do not want to be photographed, but they kindly provide feedback. Moreover, they recommend classes to their friends because it helped. Therefore, we present some feedback from participants of group classes held in Drohobych, from Eugenia from Kiev, Lilia from Melitopol and Nikita from Kharkov.
