When you can kill you tomorrow. Military psychologist is about which disorders are most common among fighters at zero. Interview NV

At the same time, much of these fighters participated in the battles, lost their brothers and broke through the enemy's environment, and therefore received injuries both physical and psychological.

Video of the day to survive them for eight years in a row to soldiers helped military psychologist Alexei Karachinsky, who has not only a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in the field of psychology, but also the experience of the combatant - he himself has passed four rotations in the Donbass in 2014–2016, and and and Since then, he has been a veteran and major in the Armed Forces.

NV spoke with Karachinsky about the most common psychological problems of fighters and moral dilemma that arise from veterans and combatants at "zero". - How often do fighters dare to contact a psychologist and are easy to contact? - Generally military - super -closed people, even spoken therapy is not suitable for everyone, not to mention bodily.

When a colleague and I were engaged in the rehabilitation of people who lost their limbs, we taught the veterans themselves as bodily practices to relieve phantom pain. These veterans felt the result and were then instructors for others. Because to pull out some military to talk is unrealistic. But it is to the first great rotation.

Because it was a case: our group of four experts on the departure found a brigade, in which at least 40% of the warehouse remained in the village of Znamnyivka in Donetsk - that is, they did not return. To my surprise, then the queues were lined up to us, because nothing helped. People drink, fight each other, or someone, for example, shoots, and another person has incontinence.

Therefore, I usually work in three directions - with those who go to the front, those who are fighting there, and those who have returned. But since there was no large rotation - the latter are not so many, only those who cannot continue to fight due to injuries. So now I most often work with the military in the war zone, which have my phone and turns from time to time.

- What are the problems in the military before sending to the front? - First of all, these are the problems of those who, as they say, are not fired. That is, when a person does not know what awaits it on the front and imagines the war only as it was shown in films. When talking about the unit commander, these are leadership problems. For example, suddenly I will not listen to subordinates or how to behave with my colleagues.

There are many topics, of course, related to fear: if I do not come back or if I come back. But here it is important to be able to distinguish the real danger from the imaginary, when a person begins to draw scary pictures of the future. So at some point she will understand how the sounds of mortar shells differ from hail. Depending on this, it will have an algorithm of action, and it will already be a reaction to a real danger.

And fear is unreal, it appears in the imagination, and it is necessary to work with it. - And what psychological problems are most often faced by military "at zeros"? - When I was there, my main task was to remove fighters from different psychological states. For example, a person caught a tremor: she starts to tremble, and no one knows what to do with it. This is especially dangerous during the battle, or when it flew. The body responds and thus tries to protect itself.

Tremor is the result of high tension that has accumulated in the body. Therefore, you do not need to stop the person in any case, you need to take hands and shake even more to help release the tension faster. Another common problem is someone caught panic or paranoia. For example, now I talk to a guy who is sure that someone is pouring something into food. A special big problem is that fighters can sometimes be paranoids that are sent by an enemy.

Often, fighters have problems with sleep, but it is also related to trust. They complain: "I need to sleep myself not to sleep. " Well, but how much is it possible? Day or two? Therefore, the military is often interested in what it is better to think before bedtime. In fact, our brain does not distinguish the imaginary from the real unless we make efforts. When I lie and imagine how I flew into the house, I will also feel anxious.

And when I lie down and imagine how Putin dies, or how I go to the sea with my wife, I am felt by a sense of security. One of the most important ideas is to give a sense of security to your body so that it can fall asleep. In short, I advise you to dream in the trenches. I work a lot with families: with the wives of the military who do not communicate, or with the fighters themselves, who often do not know what to talk to their relatives.

- Do fighters have moral dilemma related to the murder of another person? - It is cool to discuss such dilemma at the documentary festival. And when you are in the war, a special moral dill in order to kill another, you do not meet. There is an attack, you are shooting, and there is no time to think, kill or not kill, there are animal moments. In addition, if it is not fighting for the city, it is mainly about the work of artillery. And the battle itself goes differently.

I can say this from my experience with my experience. Usually you imagine how it is shown in Hollywood films, and in fact you sit in the trenches, the machine sticks out of it, and you shoot towards the enemy. There, no one even squeezes or aims. In addition, we cannot solve such a dilemma with murder when we talk about a person. And as the word "man" we replace with "scoundrel" - there is no dilemma. Therefore, it is important for the military to dehumanize the enemy, such moments are solved.

- What difficulties in adaptation to a peaceful life are those who returned from the war? - In 2014-2022, there were many such problems: someone can not forget something, and someone does not understand what to do next in life. There is a loss of meaning in life if, for example, they kill friends. When you go to fight, it's already quite great. And when you do it with a friend who stays there, it knocks out the base.

In addition, everything is black and white in the war, and much easier than in ordinary life. You have an order and you execute it. You understand well who is a friend and who is the enemy. You do not have to stay anyone to take his position, you can just kill you tomorrow, and you do not think about it at all. Bad and good qualities crystallize, the world becomes somewhat utopian.

Therefore, it is difficult to adapt to a peaceful life - someone wants to go back, someone does not feel understanding among others, and someone has a complete list of symptoms of PTSD. I remember this condition after my return, when I went to the city as a stranger, and I took me ten days to get out of my shell. I will give an example how it is in the armies of Israel and the United States: a serviceman is fighting, for example, in Iraq, and this is a conditional territory of war.

When the rotation ends, it does not go home right away. The whole unit is thrown into a closed sanatorium for a month, for example, to Germany. And it is already a semi -merchant buffer area where the fighters not only undergo medical rehabilitation, but also adapt. Therefore, there will be no such sharpness when they go to peaceful space. - What are the most difficult cases in your practice? - I had a guy who, after returning from the front, continued to feel a corpse smell.

The smell was fixed when the military unloaded the "two hundred" and was told immediately after: go, do something else. That is, for him the situation did not end, it was the last strong emotional moment in that difficult business. Therefore, in the imagination, we hid these mutilated people in the ground, which usually takes away smells, and sowed it with fragrant flowers.

The same I advise parents in working with children and their experience of explosions: it is necessary to change the association to the one where the explosion is equal to safety. For example, Birthday is a noise related to safety, holiday and, most importantly, control. Similarly, with the military: it is necessary to change the strong emotional moment in which the injury is recorded. But there are scientifically interesting cases, but there are simply emotional.