How to find your way back after a crisis

How do you find your way back after a crisis—when, following 2022, life has become completely alien? After February 24, 2022, many of us woke up to a different reality. Some left; others stayed, but their city, their work, and the people around them had changed beyond recognition. On the surface, life gradually stabilized—housing, paperwork, employment, schools for the children—yet, deep down, a strange sensation persists: as if you are living someone else’s life in someone else’s body.

If you are wondering how to turn around after a crisis, this article is for you. I am a Gestalt therapist and work with Ukrainians and Russians whose lives have been broken in 2022. I’ll tell you what it’s like to be with a person at such a moment, why just starting over again doesn’t work, and where the turning back really begins.

What does it mean to “spend on yourself” after a crisis?

Wasting oneself is not a metaphor and not a myth. A completely specific camp. People are losing what their psychic “I” was previously spiraling into. Then we waste ourselves on what we could hide in all spheres of life.

And it spiraled out of simple speech. My house. My robot. My language. My people. My street, I don’t know where to go. My plans are five years in advance. In 2022, millions of people’s support was knocked out overnight. Not just one, but all at once.

Gestalt therapy has a simple idea that the human skin benefits from contact with light. We know ourselves through what we choose, what we love, what we protest against. If the middle constantly changes, the old methods of contact no longer work. And people cease to recognize themselves.

For example, in Kiev I chose my life myself, as if I had earned money myself. I have a small job in Kiev, which I created myself. This is where I live, where I was allowed to live.

This whole massacre itself is what allowed it – and it is the heart of the crisis. The people have grown up, when they began to pour into their lives, they rapt and become drunk with the child. Vary for someone else. Rate it. Let me explain the rules. The mature one chooses first. Ditina – no. Wasting oneself after a crisis is wasting our maturity before.

How can you understand what you spent on yourself? What are the signs?

Tell people not to come asking “I spent it on myself.” They come with different words. The axis that I smell most often in the first sessions:

• “I don’t know what I want.” Previously there were plans and plans. It’s time to ask “what do you want” and the head is quiet. Or rip off.
• “I live on autopilot.” Work, children, daily wages. Everything is broken up, everything is in place. It’s impossible to see what my life is all about.
• “I have become something different, and I don’t belong as a human.” Quiet there, where before there was a smile. It’ll get better there, where we fought before. To endure those who would never have known the day before.
• “I have no right to be rude.” In a different way. Sometimes at the front, sometimes under fire. That’s why your body looks obscene, and they want to tell it to themselves.
• “I’m waiting for everything to end so that I can start living.” Life has been put on pause. The apartment is not furnished, language is not understood, friends are not made. Everything is time-based. It’s already the fourth river.
• “I’m angry at everyone and I don’t understand why.” On people, on children, on local people, on those who have lost, and on those who went. Aggression without an address is a partial companion to lost support.
• The body should speak before the head. Sleeplessness, restlessness, tension in the shoulders, illnesses that doctors cannot explain.

As you would like to recognize two points for yourself, it is not weakness and not a rotten character. This is a natural reaction of the psyche to a breakdown that triggers fate.

Why not “just start again”

Advice on “finding yourself” usually sounds upbeat: take up a hobby, set some goals, step out of your comfort zone. A person gives it an honest try—only to quit two weeks later. And then, they berate themselves for their lack of willpower.

It doesn’t work for three reasons:

The old is not mourned

You cannot build something new without saying goodbye to the old. And saying goodbye is painful. That is why many people keep their past life in a state of suspended animation. The keys to an apartment in Kyiv remain in a bag (for a long time, that was exactly the case for me). Winter clothes stay in a suitcase that has never been unpacked.

Until grief has been processed, the psyche does not release energy for anything new. It is occupied with the task of not feeling.

Anger is hidden

At the war, at injustice, at those who made decisions for us. It feels “inappropriate” to be angry, and there’s “nowhere” to direct that anger. But suppressed anger doesn’t just disappear. It turns into apathy, fatigue, and a sense that you don’t want anything at all.

In fact, anger is the very energy through which a person says “no” and chooses what is their own. Without it, one cannot reclaim one’s adulthood.

Life is on pause

“Once the war is over, then I’ll decide.” A sense of temporariness feels safe. There’s no need to choose, no need to commit, no need to take risks.

This security comes at a high price. Years are spent in a waiting room, and one risks remaining, forever, in the role of someone who waits for others to make decisions.

How can you find your way back to yourself after a crisis? Where does the journey begin?

Reclaiming yourself does not mean getting your old life back. That life no longer exists. It is about something else: becoming, once again, the person who makes the choices. Here is what this journey typically looks like in therapy:

1. Acknowledge that a loss occurred

It’s not a matter of “everyone goes through this” or “others have it worse.” It’s: “I lost my home, my job, my social circle, my city.” It sounds simple—yet for many, it’s only during a therapy session—two or three years after leaving—that they finally say these words out loud.

Acknowledgment is not self-pity. It is a starting point. You cannot chart a route without knowing where you are standing.

2. Allow yourself to feel your emotions

Grief, anger, envy toward those for whom “everything is fine.” Shame for having left—or for having stayed. Feelings that have long been kept under lock and key do not emerge all at once; they require a safe space.

When they are fully experienced, the energy returns—the very same energy that was once enough for work, children, and plans.

3. Separate the “self” from the circumstances

Circumstances have changed. Your profession, status, language, and surroundings. But some things have remained the same. Your capacity for observation. Your sense of humor. Your stubbornness. The way you know how to love.

In therapy, we look for precisely this: what survived within me when everything around me fell apart. This is something one can lean on.

4. Start making choices — with something small

Adulthood doesn’t return through major decisions. It returns through yogurt. Through saying, “I want this one because I like it.” Through saying “no” in situations where, previously, you would have offered a polite “yes.”

Every small choice is a signal to the psyche, saying: “I am once again exerting influence over my own life.”

5. Unpause life

Hang up some pictures in your rented apartment. Sign up for a course. Make one local friend. Not because it’s “forever,” but because life is happening now—not after the war.

This is not a betrayal of home. It is the right to choose oneself, without betraying others.

Why is it difficult to deal with this on one’s own?

You can find your way back to yourself on your own. But there’s a trap: the one who is searching and the one being searched for are the same person. From the inside, you cannot see where you’ve become stuck. Your inner critic says, “Pull yourself together.” Your inner child wants someone else to come along and solve everything.

Therapy provides a third position—a space where you don’t have to hold yourself together. A place where you don’t need to be strong for your children, your husband, or your mother, who calls from Kharkiv.

How I work with this request

I am a Gestalt therapist. I work online with Ukrainians and Russian speakers across the globe — in either Russian or Ukrainian, whichever you prefer.

In our work, we don’t look for a “correct” new life based on some template. Instead, we examine what is happening for you right now—exploring your body, your feelings, and your relationships. Step by step, we restore your capacity to have desires, to feel anger, to say no, and to make choices.

Before becoming a psychotherapist, I spent over 25 years as an entrepreneur. I know what it’s like to build a business from the ground up and to put your own money on the line for the decisions you make. That is why I truly understand those who were once in complete control, but now find themselves feeling like a stranger to their own selves.

And I know this not just from textbooks. I myself left Kyiv for England. I went through the journey from “everything I have is my own” to “I’ve been granted permission to live here”—and back again, to the feeling that this is, once more, my own life. This experience doesn’t make me an expert on your story, but I do know exactly what it sounds like from the inside.

Psychotherapist for Ukrainians – what do I work with?

My name is Natasha Kokhan (Vasilenko). I am a certified Gestalt psychotherapist, and I work with Ukrainians and Russian-speaking individuals whose lives have been transformed since 2022. I provide sessions online for clients worldwide, conducting them in both Ukrainian and Russian.

People come to me with requests like these:

• losing oneself following a crisis, war, or forced relocation;
• “I don’t know what I want,” apathy, living on autopilot;
• an identity crisis in emigration, involving a different country, language, status, and profession;
• unprocessed grief and the loss of one’s home;
• repressed anger, irritation, difficulty saying “no”;
• imposter syndrome after changing professions or countries;
• anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, and psychosomatic symptoms resulting from prolonged stress;
• tension within a couple or family following a relocation or separation;
• Money, work, and business while living abroad: how to start making your own decisions again.

My area of ​​expertise is the restoration of adulthood. I help people reclaim their role as the ones who choose their own lives, rather than just waiting for everything to come to an end.

SIGN UP FOR A CONSULTATION

If you recognize yourself in this article, come in for an initial consultation. During this session, we will look at what you are currently experiencing and determine the best place to start.

You can find the prices for my psychotherapy services here.

P.S. As it happens, you eventually settle on a specific yogurt. Not right away, though. At first, you just pick the cheapest one. Then, the one your kids liked. And one day—you find the one that’s truly yours.

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