About

Over time the group included people fleeing into Europe and therapists continuing to support their clients through online sessions. Defence and survival became important for all people. The groups focused on the shared impacts as the basis for creating therapy interventions with each other. One person’s therapy became a shared, vicarious therapy for everyone. Everyone needed to adjust to explosions, to air-sirens, to death, to vulnerability, to emotional overwhelm, to homelessness and loss and grief at the many stages of the invasion.

Participants found value in the group meeting and the organizers became interested in what was especially useful and the elements that proved beneficial to participants. Evaluations of these weekly groups highlighted that a magical mix of sharing within the groups were very useful. The capacity for individuals to all feel connected to the emotional issues of each other and the shared distress. The vicarious therapy help individuals in reclaiming and growing their Self and transforming distress into creating a new sense of self beyond the challenges of the overwhelming environment and develop new skills and capacities.

Over the months, psychological adjustments mean that the focus of the groups changed from survival to anger, then to a fierce resolve to fight for their nation and their personal well-being. What was a shared impact and devastation became an individual journey to heal. Together, we learned to reclaim our inner freedom as the quest for the outer freedom continued. This was the birth of the project – to reclaim what was lost for ourselves and to help individuals and clients to reclaim to weave the fabric that now holds their future.