Nyuta Federmesser: “You need to hold on to your today and the opportunity to do your job”

“With fear for the children, I do nothing.

Firstly, I somehow don’t know how to be afraid, I don’t have it. I have no fear. I'm not afraid and I'm not afraid.

I understand that those people who were born and live now - everything that needs to happen will happen.

There is a regular conversation with relatives of our patients. For example, a seven-year-old child's mother dies. The father says what will happen, how will she grow up without a mother ... It won’t, but it already exists - the situation already exists. Do not think that the situation can be played back. Everything has already happened and this person, yes, will have such a life.

And the only thing you need is to try to be happy in the given conditions. Maintain human dignity and be happy. Everything.

It's the same in every situation.

What is happening now has already affected the lives of my children.

My youngest son matured in one summer, not because his foot grew from size 38 to size 42 in three months, but because he no longer thinks childish thoughts.

He is afraid for me. He thinks about what country is right to live in, and why. He listens to all news, all channels. And he sends me - and you read this, and you saw this? What do you have at work?

Yesterday, in a text message, when asked how things were going, he told me - well, how can things be? And I answered - are you worried about Lyova, for what is happening, for the fact that you are skipping school? And he answered, well, of course, not for the school, but for the first two.

It's all already happened.

Can I influence their future?

… We must hold on to our today and the opportunity that God has given to do our job.

A very interesting moment in people with dementia. One of the last things that leaves a person is his professional skill.

He forgets what his mother looked like, the children, what their names are, but if he played a musical instrument, he plays the instrument.

If he is a teacher and knows the language, he remembers the language.

If he wrote and read poetry, he recites poetry.

It's simply incredible: what remains in the brain is what a person chose for himself, what he spent his efforts, his life on.

And this is what we need to hold on to, this is what we have chosen for ourselves, our professional, our strength. And we must hold on to our strength.

… First of all, there are a lot of people on Earth now who are in much more difficult circumstances than we are. Talk to any refugees, and, no matter which side, how have they been living for the last eight months?

And secondly, mourning has a beginning and an end. Mourning is a certain way of living through a difficult life situation, with stages of acceptance, outbursts of emotions, tears. But you understand that competently, gradually lived this period - in anthropology this is called the ritual of transition - it's not accidental. Three days before the funeral, nine days after, forty days, then years.

These are all such dots that promote you to a new life status. You were either widowed, or orphaned, or matured, or became lonely, or got the experience that everyone around you has already received, and you were the last, or you were the first ... This is all the time a stage.

Now we have ... Where is the end point? We live in constant stress. In a person, post-traumatic disorder occurs when the trauma has already been received, the stress has already been passed - and then post-traumatic disorder.

Where is this point now? How much more?

I read Olga Berggolts this year. She wrote very interestingly in the “Diaries of a Blockade Man” about these sensations, which she thoroughly, like a pathologist, laid out in the cells.

How, for example, the perception of buildings in St. Petersburg changed when the city began to be bombed.

You no longer look at this building as an architectural object, at its style, at its beauty, you evaluate the thickness of the walls and where you will stand and be, so that in the event of a bombing you will not be overwhelmed.

The entire issue featuring Nyuta Federmesser can be viewed here.