Psychologist told how wars make people indifferent and callous

“My friend’s daughter died, but I don’t care”

More than once or twice over the past months there has been talk that people stop responding to someone else’s pain. Daily reports of losses, victims and corpses lead to the fact that death becomes a familiar, everyday occurrence. What this can lead to later, “MK” was told by family psychologist Elena Moshkova.

– Here are the words of one of my patients: “A close friend’s daughter died of cancer, she was very young. I kind of feel sorry for the unfortunate mother, of course, but I don’t feel real pain. I do not feel the compassion that I would certainly have felt in this case before. It’s terrible that my soul has become so hardened, ”says Elena Moshkova.

– Really, it’s terrible.

– But it’s understandable. When death happens around often enough, people get used to it – otherwise the psyche would not stand it, and people would go crazy. For example, physicians who work with critically ill patients become less receptive to their care over time than they were at the beginning of their work. And during the war, soldiers are hard pressed by the death of their comrades only in the first days, then emotions become dull. Loss of empathy is a defensive reaction of our psyche.

– Does this only apply to someone else’s pain, or does your own possible death also cease to frighten?

– Of course, it depends on the personality and character, but in many cases it also applies to oneself. You know, as they say – in the world and death is red? I believe that this saying is just about the fact that when tragedies constantly happen around a person, when they become everyday life, then he is much calmer about the possibility of dying himself. This is the calm of doom, it is bad, it prevents, say, the sick from struggling to recover, and the soldiers from striving to survive. Connected with this, in my opinion, is the resignation with which many perceive as inevitability what is not inevitability at all.

– If we talk about empathy, about the ability to sympathize with one’s neighbor, is it subsequently restored? And if so, how soon?

– It’s hard to say, again, a lot depends on the individual, but in any case, not immediately. The period of relative indifference to the suffering of others can stretch for years – and not always due to natural callousness, sometimes this happens simply with weak people, whose psyche closes their hearts before other people’s troubles so that they can save themselves. But this is bad in all cases – when a society consists of people with low empathy, it is less viable, it has fewer prospects and opportunities.

The worst thing is when this happens to children. It is known that what happens in childhood is firmly imprinted in the character and soul of a person. So, children who grew up in a village where it is common to slaughter a lamb or a pig living in their own courtyard for dinner are unlikely to ever love a cat or a dog as a family member. In the same way, the routine of death, the habit of other people’s suffering is much more dangerous for children than for adults. Such children will subsequently not only be less responsive and sensitive towards others, but also less careful in terms of saving their own lives. And much more than anyone else, they are prone to suicidal thoughts.