ABSTRACT:

During the trying wartime period, Ukrainian psychologists and psychotherapists encountered many challenges in their work. We found ourselves in a new reality we could neither have predicted nor prepared for in advance.

Just like our clients, we, the professionals providing psychological assistance, felt the need for emotional processing, support and connection as well as for professional communication that would enable us to explore the new issues we faced in our work.

Thus, we formed a sociodrama group led by Ron Wiener and Diane Adderley.

The members of the group found the strength to meet during the long months of war and related the reality of traumatic events – manifested by different roles and voices – to the group. We did our best to examine the terrible occurrences and to understand and analyse the processes taking place within ourselves, within our personal and professional relationships, within society at large and the international community. We also observed how these processes were reproduced in the group.

We had to learn on the go and managed to achieve a lot.

During the workshop we will:

• reveal what lies behind the curtain and invite you to take a look at the work done by a group that met during the interminable war months while abiding by the principle of confidentiality;
• tell you how we moved from the declared goal to the needs that arose during our work;
• share the insights the group received due to their work together;
• affirm the importance and effectiveness of the sociodrama method as demonstrated by our experience;
• invite you to the action and the encounter.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS: