Rules for communicating with the military from the co-founders of the “Tree of My Life” project

The 1st and 2nd year students majoring in International Journalism visited the psychological and educational space “Tree of My Life”.   The topic of the meeting was the rules and etiquette of communication with military personnel.

The meeting was organized by Natalia Drabov, an English teacher at UzhNU, who practices such events with her students. According to her, young people learn important information in Ukrainian, and during their classes at the university they learn vocabulary and discuss the topic in English.

The training meeting was conducted by the space’s founder, Liubov Mykhailiuk, who is a military psychology consultant, and co-founder Ksenia-Teresa Ternavska, an analytically oriented psychologist and author of training programs. First, we found out if there were any participants who constantly communicate with the military, whose relatives are at the front. Then we watched several videos of our defenders sharing their emotions.

Ksenia-Teresa Tarnavska spoke in detail about the rules of behavior with the military, in particular, what questions to ask them, what to do when a soldier speaks first. The universal advice is to be yourself and show sincerity in communication. It is also important to remember that there are situations when the military need to speak out.  

The psychologists advised to be especially attentive to the defenders during their vacation. For example, you should not make sudden movements in the same room as a soldier, or clean up after him without his consent. Much attention was paid to behavior during rehabilitation, as well as communication between relatives and the military.

At the end of the meeting, the journalism students asked questions, shared their impressions of what they had heard, and took a group photo as a souvenir.

You can learn more about the “Tree of My Life” and support the community on their website.

Alina Turok, 1st year student, specialty “International Journalism”

Source: mediadep.uzhnu.edu.ua