February 15, 2023, 11:20 – BLiTZ – News Figure skater Roman Kostomarov is in critical condition, and it continues to deteriorate. The day before, parts of his feet and some fingers on his hands were amputated, but the possibility of further progression of necrosis remains. How can a person psychologically cope with such nightmarish trials, and even more so if he is an Olympic champion? Psychologist, Candidate of Psychological Sciences Sofya Sulim told the BLiTZ about this.
“This can be dealt with only if a person rethinks his life, creates new values and meanings. In any case, this will happen automatically, because Roman got into a situation where life is divided into “before” and “after”. And in this “after” a new stage of life is possible: when a person accepts this reality and goes through all the stages of a stressful situation, about which so much has been written, from shock, denial and bargaining to acceptance of reality, ”explained the psychologist.
After accepting what happened, the stage of some kind of understanding of one’s own reasons why everything happened this way will begin. People in such situations have been looking for understanding for years, because a person needs to have at least some explanation for himself personally, because of what happened. Although sometimes it happens for no reason at all.
“Roman is waiting for a fairly strong internal spiritual and psychological transformation”
“Therefore, after acceptance and understanding, there will in any case be a stage of reassessment of how to live on. Naturally, this is very difficult, and there are no options for it to be somehow different. Psychologically, Roman will have to go through all these stages and look for an opportunity to see what he could do next. Sometimes people in such a situation have a rather strong rethinking, that is, the focus on values shifts. If earlier the value was, for example, recognition, certain achievements, then after such tragedies the focus inevitably goes inward – on spiritual values. Including “why, why, where to go.” Roman is waiting for a fairly strong internal spiritual and psychological transformation. These processes will be launched, but we don’t know how long they will go on,” Sulim said.
The psychologist emphasized that only support is needed from Kostomarov’s entourage in being close, because in this case some words, techniques or something else will not help much. According to her, when a person is faced with this, he needs, firstly, acceptance, and secondly, to have loved ones nearby, no matter what happens.
“You need to either silently be there, or not silently, but the main thing is not to pretend that all this is not scary, not to try to run away or look for some options, but simply to allow a person to accept this and just humanly, lovingly take care of him . Support with simple household chores, the simplest actions and, of course, listen if a person needs to speak out, ”concluded the expert.
