War-Related Life-Making Landscapes: Ukrainian Context

Abstract

The full-scale military invasion has changed the lives of all Ukrainians forever. The necessity to understand how the traumatic experiences of the first months of the war affected people’s ability of life-making, how it changed this ability was the reason for conducting this study. In April–May 2022, 169 respondents wrote essays based on 4 questions about their experience. The sample consisted of 78% women, 22% men (age M = 43.2, SD = 12), 43.2% had personal experience of being under fire. Descriptive and interpretative analyses, multiple correspondence analyses, and comparative analyses were conducted to identify key variables, types of life-making landscapes, and their possible correlations. The landscape of service (27.8%), care (23.7%), and existential landscape (24.3%) were the most spread. More than half of respondents (54.4%) described the experience of losses of relationship, usual lifestyle, home or earnings. In addition, 16.6% mentioned feeling of guilt. The trajectories of the value-time dynamics that set the type of landscape during war differ from that revealed during the pandemic. The loss of relationships is mentioned most often and the most painful part of the guilt experience is the feeling of helplessness in relation to loved ones. A passive or active position in responding to events and multi-contextual or narrow individual perception of the situation turned out to be the most important for a respondent’s place in the psychological space of the studied variables. Limitations and perspectives are discussed.