You're reading: French therapist to soldiers says it’s time to believe in Ukraine

In less than two years, Nicolas Tacussel, a 30-year-old French psychotherapist, has visited Ukraine 28 times.

Traveling from
Paris to Ukraine and back more than once a month, he has since his first visit
learned to understand Ukrainian and started Smile for Ukraine, a
non-governmental organization that helps soldiers fighting in the Donbas.

In the last year
alone, he has held 650 individual consultations with soldiers, and provided
masterclasses for more than 230 Ukrainian psychologists – most of whom are
volunteers. He has also been in the warzone in eastern Ukraine, visiting
hospitals and orphanages.

Smile for Ukraine
has three programs: psychological trauma, pain management for soldiers, and a
course for children.

A specialist in behavioral neuroscience, Tacussel
teaches soldiers how understanding their body and mind can help them overcome
post-war stress or physical pain. He also teaches them how to prepare for war.

While most
psychotherapists concentrate on post-traumatic stress disorder and “of course
this is important,” the problem is much more complex, Tacussel told the Kyiv
Post.

Rehabilitation
would be easier if “we prepared soldiers for war,” he said.

“If I tell you:
‘You’re going to run the Kyiv marathon and you’ve got two weeks to prepare for
it,’ you’d run the marathon, but afterwards your entire body would be aching,”
Tacussel said. “Soldiers have only two months to prepare for war, and their
brains have to accept the fact that they must be ready to kill. However, their
brains aren’t ready for this – that’s why they have so much stress.”

Yaroslav Hnatiuk, a
volunteer who helps soldiers returning from service in the war zone, including
those who have been in captivity, told the Kyiv Post that Tacussel’s methods
are very unusual.

“He focuses on
psychosomatics (looking at the mind and body), and even though he doesn’t know
the language that well he can easily single out from a group of soldiers the
ones with the biggest problems,” Hnatiuk said.

He said that
Tacussel prefers to talk to soldiers individually, and after several sessions,
he diagnoses which problems soldiers have, so that other psychotherapists can
keep working with them.

Even though the
Frenchman thinks Ukraine does not always spend long enough on training its
soldiers for war, he said well-trained professional psychologists could help
improve the situation. He also praised the activities of volunteers

“Ukraine is lucky
to have this many volunteers. They’re doing a great job. They’re incredible,”
he said.

Tacussel told the
Kyiv Post that he had often heard about Ukraine from his Mariupol-born
grandfather.

When the EuroMaidan
Revolution started in 2013, many French media described the Ukrainian activists
as being fascists, Tacussel said. He said this image did not fit the stories
told to him by his grandfather, so he decided “to come and see” for himself
what was going on.

He first flew to
Kyiv in January 2014. Shaking in the freezing cold of that winter, and
uncertain what he would actually do in Ukraine – as well as being alone and
without knowing the language – he went to tent city in Kyiv’s central square,
Maidan Nezalezhnosti. There, he met ordinary people protesting against human
rights abuses and the failure by then President Viktor Yanukovych to sign an
agreement on Ukraine’s political association and free trade deal with the
European Union.

Tacussel started to
talk with a group of young activists, who walked him through the protest camp
and explained to him the entire political situation, as well as showing him the
rest of Kyiv. Tacussel said he soon fell in love with the city, the country and
the nation.

“It’s very
beautiful when people fight for freedom,” he said. When Russia’s war against
Ukraine started, Tacussel felt he could help, and together with French
colleagues designed his first program to train Ukrainian psychologists.

Since designing
these programs, he has devoted 80 percent of his time to the Ukrainian
non-profit, and 20 percent to his business in Paris.

And according to
Tacussel, the whole of Ukrainian society could use therapy.

“People say that
nothing’s changed, they keep complaining, waiting for the European Union to
come and change everything,” Tacussel told the Kyiv Post. “However, you have
done lots of reforms – it’s time to believe in Ukraine.”

“Open your mind –
you are strong, be more positive!” Tacussel said. “Europe is not only about
Schengen visas. If you want to be European – speak English, behave like
Europeans, but stay Ukrainian. Stop waiting for Europe to come and give you
money, to change everything. Go and make your life happen.”