Olga is 37, she has had her own family for 15 years and lives separately from her parents.

However, when a full-scale invasion began and the Kyiv region was occupied, the family decided to go from the capital to the west of Ukraine, to Olga's native village:

- My older sister was living abroad at the time, so my husband and I started living in her house.

Everything was fine, my parents were on the next street, we saw each other several times a week.

All my relatives were very supportive of each other, we prepared food supplies together, helped refugees from the east who came to our village.

There was such an elation.

I felt that going to my native village was the right decision. 

Everything changed when Olga's sister suddenly decided to return home.

Olga and her husband had to move to their parents' house.

And then the woman remembered why she was so happy when she started living separately 15 years ago: "It is very difficult to get along with my mother. Especially when we are in the kitchen together. Everything falls out of my hands. I am like a little girl again who can't to cook. Because everything is not right for my mother. I peel the potatoes wrong, I put the cup in the wrong place. We constantly quarrel. But I can't return to Kyiv either. Especially now, when these shellings are constant. Then you have to sit in the bomb shelter all day, then without electricity and heating for several days. In the village, you can flood even a pit and bring water from a well. But I can't live with my mother either."

"We all have to go through separation, that is, separation from our parents.

Usually, this happens in adolescence.

But if for some reason this did not happen at the right time, it cannot be avoided, explains psychotherapist Svitlana Marchek.

"Now many families, who were forced to start living together again, are "finishing up" this process of separation."

In addition, we should not forget that living in the conditions of war in itself traumatizes our psyche.

The body accumulates cortisol, a stress hormone that changes people's behavior whether we like it or not. 

"We come already charged to people who are also already full of stress.

Cortisol screams: let's fight!

And a person seems to be running with a jacket and does not know where to put it.

This irritation must be hung somewhere.

And it spills over into domestic conflicts," says the psychotherapist.

What should be done so that both cups and heads remain intact?

First of all, try to plan for the future, no matter how difficult it may be.

If it is not easy for you to live together, focus your efforts on creating such conditions that will make your life comfortable.

And be sure to outline the deadline.

"Here it is necessary to understand that any experience must end with something.

And now we are running a long distance with you.

If we were told: people, we have to live until February 23 and then everything will be over.

We would say: hey, mom, you're beautiful, and I can live with you until the 23rd.

Later, probably not, but for now I can.

Since we have no idea how much longer it will last, it is very difficult for us," explains Svitlana Marchek.

If moving away now or in the near future is not your option, you can still calm the storm of emotions at home, the psychologist assures.

The best way is to imagine that your relatives are not really your relatives, but business partners, for example:

- Sometimes close family relationships are impossible at such times.

We can sit down and negotiate.

Dry, business-like, putting aside emotions as much as possible.

Who buys what, who cooks in the kitchen when, who goes where.

Contract relationships are great, especially when everyone lives up to their terms of the contract.

In general, it is always useful to look at your relatives as strangers.

Imagine that your mother is not the woman who gave you life, but an ordinary woman from next door.

Think about what she dreams of, what she is afraid of.

So you can better understand the motivation of her actions.

It may not be your fault that this woman is yelling at you.

And she just needs to talk about what she is afraid of.

Or maybe she's teaching a 37-year-old woman how to properly wash dishes, because that's the only way she can show her love?

"You know, we always have two walls in our lives.

Right and left.

On the right, it is written how well done we are, what we have succeeded in, what wonderful people and what a beautiful world.

And on the left - that everything is shit.

One room.

The question is which wall I choose to look at, the psychotherapist assures.

- The same with your relatives.

Look at them and think: are all these negative manifestations that the war showed, and there is everything you know about your loved ones?

Probably not.

Look at the other wall of the room."

But the aggression that has accumulated in our bodies and should not be poured out on our loved ones at all, give another way of release.

You can trivially push the wall, or you can organize a family cleaning of the yard from the snow.

Transform accumulated tension into physical action!