Mykola Iabluchanskyi

  This book asks a simple, hard question: how can doctors, patients, and organizers meet one another in medicine without wounding one another and without letting the work of medicine lose? Starting from the story of one good but exhausted doctor, the book argues that the core problem is not only bad people or bad systems, but bad forms : the unexamined “ masks ” and roles that shape every encounter. It shows how consultations often hurt everyone involved, how victim–predator dynamics silently take over, and how the same people, on the same day, can live the same pressures very differently when they have more conscious forms of presence available. Masks here are not lies or theatrical tricks. They are deliberately chosen ways of being in the room — calm listener , firm guide, honest reporter, respectful questioner, frame‑holder, protector of dignity, inner archivist, and others — that protect both people and work. The book walks through three positions (doctor, patient, organizer)...

Current psychiatric classifications use the term   post‑traumatic stress disorder   ( PTSD ) to describe reactions to traumatic events. It is a useful, but historically “peaceful” concept: the event happened, it ended, and now we are dealing with the after‑effects. For countries living through prolonged war, this assumption does not hold. The traumatic event does not end. It continues, changes, returns in new forms, and affects not only individuals but entire societies. To describe this reality, we introduce the concept of   Continuous Collective Traumatic Stress Disorder . Today’s Ukraine is a real‑time example of such a state. Shelling, losses, displacement, economic instability, constant anxiety for loved ones, chronic fatigue, information overload, political and social tensions — this is not “one trauma,” but a persistent background. A person does not return from “the event” to a safe environment. They live in an environment where threat and uncertainty have become n...