The skating hall is cold, but Aleksandra Veresova is taking her sweater off. She’s putting one foot in front of the other, and her skates are drawing figures in the ice. “This is the one place in the world where my mind is completely quiet,” she says. “You might have a thousand problems, and all of them disappear when you’re here.”

Aleksandra is breaking in her new skates and she is focused, fast and precise. She’s practicing spins and turns with her friend Barbora. The sound of their skates cut through the muted Relax, Take It Easy playing in the hall. It’s the end of their figure skating lesson, and almost everyone is off the ice. The hall is emptying.

Suddenly – a bang, and Aleksandra falls. She covers her ears with her hands. Barbora rushes to her side. Aleksandra is lying on the ice in a fetal position. The world is gone and the war is back.

Helicopters, police and ambulance sirens, kids shooting fireworks, loud bangs in construction sites, sudden sounds in rock songs, someone suddenly clapping or shutting a door, a scream, a pan falling on the floor, all things loud and unexpected – are all things that trigger Aleksandra’s PTSD. This time, it was the pop of the sound system after someone disconnected a device.

Aleksandra is Ukrainian. The 16 March 2022 was her last day in Ukraine before fleeing the war and taking refuge in Denmark. She is one of 7 million Ukrainians to have registered for refuge abroad since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The world slowly comes back. The skating hall is now completely silent, and Barbora helps pick Aleksandra off the ground. They take some deep breaths and decide to carry on with their practice. Usually, Aleksandra is in the rink as early as 6am, when there’s nobody else there. She likes the silence and the distraction.

Aleksandra is never anything but busy. In addition to skating, she studies, has a job, takes care of her horse Pony and volunteers, to name a few of the things filling up her Google Calendar. Now all of these things help to keep bad thoughts away, but she has always been active. When she was a child, she attended skating classes with her dad and later, as a teenager, did horseback riding. She was very successful and even joined Ukraine’s national team. “When I was a kid riding horses, the doctors knew me by name,” she says, when recalling the physical trauma endured while horseback riding. However, she never felt like herself at home and struggled to find friends. She says that Barbora is her first best friend ever.

She grew up in a middle-class family in Poltava, together with her parents, grandma and her little sister Ksusha. Her father had a business, and her mother worked with insurance. Her family is still in Ukraine and she worries about them a lot. Ksusha, 19, now works in the military and is training to become a drone pilot. Aleksandra says she’s very proud of her. “All nations have a kind of inner strength, and I think she embodies that Ukrainian strength. We had a tough life, and despite all of that, she decided to protect her country.”

Aleksandra and Ksusha’s father is of Russian descent, which caused a lot of turmoil in the family after the war, and especially when her younger sister went to fight for Ukraine. “It’s hard because I love my dad so much, but every time we call, he spews Russian propaganda. And that really hurts,” she says.

Before coming to Denmark, she always called herself Russian. Growing up, her father didn’t allow her to speak Ukrainian or learn about Ukrainian history and culture. Aleksandra didn’t read the news and was not informed about politics. Before the war started, she had no idea there had even been signs of a conflict brewing. Only after starting her own life abroad did she realise how much Russian propaganda she had grown up with, and she started reading the news and learning Ukrainian. These days, she speaks Danish more fluently than Ukrainian, but she makes a conscious effort to avoid speaking Russian.

Oftentimes, Aleksandra finds herself on a tightrope of identities: the Russian identity she’s leaving behind, the Ukrainian one she’s only learning about now, and the Danish one she is trying hard to make work. Sometimes, she feels guilty for leaving Ukraine while her family is still there, but she loves Denmark. After three and a half years of living here, Aleksandra feels at home. She passed many of the integration challenges refugees face with flying colours. However, the biggest challenge is just ahead of her.

★

Aleksandra still remembers the call from her father. How could she not – he’s not the type to do phone calls. He said, “Good morning, the war has started.”

At the time, Aleksandra was staying in a village near her hometown, Poltava, located next to the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of Ukraine. It was one of the first regions to be attacked when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Kharkiv was heavily bombed that day.

Aleksandra doesn’t remember much of what happened. Her memories come in flashes. A tank on the road, a shelter to hide from shelling, hiding under the bed, terrified. And sounds: airplanes, helicopters, bombs, air-raid sirens, shouting. All of it has settled in her mind as trauma.

She stayed in Ukraine for three weeks. She couldn’t eat or sleep and was constantly on edge. Seeing Aleksandra’s state, her father decided to evacuate her. He packed her bags, put her in a car, and took her to Lviv – a city near the Polish border. From there, she took a bus to Warsaw and, finally, a plane to Denmark. She stayed with her uncle in Northern Jutland.

Aleksandra recalls that the plane ride was perhaps the most horrible experience in her life. The sound of the engine was unbearable and panic-inducing. However, as she landed in Billund and breathed in the air, she could feel that something about this place was home. She finally felt safe.

She lived with her uncle and his wife for a while and got a job as a horse trainer in a nearby ranch. But most of all, Aleksandra wanted to stand on her own two feet. As soon as she made enough money, she moved to Aarhus to pursue her dream of studying cognitive science at Aarhus University. It took her three years to finally get in and she had to take extra classes in mathematics, history and English, to name a few, while also studying Danish. While studying hard to get into university, she worked in service jobs around Aarhus, some with very bad working conditions. At times, she would go days without eating anything.

In August 2022, she decided to bring her horse Pony from Ukraine to Denmark. She made arrangements with a stable in Aarhus, made sure she had enough savings and set off to Poland with the help of a friend who had a horse trailer. Pony was delivered to the border by an NGO working with animal rescue in Ukraine and Aleksandra picked her up from there. It was a long journey home and they had to sail to Denmark from Poland. Pony, a usually nervous and rebellious mare, was completely calm during the trip. “I could tell that she knows she is getting help,” says Aleksandra.

Now Aleksandra works for DSB counting passengers on trains. And Pony horses around all day in her stable.

★

It’s a Thursday night and Aleksandra is waiting to call her grandma Paraskeva in Ukraine. She got all the products needed for borscht and will cook together with her grandma on FaceTime. Paraskeva speaks half Russian and half Ukrainian and instructs Aleksandra on what to do. Cut the beetroot, cabbage, carrots, and so on. She checks in with her granddaughter and is glad that she’s well, but most of all, she is happy to see Linus.

After a few years in Denmark, Aleksandra met Linus and they fell in love. She thought her life was better than ever. However, in the comfort of a loving and safe relationship, all of the trauma that had accumulated over the years started to resurface. An experience like this is common with PTSD and is referred to as a delayed-onset trauma. It is when trauma symptoms don’t appear until months or even years after the traumatic experiences. It often happens because the person stays in survival mode for a long time and only begins to process what happened once they are safe. When the danger is gone, the nervous system ‘stands down’, and the suppressed memories, emotions and reactions surface.

At first, she thought she was being lazy when she couldn’t get out of bed. But Linus saw through it and encouraged her to seek help. According to Nataliia Korchakova, a Doctor of Psychological Sciences, professor at Rivne State University for Humanities and postdoc at the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, sometimes Ukrainian refugees don’t seek help for their mental health issues because of the system they had at home. “The psychological help system in Ukraine isn’t developed very well. A lot of them didn’t have experience with seeking mental health support before the war. But the situation is changing, especially when people share positive experiences about seeking help for their mental health in their communities,” she says.

Soon, Aleksandra got diagnosed with depression and anxiety and started her journey towards getting better. She started going to therapy, and that was like walking with an open wound. She started having panic and anxiety attacks, chronic fatigue, sleep disturbances, emotional dysregulation, and strong reactions to triggers.

One of her biggest symptoms is the nightmares she experiences every night. She dreams about Ukraine, her family, bombings, getting into car accidents, and being unable to escape. She wakes up crying daily and rarely gets rest. “I am at war every night,” she says.

This year, she is finally starting treatment for her PTSD and is going through a psychological evaluation. Linus is there every step of the way. Together, they are preparing for what might be a long and exhausting process towards getting better.

Aleksandra and Linus live together in a spacious flat. They call grandma Paraskeva occasionally to cook some Ukrainian dishes together and she absolutely adores Linus. She says maladiec (good job) to him, and he walks away victorious. The pair live in a harmony of their own and there is a constant exchange of pechenkas (cookie) from Linus and skats (treasure) from Aleksandra.

They both have different levels of ADHD but somehow make it work. While Aleksandra cooks, Linus decides to switch around some furniture or sort out the cutlery, depending on how well it is polished. When cleaning the home, Aleksandra tends to stash things away, and then Linus goes on a treasure hunt to find them. “Sometimes, I find my two socks in three different places somehow,” he jokes.

To be loved is to be known and Linus certainly knows Aleksandra. He has an app on his phone tracking air traffic around Aarhus so that he can warn Aleksandra about incoming loud sounds. He also put in a lot of effort to learn the differences between her anxiety and panic attacks and how to help her deal with them. He recalls instances where a loud sound would happen and Aleksandra would just run out of the apartment, completely dissociated, or would run and hide under the bed. He has his ways to calm her down, for example, by tickling her toes with a paintbrush. “It’s very simple; it releases the tension in your body faster,” he says. And it works.

The soup is almost ready and they set the table for themselves, with an extra plate for Grandma on the other side of the phone. They sit and eat, talking about life in four different languages and yet somehow they understand each other perfectly.

★

Pony and her stable friend, Trixie, start neighing loudly as soon as they see Aleksandra coming with their food. Aleksandra has been taking care of Pony for over six years now, but only started to really understand her recently. Pony, like Aleksandra, has issues with anxiety and stress. Aleksandra says she’s her mirror.

“Only when I started going to therapy and understanding myself did I start to actually understand what she is feeling,” says Aleksandra. Pony came into her hands after experiencing abuse with a different caretaker. She was very skittish, didn’t like strangers, and was afraid of any touching. “When we first met, I couldn’t even put a blanket on her,” recalls Aleksandra. She only rode Pony once and ended up on the ground, leaving both of them stressed.

They share a lot of emotions. If a helicopter is passing by, both of them freeze and wait for it to pass. Pony gets anxious when her stable friend isn’t in sight and gets stressed for various reasons. Sometimes she freaks out and runs nowhere, sometimes she stress-eats. If Aleksandra arrives at the stables in a happy mood, she can tell that Pony gets happy too. If she’s tense, that tension rubs off on Pony as well. She says that Pony has her own form of PTSD, from the abuse she has experienced but also the war in Ukraine.

After she feeds the horses and cleans their living quarters, she works with Pony. She trains her to come to her if she is anxious, to breathe deep and relax, to be calm when being touched. Riding is out of question: now it’s just about emotional regulation. Aleksandra holds out her hand near Pony’s cheek and signals for her to touch. Pony takes her time but eventually touches Aleksandra’s hand with her face. To which she is awarded with a treat and a dygtig, Pony! (clever, Pony!)

“She’s the main reason I kept pushing myself to get a job and to get out of bed. I just think of her little face and how sad she would be, how she would go hungry and lonely, and I could never do that to her,” says Aleksandra. They help each other feel better. In a way, Pony is a part of Aleksandra’s support system.

★

The process of getting help for your mental health struggles as a Ukrainian refugee in Denmark can be tricky, but there are promising treatment options, such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy and EMDR therapy – a method officially recommended by the WHO for treating PTSD in children and adults. Treatment options are available in both public and private institutions and a lot of help is available from NGOs working with refugee mental health.

One of them is Bevar Ukraine, which offers psychological support and a hotline for Ukrainians in need of help in their own native language. Their lead psychologist, Inna Dolia, says that for most people the war ‘knocked out’ their support system: home, work and family nearby. Therefore, they focus on creating new support in social contacts, daily habits, work, education or hobbies. “In working with Ukrainian displaced persons, we face a unique situation: the traumatic experience has not ended. The war continues, and many people live in a state of constant anxiety for loved ones. Therefore, our task is to not just ‘eliminate symptoms’ but to teach a person to live with stress so that it does not consume their whole life,” she says.

According to her, the main goal of treating PTSD in Ukrainian refugees is to help people gradually restore internal balance without waiting for the war to end or external stressors to disappear.

“As a couples and family therapist, I see how compassion, emotional presence and support from a loved one can reduce the manifestations of stress disorders. Research confirms that stable relationships and secure attachment significantly improve trauma recovery. That’s why we help couples and families build communication, understand each other’s reactions and provide support without becoming overwhelmed,” says Inna.

Another important factor in recovery is simply caring for your basic needs: proper sleep, regular nutrition and time for rest. These simple things create the basis for psychological resilience. When personal efforts combine with systemic and professional support, the recovery process becomes more effective and lasting,” says the psychologist.

Aleksandra has managed to create a stable support system for herself and is on her way to recovery. Now she wants to help others. She volunteers to help other refugees navigate the Danish integration process and institutions.

★

The sea is the only possible contender to the skating hall when it comes to Aleksandra’s favorite places. It washes away her bad thoughts and makes things feel peaceful.

There are a lot of things she can’t do because of her condition. “It’s kind of a sad thing. I love police reality TV, Secret Agents, and stuff. I just think it’s so fun. But I can’t watch it anymore because of the shooting and loud sounds. It’s the same with music. I used to love metal. Now, if Linus wants to show me a new song, he has to warn me about what kind of sounds there will be, and we can only listen on very low volume. It’s not a very pleasant experience,” she says.

Aleksandra has to take a lot of extra steps in everything she does to keep her triggers to a minimum. She can’t go clubbing. She can’t fly in planes. She has to wear earplugs to class in case someone shuts the door suddenly or the microphone pops; otherwise, she couldn’t attend university. Sometimes it’s a choice between hearing the professor properly or risking a panic attack.

“I could be having fun with friends and playing board games when suddenly something falls, and the fun is over, because I got triggered. Soon it’s gonna be the New Year. We’re gonna have a lot of fireworks. I remember that I enjoyed them as a child, but now I will be sitting home with all of my earplugs and trying not to get triggered,” says Aleksandra. “It’s not really a big deal, but it takes a lot of energy, time and planning,” she adds.

Despite all this, she lives day by day, tries to appreciate her life as it is and doesn’t think too much about the future. “I am a bit Danish in that way,” she says.

As she walks around Risskov, a helicopter flies by. She covers her ears and waits it out. Then she walks on.