Counselling Victims of Warfare : Person-Centred Dialogues

204 Pages·2016·1.18 MB·English

by  Richard, Bryant-Jefferies

LIVING THERAPY SERIES
Counselling Victims
of Warfare
Person-Centred Dialogues
Richard Bryant-Jefferies
Radcliffe Publishing
Oxford Seattle
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
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Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2005 by Richard Bryant-Jefferies
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Version Date: 20160525

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Contents
Forewords vi
Preface x
About the author xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
The dialogues 1
Supervision 3
The person-centred approach (PCA) 4
Responding to trauma 13
The military experience 21
Further thoughts 23
Developments in PCA 24
Part 1: Ania’s story 27
Chapter 1 29
Counselling session 1: silence and a focus on Ania’s daughter, Maria 29
Chapter 2 39
Issues of con¢dentiality 39
Counselling session 2: sadness and anger at the death of her parents 41
Chapter 3 49
Counselling session 3: client cancels as her daughter is unwell 49
Supervision session 1: the counsellor has knowledge that the client has 50
not disclosed
Chapter 4 59
Counselling session 4: the counsellor’s congruence is challenged 59
iii
iv Contents
Chapter 5 67
Counselling session 5: Ania tells her story 67
Chapter 6 73
Counselling session 6: Maria attends with Ania 73
Chapter 7 83
Supervision session 2: Sympathy, empathy, healing and ‘not for healing’ 83
Chapter 8 91
Counselling session 11: bad dreams and more emotional release 91
Counselling session 12: recovered memories ^ ‘can I ever be clean?’ 93
Chapter 9 99
Counselling session 13: tired of struggling, tired of living 99
Re£ections on the process 104
Part 2: Graham confronts his memories 107
Chapter 10 109
Counselling session 1: accepting the need to talk 109
Chapter 11 121
Counselling session 2: memories of a violent and personal death 121
Chapter 12 135
Counselling session 3: a positive shift as Graham releases feelings from his 135
experiences in Bosnia
Chapter 13 145
Supervision session 1: pain and compassion 145
Chapter 14 151
Counselling session 4: a deeper cathartic release and a more conversational 151
exchange
Chapter 15 157
Counselling session 5: an act of unlawful killing? And alcohol use is addressed 157
Contents v
Chapter 16 165
Counselling session 6: alcohol use and controlling intrusive memories 165
Re£ections on the process 171
Afterword 174
Author’s epilogue 176
References 178
Further reading 182
Useful contacts 183
Foreword
In the Armed Con£ict Report of 2000 the peace group, Project Ploughshares,
noted that there were 40 designated armed con£icts taking place in 36 countries.
Sixteen in Africa, 14 in Asia, two in Europe, two in the Americas and six in the
Middle East. In the con£ict between Kashmir/India and Pakistan there were an
estimated 65 000 deaths. In the Ethiopia/Eritrea con£ict (at the time of writing
violence has been rekindled in Ethiopia) estimates were that over 50 000 people
have died. In other areas, such as Nigeria, violent con£ict is ongoing (in the
Northern territory), and there are regular violent £are-ups in the oil rich parts of
the south. We know of the media coverage of violence in the Sudan, Zimbabwe,
Ethiopia, and Iraq. We see little of the rest.
In the West we have a very di¡erent world ^ we think. We can choose not to
watch the news (‘too sad’, ‘too negative’, ‘too miserable’). We can cheer ourselves
up with retail therapy when we feel a bit down. We can be rooted to the spot with
shock when warfare is brought into our midst (the Twin Towers), or when troops
sent out against our collective will (to Iraq) come back with stories and experi-
ences that leave us without words to respond; or in Northern Ireland (with over
3250 deaths between 1969 and 1998) where we could pretend that it wasn’t
happening as long as it didn’t a¡ect the mainland.
We can perhaps pretend that wars in other countries have little to do with us,
even though Britain sends troops as part of UN peacekeeping forces throughout
the world.
In the West we are very good at pretending that everything is OK as long as we
don’t get too stressed (although therapists know of the extensive number of
young people self harming, or who have experienced abuse, low self-esteem and
signi¢cant distress). As a society, we can even try and ignore the problems in our
own country.
In the therapy room I see children and teenagers, women and men, who have
experienced beatings, abductions, rapes, torture, deliberate and violent attempts
on their lives. They have witnessed the violent deaths of members of their families
by sudden or the slowest means. Some of the young women bear children as a
result. Some were forced as children to kill or be killed as child soldiers. Some
young people talk about walking through their towns or villages stepping over
the bodies of the dead. They have seen so many dead that sometimes they need
to re-enact what they have seen.
vi
Foreword vii
Sometimes we sit together in silence, sometimes we sit and giggle at the things
that make us all laugh. Sometimes it takes time for a session to end, as I try to
gently bring this person or that back emotionally into the room; to look at me
and know that we are here and not there.
For us as therapists we need to understand that the statutory services are not
geared up to deliver a nationwide service to people in the UK who have experi-
enced war ¢rst hand. We also need to be aware that many people escaping
violence and fear are in the UK seeking asylum under the Human Rights Conven-
tion, and that if their claim fails, they may not be permitted to access the statutory
services as a ‘failed asylum seeker awaiting removal’ (even though their case
may be successful on appeal). Our UK policies may cause considerable emotional
and psychological distress in addition to the traumas originally experienced.
How do we, then, work therapeutically with people whose experiences may be
so di¡erent from our own, whose culture, country of origin, religion or philoso-
phy may shape so many di¡erent frames of reference?
Richard refers to research which indicates that there is no speci¢c ‘best’ thera-
peutic approach, but that it is the relationship between the therapist and the
client which is helpful to the client. Therapeutic work with people who have
been impacted by all that war is demands that the therapist is grounded, congru-
ent and valuing of the client. How else could a therapist work with someone who
has experienced violence from one faction or ethnic group (for example, the
Hutus), and later in the day work equally as empathically with someone from
that ethnic group (a Hutu) but who has experienced violence at the hands of
someone from the ethnic group of the client you saw in the morning (a Tutsi)?
How else could the therapist see a Kurdish young man in the morning and an
Iraqi Arab in the afternoon whilst valuing and being open to them equally. The
prizing and valuing of each and every client, extending empathy into each di¡er-
ent frame of reference, whilst remaining congruent and accepting of the unique-
ness of each individual, with a willingness to be open to see the world through
their eyes, are the paramount requisites for this work.
Victims, or survivors, of wars (or ‘hostilities’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘inter-state
disputes’) experience considerable and ongoing trauma responses which are di⁄-
cult to tolerate in the self and which threaten their sense of themselves as human
beings. It is time to consider what is the best that we can o¡er to them.
Miriam Hollis
Founder and Director
The Sankofa Foundation
(a project for clients seeking asylum or who have refugee status)
Co-ordinator, Space2Be Counselling Service
June 2005
vii
Foreword
It is a privilege for me to work with asylum seekers and refugees. Every time I
listen to a new client I have overwhelming feelings of sadness and compassion,
and I ask myself, ‘How can one human being cause such su¡ering to another
human being?’. These clients’ feelings of hatred, anger and revenge can feel over-
whelming to the listener. Yet as person-centred counsellors we learn how
to listen in a non-judgemental way. It is not always easy but our training and
level of self-awareness form the basis of our ability to do this sensitive and chal-
lenging work.
Counselling Victims of Warfare widens our understanding of how to apply the
therapeutic values of the person-centred approach. It o¡ers the reader scenarios
which show clearly the reality for those who are a¡ected by the atrocities and
horrors of war. Whilst no counselling training or text book of interventions can
ever fully prepare us, Richard shows us how we can deal with what can be a real
struggle both as a supervisor supporting the counsellor, and as the counsellor
walking beside her client in her painful journey to reconcile the bad, the evil and
the goodness, and to ¢nd a sense of acceptance.
What Richard has written is essentially an a⁄rmation of the potential value of
the person-centred approach in working with clients who have su¡ered inhu-
mane actions. In the ¢rst part, in which a victim of the war in Bosnia attends
counselling, we see how the counsellor enables the client (Ania) to explore
her inner world by focusing sensitively on Ania’s feelings and responding to her
readiness to engage in the therapeutic relationship. The healing process begins.
The atrocities of war cause trauma, which creates chaos in people’s lives, and this
chaotic hurt leaves people speechless, voiceless, bewildered and silenced. The
counselling enables Ania to make a coherent narrative out of painful events, so
deeply buried that they completely disable her emotionally.
The author demonstrates the way that the person-centred approach can be
used to support a traumatised client in telling her painful story, enabling her to
describe her own su¡ering and empowering her to ¢nd the voice to communicate
the way it was, and is, for her. Slowly she is able to re£ect upon her life and how it
can be now. The powerlessness and helplessness of her trauma have left their
mark but we are able to follow her journey. This book illustrates how a person’s
spirit, the essence of their uniqueness and individuality are, when given the
space, time and attention, able to re-awaken.
viii
Foreword ix
Counselling Victims ofWarfare is a valuable tool to help prepare counsellors (and
others) to work with clients who have experienced horrifying actions from
another human being. A sense of horror can sadden and a¡ect the counsellor.
For the client, their intimate knowledge of what one human being can do to
another, and what they can become a victim of, is revealed. It is di⁄cult to com-
prehend how any fellow human being could behave in such a way.
There are no blue prints or right ways to do this work, but the application of the
values and attitudes of the person-centred approach and methodology illustrated
here can add to the counsellor’s own knowledge, experiences and own self-
awareness, and as we see in the text, play a vital role in enabling the client’s
voice to become her catalyst to heal and ¢nd herself again.
Menna Yarwood
Person-centred counsellor working with refugees and asylum seekers
North She⁄eld Primary Care Trust
June 2005