CCTS
Newsletter 12

In this article Roswitha Jarman explores how outsiders coming in to war-torn regions can contribute to healing the personal and interpersonal hurt of individuals and groups and thereby contribute to the process of conflict transformation.

Since 1996 I have been involved in training Chechens to help their people cope with the trauma caused by the two wars in Chechnya. The work is carried out by a local NGO set up in 1995 with financial help from the Netherlands. A woman paediatrician from Grozny recognised the need to help children cope with the emotional distress caused by horrific experiences. She assembled a number of local women, mainly teachers, to train for such work. I have been involved in this training since the beginning and have learned alongside the women how best to respond to the needs of children in distress.

For the civilian population, and particularly for the children, the experience of these wars has been horrific. Homes and villages have been bombed indiscriminately. Children have seen killings and destruction and lived in fear for months on end. Most have lost their homes and close family members, and lack any kind of ordered social environment. They have little trust in the ability of adults to protect them, suffer nightmares, and have an acute fear of noise and darkness. Flashbacks disturb their days, bedwetting, frequently, their nights. Many are unable to focus and have a very short attention span. Teachers are at a loss to know how to relate to them. All are grieving and often experience strong feelings of guilt about not having prevented distressing events. Many, too, are angry and frustrated and unable to understand or come to terms with what has occured. The loss of trust in adult behaviour has made them take on adult roles, a process that contributes to the further break-up of family life. They have lost their childhood.

Teenagers experience rage at the events that so completely altered their lives and environment, and robbed them of their youth. Women feel humiliated that they were powerless to prevent the catastrophe, and cannot now provide for their families. This undermines their self-esteem and sense of personal dignity. All these factors need to be taken into account in undertaking the healing work.

The humiliation and intimidation has not ended. People face questioning, searches and frequently arbitrary arrest at Russian checkpoints. Their life is bleak and there is little hope for the future. Nevertheless there is a strong will amongst the people not to be defeated by events.

Upholding dignity

An essential element in the healing process is to uphold the dignity of people. For those coming in from outside, this implies respecting the local culture and traditions, and being a respectful witness to the stories people have to tell and the emotions they express. It also implies involving people, children included, in decision-making processes as they adjust to the present life and prepare for the future.

During and after the first Chechen war, trained women counsellors, set up centres in their villages, often in their homes, to work with groups of children, adolescents, women and teachers. It was in the schools that the needs of the children first became evident, and since most counsellors came from the teaching profession, co-operation with the schools was excellent. As the emotional well-being of the children improved, the village administration became more aware of the work and added its support. The centres became focal points in the healing process and in rebuilding communities. However, when the second war started, these good beginnings were destroyed. Most counsellors had to leave their homes and are now working in the refugee camps in Ingushetia.

The Chechens displaced from their homes have lived for over a year in harsh conditions, mostly under canvas in huge campsites. I am amazed at the dignity that many people have preserved in these grim conditions. However, amongst the young particularly, there is much anger and aggression.

Psycho-social rehabilitation has become the in-word for Western organisations working in post-war situations. However, if it is to contribute to the healing process, rather than be a further source of humiliation, the work must be grounded in the expressed needs of the people. I see psycho-social healing coming about in several ways. At the most basic level it occurs through people being together in simple relationships, talking and listening to each other or sharing in some common activity. Everybody is involved in such healing work. It is a natural and valuable process in all cultures and it includes the sharing of stories, a means by which people grow and build up their strength and resilience.

Active listening

But over and above this, we as counsellors can contribute special skills to the healing process. Through active listening, we can help people move through painful and disturbing experiences and the potentially destructive emotions of fear, anger, guilt, frustration and loss towards a process of transformation.

Our listening must enable us not only to hear the story itself but also the pain within it. And the listener must not be afraid to feel this pain. If the pain is not acknowledged there can be no deep healing. We can also bring in other skills that help people to understand and express the emotional turmoil they are experiencing through play, art and movement. This can help them to take charge of their emotional energies rather than be driven by them.

For me, psycho-social rehabilitation means enabling people to analyse and understand their emotions and thereby open up options for dealing with them and for rebuilding relationships. Some people talk of Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but practitioners have found that few people suffer the kind of extreme trauma that requires specialist treatment. People are not ill - they have experienced extremely distressing events. I prefer to talk about distress rather than trauma.

Acknowledging pain

The training I have offered has been on an experiential rather than an academic level and is based on the humanistic counselling approach. This means respecting and working with the self-healing potential of each person. It is centred around creating a safe space, developing empathy and active listening skills, and using art and play as therapy. Play is important because it helps to rebuild interpersonal and social relationships. The training has included inventing rituals to cope with loss, grief, guilt and anger. There has been work, too, around easing stress and tension, including the use of relaxation exercises.

Creating a safe space, not only in a physical but, more importantly, an emotional sense, is vital for this work. In a culture where shedding tears or giving way to emotions is seen as weakness, this is particularly important. The ground rules in the groups make it acceptable for people to behave differently. Tears are not taboo and anger can be expressed in a safe way. Time is made for remembering and mourning and adjusting to the reality of life as it is now.

Sessions generally start and end with circle time. The children sit in a circle and acknowledge each other. Anything of a sensitive nature can be said at this time. Events, personal stories, feelings, needs, news from home can be shared in the circle. There is no pressure to share, but each child knows that this space is available where it is safe to talk. The circle time becomes very precious once the trust of the group has been built up and the children know each other well. Such a group is like a mini-society in which participants start to trust and care for each other. Different ways of behaving and coping can be explored, self-esteem rebuilt, and the imagination stimulated.

Through play and fun, children are allowed to be children again and to put aside some of the responsibilities placed on their shoulders so abruptly by the violent events.

Respecting cultural traditions

As noted earlier, it is important to respect and work within the cultural traditions. Boys whose fathers or older brothers have been killed suddenly have the burden of being the oldest male for the remaining family with all the responsibility that this entails in the traditions of the Caucasus. I found that boys valued talking about their new roles and making sense of them. The counsellor needs to be sensitive and finely tune her input so as not to violate the child with expectations that are contrary to its upbringing.

Some children need individual time. However, the child should never feel forced to tell his or her story. If the child suffers flashbacks - intruding images of the event - the counsellor can explain that these can only cease when the emotions within the story are expressed and heard.

In working with distressed children it is helpful to restore the link between the past and the present by bringing to mind the whole chain of events. There was normal life before the disastrous event and the emotional reality of that time included elements of anxiety and fear. Then came the event itself and the trauma associated with it, including often a sense of guilt at having survived when family and friends did not. Finally there is the present reality and the need to adjust to it. Recalling the sequence of events and emotions in this way can assist the child to build a bridge to the past and to bring their own resources to bear upon the present.

Restoring the link between past and present

Most often counsellors sit alongside the children as they play. The counsellor may verbalise what is going on in the play and through this exchange help the healing process.

A number of examples of such sessions follow:

An explosive device thrown into a courtyard severely injured a six year old girl and her younger sister. The younger girl started to scream but when the older girl saw the distressed face of her mother as she came running out to them she decided not to cry. Her leg had been severely injured and the pain was so intense that she clenched her teeth too hard and broke one of them - but still she did not cry out or complain. She received medical attention but continued to show no sign of pain or emotion.

The mother brought her to a counsellor saying that she had lost emotional contact with her daughter. Could the counsellor help? As soon as the child joined the group, she went straight to a pile of soft toys and found amongst them a little animal whose leg had been injured. She immediately started to care for this toy animal, bandaging its leg, putting it to bed, asking it if it was hurting. The counsellor sat next to her and joined in the task and conversation. After several visits to the centre, the counsellor gently asked about the girl's own pain. Bit by bit the girl talked about herself and acknowledged and cried about her pain.

Eventually the counsellor said that she thought the mother would like to know how she was feeling. At first the girl resisted, saying it would hurt her mother. When finally she agreed to tell her, the emotional release was intense. Mother and daughter embraced and cried in each other's arms.

Making emotions concrete

Another example is that of a boy who had witnessed his father being killed and was withdrawn and depressed when he first joined the group. Fortunately the counsellor had known and respected his father and talked to the boy about him. The boy was eager to hear more, continued to come to the group, and gradually took on some of his father's positive characteristics. His face lit up talking about him and he learned to cope with his grief.

In another group a boy was tormented by images of what he called devils - men wearing balaclavas. The counsellor encouraged him to draw these devils and when he had done so asked him what he wanted to do with them. He crumpled them up, threw them down, and stamped on them, rubbing them into the ground. Having done that his expression changed. He looked relieved and smiled. These examples show how valuable it is to help the child make concrete his or her strong and distressing emotions so they can understand them cognitively. The child is then in a better position to control them.

Using role-play to test reality

Where the child has a strong sense of guilt for not having prevented the destructive events, or not having saved the life of a particular person, role play can be a helpful way of testing the reality. In one instance, a small girl was carrying her baby sister down some stone steps when a helicopter flew low over the house firing guns. The girl dropped her baby sister in fright. The baby died, and girl was tormented with feelings of guilt. In the group she attended, the counsellor set up a role play re-enacting the chain of events with the girl observing. This experience helped her to recognise the reality of what had happened and to let go her feelings of guilt.

When working with children who have suffered a loss, counsellors often find it helpful to use an empty chair or cushion. The child is encouraged to imagine the lost person sitting there, engage him or her in conversation and say goodbye. This can be a powerful way of helping the child cope with the loss, which will usually have occurred with brutal suddenness. Talking about photographs and personal objects can also be helpful in coping with loss.

Training local people

Local people can, with minimal training, contribute to the healing process, not only in the case of the individual child but also of the community. To use local people in this way is healthier and more empowering for the community than bringing in experts from outside. It is important to remember that people in these situations are not psychologically ill - rather they are people who need support during a period of disruption and distress. Counsellors who received this training during the first Chechen war and remained in the country have attested that their training helped them and the community around them to cope better with the horrors of the second war.

I would like, finally, to express my admiration for the dignity, strength and beauty of the people of Chechnya. I have observed how they have maintained these qualities amid the horrors of life on the edge of existence. This is one of the positive things that can be taken from a grim situation and indicates that if the war can be ended there is the basis for building a better future.

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