Eisteach
Autumn 2003
A
PERSONAL VIEW
I am a person
centred, humanistic, psychodynamic, counsellor, psychotherapist, supervisor and
trainer, 27 years in practice. I call on a range of approaches in my practice.
I can talk Psychodynamic, I can talk Transactional Analysis, I can talk
Existentialism, I can talk Gestalt, I can talk Jungian Creative Therapy, I can
talk the Person Centred Approach, I can talk Solution Focused Brief Therapy, (a
bit). I can talk trauma, depression, sexual abuse, suicide, relationships,
psychiatric illness, neurosis, psychosis, narcissism, projection, introjection,
attachment, dissociation, free association. Boy can I talk the talk. But my
experience of working with trauma in Northern Ireland has often silenced me.
This is not a
piece aimed at contradicting existing research, nor is it claiming the efficacy
of any approach. It is not research in the traditional sense. It is research
from a phenomenological perspective, from the perspective of my experience.
That is my validity
I wrote this
piece initially for myself following a day of trauma counselling. But in the
writing of it I am valuing the importance of the existential questions that
underpin the Person Centred Approach, and the repeated asking of those
questions of existence in trauma counselling. There are pieces of research that
will demonstrate contraindications to the use of the Person Centred Approach
with trauma victims. I wanted to share my experiences of the work not as an
answer to ‘how to do trauma work.’ I do not believe that it is possible to have
a definitive type of therapy for each type of condition. I believe that the
relationship between the therapist and the client to be the most significant
part of any answer to effectiveness. I believe that the therapist as a person
is just as important as the type of theory that they utilise. I believe this
because it is my experience. I trust in the process of being with myself and
the other person in therapy. I experience the other in the relationship reporting
repeatedly that they value being accepted as they are and that although they
would like me to have a magic wand, that it would be most unhelpful.
PANDORA’S BOX
I wish to offer some of my thoughts and
experiences working with trauma in Northern Ireland. It comes from a need in me
to share experiences in a community where sharing is a rare commodity. I also wanted
to say something about what it is like being a counsellor in this community
where I feel I am in a privileged position in being able to witness people’s
stories. As part of a community of counsellors I witness and carry much of what
troubles individuals in Northern Ireland, from all communities,
ex-paramilitaries and security forces.
I begin with the
indominability of the human condition in particular and that of organisms in
general. Humans are after all complex organisms, whose motivation is to survive
and continue the species. For millennia humans have been surviving the most
atrocious conditions from early life, through ice ages, meteors, reversals of
magnetic fields, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, to name but a few
natural catastrophes. The remainder of atrocious conditions are all created by
us and are too numerous to mention. Our capacity to wreck havoc on each other
knows no bounds. War, torture, rape, murder, mutilation, child abuse and
neglect, to mention but a few, all of which occur on an historical and global
scale.
And yet life in
this planet has such an amazing capacity to survive, develop, in the face of
the greatest odds. We make cinema, create great works of art and literature in
order to celebrate heroic acts of courage and daring do. It almost seems that
we are at our best when defending ourselves against an enemy. It was seen as a
curiosity that the Second World War brought communities together, and there is
a yearning from older members of the community to return to those days.
All organisms
seem to be invested with this never say die attitude. After the Mount St.
Helena eruption in America, scientists were incredulous at the speed, rate and
strength of the natural growth that returned. Scientists speculate and produce
some evidence for a catastrophic meteor crash in the golf of Mexico several
million years ago. Many plants and animal species were wiped out, and yet life
returned and proliferated. Life has an immense ability to hang on and flourish,
even when it seems that all hope has gone. Pandora knew not to open the box,
but human enquiry being what it is, she could not resist the temptation. Is it
not significant that hope remained in spite of pestilence, war and evil? On
many occasions I have listened to clients and supervisees describe the greatest
cruelty perpetrated against babies, children and adults. And yet there are as
many occasions when those same people also describe their experience of the
tiniest candle light flickering in the darkest corner of their being, waiting
to be rekindled. In my experience there is a yearning in individuals
traumatised by the acts of others for an unconditional relationship with a
trustworthy individual. Something that their experience of trauma has removed.
THE TROUBLES?
I have been
involved in counselling and psychotherapy for over 25 years and have worked
with trauma for 17 years. Until 1999 I worked in England, in mental health
social work and private practice. In late 1999 I returned to live and work in
Northern Ireland, having left in 1969. On my return I discovered that many
attitudes remained as intransigent as the day I left. However, I was different,
and I began to work with so called ‘victims’ of the so-called ‘troubles.’ I
dislike the epithet ‘troubles’. It is so minimising of people’s experiences. I
was shocked at the level of trauma that I heard from ordinary folk, through
intimidation, murder, fear, multiple loss, beatings, torture, kidnap, and all
of this from all sides of the political and religious community. Here were
ordinary people surviving and trying to carry on as normal as possible,
carrying the impossible. Although I knew intellectually that the media
representation contained a lot of gloss, I hadn’t realised how much. I
experienced a stench of corruption, a purulent and rotting flesh of humanity, a
fear so deep it was normalised. I felt that I had walked into some sort of open
concentration camp that mirrored the worst atrocities anywhere in the world. A
programme of ethnic cleansing was in full swing, paramilitary gangs policed
their own communities meting out fierce punishments. The police were powerless
and not trusted by either community, law and order was in disarray. Ordinary
people were being shot, internal Paramilitary feuds raged, pipe bombs were a
regular occurrence. Yet the politicians continued their rhetoric. The police
that I listened to had a horrendous tale to tell. But like the American G.I.’s
returning from Vietnam to a cold reception from fellow Americans, so the police
in Northern Ireland are vilified. Yet they are human too, and have experienced
a multitude of horrors that can only be imagined. They do not even have the
support and sympathy of the communities they are trying to protect.
PEACE?
I thought about the sigh of relief in the
country when the Good Friday agreement was signed. I have watched the ordinary
people seduced by the thought and promise of peace for the first time in thirty
years, being betrayed by power hungry politicians with no regard for the safety
and dignity of the citizen of this country. I saw that thirty years of
intimidation and brutality had produced signs of trauma in a whole country.
Derealisation, startle, dissociation, disempowerment.
TRAUMA
When I sit with people who have been
traumatised, (from the Greek to pierce the skin), I am silent, I am speechless,
I am aghast, I am there with them in the middle of a petrol driven fire knowing
they are about to die; imagining how a loved one had been shot in the back, did
they know it was coming? Did they feel anything? I am there to witness the
fourth, sixth, seventh or eighth murder or maiming from within one family.
Fractured bones, plated skulls, empty wombs, dislocated families and
communities. The once peaceful, plentiful, trustful life is gone forever.
Belief, spirit, soul, mind and body broken. Why? WHy? WHY?
SILENCE
I have read a
lot about trauma, the research into what helps, what doesn’t help. There are
ways to test an individual for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was stumped
when someone asked me if there was a test to tell when it was over and you were
no longer Post Traumatic Stress Disordered. What helps me is a good strong pair
of arms on the chair that I can hold on to as I listen to horror upon horror,
the result of what the human race is capable of, and of the compassion of the
traumatised, resisting taking up arms in the name of justice, desperate for
peace and humanity.
THE MONSTER OF
SIMILARITY
Apparently we are 95% similar to each other
according to recent genetic research. The 5% of difference refers to height,
gender, hair and eye colour, skin colour. Underneath those peripherals we are
the same. And yet those smallest of differences are at the very core of
conflict. We are the same and capable of the same deeds of the Good Samaritan
and the most wicked deeds ever committed. When we vilify Sadaam Hussein, Adolph
Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Genghis Khan, we are vilifying our own shadow. It is
said of serial killers and child murderers that they must be insane, because no
normal person would be capable of such deeds. What type of monster is capable
of these unspeakable deeds? The answer is simple, the human monster. One of our
own. I sit with that for a moment. I sit opposite someone who has been
terrorised and hear him or her talk about revenge. Not bloody, eye for an eye,
revenge. Simply that the other says that they would like the culprits to be
made to experience some degree of their terror. But not to the extent that it
would harm them. My god I think, and why not, they deserve what you experienced
and more.
SILENCE
I watch the
disbelief slowly appear on the faces of those telling, and I am aware of my
own. I don’t even bother to search for a theoretical context for my own
experience, never mind the other person’s. The roller coaster is off and
running and I am holding on, white knuckled, sick in the pit of my stomach.
Tears well up in me, anger grips my gut, I clamp my jaws to silence my outrage,
I am aware of staring, just staring. I feel some relief as I imagine the worst
of the story is over, only to be pinned back by the next horror. They were
gently easing me in through the overture, building up to a crescendo of Mahler
like proportions.
I SIT IN SILENCE
I sit in awe at
the capacity of human beings to inflict such brutality on fellow human beings.
But the greatest awe is reserved for those fellow humans, classified as
‘Victims of the Troubles.’ How I hate that phrase. Who is ‘troubled’ by murder,
cold-blooded, thoughtless murder, sickening maiming, crippling, and a legacy of
sweating, repeating nightmares? Troubled. We call the terror in the Twin Towers
in New York last September, ‘911’. Turn horror into an insignificant word or
number and we can all cope. Those Victims are Heroes, they are 21st
Century Odysseus or Jason, they are Herculean in strength, they are heroes.
They hold the pillars of the world on their shoulders and hold the hope for all
of us. They feel that the Gods have deserted them, and yet each seems to have
gifts that have carried and are carrying them through their ordeals. And I, a
mere mortal, have some place in this journey.
HUMBLED
I sit humbly before heroes
who have been through, are in the labyrinth, waiting for the centaur to charge
again. Somewhere is hope and a search for answers. I notice that I am being
watched, as if I too might run from the chaotic brutality. I notice a sense
that the other person is conscious of how much more they can tell me, or is
judging how much more I can take. Perhaps they are wondering if I have a ball
of string with me, so that if they survive I can show them the way out of the
labyrinth. They are calm until the fall into a cinematic flashback, and are
back there to the very second in time it happened. I throw a string so they can
find their way back. My string is a slight shift in the chair, a gentle cough,
just enough to say, ‘I’m still here.’ Time stands still as I am led through,
shown in greater and greater detail the sickening horrors, until I am there in
the place with them. I do not know if my images are accurate and it doesn’t
really matter. What really matters is that the other knows that I am still
there. In the room is another who is sharing the same air, the same stench, and
the same horrors.
SILENCE SOMEHOW
I can’t explain,
but somehow I know that something will make a difference. I do not know what,
when or how. I only know that it will. It may not be with myself. It may not be
this week or in the next ten years, and it may be just before their death,
something will make a difference. My belief is that being able to sit in the
room as myself is sufficient. That I can listen and not be blown away by what
is to come. That what I will hear will not destroy me, and that I do have a
ball of string that I secured somewhere before entering the labyrinth, and that
I can find the way out. I am also aware of the other person watching me closely
in order to see if I can manage and survive. My ability to meet the challenge
will determine how much I hear of the other person’s account.
THE ENDING
I search for a
way of ending, of interrupting the horror. There is a look of relief, not only
that it is over for today, but also because I have kept to the agreement about
time. I have not been consumed, eaten alive, by the story. We chat about
generalities for a few moments, both fully aware that we are ending and that a
chat will enable the other person, as well as myself to disconnect, until the
next time.
THE AFTERMATH
I leave in a trance. I am aware that a relationship has
begun. I am aware of the feeling of
chaos, of a lack of sense. What is it all about? Some happenings in this life
make no sense to me. I could go back to the textbook in order to understand the
mysterious, but I am too far into the experience for rational thinking to be of
any assistance. I am afraid that there is little comfort in what I have just
experienced in the theory books. I do not understand the human condition; I am
only able to experience myself in the present, by myself and with others. That
is my only true and real understanding. It is only now that I am beginning to
understand the half of what Carl Rogers described in his life. I am only
beginning to grasp the true meaning of being and being Person Centred.
Christopher
Murray, in Private Practice, Northern Ireland