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PERSON-CENTRED THERAPY AND TRAUMA Eisteach, Journal of the Irish Association For Counselling and Psychotherapy Autumn 2003
A PERSONAL VIEW By Christopher Murray
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.
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