I started my career as a passionate psychosocial counselor, working with children who had been subjected to severe domestic violence. As I learned a difficult truth, that not all houses are safe for children, I wanted to save all children from abuse and exploitation. And as I continued in my career, I also learned that not only homes can put us in traumatic experiences and endanger us, but also countries and oppressive regimes.
I took a counseling position at CVT in Jordan in 2013 and moved away from providing rehabilitation to children from broken houses, to working with a whole community who had come to Jordan after running away from torture, detention, hatred, kidnapping and more and more terrible events. When I began working at CVT Jordan with refugee survivors of torture, I worked with families who endured trauma together, and who endured the ambiguous and unconfirmed loss of their loved ones.
I worked with families who endured trauma together, and who endured the ambiguous and unconfirmed loss of their loved ones.”
-Yusra Al-Kailani, senior resilience programming trainer/psychotherapist
My work with survivors shaped the person who I am now; I feel more and more connected to my inner elements as a human and a therapist. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to be a helper and a passionate listener who can be there for victims when there was no one there for them. I also consider myself a witness of gross human rights violation but in a unique way: I heard their human stories, pain blended with bravery and resilience. Not all people have the opportunity to hear these stories and many things would have changed if they had.
My journey with CVT Jordan lasted for 2.5 years. From those counseling sessions, I remember people with the scars of torture on their souls and their bodies. I saw the effects on their identities, on their futures, on their social lives and their opportunities for future work. Many times, I left sessions with a broken heart from hearing about trauma and grief coming from the injustice, failure of protection systems and violations that happened, but this didn’t stop me from doing this work with passion. It made me more determined to listen and hear and have empathy to their wounds.
As a therapist, I provided individual and group counseling, and I saw the improvements people made – even their faces changed once they came for counseling. They started to have an openness to life, to their relationships with their families, with their children, with their partners. They began engaging in their daily habits again. Their work in our care program lessened the impacts of trauma. There was a hope that I saw in their courage to continue their lives.
But I kept hearing my own inner voice; I kept asking myself a question: How long-term will this experience be? Maybe this person will feel better for some time, but then they must face that the perpetrator of their torture and the atrocities they experienced is still out there. Their lands had been taken from them. The future for their children is uncertain. They are still waiting for immigration, waiting for opportunities to work, waiting to complete their own schooling.
After nine years of my life working with victims with CVT and other organizations and working in Iraq focusing on Yazidi survivors and others who survived ISIS atrocities, I couldn’t silence these voices. I had a lot of questions about justice and what can we do as psychotherapists in empowering victims to raise their voices and demand their rights.
I re-joined CVT into a new project called SOTI in January 2019, the Survivors of Torture Initiative (SOTI). In SOTI, we work with organizations who work in many ways with victims of violations. From my work with them, I see that trauma healing can’t do it alone. We need to be more proactive in justice-related forms of care. We can’t just help people heal – we need also to help people find some form of justice, to help people find their voice, to help people seek new methods of accountability.
I had a lot of questions about justice and what can we do as psychotherapists in empowering victims to raise their voices and demand their rights.”
What I have seen is that after war and torture, people no longer have a voice. People become just a number – in particular, they become a UNHCR number or a case number. They feel that they have become a problem to the country where they seek shelter. I hear overwhelming stories in my work with people from Syria and Iraq. People lose their right to work and to create their own future. And when so many people are experiencing the impacts of war, resources become stretched, the news media stops covering their stories. There can be a competition about who has suffered the most.
In my work, I think about how important it is to help survivors focus on their future. As therapists, we talk about the future with them but we forget about the ambiguity in their futures. I try to keep in mind this question: How can they think of the future when there is no justice? Wounds can heal but they will leave scars or marks.
I try to keep in mind this question: How can they think of the future when there is no justice?”
After working for nearly a decade with survivors, I have come to understand that we need to be more engaged with helping people connect with processes or systems for justice. Mental health professionals can’t stand alone in the face of torture; we need to ally with other domains; we can help people connect to fact-finding initiatives, to forms of communication that share their stories with the world, that focus attention on atrocities. It’s our role to help survivors find their voices.
I worked along with amazing colleagues on developing and implanting a creative approach called Therapeutic Documentation, which is at the heart of SOTI. This unique approach to documenting human rights atrocities combines the healing and justice-related goals of survivors. Those who have received rehabilitation and/or resilience services are supported in connecting with civil society organizations working on documentation, advocacy, research, memorialization and awareness efforts. They may also choose to document their personal narratives for individual or creative use. Many select multiple pathways for documenting their experience.
This work gave me hope and energy to do more and to engage survivors more. It preserves people’s narrative, because their stories matter. They aren’t numbers. These pathways provided them with an opportunity to advance justice and hope. I also had the privilege to know and work along brave Syrian civil society and activists who inspired my journey.
So many things changed since I wrote the first draft of this article: The Assad regime fell finally and there was a new hope for people in Syria. I went to Syria and heard people’s stories and hope for the future. I understood that what we worked on is very important and will continue supporting individuals and communities in healing.
About The Author
Yusra Al-Kailani
