Noor Al-Sagher is a tele-mental health trainer and therapist in Amman, who began her work with CVT Jordan doing direct counseling for survivors of torture. She spent five years in that role and has written about her work in several articles for CVT’s website, including this one about clients’ return to their lives after sexual violence.

In recent years, Noor moved into a regional role providing tele-mental health training for human rights defenders. Noor was the first tele-mental health trainer and therapist at CVT, as this was a new role within the organization, established in response to growing needs and requests. The move into this position allows Noor to share her expertise widely and with groups of people who come from a variety of countries, backgrounds and situations.

Noor met with Grace Ogihara, senior graphic designer, in Amman and spoke about the unique aspects of her role and the ways such a wide variety of clients respond to mental health and self-care practices.

Training Human Rights Activists is a Way to Support Change

Noor said that she was drawn to work at CVT because she found CVT’s values aligned with her own. “I went into this work because it involved working with human rights, which was important for me,” Noor said. Especially because the work focuses on people who have survived torture and deeply traumatic experiences, Noor found CVT’s focus on restoring dignity meaningful and foundational. She said she grew up with dignity as a value, noting that it is an “important value to show love and respect to other people. And this is something that I tie to the value of dignity.”

This focus was part of her motivation to move from direct counseling work with clients into tele-mental health care. “We reach people where they are,” she said. “Right now, with tele-mental health, this is something that is showing care to them.” With tele-mental health services, she can reach people, including human rights activists and people who cannot access in-person services, wherever they are.

Using the Approach That Works for the Individual

Noor’s work in tele-mental health supports human rights activists, former detainees and families of people who have been “disappeared,” meaning that they were taken by the state with no word about their condition or location. Because of the different needs for these groups, Noor and the team strive to help them increase the sustainability of the work they’re doing. This using requires using techniques to strengthen their self-care and resilience both individually and as teams. She said that focus on these areas, with workshops as well as individual treatment plans, allows the team to help people enhance their coping strategies and ultimately their functioning.

“All of these things create a safe space for beneficiaries to share, even if they are living in very unsafe circumstances and contexts,” Noor said.

All of these things create a safe space for beneficiaries to share, even if they are living in very unsafe circumstances and contexts.”

Noor Al-Sagher, tele-mental health trainer & therapist

Self-Care Tips and Principles

Noor finds that working with human rights defenders and people affected by violent conflict brings to light the importance of educating people on ways to take care of themselves. “We start with the principle of the mind-body connection, which is really important,” she said. “And then we focus on breathing exercises, work-life balance and also the balance between the work that he or she is doing individually and their family spaces.” She said these exercises help people understand how they can maintain that balance.

Noor said that knowledge and understanding of the local context is key. But it is also important to help people have awareness of their own needs and resources. “Most activists are focusing on the needs of the beneficiaries they’re helping, but not really paying attention to their own needs,” she said. “So focusing on this is one of the most effective ways that we can provide support and help them create that balance.”

Most activists are focusing on the needs of the beneficiaries they’re helping, but not really paying attention to their own needs.”

Noor Al-Sagher

As an example, when massive earthquakes took place in Türkiye and Syria last year, Noor had been working with a well-known activist. Because of her sessions with Noor, after the earthquakes the activist remembered what Noor had told her. “The first thing she did was take a breath, and she felt like she was taking a step back in order to make good decisions to be able to support both herself and also her team in the region,” Noor said.

The activist also made a decision not to watch the news, which was streaming constant information about the earthquakes and devastation. Instead, she chose to focus on her team and supporting their needs. This helped her to pay attention to her own well-being and reduced the potential impact of secondary trauma as a result of the earthquake.

Survivors’ Context is Critical to Supporting Healing

Much of Noor’s work is with former detainees, and she has learned a great deal about their experience, the environment they inhabited and their feelings. She said that most former detainees have told her that they believe “If we hadn’t been released, it would have been better for us.”

This led her to take steps to improve former detainees’ focus on their physical environment and help them increase their connection between their inner and outer worlds. “They were using the same strategies for survival outside detention as they were when they were inside,” she said. “This led them to feel that they were still in detention.”

In other words, Noor explained, when people perceive themselves as being in detention, “They don’t let themselves connect with their surroundings because it’s all about pain, torture and everything. This is how they survived in detention. So it protects them.”

This is how they survived in detention. So it protects them.”

Noor Al-Sagher

However, continuing to perceive their environment in this way after they are free prevents them from building social supports, networks or relationships, or to simply have connection with their own bodies. “Then, healing takes a long time,” she said. “So when we help them to make that connection with themselves and with their surroundings, their environment, then healing happens faster and it frees them from their own prison, where they’ve put themselves.”

Noor noted that former detainees often actually felt safer when they were in prison using those survival strategies. Then when they were released, it felt like they were under attack from society and people around them because those coping strategies weren’t working anymore. “The context has changed so much it’s unfamiliar. And so it feels unsafe for them being out in society again,” she said.

The team encourages them to make small, gradual changes in breaking old habits and creating new habits, new coping strategies. “This is a journey that they’re on, it’s a process. But as we do that, the pain begins to lessen and be reduced.”

The Connection Between Justice and Healing

“Justice is one of the greatest things that we can work toward in the field in which we’re working,” Noor said. “Justice is something that gives a huge amount of hope, but it’s also discouraging.” She has found that for people who have suffered injustice, with every new violation or problem that occurs, their perspective on justice is impacted.

With that, “One of the most important things is safety, a way for human rights activists to be in a place where they are safe and able to do their advocacy even in situations where they may not achieve justice for a long time,” she said.

Noor also notices that with the flexibility of tele-mental health, she’s worked with people who are leaders in civil society and in activism. She can see the impact of CVT’s work, not only on the individual level but on how they are able to then more effectively advocate for or support civil society more broadly.

“That’s been something significant,” she said.