Responding to trauma and abuse

I am doing a series of reflections as part of a post graduate course on Narrative Therapy. Overall there will be about ten reflection papers on various concepts and practices that currently form and shape Narrative Therapy.

It was rather timely that I had read Angel Yuen’s article (Yuen, 2007) and the interview with Michael White (McLean, 1995) about working with clients who experienced trauma and abuse.  It reaffirmed my own principle of how I wished to work with clients, and helped clarify for myself how I wished to practice. This was most relevant in a recent meeting with a gay teenage boy who had a traumatic sexual experience with an older man.

Before being introduced to narrative ideas, I value and still do value creating the space for clients to speak about their difficult experiences.  I am influenced by other schools of thought, especially around emotions.  In my earlier work in counselling clients for HIV testing, the effect of telling another person provides catharsis which clears the way for clients to think differently or act differently for their future.  When I first heard Michael White in 2007 speaking in objection to the Western ways of revisiting traumatic experiences, it struck me as something important in knowing there was more than one way to work with difficult experiences.  These were ways that were culturally relevant and powerfully acknowledging of client’s own resources.

I found this phrase to be significant for me: “Distress yes, re-traumatisation no” (McLean, 1995), because it is an encouragement that I can be influential in asking  questions about the trauma, and more specifically the response to it.  In the process of enquiry with the teenager, we uncovered the skills and knowledge that he already had in terms of negotiating with men on what he preferred, and an acknowledgement that this incident came about because of the unfair power difference exerted by the older man in withholding to send him home. His feedback that the session was “like having a wind to clear the haze” signified to me that he was gradually redefining his view about the traumatic experience.

The levels of enquiry described by Angel Yuen made my work easier as it pulled together questions that centred on client’s expertise, connection and contribution from significant persons, and identification of personal agency.  I recognized the scaffolding nature of this enquiry and in my limited practice have come to appreciate how it helps clients to reach a rich meaningful conclusion about the trauma that is not totalizing of their identity.

References

McLean, C. (1995). 'Naming abuse and breaking from its effects' an interview with Michael White. In Re-Authoring Lives: Interviews & Essays. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Yuen, A. (2007). Discovering children's responses to trauma: a response based narrative practice. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work(4), pp 3-18.