Plenary IV: Terror and Trauma: Enhancing Family and Community Resilience

By John Lawless

Are you OK? A simple yet compelling question posed to all participants on Saturday at Plenary IV, Terror and Trauma: Enhancing Family and Community Resilience during the excerpt from the play, The Guys. Initially, this question resonated with me as an individual, but soon the play fashioned a curiosity as to how the question could branch out into the connections of my life. Not only could I ask this question to the people in my life, but I could also ask it of the relationships and connections I have with people, communities, and institutions that are woven together and create "my life." The question was transformed to, "Are we OK?" The play beautifully and poignantly highlighted processes that individuals, families, and communities may experience when trauma is forced into one's life. The play compellingly reinforced the topic of the plenary and created a context of self-reflection while rousing my interest of how our colleagues are working with these complex issues.

I wondered, How did Judith Landau, Jack Saul, Isobel Reilly, Shqipe Ukshini and Nancy Baron make sense of terror and trauma? In what ways did the communities in which they work make sense of these issues? How did their work with communities value the strengths originating from within the community? How did they account for and respect issues of diversity? How did they help communities find constructive answers to the question "Are we OK?" Each presenter offered his or her unique perspective. As I reflected upon the presentations, strands of similarities began to stand out. What follows is a reflection of my experience of this powerful plenary and the ways in which the presenters wove a rich tapestry of how they work to enhance family and community resilience and healing.

The strongest and most powerful thread highlighted throughout the morning was the idea that communities can heal themselves. This was the thread to which all other strands were connected. Central to this idea is the core belief that communities have the resources (e.g., change agents, localized knowledge of healing processes) to facilitate healing, to elicit and strengthen overt and subtle processes of resilience, to re-member community members as well as the communities themselves; due to terror and trauma present in the community, however, these resources become underutilized. Judith discussed how mental health professionals can provide a facilitative component of community healing, but also pointed out that their involvement is limited across time and is hindered by not having the intimate knowledge of the community's strengths, insights, and resilient processes. She was particularly moving as she highlighted her ideas regarding community strengths and resilience and the ways in which her work utilizes the community's discourse for healing.

Many of the presenters highlighted examples showing how resources emanating from communities might be utilized, and how it is possible to allow each community to dictate its own appropriate course of healing. I was particularly struck by Jack's work with the public school system of the city of New York. His work supported Judith's ideas of engaging community change agents (e.g., teachers, parents) in building and strengthening community networks of support—networks that are already in place, or those that may be ripe for developing. His work also highlighted how professionals can be brought into the community to serve as facilitators, while allowing community members to chart their own healing process and learn from each other while processing traumatic events.

The thread of connection complemented the belief that communities have inherent resources for healing, and was another important strand highlighted by the presenters. They emphasized how reestablishing old community connections, while simultaneously facilitating new connections, can be an important process of healing. Judith aptly labeled this as a matrix of healing. Isobel's and Shqipe's powerful presentations highlighted how the long standing tensions in their communities (Northern Ireland and Kosovar, respectively) disrupts and severs the connections that potentially can unite communities. Both presenters addressed how they work with families and communities to revive connections to move communities, literally and figuratively, toward a place of peace.

Another fiber woven throughout, was the idea that interventions needed to be systemically focused while simultaneously addressing multiple levels. Judith discussed how these types of interventions enhance family and community connections and help foster resilience. Thus, they support the healing process while creating preventive resources against future trauma. Jack expressed concern, from two vantage points, at what might happen when interventions are not systemic or address multiple levels. He discussed his concern, as trauma professional and as a community member, that many funding agencies fund trauma work that focuses on the individual, while ignoring the larger context of the individual (e.g., family, community). This makes it difficult for communities and families to get services that fully address the complexity of terror and trauma treatment.

Another thread of discussion focused on the cultural sensitivity of the facilitator's role in the community healing process. Judith discussed how her model is sensitive to the local culture. Her conceptualization is that the role of mental health professionals is to facilitate healing based on a community's values and customs. This is accomplished by working with natural change agents (Link Therapists). The natural change agents are drawn from within the community and a collaborative relationship is established. Many of the presenters were very critical of the notion that professionals can come in, fix the problem, and leave the community a better place. This type of work is usually inconsistent with the needs of the community, and is often seen as disingenuous and culturally insensitive. Shqipe's and Isobel's presentations were very powerful regarding this issue. Both presenters discussed how thy have taken systemic ideas and modified them to the needs of their communities in Kosovar and Northern Ireland.

While the plenary was enlightening and powerful, there were some moments that troubled me, and the reflection group in which I participated supported my concerns. Some such moments arose during Nancy's description of her work in Africa. Nancy's discussion followed many of the threads highlighted above, but her language raised an alarm of colonialism. In particular, I formed the perception that her work focused on working with "others" by educating them about their culture and history, imposing potentially culturally inconsistent models of healing that involved only limited collaboration. While I did not have the opportunity to directly discuss these issues with Nancy, they have been posed to her by Gonzalo Bacigalupe on the AFTA and Family Process collaborative website project,http://www.familyprocess.org/featured_articles.asp, and I look forward to hearing her response.

Another concern revolved around the paucity of voices emanating from trauma work being performed in the United States. As I listened to the voices of the work being done overseas and around September 11th, I wondered how populations marginalized in the United States of America experience daily forms of trauma in the form of political, physical, and emotional violence. How are mental health professionals working within these communities in ways that are culturally sensitive and collaborative, while building family and community resilience?

Overall, the plenary was a powerful and exhilarating mixture of presentations that challenged common ideas around community healing. Not only did the presenters give us much to think about, they elucidated ways of working with communities that utilized their way of knowing and respected their traditions. It is important to note that this reflection does not do justice to the emotional impact I experienced throughout the day, nor does it capture the complexity of the issues. Shqipe captured the enormity of these issues very poignantly when discussing her work with a family in a region characterized as the "heart" of Kosova. A member of one family that experienced the many faces of loss, as have many other Kosovar families, stated, "If pain had words, these mountains would speak." The presenters in us, their audience, a desire that we may, one day, be able to help our communities begin to let their mountains speak.

John Lawless, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia and a new AFTA member. He is particularly interested in multicultural issues.