If only walls could talk, I thought, as I watched the Ethnic Relations Commission’s (ERC) recent valiant attempts to get past the stoicism that has now taken root among lower East Coast residents. The community conversations might have been a good idea but, to me, they did not produce the desired results. For the most part, folks just sat there, as if they were brick walls. They must have wanted to be there – the ones who actually showed up – but they didn’t have much to say.
Perhaps it was because the media were present. I mean, who wants to bare their soul over and again for public inspection? For many people grieving is a personal thing. Perhaps they didn’t quite know what to say, because they don’t know yet how they feel. How does one express feelings one is not even sure about?
It is easy to advocate that people talk, cry or vent as ways to overcome grief and promote healing. In fact, this is what they should be doing. But it is difficult for people to do these things when they have lived all their lives with a culture of doing just the opposite.
Heroines (and heroes) in books and films swoon, languish inconsolably or sometimes become catatonic after powerful emotional episodes in their lives, often as a result of deep grief. And even though the writers’ words and the actors’ skills could move me to tears, for years as a child and young adult, I had assumed that these emotions were exaggerated and were not felt by real people.
This is because, incongruously, the persons I had observed who had suffered losses, while they screamed and wept and yes sometimes swooned, seemed able to continue to deal with the most mundane tasks throughout their grieving. Of course, they were employing what are called ‘coping mechanisms,’ a phrase that is jargon to therapists and counsellors, but was then still a completely foreign concept to me.
It was not until I experienced deep personal sorrow that I realised how thin and blurred the line between sanity and the other side can become; how easy it could be to just go to pieces and how the mundane keeps normalcy within reach. Unfortunately, none of us is born with coping mechanisms and not everyone knows how to dig down deep and find them. Neither are we born with communication skills. Some of us acquire them; others go through life hiding feelings we don’t quite know how to express and some of us go quietly or stark raving mad.
Prior to the birth of Help & Shelter in 1994 and Guyana’s creeping response of sorts to the HIV epidemic around the same time, counselling was pretty much unheard of in these parts, except perhaps among the elite who could afford the doctors’ fees and those who sought it from their church ministers. In all, these would not have numbered more than a handful. Because this was the means of its introduction to the wider society, counselling has remained intrinsically linked to domestic violence and HIV, both of which are still stigmatised, one more than the other.
Despite the very obvious evidence of its value to good mental health, counselling is still not available on the scale of which it is necessary, which is sad. The public health system is still woefully inadequate in this regard. Instead, much of what is needed is being provided in the non-governmental organisation sector – behind closed doors at places like Help & Shelter and Lifeline Counselling Services.
It is because walls cannot talk that counselling should only be done behind closed doors. Much like what occurs when a person visits a doctor with a physical ailment, in order to truly unburden, the client must have the confidence that what s/he says will remain within those walls. Even group therapy, when it is appropriate, should be done in an enclosed room.
The walls of silence at the community conversations and the few damp faces are not and should not be taken as an indication that there has been any healing or closure. Nor should anyone presume to tell the wounded when and how they should forgive, although we all know forgiveness is necessary for them to move forward.
And at the risk of having this newspaper labelled anti-government yet again, let me say “rubbish” to Dr Luncheon’s announcement that foreign experts will develop a programme to reach the affected children. If there is a local effort, let it continue; it is way too soon to say whether it’s working or not. There is no quick fix to attempting to restore a child’s damaged psyche; sometimes these things take years. But no doubt, the foreign experts will know this.
I wonder too whether there has been an assessment of how many children are affected or if it has been assumed that only the ones in the immediate vicinity are. How about all the other children on the lower East Coast who now cower in fear every time a vehicle backfires? Or the ones who are afraid to go to school lest the local ‘bogeyman’ get them?
Finally, if their parents’ ‘psychological comfort’ is not addressed the children will never get to that place. There is a lot of work to be done and still way too much talk in its stead.
