What is Trauma? Q&A with Open Doors Trauma Care worker
Tirham (pseudonym) is an Open Doors trauma care worker in Burkina Faso.
In this interview, Tirham shares about the realities of trauma and how the team is helping victims reach a point of healing.
What is trauma?
Trauma exists everywhere it something universal that happens to people everywhere, whether in Nigeria, here in Burkina [Faso] and all parts of the world. Trauma is real, it is a heart wound. It happens when people lose their loved ones or when bad things happen to them. It affects their feeling, their hearts and then it affects the way they cope with life.
So, for these people [here in Burkina Faso] that come from different areas, different communities – there are women whose husbands were killed by Islamic terrorists and most of them have been displaced from their communities.
What I see [here] is universal and it’s common in every place when people get hurt, especially in Africa, they try to suppress their feelings. [Their families] tell them not to cry, they tell them not to talk about what has happened to them in the belief and hope that if they do [not] cry, their loved ones will find peace and rest after life. But when they cry and when they talk about their loved ones that have died, they won’t find peace.
This is a common thing that we find everywhere. They find it difficult to talk so they bottle it up and they don’t express their feelings.
Tell us more about this group.
One thing that’s unique to this particular group, is that most of them don’t speak French or can write or read French. So instead of us to doing the normal trauma healing programme using manuals, we decided to use audio.
Everything is pre-recorded in their own dialects. It’s dramatized in such a way that it helps them to picture what has happened to them and to picture their own pain. So, it brings it to life for to them and they listen to it in their own dialect. This has made it very helpful to them.
This made for a very unique trauma healing because it’s the first time that we used audio.
(Representative photo) Victims of trauma are beginning the process of healing.
Can you take us through the different steps in the manual?
The first lesson is: ‘If God loves us, why do we suffer?’
When people go through hard times, especially this kind of crisis, where they are being killed because of their faith, people usually ask this question.
We try to teach them that whatever happens, we should remember God’s character. The world was created by God, it was clean, it was perfect, but then sin came into the world, and it changed everything. So, if we are suffering, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us, rather because of choices that we make or the choices that Adam and Eve made… by disobeying God, it brought sin, suffering and pain into the world. This first lesson helps to stabilize their faith in God.
The second lesson teaches them about the heart wound. We say, ‘Okay this is what happened to us, this has made me feel…’ Afterwards they are able to identify the symptoms of the heart wound, of trauma. They know that when I behave like that, it is because I am traumatized. They learn that something has happened to me, and I feel this way about this situation. Afterwards they are able to grieve. When I talk to them about grief we talk about the right way to grieve, the way that brings healing to them. We talk about the three stages of grief.
When we do this, people are able to identify what stage they are in, in their healing journey. When they identifying it now, they are able to talk to God about it in lamentation. It’s also helpful for them to know that, wow there are people that lamented in the Bible and in fact in the book of Psalm, there are more lamentation verses than verses of praise and worship to God. It helps them to understand that okay I can tell God exactly how I feel and I am not judged and I am not condemned by God, God understands my feelings.
We also, depending on the group of people, talk to them about rape. Talking about this taboo subject really helps people (survivors) to understand that rape can happen to anyone, and when it happens it doesn’t mean the person is demon possessed or filthy, or that the person has no hope anymore. Through talking about this we are able to help these women, to encourage them and to
help them live more normal lives.
We also talk about forgiveness in respect to what has happened to them. It’s very easy to be bitter about it and hate people that have done these things to you. We talk about how forgiveness is actually more beneficial to the survivors. If you are able to forgive, then it means you can live a more peaceful life. And finally, we talk about the cross. A ceremony where they are encouraged to carry their pain to the cross.
Open Doors is only starting out in Burkina Faso with this program. How are you starting it up, building it up, and how big is the need?
Here in Burkina Faso, well I can tell we are just like scratching the surface right now. The trauma care need is just huge.
Someone just said, ‘I didn’t even know that this thing exists, this thing called trauma, and we can heal trauma, we can start working towards healing our heart wounds.’
This is the first trauma care people here are having, and so it will take time to be able to identify people that can start the work. But I see the people that we are working with, they are passionate about it, they love it and with more training, with more learning I believe that they can be on their own and start this trauma healing by themselves. Because it’s not going to be easy for someone to always come from outside to Burkina Faso to do the work here. But if they are open to learning and they are open to our organizations to teach them.
There are other people that have already gone made progress with the trauma healing work, but their focus is not necessarily persecuted Christians like ours is. So, we need the trauma healing (for the Church) if we want to succeed in helping believers, not only with relief but also with their emotional needs. If people can get healing, it will be wonderful, it will establish their faith so that it can be strong in the Lord. To deepen their love for God, to deepen their faith in God, they will need emotional healing. They will need their heart wounds to be healed. So, the need for trauma healing here I think is a priority.
How does trauma healing help?
Sometimes I look at it and it’s just a miracle. To give an example from this program. The first day the women came was on a Monday, you could see and literally feel the pain in their eyes, in their faces, you could see it.
On Tuesday when we started the workshop you could see that they were reserved. They were not open to discussion, they were not expressive, they could answer the question from the stories, but they were not talking about their personal problems.
Then the day after that I noticed that some of them started smiling, because after we did the lesson on grief it was like a light went on inside them and lit up their faces. It’s like they realised ‘wow, I can actually grieve, I can actually cry, I can actually tell God how I feel…’ By this morning, they were laughing and whatever I said they would laugh. I was really happy. I told them, ‘Today your faces are shining. Because the first day you were not smiling. Yesterday you smiled. Today you are laughing.’ On the last day they were like God has really healed them. But I believe this is the first step that they have received this healing.
Now something that happens, and we see it again and again: their ability to sleep. When we came here, I was talking to someone, and she said for a very long time I haven’t been able to sleep. Each night I wake up… and I can’t sleep again, but since she came here on Monday, and after the lesson on Tuesday, she has slept through the night.
So, I think it’s one of the ways that God brings healing because they are able to just pour out, to just speak about it. It’s like off-loading a burden in their hearts.
You can see it from their faces. The way they interact with people, they start interacting with people, they start smiling and laughing, and you know they are able to sleep well.
