27.5
Respect and recognition
The struggle for respect and recognition was spoken of by several of the
participants in the interviews. Gunhild, Knut and Ivar discuss the importance
of feeling respect; both self-respect and the respect of others.
Gunhild: To
be respected for whom I am. To be seen as I am. Be accepted as I am. I don’t
mean that people have to accept all of my reactions. ((Laughs)) When I scream and shout. Yeah. That’s
important for me.
Knut: What is really important for me? You have all of these material
objects, but do they have any value in themselves? What does my house, boat,
car mean for my self-image? The most important thing is my self respect. I
noticed in my healing process, that it was very important what others thought
of me. That’s important. There’s something I feel that I keep to myself, the
feeling that I have to live up to
others’ expectations. That’s something I dislike. (.)
Ivar: I expect others to respect me (.) for whom I am.
All three speak of the respect from
others for whom they really are. In my opinion this can be difficult to achieve
in institutions which do not respect others as they are because they are
occupied with the control of those who are asking for help. Zola (1972) argues
that therapy has become an institution of social control in the name of health.
This has occurred because we define many of the problems of daily life as
sickness, and because labelling things as either healthy or sick has become an
ever increasing aspect of human existence. He writes that if we search for ways
to explain this, we will find that it is rooted in our increasingly complex technological
and bureaucratic system. This is a system which has led us down the path
leading to the reluctant reliance on the expert. Lazare (1987) argues that
patients have a high risk of experiencing shame and humiliation in any form of
therapeutic encounter. This is because we commonly perceive illness as rooted
in defects, inadequacies, or shortcomings. Visiting therapy institutions often
means physical and psychological exposure. Patients respond to the shame and
humiliation that is evoked by avoiding therapy experts, withholding information
or complaining. It would in my opinion be interesting to conduct a similar
exploration of the concept and phenomenon of shame within the settings of a
psychiatric institution.
Dagny, who is one of the users of
the Incest Centre, explains that helping others with shame is a way of healing
her own shame.
Dagny: ((Nods her head)) The first thing I think of is I’ve done
something that I can use to help others. It’s not about me. I’m always last in
line. What’s important is helping others. By helping others, I myself am
healed.
Finding the other as a helper implies showing oneself to the other. When
Dagny opens up for others in my opinion, her own shame is recognized and this
contributes to the diminishing of her own shame. Thomas and Parker (2004) argue
that in the healing process the focus should be on facilitating the emergence
of the self. By strengthening the emergent self, one is able to move it
developmentally toward the point where the self becomes secure enough to take
responsibility for its actions. Until the self becomes stable enough to
distinguish itself from its actions, the person will continue to confuse the
two. In working to weaken the grip of shame, emotional work is important and
involves nurturing the self so that it is able to move away from the massive
self-condemnation that prevents the self from making a realistic assessment of
its actions and choosing appropriate responses. Educating new social workers in
emotional work seems in my opinion to be an important task.
The healing process which is
illustrated in figure 4 is in my opinion both a complicated and a frightening experience
of for many, both for those asking for help and the social worker. The social
worker should start off carefully, giving the individual the time that is
necessary. Linda explains that a lot of people do not dare to come to the
Centre for a conversation or even to speak on the telephone. She says that
using text messages on her cellular phone is often a good way to make contact
with someone who has problems sharing problems with others. Reading and writing
messages to each other can be of great help in creating enough security and
enable people to come out of their hiding places.
Linda_1: Using
text messages is also a big help. I use them a lot, all the time. ((Places
her hand in front of her mouth))…It’s a
real good way of helping people. Yeah. I remember one girl here who changed her
whole behavior because of text messages. She used to just sit here on the
floor. I had her for two and a half years. She just sat on the floor and played
with her car keys. She didn’t dare look me in the eyes. So I tried sending her a
sms. It worked and she opened up and wrote a whole lot. Talking to me face to
face was unpleasant, but reading and writing on the cellular phone worked fine.
Meeting others does not have to be face to face meetings in order to be
genuine. Linda illustrates that meeting the other where one is might sometimes
require not being able to see the other person. Having conversations over the
telephone is a similar form of meeting. Many users of the Incest Centre start
their contact and healing process through telephone conversations or even as
Linda tells by written text messages over the cellular phone. I agree with Kaufman (1980, 1989) when he argues that the first step in the healing
process is to construct a relational bridge. Since nurturing the emerging self
is the focus in healing shame, the method must be relational and not
behavioral. One has to find the hiding self and restore the relational breach
by first asking where the individual is. Shame involves moving away from
relationships, hiding. Trying to address guilt instead of shame may be a way of
allowing the self to continue hiding. The social worker who moves to affirm and
value the shamed self takes the first steps towards strengthening that self.
Then the self can is able to reflect upon its deeds with a less punitive evaluation,
whether this involves negation of the self or blaming others. Helping others
overcome unbearable shame involves building strong relational bonds between the
caregiver and the shamed and suffering self.
Emotional work and acceptance
towards people suffering from shame seems in my opinion to be important in the
healing process of shame. Larsson and Starrin (1990) argue that skilful helpers
use communication of an everyday character as a means of reaching the personal
and emotional level in a natural everyday manner and communication dealing with
personal and emotional qualities, and they use less communication dealing with
facts and practical issues. Margaret explains that abused women and men are often
withdrawn when they come for the first time seeking help and security. Helping
others with shame involves having experienced the same kind of pain with one’s
own body. She argues that personal experience makes a good fellow human being.
Margaret_1: They
are very withdrawn ((Places her hands in front of her)) humiliated, and it’s important that they
take one small step at a time and try to zoom in what kind of place this is.
They are very afraid of getting in someone’s way here. They are afraid to ask
and afraid of doing something wrong. Usually they speak very little. Some of
them just sit on the sofa and search for some security. We never start a
conversation about abuse or other problems. We always let the users start the conversation…I tell them that they can use me
if they want and that I’m here for them…I want to make a difference for
them…The most important qualification for working here isn’t whether one has experienced
sexual abuse or not, but if you’ve really lived your life. (.) Yeah. That’s what makes a human being a good
fellow human being…They find out that they are not alone. They meet others and
that means a lot. They meet others who have the same emotions, same thoughts
and they start believing in a future. There are many things that fall in place
when one dares to share oneself with others.
Margaret stresses that meeting
others who have similar emotions and thoughts is important. It takes time to
build new relations and Linda says that people may use the Incest Centre as
long as they need to.
Linda: There are some people who have been users here for ten years. They can
use the centre as long as they want.
Several of the participants speak of
not being able to trust others and that it takes often a long time to be able
to trust others again. This is especially towards significant others. Some
speak of mothers who where not there for them in their childhood and miss having
a loving and caring mother. Nina tells about a woman she met at the Incest
Centre who felt that she had never had a mother, and who now feels as if she
has thirteen mothers: all of whom were employed at the centre.
Nina: I had one who told me once that she really never felt that she had had
a mother, but now she has 13. ((Everyone laughs)) That was cool.
Being a mother for users of the
Centre is not a role that is given the employees by the institution but by some
of the users, and they see this as something positive. In my opinion the
employees seem to be careful not to encourage this role but give the users the
opportunity to view the Incest Centre as a home and the employees as caregivers
and significant others. Pia feels grateful each time people trust her enough to
express their shame and suffering to her.
Pia: You get a real good feeling because you’ve helped others with your own
costly experience. I tell them so, too, that they give me so much by showing me
trust and letting me help them. I’m very grateful to them for that. I never
take anything like that lightly. If someone shows me trust umm that’s something
I store in my heart. There must be a reason for showing me trust.
Pia sees the trust developing in
genuine meetings, she even feels grateful for the trust users show her. Trust
is not something the social worker has as an employee at the Centre, but
something one receives from the users if one is found worthy of receiving this
trust. Building this trusting relationship is important for helping the user to
be able to let go of their self-focus and be able to relay on others. Being
less self-focused (I-with-me) and more occupied with oneself in the world
(I-with-me-in-the-world) will in my opinion lead to a better self-evaluation
and make the creation of a new identity possible. Covert, Tangney, Maddux and Heleno (2003)
argue that since shame involves an intense self-focus a person experiencing
shame is likely to have difficulty thinking of effective solutions to an
interpersonal problem. More importantly, however, the person experiencing shame
may have a set of beliefs about himself or herself in the interpersonal domain
that makes it difficult for them to use the skills that they actually have.
People who frequently experience shame are likely to experience frequent
failure in their attempts to solve interpersonal problems, and these
experiences are likely to lead to low self-confidence for solving even the
common problems and conflicts that occur in interactions with other people.
Trude and Ruth discuss how children protect their mothers and how this had been
a source of shame for them.
Kaare: Did you try to protect her?
Trude: Yes. ((Nods her head)). Yes.
I did then and I still do, even though I tell myself ((Points a finger at
her head)) up here, that that’s the way
it was and I’ve worked a lot with it, but it’s still lying there under my
shoulder blade. I still protect her ((Bites her lips and nods her head)).
Ruth: It’s weird how we protect our mothers.
Trude: Yeah. It’s like the last old tie that keeps
us together.
Ruth: And makes you feel shame in a way.
Trude: Yeah. That’s something I have to work with. It was ( ) fine
that this came up now so I could think about it ((Bites her lips and nods
her head))
Linda has a similar experience as
Trude and Ruth and protected her mother and it seems that Linda felt sorry for
her mother being married to her father. Her father was unfaithful and drank a
lot.
Linda_1: I’ve
protected her a lot because umm my father was so rotten to her. He drank a lot
and messed around with other women and I really felt sorry for Mom.
Trude, Ruth and Linda were very
aware of their parents, especially their mothers. Children’s awareness of their
parents needs has been investigated by Jensen, Gulbransen, Mossige, Reichelt
and Tjersland (2005) who have carried out a qualitative study of families
reporting possible sexual abuse using a sample of 20 families with 22 children
in therapeutic sessions. Their results indicate that disclosure is a
fundamentally dialogical process that becomes less difficult if the children
perceive that there is an opportunity to talk, and a purpose in speaking, and a
connection has been established to what they are talking about. It is difficult
for children to initiate a conversation about something so secret, confusing
and distressing, and where there are few conversational routines in a family
for talking about such themes. Children are also sensitive to the needs of
their caregivers and fear the consequences of talking about their families and
the offenders. Children need a supportive structure or scaffold in order to
expose their experiences of child sexual abuse.
Rafferty and Hartley (2006) argue
that even though a lot still remains to
be learned about shame it is clear that shame is a painful self-conscious
emotion that operates, albeit quietly and hidden, in the development of a wide
variety of personal and social problems. It is also clear that, for an
individual to be freed of shame, he or she needs to be approached with
sensitivity and tact. Perhaps listening to children and adults, with an ear
open for the voice of shame may help professionals connect with their shame and
release them from their distress. Not to do so would be, in a very real sense,
shameful.
In Figure 5 below, figures 1, 2, 3,
and 4 are combined to illustrate the struggle for recognition within the
context of sexual abuse and the settings of the Incest Centre in Vestfold. This
struggle for recognition is influenced by Honneth’s theory of recognition
(1996) and is in my opinion a valuable perspective for social work practice
(Høilund and Juul 2005; Møller 2008). The figure illustrates that the social-self
can be evaluated by self and others in a way that leads to lack of respect and
a negative self-evaluation. It is this process, characterized by the
destruction of relational bonds, exclusion, hiding, and so forth, that leads in
my opinion and based on the interviews in this exploration, to shame. If the
person shame is not met with respect and recognition in a dialogical I-Thou
meeting with others, then emotions may become repressed and the healing process
is obstructed. This means that others are kept at a distance, intimacy is
difficult, and the individual objectifies oneself and others. This will often
lead in my opinion to a negative spiral, causing more suffering.
Meeting people with problems may be
conceived as turning the world upside down; it means moving from being within
an I-It relationship to an I-Thou relationship. This can only be accomplished
in my opinion through a setting where one is allowed to express one’s emotions,
where one is accepted and can carry out emotional work with others when exposing
these emotions, and where one gains new experiences that enable the social self
to develop in a positive direction.
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