Emotions

Emotions, or feelings, also playa big role for the survivor, yet in the literacy program there is often not a lot of space for emotions. Physical violence may leave visible wounds, but the emotional or mental effects are also present. Emotional or mental abuse also undermines the sense of self.

One counselor said that she felt that many of the learners were “too busy getting upset to learn”. That felt very familiar to me. I knew what she was talking about, I had seen many learners that I could describe in that way. Another therapist talked about “difficulties with feelings.” She said that many survivors have a fear of feelings while internally they struggle with intense sadness, vulnerability and enormous anger. Such a complex mix of feelings can make it easier to bypass or deny the feelings of sadness and fear and go straight to anger. This can mean that a survivor shows no feelings and then suddenly blows up. A well of feelings that cannot be easily expressed may mean that a survivor is “overreacting,” as the feeling can be in response to past as well as present issues. Learning how to respond respectfully to such a complex mix of emotions is hard, as literacy workers need to both avoid dismissing the emotions that seem more “childlike,” and avoid getting hooked and “overreacting” in response. It may be challenging to avoid shaming or blaming a learner, or suggesting that their reaction is inappropriate, while also recognizing that the emotion may not all be in relation to the current situation.

One therapist stressed the importance of literacy workers developing the “capacity to witness.” She reminded me that survivors may be depressed and suicidal. Observing people who are feeling desperate can be very hard. She suggested that holding on to a belief that things will get better, and supporting the woman in finding ways to be with herself in despair that were not harmful, were two ways that workers could be supportive. One learner stressed that it does not work to tell literacy learners that they should just “leave their emotion at the door” as she was told in her program. Learners (and workers) need space for feelings within the program and places to go outside the program when the feelings are “too much” for themselves or for others to deal with in the class or group. As part of literacy work, learners could work with their feelings, learning to recognize them, drawing, talking and writing about their feelings.

Spirit

In my reading I came across the concept of “soul murder” (Shengold, 1989). It was used to describe people who have been severely abused and brutalized. Initially I found the concept disturbing - it seemed like another description of “damage” and another way to make people “other” and outside. But the concept stayed with me as it did seem to capture the way in which some people who have been severely abused seem to see themselves as outside the human compact. When a First Nations’ group of instructors talked about students whose “spirits have left” I realized that this talk about the soul or spirit was important. Yet I struggled with a sense that I would be laughed at by non-Aboriginal people if I tried to say that literacy work and the spirit had anything to do with each other. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when I did speak about it in a workshop and several participants picked it up and said how crucial they felt it was to recognize the spirit when we are teaching literacy.

It is not new to literacy workers to talk about learners feeling stupid, but the depths of feeling “pathetic” or worthless and the block that can create to learning may be something we have not adequately addressed. There are often debates about self-esteem and literacy and which comes first. Does work on improving literacy skills improve self-esteem or is work on self esteem needed to enable literacy learning to take place? I want to look at the ways they are intertwined and need to be addressed together, if learners who have been traumatized are going to have a sense of themselves as able to learn. I want to question whether thinking in terms of the spirit would help us to notice approaches different from traditional self-esteem work. Maybe we need to look at what helps a person believe they are worthy and sacred, and how specific beliefs which block learning - such as a learner's belief that she is stupid or must not make mistakes - can be turned around. How can we, in literacy, help someone to believe they are not stupid, believe that it is all right to make mistakes, trust that they can learn and begin to move from feeling badly about themselves?