Pages for Loved Ones
We at Friends Peace Teams are so glad you’ve decided to support your friend who is part of a “peace team”—doing nonviolent peacebuilding work with a team—in another culture. Even if your friend who is returning from a peace team has gone to other cultures many times, you can assume that this experience will change them in ways that can’t be predicted. Though sometimes frustrating to your friend and perhaps to you, the changes your friend has gone through can enrich your life. These pages are meant to help you think about how to get the most from your friend’s peace team experience secondhand, have an easier time interacting with them, and learn more about why people who come home from another culture may have a hard time.
Staying Connected
We know you feel close to your friend and want what’s best for them. But when a loved one comes home from a vastly different culture, it is common to feel challenges in staying connected. They may seem different than they were before they left home, and you yourself may have had intense experiences while your friend was gone. Here are some thoughts to help you stay connected as you both grow. (Your friend has a copy of this list as well.)
q Keep in touch. In the weeks or months after they come home, many people in reentry feel distant from those they’ve had close relationships with, perhaps because they have a heightened sense that their loved ones haven’t been through the same thing. Crisis counselors note that in such situations, simply keeping in contact with people you care about, even at a reduced level, can help preserve closeness. If you sense your friend withdrawing, remember not to interpret this personally. Try telling them you’d like to spend a little time with them.
You and other family and friends of a peaceworker may experience your own difficulties while your friend is in the field, which you would like your friend to acknowledge or help you with when they return. Phyllis Taylor, founder of Witness for Peace, has noted some common difficulties:
q added responsibilities;
q people focusing on how wonderful the field peace team worker is while not acknowledging how wonderful and equally committed to peace and justice you may be;
q worry, anger, sadness, or resentment toward the person away and those who sent them;
q difficulty hearing or retaining information about the day-to-day conditions where your friend is working, or not understanding the political context;
q feeling guilty because your friend is doing something that may sound more important than what you’ve been doing during the period they were away.
You may need your friend’s caring attention about things that happened while they were away. But hearing stories that involve certain aspects of Western culture are often difficult for people who have just returned from working in a place with different cultural values or resource problems. It can always be useful to ask whether a friend can give you their full attention before you begin the vulnerable process of letting out emotion, be it frustration, sadness, worry, or other feelings. Later in this section you’ll find a paired listening exercise that can help you and your friend give each other positive attention for whatever is going on with each of you.
It may also help you to have the attention of a trusted listener—someone other than your friend on the peace team—to work through any feelings you have about their project, how they act after returning, or the fact that they went away. If you are experiencing guilt, use the time with a listener to remind yourself that you are a good person.
Expressing your feelings can help you think more clearly, so that you can process information about the day-to-day realities of the place where your friend has sojourned. The more you can absorb about your friend’s experience, the more you can feel your own connection to this part of the world—and to your friend.
How can you support your friend during their reentry into this culture?
One important way is to offer yourself as a listener they can call on. Ask your friend what kind of listening they want. Are they trying to give you information or help you understand what they experienced? Or do they want a shoulder to cry on, a place to let out their feelings? Do they want advice? Or are they trying to figure out what they think by talking something out? For expressions of feeling or thinking out loud, try using the paired listening technique described on the last page.
Also, if your friend has not returned home yet, and you or another friend is going to meet them at the airport, make sure the person going is aware that the airport may be difficult for your friend who is coming home. Western airports are probably very different than the place your friend is coming from, and can induce culture shock. Try to have in mind that the next 24 hours can be crucial for your loved one who is returning—even if they don’t realize it or say so. Feelings your friend has about their experience, and about returning, can be released now more easily than later, so it can help your friend if you give them your full attention. Be especially gentle and patient; let them express emotions however they need to. Also be aware, many people returning from other cultures want to stay away from restaurants, highways, supermarkets and other stores for their first few weeks home.
You can also support your friend by reading more about the concepts discussed below. If you’d like to learn more about these concepts, your friend has a list of other short written materials.
Reentry (sometimes called “reverse culture shock”): the transition home from another culture.
People can experience a broad range of feelings at different times, from being preoccupied with particular memories, to suspiciousness, to loss of faith, to physical symptoms. The experiences your friend may go through are sometimes known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a Western term developed after studying the effects of war on United States’ Vietnam War veterans. These feelings do not mean that there is something wrong with your friend—just part of a process of integrating their experiences in the “first world” with the culture from which they’ve returned.
Secondary (aka vicarious) trauma: Trauma can affect people who didn’t witness an event directly, or can be caused by events that don’t seem big. “In fact,” researcher Daniel Hunter notes, “data entry professionals for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, though not hearing any stories of brutality themselves, were found to be severely traumatized.”
Even such exposure described above can affect a person much the same way it affects the people who experienced it directly. The nature and locations of Friends Peace Teams’ projects makes it likely that your friend has been exposed to stories and reactions from trauma survivors. You might also experience some secondary trauma from hearing stories about the place where your friend is living. If you stay aware of the reality of secondary trauma, you can help your friend by giving them a space to heal from it—to vent their anger, or feel their numbness, can be a great help to them. Just as you serve as a caring listener to your friend, make sure you get attention from someone else if you need support.
Compassion fatigue (a form of what’s called burnout): “It’s a feeling of depletion from giving all day,” writes Edward Poliandro, PhD, a stress-management instructor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. It’s a sense of unwell being where the individual feels drained by giving.” Compassion fatigue can happen just from watching American TV news. Its effects are widespread throughout our culture. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or unable to take in what your friend is telling you about their experience, this may be a sign of compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue can stimulate feelings of guilt about any time not spent doing direct service. Workers in another culture often feel guilty about returning to their home culture. Such feelings may be, in part, a reaction to noticing one’s economic privilege. However, guilt is also a common symptom of compassion fatigue, a sign that one needs to take better care of oneself. For example, many nurses in Western hospitals also feel guilty about leaving work at the end of the day.
Small actions done consistently for one’s own well-being can help alleviate compassion fatigue. For instance, one hospital worker social worker observes, “It’s important to realize that taking time away from direct care is not a luxury, but that it is essential. I find that just ducking away for five minutes lets me return to my office refreshed.”
People with compassion fatigue often associate their self-worth with how much they help others. For instance, even if a person is worn out, they may repeatedly stay late at work because it “feels good to be asked.” Confusion between one’s work and one’s self-worth is endemic to our culture, so that it may look normal to us. With emotional work over time, the two can be seen, and cherished, separately. You can help your friend with this, too. While you tell them you value the work they’ve done, also let them know they’re cherished just for being themselves, peace team or no peace team.
The instructions below for listening exchange are adapted from Re-evaluation Counseling. If you want a topic, here are two that have worked well for many people, especially when they have a longer period to be listened to: 1) any particular memories or thoughts that have come to your mind again and again; or 2) Tell your whole story, not just what’s bothering you now. Say that you’re going to start at the beginning; then let yourself talk about whatever comes to mind, even if it doesn’t make sense.
Before you begin:
1) Find a spot where others will not distract or overhear you.
2) Decide who will listen first, and who will be listened to.
3) Agree on confidentiality in the following ways: the listener will not repeat to others what has been said; the listener will not refer to what the talker said when the roles are switched; only the person who originally said something can bring it up in conversation later.
4) Time your listening with a watch or timer, so that each person will get the same amount of attention. Try five minutes for each person. If you like this method, you can try longer sessions: 15 minutes, or even an hour each.
For the listener:
1) Listen without talking, but show in your face that you like the person you are listening to. RC calls this “delighted attention.”
2) Keep in mind that you are listening to the person. If you become distracted or get caught up in feelings about what’s being said, remind yourself that the person you are listening to is delightful, good, and smart.
3) Stay connected using eye contact.
4) If the person moves, stretches, laughs, cries, yawns, talks rapidly or loudly, or shivers, welcome and encourage this. In fact, see if you can notice topics where the talker shows a physical emotional reaction; if you observe this, encourage them to stay on that topic. They may resist, because we often avoid feelings; but your loving support can help them stay with it. If you become uncomfortable yourself, just remind yourself of step number one.
5) Do not interrupt with advice or talk about yourself, even if something reminds you of your own feelings or experiences. This time is for the feelings of the person to whom you are listening.
6) When the time is up, ask an unrelated question to help the other person get their attention off the emotional topics and back out onto their surroundings. For instance, ask the person to name words that begin with a certain letter, or name the color of their shirt. Any silly question will do so long as it is unrelated to whatever the person was talking about. This short activity will not only allow the person to switch roles and give their full attention as listener; it will also help prevent the person from being preoccupied later with whatever they talked about during their time. It also gives the person practice in switching in a fairly short time from intense emotion to present-day reality. When the person says their attention is sufficiently “out,” switch roles and start the timer again.
For the person being listened to:
1) Anything you do during your five minutes is just right. You can’t do this wrong.
2) You may want to start by noticing that someone is listening to you, and go from there.
3) If you notice any feelings coming up, allow them to come out.
4) If the person listening to you does something that makes you uncomfortable or distracts you from your story or feelings, say so and tell them to stop.