Caring for Yourself Too:

Unfortunately, this idea may be all too familiar to you, whether you are a seasoned peace team worker or on your first team project. For people who do work like yours, it is often part of one’s identity to think of oneself as resilient and able to handle anything. You have been exposed to others’ severe hurts and great needs, and may come to think of your own needs as unimportant or “on hold” until others’ needs can be met. Organizations that employ humanitarian workers often reinforce this attitude.

Your well-being is essential, and you can take care of yourself at every stage of your peace team. When caring for others, your own health does not need to take a backseat to the health of the people you serve. This handbook is meant to assist you and your loved ones in caring for you, especially after you return from a project. The period after one’s return is an important time. You probably expect difficulty at the beginning of your project, when you are first immersed in a culture away from home. “Almost everyone comes home expecting the transition to be easy,” writes Pablo Stanfield, an experienced peace team volunteer, “perhaps because we think of home as a refuge from the alienation found abroad. In fact, it is no easier than the transition to a foreign milieu for a large majority of people who make the trip.” (from “Services for Returned Volunteers,” Peace Teams News, v4 i1)

You may have a hard time after you return home. Living and working in another culture involves more stress than the already demanding work a peace team does. Additionally, you may have experienced a disaster or significant loss during your project. Until healed, any hurts, or even less-than-smooth experiences, may continue to affect you.

Your relationships will probably be affected as well. People around you may not respond to you or your stories with relaxed attention; people who care about you may nonetheless do things that stimulate feelings of upset, confusion, or isolation. Your awareness may have shifted toward the inequality and oppression in our world, and inside, you may feel something is wrong; but middle-class friends may insist—sometimes ferociously—that “everything is fine.”

This disconnect, however painful, may be the start of something wonderful—working on a peace team can help one grow tremendously as a person. By stretching your awareness to include a culture different from your native one, you gain an expanded vision of the human condition. By lending your hand to healing some of humanity’s most violent wounds, you can access deep healing yourself. But profound growth often involves profound struggle, and even deep pain. By the very nature of your crossing between first and third world cultures, you will have trouble finding people whose focus is not limited to one of these worldviews, who can speak to your condition (to use the Quaker saying).

This handbook is designed to help you create a more connected reentry experience for yourself than many returning workers have had in the past. With the right tools and human resources to assist you, you can stay connected to others as you grow. You can slowly integrate your peace team experience with your continued life at home, and can heal from any harmful experiences associated with your project. Integration and healing can help you:

q More easily maintain friendships you’ve chosen to continue with your teammates or people you met in the other culture where you worked;

q Fulfill whatever commitment you make to ongoing peacework, including your relationship with Friends Peace Teams;

q Enrich your family, your friendships, and your community at home.

The materials here draw on resources from the mental health field, nonprofit organizations, Quaker practice, and a peer-counseling community called Re-evaluation Counseling. The sections can be read all at once or separately over a longer period.

All the best to you on your journey home.

Concepts to Explore

Though you may be familiar with these terms, read through the descriptions, as you may well find you have a new perspective on them in light of this particular peace team experience. Putting words to what you’re going through can also be an important step toward freeing yourself of any difficulty associated with your experiences.

Reentry (sometimes called “reverse culture shock”): the transition home from another culture.

People can experience a broad range of feelings during reentry. The table at the end of this section lists common experiences. You may want to look through it occasionally as your experience shifts. The experiences listed on this chart 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.

Identifying with symptoms on the chart does not mean that there is something “wrong” with you or that you need medication. This handbook discusses some of the many resources that can help you through related difficulties.

Secondary (or vicarious) trauma: Trauma can impact 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.” The nature and locations of Friends Peace Teams’ projects makes it likely that you have been exposed to stories and reactions from trauma survivors. You might experience secondary trauma from the project itself, or from talking with other team members, hosts, and friends in the area.

Secondary trauma deserves healing in addition to the other emotional work you do during reentry. You may struggle with how to express your feelings about others’ stories without breaking the confidentiality that may be associated with what you heard. There are counseling methods that can help you heal from secondary trauma without re-telling someone else’s confidential story.

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. Team members may already have compassion fatigue from previous work before the peace team project begins.

Compassion fatigue can stir up feelings of guilt about any time one is not doing direct service. People who work 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, try to understand that guilt is also a common symptom of compassion fatigue. For example, many doctors and nurses in Western hospitals also feel guilty about leaving work at the end of the day. The guilt is not based on reality—other people’s needs are not your fault, and you can’t meet all of them yourself. Look at it as a sign of burnout—in other word, that you need better working conditions, or you need to take better care of yourself.

Caregivers are sometimes trained to think that any problem they feel inside, and their inability to fix all the problems they see in the world, come from some inner flaw of their own, rather than from an external force or system. The inequities of the world are not yours alone to remedy. It may help to remember your role in something larger, and that you are more than just a caregiver, but also a human being.

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.” Doctors who care for peers with compassion fatigue also note the value of exercise, and interests outside of work.

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 done over the course of time, though, the two can be seen, and cherished, separately.

To assist with this emotional work, you may need a counselor who can listen from a point of view outside your confusion, who can repeatedly hold out the truth that, even if you lie in bed all day, your worth is intact, indestructible, and unconditional. The idea that you are good no matter what you do may be difficult to hold onto; having someone remind you of it on a regular basis can help you rise out of much confusion, and recover your own clarity of thinking.

As you discern your ongoing role in peacemaking, also remember that your own health is essential to any work you choose. As said by one doctor who works with colleagues who suffer from compassion fatigue, “You can do all sorts of really demanding things, like giving compassion over a long period of time, if you have the proper balance of physical and spiritual outlets.”

Before you Go

Setting up a positive reentry experience begins before you ever leave home. Though you’ve probably got lots of errands to do and arrangements to make, making time to set up a healthful reentry situation for yourself is important, and can help you on many levels. It’s good for your personal life, good for the people you’re working with, and for helping you act as a bridge between cultures when you return.

Planning Before Your Trip to Manage Stress During Reentry

Before you depart for your project, you will probably consider plans for when your full-time participation in the project is finished. You may have noticed that when you go on any trip, for vacation or to work, the responsibilities you would have met at home are still waiting for you when you return, so that after a trip you have more to do than usual. This increased workload can present difficulties after any trip. But after your peace team, you will have the additional challenge of integrating your experience abroad with your continued life at home. Plan ahead to ease your responsibilities after your return. Think about how you and your family and coworkers can start to figure this out now. Think of the transition home as a major item in any “to-do” list you make, and as something that takes up large amounts of time. Though it may seem difficult to lessen your workload, doing so will help you stay healthy; your health is good for everyone around you.

Setting up your Support System: Figure out ways to stay connected to home while you are away, even if you won’t have access to reliable email or phones. One way to stay connected is to ask to be held in the Light (a Quaker term akin to being prayed for), perhaps at a particular time every day you are away, or a particular day of each week. Ask one of your support people to figure out the time difference so people are thinking of you at the correct time, and spread the word in your religious community.

You can also use the time before your trip to ensure support for when you return. Read the exercise on page 1 of the Reentry section; doing this exercise before you start your peace team can help you with this. Also, talk to your friends and family about any needs you anticipate. Tell them that the weeks after you return may be when you most need attention and understanding from them; and that you may have changed in ways you can’t predict, but you want to stay close.

If you meet face-to-face with your support committee before you leave, think together about some things they could do for you after you return. Acknowledge that their most important role may be during your reentry. See “Your Relationships with your Support Committee and Loved Ones,” starting on page 9 of the Reentry section, for more about working out your support system; clarifying roles before you leave for your peace team is best.

Learning about the Culture

In the time before you leave, you are no doubt learning about the culture where you will be living and working. This study will not only help you do your work better, but will help your experience go more smoothly. Also learn about how you need to adjust your self-care in the field. In addition to medical concerns such as “don’t brush your teeth with the water,” your change in living situation will affect your self-care habits and what you pack. For instance, in some situations you can never get your feet as clean as you might be used to, causing your feet to soil your towel and clothes. Would it help your sense of well-being to bring a small towel just for your feet? Should you bring your own clothesline to dry personal items indoors? Should you have bottled water in your carry-on bag in case you need to take medicines soon after you arrive?

Relaxation

Taking it easy before you leave is also a good form of preparation! Depending on the culture in which you’ll be working, you may have to get used to doing things more slowly or having unexpected breaks. This challenge can be even more dramatic if all the time leading up to your peace team is spent hurrying around doing tasks to prepare for the trip. Do what you can to relax now; get help with preparations.

Feelings about Home

Pay attention to your feelings about materialism and other feelings you have about your home culture. This is a good topic on which to convene a support committee meeting before you leave, so they can give you attention while you express your feelings. Going through such a process now will serve you well later. Sometimes when people return to a Western home they become overwhelmed by what they dislike about the U.S.—perturbed even by things they didn’t notice previously. Though the contrast of another culture brings these feelings up, their roots may be inside you already. Working on them now will be less complicated.

Preparing for Your First 24 Hours Back Home
The first 24 hours after one’s return home are a time of important opportunity for people in reentry. Unfortunately, you will probably have to spend at least one of these hours in an airport. Western airports are weird; they house what can feel like the epitome of Western excess and difference. Any feelings you notice in the first hour or two home will come out more easily in the moment than they will later, even if this means you have to express your feelings in a public place. Sitting in the airport parking lot may be a good place to let things out. Cry, yell, shake—these reactions are fine. You are fine. You’ll be even clearer if you let whatever reactions you feel come up, and out of you.

So that you can make the best use of these 24 hours and have room to express your feelings about your new-old surroundings, the people you spend your first hours at home with should be ready to listen, listen, listen. They should be prepared to give you their full attention, and may need to reserve talk about their own perspectives and experiences until later.

Additionally, many people in reentry find that in the first days or weeks, they need to avoid restaurants and most stores. Whoever picks you up at the airport should be apprised of this tendency—you might show them this page—and they should not have their heart set on stopping somewhere on the way home. Other things can wait; this is the time for you to begin bringing your peace team experience home.

While You’re Away

Managing and Alleviating Added Stress

Living and working in another culture causes more stress than the already demanding work of the peace team itself. For example, on your trip you may experience:

q Separation from family, friends and home;

q Intense physical labor;

q Austere living conditions;

q Different foods;

q Limited communication;

q Potential for injury;

q Lack of sanitation;

q Risk of illness;

q The shock of dealing with the values of a different culture.

(from “Mental Health and Aid Workers: The Case for Collaborative Questioning,” T. Ditzler.)

Acknowledging these various stresses is an important part of caring for yourself.

Debriefing

Even if you do not experience direct violence or a life-threatening event, you will no doubt experience events that will bring up strong feelings. Debriefing right away is best: arrange a process in which each person on the team can express their feelings about whatever happened. See if you can debrief immediately whenever something particularly challenging happens, even if only one person feels upset about it. Agree ahead of time—before something upsetting happens—on the process you will use, and any ground rules involved. (See instructions for Paired Listening for Healing, page 5 in the Reentry Section, for examples of ground rules.)

People in the culture where you are living may have different ways of expressing emotion than you are used to; as you adjust, you may not find as many small, everyday opportunities to express your feelings as you do at home. This difference makes emotional outlets such as journaling and debriefing even more important. Your teammates may also have different thinking about when and how it is OK to express emotion. Consequently, discussing ground rules ahead of time can prevent misunderstandings later when you are more vulnerable.

Remembering Your Goals

Your peace team experience will probably be more positive if you can keep a clear idea of your role in the project, and your goals—for the project and for yourself. Goals are important even though you are not in complete control of outcomes—no one is ever in complete control. The entire team process can go better if you can agree with your teammates on what your roles are.

Unfortunately, many people who do service work have been taught a great urgency to fulfill their service goals, and somehow manage to feel at the same time that they cannot possibly make any difference ever. Keep noticing how valuable you are and what your contributions are, even if you don’t feel like you have reliable feedback about your work.

Making Sense of Health Information

Once you’ve gotten to know people in the culture in which you’re living, it is not unusual to want to try and change your health habits to be more in keeping with the culture in which you’re sojourning. For instance, some people feel a pull to stop taking medications that people in the native culture don’t take. Some even feel like throwing out any or all information they were given about the culture, or health precautions, before they arrived. This feeling may come from a desire for solidarity, or because of conflicting information about what might make them sick.

You cannot achieve total equality or sameness with the people you are meeting. There are differences that you can’t change by yourself in the course of one peace team. These differences include the fact that most people you meet are at home, while you are travelling. There is nothing wrong with the fact that you come from a different culture.

Do not abandon self-care or safety measures. As you reconcile pre-departure information with what you find when you arrive at your project site, consider how you can best fulfill your responsibility to care for yourself—a responsibility to the community on whose behalf you are working, who helped you get to this point. Whatever habits you choose, conduct them with caring attention toward yourself.

Reentry:

Some Basic Approaches to Integration and Healing

1. Make an inventory of your resources; then think about how to adapt and expand them. You can do this in two sittings, or all at once. Do this exercise when you can set aside at least 30 minutes.

First, write your answers to the questions using the brainstorm method: write everything that comes to mind, without judging whether it’s good or bad. Make sure you consider tools you may have come across during your peace team experience. After having lived in another culture, it is not uncommon to find that activities one used to enjoy or find helpful in difficult times may now seem unsatisfying because of the perspective gained during cross-cultural experience. It may be possible to use new tools, or to bring out in your community aspects of the culture from which you’ve returned.

q What traditions do you keep? These are usually things that happen on some regular basis, like every week, or every year on the same day.

q What people are around to support you? For example, elders, concerned parents, women’s groups, teachers? If it comes to you, also note how they could help.

q What resources exist in your wider community at home? For instance, some towns and organizations offer mediation or conflict resolution services. Also list people who might know of resources.

q What skills or tools do you personally have? Examples might include a method of artistic expression, or something you do when you’re upset, like listening to music.

When you’re done listing answers, or at a later time, look over what you’ve written down. What resources do you want to access? How might you want to adapt them to better fit your current needs? Note down all your ideas as you go. For example, if silent prayer or meditation is a tradition for you, perhaps there are new times that silence can help you when you feel overwhelmed: a silent meal with friends or family, or a few minutes of silence while you are at work.

2. Pay attention to your feelings.

Western middle-class culture tends to be “up in its head,” at the expense of emotions. To experience emotions is often viewed as being weak, unfocused, or lacking resilience. But if we have the courage to feel our emotions, they will not rule us; we can release them and see more clearly the rich lessons of our experiences. Feeling your emotions is different from acting on them. In fact, if you do give your emotions the space to come to the surface, you’ll find that afterwards you’re better able to think rationally about your best course of action.

Participating on a peace team, and going to another culture and back, are going to bring up emotions. If you try to gloss them over, then they will influence you in unhealthy ways, such as sapping your energy, your sense of purpose, clouding your thinking. The following information can help you experience your feelings in a productive and nurturing way.

Working through feelings takes time, and doesn’t always feel pleasant. In particular, while one is releasing a feeling, the release can temporarily bring up the way an event originally felt, including physical feelings. Feelings might be expressed or released while talking, or while just laughing, stretching and yawning, moving, perspiring or shivering. As Re-evaluation Counseling theory teaches, it is part of our nature to experience deep feelings, or a crisis, as we work toward freeing ourselves of past hurts. Deep feelings don’t mean you are sick or having a “breakdown.” There are many resources that can help you through such feelings, so that when you are finished, you have not simply restored yourself to how you felt before, but learned and grown.

Having the attention of a skilled listener is an especially important healing tool. As Pablo Stanfield says in “Services for Returned Volunteers,” “Speaking tours can help give one a forum for expressing both facts and real experiences as well as sharing political deductions and passion for required changes. They do not take the place of a caring friend who can listen attentively every time one needs a shoulder for the emotions that are stimulated.” Many activists have found that if they seek separate counseling attention to release tension about oppression and experiences associated with their work, then when they communicate as activists, they are more relaxed and come up with great things to say.

A friend or committee member who asks a question or offers help may not always have healing in mind. Listening can serve different functions as well: it can help one receive information, incite advice, connect people, help the speaker vent feelings or think out loud, start a discussion…state clearly what kind of listening you are asking for. People also have different listening techniques that may or may not work for you. If you know what you want—or don’t want—ask for it. For more about skilled listening, see “Paired Listening for Healing” in page 5 of this section, and “Exploring your Counseling Options,” page 11.

There are additional tools to help you work through feelings that you can use in solitude. Bookstores and libraries carry good books about journaling, such as Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. You can find an index to online Quaker bookstores at <www.quaker.org>; affordable journaling books available at these stores include Live the Questions, Write into the Answers, by Barbara E. Parsons and Mary C. Morrison.

Freewriting also helps many people express emotions. In a practice similar to brainstorming, you write down everything you think, without stopping, and nothing you write is wrong. To start, you can set a kitchen timer for ten minutes or more, or set a goal to fill a page, or two or three, before you stop. Title the page with the subject you want to start with, and then just go. Write every thought that comes to you, even if it’s off topic, even if it’s about your pencil, or how you feel about writing. Don’t take your pen off the paper. If your mind wanders, write down whatever words are going through your head. What you write down doesn’t ever need to be seen by anyone but you, so you are free to write what’s uncomfortable, to write anything. You don’t even have to write phrases that make sense.

A Freewriting Exercise

1) Set a timer or goal for how many pages you want to write.

2) Freewrite starting with the topic “At home after my peace team I want to keep….”

3) The next step can be done right away or at another time. Don’t read this step until you’re done the freewriting. Look back over what you wrote. Ask yourself, “How can I keep these things with me now? How could my community and the people who care about me help with this?” (Examples: Ask to find a smaller place to go shopping. Say, “People should come visit more.” Suggest we have this food more often.) Concrete examples may or may not come up.

Other topics you can use for freewriting include:

q What’s weird about home? (e.g.- the USA)

q What you missed about home when you lived away

q What you like about how you have changed since before your trip

q What you like about the culture you’ve returned from

q What you like about your national identity

q Read a paragraph or page of a book about reentry or trauma; then freewrite.

If you feel comfortable, share one or more of these lists with your friends. Showing them the piece of paper in front of you can help you talk about something that might otherwise be difficult to bring up. If there is something on the list you don’t want to show them, then take some items from your list and share those.

Other Exercises: If your team had a process for debriefing or checking in about feelings, and you found it useful, find a way to continue this practice after returning. You might benefit from the continuity in addition to the process itself. Your support committee may be able to conduct such practices with you, or think of others who can.

With any tools you use, you may want to keep a few things in mind when working through your feelings. First, consider that the way you feel now, though it might seem to have been caused by recent events, may also be linked to experiences in your past, long before the peace team began. While it may not feel good, whatever is troubling you is important. This time may present an opportunity to work through something that has been confusing for years. When you feel yourself starting to cry, or some other release of emotion, welcome this, even if it’s not at a convenient time. There is no better time to heal than the present.

It is not uncommon for international workers to choose a peace team trip, in part, to get away from something at home. Although this is only part of one’s motivation, some disappointment is likely to result, if not during the project, then when you return home. Even if the situation you were trying to get away from has changed when you return, leftover feelings you had about it have probably been festering. Once brought out, these feelings can be healed. An important step in such a process is noticing the disappointment that the feelings aren’t already gone.

Paired Listening for Healing

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:

q Any particular memories with which you are preoccupied, or that have come to your mind again and again.

q Tell your whole story; your participation in this team is not the beginning of the story. Say that you are 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 that what is said will be confidential in the following ways: the listener will not repeat to others what has been said; the listener will not refer to what the person said later 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, 30 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 steps one and two.

5) Do not interrupt the person with advice or talk about yourself, even if something said 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 time 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.

3. Give your body some positive attention.

Your body has been through a lot over the course of your peace team experience. You may find yourself with some physical discomfort. People who have been through intense experiences often need more sleep, not just in the days one is recovering from jetlag, but in the weeks beyond. Extra sleep helps some emotional dis-ease, as well as muscle and joint pain.

Relaxation techniques are recommended by many doctors to help alleviate ongoing tension and pain and relieve anxiety. For instance, progressive muscle relaxation is easy to learn: stretch out comfortably on a floor; tense one muscle group for 4-10 seconds, then give yourself 10-20 seconds to release and relax all over. One by one, starting with your feet, focus on each muscle group. Some muscles are tensed by clenching, such as hands and thighs; some are tensed stretching or arching, such as the ankles, back and neck. Don’t forget your jaw (tense by grinning) and eyes (tense by shutting tightly). When you are finished, one way to bring your attention back out is to count backward from five to one.

Other relaxation techniques can be learned from a simple set of instructions obtained from health books and various health care professionals. Or you can simply take a few minutes to move your body and give it your attention. In the other culture where you lived, you may have learned new ways to relax; try to bring them home now.

As both Eastern and Western medical cultures agree, emotional experiences can cause real physical effects. Often, emotional release—especially while being listened to—can alleviate physical symptoms. Feeling new physical symptoms (such as those on the chart on page 7 of the Introduction) can be confusing after one has returned from another culture. During reentry, many people worry they have a disease. Unless you have specific symptoms of an illness, you may want to try some emotional healing before visiting the tropical disease doctor.

4. Make room for transition and growth.

Your brain is probably working overtime to sort through and learn from the experiences you’ve had recently. With enough room to process these experiences, you may find your life becoming better than it was before your peace team sojourn began.

What does making room mean to you? It could include relaxing your schedule and assuming that everything will take longer; devoting a larger portion of your time to being with family, in solitude, or sleep; or scheduling some free time that has no agenda attached to it. Many people who have been in cultures with a different pace find, once they return home, they want to reduce their pace too.

You may find yourself stepping out of old roles now that you have gained new wisdom and adjusted your horizon. To allow for growth, you may need to let your identity shift a bit. Giving up an identity, such as the one who always does X, Y, or Z at a gathering, may be scary for you and those around you. But it doesn’t mean giving up your self. The resources you wrote down in your inventory can help you remember what you want to do. If a role you are stepping out of involves agreements with other people, or those around you are simply accustomed to your former way of acting, you may feel like you are losing the resource of these friendships, at least temporarily. But it is possible for you to negotiate changes, and for others to learn to accept and appreciate how you’ve changed.

Peace team workers often remark that they received more than those they served. This may very well be true. But the kind of work you have done can also have positive repercussions that can’t be seen right away. Peace Corps volunteers who thought they had been ineffective, Pablo Stanfield relates, found out years later that their work sparked significant improvements or changes. Allow room for the possibility that your work was valuable in ways you may never know.

Relationships with your Support Committee and Loved Ones

Loved Ones

While you are separated from your loved ones, you may experience a range of feelings about being away from them. Homesickness is not uncommon, and perhaps an idealization of someone whom you can’t currently talk to, but would like to share your thoughts and feelings with.

Sometimes, after a separation, two people can return gracefully and flexibly to closeness. Sometimes, however, the time after a separation can get bumpy, awkward. You may feel disappointed that you don’t feel on the same page with those who care about you.

When you return from working on this peace team and living in another culture, you have probably grown, and will keep deciding how to change in light of your experience. While you were away, your loved ones may have also grown and changed in other ways. How, then, can you meet the challenge to connect? Here are a few things you might want to keep in mind when thinking about your friends and family. These advices are also included in the section supplied for you to give to your loved ones.

q Act gently with each other. Our whole culture can promote unconscious harshness between people who care about each other. But you can find your kind manner, even when you’re feeling hurt or confused. You and the people you care about are good people, and you may have a lot to offer each other, if you can treat each other in a way that keeps you both safe and relaxed.

Let your loved ones know they are safe with you, just as you want to be safe with them. Save your expressions of anger for times when someone has agreed to listen as a counselor would. Act with trust that the way will open, as Quakers say, for you and your friends to understand each other as you both work on the relationship. Reading this handbook’s “Pages for Loved Ones” may help you think about the perspectives of your loved ones.

q If your relationship is bringing up difficult feelings, consider that they might be sparked or aggravated by your reentry experience. Focus on healing through your reentry experience, as healing from past experiences can only help your relationships. You may want to acknowledge to your friend that your reentry is making things harder, including the relationship.

Use your tools for healthy relationships as well. In particular, own your feelings, and express them as your own, not as though the person with whom you are speaking caused them. Strive to do this even if you’re frustrated with them. And above all, don’t feel bad for having difficulties. Just don’t give up on each other; use any difficulties as the opportunity they are, to grow closer across whatever differences you find between you.

q Keep in touch. Many people in reentry find that they 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, keeping in contact with people you care about, even at a reduced level, can help preserve closeness. During reentry, stay in touch with your friends on some kind of regular basis, even if you feel like being left alone.

People at home will never really be able to know what your experience was like—this is part of the human condition, and not unique to cross-cultural work. But if you can stay in regular contact, it can be easier for you to tell people about the details of your daily life. Staying in touch can, over time, mean the difference between being asked “How was Africa?” and “What happened next?”

Real contact with others at home is not just important for your health—it is also a significant part of the work you have set out to do as a peace team member. By the very nature of the friendships you have at home and your connections abroad, you are building bridges of understanding and knowledge between the two cultures you have inhabited.

q Educate loved ones about reentry by giving them a handout or letter:

1. Pablo Stanfield’s article, “Training Volunteers for Reentry: Part 1” provides a good overview on reentry.

Short printable information sheets on terms like compassion fatigue, and an interesting psychological term called “resilience,” are available on the web at <http://www.humanitarian-psy.org>

Look through Appendix B, “Pages for Loved Ones,” and think to whom you might like to give it.

Your Support Committee: Clarifying Roles

Agreeing on the role of your support committee will help things go better for you and for the committee. You can get help by asking the clerk (or, if there isn’t one yet, the person forming the committee) to communicate with the rest of the committee about the issues described in this section. Clarify roles as early in the process as possible. Let any potential new committee members know what you expect before they commit, so they can make an informed and realistic decision about whether they can offer what you need.

1) Clarify the minimum time commitment you want.

2) Confirm each member’s availability, particularly immediately after your return.

3) What role would you like the committee to serve, as far as you know at this point? Different people find different things useful, and it’s important that your committee be aware of this; you can help by telling them what you think will help you. Do you want them to provide listening? Practical assistance such as bringing meals? Help organizing speaking engagements?

Sometimes a separate Peace and Social Concerns-type committee within your Quaker meeting or church may take on the task of helping with speaking engagements—such as publicity, securing a location, being with you beforehand for moral support, filling some seats themselves, and helping you evaluate the event afterward. Such a separation of functions can keep the support committee “pure” as well as expanding the sense of meeting-wide involvement.

4) What does your Quaker meeting expect from you and your support committee? If they expect reports, supervision of your outreach and fundraising, or other functions, should these functions be separated from the supportive role of the committee? For instance, you could have separate meetings for support and for supervision.

5) Give the committee ongoing feedback, both positive and negative.

Exploring your Counseling Options

Everyone can benefit from counseling. To assist you in considering your options, below are some descriptions of established methods of counseling, and examples of questions you might want to ask when considering them.

Reevaluation Counseling (aka “Co-counseling”)

Reevaluation Counseling (RC) is a system whereby people of all backgrounds can learn to exchange effective help with one another. RC is based on the idea that all people are born good, powerful, and zestful, with a natural thirst for justice and the intelligence to respond creatively to any new situation. However, these qualities have become partially blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated “distress” experiences that begin early in our lives and link to one another over time.

Any young person would recover from a hurtful experience spontaneously by use of what RC calls “discharge” (talking, crying, trembling, raging, laughing, etc.). However, this natural process is interfered with by well-meaning people (“There there, don’t be upset,” etc.) who erroneously equate the healing with the hurt itself. Healing can take place years later, successfully removing confusion and allowing people to reevaluate present situations using their full intelligence. Co-counseling instruction includes practice in assisting people in discharging internalized oppression.

Basic co-counseling theory and skills are usually taught in a thirteen-week class in which one receives counseling and also learns how to be a counselor; check with your local contact person to see what learning opportunities exist in your area. Fees to learn co-counseling are on a sliding scale and very affordable in comparison to non-insurance-covered mental health services. Once one learns the basic skills, co-counselors can exchange sessions without money changing hands.

The author highly recommends co-counseling classes. Co-counseling is affordable, an excellent tool for people doing ongoing liberation work, and you can apply the skills not only in formal sessions, but also in various life settings. To find a contact person in your area, call Personal Counselors at 1-206-284-0311.

Questions to ask an RC contact person:

q How can I learn more about co-counseling classes to help me decide whether to take one?

q When are classes (or any other learning opportunities) starting?

q What time commitment is involved?

q What fees are associated? When are these due?

Pastoral Counseling

Thanks to Dale Hayes, Quaker pastoral counselor, for this information.

Trained in both psychology and theology, a pastoral counselor can address psychological and spiritual issues. You should consider meeting with a pastoral counselor if you want to enter into an honest, caring relationship that allows you to address and seek meaning of your experiences in the context of religion and spirituality. While pastoral counselors ordinarily are connected with a particular faith tradition, they offer their services to anyone who wishes to avail themselves of them.

You may locate an experienced and spiritually mature pastoral counselor through your own faith tradition. If not, the American Association of Pastoral Counselors provides a list of over 100 accredited pastoral counseling centers. You can call (703) 385-6967 or browse www.aapc.org/centers.htm to find the name of a certified pastoral counselor near you. Fees of pastoral counselors generally are lower than those of other health care professionals, but health insurance does not always cover them. The prevailing ethic of pastoral counseling is to make every effort to treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

Mental Health Counseling

There are many kinds of counseling in the mental health field. Before establishing a counseling relationship, it is important to learn about the technique your counselor uses, and whether it fits your counseling goals. Also make sure you feel safe and relaxed with your counselor.

Questions you may want to ask before starting a counseling relationship:

q What is the theory behind this type of counseling?

q How does the counselor react to dramatic or sustained expressions of deep feeling?

(Does the technique see them as alarming or a warning sign, or can the counselor listen to them?)

q For each session, how much will I pay, and how much will be paid by my insurance plan? When are these payments due?

q To what extent does the counselor’s practice rely on the use of psychiatric drugs?

Author’s Note: Psychiatric drugs are probably not what you need to integrate, and heal from, past experiences. If you weren’t taking them before your peace team experience, try to find a counselor who can listen to you and assist you without drugs being part of the picture.

When Things Get Difficult

Sometimes you might need more than you expected, or more than your friends realize. You deserve all the help you need, even when it’s not convenient or planned for. Information about a few common difficulties is outlined in this section, with suggestions on how to get more help. Ask yourself what your resources are, and find new ones.

Challenges Associated with Reading

It is not unusual for anyone to experience difficulty reading—having trouble focusing, reading the same sentence over and over, or simply feeling daunted by the task. Symptoms such as those on the chart on page 7 of the Introduction can aggravate these feelings, and difficulty reading can interfere with one’s ability to get information or stay in touch with one’s community.

If you want to read something but are having a hard time, try working through your feelings about reading. For example, you could bring an article to a counseling session. Or try calling a member of your support committee and ask them to listen to you talk about your feelings about reading, or about the material you’re reading. Ask them to just listen. Many co-counselors have found it helpful to talk about memories of difficulty reading when they were in school; releasing these feelings can help clear up current difficulties. Or, ask someone to read to you.

Use Food for Nourishment; Use Better Tools for Addressing Feelings

During times of transition, it’s not uncommon to do what’s called “emotional eating”—that is, deciding to eat or not to eat based on emotions. Some people eat to stuff feelings down or anesthetize themselves when feelings arise; some eat a particular food to remind themselves of a time when they felt better, or to try to re-create something lost.

If you suspect you are eating for emotional reasons, try listening to your stomach. In French Toast for Breakfast: Declaring Peace with Emotional Eating, psychotherapist Mary Anne Cohen discusses different kinds of emotional eating and tools that can help people choose alternatives. Cohen writes that if your mouth is hungry but your stomach is not, it “usually means you are struggling with an emotional hunger.” Ask yourself whether your stomach is hungry. If your mouth is hungry but your stomach is not, ask yourself what you are feeling. How might you address this feeling, other than by eating? Cohen explains:

When angry, for example, emotional eaters often like to bite and chew aggressively. When looking for comfort, emotional eaters will often seek out foods they can lick and suck.

Sometimes, despite all your best efforts, you may still have episodes of emotional eating, but this can offer you an opportunity to decipher what could have satisfied you instead. Were you angry, lonely, tired? How else might you have expressed or comforted yourself?

In contrast, some people develop a habit of not eating as a way to address emotions, especially if they’ve been upset by an experience they couldn’t control. People who are numb, or avoiding feelings, may lose touch with feelings of hunger and fullness. Many therapists advise trying to think of a bit of nutritious food as healing medicine.

If you haven’t eaten for a day or more, or think you might be starving yourself, get help. (Even if you’ve gained weight, a habit of starvation is a sign you need help.) Call or visit someone: a trusted friend, your counselor, your doctor, or a member of your support committee, to let them know what’s going on. At least one of these people should be able to help you think about who and what can help you further.

Insomnia

Insomnia is another common experience for people in situations like reentry. Jetlag can cause sleeplessness or sleeping at odd hours, but usually does not lead to chronic insomnia (defined as “an inability to get a good night’s sleep on most nights over a month,” according to Prescription for Nutritional Healing, by Phyllis Balch, CNC and James Balch, MD). Getting good sleep is essential to all aspects of your health. Even if you don’t have chronic insomnia, books like Prescription for Nutritional Healing, available for consultation in many health food stores, include both nutritional remedies and habit changes that can alleviate an inability to fall asleep or stay asleep. A doctor may also be able to help.

If You’re Having Trouble Completing Tasks or Making Decisions

Western cultures are very focused on efficiency and tasks. After a trip, particularly during the transition of reentry, these values may not seem as important to you as they used to; or you may want to do things but have difficulty focusing.

If you want help making progress on tasks, creativity expert Susan Kennedy (whose books include Creative Companion) has written about a technique called “Micromovements” in which you break up an overall goal into tiny pieces and focus on progress rather than efficiency. For example, if you want to think about applying to an educational program, but the tasks or decisions involved seem overwhelming, identify a tiny step to take; just pick up the course catalog. Tell yourself you’re only going to read for five minutes. Any task is progress toward your goal.

The best wishes and prayers of Friends Peace Teams go with you as you bring your growing wisdom home to yourself, your friends, and the Friends around you. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us.

Bibliography

Balch, Phyllis A., CNC and James L. Balch, MD. Prescription for Nutritional Healing.

New York: Avery, 2000.

Cohen, Mary Anne. French Toast for Breakfast: Declaring Peace with Emotional Eating.

Carlsbad: Gurze, 1995.

Ditzler, T. Mental health and aid workers: the case for collaborative questioning. The

Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, 2001. http://www.jha.ac/articles/a063.htm

Ehrenreich, John H., Ph.D. Caring for others, caring for yourself: A guide for

humanitarian, health care, and human rights workers. Old Westbury: State

University of New York, 2002.

Hunter, Daniel. Dealing with traumatic events. Training for Change Orientation

Documents, 2002.

Kennedy, Susan. Creative Companion. New York: Fireside, 1991.

Stanfield, D. Pablo. Services for returned volunteers. Peace Team News. Val Liveoak

(Ed.) v8, i1, pp. 6-9.

Stanfield, D. Pablo. Training Volunteers for Reentry: Part I. Peace Teams News. Val Liveoak

(Ed.), v4, i1, pp. 7-9/

Ver Berkmoes, Ryan. Doctors who care too much: ‘compassion fatigue’ plagues health

professionals who haven’t learned their limits of giving. American Medical

News, July 6, 1990, v33 n26, pp23-26.

Wessells, Michael G. Culture, power, and community: Intercultural approaches to

psychosocial assistance and healing. Randolph-Macon College.

About the Author

Rachel Avery Harrison is a member of Friends Peace Teams’ Coordinating Committee; she served as their Recording Clerk from 2001-2003 and has served on the Reentry Committee since its inception in 2001. A facilitator in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), she traveled twice to Ghana as organizer of an international peace team leading AVP. She led a two-year support group in the peer counseling community of Re-evaluation Counseling, and has also used co-counseling to lead support groups for AVP facilitators who work in prisons. Rachel has been a Quaker since childhood and is a member of Adelphi Monthly Meeting (Baltimore Yearly Meeting) in Maryland.