Part 2 book “A practical guide to therapeutic work with asylum seekers and refugees” has contents: Bearing witness, psychoeducation, building on strengths and resilience through community engagement, working with separated children asylum seekers, self-reflective practice and self-care, working with interpreters. | CHAPTER 8 BEARING WITNESS In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein After reading this chapter and completing the learning activities you will understand the importance of: • the culture being both a hindrance and a support for the refugee • cultural humility and being culturally sensitive • being psychologically resilient in order to allow the client to express their distress. We have found that if we are able to establish a trusting relationship, our refugee clients feel safe enough to connect with and share their concerns with us that we bear witness to. Five psychosocial dimensions When bearing witness to a refugee, we consider five psychosocial levels of context within which they are situated due to the impact that they will have on our work together. The levels are socio-political (their asylum claim), cultural (their own culture as well as that of the host country and organisations within it), interpersonal (relationship between the refugee and practitioner), intra-psychic in terms of the refugee, and intra-psychic in terms of the practitioner. On an intra-psychic level in a refugee context where persecution and even torture have been used, we suggest that it is crucial that a practitioner carefully monitors their own intra-psychic experience 88 Bearing Witness so that their non-directive approach is not compromised by relating in a detached, or conversely, intrusive manner (Pope and GarciaPeltoniemi 1991); for example, by noting experiences of discomfort that may create distance, so as not to have to go with the refugee into their distressing material, or, contrarily, to satisfy their own voyeuristic interest, by asking them to reflect in greater detail on the material than they may want to. On an interpersonal level, it is also important to be sensitive about only being non-directive: as Afuape (2011, ) explains, ‘This may be experienced as disinterest’, as many refugees have ‘lost a significant proportion of their intimate
