The intense dread many individuals seeking asylum experience when they are expected to think and talk about their past may be directly linked to the extreme forms of torture and sexual violence they have endured. Specific forms of torture, especially details of sexual violence are seldom mentioned by men even in the safety of a therapeutic relationship. It is likely that desperate acts, such as self-harm are considered by survivors in efforts to cope with the humiliation, intense pain and the sequelae of torture and sexual violence.
Many individuals seeking asylum may not be ready or able to process their horrific traumas even when threatened with forced repatriation. Therapeutic approaches have generally relied on a combination of strategies to sustain and facilitate improvements in functioning. However, it has been observed that symptoms could persist, and an inability to form coherent narratives and integrate the past is a potential barrier to healing.
The authors therefore adopted a combination of group and individual treatment approaches to assist survivors to form a meaningful narrative of their past, by integrating multiple strategies, incorporating principles of NET (Narrative Exposure Therapy), cultural narratives and practices such as pranayama and mantras in a culturally sensitive manner.
Evaluation and psychometric measures indicate that these interventions contradicted the long standing belief that individuals seeking asylum may not be ready or willing to process their difficult past prior to the resolution of their claims for protection. As survivors began to integrate and construct a narrative of their past traumas the intensity of their symptoms of anxiety, avoidance and arousal decreased, and survivors became increasingly confident to share their traumas.
Assisting clients to narrate trauma experiences, gradually led to habituation to these experiences. The reduction in anxiety and the intensity of the emotional response to the traumatic memory led to the onset of a recovery process.
