Two Dinners
Last night I ate two dinners. One was American, the other Nepali. I was finishing treatment with a Nepalise/Bhutanese family with whom I had worked for a year. I have been visiting with them in their home, doing family therapy and helping them understand and negotiate the complications of American life. We have ended every session with a Nepali meal that the family cooked for me as a way of saying thanks -- and probably also a traditional way of treating a guest. When planning our final session, I suggested that I cook an American meal for them: after some discussion, they decided on pizza. But then, after eating pizza together and watching some Nepali music videos, the family wanted, one more time, to cook me a Nepali meal. So against all possibility of available room in my stomach, I graciously ate a second meal! I thought I was never going to fit into my pants again, I felt so full. But I'm glad we were able to honor each other in this way.
Culturally competent therapy can be so unique. Throw in home visits, and the normal protocol is no longer sufficient. I feel like a mix of therapist, artist, American diplomat, cultural translator, and guest when doing treatment in the home with refugees. I would not usually accept a full meal from a client when working with Americans: the need to maintain boundaries takes priority over politeness. Most Americans would hardly consider offering food to their therapist, in my experience. But refugees are thrown into unfamiliar and often dehumanizing situations that would disorient and stress out any person. Often, a major psychosocial stressor and trigger of mental health issues is the difficult transition into American life and its many compartmentalized services and relationships. People can feel lost and not cared for -- and certainly not treated like human beings! I will not contribute to this by denying people the dignity of sharing food and the remaining aspects of their lost cultures.
I have learned so much about people and their personal resources (important in therapy) by sharing food. I once learned about a woman's past life as a vendor of fufu in Freetown by sharing fufu and "watah greens"with her. She cried as she remembered that simple and fulfilling work, which added to her purpose as a mother and a wife. Most other cultures are not conditioned to spill their guts to total strangers, with the only rationale being that it's the job of that stranger to listen. Often I have felt the need to be a friendly person and gracious guest first before expecting any deep sharing of self. It sometimes takes a few months of rapport-building before one of my clients from another country feels comfortable sharing painful memories with me, a white American woman whom they've only just met. This is in great contrast to my American clients who are often sharing their stories within minutes of walking through the door for the first session. But we Americans are used to this, more or less. And unlike most non-Westerners, we seem to feel almost more comfortable sharing our difficult stuff with a stranger than with a close friend or family member. I don't totally understand this yet.... like a fish in water, it just makes bizarre sense to me.
Culturally competent therapy can be so unique. Throw in home visits, and the normal protocol is no longer sufficient. I feel like a mix of therapist, artist, American diplomat, cultural translator, and guest when doing treatment in the home with refugees. I would not usually accept a full meal from a client when working with Americans: the need to maintain boundaries takes priority over politeness. Most Americans would hardly consider offering food to their therapist, in my experience. But refugees are thrown into unfamiliar and often dehumanizing situations that would disorient and stress out any person. Often, a major psychosocial stressor and trigger of mental health issues is the difficult transition into American life and its many compartmentalized services and relationships. People can feel lost and not cared for -- and certainly not treated like human beings! I will not contribute to this by denying people the dignity of sharing food and the remaining aspects of their lost cultures.
I have learned so much about people and their personal resources (important in therapy) by sharing food. I once learned about a woman's past life as a vendor of fufu in Freetown by sharing fufu and "watah greens"with her. She cried as she remembered that simple and fulfilling work, which added to her purpose as a mother and a wife. Most other cultures are not conditioned to spill their guts to total strangers, with the only rationale being that it's the job of that stranger to listen. Often I have felt the need to be a friendly person and gracious guest first before expecting any deep sharing of self. It sometimes takes a few months of rapport-building before one of my clients from another country feels comfortable sharing painful memories with me, a white American woman whom they've only just met. This is in great contrast to my American clients who are often sharing their stories within minutes of walking through the door for the first session. But we Americans are used to this, more or less. And unlike most non-Westerners, we seem to feel almost more comfortable sharing our difficult stuff with a stranger than with a close friend or family member. I don't totally understand this yet.... like a fish in water, it just makes bizarre sense to me.
Thank you for visiting my blog. I am very interested in what you are doing and will enjoy reading more about your work. warmly, Karen
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