Becoming ‘Instruments of Healing’ in Mindanao

The Seminar and Workshop

The Trauma Debriefing Seminar and Workshop was conducted in the Provincial Capitol of Lanao del Sur in partnership with Operation Blessing and the Provincial Government of Lanao del Sur through Governor Mamintal Adiong Jr. It was attended by a diverse cross-section of professional people from Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte. Local government officials, Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council members, Muslim Ulama religious leaders, Youth and Women Group leaders, Social Workers, NGOs, Philippine military officers and Christian Faith Based groups all attended. We were educated in the psychological process of stress and trauma by professional counselors. Then we separated into group sessions to practice counseling and group discussions. After two days of training, all participants were encouraged to apply the techniques they learned in their home communities.

I was deeply touched during the training in the predominantly Muslim city of Marawi. A middle-aged female social worker repeatedly expressed negative comments like, “peace is never possible,” and ” groups like you cannot do anything about what’s going on.” She did not want the military to be present in the training. I became curious about her background and her negativity towards giving peace a chance.

Coming from Lanao del Sur, I was not afraid to ask local people who this woman was. Twenty years earlier, her husband had been killed by the military in fighting between the [non-terrorist] Moro National Liberation Front and government forces. For confidentiality, I will not mention her name but my conclusion was this: Her past still haunts her. She’s among the many persons who never received proper counseling to help her overcome her traumatic experiences — not to mention the extreme pain she suffered from because of death of her loved ones.

I gained respect for her because despite her many critical statements, she never left nor walked out of the training. I was trying to empathize and continually observed her. As the sessions went on, her negativity slowly diminished. She freely participated and cooperated with the rest of the group. Throughout the latter sessions, she sat silently and listened intently, very different from how she was acting at the start of the training.

Most of the participants said that it was their first time to undergo training on post-traumatic stress or Trauma Healing. They all realized the importance of incorporating it in their Disaster Management programs. The debriefing workshops acted as an icebreaker among professionals from different sectors. This was especially important because of the negative notion by local people against the military combatants. The practice exercises paved the way to for dialogue among different groups.

Compassion and Consistency are the Keys for Healing

As the training experiences were completed, participants discussed the next steps for instituting post-traumatic stress counseling among all cultural groups suffering from armed conflict. Ms. Grace Alag, the speaker from Operation Blessing, Philippines, encouraged the participants to network and create a support network. This can help facilitate consistent and continually improved trauma counseling in communities afflicted by conflict. Everyone, Christian and Muslim, left the Social Hall of the Provincial Capitol of Lanao del Sur with one goal in mind: To be instruments of Hope to facilitate healing in their communities.