This week I had the
great opportunity to attend a three-day conference on Brumana, a nice town in
the mountains with good fresh air. The
conference was about helping victims of trauma, whether personal or collective,
to break the cycle of violence. By
collective trauma, I mean something like a genocide or living under a brutal
regime. It is something that traumatizes
a group of people and the emotional and behavioral symptoms of that trauma are
widespread throughout the community. One
of the reasons why I loved studying in Lebanon during my junior year of
University is because even if we were studying a topic that I could have
studied in the U.S., the discussion would be so different because of the collective experience of my classmates. This week in the conference, I was very aware
of the fact that studying and discussing trauma and cycles of violence with
Lebanese and Syrian citizens would be very different from taking a class on the
same subject in the U.S. We discussed
the war and oppressive regimes. When we
talked about the cycle of unhealed trauma leading to a continuous cycle of
violence, we got into small groups and had to make dramas to show how this would
look in real life. My group created a
drama which showed our fear that in these countries, those who get rid of the
current regimes and are the next to sit in the palaces, will adopt the same
behaviors as the previous regimes without realizing they have become just as
bad. The cycle continues because there
is no reconciliation between the warring groups, they continue to fear and hate
each other. It was an interesting time
to encounter such a workshop, right as I began my second week in Lebanon. It was a good introduction back into Lebanon
and my work to have the chance to connect with Lebanese and Syrians on these
increasingly relevant issues.
