Working with Tibetan Adolescents

Ankita Khanna Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science & Research School Counselor The Shri Ram School DLF Campus

Understanding Adolescence

• Brain Wiring • Physiological changes • Peer group • Sex • Life style • Cultural context • School • Family

Adolescent Brain “Work in Progress”

• Myth of raging hormones • Pruning- loss of substantial neural connections (20 billion synapses) • Immature frontal lobe impacting – Clear thinking, control – Executive functions – High level reasoning and decision making – Manage emotional circuit • Vital part of growing up • Clearing out of weak connections to make way for more efficient information processing in adults • May affect the way they manage emotions, thinking, decision making, impulsivity • Frontal lobes not fully mature until the age of 20

What is ‘normal’?

• Rebellion • Defiance • Rudeness/talking back • Mood swings • Risk taking/experimenting • Lying • Crossing limits/breaking rules

Issues of Sexuality

• Awareness • Orientation • Confusion • Experimentation • Need for “unconditional acceptance & love”

Peer Group – New Umbilical Cord

• Only place they perceive they are not being judged • Addictive • Rules of the Game -Either you are “in” or “out” • “Unconditional love”

A World of Their Own: An Exploration into the Lives of Tibetan Refugee Adolescents

A research project submitted to the University of Delhi for the M.A (Psychology) Program, 2005-2007

Ankita Khanna

Background

• Classical child development theory has been guided by an assumption of homogeneity • Utopian notion of a ‘normal’ childhood in a safe and nurturing family environment • Need for psychological research to recognize, and give a voice to, these diverse and unique childhood experiences.

The Study

• The present study aimed at exploring the lived experiences of six Tibetan refugee adolescents in exile. Using a host of qualitative tools, including interviews, focus groups, drawings and writings, an attempt was made to capture the experiential realities of this young refugee group.

Why Tibetan adolescents?

• A group negotiating with a cross-section of experiences of transience, both developmentally (adolescence) as well as politically (refugee hood) • Unique in their position within the Tibetan refugee community: came to India as unaccompanied minors, have spent a part of their lives in Tibet, and were sent, at varying ages, to India by their families, in the hope of a better future and a good education for them. These children have had almost no contact with their families over the years, and are growing up under the care of the Tibetan government and its organizations.

Preliminary Research Questions

• How do these children negotiate with the developmental challenges of adolescence, and the challenges of their politically unstable lives as refugees? • How do identities evolve in a life characterized by statelessness? • How has their relationship with their families and their country changed in their minds over the years of no contact with either? • Is there an image of ‘home’ and ‘family’ in exile that has replaced the real one?

Themes uncovered

• Remembering the past: • A vivid account of the carefree pleasures childhood in Tibet. • Images of a serene and beautiful landscape, where life was good and everybody was happy. • ‘Nostalgia’

• Life in Exile: • Expectations from the host country: the ‘promised land’ • Long and difficult journey across borders • Series of displacements: lack of a sense of agency • Trying to re-establish a sense of ‘home’ and ‘family’ in the foster homes

• High sense of gratitude towards own community and leader, and the host community • Sense of being disadvantaged/discriminated against • Resignation/passive acceptance

• Self & Nation: “Me and my country” • Self and country inseparable; the larger Tibetan self always precedes the personal self • imprints of a disjunctive, authoritarian Communist regime • How they view the Chinese: anger, resentment, at the same time not necessarily as ‘the enemies’

• The oppressor as strong and all powerful, the Tibetans as weak and defenseless • Visions of Tibet’s future: hopeful/uncertain • Notion of ‘return’: all the participants were unanimous in their firm assertion that they did not want to return to their homeland for good.

• In search of Self: ‘Who am I?’ • Struggling with questions of identity and belonging • Being a ’refugee’ most salient part of identity • Personal aspirations represent a concern for the collective • Boundaries between personal and collective are blurred

Who am I?

I am a girl from Tibet who don’t have a land to call my homeland I am a girl from Tibet where I don’t have a home to call my home I am a girl from Tibet and I left my heart and soul over there.

Namlha, Age 18

Who am I?

This question comes again and again Into my peaceful mind And breaks the tranquility of my mind But who really I am?

“Refugee!” My inner voice quoth

Phunrap, Age 16

• These young refugees often come under intense but opposing pressures in asserting their sense of Self. Life within the exiled community necessitates that they retain the Tibetan identity while the challenges of their particular life stage presses them to evolve a distinct identity of their own.

• In the in-between spaces, this group of young people negotiate and assert a sense of selfhood, an identity uniquely theirs and different from their parents’, from the homeland, and from the larger diaspora consciousness. Like tender plants that are capable of taking root in a new soil, this group of children seems to have created “a world of their own”, with their own joys, struggles, hopes and dreams.

Implications of the study

• Provides a psychological lens through which

to look at the real, qualitative concerns and

realities of this particular group. • The need to look at, and give voice to, the experiences and expressions of children. • Looking at a cross-section of experiences of

transience, both developmentally (adolescence) as well as politically (refugee hood)Therapeutic implications: using group work with refugee children & adolescents

Working with Adolescents

• “Just try it out…..there is no harm in meeting” • Gradual work – First individual – Then with somebody he/she feels comfortable with – The whole family • Self disclosure • It’s OK to be wacky & bizarre • Body language • Language • Confidentiality • Genuineness • Respect • Clarify responsibility as a therapist • Connecting with his/her interest • Anything you do, try not getting shocked… • Be naturally curious to explore their world • Message…I am on your side • Once they understand that ……..you can try out any technique

“You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows spring forth”

Kahlil Gibran