Making peace with the past

11 March 2013

Making peace with the past

When you are persecuted and forced to leave your home country, your new life starts with refugee status and painful memories.

Helping refugee women move past this pain using art therapy has been the aim of Manukau Institute of Technology senior counselling lecturer Suzanne Scarrold.

Sue has been working with a group of refugee women from Cambodia, Iran and China based at Refugee Education for Adults and Family (REAF) at Selwyn College.

The group have been making “altered books”, which contain positive artefacts and memories of their home countries.

Suzanne, who is using the work as part of her Master’s research, says having some positive grounding in the past is important to your sense of self.

The feedback from the women Suzanne has been working with has been very positive. She says their willingness to share their stories has been invaluable to her research into the link between positive memories and happiness.

“Often when counsellors work with refugees, it is around their experiences of trauma. This is a different approach, looking back on good memories. All the women have told me they have thoroughly enjoyed the process.”

Suzanne first started working with refugees in the early 2000s when the MV Tampa refugees from Afghanistan were granted asylum in New Zealand.

As well as conventional counselling, Suzanne used drawing therapy with the Tampa refugees and found it was an effective method.

“Art therapy can access deeper levels of feeling than you may be able to put into words. It is a way of reaching those feelings in the subconscious,” Suzanne says.

She has since specialised in arts therapy and it is knowledge she enjoys passing on to students at MIT on the Bachelor of Applied Social Science (Counselling).

ENDS

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