The Context of Suffering in Violent Times

Abstract

At the time of writing this, our collective counseling center minds are split between simultaneously preparing for the academic year, while also processing the horrific shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. With regards to the former, we are getting ready for the inevitable surge in demand for services and the various local challenges all our centers face. As for the later, we are considering how another national tragedy and the inevitable inaction that will follow affects our students’ mental wellness. This conversation of inevitabilities, between the local campus needs and our broader national crisis stirred our thinking about our students and whether, as many think they are getting “sicker”, if in fact their apparent sickness is a sign of health and even strength. We believe that symptoms are meaningful and not random. They can be understood as reflecting unconscious and unformulated experiences and conflict (Stern, 2015), which cannot be expressed symbolically through language. Their presence is an indication that something is wrong somewhere in our life without awareness of the actual conflict. A symptom, in other words, is our psyches way of asking that we pay attention to ourselves to determine what in our lives may be causing suffering and pain. Symptoms are in fact ordinary and healthy expressions of conflicts and challenges. From this perspective then, we can consider the increased usage of counseling services as a national symptom of a series of problems we are struggling to confront emotionally and directly. While it would be more convenient to think that the issue lies with young people learning to make their way in the world, recent events, including the rise of White Nationalism, ongoing racism and sexism, discrimination against different sexualities and gender identities, environmental changes, Anti-Semitism, etc., all speak to the opposite. Our students are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, suffering for sure but suffering from the same afflictions as us. The ongoing need of adults to figure out what is “wrong” with these suffering students so as to “fix” them is a convenient displacement. The question is not really about what’s wrong with them but rather what is wrong with “us” that we cannot provide them with conditions of basic safety and security. From financial stability (affected by a recent major recession that still affects income and job security), to food insecurity (with a rising income gap between the rich and the poor), to worries about concealed weapons on college campuses and active shooter drills, it makes sense that students would be coming to see us in record numbers. The current situation reminds us of Racker’s quote (1968) that “the myth of the analytic situation” is that analysis is an interaction between a sick person and a healthy one” (p. 132). Indeed, for many patients what moves the therapy is not a particular interpretation or observation but rather the therapist’s own participation, self-reflection and therapeutic engagement. Therefore, we cannot help but think what is called for at the start of this academic year is movement on the part of us adults. Though our ability to shift the national conversation about student mental well-being, gun control, hate, etc., may be limited, we may be more effective working in our own sandboxes. Here, we can strongly advocate that our students, far from being fragile, entitled, not resilient, and victims, are in fact the opposite. They are strong young people struggling with conflicts about basic JOURNAL OF COLLEGE STUDENT PSYCHOTHERAPY 2019, VOL. 33, NO. 4, 273–274 https://doi.org/10.1080/87568225.2019.1656442