The elevator pitch vs. Injustice

Injustice is a major driver of psychological distress. Instead of receiving therapeutic support for this affliction, people are encouraged to strive for justice. Yet injustice is a separate beast to justice, with its own unique challenges and grievances.

This project aims to put the unburdening of injustice at the very heart of its work. It invites people to let go of their hurts through having their story heard (and validated) – without fear of judgement. Let’s give people their day in court, but do so in environments that are safe, nurturing and ultimately self-empowering.

The People vs. Injustice is being trialled as a free-to-access service. We welcome partners, practitioners and participants to help shape this toolkit for the benefit of our fellow folk. If you are interested please read on. And please share with those who might also want to be involved.

The scale of the problem vs. Injustice

Injustice – a wrongful act that harms someone.

Thanks to research we know that as a species injustice is something humans are averse to. The same is true of monkeys, dogs, horses and crows. We also know that injustice blights 2/3rds of the human population (according to The World Justice Project). That’s currently 51 billion people unable to resolve their problems and move forward.

We know that injustice is the cause of many emotional, psychological and bodily issues. We know that personal injury leaves a residual if it is not dealt with. We know that this sense of irreparable loss can block routes back to a person’s wellness if it is not dealt with.

Here is an incomplete list of some of the ills of our society that may fall under the umbrella of perceived injustices. As you will see they come in all shapes and sizes, with many of them ‘normalised’ and accepted as part of our everyday life.

The justice system vs. Injustice

Justice stands for fairness and moral rightness. Neither justice or injustice, as abstract nouns, play much of a part in ‘the justice system’. Instead this is dominated by ‘law’: a collection of rules created and enforced by governments to regulate behaviour, maintain order, and resolve disputes. Courts follow rigid rules, due process, written statutes, and set procedures. If the criminal justice system decides to take on your case, it no longer becomes yours. Instead you will be a witness for the crown prosecution service.

Depending on the nature of the case, there is likely to be a delay. It is not unheard of for people to dissociate inside hostile court rooms. It is not unheard of for courts to reach decisions that baffle and frustrate. It is common, however, for courts to be a major source of injustice in their own right.

So where else can we go with our injustices?

The mental health system vs. Injustice

Mental health: emotional and psychological wellbeing.
Wellness: being pro-active and conscious about our health and wellbeing.

Within our society, we have lots of avenues for therapy. We have confessional boxes, the Samaritans, counselling, co-counselling, AA meetings, peer support groups, EMDR, etc, etc.

While there is support for individual ailments, classed as ‘responses’ such as anxiety, depression, substance misuse, etc, there is no formal address when it comes to injustice as a main ‘cause’ of our troubles. Quite the opposite: “The use of counselling should be questioned if it is likely that systems of distress are caused by … a lack of opportunity due to discrimination or oppression … Problems of this nature are best addressed by social action.” [Pete Sanders].

So where else can we go to heal our injustices?

The process of healing vs. injustice

Thanks to over one hundred years of research into the human condition we know, by and large, what makes us psychologically well and what makes us unwell. We also know how to become well again if we become unwell. This involves moving away from hostile conditions, towards favourable conditions.

Mercifully there is also a general framework for healing. And it doesn’t have to involve experts – which is just as well since there aren’t enough of them to go around…

In safe, stable environment, we bring whatever is troubling us to the forefront of our mind, where an intervention takes place. This could be verbal, creative, or somatic, among other things. This then allows the distress/trauma to be processed in the human brain rather than staying active in the reptile and mammal parts of our brain.

We can use this knowledge as a basis for our project. We can also utilise a number of other therapeutic tools…

Externalising vs. injustice

One of the most powerful templates of self-healing and self-recovery for sufferers of injustice is Chanel Miller’s victim statement in the ‘Stanford case’.

Chanel’s process of devoting a period of time to crafting away at her words, her story, until it finally spoke her truth, appears not only to have propelled her from sexual violence victim to survivor, but also to thriver – helped along the way by having her testimony read and validated by a lot of people.

The same may be said of Giselle Pelicot. [“It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”]

But here’s the thing: both women were only able to have their voice because they were part of the 3% club. If they had been one of the 97% of people who were unable to secure a conviction around sexual abuse, their words could end up in contempt of court. They could be vulnerable to libel laws.

Yet if we can seek confidential spaces – independent of justice & mental health systems – for people to externalise their internal injustices, maybe this can go some way towards letting go of our emotional and psychological baggage, be it the shame, the anger, the mental load, etc.

Mutual aid vs. Injustice

People: individual human beings; groups of persons; kin; community; collectivist, activists; empaths.

There is a quote that reads: “we are the ones we have been waiting for”. A notion that if you want something doing, you do it yourself. Which brings us to the term mutual aid: people coming together to support each other and in doing so avoiding the need to control, oppress, coerce or create hierarchies.

Unless and until the powers-that-be have a sudden change of heart and (i) acknowledge and accept that their ministries and institutions create injustices as a matter of course, and (ii) are keen to fund a project that seeks not to right wrongs, but to heal wrongs, then we, the people, are on our own. Between something and nothing there is but goodwill among kindly folk.

Community Counselling Cooperative & Self Detective have been working with unmet need for 14 years now. We’ve been enabling all sorts of mutual aid projects to stand on their own two feet, with facilitation training, support, supervision and resources.

So what might healing injustices look like in practice? …

The people vs. Injustice

Early incarnations of ‘the people vs. Injustice’ within existing support groups have shown real promise, typified by the quote “now that I’ve spoken about [my injustice] in front of you guys, I’ve managed to change my mind about it.”

Prior to our first introductory meeting on August 13th – which you are welcome and encouraged to attend – we have a proposed structure to the project:

A starting point…

1. We gather people together who are keen to work collectively, to help repair the ruptures of injustice, as part of an ongoing support group.
2. The group spends time developing a safe space agreement. This includes placing importance on self-regulation and co-regulation in order to ground us emotionally and somatically.
3. The group outlines a consensual, flexible framework of what we can expect from our time together.
4. The group begins the process of sharing their thoughts, feelings and insights around injustice.
5. Participants begin to arc their way towards the epicentre of their own person injuries: testing the waters, probing, exploring, in their own time, in their own way.
6. When a participant is ready to have their ‘day in court’ the dynamics of the group changes. The ‘teller’ comes to the fore and the rest of the group become ‘listeners’, bearing witness to the testimony of the teller.
7. Following this moment there is a debrief for all those involved: there is a re-orienting back into the here and now; and a chance for immediate reflections from the teller, who might also welcome comments from the listeners.
8. To conclude this intervention, there is a brief compassionate ritual undertaken by the group as a whole to recognise what they have gone through collectively.
9. The group carries on. People remain in the group for as long as wish, as long as they need.

Future plans…

10. When a group is ready to become autonomous and peer-led, members can be trained up to become their own ‘good-enough facilitators’.
11. In time, we will explore further group-based interventions to assist injustice sufferers. This could include psychodrama, playback theatre, silent memory protocol, as well as having one-off events that can help fast-track ‘the day in court’ element, for those that are ready to do so.
12. We will set up a website, including an online library of resources, as well as a video of what to expect from the sessions.
13. Using the Self Detective Club podcast as a base, we’ll create anonymised, lived-experience stories of injustices to further help the process of externalising the internal.
14. We will share our findings and promote greater levels of partnership work and stakeholders.
15. We will seek funding to expand our training base so that more groups and events can be set up and become autonomous.
16. We start working with children and young people.

So, finally…

A call to action vs. injustice

Would you or your organisation like to be involved?
If so, you can contact us (usually Simon) on TPVI@communitycounsellingcooperative.co.uk
You may also wish to complete our ‘expression of interest’ form, using the QR code.

You are warmly welcome to attend our inaugural online workshop by signing up via Eventbrite.

You can also attend our live group (based in Newcastle) if you are local…