Interview with Rubén Monreal: psychotherapy for deaf people

Psychotherapy is characterized by adapting to the needs of each type of patient; It is part of the nature of this service to take into account the particularities of the individual and do everything possible to correspond to them in the professional treatment that is given.

This work philosophy means taking nothing for granted: what works for one person may not work for another, and this even applies to the way you communicate. The clearest case in which this occurs is found in deaf people who go to the psychologist.

in this interview We talked with Rubén Monreal, a psychologist specializing in psychotherapy for deaf people who attends in Madrid.

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Interview with Rubén Monreal: this is psychological therapy for deaf people

Ruben Monreal he is one of the few psychologists in Madrid who care for deaf people in Spanish sign language. On this occasion, he tells us about his professional experience caring for members of people with hearing loss or profound deafness.

How was your learning process of Spanish Sign Language?

I consider that I am lucky in that sense to be a direct relative of deaf people and that has made things easier for me when it comes to learning Spanish Sign Language. Since I was born I have expressed myself fluently in this language and to this day I have been able to understand what a deaf person wants to convey without any problem.

Sometimes it happens that professionals are trained to be able to offer services, but in my opinion that training is not enough to be able to reach people and understand what they need until we truly connect with their needs.

Sometimes our connection with others fails us, and in that I consider myself lucky, when it comes to relating to and understanding the demands of a deaf person who comes for a consultation.

Many times the deaf community is spoken of as a whole with its own cultural characteristics, having its own language and typical ways of socializing. Do you think this is reflected in the type of problems and needs that lead some deaf people to attend psychotherapy?

I don't think so. I think that deaf people have integrated thanks in part to the technologies that allow them to send messages and make video calls, in an extraordinary way in today's society.

In fact, we have the proof that there are practically no educational centers or schools exclusively for children anymore. deaf, but has opted for the inclusion of this community in mixed classrooms with mixed hearing and deaf children.

On the other hand, it is true that realistically the world is not ideally designed for people deaf despite the fact that the advent of mobile phones and computers have made things easier for this collective.

For this reason, at times, some deaf people may feel undervalued, disconnected from the rest, disillusioned or tired of perceiving how in situations that are important to them, they are not given access or facilities to what they want or what would make them feel better.

Many times, moreover, the fact of being hearing people does not help us to put ourselves in their shoes, we do not understand what life is like without being able to hear and we do not even stop to become aware of this.

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In your experience, are the cases of discrimination that deaf people still suffer today are significant enough to be, in itself, the main cause for which many are going to therapy?

In a certain way yes. Let's imagine for a moment that a deaf person gets on a bus and decides to sit at the end of it. without noticing the sound emitted by the little machine to warn that there are no more trips left in the ticket.

The driver tries to warn her, but he perceives that this person is not paying attention to him. For this reason, the driver, fed up and offended by this "attitude" of indolence when feeling ignored, drives in a aggressive and exasperated to this deaf person to tell him that he has not paid for the trip and that he has to get off the bus.

Well, what would we perceive if we were for a moment that deaf person? Exactly, the consequences. We don't know what could have happened, we're just seeing a pissed off, exasperated driver accusing us of we don't really know what. Emotionally, a message of hate and anger is reaching us and this has an impact on us without expecting it.

Emotions are transmitted, so we have already absorbed the unpleasant message despite the fact that it could have been avoided with sufficient means or by paying more attention to things.

Consequently, being attentive to the present moment (Mindfulness is one of the first things we work with hard of hearing people) becomes fundamental for the deaf people, since operating on automatic pilot for hearing people cannot generate apparently painful consequences, but in the case of the deaf group, Yeah.

In other words, this is just one example of how there are a multitude of daily situations that can generate conflict and that can make deaf people sometimes feel misunderstood, discriminated against and mistreated in the society in which they live. we live.

Does the way in which the psychologist establishes the therapeutic relationship between professional and patient have particularities when caring for a deaf person?

Not necessarily. We follow a similar work to the one I establish with hearing people, except that we change the “language”. Both client and I establish communication through Spanish Sign Language (LSE).

For me as a professional it is a challenge, a pride and a motivation to be able to collaborate with deaf people and propose the learning of psychological skills without the use of the auditory canal for it.

It seems to me that it is a way of adding value to this group so that they can relate to reality in a healthier and fuller way and I feel truly privileged to learn in this therapeutic relationship about the difficulties and strengths that these deaf people have developed throughout their lives to get to where they have arrived.

Due to the type of complaints that you have been perceiving, what ideas do you think would have to permeate more in society so that deaf people feel more and better integrated?

At this point, I am in favor of only one idea, which is to be more conscious. Being more attentive and empathetic to the needs of the deaf collective.

I believe that, without paying real attention, we can raise little awareness as a society. Look at climate change. Until it has not started to get very high temperatures in the month of October we have not realized that we may be destroying the planet.

For this reason, it seems to me that we, as hearing people that we are, could try for a month to live without hearing anything to understand from what perspective a deaf person faces day-to-day situations and the difficulties that are sometimes encountered due to not being able to hear or hear little.

Regarding psychotherapy services designed specifically for deaf people, do you think there are good options for training as a psychologist trained in this field?

Regarding this issue, I think there is still a lot of work to be done. Each psychologist has our own way of working and addressing the demands of the people who come to us.

Currently, it seems to me that there is no subject in the career or higher education psychology, which dedicates part of the agenda to training future professionals in sign language Spanish.

For this reason, as it is a need that is not contemplated in the current curricula, I consider it essential that those psychologists who wish to do so adapt what they know to sign language and train their abilities to be able to reach and transmit to deaf people the knowledge that they are capable of transmitting to people listeners.

My ideal vision of all this is that there are not or should not be difficulties in any psychology center to care for deaf people in Spain, but unfortunately we are few at the moment and I would like things to be different in the future.