Seeking asylum in the United States is no easy feat. Around 70,000 individuals sought asylum in the past year, with a grant rate of just 28% nationwide. Representation by an attorney makes gaining asylum nearly 5 times more likely. However, the courts have a tendency to be a “very black and white system” and may struggle to properly account for the psychological implications of the conditions and fears that accompany a refugee status. This is where Ginger Rhodes comes in. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Rhodes is hired by attorneys to help the court understand and build a psychological story of those seeking asylum.
Over fifteen years ago, Dr. Rhodes began working with asylum seekers when she discovered a trauma recovery center in San Francisco that needed clinicians for psychological evaluations. She was already working as a psychotherapist in private practice, a role she has continued to perform despite her relentless commitment to the refugee community. In our discussion, she explained to me how her background in psychotherapy informs her work with refugees, giving her more insight as she goes through the incredibly condensed evaluation process for those seeking asylum.
“[Clinical] psychotherapy never lets [patients] tell detailed, deep trauma in the beginning,” Dr. Rhodes explained. But an evaluation for those seeking asylum “goes straight for the detail.” Though she does her best to keep perspective, and think of the bigger picture, Dr. Rhodes expressed her mixed feelings about these discussions. “It’s hard to drop into someone's life with such an intimate experience and then they're gone,” she said. “All of the things they have to go through are retraumatizing—the interview and the separation, where they stay, the uncertainty.” But at the end of these interviews, Dr. Rhodes likes to ask her patients what they might do with the rest of their day, which I found to be a beautiful way to shift the perspective away from the challenging topics that were so quickly unearthed.
In listening to Dr. Rhodes speak, I was particularly struck by how the expression of trauma can vary vastly across cultures. The highest proportion of people seeking asylum in the United States are Chinese nationals, and after that, people from El Salvador, Indian nationals, and people from Guatemala and Honduras. Dr. Rhodes explained how many of our psychological tests and measures are normalized to a US population, but she has worked with individuals from nearly 50 countries. Culture affects emotionality and the meaning of trauma, it “impacts how people express.” For example, she has found that her patients often communicate traumatic experiences through somatic, or bodily, concerns, rather than through explanations of specific events. And I suppose this makes sense, as bodily expressions and sensations are a universal experience, that can be expressed irrespective of the language one speaks.
Dr. Rhodes explained how building a client’s ‘psychological story’ includes traumatic experiences, “how [these] changed them fundamentally as a person,” and how this trauma “continues to live in them.” Traumatic memories make our brain go on high alert—our hippocampus and limbic system are activated and our amygdala, responsible for responding to salient emotional experiences, goes into “survival mode”. This is why, she explains, we often have a physical memory but cannot remember important details. In other words, there are “people who are very symptomatic but can’t tell you why.” Avoidance of traumatic memories leads to a decrease in the details remembered about said experience, one of the many psychological concepts Dr. Rhodes serves to help the court understand.
Working with the psychological trauma of those seeking asylum is undoubtedly a daunting career. Dr. Rhodes did not expect to work in this capacity, let alone for over 15 years. But when asked why she still does it, her answer is that it feels important. As for how she does it, she simply says that she tries to remember that she’s helping people. When asked why some go on to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example, and some people recover from traumatic exposures, she feels the latter is because they made some sort of meaning of what happened to them. “I think that’s what protected me ultimately,” she added. Though there are certainly other aspects that contribute to how traumatic exposure manifests in different people, post traumatic growth, or making meaning of our traumatic exposures, is a novel and promising contributor to healing.
In her career, Dr. Rhodes has supported her patients through some of the most harrowing moments of their lives. But, she never fails to remind them of their humanity, and to remind them that there is more to their lives than the trauma they’ve experienced. Her final question at the end of her interviews, regarding what her patient may do for the rest of their day, serves as a slight suggestion to look ahead into the future which exemplifies Dr. Rhodes’ ultimate goal— to foster growth and meaning in the wake of trauma, and begin the process of healing.
By Georgia Spurrier.
Georgia is a staff member for The Yale Layer.
