By Reynaldo Mena
Adriana RodrÃguez can’t be told that she hasn’t lived what she speaks about. Of Salvadoran origin, RodrÃguez lived as a child the terror of the Civil War in that country; the separation of her parents and growing up in an inhospitable space that made her take refuge in school to avoid getting involved in gang problems. “It was a very tough time, trying to survive in that environment, seeing dead bodies, sleeping full of fear, moving our mattresses to different spaces in our home so that the bullets wouldn’t reach us,” says the now therapist residing in Sacramento.
It was when the armed conflict in El Salvador exploded that her parents were forced to flee to the United States. “They were religious, they were part of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Because of their beliefs, they couldn’t be part of any army, not even El Salvador’s or the guerrilla’s,” RodrÃguez mentions. “That’s why they had to leave. I stayed with my grandmother, I was very young, they couldn’t take us, we had to stay.”
It was nine long years before they could come back for her and her sister. By then, that girl had become a teenager who could fend for herself – she had to find her way to survive. Coming to Sacramento, the place of her parents’ residence, was not easy. “It was a completely different world. Everything was different. They were my parents, but honestly, I didn’t know them,” says the Salvadoran.
That marked the first distance with them. Yes, she had managed to survive a country at war, but she arrived in another space that, while it didn’t mean an armed struggle, was full of conflicts, at a difficult age, where she had to define what she wanted to do with her life. “I was full of reproaches, I understood rationally that they had fled to the United States, but emotionally I did not forgive them. I did not understand why they had left me. They, on the other hand, felt disappointed. They thought I should be grateful, that I should turn to them and thank them, but I didn’t,” says RodrÃguez.
Once again, her school was her salvation. “I immersed myself in studying. It was something that helped me forget everything. A counselor told me not to worry about my studies, to just learn English to defend myself in this country. That made me angry. Those were not my goals. Many young immigrants take refuge in gangs to survive, I did it in books,” she adds.
RodrÃguez thinks that having had that experience in her childhood and adolescence has made her a better therapist. She can understand different situations of her patients because she has lived them herself. Her first step in understanding her environment was the decision to study sociology. “That gave me an understanding of society, of the world. I understood the way societies, inequalities, and politics worked,” she says.
“We must live on the path where we are fulfilling our ideals and desires to live. Living in the present is achieving happiness.”
Then she decided to study Clinical Counseling. “I understood the outside, now I would understand the interior of the human being,” she says. “And now I practice something that can be defined as a therapy of the system. We are part of a whole and we have to learn to be okay with that. We have no choice. We are all connected, and what happens to us has an impact around us.”
This therapist has seen a substantial increase in mental health-related problems, especially in light of the pandemic. Problems such as anxiety, depression, and low self-confidence can increasingly be seen in society.
One of her struggles is to make therapy accessible to immigrant communities and low-income people. For this purpose, she is part of a movement that seeks to decolonize therapy.
“Therapy is known as a means for white and wealthy people. However, we are living in a time when therapy should be necessary for everyone, without exclusion,” says Rodriguez.
The problem with the exclusion of minorities from the outset is that it has created a stigma within the community. Many believe that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness, and taking into account Latin culture, this has a double effect. Plagued by machismo, many men think they do not need help from anyone, and women, affected by the “marianismo” phenomenon, submit to this situation.
“We grow up believing that seeking treatment for an illness is being crazy, and that is a mistake,” adds Adriana.
Another problem is the lack of bilingual Latino therapists who can serve the most needy communities.
“It is an urgency to address mental health. We are being bombarded by social media, telling us that we have to live a certain way, yearning for things we do not have in the present. We have to live more in the present and not in the past or future,” she says.
For her, happiness can be defined in a very simple way.
“We must live on the path where we are fulfilling our ideals and desires to live. Living in the present is achieving happiness,” she concludes.
