Psychotherapy is characterized by its adaptation 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 to do its best to correspond to them in the professional treatment given.

This philosophy of work implies not taking anything for granted: what works for one person may not work for another, and this applies even to the way of communication. The clearest case in which this happens is found in deaf people who go to a psychologist.

In this interview we talked to Rubén Monreal, a psychologist specialized in psychotherapy for deaf people who attends to people in Madrid.

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

Rubén Monreal is one of the few psychologists in Madrid who treats deaf people in Spanish sign language. On this occasion he talks about his professional experience attending members of people with hearing loss or profound deafness.

How was your Spanish Sign Language learning process?

I consider myself lucky in that sense to be directly familiar with deaf people and that has made it easier for me to learn Spanish Sign Language. Since I was born I have expressed myself in this language fluently and I have been able to understand until today what a deaf person wants to convey without any problem.

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

Sometimes we fail to connect with each other, and in that I consider myself lucky, when it comes to relating to and understanding the demands of a deaf person who comes for consultation.

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

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

In fact, the proof is that there are practically no longer any educational centres or schools exclusively for deaf children, but there is a commitment to include 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 deaf people even though the advent of mobile phones and computers has made things easier for this group.

For this reason, some deaf people may sometimes feel undervalued, disconnected from others, 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 that would make them feel better.

Many times, moreover, the fact that we are 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.

In your experience, are the cases of discrimination that deaf people may still suffer today significant enough to be, in itself, the main reason why many go to therapy?

In a 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 the little machine makes to warn that there are no more trips left on the ticket.

The driver tries to warn her, but he senses that this person is not listening to him. Therefore, the driver, fed up and offended by this “attitude” of passivity when he feels ignored, aggressively and exasperatedly addresses 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 an angry, exasperated driver accusing us of not knowing what. Emotionally, we are getting a message of hate, of anger, and this is having an unexpected effect on us.

Emotions are transmitted, so the unpleasant message has already been absorbed even though it could have been avoided with sufficient means or by paying more attention to things.

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

That is to say, this is only 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 badly treated in the society in which we live.

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

Not necessarily. We follow a similar work to the one I set up 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 to raise the learning of psychological skills without the use of the auditory channel for it.

It seems to me that this is a way to bring 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 from the difficulties and strengths that these deaf people have developed throughout their lives to get where they have gone.

From the type of complaints you have been receiving, what ideas do you think should permeate society more 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 aware. To be more attentive and empathetic to the needs of the deaf collective.

I believe that, without paying real attention, we can do little to raise awareness as a society. Look at climate change. It is not until it has started to get very hot in October that we realise that we may be destroying the planet.

For this reason, it seems to me that we, as hearing people, could try for a month to live without hearing anything in order to understand from what perspective a deaf person faces everyday situations and the difficulties he or she sometimes encounters due to the fact that he or she cannot hear or hear little.

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

On this subject, I think there is a lot of work to be done. Every psychologist has his or her own way of working and dealing with the demands of the people who come to us.

At present, it seems to me that there is no subject in the career or higher training of psychology, which devotes part of the agenda to train future professionals in Spanish sign language.

Therefore, as it is a need 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 skills to be able to reach and transmit to deaf people the knowledge they are able to transmit to hearing people.

My ideal vision of all this is that there are or should be no difficulties in any psychology centre to attend to deaf people in Spain, but unfortunately we are few at the moment and I would like things to be different in the future.