Emotional Transformation in the Victims of the Armed Conflict for Reconciliation in Colombia

Abstract

This article analyses the place of emotions in the frame of the Colombian post-peace agreement situation based on the Espere (Schools of Forgiveness and Reconciliation) programs' implementation. When the participants (mainly victims of the armed conflict) are not showing their emotions derived from an offense (victimizer action), we observe that they have not developed enough individual resilience, expressing them in other ways, for example by somatization. The methodology allows people to understand reconciliation through playful and reflective activities in small groups. The discovery of a new socialization space for constructing trust in relationships with others, after being fractured during a trauma, is innovative and liberating: to achieve that, both body and language are essential tools in the personal (individual) expression. During the process, we added a gender component. It is important to remark that our two groups from Usme (Bogotá, Cundinamarca) and María La Baja (Bolívar) were only composed of women; psychosocial attention took into account this characteristic, and the method was adjusted accordingly.