Hope—A Rudder in the Ocean of Chaos: Juan Bustos in conversation with Katie Eberle

Introduction

The following conversation was born from the grief and fear of living and working in our current world, the political environment, and the threats that communities face, particularly in our home Los Angeles. Ignacio Martín-Baró, in Writings for a Liberation Psychology, discusses how fatalism, rooted in historical oppression, is the learned conviction that nothing can change; that suffering becomes normalized by failing to recognize the oppressive and destructive systems in which we live. We start to see that hopelessness isn’t always a personal deficit but can often be the systematic process through which psychic or realized domination begins to feel inevitable. 

As a white, cis clinician, my own sense of hopelessness is an evolving one—co-mingled with the reality of the removed privilege of whiteness and citizenship, mounting outrage at injustice and kidnappings, an urgency that there can be no room for paralysis, and an ongoing analysis of my community and contributions. When liberation work enters into the intimate and nuanced space of the therapy room, where will it go and will it ever feel like “enough”? Where do outrage, grief, and terror belong when they are my feelings, those of the client sitting across from me, and also belong to many people I will never get to meet or work with. 

Knowing that oppression benefits when despair overtakes us and the hope of liberation can come in many forms has been a rudder in the ocean of chaos; that the seemingly small motions we engage in the therapy room aid in recovering feeling from numbness, awareness from desensitization, and movement and community from paralysis and isolation. Where oppression preaches deadness and domination, the work of exploration and support can feel alive when we engage with experience, history, grief, outrage and fear. 

In the midst of all of these feelings, and seeking to feel more aliveness and connectedness, I invited Juan Bustos to join me in conversation. Juan is a psychiatric social worker who mainly works with adolescent clients. He is someone who has helped me process and sort through my relationship to my work in a real and honest way. We speak about our current moment and the particular struggles we face from our different positions. 

—Katie Eberle

Katie Eberle: One of the reasons I asked to speak with you about hope is because of the work you do and where you are in navigating care for folks right now. There’s so much to contend with in our communities and the larger world—the administration’s policies and discourse, ICE kidnappings, the fear that so many are experiencing. It feels both new and old at the same time. 

Juan Bustos: It does. 

KE: Can you introduce yourself? Tell me about your work and who you work with? 

JB: I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I’m a second-generation Latino male. I work with middle schoolers in the San Fernando Valley, mainly from Latino and Armenian backgrounds and low-middle socioeconomic status. As you can imagine, the work covers many areas but there has been a lot of grief and loss lately. At a middle school, there's also issues around bullying, racism, and navigating safety. Recently, with the state of the country and ICE, there has also been an increase in kids and families just feeling a sense of fear. 

KE: In thinking about this conversation, we talked about safety—the risk inherent in speaking about these things and the privilege that I hold in my positionality in this conversation. My whiteness pads me from a lot of risk in discussing this, in addition to the obvious safety I experience existing in our current world. And for you, this conversation carries risk. 

JB: Oh definitely, yes. I’ve been on the fence about wanting to use my name in this. Especially in talking about our current world the way it is. In thinking about it, can I speak freely or do I run into risks? 

KE: Well the real terror that feels could come from many different sides. 

JB: Yes, and things are different now than a few years ago. The stakes feel higher and there’s more at risk. 

KE: Would you share a bit about what you see in the folks you work with? 

JB: We saw a lot of fear being experienced in the community. That hasn’t gone away. It may seem like things have subsided but people are still scared. They’re safety planning—if I don’t come home tonight, then do xyz. Being a Latino man who was born here in the states, I have so much privilege in not planning and worrying in that way. On my way home, I get to just drive without worrying that someone is out to get me. That’s not the case for some of my clients who have lost family members to this. 

KE: And what a terrifying thing to worry about, for an adult or for a child. 

JB: It is. 

KE: In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire talks about despair feeling “realistic” under oppression and how hope can feel naive or misguided. 

JB: Yeah, in our work and with the people I’m working with, I’m not sure that we see the light yet. It’s tough to find it. Hope when you’re living in fear is just kind of a focus on survival and “I just gotta stay safe.” It’s bizarre to live in the hatred of this time. 

KE: To live in the danger of that. And I get it—hope doesn't feel realistic. 

JB: Hope feels illusive to many. It feels like survival right now. Survival is what we’re trying to do. Having a parent detained but still needing to pay rent requires a focus on survival. I need to get groceries. I need to find a lawyer. I need to stay safe for today. How do I stay safe from the systems and people around me that want to hurt me? Hope can come from faith or religion, often, but not always. There's so much beauty in hope, but it also feels so dangerous right now to engage in any hopeful behavior like protesting or believing that things will change. And maybe my hope is less that things will change on a large scale but more so that my clients can come to me and we can find some version of safety in the room. 

KE: I think you make a good point too—maybe I can create some safety in the room that I’m in with my clients. And even safety feels so privileged, dependent on your income, background, or immigration status. We often talk about wanting to develop or grow into a sense of psychological safety, especially in the therapy room. I’m curious how you see this with your clients and if it feels possible, or impossible? 

JB: Definitely. I hope that it is possible. And being a Latino male, with the clients that I work with, that matters. Speaking Spanish, understanding some or all of their experience. Presence and showing up in that way and in that skin matters. I think often with my clients there is a question of, “Can I trust this person?” With an experience of deportation or a fear about immigration or moving around the city—do you get what I get? 

KE: Yes. And the presence that says: yes, this is an unjust and violent world and it does impact us in different ways. 

JB: Definitely. I think it’s the genuine validation not just of feelings, but of the oppressive systems we face. I grew up with immigrant parents and have the privilege of citizenship for myself and my family, but the reality of continuing to need to safety plan and watch out for your brown family members is real and doesn’t leave you. I’m impacted and so are my clients. We share this. In the back of my head, that is always present. 

KE: Well, yes, and the burden of risk is real and has a heavy psychic and physical toll. Does psychological or physical safety feel illusive right now? 

JB: Things are very divided, as we all know. The feeling in the air is separation. In that sense, safety has become far from us. It feels like we’re on edge. 

KE: Our work is both very similar and different. You work with individuals and families and the larger community in a way that those of us in private practice don’t, and vice versa. What connective tissue or overlap do you see? Are there things you would hope we would see and know about what your clients face? 

JB: I think you’re right—we work with some different folks but in good ways. Honestly, I’m not sure that we’re working with people who have access to the same types of services. I think socially and economically, there are huge differences in access to therapy. If we think about things we spoke about earlier, like safety and survival, there are some different priorities required from folks who need to evade and stay safe. Not until the dust settles can you reflect and see what you experienced. 

KE: The reality is very different from being able to enter into weekly therapy and explore your interior. It might need to be about survival right now. Thanks so much for talking with me. 

JB: You’re welcome. 


The first element for putting fatalism aside is overcoming the exclusive focus on the present, not only by opening people's minds to the future, but also by recovering the memory of their personal and collective past. Only insofar as people and groups become aware of their historical roots, especially those events and conditions which have shaped their situation, can they gain the perspective they need to take the measure of their own identity. Knowing who you are means knowing where you come from and on whom you depend. There is no true self-knowledge that is not an acknowledgement of one's origins, one's community identity, and one's own history.

 –Ignacio Martín-Baró, Writings for a Liberation Psychology