Diyala Midhat, a community and educational psychologist based in Jerusalem, on what creativity means to her. As told to Aspa Paltoglou (Manchester Metropolitan University).
16 April 2025
I work in many different settings. In terms of community psychology, my professional experience was in refugee camps in West Bank and Jerusalem, and Palestinian NGOs organisations. In my practice, I work part-time and freelance. I run sessions with various groups, including teenagers and mothers, and sometimes groups of men. I see myself as a leader for social change.
My aim is to help groups reach their own goals. I organise sessions for different community groups, I implement psychoanalytic groups, educational groups, advocacy groups, and other initiatives. For example, I run 'from Personal Growth to Actionable Initiatives' for young people starting at university. These initiatives relate to the social problems that they are facing in their community and how they can lead the advocacy for change in this social problem that they are facing.
With mothers, most of my work is sharing practices for parenting, how to be a better parent, especially when you have passed through traumas and crises in Palestine. So I merge psychology and trauma informed practices to help people in my sessions.
I studied at Birziet University, gaining a BA in Psychology, High Diploma in educational psychology, and a Master's in community psychology. For the last five years I have been doing upper studies to specialise in educational psychology. In that line of work, I'm with schools mainly. We use a different perspective there. I work with schools to help schools implement systematic changes so that they offer better services to children. I also provide individual therapy for children who need therapy.
I am also involved in making Psycho Didactic tests. This is a kind of evaluation that we as educational psychologists make for children, where we evaluate their IQ, and try to explore any learning difficulties they might have. We examine difficulties in Arabic, mathematics, then we correlate it to the IQ. Based on our evaluation, we give recommendations to the schools about how they can help children with their education. If they have, for example, memory issues, then we can identify the issue, and give recommendations on how they can overcome it. Depending on what the results are, we give recommendations. Sometimes our recommendations might be to move the child to a class with fewer children. For example, we usually have between 30 and 40 pupils in a class. In the classes that provide extra support for learning difficulties, we have 8 to 12 students. If the child has very complex learning difficulties and we find that they cannot achieve or learn in a big group, we recommend taking them to a smaller group. After they finish the therapy in the smaller class, they can go back to the big class.
For me, creativity within the context of my work as a community and educational psychologist means a variety of things…
Language is a critical tool
One is that I can take all the theoretical background that I have, and be able to make it applicable for the situation that I'm working in. Language is a critical tool, and it is important to use appropriate language for the group of people I work with. The creativity is to choose words that touch the heart and mind of the person I have in front of me and help them to develop and make a change. So, my creativity is how can I merge my knowledge and my experience in my practice to address what the person in front of me needs, in a way that they can really feel it first. If they can feel it, then they can think differently about it, and then they can make a change.
As a practitioner psychologist, I feel I need to use language in a way that is near to the people. It is still a professional language, but it is direct and to the point. Sometimes I feel I need to have the courage to address and name the issues in a way that people can accept. It's not easy to tell a mother 'you know, your child has ADHD, that means such and such'… it's not an easy thing to do. But that's what we have to do in the field. If people understand it, they will go with you and will believe in the plan, and they will be part of the team.
Own the process
The second part is the ownership. I want the people I am trying to help to feel they own the process. If we are working together on a plan for a child, they are not just my patients. They are partners, and they are leading this change. If I am running a group awareness or advocacy group for mothers, I always address this with them: 'You are my partners. I'm learning from you, and you are learning from me. And what we are sharing will help the next generation.'
So, we relate it to ourselves, to our family, and then to our community. Then they feel 'wow, we are great people, if we do the change for ourselves, our children will get married and will affect their families and then our community will be better and…' Just dreaming in a therapeutic way is really motivating them to make the change. People need to dream. If they are dreaming, they will have a lot of energy to change for the dream. It is important that we can dream with them, and help them to fulfil those dreams.
We need to have fun
Thirdly, we need the process to be fun. We need to have fun. We live in a community that is facing many difficulties. If you come to Palestine, and you walk in the streets, you will sometimes wish to find someone who smiles. So when I run a group session, I dance myself, I sing with them. They will be shy at the beginning. But when they feel I am like them, I am a mother, I am wearing hijab like them, and I'm enjoying moving my body, dancing, singing, with a high voice, then I lower my voice and move in a way that is funny, and they start laughing and they start wishing to do the same like me.
In each meeting, we stand in a circle and do breathing and moving exercises, so we can release and free the body from all the tension that is coming from outside.
Other times, mostly with children, I would start in asking them to draw everything that they are coming with from the outside, and to get to the inside energy, freely, so that they are able to dream and free their minds from all the stressors that they are coming with, and to get a different experience. They need to feel the different vibe. Otherwise they won't continue with the group work. Sometimes I work with a group for 20 sessions. I need to make people trust me that it is worth doing 20 sessions, three hours each, and spending all this time on this. They need to feel that this day they dedicate to the session, it will have a positive effect on them. It will charge them with positive emotions, positive thoughts, and it will give them emotions and thoughts that they can use in their everyday life.
We are not talking about magic, and magical things, or things that they need to put a lot of effort to change. It's just the way of thinking about the trauma, or the crisis that they are living in, that might help them to get out of the circle that they are stuck in. And this is the creativity, to be able to see where people are standing, what the vibe is, how we can we change the vibe, so we can charge the energy in the room, and then you can feel, the circle is different. They will do the activities, they will do the breathing, they will give us the dancing, or they will choose the song that they will be preparing like. We will alternate – one time I will prepare, next time you will prepare the songs. So, they will also be leaders, in a way or another.
Visual arts
I also use visual arts in my practice. I use art therapy. One of my group activities that I used to do is asking people to take pictures from the community. It's called 'photovoice'. We ask them to take any photo that is stuck in their mind, and they will bring it and show it to the group, and then each child or each mother will talk about the picture and what it means to them.
Other times we use newspapers and we will ask parents or children to search this newspaper, and take the photos that match their personality and tell us a story about themselves, as if they were advertising themselves. From these photos, how would you explain things about yourself? They enjoy cutting the pictures, and you will see creativity in linking the pictures to their story. You will be surprised by the way they relate to these pictures. It is a really amazing activity.
Other times I'll bring watercolours, and I will ask them to draw holding the whole litre of water colour, and I will give them a very big roll of white paper, and ask them to draw together with the watercolour. Initially, they will just enjoy drawing. But then we might talk about limits and what limits mean for them. The lines they draw will be over each other's lines. We'll talk about their emotions – what does it means for them when somebody puts a line over their line, or they touch the area that they were drawing in? Then we will discuss how they feel about crossing the limits, how we should feel in the group if a person is sensitive to issues we discuss. What limits do they want in this group so that we will take care of each other? This creative activity allows people to open up. Arts make it easier for people to express themselves.
The plan is, there is no plan
I don't work by the book. I use these steps according to the need of the group. Sometimes we have standards for groups, or I go to an organisation and they will say 'give us a plan for each session, what you will do?' The first answer is 'I have no plan'. I don't plan for others. We build the plan together, me and the group. I need to do an assessment, I need to give them awareness about what we are going to do, they need to accept what I am proposing, or if they want to do this kind of process for therapy. And if they accept it, if they understand and if they are willing to do it, we can make a plan.
When I go to the young people we are working with and I tell them we will work together on the plan, they feel that something different is happening. No-one is dictating to them in a top-down way what they should learn, think or do. The community comes from the ground, and the experience they have in this group will likely affect how they communicate in other groups in life – husband, children, friends, family.
In Jerusalem, in Palestine mainly, NGOs come and think that people here don't know how to work in a group. I used to work with an organisation that wanted to work on coping skills for young people. They created several sessions, and made very specific recommendations for those activities. But sometimes the group doesn't need what they offer. The NGO insisted that we should do what we had planned, because that's what the donor suggested. I started realising that we should revolt against all these manuals and set plans, and we should instead focus on what the group needs. We should ask what they want, or don't want. People in these groups should be treated with respect: for their experience, their knowledge, their crises, their challenges.
We are an occupied community. And the occupation has put us under a lot of rules. They are taking our breath by making us follow the rules and putting lots of challenges over us. I don't think it helps if we do our psychological work in a similar way. When I started to do freelancing work, I told the organisations, the NGOs: if you want me as a freelancer psychologist, you need to give me some freedom and allow me to follow my rules. I've got the ideas, the knowledge, I am the expert. But all my expertise means nothing, if it is not fulfilling the needs of the groups.
In community psychology, one of the main things we learn is that we should contextualise the knowledge that we are bringing to the community. For example, if I go to Africa, I can't do psychoanalysis in Africa in the same way that I'm doing in Palestine. It's different. The language that I should use with African people is different than the language that I should use with Palestinian people. Words are very strong tools for change, but only when we understand the community and the culture, and then create the therapy accordingly. Otherwise, people will refuse us. And what we are doing there, we will not achieve.
SOURCE:
