Resiliencia y discapacidad intelectual en entornos residenciales desde las historias de vida

Abstract

The text that I present in these lines, arises, on the one hand, as a personal need to know more about the lives and experiences of the people with whom I have worked -as an educator- during the last 14 years. On the other hand, it arises from the need to transfer the voice, serving as a communicative channel, to people who for years had been silenced. In this sense, and during the development of it, I have realized that the objective was wrong and that I should not set myself up before them as the "voice giver", but that I should position myself as a mediator between them and their communicative process, since they already had a voice. That is why the general purpose of the research was reconfigured with the intention of knowing the strategies that they have been using throughout their lives to achieve a fuller life and with which they are comfortable living. In this same sense, I inquire about the problems that have been encountered both at social, school and family level, trying to discover the subjectivities of each of the participants through their narratives, bringing to light five submerged and hidden resilient processes in people diagnosed with intellectual disabilities (hereinafter PDCDI), belonging to residential institutions. The methodological strategies have focused on understanding how the protagonists of the study have learned from that adversity; to do so, I have approached their lives from an interpretive-narrative position through the tool of life history. This same positioning places me in an advantageous position before the interpretation and transformation of the participants' reality; accessing their stories, not remaining oblivious to the needs of each participant, nor to the narratives of those who have been relegated over the years and giving them the opportunity to do something that still remains exclusive as it is to tell the stories by themselves. To this end, I have taken into account as resilient mechanisms aspects of intersubjective character such as Introspection, self-esteem, self-concept, independence, ability to relate, initiative, humor, creativity, morality, critical thinking or planning, among others; which emanate as main mechanisms within this research, demonstrating not only a single way to overcome the different adverse experiences reported (mistreatment, abuse, bullying, rape, etc.) of each of the protagonists. This research shows not only a unique way of overcoming the different adverse experiences (mistreatment, abuse, bullying, bullying, rape, etc.) of each of the protagonists, but also a whole amalgam of personal strategies that, in some cases, are supported by the social community (help from monitors, teachers) and in other cases not, and that responds to the hypothesis that I posed at the beginning: can the PDCDI develop resilience and overcome adverse situations regardless of their abilities?