PSYCHOTHERAPY, COUNSELLING THERAPY
As we explore your unique and individual story together, we begin to uncover layers and obstacles that have held you back from living out of your Authentic and True Self. We peel back the layers of family history, past trauma and abuse to reveal dysfunctional coping strategies, unhelpful patterns, as well as blocking beliefs to the truth.
EMDR - EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION REPROCESSING
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, is a successful psychotherapy protocol that relieves chronic distress for victims of trauma. EMDR is currently, the most researched treatment for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
As we explore your unique and individual story together, we begin to uncover layers and obstacles that have held you back from living out of your Authentic and True Self. We peel back the layers of family history, past trauma and abuse to reveal dysfunctional coping strategies, unhelpful patterns, as well as blocking beliefs to the truth.
EMDR - EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION REPROCESSING
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, is a successful psychotherapy protocol that relieves chronic distress for victims of trauma. EMDR is currently, the most researched treatment for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Trauma is often connected to a disturbing event in one’s life that can get locked in the nervous system. Many people have experienced trauma. Often early negative childhood messages get planted into our brain, continuing to grow as we age. EMDR Therapy sets the stage for our brain to process this trauma.
IMBALANCES OF POWER IN RELATIONSHIPS: ABUSE PROTOCOL & TREATMENT THERAPY
While some recognize the misuse of power, or abuse, as a negative influence in our lives and society, many don't understand that there is a specific protocol for those experiencing being ‘powered-over’, as well as for those misusing their power. Without this specific abuse protocol, abuse continues unchecked, and, those challenged with misusing their power continue unchanged.
Abuse is any continual series of actions, words, or innuendos that devalue the humanity of another person through power and control. A person who struggles with this behaviour participates in stressing the 'de-humanity' of another by systematically convincing them they have no value.
IMBALANCES OF POWER IN RELATIONSHIPS: ABUSE PROTOCOL & TREATMENT THERAPY
While some recognize the misuse of power, or abuse, as a negative influence in our lives and society, many don't understand that there is a specific protocol for those experiencing being ‘powered-over’, as well as for those misusing their power. Without this specific abuse protocol, abuse continues unchecked, and, those challenged with misusing their power continue unchanged.
Abuse is any continual series of actions, words, or innuendos that devalue the humanity of another person through power and control. A person who struggles with this behaviour participates in stressing the 'de-humanity' of another by systematically convincing them they have no value.
SUPPORTING THE ONE WHO MISUSES HIS POWER
Steps to positive, transformational, and long-term change are specific. Often anger-management is prescribed, yet this only perpetuates the falsehood that one cannot control oneself. Anger-management controls and modifies behaviour to a degree, but does not deal with the unhealthy belief system, nor does it demand abusive behaviour accountability.
Steps to change include:
- Full admittance to history of psychological, physical, and sexual abuses towards any current or past victims.
- Acknowledge, unconditionally, the abuse as wrong.
- Acknowledge the abuse was/is a choice, not a loss of control.
- Recognize the long and short term impacts of abuse and its effects on others, showing empathy for all.
- Identify, in detail, patterns of controlling behaviours and entitled attitudes.
- Develop respectful behaviour and attitudes.
- Re-evaluate distorted images of ones partner, replacing that with a positive and empathic view.
- Make amends for the damage done (eg. telling the truth; protecting the vulnerable; respecting the negative consequences; offering to pay for the victims’ counselling).
- Accept consequences of their actions.
- Commit to not repeating the abusive behaviours, and honour that commitment.
- Accept the need to give up their privileges, and do so.
- Accept that overcoming abusiveness is likely to be a life-long process.
- Be willing to be accountable for their actions, both past and future.
Victims need to be believed, not minimized or asked what they did to deserve the abuse. Victims need close care and support. They need to learn how to trust their own intuition again, and make their own choices. The victim needs to be enabled to see their own value, and empowered with control over their own lives. Abuse, whether it is physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, financial, social, cultural, intellectual, verbal, sexual, etc., always leads to dehumanization.
"Just because it's normal, doesn't mean it's healthy" - Sherinne Cropley
It is not possible to be truly balanced in one’s views of an abuser and the victim. As Dr Judith Herman explains eloquently in her master-work Trauma and Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on their side, they will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To them, that means you see the couple’s problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn’t abuse.
In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abuser, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To the victim, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help – just what their partner wants them to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.
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It is not possible to be truly balanced in one’s views of an abuser and the victim. As Dr Judith Herman explains eloquently in her master-work Trauma and Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on their side, they will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To them, that means you see the couple’s problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn’t abuse.
In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abuser, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To the victim, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help – just what their partner wants them to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.
