Psychologist helps victims of home abuse

Friday, 27 November 2015 14:07 |

Since May 2015 Fund IGA has been providing psychological consulting of victims of home abuse. Up to now 12 consultations with 6 volunteering clients have been conducted. These are mainly women who have been for a long time in an abusive relationship with their partner and are distinguished by several specific characteristics. What unites the victims is their low self-assessment, tendency to underestimate themselves, and incapability to uphold their personal opinion and desires. Their emotional state can be described as low spirits, sadness, depression, and tendency to isolate themselves. In the majority of the cases, the victims have transformed violence into a taboo subject and hide the abuse they have gone through by acts of resistance to other people’s help because of feeling of shame and guilt.

Psychologist from Fund IGA works with them mainly in the direction to change their perceptions which includes increasing self-knowledge and awareness of the nature of <<home abuse>> as a social and systematic problem; improving self-assessment and the personal resistance to oppression as well as the way of perceiving the world and the relations between women and the others – family and society; stimulating and maintaining the victim’s motivation for a change in their life and asserting their responsibility to protect themselves from future abuse; forming skills for taking and upholding decisions.

The users of the service are active and take part in all elements of the session. They share their emotions and experience in a peaceful and trust-worthy environment. This leads to emotional stabilizing after they have shared traumatic episodes from their lives. The aim is for them to overcome the painful emotions, change their behavior, and build a positive self-assessment, and new emotional schemes related to their way of living and future expectations.

The consultations have been conducted within Project “Against the Invisible Violence” funded by the Ministry of Justice, by virtue of article 19, paragraph 3 of the Law for Protection against Home Abuse.