Introducing: Empowerment @ SRC

Over the last few months, I have had the privilege of designing the first online course for sexual violence survivors at SRC. To launch, I thought we would put together for you a little summary of the group and how we got here!

Empowerment is an online course supporting you in understanding and healing from sexual violence delivered from a trauma-sensitive perspective. It combines learning about sexual trauma responses and reactions with creative mindfulness strategies to manage them, with the aim of making life a little easier!

So, what does that really mean? Trauma can impact our mind, brain and body. Everyone responds to trauma in different ways – everyone has different ways of reacting, coping or responding to trauma in the moment that it happen, and in the days, weeks and months afterwards.

However, practitioners and researchers have shown that there are some common shared responses and some effective strategies for dealing with them. And, that learning about these in a support group where you can share and feel understood by others going through a similar experience can help us move forward.

Empowerment is founded on this. And most importantly, we will aim to provide a sense of belonging to a space where there is no judgement.

So, what does the course look like? Empowerment is a structured group with the goal of providing survivors with a safe space to explore society’s attitudes; responses and reactions; and practice how to care for ourselves.

The course is two hours a week, weekly for six weeks. Each session has a similar structure – we will explain and explore a type of sexual trauma response or reaction and then we’ll practice a mindfulness strategy to manage it.

The course will take you through brain and body responses, the impact of victim-blaming on our thoughts to language around our mental ill-health, and how to define our strengths and future goals.

However, it is not just us talking at you! There will be space for mutual bonding and sharing, as the simple act of hearing and helping someone else with a similar lived experience, can help us heal too.

So, what next? Here at SRC, we cannot put enough emphasis on the bravery that is needed to take that first step and contact us to come to the group.

If you feel ready or just want to chat about what it might look like email us at administration@srchelp.org.uk or call us on 01473 231 200.

Take care, and we hope you’ll join us on this brand-new journey!

Kat, and the Team @ SRC