Promoting Peer Support in Domestic Violence: Learning From Mental Health Consumers and Peer Specialists

Brief Description:
People can recover from abuse and trauma but first they must feel safe. One of the ways to obtain safety is with the support of peers, friends who have been through similar experiences. Peer support can help you realize you are not alone. Peer support can help you realize that it is not your fault. Peer support can help you find and obtain the help that will keep you safe and allow you the opportunity to recover.

Forum Description:
People have basic rights. These rights include the right to survival and basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, maintenance of health and hygiene and the right to be secure in one's "self."
People who are living in a domestic violence situation are often denied these rights by their abuser. In order to help someone in a domestic violence situation, it is imperative that first they be secure in their basic rights and that means they must be safe.

Only after safety has been obtained can a person look beyond their basic survival needs. Beyond basic survival, a person can heal and grow and flourish and thrive. That next level of living happens through relationships, obligations and duties to others, and by the reciprocal nature of those relationships. To heal from the trauma of abuse, people may pass back and forth through the steps of denial, anger, bargaining, depression grief and acceptance. It's much easier to grow into healing with the support of others who have experienced similar situations.

Peers, friends who have been through similar experiences can help heal in many ways. Healing is a process, a transformation. People transform from living a life of abuse in secrecy to a life of hope.
Overcoming the secrecy by sharing those secrets with others is part of the healing process. Peer support can help to overcome a closed life and find a way to more positive outcomes. People may hold many false beliefs and it is with the help of peers that they can acquire the critical self-forgiveness that helps healing and growth.

Knowing that others have gone through similar experiences and emerged to live fulfilling lives, can provide the hope necessary for healing.
Hearing how others managed can provide guidelines for a path to our own healing. We may learn healing skills as we listen to how others have overcome their situation. There is comfort in knowing we are not alone and hope in knowing that healing is possible. As we vent and tell our story, we may find in others, the ability to tolerate hearing about the pain. We can discover the validation of the importance of what happened as we bear witness to the trauma. We can overcome the aloneness of the abuse as we make connections with others.

People who have survived abuse and trauma can recover. Domestic violence, like other forms of abuse, is about power and control.
With the help of peer support, people can progress from safely surviving through stabilization to endurance to understanding and eventually transcending the trauma. This forum can help with that process.

Please write and share your experiences, your questions and struggles and hopefully we can all learn and grow together to make a difference.