Doncaster Rape & Sexual Abuse Counselling Service
Sensory play is about finding activities or even toys that interrupt your negative thoughts, feelings or behaviours. They work in a way that reconnects you to the environment that you are in. Be creative and experiment with different ideas. Use one activity or a combination of them. The aim is to find activities that connect you to use sense (sight, touch, sound, smell, taste). Some examples are:
This is similar to The 5 Senses in that it’s helping to focus your brain to give it messages that you are safe.
Name something from every letter of the alphabet around a certain topic. The topic can be anything. Some examples might be animals, colours, or people’s names.
This can be a useful game to use with others around. Considering sharing this idea with those who support you.
This technique is about focusing your mind on the environment around you. It will help to give your brain messages that there isn’t any danger around. You’ll have to concentrate to really notice the different sights, feelings, sounds, smells and tastes around you.
You can try this backwards too. Remember there isn’t a right or a wrong way of doing it. Its about finding the right combination for you.
The aim is to concentrate and control your breathing to force your body to relax in a physiological way. Empty your lungs of as much air as you can. Notice your shoulders drop and relax as you do. Repeat the following process until your symptoms subside.
Having someone with you to breathe along side you in this way can help. Considering sharing this technique with supportive people around you so they know how to help.
In the weeks, months of even years after a person has experienced sexual abuse, assault or rape it can be common to experience things like panic attacks, feeling emotionally overwhelmed or even feeling numb and separate from any emotion; sometimes to an extent it may not feel like you’re in your own body. These feelings might last for short amounts of time but can feel very scary when they happen. As with all feelings, they will eventually subside and pass. Emotional first aid at these times can give you some tools to try and bring you back to a more comfortable and connected place. They may help you to feel more in control again both physically and emotionally. Before looking at some emotional first aid techniques, let’s think about why this happens to you.
You may have heard of the Flight-Flight-Freeze response. These are different behaviours that the brain makes happen when a person feels frightened or under threat. The brain tells the body that they need to fight against danger (fight), run away (flight) or become still and unnoticeable (freeze) to survive. These are very powerful instincts that are built into the brain and body. Sometimes when a person has experienced sexual abuse the brain is on hyper alert to recognize danger. The brain may initiate the Fight-Flight-Freeze response when a situation isn’t dangerous but may have similar sounds, images, smells or even feelings. Your brain is trying to recognize danger and keep you safe. This may be when a panics attack, feeling emotionally overwhelmed or separating completely from your emotions can happen. At these times, your brain needs some help to calm and register that there isn’t any danger around. Emotional first aid can help do this.
We call the following Grounding Techniques. There isn’t a right or wrong way of doing these techniques. Once you get the hang of them, you might like to explore finding your own techniques that work.
Controlled Breathing The 5 Senses The Alphabet Game Sensory PlayFeelings of guilt and shame can be a common experience for people (or their families) who have been sexually abused or assaulted. Often, they can be the most challenging feelings to overcome. Perhaps because they have a lot to do with how a person thinks about themselves and others. Many people use the terms guilt and shame to describe the same thing. However, they do have subtle but important differences.
Guilt – A feeling of responsibility or remorse. Often around something we ‘believe’ we have done to another, whether true or imagined. Guilt is about how we might feel regarding other people. A person may feel guilt about how something they have done has impacted another.
Shame – A painful feeling about something a person ‘believes’ to be wrong or improper. Shame is a feeling a person has about themselves. The emotion is aimed inwardly. To feel ashamed of who they are, or something they or another person has done (whether imagined or real).
“I don’t like myself” “I don’t like letting people in”
“I hate it when everyone is looking at me” “I feel exposed”
“I don’t want to burden others with my feelings” “I don’t deserve…”
“I don’t want to talk about it” “I’m angry all the time”
“I’m – or the things I do – aren’t good enough” “Shame makes me feel vulnerable”
“I am bad, wrong, not good enough, disgusting because of what happened to me”
Shame can be difficult to recognize because it can be so hidden. It can sit behind may other parts of a person that make them who they are. For example, a person may feel shame about how their mind thinks, how their body looks or feels, achievement, status, their gender, or their sexual self or the abuse that happened to them. They may feel shame about their sense of self (who they are), their values, relationships, their culture, and their age or how they are aging.
Therapy is a safe way of gently unravelling how unhealthy shame may be preventing you from having a better relationship with your ‘self’ and therefore living a more fulfilling life. This can take time, patience, and a lot of healing. One of the key things that can help heal unhealthy shame is pride. Learning to develop pride in your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and experiences.
A whole person is not just made up of the impact of the abuse they experienced. A person is a rich, complicated, deep, and vast infusion of many different parts. Finding pride and holding onto it can help uncover all these other parts of who you are.
The ingredients to knowing whether you’re ready for therapy can be different for everyone. Only you can decide this. However, there are some common indicators amongst people that have found therapy helpful.
Here’s some ideas of what clients who have been ready for therapy have said they’d would like to work on:
“Finding peace” “Closure”
“To not feel consumed by the worry and anxiety” “To heal”
“To go out and not fear bumping into them” “To be believed”
“A space to talk about what’s in my head” “To understand why they did what they did”
“Ideas on how to cope when I’m feeling anxious or having a panic attack”
“To not feel it’s my fault” “To understand why I’m so angry”
Feeling agitated, apprehensive, or even frightened is very common when considering therapy. Its an important step and natural to feel a range of emotions. This doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t ready to work on yourself. Your therapist will want to hear how you’re feeling about starting therapy and will help you put you at ease as best they can.
Everyone has their own unique reasons as to why they may not be ready for therapy. Some common ideas are below to help you decide how you feel.
All therapy starts with an assessment. This is a meeting with a therapist to gain an understanding of what you’d like help with and whether therapy is the best way for you at this time. Its your opportunity to gain more information to help you decide if you’re ready for therapy or not.
Whether you have had therapy before or whether it’s a new experience for you, it can be natural to feel a little apprehensive about what to expect. You may be feeling worried about what the counsellor may ask you; feel scared that you may get upset or overwhelmed or talking about what happened to you. Knowing what to expect in therapy can help put you at ease, which is why we’ve tried to do that here.
Your therapist is someone who has been specially trained to help support others with their emotions and help them facilitative change. They have experience in and participate in ongoing training around helping people who have experienced issues around sexual abuse. They are an empathic individual who has a great capacity to care for others. They are something who wants to listen, understand, and support you at your own pace. They know how to tailor their approach to match the pace you would like to go. They are also open to hearing how you’d like to work, and your thoughts on what they can do to help support you as best they can. They will use questions to help you explore your thoughts and gently challenge the way you might see things, to help create new vision.
The process of therapy is unique to every individual. This is because every individual experience’s their distress differently, and because therapy can have many different faces. This is why your therapist can adapt their approach to suit your needs. At one end of the spectrum the process of therapy may be very much about expressing and making sense of the emotions you are feeling. At the other end it can be about learning new information about how emotions – and the mind and body – work so that you can develop strategies to help support yourself. Useful therapy can be judged on its ability to facilitate change for the person experiencing it. Its aim is to help a person make sense of things in their mind by unlocking emotions and shifting their perspectives. A bit like the videogame Tetris. You must twist and turn the pieces to get them to slot together. As you do this, chunks of blocks disappear, and a different understanding is formed.
DRASACS offer an initial appointment with a therapist to help decide if therapy is the best form of support for you right now. Followed by up to 20 sessions of therapy: each lasting up to 50 minutes. Sessions may include short wellbeing questionnaires to help to give your therapist some detail about how you’re doing each time they meet with you. It is common for therapists to review how the work is going with you in blocks of 6 sessions.
You may have heard the phrase a ‘Talking Therapy’. This is a useful description as one of the key ingredients to therapy is that you feel ready to talk. If talking feels difficult – but you are ready for change – your therapist will be able to help. Talk about what you want to talk about. If you do not want to talk about the details of what happened during sexual abuse, you don’t have to. If you want to talk about it; that is also ok. It’s important to feel comfortable with your therapist as useful therapy relies on a trusting relationship between you. Be open to trying new ways of looking at things and explore how they look and feel to you. Try to be brave and share when you don’t understand something or can’t make sense of it. Let your therapist know if something doesn’t work for you. Be patient and kind with yourself. Feeling stuck can feel frustrating, therefore so can the process of trying to change it.
The service has remained operational throughout the pandemic and lockdown and people are free to make referrals for support.
We are looking to re-open face to face therapy for children at the beginning of August, and are in the process of making the building COVID secure and contacting clients to organise resuming support we could not deliver safely through telephone and webcam.
There will be some clients that may feel unable or uneasy about using the telephone, and as it is a confidential space, clients need to set aside a private space for themselves to focus on the session. We would urge clients to try it initially and discuss concerns with their counsellor, and then decide.
We understand with schools being closed it may not be possible for all clients to have a private space, and may need to consider childcare for a short period to go ahead. If someone is unable to work on the telephone, we will pause therapy and continue once the advice from Public Health England has shifted. Nobody will lose their place with their therapist.
The ISVA’s will be available on the telephone as per people’s care and contact plan. There may be some delays with Court Cases and Investigations and we will update everyone with as much information as we are able to.