How to Use in Therapy
Survivors often come to therapy feeling confused and hopeless. Many describe feeling as if they have lost who they are. This makes sense. Abuse works to disconnect survivors from their sense of self and their ability to direct their own lives. It often leads to doubting their perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, making them easier to control.
 
The Self-Regulation materials briefly explain trauma symptoms and begin the work of reconnecting survivors to themselves and valuing who they are. These handouts are especially useful when clients present with stress, emotional overwhelm, or difficulty identifying what they feel or want.
 
The Self-Care and Self-Care Encouragement handouts can be used to reduce the shame survivors often experience when encouraged to improve self-care. Rather than ignoring barriers, use Self-Care to open discussion of them and explore realistic possibilities. 
 
Self-Care Encouragement builds on what survivors are already doing and gently supports adding to it. These tools often open discussion about how survivors can “sneak” moments of privacy and care into their lives, such as five minutes in the car before buying groceries.  
 
The Healing Power of Listening is particularly useful in group therapy. It can also be used to contrast how their experiences have been ignored, minimized, or devalued by abusive partners or others.
 
The Vision Collage exercise encourages survivors to identify what they want in their lives—such as values, qualities, relationships, and material goals—and express these through pictures, words, or art. This process shifts focus toward the life they want to create and supports the development of agency and self-awareness. It also contrasts with the suppression of needs and desires often present in abusive relationships.
 
Identify and Own Emotions introduces emotional awareness and explores which emotions feel acceptable or difficult for survivors. It also helps identify thoughts and beliefs that contribute to emotional responses, providing an early step toward cognitive restructuring.
 
Self-Regulation materials complement other therapeutic self-regulation strategies with a focused approach on abuse issues