Women'S Self-help Groups

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There are some organizations that aim to encourage self-help among women with particular needs. Such organizations, of which Women's Aid is a well-known example, provide refuges for battered wives and encourage the women to take charge of their lives. The location of the refuges is kept strictly secret so that husbands who have acted violently towards their wives will not be able to track them down and attempt to take them back.

As has been indicated, the aim of these women's organizations is to get women who have suffered at the hands of violent partners to take charge of their own lives and to try to make new and independent lives for themselves away from the tyranny of violence. To some extent, however, the self-help is the second part of this aim.

First the women have to feel assured that there is somewhere safe to go before they take the huge step of leaving their home and partner. Organizations like Women's Aid provide such assurance, with their refuges and staff providing backup support and advice on benefits, childcare, job opportunities and many other areas of concern.

Women, particularly women with children, never leave violent partners lightly. Most of them keep hoping for some form of miraculous change in the man concerned, who may ordinarily be very charming. When they eventually face the fact that this is not going to happen, when they start to become terrified for their children as well as for themselves, indeed when they begin to fear for their very lives, they often still hesitate before leaving, even if they know about the work of the women's organizations and the refuges.

The recurrent violence, which will often have been accompanied by verbal abuse, will very likely have left the women with very low self-esteem. They have probably been told repeatedly that they are useless, and they have begun to believe what has been said. Worse, they frequently feel that they are responsible for what is happening to them. A woman may feel that if her partner is so charming to everyone else then it must be something in her that is inviting the blows.

A woman who leaves her partner and then returns to him feels even less self-esteem, since she has tried and failed. The failure may well have been no fault of her own, but she will not see it that way. Many battered women go to their parents or other family members and return because the partner turned up at their house, made a scene and offered violence to her family.

They sometimes return because their families do not have the space to accommodate them and the children, or the money to support them, or sometimes are not willing to offer them either financial or emotional support. Sadly, they frequently return when their violent partners tell them that they will take the children from them if they do not return.

The woman who has heard about one of the agencies that help battered wives-such agencies, fortunately, are now much better known than they were formerly-and decides that there is no hope other than to leave and seek their help, has already embarked on a journey of self-discovery as well as one of self-help. When she leaves she realizes that she has more strength than she thought she had-the sheer act of leaving is testament to this.

After she has received help and advice she will realize that she has far greater potential than she felt she ever had before, and this will in turn lead to greater self-confidence. When she has been out on her own for a bit, and coping with children and home on her own, she may well begin to take stock and really begin to discover even greater depths in herself.

For some women their new-found liberation from violence and their new independence will have been part of a journey of self-discovery, but for others it may be a part of a journey of rediscovery. They may have been quite different people, when they married, from the frightened, shivering, worthless-feeling wrecks that they became. The incidence of domestic violence is not related to class, education or money, and some women might have had quite good jobs before marrying jealous men and giving up their jobs. As she re-establishes her life independently of her violent husband she will probably also end up on a journey of discovery as she reflects on how far she can come and on how far she can go.

Thus we have seen how some people who have been rendered vulnerable in some way, or who have suffered some form of trauma, can achieve some degree of self-discovery in the course of seeking help with their problems.

There can be benefits from the experience of trauma, and these benefits are enhanced by the help given in the various ways described above. Thus psychiatry, psychotherapy, counselling and self-help groups can not only help people towards a greater sense of wellbeing and a greater sense of being at peace with themselves, but they can also help them to have a greater understanding of their inner selves.