3 Ways to Create Safe Spaces for Survivors to Grow Relationally
Supported by psychological research, we are beings of attachment that are both harmed and healed in relationships. For survivors of trafficking and exploitation, learning how to trust and grow relationally again after so deep a betrayal is one that takes great risk, repeated exposure to safe relationships, and time. This requires allies to know how to create safe relational spaces by doing their own personal work to deal with their own relational hurts and trauma. This is so they don’t foster unhealthy relational dynamics for survivors, especially as staff working with direct service providers.
5 Ways Traffickers Build False Safety Through Trauma Bonding
Individuals who exploit others exploit our innate need for connection and twist relational bonds to coerce and manipulate individuals making them feel loyalty and connection with their abuser. They make false promises of love, shelter, family, security and belonging that turns out to be a false front for a usury relationship between the trafficker and the individual being exploited.
A Vignette of Vulnerability
This blog covers how abuse becomes a normalized way of living. When it is all, you have known, you don’t see how it is exploitive or harmful. Love has been redefined. Exploitation is an abuse of trust, and individuals taking advantage of vulnerabilities caused by childhood adverse experiences. People who are exploited are not different from the rest of us. Any one of us could be lured into an abusive and controlling relationship because we are built to want safety, love, and our needs met.
No Safe Place: The Root of Vulnerability
This blog talks about where vulnerability starts that normalizes abuse and makes individuals more likely to be exploited. It starts at home, behind closed doors, in unstable family situations where children are exposed to higher levels of ACES. Development is impacted, as the child learns that the world is an unsafe place where primary attachment figures are not attuned, present or protective. It concludes with talking about how to believe and support children that disclose abuse.