Certified Family Violence Online Course

Welcome!

Hello, I am Dr. Jane Simington, PhD. I am a grief and trauma specialist, educator, researcher, and author. I am a CCPA (Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association) qualified supervisor. I have considerable professional experience helping those experiencing family violence. The knowledge and methods for helping, that I provide in this course are based upon my years of study and research related to the effects of trauma, and from my hours of clinical experience with those experiencing effects of family violence and learning from them the best methods for helping and healing the effects of family violence.

My professional experience in family violence is mainly with abused women and their children who have witnessed the violence but it is important to note that men are also victims of family violence, and that family violence is a systemic problem, and the need for heal and healing must extend to the victim, the abuser, all members of the immediate, and sometimes also to those in their extended families and social networks.

A More Soulful Approach

A traumatic event can result in symptoms of post-traumatic stress and be experienced following a singe-blow event, or multiple-blow traumatic events, negatively affecting all aspects of the traumatized person’s life. Victims of family violence report dissociating during the violence, as a way not to feel, and have an awareness of how the frequent dissociation fractures their spirit, impacting their sense of wholeness (Simington & Wagner, 2020).

The relationship between spirituality and psychiatric concerns, including the results of frequent dissociation is researched and described. (Bormann et al. 2011; Currie, et al. 2015; Hinton et al. 2020; Eisenbruch 2017). Enhancing spiritual connection helps traumatized persons achieve a sense of mastery over the traumatic events (Mutambara and Sodi, 2018), and reintegrating the fracture spirit allows a traumatized person to regain a sense of wholeness. (Simington and Wagner, 2021).

Healing All Aspects of Trauma

In this course and in all the courses I develop and facilitate, I apply a framework that addresses first, the spiritual distress experienced because of the trauma. Using this approach allows more effective resolution of the emotional, mental, social, and physical manifestations of the trauma.

Terminology

In the course, spirituality is defined as, “The animated essence of one’s being that guides one’s life and gives meaning and purpose to one’s existence and can be described as a process of acknowledging the three R’s of spiritual growth. Once the animated essence is REMEMBERED in one’s own life, one can begin to RELATE to that essence in others. Once this takes place, one is able to RECOGNIZE that essence in all that is created.”

In completing the course, you use Guided Visualizations as a therapeutic method. In the visualizations are words of a spiritual nature. Once you are familiar with the exercises, you may use the words in the texts provided, or change them for words that would be more meaningful to your client.

References

Bormann, J. E., L. Liu, S. R. Thorp, and A. J. Lang. 2011. “Spiritual Wellbeing Mediates PTSD Change in Veterans with Military-related PTSD.” International Journal of Behavioural Medicine 19(4): 496–502.

Currie. J. M., J. M. Holland, and K. D. Drescher. 2015. “Spirituality Factors in the Prediction of Outcomes of PTSD Treatment for U.S. Military Veterans.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 28: 57–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/ jts.21978

Eisenbruch, M. 2017. “Mass Fainting in Garment Factories in Cambodia.” Transcultural Psychiatry 54(2): 155–178. https://doi. org/10.1177/1363461517703918

Hinton, D.E., R. Reis, and J. de Jong. 2020. “Ghost Encounters among Traumatized Cambodian Refugees: Severity, Relationship to PTSD and Phenomenology.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 44: 333–359. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11013-019-09661-6

Mutambara, J. and T. Sodi. 2018. Exploring the role of spirituality in coping with war trauma among war veterans in Zimbabwe. SAGE Open January– March: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017750433

Simington, J. and Wagner, I. J. 2020. Retrieving a Soul Part that Fractured During Trauma. Religious Studies and Theology 39(1): 5–20. https://doi. org/10.1558/rsth.41174.