English Mental health and gender-based violence English version | Page 96

86 Recovery skills 2
TO THE TRAINER
PART II : THE TRAINING

Recovery skills 2

Aim . To practise grounding exercises and give tools that enable a person to stay in her window of tolerance .
GROUNDING EXERCISE
Grounding Exercise 5 . Re-orienting to the present . This exercise is of help to survivors in ‘ freeze-mode ’, who feel numbed and frozen . It would be good to demonstrate this exercise before the participants do it .
Invite the participants to form pairs and change roles after five minutes . When they do so , be sure to ask the participants to brush off their old role before taking on a new one . If possible make scarves available to indicate who the Survivors are . After 10 minutes give the pairs some time to reflect on how the exercise made them feel .
It is important to make sure that helpers practise skills they will teach survivors . The techniques will be more powerful if helpers are familiar with them .
At the end , make sure that participants come out of their roles . Ask them to brush off their character and say aloud : “ Now I ’ m [ me ]”.