Learn more about HELP’s Therapy Services.
- Counselling can provide a safe environment and support for healing the long-term effects of sexual abuse and rape, helping you to make sense of your feelings and experiences.
- Studies show that counselling helps alleviate many symptoms, such as anxiety, depression and thinking about suicide.
- Counselling can provide you with reassurance that your experience is similar to that of other people. This enables you to feel understood and valued.
- You’ll have someone you can trust to keep valuing you in spite of what you feel bad or ashamed about. It helps you to gain confidence that you can live through your feelings, reducing the painful ones and increasing the happy ones.
- Your counsellor can share information about the effects of sexual abuse and rape with you, which may bring about positive changes in the way you think and feel about yourself.
- Many survivors report ongoing relationship difficulties in their lives, but counselling can assist you with issues of anger, trust and intimacy, helping you relate to people better.
- Counselling can help you understand and reduce physical responses such as headaches, eating and sleeping difficulties, flashbacks and self-harming behaviours.
- Counselling can help you develop new skills to more effectively heal your experience of sexual abuse or rape and empower you to make new decisions and feel better about yourself.
- If necessary, your counsellor can help you to get ready for the court process.
- If you have any concerns about your safety, or that of your family, your counsellor can help you look at the available options.
- Your counsellor can give you information and resources about other services available to you, including legal agencies, doctors, ACC, Women’s Refuge and Work and Income NZ.