My Choices Foundation

Capacity Building Programme For Our Counsellors

My Choices Foundation organized a series of ‘Capacity building training programmes for domestic violence counsellors’ across five centres located in Shah Ali Banda, Golconda, Lakdikapul, Secunderabad in Hyderabad and Hunter Road in Warangal during last month. Led by Dr. Sukriti Kushwaha, Chief Psychologist and Director of Programs at Emancipation India Foundation, 10 counsellors and 4 […]

My Choices Foundation organized a series of ‘Capacity building training programmes for domestic violence counsellors’ across five centres located in Shah Ali Banda, Golconda, Lakdikapul, Secunderabad in Hyderabad and Hunter Road in Warangal during last month. Led by Dr. Sukriti Kushwaha, Chief Psychologist and Director of Programs at Emancipation India Foundation, 10 counsellors and 4 support staff have attended the programme.

“Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities”, said Abdul Kalam, the former President of India. Capacity building and training are key elements to equip our counsellors with knowledge and skills in diverse areas that support them in their work. It improves the quality of counselling practices and emphasizes the importance of ‘self-care while helping clients, looking to free themselves from domestic violence.

The sessions focused on ‘Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’

– The role of the therapist
– Psychoeducation: Communication techniques
– Relaxation exercises
– Emotion management
– Cognitive processing

Therapists’ active and supportive agenda help the survivors to open up and release their stress and emotions. The second method to lower the psychological stress of clients are psychoeducation and communication techniques. Acknowledging and affirming with the clients help them to trust the counsellor and helps them release their tension. The next exercises used in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy are breathing relaxation exercises to help counsellors understand and express their feelings.

The emotion management exercises include recognising feelings and grounding exercise helps the clients to recognize trauma-related cognitive distortions and replace the negative thoughts with more helpful and positive thoughts. Cognitive processing revolves around a cognitive triangle, when an event happens there are three basic reactions given out; what we think, what we feel and what we do.

Feedback from our counsellors:

“The training helped me to understand the client’s problem in a structured way especially if the client is traumatised. It was an informative and educational programme.”

“The best of the training is the mix of theory and practice. I have thoroughly enjoyed all the exercises and when I applied, it showed great results. It helped to understand and solve our client’s problems as well as ours.”

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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