Nurturing Healthy Boundaries: Overcoming Childhood Trauma for a Stronger Relationship Boundaries are largely formed in childhood, shaped by how children are treated and their early experiences. When children’s needs are met with care and security, they develop a healthy understanding of personal boundaries. Conversely, childhood abuse, especially childhood sexual abuse, can severely impact their sense of safety and self-identity. Abuse, whether physical, emotional, or sexual, violates boundaries, leaving victims feeling powerless and disconnected from their bodies...
How to use your creativity to help support you on your healing journey By: Selina Mattison, Placement Student at The Gatehouse, Social Service Worker Diploma Art is often used as an outlet for expressing difficult emotions. The arts are quite diverse, and have many different forms such as painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, performing and cinema. These outlets both help the artist and the viewer. However, you don’t have to be an artist to have creativity. There...
Canada Day 2021: A Time for Radical Reflection. It is not about guilt, it’s about how we move forward as a country. Since the late 1970s I developed an ambivalence towards my adopted “home” when I learned that the architects of apartheid South Africa visited Canada to study and learn from Canada’s Indian Act, its policies and practices towards Indigenous, First Nations, Metis and Inuit Peoples. This was also the time of the growing anti-apartheid movement...
Hello, fellow survivors!! I am a survivor and am taking part in the phase one peer support program at The Gatehouse. Since we began, we’ve discussed topics such as anger, addiction, and triggers. This week: the sixth session, was the first of three sessions that focus entirely on our “Inner Child.” I looked over the entire program when we first received it, but I had forgotten about this part of it, and it caused just a...
Andrea: To Heal Is Truth & Peace By Andrea Robin Skinner ***Trigger warning*** The sexual abuse of a child is a rape of the mind, in which any fledgling tools for healing are stolen. Without intervention, deep shame fills up the child’s life, and continues into adulthood. This is my story… I was nine years old when my stepfather climbed into my bed and sexually assaulted me. My mother...
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