Sami Altman-Hall & Emma Goldhoff with Yesenia Gorbea Zuffanelli & Shellie Taggart Designed by DJ Peay
Healing Activities Guide: Building Protective Factors with Survivors of Domestic Violence
The goal of this guide is to assist advocates and facilitators to support survivors by helping individuals, groups, and families dive deeper into their healing journeys.
Protective factors are conditions and characteristics of individuals, interpersonal relationships, communities, and the larger society that reduce the negative impacts of domestic violence, promote healthy development, and support the well-being of both adult and child survivors. Adults who have experienced DV can actively build protective factors in their own lives and the lives of their children, and find support from other people and communities. In this resource, we provide advocates and group facilitators working with domestic violence (DV) survivors a range of exercises to help build and promote protective factors. The word “survivors” refers both to adult survivors of DV and to their children who have been exposed to it, witnessed it, or been harmed by it. This guide can be used in individual, group, or dyadic parent-child settings. Please note that it is not intended for survivors who are in active crisis situations.
The goal of this guide is to assist advocates and facilitators to support survivors by helping individuals, groups, and families dive deeper into their healing journeys. Protective factors are universal, although they show up differently for each survivor. For this reason, the exercises are flexible and non-prescriptive. Advocates and facilitators should adapt exercises according to specific survivor and community needs. Completing these or similar exercises in survivor-centered ways can foster a sense of confidence, connection, and choice – all of which are essential to mitigating the immediate and intergenerational impact of DV for both adults and children.
