This workshop aims to deconstruct what it is for male survivors of sexual abuse and violence to feel shame. This includes some of the stigma that can be perpetuated by the psychological professions and the impact sexual abuse has on shame when experienced in different developmental stages (childhood, adolescence & adulthood).
The workshop will also look at men’s relationship to victimhood and how this can impact the therapeutic relationship and men’s relationship in the world. The workshop will feature audio clips of male survivors speaking about their experience and examine the psycho-social impact of abuse and men’s identity.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- To understand how shame plays a unique role in the silencing of male survivors.
- To think about the interaction of stigma, identity and shame and how this can manifest in men’s thoughts and behaviour
- To consider how men’s relationship to victimhood can become a barrier to them seeking support and how that may impact the therapeutic process
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Psychotherapists, counsellors and anyone within the helping professions who encounter male survivors of sexual violence
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- Male survivors can be some of the most marginalised people counsellors will work with. Often, an experience of sexual abuse is at the ‘bottom of the iceberg,’ buried underneath anti-social behaviour, sexual compulsiveness, addiction or violence. In addition, they are often some of the most vulnerable within our society and from marginalised communities. To start to unpick shame, barriers to help and hear survivors in their own words is a key to working with sexual trauma in therapy room and combatting the damage of stigma in our wider communities
Course Content
Presenter
Jeremy Sachs is a psychotherapist based in Glasgow. He developed and facilitated groups for male survivors of sexual abuse for 6 years at SurvivorsUK. While there he developed services for trans & non-binary survivors, and boys 13 years upward.
He works with trauma survivors of all genders who have experienced sexual or relational trauma. Outside of the therapy room he develops psychologically informed research participation methodologies. This is often working across different communities, or where participation requires specialised psychologically informed practice or particular ethical awareness. He is an occasional guest lecturer at The Tavistock Relationships on their Psychosexual Psychotherapy diploma and consults with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health on trauma informed practice.
He presents The Trauma Talks podcast, a show that examines different experiences of trauma and how it impacts peoples everyday lives and is a contributing writer to the BACP’s Private Practice Journal, Therapy Today and Happiful Magazine.
He is currently writing a book for Routledge Taylor & Francis on the topic of intersectionality and male survivors of sexual abuse.
