Embracing Vulnerability: Lived Experience of Emotional Abuse and Healing

Embracing vulnerability research project focuses on the physical experience of emotional abuse and the process of healing. The aim of the project is to support the process of healing of each participant in focus groups interviews in which the emphasis is on naming one's own experience and reconstructs one's self-image after emotional violence.
Manipulation, control and double-bind communications are used often in subtle ways so that it is difficult for the target of violence to point out the abuse. Emotional violence is also difficult to prove as it does not leave marks on the body. The use of power and control may be presented and seen as forms of care and concern.
The aim of this project is to produce new information on how targets of violence are able to restore their own self-worth after the experience of abuse.