The devastating effects of domestic are caused by the violent and abusive verbal or physical behaviour of a spouse, partner, parent or family member which renders the victims to experience physical, sexual and/or psychological damage, forced social isolation, economic deprivation, or causes the victim to live in fear.

Counselling entails a supportive approach that guides the individual to acknowledge the concept of the abuser and the effects of the abuser’s behaviour, the victim’s relation (or absence thereof) to the causes of the abuser’s actions; the resolution of damage incurred and the empowerment not only to recover from the trauma of violence and abuse, but to prevent falling victim to future recurrence. Such counselling should ideally coincide or be followed by Victim Empowerment Counselling, since the latter focusses on the ultimate improvement of the recovered victim’s prevention of recurrence.

The Counselling objective encourages the victim’s differentiation between the role of the abuser and the submission of the victim, in order to enable the establishment of a healthy recovered self-esteem, self-love and trust in the learned ability to assert self-worth and the control over the threat of future recurrence of violence and abuse.

The significant psychological difficulty caused by the lack of empathy, selfishness and self-seeking intentions of a narcissistic spouse or partner is often misdiagnosed as suffering from despression, anxiety, stress, addiction or abnormal or irrational behaviour since this subtle kind of abuse is often not recognised or plainly visible. Counselling offers a supportive and guiding approach toward addressing the key factors of the trauma caused by the relationship with a narcissist, redeveloping the victim’s sense of self, concept and recognition of self-worth, addressing and processing the hurt suffered during the course of relations, recovering therefrom and establishing renewed approaches to self-assessment and self-asserting. Skills are developed in order to enable the individual to be cognisant of the characteristic of narcissists in order to prevent future proneness to involvement.