It’s not a secret that many practitioners in the specialist sexual assault sector are, themselves, survivors of sexual violence. But is it ever OK to disclose that to a client? And if you do share that information about yourself as a practitioner, how can it be done safely? RMIT University PhD candidate Hannah McEniery is aiming to answer that question through her research, Navigating Professional Self-Disclosure in Sexual Violence Support: Female Practitioners’ Decision-Making and Its Effects on Relationships with Female Victim Survivors.
“I think [self disclosure] has the potential to be really useful, but I think the issue at the moment, from what I’ve heard and seen, is that it’s a very big grey area in the sector,” she told SASVic.
Hannah’s academic background is in psychology. She was originally going to do her phD on vicarious trauma in healthcare professionals working with victim survivors, but had the idea to research professional self-disclosure when reading about counter transference in psychology and how it can impact the therapist-client relationship.
“If you’ve got women working as support professionals in this space, and they’re talking with other women who have also experienced something similar, how do you like – how do you navigate that? Because we’re all human, we all have feelings, you can’t always ignore that,” she said.
“It seems like the guidelines around how to navigate it from a support professional perspective are quite vague, or largely absent, or it’s just an absolute no-go,” she added.
Hannah recently completed a year long internship with SASVic, where she had the opportunity to build an understanding of the support sector in Victoria and its history. Speaking to workers in the specialist sexual assault sector over the past year has affirmed Hannah’s conviction that the topic deserves more research.
“Hearing [SASVic members’] opinions on it has been great,” she said.
“Obviously I want to do research that’s relevant, so I feel like their opinions and thoughts on my topic were really helpful for me”.
Hannah told us that learning about the sector’s origins in the grassroots feminist movements of the 70s was a highlight of her internship.
“The idea that I’m researching is very feminist and it was something very characteristic of those early feminist movements,” she said.
Despite writing her honours thesis on barriers to disclosing military sexual trauma, coming from a psychology background, feminist perspectives on sexual violence were relatively new to Hannah when she began her research. She has since embraced the feminist approach wholeheartedly.
“My mentality towards these kinds of issues now is more of maybe a sociological one than a psychological one,” she told us.
“There’s a big focus obviously in training psychologists to think about diagnoses and things like that. Thinking about broader social structures that kind of undeniably play a role in these issues, it’s acknowledged in psychology but it’s not spoken about as much,” she said.
Hannah will complete two studies as part of her research: one interviewing victim survivors, which is already underway, and another interviewing practitioners, which she is hoping to begin recruitment for soon. The aim is then to create practical recommendations to help practitioners understand how they can navigate self disclosure in a way that is safe for everyone involved.
If you’d like to know more about Hannah’s research or to participate in one of the studies, send her an email at s3784831@student.rmit.edu.au