Tips for Helping Girls Cope with Violence

We know that girls and young women are exposed to all kinds of violence ranging from systemic violence (war, racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty) to relational violence (bullying, physical, emotional and sexual abuse) to internalized violence (self-injurious behaviours and substance overuse). They may also be exposed to random acts of violence. Random acts of violence, especially those that occur in a school setting, can have profound effects. Although such events are extremely rare, the fact that they are well publicized in the media can make them seem more common and close to home. As a result, exposure to coverage of these events can leave students feeling vulnerable, confused, and powerless.

All of these forms of violence can lead to painful feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, depression, hopelessness, and shame. Emotions could also include feeling cut off, isolated and numb, or could involve sadness, grief, anger, and a sense of loss.

Often when doing popular education workshops, participants are invited to reflect or draw on their own experiences as a basis from which to learn together. It is therefore very likely that participants will be reminded of, and want to share, experiences that were hurtful or harmful.

Your responsibility as a facilitator will be to notice and respond to the importance of what they are sharing, and to call in, or refer participants to, additional resources when necessary and when legally required. These resources might include parents, older siblings, teachers, social workers, or counsellors.

The following tips are intended to help girls and young women cope with the feelings that violence brings up, and to help them maintain a sense of safety.

Let Them Talk

People need a place to vent their feelings. If they feel unsafe, let them share that. If they have fears for family members or friends, let them share that, too. For some youth, exposure to public tragic events may trigger memories of their own experiences, and they may need time to talk about and process these events, as well.

If a young woman or girl begins to speak about experiences that appear significant and distressing to her or to other group members, you will need to decide whether it is appropriate to continue the conversation with the group or whether to continue the conversation with her alone. You can ask your group if they would like to have a supportive parent, counsellor, or social worker join the group. You can also ask if providing a follow-up workshop is something they would like to do. Or you can refer group members to helpful resources in the community, at the school or online.

Review Safety Plans

Make sure they are aware of the safety plans that are in place at your school or agency. Understanding the procedures that have been developed to keep them safe is sometimes enough to give them an extra measure of security. Through practising fire, evacuation, lock-down, and other drills, they will also take some of the ownership of keeping themselves safe and increase their feelings of control over the situation.

If the violence they are facing or have faced is happening in their homes or elsewhere, review with them the phone numbers of parents, guardians, crisis counsellors, help lines, and youth shelters that are available in your area and that can offer support.

Don’t Make Impossible Promises

While you want to help them feel safe, avoid promising what can’t be delivered. Statements like, “It will never happen here,” aren’t helpful because girls know they aren’t true. Offering false statements can cause them to doubt everything that you say.

Work with Community Members

When possible, work with other community members such as parents, social workers, schoolteachers, counsellors, and psychologists. Know whom to call if one of your participants is facing a violent situation. It will help you feel less helpless in listening to accounts of violence they have faced or continue to face. 

Help Put Things in Perspective

You can also help your participants see situations clearly. Yes, tragic events do happen, but the odds of any particular incident happening to them are maybe not as big as they think. A social network of caring people can go a long way to make sure that they are safe and can work though difficult situations. In the case of large-scale, random violence that happens in public spaces, help them also understand how repeated media coverage can make events seem more commonplace than they actually are.

In cases of bullying, help participants identify and understand how their experiences might be driven by racism, sexism, homophobia, fear of poverty or other social locations. By unpacking potential causes of bullying, participants are supported to talk about how their experiences are related to repetitions of social, systemic, and collective forms of violence, and not only as isolated experiences between peers. For example, if we see two girls bullying another girl, we might get curious about what is causing the fight and chalk it up to the victim of violence being less popular. If we step back from this story of bullying and take into consideration the socio-economic status, racialization, and other forms social location that each of these girls are a part of, we may see more of the story.

This wider perspective helps participants see how certain groups of people are rendered more vulnerable to violence because of discriminatory ideas, stereotypes and language, rather than seeing bullying as a simple exchange between a “strong/perpetrator” and “weak/victim”. Such an analysis is useful because it helps us move away from feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. It also helps us to move away from beliefs that perpetrators and victims are destined to repeat the same story for the rest of time. Finally, when we are able to unpack some of the roots of bullying, we are better suited to direct participants to more appropriate resources.