Domestic Counselling

Domestic Counselling is a vital part of our Development Support vertical. ZOE has affiliates world-wide that offer professional Counseling services. These services cater to and support Legal Aid and Counseling for The Delivery of Psycho-Social and Psycho-Educational Programming for the Prevention and Termination of Gender-Based Violence.

Our affiliates also outfit professional Counseling modules to prevent Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, and Stalking. These modules are run in centers that are legally enlisted as institutes harbouring potential offenders.

Our partner institutes in the continents of Africa, Asia and the U.A.E design and run basic and advanced level Counseling programs for the victims of Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, and Stalking.

ZOE understands the need for culturally specific services for these victims and therefore employs its research team consisting of Professional Behavioural Therapists to strategize relevant and effective developmental programs to meet the needs of the specific cultures of those in need.

Our Open courses enlist Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) where interventions are designed and developed to treat violent behaviour. The target participant group are potential and / or existent domestic violence offenders. These interventions approach violence as a cultivated behaviour. According to a CBT model of psychology, nonviolence can also be learned by domestic violence reprobates.

For Offenders – ZOE’s Counseling-based programs are designed with a supportive functionality to facilitate the modification of harmful behaviour by identifying the thought processes and beliefs that contribute to the offenders’ actions and assisting their alteration.

For Victims – (Similarly), our programmes hand-hold victims of domestic violence suffering resultantly from low self-esteem depression, anger management issues, the need to dominate, emotional insecurity or dependence.

Through Counseling sessions and tailor-made programs, the mental pathways to violence, as well as the justifications for violent behaviour, are challenged. Physically abusive men and women are encouraged to think about and alter their perception of violence and examine the circumstances surrounding their violence.

While the safety of the therapy session encourages open communication, such communication can be dangerous in a violent relationship and subject the recipient to more violence, individual Counseling can help a victim of domestic abuse see the pattern of violence in the relationship and develop a safety plan.

It has been observed with substantial evidence that the most dangerous time period for a victim of domestic violence occurs when he or she attempts to leave the relationship. This is the one reason people often continue to suffer in violent relationships. The professional therapists working in affiliation with ZOE also create safety plans for men and women leaving a violent relationship.

Our professional instructors attempt to disrupt the cognitive chain of events that leads to the offenders’ conducting of violent acts of domestic abuse. By demonstrating how they practice violence as an anger outlet, to obtain co-operation from the victim, and to empower themselves with a sense of control, therapists encourage change in perpetrators’ thoughts about violence while showing them cognitive behavioral techniques such as communication skills, nonviolent re-enforcement, social skills, and anger management techniques.

ZOE’s support mechanisms and models include domestic counselling and treatment for domestic violence by addressing the emotions underlying the violent behaviours observed and reported, as well as the perpetrator’s attitudes towards their victims including women and children.