Why I facilitate support groups - Dianne Simboro

Many people come to support groups believing that they are broken. I don't see broken people - I see people who have gone through incredible adversity and survived. In my own journey through prolonged family violence, I had to draw deep on an inner strength that I was unaware even existed before.

Some things often viewed as a ‘problem’ after trauma, such as the inability to trust, can actually become a friend. Our inability to trust forces us to set up healthy boundaries, thereby helping us to navigate life and future relationships in safer ways. So it's about learning to look at “problems” in a different way - learning how to identify and harvest the ‘gold' buried in each individual’s personal history and clarifying what needs to be left behind. Letting go of what might have been normalised before and developing a new “normal” that serves your desires and needs sustainably.

Each and every person in the groups I facilitate has had to develop strategies to survive. They only start to recognise the value of what they’ve developed when they witness how those same strategies help others in their recovery process.

What I discovered was most helpful for me was learning to trust myself and my own intuition. I stopped looking outside of myself for the solutions and found them inside. I learned to trust that I had the solutions I needed, or that I had the capacity, tools and experience necessary to develop new solutions.

My hope for each person who attends my support groups is that they walk away drawing on, and trusting in, the strength that they already possess and they are armed with a tool-belt of tried and tested strategies they can implement each time they’re challenged or triggered.

To find out more about the support groups Dianne facilitates https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/trauma-and-ptsd-support-group or https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/coercive-control-support-group