Newsletter No. 3 August 2019 The butterfly woman story. Animation

Dear friends and colleagues

As a part of our work with the manual “Mental health and gender-based violence Helping survivors of sexual violence in conflict – a training manual” 

We are happy to launch the story of the Butterfly Woman, which is a central part of our Gender-based violence (GBV) training manual. This animation tells the story of the Butterfly Women, a metaphorical narrative that is based on women’s encounter of gender-based violence in armed conflicts.

Metaphors are stories or images that convey something that can inspire or open the mind and can be simple and effective tools for teaching and learning.
In this training, we use a single metaphorical narrative to describe the experience and consequences of GBV. We explain the course that trauma takes in generic terms through the story of the Butterfly Woman; it remains a story but at the same time it is clinically accurate.

After being violated by soldiers, the life of the Butterfly Woman is turned into chaos. By the support of the good helper she learns ways to cope in order regain dignity. The story is created from the testimonies of the survivors in various parts of the world. We hope this animation will be a useful tool, for those working with survivors of gender-based violence. This animation should be used as a complement to our GBV-training manual. The complete written Butterfly woman story can be found on our website.

Welcome to the first tutorial.

This is a short introduction to the manual. This part gives you a general idea of the intention for making the manual, where to download it, how it is out lined and how to read it. Page 1-6 in the manual.

Why the human rights based approach?

Understanding the experiences of participants and survivors in terms of rights and their violation may be creative and bring insights, and can give survivors and their helpers valuable tools. Awareness of human rights, and their great importance for everyone, can be a valuable resource when working with people whose rights have been brutally disrespected. Human rights values may assist us both to understand the suffering we encounter and find ways to respond to it in a respectful and helpful way.

How to be a good helper?

What is a good helper in your community? What are the tools we already use and what are the new tools we can acquire from the manual.

Helping the helper

This tutorial is about how to support the helpers. For helper’s empathy is an essential aspect of good assistance. This is also a source for compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization or secondary traumatic stress. Early recognition and awareness are crucial to be resilient to these symptoms.

The window of tolerance

Katinka Salvesen is a clinical psychologist working with trauma patients at the Modum Bad Clinic in Oslo. Among other, she is an experienced trainer, working with helpers and survivors of sexual violence in Congo. In this tutorial she will introduce the window of tolerance as a therapeutic metaphor that we can use to explain trauma reactions. This tutorial is the first of a series of three.

The butterfly woman metaphor

The manual uses the metaphor of the butterfly woman. A made-up story about a women who is raped by soldiers is presented. Her experiences, her life before the rape, her reactions and thoughts are presented. Furthermore the story contains descriptions about the way in which she sees herself afterwards, reluctantly asks for help and then slowly proceeds in her life through a lot of difficult steps.

All manuals can be downloaded from the MHHRI website

There are three different manuals, which respectively address working with women, with boys and men, and with children who have experienced sexual violence.

The manuals are translated into several languages. The page numbers in each manual remain the same across languages. This allows survivors and helpers to work from copies in their preferred language and read the same content on the same pages. It also makes it easier to teach participants when participants and trainers work in more than one language. The manuals include a toolbox. Survivors can use it individually to regulate their own emotions through grounding exercises or in collaboration with a helper. Helpers can also use grounding exercises to take care of themselves as helpers.