The Shark Cage Programme

All too often women who present with symptoms of depression and anxiety have a history of abuse. Many of these clients have had multiple experiences of abuse often beginning in childhood.

In fact it has been found that childhood experiences of physical or sexual abuse render women almost twice as likely to experience domestic violence in adulthood (Mouzos & Makkai, 2004).

Women often believe that they must be to blame for abuse in their lives if it keeps happening. The Shark Cage® framework will assist professionals and their clients to understand re-victimisation in a way that does not blame the victim.

Shark Cage is a valuable tool box which can be easily integrated in to a support service setting and used by counsellors. Shark Cage is utilised by the counsellors at Trauma Assist Wide Bay in various capacities – in one-on-one work with clients and in group programmes.

Shark Cage is a metaphor based programme that describes how we develop our sense of boundaries and rights. The use of the metaphor enables women and girl’s to understand their primary human rights, decide what is important to them as an individual and create a shark cage – a boundary – to address and prevent unacceptable behaviours.

The developed of the framework is Melbourne-base psychologist Ursula Benstead.

To find out more about how Shark Cage can be helpful to you as an individual in a counselling setting, or as a professional counsellor please contact us.