2.2.4 Personal Boundaries

As an advocate, respecting boundaries between you and the survivor is important to maintaining a supportive and healthy relationship for you both.

Because the survivor may discuss extremely intimate details with you, you will need to maintain personal boundaries in order to create a safe space for the survivor to share.

The boundary between the advocate and the survivor needs to stay extremely clear.

It’s important that the advocate not cross this boundary. This can be challenging if the advocate starts to identify with the survivor’s story.

If you begin to identify with the survivor’s story, it’s important not to express these feelings to the survivor.

Keep these feelings to yourself and be mindful of personal boundaries. Later, for your own self-care, discuss these feelings with a counselor, an other advocate or a trusted friend.

Advocacy is about empowering the survivor to make good choices for themselves, not about you as an advocate.

The advocate can help the survivor to examine their options and to navigate the pros and cons of certain actions, but it’s up to the survivor to make the choices that are best for them, their life and their family.

It’s essential that the survivor not try to please the advocate, the health center staff or law enforcement when making decisions. The survivor does not need to please anyone but themselves.

Creating and maintaining personal boundaries supports the survivor as they develop trust and vulnerability in their relationship with the advocate.

As advocates, we need to be aware of warning signs that a survivor is crossing a boundary into what could be an unhealthy relationship with us.

We must avoid putting ourselves in potentially risky situations or creating potentially unsafe or risky situations for the survivor.

For this reason, it’s important to independently address our own personal issues and not bring them into our advocacy for survivors.

Advocates often have a personal history as survivors of sexual assault, intimate partner violence or an other trauma in their past.

While this can be part of why you want to volunteer, it’s important that you create and maintain strong boundaries so that you do not over-identify with the survivor.

There may be times when a survivor’s story might trigger your own trauma. If this happens, it’s important that you are aware of how to create and maintain strong, personal boundaries. Otherwise, you could end up relating to the survivor concerning your own trauma rather than fulfilling your role to help and support the survivor with their needs.