This page is written for community members who want to better understand the role of women’s specialist DV services. If you are experiencing or recovering from domestic or family violence, support is available in Margaret River.

Women’s DV services are the best tailored supports for women experiencing DV due to their ability to support safety and respond to risks. This page will identify types and patterns of domestic violence, the importance of working with a female counsellor and women’s DV services, and briefly discuss how seeing a male counsellor at a later stage may/may not be beneficial for some women. 

Content note: This page discusses domestic and family violence in a non-graphic way. Please take care while reading.

Domestic and Family Violence In Margaret River

Domestic violence is not only physical. For many women, the most damaging aspects are psychological, emotional, and relational, and these can be extremely difficult to name and identify because of their subtle and gradual nature.

Types of abuse may include, but not limited to:

• Coercive control or constant monitoring and surveillance
• Emotional abuse, such as constant criticism and humiliation
• Gaslighting or being made to doubt your feelings, memory, and reality
• Isolation from supports and demonstrating omnipotence
• Financial control or creating dependence
• Sexual abuse, harassment, and objectification
• Technological abuse, including tracking or blocking use
• Recruiting and manipulating family, community members, organisations or healthcare workers against you
• Intimidation, threats, inducing exhaustion, and unpredictable anger

Often, these behaviours occur alongside periods of affection, remorse, and promises to change. This can make it extremely difficult trusting your own perceptions, especially when abusive behaviours are supported by systemic inequalities.

Women’s experiences of power/control and safety are shaped by not only gender but also race, sexuality, class, disability, and rurality, to name a few. 

Women’s Domestic Violence Services and Counselling

Due to the gender-based nature of domestic violence, women’s DV services can more safely deliver supports and counselling to women who have been impacted by domestic violence. After experiencing coercive control, there is significant empowerment in having the choice and agency to say ‘this is what feels safest for me’.

Women’s DV services, more so than individuals, are more able to assist in navigating resources/supports, addressing structural barriers and systemic inequalities, assisting in court advocacy and violence restraining orders, providing more thorough safety planning, and responding to risk. Further, services like Waratah work closely in coordinated responses with Police and child protection to help keep women and children safe systemically.

Seeing a female counsellor can provide safety against feeling judged, misunderstood, or not being believed. Conversely, a male counsellor can represent gender-based power structures, such as male authority, and risks women’s authority and agency. Ultimately, women-led counselling and DV services offer a level of safety grounded in lived experience of gender-based abuse and power imbalances that men, by their lived position, cannot replicate.

Seeing a woman counsellor can feel safer for:

• Women’s experiences being taken seriously and believed, without judgement, gender blindness, or the need to explain

• Reduced tension in the body, greater ease in thinking and reflecting, and increased access to emotions

• Less need to justify, minimise, or manage how she is perceived

• Making sense of experiences at a gentle pace, without pressure to be reasonable or forgiving

• Confusion and self-doubt settling through safe attunement and shared understanding

• Exploring how safety, boundaries, agency, and self-trust can be rebuilt relationally and over time

While gendered power imbalances shape many experiences of domestic violence, what feels supportive can depend on other types of power structures and factors (disability, mental health systems, identity, personal meaning, etc). As such, some women may seek other supports at different stages of their healing journey. What remains central is their agency to choose what feels safest and most supportive.

Working With a Male Counsellor in Margaret River

Male counsellors add limited safety outside of women’s services during high risk, but they can add meaning making once safety is established. 

Women-led supports are almost always primary, and male counselling – if used at all – can be an adjunct option. Some women choose to explore specific questions with a male counsellor, occurring after or in addition to women’s specialist services. Some women find a DV-informed perspective from a male is a supporting factor alongside broader specialist DV supports. 

Whilst I have a strong background in working with men who abuse, I don’t aim to replicate any DV service or support provided by/for women, nor can I psychologically explain about the abusive person, I can’t help to mend relationships where DV has/is occurring, and I don’t believe a man’s perspective is required to understand a man using abuse. Further, I’m wary against centring the behaviour of abusive men and woman’s agency being mediated through masculinity.

What I can do is support meaning making that positions the client as the expert, help to scaffold her authority, and externalise patterns and power structures such as entitlement and patriarchy. We’re doing this well if she references herself more than me or the abuser, and connects to increased self-trust and self-authority with reduced need for therapist-mediated support.

Counselling Supports in Margaret River

Here are a list of people you can consider in Margaret River that specifically work with domestic violence:

Sally George (South West Counselling)

Jane Wolf (South West Counselling)

Alison Lines (Waratah)

Mary Hirschmann (Privately counselling in Margaret River)

Erin Statz (Mind Ed Margaret River)

Waratah and Tuart House are our local DV specialist centres with specialist DV counselling.

You can also call 1800 RESPECT or Women’s DV Helpline for confidential counselling or 000 in an emergency

Living in a regional area like Margaret River can bring additional challenges, including isolation, privacy concerns, and limited access to specialist DV services. Though, seeking counselling locally can provide confidential support without as much need to travel or explain your situation repeatedly to different people.

A Gentle Invitation

If you are considering support for domestic violence in Margaret River, you are welcome to get in touch to ask questions or explore whether this feels like the right fit for you. Your experience matters and support is available.