CCChat-Magazine_Issue-27-Survivors-Speak

Dr Saira Khan
Chartered Counselling
Psychologist
“The reason I was drawn to this work is because
of my own experience.”
M: Could you tell me a little bit about
what you do?
S: I originally trained as a therapist in
California and I arrived in the UK
about 12 years ago and realised that
my training from the USA didn’t
translate, so I completed a psychology
doctorate. Now I am a counselling
psychologist working with people with
complex mental health needs. I would
say that most of the people I work with
have experienced significant trauma
from personal experience or exposure
to someone close to them where
coercive control is happening; these
relationships understandably create a
lot of distress.
The reason I was drawn to this work is
because of my own experience. After I
left, it took me two to three years of
volunteering with Refuge, to realise
that what I had been through was
domestic abuse. I had never
experienced physical abuse and it was
a huge undertaking to see that what I
had been through was coercive control.
I could look at every segment on that
power and control wheel and say, yes,
that happened to me and it took a long
time to accept that what I've been
through was coercive control. The
psychological trauma and denial about
the reality of what I had been through
was immense. I found that my
experience mirrored all the women in
the support groups I was in and that's
when I realised a larger scale
understanding of coercive control in
the general public was just not
there. The mind games, the
psychological and emotional tactics to
keep power and control over another
person was what I experienced and
this then led me to understand victims
of cults and other forms of relational
abuse. I decided to focus my doctorate
on how to help survivors of abuse. My
experience with therapists and mental
health professionals is that they didn't
get the depth,complexity and horror.
Women's organisations understood,
and I didn't understand why this
knowledge seemed to be limited to the
women’s sector.
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