RSA : 9— Mapping

“A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.”
— Gilbert H. Grosvenor

Heros Journey

When an ordinary person is called away from a safe, familiar world to a journey on an unknown and dangerous path. Upon stepping across the threshold into the adventure, the traveler is faced with a series of trials, tests, ordeals, and victories through which he is ultimately transformed into a different kind of person — a heroic person. In the final stage of the journey, the hero returns to the world from which he began — changed from ordinary to heroic

— Campbell, 1949

Trauma survivors who choose to enter into trauma recovery may be viewed as individuals embarking on a hero’s journey. Historically, many of the coping strategies utilised by individuals who are experiencing post-traumatic stress have been viewed as inherently disordered and personally dysfunctional. An alternative perspective of these behaviours calls for an examination of strengths present within trauma survivors, suggesting a reframe of their symptomology as ingenuity in coping during adverse circumstances and an appreciation for the difficulty of living with traumatic memories. This article highlights the challenging process of trauma recovery as it parallels Campbell’s (1949) metaphor of the hero’s journey and its stages of departure, initiation, and return. The historical conceptual framework for understanding psychosocial and lingering impacts of trauma is reviewed, an alternative strengths-based perspective in the examination of trauma symptoms is proposed, and potential positive outcomes of post-traumatic growth are discussed. Finally, a trauma survivor’s personal story of her hero’s journey towards post-traumatic growth is presented.

Meeting a mentor — Advocate with similar lived experiences

Advocates are people who have survived and lived to tell the tale. Their past experiences mean that they can have true empathy, being met at eye level and not being cast into an environment of judgement is very important for victims of exploitation.

Crossing the threshold — Escaping

With the decision to intentionally walk back into the experience of horrific memories through a therapeutic counseling process that confronts the shame, fear, and pain that grip many aspects of life, the survivor crosses the threshold from the ordinary world into a new and unknown territory. The trials, tests, and ordeals of the trauma survivor are made up of facing terrifying memories and overwhelming pain.

The enormity of this step cannot be understated.

On average only 10% of people escape the sex trade so what that means is that they have extreme survival skills and are more likely to revert to what they know rather than face the unknown. Also in the context of domestic violence, it takes on average seven attempts for somebody to finally leave their abuser.

Trials and failure — Symptoms of PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury. Some of the common symptoms for victims of sexual exploitation are:

• Constant state of fight or flight
• Numbing
• Substance abuse
• Eating disorders and self harm
• Dissociation
• Flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Source of terror
• Intrusive sensations

Growth and new skills — Emotional intelligence skills

Sometimes called EQ (emotional quotient) as opposed to IQ (intelligence quotient).

Emotional Intelligence is our ability to handle emotions and to cope with the highs and lows life throws at us. The more you are aware and in control of your emotions and the higher your EQ, the more likely you are achieve success, happiness and fulfilment in your life.

Overcoming the monster — 5 stages of grief

The stages of grief and mourning are universal and are experienced by people from all walks of life, across many cultures. Mourning occurs in response to an individual’s own terminal illness, the loss of a close relationship, or to the death of a valued being, human, or animal. There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

Revelation —Narrative therapy

Narrative therapy is a form of psychotherapy that seeks to help patients identify their values and the skills associated with them. It provides the patient with knowledge of their ability to live these values so they can effectively confront current and future problems.

The key desire for any victim is to not let their victimhood or their pathologies define them. Narrative therapy focuses on self-authoring and goal setting in order to uncover and realise the person that they want to become.

Gets gift — Trauma informed care training

A system utilising a Trauma-Informed Care approach realises the direct impact that trauma can have on access to services and responds by changing policies, procedures and practices to minimise potential barriers. A system utilising a Trauma-Informed approach also fully integrates knowledge about trauma into all aspects of services and trains staff to recognise the signs and symptoms of trauma and thus avoid any possibility of re-traumatisation.

Emma’s core belief is that there is real power in the stories of women who have survived trauma. But in order to avoid re-traumatisation and the mishandling of a fragile victim, it is important that every woman should receive training in order to unlock the true potential her story could have for others.

Service Blueprint

A service blueprint is a diagram that visualises the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touch points in a specific customer journey.

Onboarding Flow

Many apps ask for a log in straight away, we thought that this would not be a good idea to do with people who have severe issues trusting people. So we focused on delivering value and making it prescient in as short a time as possible.

Our job stories demarcate the three different states that our persona might join our app in, and the value props and the onboarding needs to be adjusted to that.

Value first, log in second.

Information Architecture

What we’ve learned is that many women who are caught in the sex trade are intentionally kept uneducated and with low levels of literacy. One trauma specialist told us that our app must be designed to be used by people with a reading age of 10–15 years old.

With this in mind, reducing the cognitive load and keeping the features pared back and in domains that would be easy to navigate was of utmost importance.