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Video transcript

We explore the social context of image-based abuse and learn tools for processing our emotions, understanding our responses, and healing from trauma. We remind ourselves that we are not to blame. 

Image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves

 Hello everyone! Welcome! This is Paz, and I’m here with Mehak, Nooreen, and Francesca. Today we've brought the team together to welcome you officially to Bloom. We are so glad you are here and are joining us for this part of your healing journey. 

 Today’s introduction is going to cover a few different things.

 Without further ado, let’s get started! This right here, the faces you’re seeing now, are the Bloom team - a team of survivors and allies. We’re all here today, but we’ll be splitting into pairs to make the course videos, so it’s us you’ll see in them. Now let’s get started with our introductions! 

So, I’m Mehak, my pronouns are she/her. I’m based in Delhi and Mumbai in India. I speak Hindi and English. A fun fact about me is that I absolutely love The Powerpuff Girls. Ever since I was a girl I wanted to be Buttercup, I think I still want to be Buttercup. If I see merchandising of her I get really intrigued to buy them. That’s a fun fact about me, what about you Francesca?

I feel like I’ve learned something about you, I didn’t know about that until now. I’m Francesca, my pronouns are she/her. I’m from the UK, I’m based in London. I speak English and I’m trying to learn Spanish but it’s going very badly and slowly. A fun fact about me is I love football, I love watching football, I love playing football. But I’m also extremely competitive which is a big factor in playing and watching football. So, that’s mine. Nooreen, what about you?

 I love that, Francesca. Hi everyone! I’m Nooreen, my pronouns are she/her. I’m Bangladeshi, I was born in the United Arab Emirates and I’m currently based in Edmonton, Canada. I actually speak Bengali, Urdu and Hindi fluently and outside of that I can get some French and Arabic. And a fun fact about me which is quite random, I really enjoy dancing. When I was in elementary school in grade one I did a dance performance with two of my friends in the annual function to Barbie Girls by Aqua. So, I'm not at all excited for the Barbie movie coming out soon. What about you, Paz?

 I love everything you said about yourselves, I didn’t know that. I’m Paz, I’m from Argentina. My pronouns are she/her, I live one hour South of Buenos Aires in a city called La Plata. I speak Spanish, English and Portuguese because I lived in Brazil - in Rio - for a couple of months.  I worked there. And a fun fact about me is that I have a Tiktok account, an anonymous Tiktok account with just a couple of followers where I only share music that I like. So yes, that’s it. 

 That’s so cute. So many cute facts about each other and It’s lovely to meet you all, even if we can’t see you. 

Let’s start by telling you a little bit more about what Bloom is. Our courses were made with two intentions: 

 Within each course, our team will pass on key information and give you the tools that will support you to cope with trauma. 

Through our material, we hope to embolden, acknowledge, and enable everyone here to process their experiences, understand their coping mechanisms, banish shame, recognise patterns in their lives — and be able to build new ones. You are the expert in your own recovery, and the insights you bring to this space are very valuable. 

We also know that trauma is personal and that our stories and needs will vary. The experiences we bring to this space may be different —  from a one-time traumatic incident to long-term experiences of violence, abuse, or harassment. Our experiences as survivors will also depend on our gender identity, our sexuality, where we live, if we’re disabled, if we are racialised within our society, and more. 

We may have experienced oppressions which are in and of themselves traumatic. We may understand the effect our experiences have had already, or we may not. Whatever you are coming here with, welcome. You’re in the right place. 

 With that covered: how does this all work?

Our Bloom courses are divided into sessions, which we record as videos.

We have written and edited captions for all our videos, which you can enable by clicking the ‘subtitles’ or ‘closed captions’ button at the bottom banner of the video. Click the option that says ‘English’ without ‘automatic’ next to it. Each video also comes with a transcript, and this will have links to any other courses and content we talk about in the session.

While our courses are divided into sessions and weeks, you can take Bloom at whatever pace works for you. If you need to step away from the course for a while, that’s totally fine. Take as many days, weeks or months as you may need. You can also pause these videos at any time, go get food or a drink, and also step away if you need to reflect.

As our first wellness tool, we start every session with a 

Grounding exercises can help to bring us back to ourselves and the present moment when we feel distressed, overwhelmed, or disconnected from our bodies and the world around us. They engage with our senses — sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste — and may involve different visualisation techniques or even sometimes our bodies, to help ground us in the here and now. 

Everyone’s needs and preferences are different, so it’s totally fine if you can’t do one. But that’s why we do a different one each session, to help us all find the ones that work for us. Any time a session feels uncomfortable, or you get triggered during a video, or really at any time you need it, you can use one of these exercises to bring you back to sensations of the present.  

 It’s not necessary for you to do this activity, but we’ve designed them to provide opportunities to reflect on the material from the sessions. Outside the sessions, you’ll see 

This includes definitions we talk about in the sessions, graphics to summarise our content or support your learning, articles and quotes we want to share, and more. 

You can also directly talk to our team and reflect through our 

, which you can access through our Bloom platform.

A more specific introduction to the material we’ll cover in the course you’re taking will come at the end of the video. But with all this in mind, our course values are: 

. We know that healing isn’t linear and that everyone’s recovery is unique. The information in our courses is for survivors at different stages of recovery to use as is most helpful. 

 We don’t use trigger warnings, as discussing the effects of trauma is the core of our work. But we do give an overview of our material in the session goals at the beginning of every session so that you know if any upcoming material might be difficult for you. 

Each video also has a transcript, with the material divided under different headings, which you can read before watching the video. This means you get to learn in the way that works best for you. Overall, the course-specific introduction will set up what kind of material you can expect from the course. 

 As we just said, we don’t experience trauma in isolation from the world around us, and we know that our experiences as survivors will have been impacted by our identity and the way our identity is treated by society. We are always trying to amplify the voices and experiences of survivors who are less often heard, such as survivors from the Global South or with migrant or refugee status, as well as survivors from the LGBTQIA+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual and any gender that isn’t the one assigned to us at birth or any sexuality that isn’t heterosexual). This includes disabled survivors, sex workers, and more. 

Our material has been written or checked by a trauma-informed therapist. We operate on a strict policy of no pseudoscience! The information we cover on the science of trauma and the trauma response, and the psychological and sociological material of our courses is up-to-date and backed by research. We’re always learning, updating, and revising here at Bloom. 

 Before we go into the course-specific introduction, we have a couple of disclaimers about what you can expect as part of Bloom. 

Bloom’s courses are not meant to replace professional services. 

However, there may be many reasons why therapy is not an option for you. Know that there are other kinds of support out there, such as support groups and helplines. You can find our global 

 of support services by clicking on ‘Immediate help’ at the top of the Bloom platform. 

Bloom has been widely researched, double-checked, and verified by our professional therapists and team of trauma-support workers, survivors and allies. The information and advice that we cover about trauma, abuse, and everything else is psychologically-informed, and, perhaps most importantly, informed by our own team of survivors, who have included resources and stories of their own recovery. 

However, this programme is not meant to substitute the individual attention and training of an accredited counsellor or agency. As an additional resource, Bloom supports you as you learn and heal, whatever that might mean to you.

If therapy is accessible or affordable for you, do explore it as an option. There are many types of therapy out there, and we trust that you can find one that suits you best, as well as a therapist who helps you grow. 

So if you or a young person in your care is at risk of immediate harm, please do contact an organisation that can support you directly. As we just said, you can find local support services by looking at our 

If you have any questions about this, you can email us at team @ 

 or message us through our social media on 

We also wanted to give you a reminder that 

when browsing on Bloom. You can check out our 

We use the word healing in our courses. By this, we don’t mean that you are broken or need to return to who you were before the abuse. We consider healing to be a non-linear journey, with no final or ideal destination. You define what healing means to you. 

 We will do everything we can to help you cope or reclaim your own power, whether this means managing your symptoms, mourning the past, or untangling the present. It can also mean learning to hope. Whatever your journey here, we can’t wait to get started. 

Thank you so much, everyone. We’ll see you soon. Stay tuned for a course-specific introduction! 

Hello everyone! This is Francesca and Mehak here. You’re now in the video introduction specifically for 

‘Image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves.’ 

 Welcome! We’ll take a couple of minutes to share more specific information about the structure of this course, and what to expect. 

‘Image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves’

 course has been created for everyone who has experienced or survived such abuse. These could involve our images and videos, those of loved ones, and those of the abuser, as well as entirely fake or digitally manipulated material. It can also be material taken from the internet. This might be sent to us directly, shared with others, or uploaded on different platforms. 

The abuser can be a current or ex-partner, as well as a colleague, friend, family member, or a stranger. It can even be a group of people. Image-based abuse doesn’t only happen online, and it’s not only sexual. It can happen to anyone, including people with disabilities, younger adults, sex workers and indigenous people. 

 In this course, we’ll be looking at why and how image-based abuse happens and the impact it leaves on our lives. We’ll focus on our healing and on rebuilding ourselves after this abuse. We know from research that survivors often experience more than one type of image-based abuse.

e might experience nonconsensual taking, threatening, and sharing of intimate images all at the same time

. Likewise, we often see image-based abuse happening alongside and intersecting with other abuse, like exploitation, bullying, harassment, blackmailing, extortion, domestic abuse, sexual violence, and stalking, both on and offline. 

In the aftermath of such abuse, how do we heal our relationship with our emotions, our mind, our body, our sense of identity and even technology? This is what this course is all about. For many of us, image-based abuse might be ongoing. Due to the nature of this type of abuse, it can sometimes last for long periods after the initial incident. Some of us may also be living with abusers and may not be in a safe space. Please do take care as anything we share should be adapted to your particular situation. 

This course is 7 sessions long, not including this one. We’ve tried to keep each video under 20 minutes. All of our bonus content is under 10 minutes. You know yourself best, so you can take this course at whatever pace works for your healing journey.

As we said earlier, this course is fundamentally intersectional. We try to make our content reflect people’s experiences of image-based abuse and being a survivor may be very different based on our contexts. This depends not only on our personal experiences, but also on our class, age, race, caste, gender, profession, nationality, disability, ethnicity, and sexuality, as well as other factors, such as our body shape and skin colour, including how these interact.  

Who you are and how you identify does not and should never affect your right to live a life free from violence, harassment, or abuse. With Bloom, we know that recovery cannot be done in isolation, and we need a breadth of people to offer advice on practical and emotional support after trauma. 

We want you to keep in mind that we will never underestimate the courage it takes to sign up for a course like this or overlook the trust you’ve given us as we work through these topics. We might question what we’ll remember in recovery. Often, we wonder what we can handle. This is normal! However, we will never mention or present information without a purpose. Many of our Bloom team are survivors themselves, so we know that talking about trauma and abuse can bring up a lot of unknowns. 

Be flexible and kind with yourself, as you take this course. For more support in your part of the world, explore our

Thank you for joining us on this course. We can’t wait to get started. See you in

Week 1

We discuss the impact of image-based abuse on our lives, understand its social and cultural context, identify some common victim-blaming myths, and recognise that we are not to blame for the abuse. 

The social context of image-based abuse and victim-blaming 

Session 1

Week 2

We unpack how image-based abuse impacts our emotions, explore emotions like guilt, shame, fear, anger, and betrayal, and learn how to respond to these through reflection, curiosity, resilience, trust, and self-compassion.

Unpacking and processing our emotions

Session 2

We discuss how the emotion of fear manifests itself when we experience image-based abuse and how we can cope with it by using different techniques, including some rooted in resilience. 

Fear

Mini-session

We reflect on how the emotions of guilt and shame come up after image-based abuse, how this does not mean we are to blame, and how we can meet these emotions with self-compassion.

Guilt and shame 

Shame and Guilt

We discuss how feelings of betrayal and anger show up when we experience image-based abuse, how we can trust again, and how we can use the tools of reflection and curiosity to engage with our emotions.

Betrayal and anger

Week 3

We realise the impact of triggers, hypervigilance and dissociation on our lives and understand these responses to trauma. We reflect on how our ability to trust others may have also been affected and how we might rebuild this after image-based abuse.

Understanding our responses to image-based abuse

Session 3

Week 4

We recognise how image-based abuse can fundamentally change the way we think about and feel in our bodies. We also explore body-focused recovery tools, such as yoga and meditation. 

Healing our relationship with our body and body-image

Session 4

Week 5

We acknowledge how our sense of self and identity is impacted by image-based abuse and learn tools to rebuild our self-esteem, reconnect with our identity, and trust ourselves again.

Healing our sense of self and identity

Session 5

Week 6

We reflect on how our relationship with the digital world may have shifted since the abuse and explore how we can use concepts like digital self-care, digital boundaries, and online safety to create room for us in digital spaces.

Healing our relationship with technology

Session 6

Week 7

We look back at everything we’ve learnt so far and reflect on how the abuse might continue to impact our lives and relationships. We also create a self-care plan, allowing ourselves to look towards a hopeful future. 