It’s possible you’ve seen our social media posts about a themed week of self-love and recognizing relationship abuse, so here’s a little more insight into our motivation for such a lovey-dovey week from Her Campus DU!
We were given the opportunity to run a campaign titled “1 in 5” by DoSomething.org to bring awareness to relationship abuse and violence. The idea behind the campaign is that 1 in 5 young people, both girls and guys, will experience dating abuse of some kind. Of course young women have a higher risk than men, but men are still targets and are effected! There is a line between a healthy relationship and one that is dangerous and controlling, though this line may be blurry. The 1 in 5 campaign seeks to illuminate some examples of relationship abuse and provide methods and support for seeking help! Here at DU our very own CAPE office (click here for a link to their website) runs the same campaign throughout the academic year. We are so fortunate not only to have these resources for a month with DoSomething.org, but also all year long right here on our own campus!
The first part of this campaign is recognizing relationship abuse and what to do about it. Some common signs include controlling attitudes or actions, anger or sporadic spurts of rage, over protecting tendencies or distrust, lack of communication, jealousy, any kind of abuse from physical, to mental, to emotional. None of it should be tolerated! It’s often easier to spot physical abuse than it is mental or emotional, but those can look like jealousy, put downs, not supporting or believing in you, name calling, or things like telling you to suck it up, or not be so needy. You know what you need and who you are which leads us to the second part of this campaign, loving yourself.
Loving yourself can look like a lot of things; it can be taking a night off to spoil yourself with wine and Girl Scout cookies (check out our article!) or dating yourself for a while (another awesome article!), or it can simply be finding and having the confidence to believe in yourself, support your own ideas and dreams, and taking time to remember who you are. There are so many ways to love yourself, we could write a novel about it, in fact there are tons of novels out there, but what is really important is knowing what you will and won’t put up with and standing up for what you believe in, and hopefully that’s yourself.
This week the Her Campus DU team has made it our mission to write all about relationships, loving yourself, and getting the help you need. We hope our outreach can help at least one person, if not many more, so pass it on and share the love.