What if there’s a better way to communicate?
Have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking, Why did that go so badly?
Hello, I’m Susan Dunlop, the Founder of Lead Believe Create with Susan Dunlop and social enterprise, Blue Borage, and an Advisory Board Member for 5WAVES.org in the USA. When not facilitating leadership and team training programs, I advocate for survivors of SSTA and support them in my unique way through training in empowered communication and my Blue Borage Conversation Cafe events. I also bring my skills and experience to help prevent SSTA.
I recorded a podcast conversation with Kristi McVee, which was released in July – here is the link to the podcast: S3 Ep8 – Navigating Self-Development with Susan Dunlop. In that chat, we discussed topics I found interesting and empowering—things I needed as an adult survivor of SSTA. During my healing, when I realised something I didn’t understand was linked to SSTA, I would grieve, sit with it, and slowly, the hurt would lessen. My curiosity led me to look up and understand, with that new knowledge, what I could do now.
I had given myself the gift of immersing myself in the principles and frameworks of the 3 Vital Questions and The Empowerment Dynamic the year prior to finding time to press pause, and take a few years to heal and learn all I could about SSTA, both within and beyond my own lived experience. The 3VQ and TED* frameworks turned out to be something I could hold onto when life felt wobbly, keeping me moving forward through fear, hurt, memories, and pain, towards what I knew was important. I would become a voice in the silent landscape of SSTA. I aimed to understand our family dynamics, the communication issues we faced, and what could have made our circumstances healthier if we had known better.
Perhaps you’ve found yourself reacting instead of responding, rescuing instead of truly listening, or getting frustrated when all you wanted was a genuine connection.
You are not alone
None of us is alone. Many of us, as children, including our parents and their parents, were never taught how to communicate in empowering, sustainable ways. Often, we repeat the patterns we saw growing up — survival-based habits that don’t always serve us or the people we care about.
When I spoke with Kristi McVee we discussed how the phrase “just talk to your kids” isn’t as simple as it seems. This is especially true for those who were never taught how to communicate with empowerment, clarity, and respect.
If you come from a family affected by abuse and trauma, it can be especially challenging to feel like you’re “getting it right” in your interpersonal relationships. It’s important to be kind to yourself and recognise the following: (a) we are often dealing with generations of role modelling how to communicate that have been passed down to us; (b) you are not alone; and (c) things don’t always have to be this way.
There are effective tools, guides, visuals, and frameworks that I have found helpful in becoming a conscious communicator in both my personal life and at work. You can do it too!
This is where frameworks like The Empowerment Dynamic (TED*) can make a significant difference.
TED*® offers a simple map to shift out of the stress-based cycles most of us fall into — known as the Drama Triangle — and into more conscious, empowering ways of interacting.
Instead of:
- Feeling like life is happening to you (Victim),
you shift to becoming a Creator of your life.
Rather than:
- Jumping in to save others (Rescuer),
you become a Coach, supporting without rescuing.
Let go of:
- Reacting or blaming (Persecutor),
and you become a Challenger, helping others grow with respect.
These are not labels: the one shown in brackets is a role we play, a default reaction in times of stress, and the other is a conscious skill. They are available to us all, or in us all, the healthy conscious skills can be relearned; they just take practice.
Are you curious about how to move beyond reactive, drama-filled conversations?
These conversations can occur at home, at work, or within yourself, and they can be exhausting! I invite you to take a first look at the simple, powerful shifts TED*® offers.
You can view or download this free one-page From DDT to TED*® overview PDF here:
From DDT to TED* – Susan Dunlop 3VQ Certified Trainer
If you’re like me, and most other people who’ve joined me, ready for change, looking at this poster often evokes a common response: ‘But How Do I Make That Change?’ That’s what I now train people in: families, partners, educators, and organisational leaders and teams. We all know our default reactions to stress, but within us, we have a conscious set of gifts and talents that we can draw on to live and model a more empowered way of being.
Also, I wanted to follow up on the second downloadable I mentioned during my conversation with Kristi.
There was a new, interesting paper written by Dr. Elly Hanson for the NSPCC in 2024, titled “Understanding and Responding to Sibling Sexual Harm and Abuse: A Research Review and Analysis” and I thought it might be of interest to Kristi’s listeners. See below where you will find the link to the NSPCC Learning website, where you can download the full document. Above that is a one-page summary of the key insights I gathered from the full document, some of which I shared with Kristi during our call and are available here via my blueborage.com.au resources.
Sibling_Sexual_Abuse_Key_Insights_with_References
NSPCC Learning Link to Download Dr E Hanson’s Full Review
In closing off the conversation with Kristi, I mentioned a few websites, but we were riding a choppy sea of sound that dropped out, and whole sentences or parts of them got lost in the wash. So I’ll share them clearly here for you.
| 5WAVES.org | 5WAVES.org is a collective voice promoting Worldwide Awareness, Voice, Education and Support around Sibling Sexual Trauma. |
| raisingchildren.net.au | raisingchildren.net.au is an Australia Parenting Website I found had a lot of valuable resources and articles. The link I’ve shared is titled ‘Sexual assault and teenagers”, as one example of the pages you’ll find there. |
| RAINN.org | RAINN.org is a USA-based organisation. My mention of this site was that I found it had helpful articles during the time that I was processing my disclosures – the two that went wrong. You might find this article helpful ‘Help for Parents of Children Who Have Been Sexually Abused by Family Members’. |
| Blue Borage Conversation Cafe | Monthly conversation events hosted by me for survivors, parents, allies, professionals, educators, and family members interested in speaking about SSTA. The format may be a roundtable, a panelist Q&A or a showcase. We focus on a particular theme each month, and all events require registration through Eventbrite. |
| susandunlop.com.au | This is my training and coaching practice directed to organisational leadership and team empowerment. |
If you’re ready to go deeper, explore our coaching and training programs designed to help individuals, families, and teams build the empowered communication skills that ripple out into stronger, safer, more connected communities.
Explore Our Empowered Communication Options Here
This blog was written in my Voices of Change blog on www.blueborage.com.au and shared to this blog at www.susandunlop.com.au, as Kristi directed people towards this website, not Blue Borage. Thank you for being here,
Susan