Begin here before starting Week 1. This section introduces GROUNDWORK, explains how the program works, addresses important safety and privacy considerations, and helps you establish a starting point for your recovery. Please complete each activity in this section before beginning the 26-week program.

GROUNDWORK begins before the relationship experiences that brought you here. Phase One explores the biological, developmental, relational, and social influences that helped shape who you became. The goal is not to explain your life with a single cause, but to begin understanding the many influences that contributed to the person you brought into your relationships.

Understanding where you came from is only the beginning. This brief transitional phase connects what you have learned about your development with the experiences and patterns that emerged later in your life. It provides a bridge between understanding how you were shaped and beginning to examine what happened in your relationships.

Patterns can be difficult to recognize when you are living inside them. This phase begins bringing those patterns into focus. You will examine experiences, behaviors, expectations, and relationship dynamics more closely while learning to distinguish what happened from the explanations you may have developed around it.

Greater clarity makes it possible to examine difficult experiences without losing sight of yourself. This phase examines power, control, manipulation, boundaries, responsibility, and how prolonged relationship experiences can affect perception and decision-making. The objective is not to tell you what happened, but to give you better tools for evaluating it yourself.

Understanding creates a new challenge: deciding what to do with what you now know. This phase moves from recognition toward choice, examining safety, boundaries, decision-making, responsibility, and the practical realities that can accompany significant change. The emphasis shifts increasingly toward your agency and the direction you choose from here.

When confusion begins to clear, recovery becomes about more than understanding the past. This phase focuses increasingly on rebuilding - strengthening self-trust, recognizing healthier patterns, developing practical skills, and deciding what you want to carry forward and what you are ready to leave behind.

The final phase of GROUNDWORK turns increasingly toward the life you are building. You will integrate what you have learned, strengthen the tools and principles you want to keep, prepare for challenges that may reappear, and define recovery on your own terms. The goal is not simply to have survived what happened. It is to move forward with greater clarity, agency, accountability, and purpose.

No. You don't need to adopt any particular label. Some men begin GROUNDWORK knowing they have experienced abuse or coercive control. Others begin because something about the relationship didn't feel right, and they want to understand it more clearly. GROUNDWORK gives you information and tools to examine your own experiences and draw your own conclusions.

You can participate whether you are currently in the relationship, considering leaving, separated, divorced, or the relationship ended years ago. GROUNDWORK does not tell you whether to stay or leave. If you are currently experiencing threats, violence, stalking, or immediate safety concerns, however, an online educational program should not replace individualized safety planning or crisis assistance.

No. GROUNDWORK is a psychoeducational recovery program. It provides structured education, reflection, and practical tools, but it does not provide psychotherapy, diagnosis, medical or mental health treatment, crisis intervention, or individualized clinical care.

Yes. GROUNDWORK can be used alongside professional services. You may even find that the program raises concepts or questions that give you useful topics to discuss with your counselor or therapist. GROUNDWORK does not replace those services.

No. The 26-week structure provides a progression through the material, but recovery doesn't operate according to a calendar. Some weeks may move quickly; others may deserve more time. The important thing is to engage with the material rather than race through it.

GROUNDWORK addresses emotionally challenging experiences. Work at a manageable pace, take breaks when needed, and seek appropriate professional or personal support when the material becomes difficult. If you are in immediate danger or experiencing a mental health crisis, use appropriate emergency or crisis resources rather than relying on GROUNDWORK.

No. GROUNDWORK is designed so that you can work through the program independently. You are not required to publicly disclose your experiences or participate in group discussions in order to complete the program.

No. Understanding harmful relationship experiences is important, but GROUNDWORK also asks you to examine your own history, patterns, responses, choices, boundaries, values, and direction. Recovery involves understanding what happened and taking ownership of what you build next.