The work, and the person who built it.
Two parts: the author behind the framework, and the project's direction over time.
About the author
Mariela Haack — attorney, survivor, creator of The Abuse Survivor's Toolbox.
Mariela built these tools through her own experience of coercive control, the criminal and civil legal proceedings that followed, and the period of recovery that began on the other side. She designed the framework to address what she found missing for herself: practical structure for thinking, deciding, and rebuilding under conditions that compromise all three.
She approaches survivor recovery as something that is not only emotional but neurological, cognitive, and logistical. Survivors are routinely expected to remember, explain, organize, and defend their reality while still in survival mode — while institutions, deadlines, and decisions continue to demand action. What was missing, in her own experience and in what she observed of others', was practical scaffolding that could hold information when the brain could not.
Recovery requires safety and clarity before insight and growth. Systems should work with the nervous system, not against it.
Her work draws on her legal training, her direct experience of the conditions the toolkits are designed to address, and ongoing engagement with research on trauma, decision-making under stress, and survivor-centered practice. The framework is built around several core principles:
- Survivors are not broken — they are responding to prolonged stress and coercion
- Recovery requires safety and clarity before insight and growth
- Support should reduce cognitive load, not add to it
- Tools should be usable in short, manageable sessions, without requiring repeated retelling of traumatic material
- The goal is not productivity or performance — it is steadier footing, clearer thinking, and restored agency
Her work is for intelligent, capable survivors who want usable tools rather than platitudes, fear-based framing, or motivational pressure — and for the professionals supporting them.
About The Abuse Survivor's Toolbox
A growing system. Built to scale beyond a single book, beyond a single language, beyond a single point of access.
The Abuse Survivor's Toolbox began as a personal framework and has scaled into a system of educational and decision-support resources for people navigating abuse, recovery, and complex institutional realities. The project's premise: abuse — especially coercive or psychologically complex abuse — does not only cause emotional harm. It disrupts perception, memory, safety assessment, and access to resources. Survivors are routinely expected to make high-stakes decisions while under cognitive and physiological strain, in environments that are fragmented, confusing, or actively hostile.
Rather than offering motivational language or prescriptive advice, the project provides education and structured tools that help survivors understand what they are responding to, organize complex information, assess risk, and plan next steps at their own pace. The focus is not on telling people what they should do, but on restoring the capacity to choose.
At its core, this project is about restoring agency under pressure — and recognizing that clarity itself is a form of safety.
Where the project is heading
The Toolbox is currently a published book and a series of three structured toolkits, with several free tools and resources for survivors and professionals. The work is actively scaling along several directions, in collaboration with clinicians, advocates, attorneys, and institutional partners:
Clinical adoption
Training programs and integration pathways for therapists, counselors, and trauma-informed care teams.
Legal & advocacy partnerships
Use by domestic violence legal clinics, victim services programs, and advocacy organizations supporting survivors through civil and criminal proceedings.
Research & academic collaboration
Engagement with researchers studying decision-making under coercive conditions, and use of the framework in social work, counseling, and law school curricula.
Translation & international scaling
A Spanish edition is currently available. Additional languages are planned to extend access in jurisdictions where survivor support resources are scarce.
Nonprofit & fiscal sponsorship
A philanthropic arm to enable foundation funding and expand access to populations who cannot afford the materials.
Cross-system standardization
A shared framework that attorneys, therapists, and advocates can use to coordinate care — reducing the burden on survivors of repeating their story across siloed systems.
All resources are designed to respect survivor autonomy, real-world constraints, and the uneven nature of recovery. They are intended to support — not replace — professional care, advocacy, or community support, and to help survivors arrive at those resources better prepared and less overwhelmed.
Get involved
Partner with the project.
For inquiries about clinical or institutional adoption, training, research collaboration, translation partnerships, or philanthropic support, please reach out directly.
DISCLAIMER: The resources on this site are for educational and organizational support only and are not a substitute for professional medical, mental health, or legal advice.