Helping a Loved One Experiencing Abuse
Supporting a loved one experiencing abuse involves educating yourself about the dynamics of abuse and available resources, providing a non-judgmental space for them to share their experiences, offering practical support and encouragement to seek professional help, assisting in creating a safety plan, respecting their decisions, staying connected, and prioritizing your own self-care. It’s essential to remain patient, supportive, and understanding while respecting their autonomy and readiness to take action. If there’s immediate danger, don’t hesitate to seek emergency assistance. Your support can play a crucial role in their journey toward safety and healing.
Understanding Abuse
Domestic and relationship violence are based on the abuser exerting power and control over the victim. Be aware of some of the tactics in the power and control dynamic.
- Isolation: Abusers often isolate their victims from friends, family, and support networks. This isolation makes the victim more dependent on the abuser and less likely to seek help or leave the abusive situation.
- Economic Abuse: Abusers may control the finances in the relationship, restricting the victim’s access to money or employment opportunities. This financial dependency can make it difficult for the victim to leave the relationship.
- Control Through Fear: Abusers use fear as a tool to maintain control over their victims. This can involve threats of physical violence, emotional manipulation, or intimidation tactics to instill fear and ensure compliance.
- Emotional Abuse: This form of abuse involves manipulating the victim’s emotions and self-worth to maintain control. Examples include belittling, humiliation, constant criticism, gaslighting (manipulating someone into questioning their own reality), and withholding affection or validation. Emotional abuse can have profound and long-lasting effects on the victim’s mental health and well-being.
- Control Through Using Children: Abusers may use children as pawns to exert control over the victim. This can include threatening to take the children away, manipulating visitation schedules, using children to relay messages or spy on the victim, or even directly involving them in the abuse. By using children in this way, the abuser further undermines the victim’s sense of security and autonomy.
Common Questions
Want to help a friend or family member who is in an abusive relationship? Showing genuine concern is the best place to start.
Time and place are important. Privacy matters. You can begin with a simple statement like, “I’m worried about you.” Be aware that denial has a purpose, and safety is central. If the conversation shuts down, at least an opening has been created.
Believe what you hear. Listen without interrupting or asking a lot of questions. Accept the details as they are revealed. Be aware that your friend/family member may be struggling with deep embarrassment, guilt, or fear. Try not to judge the situation, the victim, or the abuser. This is difficult for most people; however, judging will often push your friend or family member farther away from you.
First, establish a safe connection. Your friend or family member may not know what is needed most, but he or she knows that staying safe is important. Providing a safe place to talk and demonstrating your respect for privacy and confidentiality is essential. Offering advice usually isn’t effective; offer your support and encouragement.
Unfortunately, this is too often the case. It is not your fault because it was not your decision. The important thing to do when this happens is to remain open and available; if you are able, let your friend or family member know that you are not passing judgment on decisions made. Be aware that relationship violence follows patterns of behavior, and that your friend or family member may be responding to the abuser’s sense of remorse or promises to change. The dynamic between an abuser and his or her victim is unique to them as a couple or family. There may be pressures that are not understood by others in the family or community. Be genuine. Be available. Be open.
First, understand your limitations. There are many things not in your control. Helping your friend assess the danger could be an important way to support his or her decision-making process. Does the abuser have a history of violence against others or against the police? Does the abuser have a history of drug or alcohol abuse? Has the abuser ever choked the victim? Has the abuser ever threatened the victim with a gun or other deadly weapon? If there are children in the home, have they seen the violence? If the answer to the above questions is “yes,” the danger level is high. You can help your friend develop a safety plan. You can encourage your family member to keep their phones charged in order to call 911.
A safety plan is a plan of action that the victim of violence can put into place at a moment’s notice. For instance, where will a victim go if he or she has to flee? Where will the children be? Can a bag of clothing, money, important papers, and other essentials be kept in a safe place? What support network is available; friends, neighbors, family? Advocates at Starting Point are experienced and available to help develop a safety plan.
You can call for yourself because you are exposed to the trauma of relationship abuse. You also need support in order to support your friend. Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for the help you want to give your friend, as well as the help you may need for your own peace of mind. Your friend may be helped by the resources that you learn are available for victims of relationship abuse.
Domestic and relationship violence is based on the abuser exerting power and control over the victim. Be aware of some of the tactics in the power and control dynamic:
- Control through isolation: the abuser seeks to isolate his or her victim from friends and family or employment opportunities; this leaves the victim with fewer resources and a greater sense of aloneness.
- Control through economic abuse: the abusive partner seeks to control finances; takes the victim’s paycheck; makes it difficult for the victim to go to work or refuses to share the car for transportation to and from work; will not share in child care while the victim works outside the home, or uses the victim’s credit cards for personal gain.
- Control through fear: the abuser has the victim convinced that if she leaves, she will never see the children, that friends and family members will hear what a terrible person she really is, that she will have no place to live, that she will have no health insurance, no money, no car, and no one will believe her. Everyone will know that she is crazy and unreliable, a drug user, and an alcoholic.
- Control through emotional abuse: the victim hears over and over his or her weaknesses and shortcomings; the victim is called names so often it almost becomes commonplace; the victim is criticized and belittled in public and in private. Feelings are not honored, and personal failings are exaggerated.
- Control through mind games: the abuser says, “ I was just joking” after an insult or tells the victim’s family and friends that he or she is actually the victim of abuse.
- Control through using children: This is a devastating form of control because it uses a victim’s sense of parenting as a weapon. The abuser tells the victim’s child(ren) that she/he is a terrible and unreliable parent. The abuser tells intimate information about the victim to the children. Or the abuser demands from the children absolute loyalty and paints the victim as one who does not truly love her/his children. The ultimate fear of losing a child may drive the victim’s decision-making, thereby threatening personal safety.
This is when the real work begins. Every fear that the victim once had about leaving is now part of her every day experience. In addition to figuring out how to survive, the victim also has to be hyper-vigilant about the reaction of the abuser, vigilant about reactions of family and friends, vigilant about housing, finances, bills, a job, transportation, insurance, medical care, child care, and how much to tell the schools if there are children.
These are concerns that weigh heavily on a victim at a very vulnerable time. For some victims, returning to the
abuser seems to be the least frightening solution to insurmountable obstacles to safety.
In this period of time, a victim needs support from many fronts. Respect her decision; honor his choices – even if
those decisions and choices would not be yours.
Encourage a connection to Starting Point if one has not already been established.
And if your friend or family member does make the decision to return to an abusive relationship, keep the
door to communication open. Let him/her know that returning does not mean losing you.
Starting Point provides support for all individuals touched by relationship abuse. That includes friends and family members of those who are directly involved. Be sensitive to your own need for support and encouragement. Besides information about local resources, advocates are available to listen and discuss options. You can contact our 24-hour support line at 800-336-3795. Advocates are also available in our offices either by phone or personal appointment from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Monday through Friday.