GUIDANCE FOR INTIMATE PARTNER ABUSE THERAPY
Intimate partner abuse victims often search for therapists who help them recover from the emotional injuries they experience.
Before focusing on therapist behavior that facilitates therapy success, let’s acknowledge that not everyone wants therapy. Our society often assumes they should, which inadvertently keeps the focus of responsibility on victims, rather than on the person who uses abuse. When survivors have support and encouragement from family, friends, or advocates, they may not want or need a therapist.
Because intimate partner abuse is so confusing and destructive, many decide therapy would benefit them. Their confusion stems from many things, a few of which are:
- Abusive intimate relationships betray relationship norms of trust and caring. Healthy relationship conflict includes looking at what our responsibility is, but this gets twisted by abusers.
- There are almost always good experiences in relationships. It’s confusing to reconcile these with harmful words and actions.
- Their partners’ behavior may only become abusive after commitment.
- The stress of abuse in a relationship wears on victims, eroding the good coping strategies they often have.
The purpose of this blog is to guide both prospective clients and therapists toward treatment success.
Beneficial Features of Therapy
Successful therapy experiences have a foundation of trust and respect. Research indicates the therapy relationship is the most important determiner of treatment success. A good one provides the foundation for therapist training and therapeutic modalities to be effective. Trust and feeling safe are the first criteria by which to choose a therapist.
These therapy characteristics also promote therapy success.
- Free screening and consultation
- Knowledge about issues faced
- Strengths-based therapy
- Working alongside clients to set and reach goals
- Respect for the context of clients’ lives
- Space for grieving
The rest of this blog gives details that pertain to intimate partner abuse therapy.
Free Upfront Screening and Conversation
Most therapists screen clients and have a willingness to speak briefly by phone or virtually about what they offer and what clients want. Clients can also use this conversation to screen. Telling a bit about their situation and asking questions about the therpaist’s knowledge and skills gives them a sense of how they work. This conversation helps both client and therapist gauge how confident they are that they are a good match.
A Strengths-Based Approach to Therapy
This means therapists actively ask about strengths and coping strategies. Let’s explore one example.
Victims frequently ask, “why didn’t I see this sooner?” Clients benefit when therapists recognize how giving the benefit of the doubt and other coping strategies are strengths in equal relationships. They can note how abusers take advantage of strengths. This provides the basis for investigating the extent to which trusting themselves is an issue in general or a byproduct of abuse.
Knowledge About Issues Faced
Those who experience intimate partner abuse want therapists who understand what they are going through. Not all therapists specialize in partner abuse, but many are trauma-informed. During the screening, clients can ask about trauma training and their knowledge about intimate abuse. This gives them a feel for whether therapists will understand their experiences.
Therapists who know abuse dynamics can better help clients in healing. For instance, they can normalize how coercive control affects everyone, recognize how it’s affected them, and address any personal issues that make them more vulnerable.
Working Alongside Clients to Set and Reach Goals
I suggest thinking of therapists as midwives who work alongside clients instead of using the medical model of expert/patient. They use their expertise to plan goals that come from the client. Many times, people can’t identify what they want in the first session, but the process of talking brings clarity.
One mistake sometimes made involves rushing into decisions about leaving because of safety fears. When therapists feel uncomfortable about danger, they should say so, but in a way that invites discussion. For instance:
- “Your partner’s behavior matches high-risk flags on screening instruments. How do you feel about this?”
- “I’m feeling afraid for you. Can we talk about safety planning?”
- “What are your thoughts about leaving versus staying in the relationship?”
These open-ended interventions leave space for gathering information about where the individual is and why. Giving input about clients’ situations in an objective, nonjudgmental, and non-controlling way promotes their ability to decide what is best for them. Telling people what they should do is tempting but never wise.
Respect For the Context of Clients’ Lives
Therapists’ knowledge about therapeutic approaches should respect victims’ life situations and what they want. Such things as socioeconomic status, race, children, connections to family, gender identity, and sexuality affect what clients want or are ready for. Therapist guidance needs to be geared to clients’ circumstances. For instance, calling the police has been traumatic for many minority members.
People also enter therapy at different stages of change readiness. Some aren’t sure what is happening in their relationship. Others enter knowing their partners are abusive and want to leave or tell them to get treatment. And it can be anywhere between these ends of the continuum. Therapy is often a process of gradually accepting the reality of partners’ behavior. Survivors need different things depending on where they are in this process. And, depending upon how their partners respond to them as they make progress with their goals.
Space for Grieving
Therapists and clients may not acknowledge grief, partly because there isn’t time and energy for it in the midst of constant abuse. We also live in a culture that rushes people through the grieving process because of discomfort with losses. A third reason lies in family and friends not understanding the need for grief when victims have been harmed. They may have trouble hearing about sadness, so survivors silence it.
Therapists make space for grieving because processing grief is the first step to creating a new life chapter. Author Pauline Boss[i] says that you can learn to both live with loss and have a good life. Short-cutting grief hampers the ability to make peace with any crisis.
Summary
Those who seek intimate partner abuse therapy should feel like they are in the employer’s seat. However, the demand for therapy is so high right now, that I know many are frustrated by waitlists and lack of therapist availability. My hope is that prospective clients use this information to know what they want and keep looking for it.
[i] Pauline Boss, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2022)
