At some point, you will likely have the opportunity to confront a person about their abusive personality and behavior.
Whether the abuser is a client, co-worker, family member, or friend, when you are in a position to support a victim by interfacing with the abuser to enact change, you will want to be equipped with the best tools for doing so.
In this article, we’re going to:
- Provide you with an overview of the challenges of confronting abuse
- Describe why it’s crucial to get permission from the victim first
- Uncover how abusers tend to react to confrontation (and how to avoid the pitfalls)
- And unpack a 7-step plan for confronting abusers in the most productive manner possible
Let’s discuss it.
Avoid These Potential Issues
Different circumstances may arise which will compel you to confront someone you see acting harshly or being abusive. You may be a part of the trusted community of the person who is causing harm, and might even be witnessing the toxic behavior first hand. If so, it puts you in the perfect position to confront them.
You might be friends with both people in the relationship, or may even be a ‘friend’ of the couple. You may also just be an outsider trying to help the one being harmed.
If this is you, it’s essential for you to receive permission from the victim first before confronting the abuser, because there might be issues of personal safety, risks of emotional or financial retaliation, or other matters that could seriously affect the victim—so you always want to trust that the victim knows best.
Confronting the abuser may end up escalating the violence at home when the abuser blames the victim for your confrontation. Or, it could cause the abuser to retaliate in various overt and/or covert ways.
It is important for the victim to be emotionally well prepared for a hostile response, as well as to create a safety or exit plan, including quietly seeking the advice of a family law attorney before allowing you to confront their partner.
Once you do, prepare yourself for these potential reactions from the abuser.
How Do Abusers React When Confronted?
Oftentimes, those who abuse are only partially aware that their verbal interactions with the victim are way out of line with social norms.
Being confronted disrupts their sense of misplaced confidence and can lead to either self-reflection or contrition. Or in contrast, it could also lead to retaliation against you and/or the victim. If the abuser retaliates and increases harm against the victim, it’s important that you fully align with the one being harmed. Your support at this juncture is crucial.
Let’s take a look at the proper steps for confrontation here:
The 7 Steps of The Accountability Model of Courage
Learning how to confront an emotional abuser (or any other type of abuser) can be intimidating.
It requires courage and resolve.
If you don’t possess the proper talking points, you will likely be manipulated by the abuser into prematurely believing that they have changed, that there was never an issue with their behavior to begin with, or that the victim is the true abuser.
To circumvent this, we created “The Accountability Model of Courage” to assist you when you interface with abusers—and to help them realize that they need to spend significant time unpacking faulty beliefs and thinking in order to terminate their harmful behaviors.
This model provides a template for helping the abuser take responsibility and face the reality that their actions are not socially or interpersonally acceptable. Since abusers care a great deal about their public image and how others perceive them, confrontation in some cases can lead to change—especially if the one causing harm is not pathologically entrenched.
1. Face
When learning how to confront an abuser, the first step to learn is FACING. This is a profound act of conversational confrontation that takes place between you and the person in your community who may be abusive.
Facing begins as a calm, thoughtful, and even-handed conversation about what the abuser needs to recognize: emphasizing the specific abusive behaviors they are engaging in.
This amounts to challenging them with a steady hand and a strong voice.
You are helping the abuser to become aware, to think, and to face the reality that what they are doing is obvious to you and harmful and traumatizing to the victim.
2. Own
Step two, OWNING, involves the abuser taking responsibility for their distorted belief that their behavior is in any way acceptable.
Ownership is not for the faint of heart—neither for the person helping the abuser to face what they are doing, or for the individual admitting to their acts of abuse.
Owning and its act of acknowledgment requires abusers to fully admit that their behavior is hurting others. Doing less than this is a false owning and doesn’t satisfy this step.
False owning usually means the ownership they’re displaying is only external, and has not resonated internally for them.
Ultimately, the abuser’s work needs to be deeply self-reflective and open-minded—with an external manifestation of the internal change. This means the abuser, with your prompting and firm expectation, needs to make amends as well as reparations commensurate to the harm caused.
3. Resource
Step four, RESOURCING, means that once you have helped an abuser to face and own their abusive behaviors, you offer yourself as an accountability resource.
When they are willing, this step affirms to them that there is help available to them.
ACCOUNTABILITY involves holding firm boundaries and allowing or facilitating consequences for the damage they have done.
Boundaries are often difficult for abusers to accept, but ultimately it is essential if there is to be hope for an abuser to change.
This works best when the accountability partner is someone with knowledge of the nature and activity of the abuses occurring, how this particular abuser has enacted that activity, and who is willing to hold them accountable for the changes that need to occur.
Genuine remorse and repentance are not enough. Many abusers apologize, only to return to enacting destructive behaviors soon after. You are looking for true humility and a willingness to make things right—which are signals that an abuser truly understands what they have done and the hurt they have caused, and that they’re willing to make meaningful and tangible reparations.
Additionally, rich resources that can both support the abuser in getting help and serve to uphold the work they need to do to change, include specialized programs that work with abusers on tangible efforts to transform themselves and their faulty thinking and beliefs—such as volunteering to participate in a batterer’s intervention program and qualified individual therapy.
In both of these action steps, the victim needs to be allowed to speak into the situation without the abuser present. Batterer’s programs automatically operate this way. For therapy, the abuser needs to agree to sign a waiver allowing the partner to have unconditional access to the therapist, and for the therapist to be allowed to check in with the one being harmed.
4. Educate
Step Four, EDUCATING, is important for the abuser to gain clarity about the impact their behaviors have on their partner.
Attitudes of entitlement and double standards, likely learned through early childhood in their familial or cultural upbringing, place the abuser in a hierarchical position.
They may be conscious or unconscious of their prejudices. It’s important to talk through how these attitudes place the victim in a lesser position that is destructive to their self-worth.
Teach what constitutes abuse. Perhaps show them MEND’s terms and definitions, which define hidden abusive behaviors meant to control conversations and conflicts.
Show the abuser how their dynamics are playing out: defensiveness, stonewalling, and belittling in conversations are the opposite of authentic communication (authentic communication being communication where the victim’s voice is heard and validated).
For example, belittling a partner in any way or placing the partner in a downgraded position is abusive. The more you can shine a light on specific abusive behaviors, the more clarity you bring to the situation, and the better chance there will be for an abuser to see how their interactions are harmful.
One specific area that is important to confront and value when guiding abusers in this manner is the area of bringing awareness to the trauma that their behaviors are causing.
When abusers repeat abusive behaviors, new triggers are provoked based on the victim’s past traumas. Trauma and its effects are a critical focus for the abuser because they need to recognize that these behaviors will no longer be tolerated by the victim or by you, the accountability partner.
At the core of educating are efforts demonstrating how the opposite characteristics of the Four Pillars of Abuse will steer the abuser toward healing resources.
The 4 Pillars of Abuse are:
- A faulty belief system
- Image management
- Entitlement
- Cultural, preferential, or hierarchical preferential treatment
Learn more about these Pillars of Abuse in this Can Abusers Change article.
5. Require
Step five, REQUIREMENTS, are at the heart of what makes an accountability relationship meaningful (rather than harmful) to the victim.
As an accountability partner, it is essential that you clarify your relationship expectations with the abuser.
Name specifically what you will and will not accept.
For example, if you are meeting with the abuser in any capacity, be sure to state that you are there to support them only in their tangible efforts to change.
If you are socializing with an abuser and are not holding them accountable for their harmful behaviors, you are colluding in the abuse and adding significant trauma to the victim.
As the abuser takes responsibility for the deep and serious psychological, emotional, and cognitive reworking they must do, if they want their relationship to thrive, they will also need to come to grips with the requirements of what a relationship needs.
While hundreds of books have been written on the subject, here are just a few of the essential requirements that an abuser needs to accept and learn how to meet:
- Necessary repairs
- Building
- Equality
- Emotional and physical safety
- Discovery
- Mutual respect
- Reciprocity
- Individuality
- Affection
- Caring attention
- Support
- Honesty
- Pleasure
- Variety
- Accountable freedom
- Protective boundaries
6. Determine
DETERMINING, the sixth step, is setting a new bar of matching words to actions, which the abuser is not used to experiencing.
If a couple is separated, for example, and the abuser commits to checking in with their partner at 6:00 p.m. every evening, your role as a healthy accountability partner is to accept nothing less.
Checking in at 6:15, for example, is not matching words to actions. Instead, it’s an act that shows a lack of respect for their partner’s valuable time. If something legitimate comes up, making it impossible to call at the appropriate time, for example, then the abuser needs to text in advance explaining the problem and ASKING politely if a later time will be doable for the partner.
Abusers are boundary breakers. And as the accountability partner, it’s essential that you clarify that you will not play any part in the relationship if the abuser does not fully keep their commitments.
To accept less or to give credence to justifications is colluding in the abuse and is traumatizing to the victim.
7. Confront
Finally, CONFRONTING outcomes involves recognizing, analyzing, and going through the steps again.
You are there to cautiously celebrate their progress and firmly address failures, while being mindful of the possibility that the abuser may need to reset their efforts and start at the beginning.
To start over requires owning, repairing, and fully facing consequences. While supporting and being there for victims is critical, a topic we similarly break down into steps in our blog post on the Healing Model of Compassion, confronting abusers is also a necessary step—especially when there is abuse in a marriage or between family members who want to work things out.
Conclusion
Healing cannot fully occur if the abuser does not enact change.
The Accountability Model of Courage helps the abuser to feel social pressure to mend their behaviors and their relationships while also receiving support in their tangible efforts of change.
We highly encourage you to share this resource with anyone you know who regularly interacts with abusers. You may also want to encourage them to enroll in our full training curriculum.
We would also like to point you toward information about Original Abuse and Double Abuse®.
We’re here to help and want the very best for you.