Navigating the complexities of helping someone who is being abused can be challenging. On the other hand, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences you’ve ever encountered.
Imagine seeing someone you care about experience abuse and not knowing what to do.
It's hard to know where to start or how to help. And while we might want to jump in, it's essential to approach the situation with both care and knowledge.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Let’s dive in and see how we can make a difference together.
How to Help The Victim
Helping a victim is a worthy act and one that often comes with challenges for the responder. It can be especially painful to know someone we care about who’s experiencing abuse.
This pain can lead some responders to experience their own trauma - Vicarious Trauma - a form of trauma that comes from feeling helpless as a witness to another’s trauma and not knowing how to intervene or, if knowing, not being able to.
When coming alongside a victim, you may be presented with a variety of responses that leave you feeling unsure of how to support them. You may hear statements such as:
- “Nothing’s wrong”
- “I can handle it myself”
- “There’s no way out”
They may not be ready to see themself as a victim or their partner as an abuser. It’s easy to become discouraged by this, especially if you’re not sure your help is considered helpful.
While it’s hard to imagine, some responders may begin to think it’s the victim’s fault for any number of reasons, including their staying with an abuser.
Leading abuse expert Lundy Bancroft (2002) says, “Empowerment and recovery for an abused woman can be a long process; the urge to find fault in her interferes with your ability to help her and ultimately colludes with the Alleged Perpetrator or with secondary abuse.”
To equip you to be a compassionate and confident responder, we suggest you follow the simple steps outlined in our Healing Model of Compassion below as your guide.
The MEND Project's view regarding these interactions with the victim is, “Do not over-confront and do not under-inform.”
What does this mean?
Over-confronting happens if you blurt out a statement like, “You’re being abused” or “I can’t help you if you don’t leave” before the victim fully understands. Doing so may cause them to pull away from you or even defend the abuser.
Under-informing looks like a responder hearing and knowing abuse is happening without providing tools or resources for the one being harmed to come to the knowledge they are experiencing abuse on their own.
The best approach is to gently provide them with valuable information about what constitutes abuse so the victim will gain clarity about their relationship from a wellspring inside themself.
Now, let’s get into the basic steps of the model.
The Healing Model Of Compassion
1. Listen
Listening means providing victims a safe place to process their experiences with you without interruption or interrogation. Victims are often stressed and confused. They need a calm and compassionate listener to share their experiences.
Listening well is a skill. Instead of retreating, interrupting, interrogating, making judgmental statements or suggestions, or asking pointed or leading questions, use positive non-verbal and verbal cues to let the one in your care know that you are there to listen only.
Then, listen, listen, listen.
Often, when a victim or survivor is listened to in a safe environment, they begin to process out loud what is happening and may become more open, later, to an offer of intervention.
Remember, the victim’s present position did not occur overnight. It’s likely been a slow and evolving process.
They may feel that what they are experiencing is the norm and have become used to it. Or they might be so terrified that any thought of action is overwhelming.
They are vulnerable, and they deserve and need to be approached with empathy and compassion.
Being a good listener is easier than trying to come up with solutions or advice. It’s healthier for the responder and is a lighter load for both to carry.
Finally, be mindful and careful of how you speak about the abuser. It is common for the victim to rise to their abuser’s defense until a time when they come to terms with the reality of their relationship.
2. Accept
Accepting means believing the experience to be true without asking doubting questions. This is an integral part of stopping the abuse cycle.
Victims are in a highly compromised position without knowing what to do, and they need you to accept their veracity, pain, fear, indecision, and/or confusion for what it is: the story of their suffering.
3. Empathize
Display empathy with warm gestures of understanding while refraining from critiquing their personal choices.
Empathizing is putting yourself in the other person’s shoes so you can feel what they are experiencing. It’s not saying you can understand something you’ve never experienced; it’s showing compassion for them in their pain.
Feeling empathy for the victim/survivor’s situation will guide you in communicating your deep understanding without negative judgment, the need to control the conversation, or telling them what to do.
Empathizing will also guide you in offering them compassion and patience as they process, maybe for the first time, and make their own decisions about whether to stay or leave or to create an exit plan.
Lastly, empathy means you treat the victim as an equal rather than someone to be talked down to. Empathy is meant to offer emotional companionship along their journey regardless of their choices.
4. Validate
Validating consists of mirroring back to your loved ones what you understand about what they are saying.
This isn’t parroting or mimicking. Instead, it’s saying what you have heard so that they know you are listening and you genuinely comprehend what they are saying. Aim to capture the meaning of what they are saying. Be sure to tell them that nothing they have done deserves abuse. Abuse is a choice, not a mistake, and it’s never the victim’s fault.
5. Identify
Identifying is the act of assisting the one who has been harmed to name their experience and to feel they are not alone.
This interaction helps them find their voice and the words to speak their truth about what has been confusing to those who can intervene and help them heal.
When you help them identify abuse, it can be illuminating to them to name your own parallel experience as an example. Just be sure that when you use your example, the primary focus remains on developing their narrative instead of shifting to yours. This means you share your experience for ten or twenty seconds to convey you are listening well and can imagine how painful it must be for them.
6. Encourage
Encouraging them gives them hope that with education and support, they can gain clarity, make the best decisions for themselves, and heal.
Be careful not to give a set of directives; instead, communicate that you believe in them, that you will walk beside them, and that with the proper support, they will have the courage to work out of the morass.
Your role is to give them hope and the belief that they will get through this tough season.
7. Ask
“How can I help?”
Ask this one question to demonstrate your willingness to support them on their journey.
They might not have an answer.
But they will feel supported and uplifted to know someone is willing to help them.
They may ask you to help them find resources or accompany them on an appointment to a domestic violence shelter, attorney’s office, etc.
8. Grieve
Grieve with them for all they have lost or will lose and maintain a meaningful connection.
Too few people are willing to sit in the difficult place of grieving with someone who has experienced deep loss. Yet, one of the biggest gifts you can give a survivor is allowing someone to grieve deeply and showing a willingness to encourage or even hold them while they do so patiently.
Grieving with a victim or survivor provides an opportunity to have a deep connection with you. Connection and community are essential components for a victim’s healing. Victims cannot heal in isolation. They need meaningful connections and community.
It might not make sense to you why they might be grieving about a relationship that included abuse, but it doesn’t need to make sense to you. If you judge their feelings, you are looking down on them just as their abuser has done for an extended time.
Helping them heal includes allowing them to grieve all they have lost or will lose.
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When We are Aware That Abuse is Occurring
Our gift and responsibility when we are aware that abuse is occurring is to use our voice and our words to confront the abuse - even when the one causing harm is a loved one or friend - and not use our voices and words to confront and accuse the victim.
(For more information on responding to an abuser, see our Accountability Model of Courage.)
If a victim confidentially discloses abuse to you, your primary responsibility is to maintain confidentiality and help the victim connect to resources that will help protect them best.
Abuse is a category in various protocols because a professional or layperson’s fundamental charge is to Do No Harm. To adhere to this charge, one must be willing to hear what the victim says while maintaining their confidentiality.
You are on the front line.
As a friend or family member, you have a better chance than anyone else of successfully holding an abuser accountable through healthy confrontation. But you first need to receive the victim’s permission to do so, or you could worsen matters.
More than their partner, therapist, the court, or anyone else, abusers have the hardest time resisting or discrediting the people who are closest to them.
They may easily dismiss the others on the list with a wave of their hand, or the charm of their smile. But when a loved one, other than the abused, steps in and confronts them, they are likely to experience some uncertainty for the first time (see Bancroft, 2002, p. 376).
Those who cause harm are intensely focused on managing their public image while they hide what they do behind closed doors. Public image or image management also serves to provide the abuser with validation and acceptance. If those who are closely positioned to the abuser confront destructive behaviors, they may influence how the abuser acts moving forward.
The abuser might then be willing to listen. But, as a responder, you are on shaky ground.
If you have learned about their abusive behavior through their spouse rather than through your direct observation, please do not confront the abuser without the victim’s express agreement and, even then, after consulting with someone knowledgeable about domestic abuse or violence. Confronting the abuser without taking these steps might be putting the victim in danger.
That said, when you directly witness treatment that appears abusive, you may confront them on your own on the spot. If you do, here are some things to keep in mind.
They're Trying to Keep Their “Controlled” World Intact
Five pillars describe the mindset of the abuser:
- Image management
- A faulty belief system
- Entitlement
- Low emotional intelligence
- And an expectation to receive preferential treatment
For a deeper dive into these pillars, check out this article on whether abusers can change.
To maintain Image Management, the abuser will need to keep their world intact, and that includes maintaining your view of them.
To do this, they might do a number of things, including:
- Make partial confessions, admitting to some wrongdoing to deflect attention away from the severity of their actions, hoping this will appease you and encourage you to drop it.
- Give a litany of harsh criticisms about the victim and their treatment of the abuser. There may be snippets of truth but they are riddled with deception and distortion. This may tempt you to drop it as it’s too confusing or complicated, or you may view the situation as a typical “he said” or “she said” conflict in a relationship.
- State - and even believe - they are the ones who are being abused because as the victim becomes more autonomous and finds their voice, the abuser may feel the victim is threatening their worldview and the controlling role they have played in the victim’s life. This tactic also is aimed at having you take the abuser’s side. Another reason they may claim to be the ones who are being abused is because abusers love to play the victim. They aim to avoid responsibility for abuse at all costs. They will say and do just about anything to appear innocent and victimized. Also, several states remove the obligation for alimony if abuse can be proven toward the primary breadwinner, meaning they are financially motivated to lie.
- They may begin to fold you into the problem, even verbally abusing you via criticism, ridicule, denial, or placating. Be willing to confront these manipulative behaviors, or if it’s too confusing, pull away, but never pull away from the victim.
Do not take a neutral stand where you align with both the victim and the abuser. Neutrality benefits only one person in the equation - the abuser. Neutrality also carries a huge risk that you will inadvertently collude with the abuser, doing even more harm.
The abuser asks very little of you, such as doing nothing. The victim, on the other hand, asks for your caring support. The victim asks you to share in their pain and walk safely alongside them as they go through their journey of discovery and healing.
Statistics say that between 2-10% of victims lie about abuse, whereas the majority of abusers lie about their actions.
For our guidelines on how to approach or help an abuser, follow our Accountability Process for Abusers.
Conclusion
Abuse is both a personal and societal concern that requires collective effort and understanding.
Whether you are a friend, a family member, or a bystander, your involvement can be a catalyst for hope, healing, and change.
You are on the frontline, and by utilizing the Healing Model of Compassion with victims, you create safer environments that can effectuate transformation.