Understanding Domestic Violence

By Elisa Davoodi, NVRDC Senior Advocate

Domestic violence is a reality experienced by many and understood by few. As an advocate and survivor, I’ve faced an alarming degree of misinformation and misunderstandings about domestic violence.

Given that domestic violence homicides accounted for over half of all mass shootings in the United States over the last decade, understanding – or misunderstanding – the realities of domestic violence, can be a matter of life or death. 

As such, being asked to write about domestic violence for the sake of public awareness feels like an enormous responsibility. There is so much essential information to share. I’ve done my best to do so with as much brevity as I could responsibly afford. 

Reflecting on over ten years of clients’ experiences, as well as my own experiences as a survivor, I’ve identified some of the key subject areas about in community knowledge can make a real, tangible difference in the lives of victims and survivors. 

We need our communities to understand that:

Isolation is key

The isolation stage of a domestic violence relationship is when the abuser slowly starts to separate the victim from their support system and, subsequently, from reality. Efforts to isolate are often introduced in the relationship in seemingly innocent, benevolent, or even exciting expressions: “your parents are always criticizing me. I don’t want to spend time with them anymore, and if you value our relationship, you won’t spend time with them either;” “your friends are a negative influence on you. Maybe you should stop spending time with them and focus that time on our relationship instead;” “If we move to this remote location on the other side of the country, we could lower our living expenses and save a ton of money.” 

Isolation is essential to the maintenance of an abusive relationship because it impairs the victim’s frame of reference and connection to reality, making it much easier for an abusive partner to gaslight a victim and rewrite their reality. Maintaining relationships with healthy parties outside of the abusive relationship allows for increased opportunities for the victim and their support network to identify that abuse is taking place. Isolation also serves a self-reinforcing purpose – the more an abusive partner can create situations where the victim is forced to cancel plans, pull back from other relationships, and appear to be obsessed with spending time only with their partner, the more likely it is that the victim’s social network will cut them off or scale back their efforts to maintain a relationship with the victim. This plays right into the abuser’s hand. The best thing loved ones can do is to stay consistent in efforts to maintain contact and a relationship with the victim as much as is safely possible. Abusers already spend so much time trying to make victims believe that they are alone and that no one is willing to help them.  We should do everything we can to prevent that from becoming reality.  In short: isolation accelerates abuse. Living in abusive conditions accelerates isolation. The abuser wants you to view the victim as “flakey” and “unreliable.” Do the opposite. Disrupt their efforts.  

We don’t sound, talk, or think “like a victim” - we are victims.

There is absolutely no shame in being victimized. Yet even those whose stated mission is to empower victims and survivors of violence often treat “victim” like it’s a dirty word. By definition, victimization is something that is imposed on us. We are not responsible for the burdens that others unload onto us, and we certainly should not be carrying their shame. “Victim” is a word that accurately describes the current state of millions of people worldwide. Robbing us of the language we need to accurately speak about and process our experiences by stigmatizing the term only compounds the pain and shame we already feel.

The abuser doesn’t have an “anger-management” problem. 

Abusers are excellent actors and master manipulators. They perform so well that most people in their daily lives do not even suspect them of being at all violent. A violent partner can go from expressions of explosive, terrifying rage to appearing calm, soft, and even concerned or jovial as soon as someone whose impression they care about and want to manage is present. Contrary to the popular belief that most violent partners simply cannot control their emotions, in most cases abusive partners are extremely skilled at controlling and performing emotions. They have to be, in order to control others’ perceptions about themselves and their relationship in a way that conceals and enables continuing abuse. 

You’re not the only one having trouble trusting us

To fall in love with someone; to continue to see the good in someone; to have hopes for the redemption of someone who is causing you harm while declaring their love; to keep hoping while being chronically harmed and traumatized eviscerates our sense of self and our sense of trust for our own judgment. The aftermath of a violent relationship involves making amends to ourselves, licking our wounds, and working to rebuild trust with ourselves. What we – and you – need to know is that there is nothing wrong with our instincts or intellect. The issue was never that we did not have the correct survival instincts or inner voice – the issue is that we routinely ignored and silenced that voice throughout the relationship – first out of benevolence and empathy for the abuser, then out of confusion, and finally out of fear. Rather than reminding us how untrustworthy we feel to you in the aftermath of abuse, focus on reminding us that we were – and continue to be – always deserving of trust, especially our own. Focus on nurturing these feelings of trust so they can regenerate stronger and more impenetrable than ever before. Fostering a strong sense of self-trust can protect us from future violent relationships.