Part Three: What Mental Health Professionals Can Do to Help Clients Heal from Domestic Violence
Content warning: This three-part series discusses aspects of abuse that may be hard to read through. Please step away and take care of yourself if this information is upsetting you. If you are experiencing domestic violence please see the end of this blog post for how to get help.
This past month, I have written about domestic violence, power and control dynamics, the cycle of abuse, and how domestic violence shows up in the queer and trans community. (Read part one and part two.) This post is about the next steps. How can survivors begin their healing from experiencing abuse? How do we, as mental health professionals, encourage that healing?
Moving Forward
As mental health professionals, especially if we work with couples and families, we are bound to come across clients who are experiencing or have experienced abuse. It is incredibly important for people in our field of work to have at least some basic training in working with these types of clients. Unfortunately, the basics are often left out of graduate school curricula.
When your first thought is Shit. Now what do I do? Step one is to take a deep breath. Steps three through four: believe your client; take the information seriously; and validate how they are feeling. A big myth in popular culture is that many outcries of domestic violence and sexual assault are false. The reality is that research shows only 2% through 10% of outcries could be false (when taking into account that some cases are “false” when a judge deems not enough evidence exists).
What comes next, is helping to make the therapeutic relationship as safe as possible and providing resources for safety planning, psychoeducation about abuse, and connection to domestic violence centers.
Consult Consult Consult (and more)
Seriously, to begin working with domestic violence survivors, you’ll need to make time to consult with more experienced clinicians, attend trainings, and seek out other means of education. But, you are still able to begin the work by including the following methods in your practice.
Strengthen the safety of your therapy room with softer lighting, comfort items, and other soothing items that radiate calmness. If you are seeing your client virtually, encourage them to make the space that they are logging in from as comfortable and calm as possible.
Empower your clients to make their own decisions in a way that helps them regain their autonomy and their power. Don’t make any decisions for them about whether to leave the relationship or not and/or whether to report to law enforcement or not (this is not included in mandated reporting requirements unless your client is a minor or elder).
Name that what they are experiencing is abuse, but don’t push the client to talk about it if they aren’t ready. Do make time to process the concept of abuse, if they want to. For some clients, it will take a long time for them to internalize that what is happening to them is abuse, not okay, and not their fault.
Check in with the client about the language they would like to use for themselves, their partner(s), and what happened to them (e.g. survivor vs. victim, abuser vs. a code name vs. ex, violence vs. abuse, etc.)
Help the client build up their internal resources through grounding techniques, exercises, etc. Help them build their external resources within the nurturing and supportive communities they have access to.
Include safety planning in the healing process as urgently as the level of danger and lethality asks for. If the client is in immediate danger, make plans on how to keep them safer whether they want to leave or not. If the client is no longer in danger, but the abuser may still have access to them in other ways, safety planning is still important but can be taken a little more slowly.
When providing your client with some psychoeducation about abuse, don’t overload or overwhelm your client, use the power and control wheels and the abuse cycle graphics (see blog posts one and two) for visual learners, and go slow.
Direct your client to The Domestic Violence Hotline so that they may get connected with local free and low-cost resources to help them safety plan and get more information on their legal and societal options.
Hopefully, these critical first steps will help you as a mental health clinician begin the healing process with your clients who have experienced or are experiencing domestic violence. Remember that just like our clients, we are not alone, and we have so many resources available to us on how to navigate working with all types of clients, not just the clients we have been focusing on in this three-part series.
Read more in parts one and two for a primer on domestic violence (part one) and how domestic violence shows up in the queer and trans communities (part two). You may find helpful hotlines and shelters on this page.
