Understanding the Beliefs Behind Abuse Understanding someone's behavior begins with understanding what they believe.— Inspired by Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear You begin to answer why your partner dominates you when you recognize what they believe. Realizing that your partner thinks it is acceptable to harm, control, or dominate you contradicts everything most of us expect from a loving relationship. Give yourself permission to grieve this. This is the final article in a

Find Your Voice’s mission is to provide therapy resources for healing and for leaving relationships that are abusive when necessary. I invited Dawn Lanaville to be my guest co-blogger because of her expertise with forensics and family courts. She speaks about shifting the focus to perpetrators and providing answers to an survivors’ oft-asked question, “Why do they hurt us?” Lanaville is a clinical/forensic psychologist who primarily works in family courts in Intimate Partner

Couples in an abusive relationship often seek therapy for other issues and fail to mention abuse. A few of the reasons they don’t identify it: Victims are invested in the relationship and think couples therapy will convince the partner to change. The abusive partner threatens consequences for speaking about it. The abuser does not view their behavior as inappropriate and persuades their partner they are to blame. Neither one recognizes inappropriate or aggressive behavior. Re

Couples therapy is not appropriate when one partner abuses the other. This general rule applies until the abuser holds themselves accountable, has completed an abuser treatment program, and the therapist and the victim consider it safe. Why? Couples therapy is not effective because of the imbalance of power between the two individuals. That imbalance results in one or more of these issues: A victim who discloses is punished outside of the therapy room. Abuse disempowers and