Resources for Leaving Relationships that Link Victim Symptoms to Abuse
- jenniferwomensvoic
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
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 Violence and Coercive Control cases. She has worked in law enforcement and with incarcerated inmates and is now in private practice working with victims/survivors in courts. Dawn also conducts psychological evaluations that help victims/survivors and, in some cases, their children. Contact information is listed at the end.
Read on for Dawn's content and my comment that addresses how survivor's use this information.
Importance of Focusing on Abusers’ Behavior
Therapists pay close attention to victims’ symptoms and issues in order to help them.
However, if the focus is solely on the symptoms without considering the abuse that produced it, they miss an important element for victim healing. Helping survivors to identify and understand what they’ve experienced and put names to their partner’s behavior helps them release self-blame and regain self-esteem.
Understanding abuser's behavior becomes a resource when leaving relationships because it shifts the focus from viewing symptoms as a victim’s problem to viewing them as injuries from the partner abuse. This focus enables therapists to offer effective assessments for family or criminal court professionals.
Taking into account the characteristics and traits of abusive partners supports victims and makes their perpetrators “visible” in court settings. This shift is much needed because victims are too often re-victimized by a system that lacks sophistication regarding intimate partner abuse and its effects. One cannot properly understand or help a victim unless you consider the perpetrator’s behavior.
Pertinent Diagnostics
The term “narcissist” is broadly applied to many intimate partner violence and coercive control perpetrators but does not fully capture all personality problems.
Research shows that one personality disorder or group of traits are insufficient for identifying perpetrators. Here are traits of other personality disorders as well as non-disordered individuals:
Antisocial and psychopathic personality disordered people use extreme behaviors such as threatening with weapons, animal abuse, sexual violence, strangulation, psychological and financial control, and kidnapping.
Passive-dependent/compulsive classification involves a partner who primarily exhibits anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and hostility when their needs are not met.
A Schizoid/borderline abuser is likely withdrawn, moody, hypersensitive, and volatile.
Narcissistic/antisocial abusers are self-centered and manipulative. They may be quick to anger and blame their partners for the problems in the relationship.
Psychopathic abusers are impulsive, remorseless, and violent, often with criminal backgrounds. They may resort to physical abuse more than other types of abusers.
Hostile/controlling abusers tend to be dominating and coercive. They likely control time, money, friends, and even your relationships with family members.
Borderline/dependent involves an abuser who is emotionally unstable, deeply fearing abandonment, and blaming partners for distress. These abusers may be most prone to threatening to harm themselves to control their partners.
Only a qualified mental health professional can diagnose perpetrators with personality disorders. They take into consideration child development, disruptions of attachment, and the traits of the personality disorders. Personality disorders are lifelong patterns of maladjusted behaviors that manifest in a myriad of ways.
Clues about perpetrators’ behavior come from survivors’ descriptions of what they’ve experienced. They can also be found in court documents, judges’ rulings, or police reports that mention academic failures, domestic violence between perpetrators’ parents, repeated motions or filings by an abusive ex-partner, and more.
Abusers from some sub-types or classifications have problematic behaviors and criminal histories beginning in their juvenile years with school expulsions, suspensions, fights, theft, and crimes that do not fall in only one category.
Abuser Behavior Creates Victim Dysregulation
Peer-reviewed research on the topic of DARVO explains why victims often feel crazy and have their reports minimized by court professionals.
DARVO means abusers:
Deny the survivor’s account, gaslighting them to question their memory, downplaying the severity of events.
Attack and discredit the survivor, questioning their mental health, or past behavior.
Reverse Victim and Offender, positioning themselves as the victim, alleging the survivor has a vendetta.
Research on DARVO indicates this manipulation tactic is commonly used by abusive partners, often in family court proceedings. When DARVO behavior is not recognized, perpetrators remain “invisible” in the courtroom. When it is identified, we spotlight the personality characteristics of perpetrators and their effects on victims.
Recognizing DARVO also aids in survivor healing. Possessing knowledge that abusive partners use crazy-making and manipulative behavior empowers victims to believe their perceptions instead of what their partners say. This improves their ability to repair self-esteem and loss of trust in themselves.
Dawn's information about perpetrator behavior reminds me of cautions I delivered to survivor clients.
Most Powerful Survivor Resource to Leave Relationships
As mentioned earlier, understanding abuser behavior is a resource for healing.
However, always stress that clients should not use clinical language when they are involved in family or criminal court proceedings.
Survivor/victims who use broad terms like “personality disorder” or “narcissism” lose the opportunity to flesh out exactly what they’ve experienced. Such detail gives professionals data that guides their decisions.
If victims use clinical labels, they run the risk of being discredited and having their motivations questioned. I saw this many times during my therapy career.
Naming the behaviors they experience from abusive partners is the most important way they can empower themselves. If they are triggered by writing or talking about abuse, work with them on self-regulation strategies that enable them to manage this.
It is also helpful to explain to professionals that the trauma they experienced interferes with talking about what happened. Indicate therapy will help them heal and therefore, make it easier for them to report.
Naming this reduces the likelihood of victims being discounted because they aren’t as articulate as their abusers. Once again, this spotlights the abuser as the problem, not the survivor's response to it.
To contact Dawn Lanaville:
Albemarle Psychology, Clinical & Forensic Services PLLC
Website: http://www.albepsychcfs.com/
Email: apcfs.info@pm.me
Comments