Why Domestic Violence Can't Be / Shouldn't Be Treated by Couples Counseling

(It is noted that there are female abusers, and I facilitate groups that are devoted solely to treating them, but for this entry the abusers are referred to as male and the victims as female).

In domestic violence relationships, the thinking often is that if they can work on something together as a couple, they can heal the marriage and relationship.  As a result, well-wishing friends and family, clergy, or even other mental health professionals who don't work with domestic violence may recommend marriage / couples' counseling.  Community groups may even facilitate couples education classes inviting disaffected couples in the hopes that they will be able to mend their relationships.  But few are actually skilled at handling abuse specifically and the knowledge that follows isn't generally known by the well-intentioned public. 

Unfortunately, couples counseling tends to have the opposite effect when domestic violence is involved, and actually has been recognized to put the victim at increased risk of harm, death and even divorce - divorce might not seem like a bad thing, except that victims are often financially dependent on their abusers, have limited support systems, and may not have the emotional ability or strength to simply transition out of an abusive relationship to providing for themselves and their children independently.  Additionally, separation or divorce can put her at risk of stalking, or even child abduction from the former partner or retaliation against others who help her.  When a victim leaves their abuser, their risk for harm and even death increases dramatically in retaliation.

The reality is that abusive behavior is the choice, actions and responsibility of the batterer.  Typically the thinking of the predominant aggressor in treatment is that they were responding to the abusive dysfunctionalities of their partner - i.e. they needed to engage in abuse to control her, her abuse was just as bad, they were both abusive so it's okay, they were out of control and therefore not responsible for their behavior, the alcohol or drugs made them do what they did, what they are doing isn't as bad as what their parents did and therefore what they are doing is okay, "this is just how the world operates" - any number of thinking errors that absolve the abuser from the fact that he made a choice to abuse. They are usually successful at convincing others around them that these are the case as well to build a coalition against the victim to sanction and justify the abuse.

Unfortunately, by the time domestic battery has taken place in the relationship, the abuser has spent a lot of time working to convince the victim that she is to blame for her abuser's behavior, and that she is partly responsible for being abused as well - and under the stress of the relationship, and as a victim in an attempt to feel some semblance of control in her life, and with high levels of codependent need to protect her abuser - the victim will begin to believe it also and lose a sense of her own reality and protections and fail to see the full scope of the danger she is in and what is happening to her.  The abuse becomes normal, and seemingly-less-severe abuse gets minimized against the backdrop of other more severe abuse, and then becomes tolerated, accepted and even expected.  Sometimes the victim will finally "snap" and retaliate against their abuser or try to provoke what she know is coming to have some sense of control and predictability in her world, or even try to defend themselves and then find themselves being arrested for battery.  This will be used to show that "she's crazy" and the abuser will then justify that he needed to protect himself from her and further destroy her psychologically for what's essentially an expected and unsurprising response on her part.

Combine this together in a counseling setting where a non-domestic-violence-therapist is going to be receiving input from the couple on what the issue is - the therapist isn't going to get a straight picture of what is happening in the relationship.  (More on this in a moment).

Additionally, the most common and yet devastating abuse a victim will endure is mental and emotional abuse and the actual physical component is the smallest part of the abuse cycle - less than 1% of the entire time she is being abused.  The physical violence tends to be the crowning event of abuse, and the rest of the time with various tactics being used to remind her of what could happen to her if she doesn't comply with his wishes (threats and intimidation). 

This being said, much abuse is actually invisible to the public or to friends and family - and it's designed to be.  Many abusers report "testing the waters" to find out how much they can get away with, and getting their abuse to have the maximum effect on their victims with minimum effort and they don't want to get caught and go to jail - so they become experts at hiding it or getting others to sanction it.  Many abusers have reported even being able to condition their victim so that he can shift in his chair in a certain way right in the middle of a crowded party such that he can send a message to her of "you know what's coming".  He can send a lot of his non-verbal clues when he's becoming angry that preceded her being harmed - i.e. breathing changes, playing with his ring, a certain look, cracking his knuckles....any number of things that as a victim (who is traumatized) has learned to recognize precede the abuse, and are going to have a devastating effect on her psychologically and even physically...and he gets away with it right in public - which achieves the psychological damage of isolating her right in front of friends and family where she can't even ask for help.  She would be labeled as "crazy" for identifying what he was doing, and him shifting in his chair isn't admissible evidence in court regardless that it's being used to send a message to threaten and intimidate, and is easily denied by the abuser - further devastating her that she's experiencing a nightmare and isn't believed.  Further the abuser will often cite that "it only happened one time" (you only have to experience trauma one time to develop PTSD) to further deny and minimize the impact of his behavior on her.

Which leads us back to the therapists couch and office as a couple.

Unfortunately, for the victim, sharing vulnerable thoughts and feelings usually put her at risk for all types of exploitation and abuse.  Many abusers will make a mental list of vulnerable feelings and issues so that he can harm her with them or embarrass her later - often in front of friends and family or children in an attempt to cut her off from social support or esteem, making it more impossible for her to ask for help.  This combines to actually make the therapist's office a very unsafe place for the victim - literally a physically and emotionally dangerous place for the victim.  Not just because she can be sharing emotionally vulnerable feelings, but if she expresses something the abuser doesn't like in the office about him or their relationship or her perceptions about the issues, he will often "make her pay" for it after the session, physically, sexually, or emotionally.   Even more, going back up to most abuse can be done in public and among friends and family, changing postures, a look, a glance, shifting in his seat and so on, can all be done surreptitiously right in front of the therapist and further abuse her without it even being caught further contributing to the experience of isolation and helplessness. Or if through the process of discussing her feelings, she begins to actually become agitated and share pent-up feelings in the session, the abuser will often make her pay the penalty afterwards for embarrassing him or "telling lies" in the session (or however he chooses to spin it).  Also remember, there are often children, pets and other family members involved in these scenarios who can also be at risk for various types of retaliation.

Abusers rarely admit the full scope of their abuse, and certainly aren't to be expected to fully disclose their abuse to a therapist, even if they are mandated to treatment and have been sentenced.  "Regular" clients rarely fully disclose their issues to a therapist, so it would be entirely unreasonable and unrealistic to expect someone with criminogenic thinking who is hiding their abuse to be transparent in an attempt to resolve an issue. This is one reason when treating clients, a copy of the police incident report for the instant offense is required so that the therapist can get something other than the abuser's minimized and uninsightful account of the events to work with.  It isn't going to be safe for victims to disclose issues either, and their perceptions are going to be distorted as a result of the abuse - so forming a regular "treatment plan" is likely to be inaccurate, harmful, and even be exploited by the abuser in terms of things she has to work on to please him and contribute to a relationship he's actively destroying.

When we're dealing with the high probability of even sexual abuse in domestic violence (accepted to be around 60%) - and the scope and spectrum of sexual abuse goes far beyond rape - even some couples' therapies that are aimed at intimacy / sex will further victimize the victim.  Sex is often used to cover up or make up for abuse, it may itsself be abusive, or may precede abuse.  Essentially, couples treatment is unsafe for the victim and becomes yet another place where the victim is further abused but now with the unwitting sanction of the mental health community who is "supposed to" be able to recognize and help these things.  

So what to do as a therapist when you discover or suspect domestic abuse in the relationship?

There are a few realizations that need to take place at this juncture.

First, this is where the therapist actually needs to be careful.   Going back to the fact that therapy is actually a dangerous setting for a domestic abuse victim - it's going to be important to avoid sanctioning the abuse by minimizing it, or, putting the victim at risk by setting up a conflict that can result in her being harmed or exploited after the session.  It is also important to realize you aren't going to be getting the full picture from the clients, and this issue is going to go much farther and deeper than the clients may admit or even realize for the reasons listed above.

Second, is realizing that this is not going to be solved as a couple.  The victim is not to blame for her abuse. She does not share responsibility for being abused, and she is not responsible for his behaviors.  She does not need to fix herself in order for him to stop abusing her - it's not her fault.  Most often, as abusers become accountable for their own actions, identify their own thinking errors, and behavior patters, become accountable to their partners and learn healthy communication patterns, and engage in the required mental health care, couples counseling is unnecessary.  Also, this is going to take years to straighten out the damage, mistrust and trauma.  My experience is that it can take 3-6 months for an abuser to begin to recognize / be accountable for the fact that he is actually abusing someone else, and another 3-6 months after that for him to begin to be able to articulate and recognize the abuse he has used in the past and that have become a part of his personality up to this point and its impact on his victims.  Even after that point victims may have a decade-plus or even a lifetime of healing to take place for them. 

The third is to recognize that forensics and dealing with criminal behavior is it's own specialty that requires years of training, exposure and experience for the clinician to begin to recognize the reality of what they are dealing with - just like any other specialty in mental health.  The clinician is going to be played by the abuser.  Many have told me of the delight they took in getting the clinician to side with them against their victim right in the therapist's office before they ever were held accountable by domestic batterer intervention.  Criminal thinking and manipulation is not one we are generally adept at identifying in our world to the nuance and degree which it is practiced by the abuser.  Recognizing not only that the therapy setting is dangerous for the victim, but that having a second or even third set of experienced and practiced eyes to help keep your clients safe is key and it might be necessary to terminate treatment, make another recommendation for treatment, or involve other agencies.  Remember also that the family is likely to have a distorted perception of what's taken place as well as a result of a number of reinforcing factors not the least of which is the spin that the abuser himself will put on the situation.  Even family members may have a vested interest in denying the abuse for a number of reasons (children may feel as though they are betraying the abuser and are especially vulnerable to retaliation).  When you come upon domestic violence, or suspect it is going on, as they teach us in school: Consult! Consult! Consult!  An experienced and skilled domestic battery counselor will not only be able to give a deeper perspective on how to evaluate the full scope of the issues and make recommendations on how to proceed with the clients as a therapist, but will also be familiar with community resources specifically devoted to the needs of the family / couple.

In the end, what I've described above is pretty depressing and may seem extreme and out of the ordinary, but unfortunately by the time offenders are sentenced to treatment, these histories and behaviors are more the rule than the exception and we don't want them to progress any farther.   We have to remember that "harm is harm" and "abuse is abuse" - there isn't really a hierarchical categorization of "good harm" or "bad harm", or "good charges and bad charges".   We need to be diligent, sensitive, thoughtful and have the client's best interests in mind as well as their and everyone else's safety.  At the first sign of abuse, we need to be taking the appropriate steps to protect our clients and gather information so we can respond as will be most beneficial to protect those who can't protect themselves.

But the bottom line is that domestic violence is not a couples' problem or marriage issue.  It should be consulted on, and if possible evaluated by a clinician specifically trained, experienced and skilled at handling and recognizing the dynamics of domestic violence and family abuse.

There's unfortunately no silver-bullet for stopping domestic violence, and despite our best efforts, we know much abuse is going to continue on behind the scenes and outside of our awareness.  But at the very minimum we need to do our best to make sure our own therapy isn't putting clients at risk, and make sure we are consulting, being informed and engaging in best-practice to help those we serve.