How to Support Someone Experiencing Domestic Violence

A note before you read: this post discusses domestic violence, including the increased risk of harm during and after separation, and what supporters can do. Please read at a pace that feels right for you.

“Just leave.”

If you have ever said that to someone you care about, you meant well. Most people start there, but it usually doesn't help.

Last week, I explained why leaving is so difficult and why the time right after someone decides to leave is the most dangerous. This post gives practical advice to go along with that.

Why “just leave” isn't support

It might sound helpful, but it often feels like a judgment.

When you say “just leave,” the person may hear that the answer is simple and that they've failed to do it. Abuse has already sent a message of judgment, blame, and failure for years. Instead of helping, you might reinforce what they already believe about themselves.

There is also a serious safety issue. For most people, leaving isn't a simple exit; it's a process. The time right after deciding to leave is when the risk of harm is highest (Mahoney, 1991; Spearman et al., 2023). If someone is pushed to leave suddenly, without a plan or a safe place to go, they may face the most dangerous part of the relationship unprepared. Saying “just leave” without thinking can actually put them at risk.

So if that isn't it, what is?

The goal isn't to fix anything

This is the main idea that guides everything else.

Domestic violence is not just about stopping someone from doing things. It is also about making them believe they can't do things. Over time, abuse wears down a person's trust in their own judgment. Coercive control not only limits choices, but it also erodes a person's confidence in making decisions (Stark, 2007).

Your role is not to decide for them. Instead, you can help by gently challenging the negative messages they have heard for years: being told they are wrong, too sensitive, or that things did not happen the way they remember.

One of the most important things you can offer someone who has been gaslit is a reminder that what they feel and see is real, and that only they can decide what to do next. This matters because abuse can continue even when it’s not obvious.

What to say

Keep it simple.

• “I believe you.”

• “You don't deserve to be treated that way.”

• “It's not your fault.”

• “I'm here no matter what you decide.”

• “You know your situation better than anyone. What do you think would help?”

Notice what these statements have in common: none of them tell the person what to do. Each one respects the person's judgment. If abuse has taken that away, every supportive sentence helps rebuild it.

What not to say

Some of these might seem harmless, but they are not.

• “Why didn't you just leave?”

• “If it were me, I would have been gone.”

• “What did you do to set them off?”

• “Are you sure it's really that bad?”

• “But they're so nice to everyone else.”

Each of these statements makes the person feel like they have to explain themselves, and adds more shame. Shame keeps people quiet, and silence hides abuse (Weaver et al., 2020). If you have said one of these things before, don't be hard on yourself. You don't have to be perfect. You just need to be someone they can talk to.

This also means avoiding lecturing, diagnosing, or trying to take control. Don't expect the person to act on your schedule. They are the best judge of the risk, not you.

Be steady, not intense

The best thing you can offer is being reliable.

Abuse is unpredictable. There can be periods of tension, outbursts, and then lulls. This unpredictability keeps people in a heightened nervous system state. You do not help by matching that intensity. You help by being steady and consistent every time.

That looks like:

• Checking in without demanding an update.

• Staying in contact even when they pull away.

• Not pulling away if they go back. Most people leave and return several times before they leave for good (Anderson & Saunders, 2003). If a friend makes them feel ashamed for returning, that friend becomes someone they can't reach out to.

• Keeping what they share with you private. Do not share it with others unless they say it is okay.

• Letting them lead on decisions, including the decision to stay.

Letting them make their own decisions is the hardest but most important part. Support is not about making choices for someone else. It's about helping them trust their own choices (Kiani et al., 2021).

When they start thinking about leaving

When someone begins to think about leaving, your role changes. You're no longer just a listener: you can help with planning. The plan should focus on safety, not speed.

A safety plan does not have to be complicated. It can start with simple questions like:

• Where could they go in an emergency? Family, a friend, a shelter?

• Are documents, keys, medications, and a phone somewhere safe, or with someone they trust?

• Could they quietly open a separate bank account or start a small emergency fund?

• What is the exit route from the home, and when is it safest to go?

• What is the code word, a text or a phrase, that means “call for help”?

The plan is theirs. You can help with the details, but you can’t make the plan for them. Pushing someone into a plan when they aren't ready isn't helpful. It just adds more pressure.

Protect yourself too

One more important thing to mention: abuse often isolates the person experiencing it, but it can also affect those around them. Sometimes, an abuser may target anyone who tries to help, like a friend who listens or offers support (Goodman et al., 2022). This isn't your fault, and it doesn't mean you should stop helping; it just means you need to be careful.

You should not confront the abuser. Do not leave evidence on shared devices or reveal your plans. It can help to involve an advocate early, since they know how to look at safety for everyone involved. Your goal is not to be a hero. It is to stay safe so you can keep offering support.

The part that matters

About 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by a partner at some point in their lives (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Each number represents a person who has already thought about the risks of speaking up versus staying silent.

You won't always know what to do. No one does. What matters is being someone others feel safe talking to.

You don't have to be a hero. What helps is believing them, being steady, and knowing that leaving is a process, not a single moment. The hardest part often comes after the decision to leave, not before (Anderson & Saunders, 2003).

Next week, I will share the last post in this series. It will cover what happens after someone leaves, and why people may still feel on edge even after the danger has passed.

If you need support

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

• National Domestic Violence Hotline – 1-800-799-SAFE (7233); TTY 1-800-787-3224; text “START” to 88788; chat at thehotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7, open to anyone regardless of gender or relationship type.

• StrongHearts Native Helpline – 1-844-762-8483.

• love is respect – 1-866-331-9474, or text “LOVEIS” to 22522.

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – call or text 988.

A note on technology precautions. If someone may be monitoring your phone, accounts, or location, seek help on a device they don't have access to, like a work or library computer or a trusted friend's phone.

References

Anderson, D. K., & Saunders, D. G. (2003). Leaving an abusive partner: An empirical review of predictors, the process of leaving, and psychological well-being. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 4(2), 163–191.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 report on intimate partner violence. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Goodman, L. A., Epstein, D., Hailes, H. P., Slocum, A., Wolff, J., Coyne, K., & McCraney, A. (2022). From isolation to connection: The practices and promise of open domestic violence shelters. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(9–10).

Kiani, Z., Simbar, M., Fakari, F. R., Kazemi, S., Ghasemi, V., Azimi, N., Mokhtariyan, T., & Bazzazian, S. (2021). A systematic review: Empowerment interventions to reduce domestic violence? Archives of Women's Mental Health, 24(3), 345–355.

Mahoney, M. R. (1991). Legal images of battered women: Redefining the issue of separation. Michigan Law Review, 90(1), 1–94.

Spearman, K. J., Hardesty, J. L., & Campbell, J. (2023). Post-separation abuse: A concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 79(4), 1225–1246.

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.

Weaver, T. L., Elrod, N. M., & Kelton, K. (2020). Intimate partner violence and body shame: An examination of the associations between abuse components and body-focused processes. Violence Against Women, 26(12–13), 1538–1554.

Why Leaving Is So Hard

A note before you read: this post discusses domestic violence, including the increased risk of harm during and after separation. Please read at a pace that feels right for you.

Last week I wrote about the forms of domestic violence that leave no mark. Isolation, financial control, gaslighting, surveillance. The tactics many people don't recognize.

If you read that post, the question on your mind is probably the one many people ask.

Why don't they just leave?

Most survivors have been asked this, sometimes by people who love them. Some ask it of themselves at 3 am, staring at the ceiling.

The question sounds reasonable, but answering it properly means understanding four things: what coercive control actually is, how it plays out, what keeps someone in place besides fear, and why leaving itself can be the most dangerous part of the whole story.

A system of control

If the forms of abuse I mentioned last week felt like separate problems, they aren't. They are spokes on a wheel built to turn together.

The Power and Control Wheel was developed in the early 1980s by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, in Duluth, Minnesota, based on interviews with survivors (Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, 1984). Because the original version was designed around gendered roles, it has been adapted many times, including a gender-neutral version that fits relationships of every kind (Snider, n.d.).

The wheel maps common tactics: coercion and threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, minimizing and blaming, using children, economic abuse, and using privilege.

So if you try to assess an abusive relationship by counting individual incidents, you miss the overlapping dynamics that are doing the actual work. The wheel is a list of methods that an abuser uses to systematically limit the other person's autonomy and sense of self. Coercive control is the system that runs them. That system is why leaving is so hard.

The calm is part of the control

What most people miss, because it is the least obvious and the most attractive, is that the calm moments are not a break from the abuse. That's one way the abuse takes hold.

If the abuse were constant, it might be easier to leave. Cruelty that never lets up sends a clear signal. But when someone is cruel and then, at some point, tender, leaving gets much harder. The tenderness feels real. The cruelty starts to look like the exception.

The survivor begins to believe something that is entirely sensible from where they stand. The "good" version of their partner is the true one. If they just do the "right" thing, that version will stay. This is where the self-blame comes from. This is what people outside the situation find hardest to understand. It isn't weakness, and it isn't a lack of self-respect. It's hope. Hope that gets fulfilled occasionally and unpredictably, just often enough to keep a person going.

In the language of coercive control, this is not a lull between incidents. The tenderness is delivered on purpose, and intermittently. Unpredictability is the mechanism. A person who cannot tell which version of their partner is coming home keeps working for the good one. Keeps waiting for it. Long after it stops coming back.

What else keeps someone there

The emotional dilemma is real, but there are barriers beyond that, and every one of them was either built or exploited by the abuser, and every one of them maps directly onto a spoke of the wheel.

Children. A parent may stay to keep the family together and give the kids stability. A parent may also stay because the abuser has threatened to take custody, harm the children, or turn them against them. It can feel like two impossible risks with no third door. Staying can look like the only way to protect the children who are already here.

Pets. Abusers target pets precisely because they know the survivor will not leave an animal behind, and many shelters still cannot take them. People will absorb a great deal to keep a beloved dog or cat out of harm. That is a real barrier, not a misplaced priority.

Money. Financial control is rarely easy to reverse. When someone has no job, no access to bank accounts, no credit, no transportation, and nowhere to stay, telling them to leave is not reasonable. An abuser who has spent years making sure every resource is missing has locked the door from the outside.

Shame. Subtle, potent, and almost entirely social. Picture a survivor who finally confides in a close friend and gets back, "Why did you let it get this far?" The lesson lands immediately: telling the truth invites judgment. Shame produces silence, and silence keeps abuse hidden.

Isolation. By the time someone is thinking about getting out, they usually have no one left to call. Step by step, the abuser has withdrawn them from friends, family, and colleagues. They have no one left to call because the isolation began years before they needed anyone.

These barriers hit some survivors harder than others. Immigration status and dependence on a partner's visa. Disability. A rural location with no services within reach. A relationship already hidden from family and community. Each one adds weight that people outside the situation rarely see.

Add it all up, and the question changes. Not, "why don't they leave?" but "how is it possible that anyone leaves at all?" What's remarkable isn't that people stay. It's that some of them, against every one of these forces, still get out.

The dangerous time is leaving — a solid plan can make all the difference

What many people don't know, including many who mean well, is that the period right after a person leaves, and the weeks and months after separation, is when the risk of serious harm is greatest. Researchers have documented this for decades. The legal scholar Martha Mahoney named the pattern in 1991: separation assault (Mahoney, 1991).

While a survivor stays in the relationship, the abuser still has most of what they want. Control. Only when the person leaves do they lose it. People who enjoy controlling others do not let go easily. Someone who has built their safety and their self-image on controlling another person will experience that person's leaving as the most dangerous thing that has ever happened to them. That is when abusers are most desperate and least predictable. The danger that continues after the relationship ends has a name too. Post-separation abuse, and it is one of the most underestimated risks in domestic violence (Spearman et al., 2023).

This is why "just leave" is not only unhelpful. It can be dangerous. A person pushed to leave suddenly, without a plan and without knowing where they could go, can be shoved into the single most dangerous phase of the relationship, unprepared.

None of this is meant to frighten anyone into staying. It's meant to correct the most harmful myth about domestic violence: that walking out the door means the abuse stops. It doesn't. Leaving marks the start of a new phase, often a more severe one, and that phase has to be planned for.

It also helps to think of leaving as a process, not a single event. It can take years and several attempts. The people who get out safely are rarely the ones who ran. They are the ones who planned, who had somewhere to go, and who had people around them who understood that the hardest part comes after the decision, not before it.

If this is you

If you recognize yourself here, staying is not evidence of failure or a lack of intelligence. The obstacles you face are considerable, and many of them were built on purpose by someone close to you. Noticing your own circumstances is already an act of agency. Reaching for support when you are ready is brave.

If you're reading this because you love someone who is in it, next week is for you. I'll write about what to say instead of "just leave."

If you need support

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

• National Domestic Violence Hotline – 1-800-799-SAFE (7233); TTY 1-800-787-3224; text "START" to 88788; chat at thehotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7, open to anyone regardless of gender or relationship type.

• StrongHearts Native Helpline – 1-844-762-8483.

• love is respect – 1-866-331-9474, or text "LOVEIS" to 22522.

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – call or text 988.

A note on technology precautions. If someone may be monitoring your phone, accounts, or location, seek help on a device they don't have access to, like a work or library computer or a trusted friend's phone.

References

Domestic Abuse Intervention Project. (1984). Power and control wheel. Duluth, MN.

Mahoney, M. R. (1991). Legal images of battered women: Redefining the issue of separation. Michigan Law Review, 90(1), 1–94.

Snider, J. (n.d.). Gender-neutral power and control wheel [Adapted]. University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Spearman, K. J., et al. (2023). Post-separation abuse: A concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in daily life. Oxford University Press.

What Domestic Violence Actually Looks Like When There Are No Bruises

A note before you read: This piece describes forms of domestic violence, including isolation, financial control, intimidation, sexual coercion, and coerced substance use. Read at a pace that feels right for you. If you are concerned about technology surveillance, please see the note at the end of the article.

"They've never hit me."

If you have ever said that sentence, or thought it, you are not alone. It's one of the most common reasons people stay, and why so many don't recognize what's happening to them until years have passed.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Over the next four weeks, I'll share a series of articles on this topic I feel deeply passionate about. As a trauma-informed therapist with a background in domestic violence counseling, I support survivors every day.

I want to start by clearing up a common misconception.

Many people picture domestic violence as a bruise. Something visible and unmistakable.

That's a real and serious part of the problem, but that image misses what often keeps someone trapped long before anything physical happens.

What we picture, and what we don't

Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior used to gain and keep power and control over an intimate partner or family member. Sometimes that pattern includes violence, and sometimes it doesn't, but regardless, the underlying mechanism is the same. An abuser learns that fear, isolation, and the slow unraveling of the other person's grip on reality maintain control far more reliably than force alone.

That's why the forms that leave no mark are often the most effective, and the hardest to name while you're inside them.

This isn't a problem that belongs to one gender, or one kind of relationship

A significant share of people experiencing intimate partner violence are men, and they are among the least likely to be believed (Basile et al., 2022). The scripts we hand men about strength and relationships can make it nearly impossible to name what's happening, or to ask for help once they do (Kim et al., 2024). A man being controlled by a partner is not failing at masculinity. He is being abused.

Domestic violence happens in same-sex relationships and among trans and nonbinary people at rates that match, and in some measures exceed, those in heterosexual relationships (Chen et al., 2023). Abusers weaponize identity, threatening to out a partner at work or to family, and survivors often face judgment that has nothing to do with the abuse. That keeps people silent and keeps abuse hidden.

The forms of abuse many people don't recognize

Coercive control is the umbrella term for most of what I'm describing. The sociologist Evan Stark introduced it in his 2007 book of the same name (Stark, 2007): an ongoing pattern of intimidation, isolation, and control of daily life that traps a person in a relationship. It isn't a single bad fight. It's a structure, built over time, that quietly narrows another person's world.

Isolation. Moving you to a new city, away from everyone you know. Turning every visit with family into an argument, until you stop going. Undermining your friendships one by one. By the time you reach for help, the people who might have noticed have often already been cut off.

Financial control. Keeping you from working or sabotaging your job. Putting everything in their name. Controlling every account, demanding receipts, giving you an "allowance." You can't leave if you have no money, no credit, and no job. That's the point (Trendl et al., 2026).

Emotional and psychological abuse. A steady campaign that teaches you to doubt your own judgment. Name-calling, humiliation, gaslighting, rewriting what happened until you can't trust your own memory. From the outside, it looks like "just a bad fight." It isn't. A fight involves two people seeking to understand each other. This has one person seeking dominance by breaking the other one down.

Sexual coercion and reproductive control. Pressuring or guilting you into sex, treating it as an obligation, or punishing you when you refuse. Sabotaging birth control, refusing to use protection, pressuring you into a pregnancy or out of one, controlling whether you can see a doctor. When sex stops being something you choose and becomes something you owe, it belongs to the same pattern as the rest.

Immigration and legal abuse. Using your immigration status as a weapon: threatening deportation, hiding your documents, preventing you from learning the language or reaching your own community. Legal abuse runs the same playbook: repeated court cases to drain your money and time, threats to take your children, the legal system itself turned into a tool of control.

Coerced substance use. Pressuring, forcing, or sabotaging you into using drugs or alcohol, sometimes to create dependence, sometimes to damage your credibility or cut you off from support, sometimes to manufacture "evidence" against you. When it's coerced, it stops being a choice and becomes another instrument of control.

Digital and surveillance abuse. Reading your messages, tracking your location, demanding your passwords, watching you through cameras and apps. It's framed as concern or protectiveness, until you notice they have eyes on every corner of your life (National Domestic Violence Hotline, 2025).

Intimidation and threats. Destroying your property, hurting your pets, brandishing weapons, threatening you, your children, or themselves. Sometimes the threat is enough. When you know what someone is capable of, you have already been controlled, whether it ever happens or not (Hilton & Radatz, 2025).

Most of these leave no visible mark. All of them change how you live, think, and feel about yourself. And none of them stop simply because they don't leave physical marks (Lohmann et al., 2024).

Why the physical-picture problem matters

Defining domestic violence only by bruises teaches people that harm isn't real until it leaves a mark. "They've never hit me" becomes a reason to stay, as though everything short of that doesn't count. "We just struggle to communicate" becomes the explanation for a control dynamic.

It shapes how the people around them respond, too. Friends and family ask the wrong questions, or look for the wrong signs. They may hear "they've never hit me" and feel reassured, when they should feel concerned. And the survivor walks away still doubting whether what they're experiencing is real enough to deserve help (Gregory et al., 2017).

It is real enough.

What others actually see

Friends, family, and coworkers usually won't witness the abuse itself. They see its edges.

Someone who has become hard to reach. Who cancels plans or has stopped seeing old friends. Someone who checks their phone constantly, or seems anxious about saying the wrong thing. Someone whose partner answers for them, talks over them, or insists on being present. Someone whose access to money, transportation, or decisions has quietly disappeared. Someone who has gotten smaller over time, apologizing more, explaining less.

One sign on its own may mean nothing. A pattern, over time, does (Dichter et al., 2018).

If any of this sounds familiar

Abuse doesn't have to be physical to be real, to cause real damage, or to be worth leaving. You don't need a bruise for your experience to be taken seriously.

If you recognize pieces of your own relationship here, you are not overreacting, not being dramatic, and not the problem. You also don't need a plan today.

If you're reading this because you're worried about someone else, this series is for you.

Next week: why "just leave" is the question so many people ask, and why it's the wrong one.

If you need support

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

• National Domestic Violence Hotline – 1-800-799-SAFE (7233); TTY 1-800-787-3224; text "START" to 88788; chat at thehotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7, open to anyone regardless of gender or relationship type.

• StrongHearts Native Helpline – 1-844-762-8483.

• love is respect – 1-866-331-9474, or text "LOVEIS" to 22522.

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – call or text 988.

• A note on technology precautions. If someone may be monitoring your phone, accounts, or location, seek help on a device they don't have access to, like a work or library computer or a trusted friend's phone.

References

Basile, K.C., Smith, S.G., Kresnow, M., Khatiwada S., & Leemis, R.W. (2022). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Sexual Violence. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chen, J., Khatiwada, S., Chen, M. S., Smith, S. G., Leemis, R. W., Friar, N., Basile, K. C., and Kresnow, M. (2023). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) 2016/2017: Report on Victimization by Sexual Identity. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dichter, M. E., Thomas, K. A., Crits-Christoph, P., Ogden, S. N., & Rhodes, K. V. (2018). Coercive control in intimate partner violence: Relationship with women's experience of violence, use of violence, and danger. Psychology of Violence, 8(5), 508–516.

Gregory, A. C., Williamson, E., & Feder, G. (2017). The impact on informal supporters of domestic violence survivors: A systematic literature review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 18(5), 562–580.

Hilton, N. Z., & Radatz, D. L. (2025). Coercive control in a national U.S. self-report survey: Prediction of repeated intimate partner violence. Psychological Services, 22(1), 92–101.

Kim, E. Y., Nelson, L. E., Pereira, T. L., & Shorey, S. (2024). Barriers to and facilitators of help-seeking among men who are victims of domestic violence: A mixed-studies systematic review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(3), 2189–2203.

Lohmann, S., Cowlishaw, S., Ney, L., O'Donnell, M., & Felmingham, K. (2024). The trauma and mental health impacts of coercive control: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(1), 630–647.

National Domestic Violence Hotline. (2025, May 30). Technology-facilitated abuse. https://www.thehotline.org/resources/technology-facilitated-abuse/

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.

Trendl, A., Sharp-Jeffs, N., Perrier, K., Rodrick, J., Gathergood, J., & Leake, D. (2026). Banking records reveal characteristics of financial abuse. Nature. Advance online publication.