Understanding abuse is very similar to understanding trauma; We could say that they are like a robbery, a robbery that will depend a lot on how you have experienced it. It can rob you of your own identity and normal life and even determine your present, although many years have passed since then. The therapeutic work consists of doing justice and preventing it from continuing to produce the theft of life and identity.
Sometimes, people who experience a critical situation are not seriously affected, since the biggest problem in mental health is chronicity or serial repetition of critical events. Our disposition and experience not only play a relevant role in mental health, but they are also important in all aspects of our lives.
The essential is invisible to the eyes, and psychological abuse is what most generates suffering and accompanies the other abuses suffered by victims of violence. How to stop being in the place where you think you should be? Being able to answer this question requires knowing the operation of the abuse, helps to understand in depth the suffering and the difficulty to get out of this type of loop, essential to avoid putting superficial labels.
The need to understand abuse
It is in the final phase of the history of violence that aggression may increase, since the aggressor may feel threatened. Therefore, it is essential to discuss, prepare and detail security plans for the exit of the relationship or to end the violence.
Let's think that only half of the women with a history of violence -which usually lasts around six years- manage to break the relationship after an average of between five and eight attempts to achieve it. In these cases, human (social network) and economic resources are the key to be able to leave a situation of chronic violence.
Subjection, terror, incompetence (intellectual and emotional), self-distrust, control, and the internal psychological sensation of dirt and corruption (product of rape) are the picture that best describes the lives of victims of violence. If the victim maintains his criterion of reality, he can accumulate (points of inflection and no return) and end the relationship, otherwise other possible patterns of violence will evolve.
Understanding abuse is very similar to understanding trauma and helps to positively change the narration of the event.
Violence in intimate relationships
The percentage of women injured by their partners is equivalent to that of women injured in traffic accidents, assaults or sexual assaults. Approximately half of the attacks cause physical injuries, but only 4 out of 10 seek medical assistance.
They say that words are spread over time, but in terms of mental health the messages that are transmitted are extremely important for those who receive it. Understanding abuse from an adaptive functional vision can greatly help to positively modify the narration of the event.
Types of violence in intimate relationships
Physical violence in coercive control
In his intention to understand the abuse, Stark (2007) compared fear, emotional dullness, difficulties to sleep and concentrate on victims subjected to physical violence and / or coercive control, being significantly superior in coercive control. We could say that there are different trajectories of physical violence: breaking bones, strangulating, abandoning, enclosing, attacking with weapons, throwing objects are some examples of the different strategies of this type of violence.
Emotional or psychological violence
Emotional violence is very subtle, and can be more harmful than blows. Victims may feel intellectually incompetent, think they are crazy or unworthy of being loved or unable to love. The most frequent forms of exercising psychological and / or emotional violence are:
- Affective distancing.
- Jealousy.
- Denial of rights to the victim.
- Humiliation.
- Constant and global criticism.
- Abuse.
- Coercion of freedom (intellectual, labor, social ...).
- Destroy belongings or memories.
- Threats (death, suicide, abandonment ...).
More types of violence
Violence can devastate even the most recondite of the "I", how trust in one's own criteria. There are other types of violence that are also exercised within intimate relationships:
- Sexual violence: refers to those acts not consented or under duress related to sexual practices that degrade the victim.
- Economic violence: involves unfair actions related to the economic management of the victim (stealing, forcing, ruining, submission, ...).
- Spiritual violence: it can range from attacking and / or laughing to prohibiting your religious beliefs and practices.
Why is it so difficult to get out of a situation of abuse?
The abuse, as we have seen, can take different trajectories, but the way in which violence is constructed within intimate relationships constitutes a vicious circle from which it is very difficult to leave. The steps that lead the way through which violence walks are the following:
- Unattainable contract: the aggressor asks the victim something that can not be done.
- Negotiation of differences.
- Intensification: screaming, insults, coercion, threats.
- Activation: activator, aggression.
- Complementarity: cessation of dispute, repentance, forgiveness.
- Repeating the previous steps.
As in any crisis, there are moments of stability, improvement, accelerated deterioration and / or regression. But we must not forget that the processes of recovery and reconstruction are possible, and that both accelerate and coexist with the rupture. Violence alone transmits very powerful and destructive messages, that is why work with victims of violence is aimed at empowering them, "You do, violence does not" because "Only the living can do psychotherapy".
