Stage one
Recognize
You already sense something. That is enough to begin. No proof required, no permission needed.
You don't need to call yourself a victim. You don't need a crisis before you deserve help. You don't need anyone else to agree with you.
Abuse is not only physical, and most of it isn't. These patterns usually appear long before anyone gets hurt, and they build slowly enough that you adjust to them without noticing you've adjusted.
Control
- Monitoring your phone, messages, location or spending
- Controlling the money, or making you account for what you spend
- Deciding who you see, where you go, what you wear
- Making it hard for you to work, study, drive or hold your own income
Pressure on your sense of reality
- Telling you you're too sensitive, imagining things, remembering it wrong
- Denying things you know happened
- Turning others against you, or making you look unstable
- Making you feel you have to manage their mood to keep the peace
Isolation and fear
- Distance growing between you and the people who love you
- Walking on eggshells, or rehearsing conversations before you have them
- Hiding parts of your life from people you used to tell everything
- Feeling relief when they leave the house
Escalation
- Threats aimed at you, your children, your pets, your job or your reputation
- Damaging property, blocking doorways, driving dangerously to frighten you
- Any pressure or force around sex
- Any physical harm, including grabbing, shoving, restraining or strangling
If any of this sounds familiar
You are not overreacting. None of this is your fault, and there is no shame in it. You can talk to someone trained, free and confidentially, right now, whether or not you are in danger and whether or not you plan to do anything about it. The same line is there for anyone worried about someone else.
1-800-799-7233 Text START to 88788 thehotline.org
Take it with you
Before It Has a Name is a two-page guide covering the signs of emotional abuse and domestic violence, what to do next, and where to get help. Free, no email required.
A downloaded file stays in your device's downloads folder and can be found by anyone with access to it. Consider reading it here instead, or downloading it on a device the other person cannot reach.
If you're worried about someone else
You are probably the first person they've told, or the first person who noticed. What you do next matters more than you think.
Do
- Believe them, and say so out loud
- Offer something concrete: a place to keep documents, a ride, a couch, or the use of your phone or computer while they are with you
- Do not buy them a phone or a device to take home. A second phone discovered is evidence of a plan, and that can escalate the danger
- Stay in their life even if nothing changes for a long time
- Learn what's available so you can point without pushing
Don't
- Tell them to leave. Pressure to go takes the decision out of their hands and can put them in danger
- Tell them to stay, for the children or the marriage or anyone else's sake
- Confront the other person
- Give up on them because they didn't do what you suggested