Respecting Self-Defined Needs

If you're a friend or relative of a survivor of domestic violence, you can be a key player in helping that person heal emotionally. As any Women's Advocate will tell you, one of the most important things is to respect your friend's Self-Defined Needs.

We have talked about this subject before. I wrote an article that describes how you can help your friend, and an article about how you can help your spouse, and some tips on how best to re-empower a survivor. Here is more information on how to do that.

The Basics

A quick review: respecting someone's Self-Defined Needs means that the survivor decides what she needs, and makes decisions accordingly. By being beaten, by being abused, all power and control in her life has been ripped from her. The best way to help her recover is to give the power and control back to her. If you keep some for yourself, you're weakening her; you're re-victimizing her.

Respecting someone's Self-Defined Needs can be unbelievably difficult. It means that, whatever decision she makes, you have to support it -- even if she decides to go back to her batterer!

See what I mean? Unbelievably difficult.

The plain fact is that nobody knows what the survivor needs as well as the survivor herself. So don't tell her what she should do. Ask her what she wants to do. And then support her however you can. If you have information that she needs to put her decision into effect, that's different from telling her what to do. By all means, share that information with her. But make sure that she remains the one in charge.

How can you support her if she decides to return to her batterer? You have to consider several things:

• Realize that she is in a different place than you are, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Also economically.
• Her relationship with her batterer, her parents, and her children, can never be completely understood by someone else.
• She knows you disapprove of her decision, and that disapproval weighs on her like a grand piano.
• She feels like she let you down; that you're disgusted with her.
• So the next time she wants to leave her batterer, she won't dare to call you for help.

That doesn't mean that you have to swallow all of your feelings and lie. But exasperation, disgust, sarcasm, and that kind of thing, are really, really inappropriate. Talk about her decision. Don't ask "Why?" It sounds accusing and judgemental. Instead, ask, "How did you arrive at that decision?" Then she will tell you about it. Listen respectfully, and suggest that before she goes back, maybe it would be a good idea to draw up a Safety Plan. Because she is being supported, it is very likely that she will agree to that. Work with an advocate at a women's crisis center to draw up an effective safety plan. Then, when she goes back, she will go back better than before, because: 1) She has a good Safety Plan, and if it helps even a tiny bit, it will make her feel enormously empowered; 2) She has worked with Advocates and knows what they offer; 3) She knows that you are behind her 100%; and 4) She knows that when she leaves again, you will still be there for her, and will never say "I told you so."

You Can't Make It Happen

I have encountered many cases where a woman's mother, or friends, or a whole group of people, pressured the woman into going to the women's center and applying for an Order For Protection. She is pressured into going to court and having the Order approved. And less than a week later, she calls the agency again, and asks if it can be revoked or changed.

In those cases, the problem is that she was dis-empowered by the people trying to help her. She didn't want an OFP; she wasn't ready for it for whatever reason; so as soon as the OFP is granted, her friends relax, the pressure is removed, and so she acts to revoke it.

The best-intentioned people will pressure someone to take action that the person is not ready to take. This never works. The survivor will change things as soon as your back is turned, because she did it for you, not for herself. And she emerges from the experience feeling even weaker, because now she is worried about her friends as well as her batterer. She shudders to think of what they will say when they find out she un-did the OFP, and therefore, she does not dare call them the next time she needs help.

You also can't do it for her

Another common mistake made by well-intentioned friends and relatives is to show her so much support that she never has to lift a finger. As a friend, you can provide emotional support, encouragement, and so on. But don't make the mistake of trying to "take care of this" for her.