Jenna walked into the coffee shop and saw her friend Amy in the corner, already seated and drinking her usual Grande Mocha Latte. Amy smiled and waved, but Jenna immediately noticed that something seemed a bit off. To most people, it would have seemed that Amy was happy and looking forward to catching up with a friend. Jenna and Amy had been friends since they were in grade school, and Jenna was confused at what it was that seemed amiss about her good friend. As she picked up her coffee at the counter and sat down at the table, she saw a bruise on her left cheek almost expertly covered by makeup. “Hey good to see you! What happened here?” Jenna said pointing to Amy’s face. Amy’s smile crumpled and she said something about an accident. She quickly tried to steer the conversation to Jenna, after all they hadn’t seen each other in a while. Jenna noted that it had been too long since they were able to get together. She had texted her a bunch of times to hang out, but Amy typically said she was busy. Amy had started seeing her boyfriend, Brandon, seven months ago. Jenna noticed that her friend always seemed to have reasons not to see her, which wasn’t like her. As Amy asked Jenna about work, she reached across the table for a napkin. It was then Jenna saw a ring of bruises around her wrist. Deep reddish purple in color, there was no mistaking what had caused it. Jenna met her eyes and knew what had happened, but couldn’t believe it. “It’s not what you think. It’s no big deal, Jenna,” said Amy. “What do you mean? It is a big deal!!” Jenna said. “What happened?”
Amy said that it was her fault, she had forgotten to let the dog out and Brandon came home to a mess on the floor. He had reminded her a million times, and Amy said she couldn’t blame him for getting angry. He hadn’t meant to grab her wrist so hard, but she was walking away from him. “He just snapped. He didn’t mean it. He was so sorry, Jenna. He actually cried.” Then a chill went through Jenna as she came to a realization -- this wasn’t the only time this had happened. “Amy -- why don’t you just leave him?” Domestic violence is an all too common circumstance in relationships nationally and around the world. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that on average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. 1 in 4 women as well as 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (i.e beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime. As a psychologist in private practice, I have dealt with this painful issue many times with patients seeking support and guidance. Alongside the many clinical issues created by domestic violence, such as depression and complex PTSD, is the difficulty in receiving much needed support from those in their natural support system. In many cases, people find themselves isolated from family and friends due to the controlling demands of their partner. Many who experience domestic violence experience shame and guilt about the abuse, and do not share their experiences even with those close to them. A staggering 34% of those injured by their partners in a domestic violence incident do not seek medical attention for their injuries. For those who do seek help and support from family and friends, they are often asked the question: “Why don’t you just leave?” While many who have not experienced domestic violence often state that they would leave and end the relationship after the first incidence of aggression, this is not typically the case. In fact, research has shown that on average it takes a victim seven times to leave before staying away for good (National Domestic Violence Hotline website). There are many, many obstacles that victims of domestic violence face in ending these relationships. Some have to do with the identity of the abuser. Sometimes they are wealthy, hold a position of power or influence in the community, and have the ability to influence legal decision makers and others in the victim’s circle. This is especially the case if the abuser is a police officer or is in the military, as they fear their reports won’t be taken seriously or lead to issues at work for the perpetrator. Other obstacles to leaving an abusive relationship have to do with characteristics of the victim. Racism within the legal system, cultural influences that normalize abuse in relationships and discourage separating from the abuser, and undocumented immigrants who fear deportation and other complex immigration issues involving their children, the abuser or themselves can all factor into the decision of whether to leave the relationship. There is also the very real possibility that the abuser may make good on threats that they will harm the victim or their children. In my role as a therapist, many of these obstacles are foremost in the victim's mind when they present for treatment. When discussing the reasons for staying in the abusive relationship, almost universally my clients have said that they still have feelings of love for the abuser. This can be the hardest thing for people around the victim to understand. How is it possible that someone who experiences repeated mental and physical acts of abuse can still have feelings for the person who has treated them this way? As a Dialectical Behavioral Therapist, I often turn to principles of behaviorism to explain this to the victim as well as those within their support system. In particular, the work of B.F. Skinner, commonly referred to as the father of operant conditioning, is helpful in understanding the behavior of domestic violence victims. Skinner’s work built upon the idea that behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated. Skinner added the concept of reinforcement, which posits behavior that is reinforced is more likely to be repeated, while behavior that is not reinforced tends to stop or get extinguished. For example, when your spouse smiles and praises the meal you made for dinner, you are more likely to make it again. If your spouse eats the dinner, and doesn’t say anything you might not make that dinner again or you might just order pizza. Skinner also identified the importance of the type of response following a behavior in whether or not the behavior is repeated. He coined the use of the terms reinforcers or punishers to describe responses to behaviors. Reinforcers, or responses that increase the likelihood of a behavior being repeated, can be positive or negative. Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. Returning to the example of making a dinner your spouse likes, applying praise for the meal and talking about how great it is a response that when applied is likely to increase the behavior. Praise is typically a powerful positive reinforcer. Reinforcers can also be negative, meaning that removing an unpleasant reinforcer can also increase a behavior. Hopefully, this happens every time you get into a car, as there is a noise that tends to go off repetitively until you increase the behavior of buckling your seatbelt. Punishers are aversive events that decrease the behavior that follows it. Just like with reinforcers, punishers work by applying a response to a behavior or taking away a potentially rewarding thing that ultimately decreases the behavior from happening again. Common punishers are yelling, or taking away your child’s game controller when they throw it in anger after a game. While punishers are widely used in all sorts of situations, there are a lot of problems when using punishers to try and change behaviors. For instance, punished behavior is not forgotten, it is just suppressed so when the punisher is no longer present, the behavior returns. Your spouse yells at you for biting your nails, as he finds it a disgusting habit. While you stop when he yells, as soon as he leaves the room you return to biting your nails. Another issue is that it doesn’t guide you towards a more effective behavior, it just tells you what not to do. Yelling at someone for a behavior may cause them to stop in the short term, but it doesn’t provide alternatives for what they can do instead. It can also result in feeling fear, which is a powerful motivator of action. However, fear based reactions to punishment can also result in a person in overgeneralizing the fear and developing phobias. Having a fender bender in the driveway, and being verbally abused for it and called a terrible driver could result in a fear of driving or even riding in a car. In an abusive relationship, fear is ever present due to repeated instances of verbal and physical abuse that have occurred. It results in hypervigilance, or a state of extreme alertness that undermines a person’s quality of life. While not all punishers are abusive, they are rooted in the desire to change the other’s behavior. The final issue with applying punishers is that they have been shown to cause increased aggressive behavior, as it models that aggression is an appropriate solution to cope with life’s problems. A common research finding is that children who witness domestic violence in the home are more likely to engage in lying, bullying, and fighting behaviors and are more likely to experience emotional and behavioral problems. Understanding the basics of Skinner’s principles of reinforcers and punishers is important to understanding how this applies to the difficulty in leaving an abusive relationship. B.F. Skinner built a box that measured an animal’s behavior within a certain time frame. He placed the animal, such as a rat, into the box where they would be rewarded for certain behaviors, such as pressing a lever. Behaviorists utilized this device to determine just how long it takes for a behavior to stop once the stimulus stops being given. Over time, behaviorists determined that different patterns, or schedules of reinforcement, had different effects on the speed of learning and ultimately stopping the behavior. Skinner measured the response rate of the rat pushing the lever, as well as the extinction rate, or when the rat stopped pushing the lever once the food stopped coming. He found that when the rat received a pellet of food every time he pushed the lever, or continuous reinforcement, the rat quickly stopped pressing the lever because after pressing a few times no food pellet came. They studied many different types of schedules of reinforcement, such as fixed ratio reinforcement (getting a food pellet for every 5 presses of the lever), fixed interval reinforcement (getting a food pellet every 15 minutes for each lever press), or variable interval reinforcement (getting a food pellet at an unpredictable time frame as long as the lever is pressed once). Of the types of reinforcement schedules, the one found to be the hardest to extinguish was the variable ratio reinforcement schedule. In this pattern, the rat is given a food pellet for a variable number of presses on the level. It could be twice, then it could be twenty times, then it could be 110 times, followed by three times. The effect is like what happens for a slot machine player winning a jackpot. The one time of winning reinforces a million different pulls of the lever, and ensures that they will continue to pull the lever over and over again. Such is the case for someone in an abusive relationship. In the beginning of most relationships, people act in ways that reinforce feelings of love and caring for each other. Over time in most relationships behaviors that reinforce love, such as praise, compliments, buying gifts, or doing nice things for someone tend to decrease in frequency. In an abusive relationship, instances of verbal and physical aggression can escalate in frequency and intensity. What becomes more unpredictable is when loving behaviors will be demonstrated again. In looking at the cycle of violence, instances in which verbal or physical aggression aimed at controlling the behavior of the victim are often followed by the perpetrator feeling and expressing overwhelming guilt for their behavior. They may offer excuses, blame or rationalization for their behavior. In our earlier case example, Amy reported that the physical abuse happened because she had forgotten to let the dog out in the morning and it made a mess in the house. She said it was her fault because he had reminded her a million times. Amy also said that the ring of bruises around her wrist where he grabbed her wasn’t his fault because she was walking away from him. She said that he was sorry and had even cried because he felt so bad about what he had done. After a time period in which the perpetrator expresses guilt or remorse and/or rationalizes or makes excuses for the abuse, the next stage in the cycle of violence is a seeming return to “normal” or even a “honeymoon” phase in the relationship. The abuser attempts to regain a sense of control, and often shows the victim increased love and affectionate behavior in an attempt to make them comfortable and keep them in the relationship. This is the personification of fixed ratio reinforcement -- feelings of love for the perpetrator increase during this phase of the cycle of violence which reinforce staying in the relationship. The abuse is viewed as an isolated incident caused by the victim’s behavior. Following an incident of violence, victims often want to return to normal and will minimize the behavior as well as the likelihood it will happen again. The inconsistency of the abuse and the indeterminate amount of time until it occurs again, followed by behavior in which their partner shows feelings of love and fulfills their needs for love and affection. During “normal” phases of the relationship, their partner may embody their romantic ideals, and this reinforces the view that they are basically a good person whose passion made them lose control momentarily. Staying behavior is rewarded, while leaving behavior is not. Victims that engage in more independent behaviors, such as talking to friends and family or going somewhere without telling their partner, will challenge the sense of personal control the perpetrator feels in the relationship. This leads to a build up of tension and the perpetrator noting the things the victim has done wrong, which inevitably leads up to an argument and another instance of abuse. Often attempts for the victim to leave the perpetrator lead to an escalation of violent behavior as a means to control them once again. In a study of men who killed their wives, threats of separation or actual separation from their partner were most often the precipitating factors that lead to the murder (Ncadv.org). It is important to note that this is one of the many reasons why people stay in abusive relationships. Addiction, mental illness, lack of finances or safe places to stay, fear of losing custody of children, lack of response from law enforcement, as well as societal pressures of family or clergy to save the relationship at all costs as well as a lack of support are a few of the many other factors that make it difficult to leave an abusive relationship. In order for someone to successfully end the relationship, it is vital that victims of the abuse receive knowledge of and access to sources of safety and support to face this complex issue. Having an understanding of why it is so difficult for a victim to leave, and to provide support instead of blaming or cutting off contact with them for this decision is vitally important in assisting someone you care about in leaving for good. National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) for anonymous confidential help 24/7.
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AuthorDr. Kim Guarascio, PhD is a New York State Licensed Psychologist who has been providing treatment for teens, young adults and adults for nearly 20 years in Central New York. The focus of her professional career has been centered on the empowerment of women, particularly those who have experienced trauma and abuse. Archives
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