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Closure Encounters: Harm Reduction for a Conversation with an Abuser or Assailant

After we’ve survived physical violence, sexual⁠ violence, or some other kind of abuse⁠, we may long for closure. We may want to name what was done to us to the person or people who did it, know why someone did something, or want an apology from someone who harmed us. Unfortunately, folks who are abusive or violent will often not have the capacity to provide the emotionally intelligent conversation that we crave after a painful event, nor the desire⁠ to take responsibility for their actions. Despite the potential risks — including disappointment — you may still want a discussion with your abuser(s) about what happened, whether they’re sorry about it, and what you want moving forward.

Safety comes first even if you feel that you need closure to move on. Beyond emotional damage, speaking to someone who has abused or assaulted you in the past can result in more physical or sexual violence, stalking, escalated abuse, and, in extreme cases, death. The most dangerous time for a victim of abuse is when they leaveexternal link, opens in a new tab the abuser. With that in mind, I suggest you work with safe people like trusted adults⁠, counselors, domestic violence professionals, and others to determine whether the risks of having a conversation with an abuser outweigh the potential benefits.

If you decide that speaking with someone who hurt you is a step you want to take, following the harm reduction tips below may help you have a safer encounter with an individual who harmed you in the past and, therefore, can hurt you again. Also, consider how you may be able to meet the unmet need that you believe a conversation could fulfill without putting yourself at risk or compromising your safety. We can’t stress enough how important it is to put your safety before anything else, so speaking with an abuser or assailant should be something you carefully consider before you attempt to do it.

Someone who abused you or someone else in the past is likely to abuse people in the future, even if they seem to have changed. The proverb “a leopard never changes its spots” tends to hold true. In other words, it’s better to assume that someone who was unsafe in the past still could be unsafe, rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt. In the same way that we wouldn’t touch a hot pan without protection like oven mitts or safety measures to ensure it fully cooled if it burnt us before, we should exercise extra caution when attempting to communicate with someone who has shown us their potential for harm. You can read more about how the cycle of abuse happens in our article here.

What Is Harm Reduction?

Harm reduction refers to strategies we can use to lower the risk of harm in a situation. You might have heard that term in the context of self-harm or substance use. It doesn’t mean complete elimination of possible harm, which means that the risk for pain and injury to our body, mind, or emotions is still there. Although we may hope that someone who has caused harm in the past will change, the truth is that even if someone promises to treat us better or has taken steps to change their behavior, it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be safe in the future. It might even be just another way they are engaging in abuse.

As you’ll discover in this article about abuse, part of the cycle of abuse is the abuser/person who causes harm apologizing, vowing to change, and offering gifts or affection⁠. If their apologies and gifts are effective in reeling you back in, they’ll start the cycle of abuse all over again. While many resources for domestic violence offer support to victims, there is a lack of programming and mental health resources that effectively help abusers. So, even if abusers want to change, they often won’t have access to treatment that could help them with that process. Without proper treatment or accountability for abusers, we should take extra caution when interacting with them.

Part of reducing harm is understanding what our risks are of harm in the first place. It’s important to understand that even if abusers agree to go to therapy or have gotten help for their problems, it doesn’t mean that they are sincerely changed. Someone who has hurt you and is genuinely sorry should understand why you would be hesitant to trust them again or have strict boundaries around future interactions. If it seems like a past abuser’s main goal is to reestablish contact with you or leverage a reconnection you initiate to rekindle the relationship⁠ without earning back your trust, it’s likely that they have ulterior motives. I have had the experience firsthand of going back to an abuser and finding out⁠ that they didn’t actually change: they just wanted me to think they changed so they could restart the cycle of abuse.

It takes an average of seven times for someone to leave an abuser, so if you find yourself going back to someone who has hurt you in the past, you are not alone. It’s natural to want to believe the best about someone or that they are capable of change. Even so, you deserve to protect yourself from potential harm and one way to do that is avoiding people, places, and things that have hurt you in the past. It’s better to be too cautious and raise your standards for trust, as well as your boundaries, too high for a past abuser, than not be cautious enough and be on the receiving end of the abuser’s harmful actions again.

Is a Conversation with an Abuser/Assailant Necessary or Beneficial?

After abuse or an assault, your healing journey is all about what is helpful for you. Just like fingerprints and snowflakes, no two healing journeys are the same. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want or don’t feel comfortable doing. No one should pressure you to do things like forgive your abuser, report the abuse to the authorities, or speak about what happened to you before you feel willing and ready. Friends, family, or professionals may encourage you to take certain steps like seeking emergency help for threats to your safety or injuries, but ultimately, it is your decision what, if any, help you seek out.

Of course, we want you to be as safe and healthy as possible, so we would strongly encourage you to get any care and treatment you need after an abuse or assault has occurred. After all, you deserve care for all aspects of your health and well-being, and abuse doesn’t change that. Still, you’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to navigating the aftermath of any situation that took away your safety and autonomy⁠ or your sense of them.

If you believe that talking to an abuser or assailant would be helpful for your healing, you may be viewing abusive relationships through the same lens that you would view healthy relationships. In most cases, we should be able to talk to people in our lives who have hurt us in the past and reach a place of understanding. However, people who engage in abuse often lack remorse or empathy, which is usually a big part of why they do it. After all, if they cared about how we feel, they usually wouldn’t be abusive. Research shows that even if an abuser expresses remorse, it may still be part of the cycle of abuse, as outlined in this articleexternal link, opens in a new tab.

On top⁠ of that, abusers show that their communication⁠ style relies on intimidating you and hurting you physically, emotionally, and psychologically. In healthy relationships, miscommunication happens, but in abusive relationships or dynamics, the abuser intentionally creates a power imbalance that puts you at a disadvantage. As a result, abusers can’t give you the closure or healthy conclusion that you may want to heal. In most cases, it’s best to move on and find healthy people who can help you relearn how to trust others while engaging in community.

One thing to know is that you don’t have to directly speak with an abuser to hear the words that you would like to hear, and sometimes doing this differently may be the only way you hear those words. Safe places like support groups, domestic violence centers, sexual assault⁠ resources, counselors, and other safe supports in your social circle can offer you those words, too, and even from another source, they can often land just as meaningfully.

Weigh the Physical and Emotional Risks

Before we can reduce harm in an interaction, we need to consider what the harm might be: what the risks to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being are. Going over the signs of abuse and sexual violence can make it easier to assess all of the harm that has happened in a relationship dynamic. If harm has happened before, it can happen again. Risks to violence may increase if you are alone with the person who hurt you, in an isolated location, or if they have escalated in violence and threats before.

Consider What You Want From a Conversation

Sometimes, we may think that the only way to gain closure from an abusive situation is having a conversation with that person. When we leave an abusive situation or have to cut off a friendship because abuse or violence occurs, it can leave us feeling as though we have “unfinished business.”

Recognize that another person always has their own thoughts, feelings, and motives. Just because you set out to achieve a certain goal through a conversation doesn’t mean you’ll achieve it. Additionally, your goals for this discussion may change as you interact with this person or process the events that lead to the conversation more.

When we’ve just left an abuser, we may have doubts that the abuse was “that bad.” We may even think that talking it out will fix things and take the relationship back to where it was in the honeymoon phase. As natural as it is to want to fix a broken relationship, some relationships aren’t possible or safe to repair. The first 90 days after leaving an abuserexternal link, opens in a new tab are the most dangerous for a victim, with the highest risk of retaliation, stalking, and other forms of harm. Whether it’s been three days or three months after you’ve left someone who abused you, it’s not enough time for them to change. What’s more, it’s not worth the risk of finding out the hard way that they’ve not only failed to change, but they’ve escalated to worse types of abuse.

Once, I went back to an abuser about five months after leaving. At first, he seemed like he worked on himself and realized he was in the wrong. He may have even apologized for the harm he caused. I decided to get back together with him and work things out. Not even a week after I returned to him, he began emotionally abusing me and threatening to hurt me again. 

I share this story because I want you to know the reality of what can happen when you return to an abuser. Even if that person is saying all the right things and seems better behaved, they could still return to their old ways at any point. When trust has been broken on that deep of a level, it’s often not worth it to give someone a second chance. If an abuser gives you a second chance, they could benefit by having someone to abuse again or at least enjoying your company. If you give an abuser a second chance, you may benefit in the short-term by having a conversation that makes it easier to move on or feeling like the relationship has been restored. You could also end up hurt as badly or worse than you were before. As someone with personal experience leaving an abuser, returning, and then leaving again, I would suggest thinking about safer ways to gain closure and getting as much safe support as you can in the process of reconnecting with someone who has hurt you in the past.

Consider Restorative Justice Resources

If an abuser or assailant agrees to have a conversation with you, you may not have to do it by yourself. With a local restorative justiceexternal link, opens in a new tab resource, a facilitator can mediate any or even all interactions between you and an abuser in a way that feels safe to all parties. They may also offer ideas for ways that an abuser can make up for the harm caused and educate the abuser on the impact of the harm they’ve done. On top of that, a witness outside of the victim can inform the greater community about the abuser’s behavior and patterns without taking on the same risks as the victim. Plus, when more than one person says that someone is abusive or violent, it tends to carry more weight than one person’s perspective.

Consider the Conversation Virtually Instead of In-Person

Although text, email or video conversations come with risks because someone can screenshot them or send them to other people, they can be useful for keeping track of what was said and reporting abuse later if it escalates. When you communicate with someone over written messages, it’s also easier to think about what you want to say and take time to respond to them. You can even write a draft of what you initially want to say to copy and paste ahead of time, if you like. You can also enlist a trusted support like a friend, advocate, or mental health professional to go over the conversation afterward with you and do things like help you process it, including by identifying any emotionally unsafe or abusive language. Since abusers and assailants may gaslight or deny what they said, having a written record makes it easier to prove what happened in a conversation, and having someone else point that gaslighting⁠ out can help reduce its impact on you.

From planning the conversation to executing it to ending it, this whole process can take a huge emotional toll. Although physical safety is paramount, emotional safety matters just as much. Before speaking with an abuser, we might feel anxious, angry, scared, sad, or a whole range of emotions. We might also feel excited at the prospect of talking to them, which can lead us to overlook red flags or feel extra low if they let us down with how they behave afterward. Speaking with an abuser can also cause suicidal thoughts due to either depression about what they did or verbal abuse.

Even just thinking about speaking to an abuser can stir up old feelings, post-traumatic responses, and new emotions around the situation. Beyond considering what all of this could make you feel, you’ll also want to think about the potential impact that those feelings can have. Could they make you say something that you’ll regret later? Could they make you push safe supports away and isolate? Is it possible that they’ll push you to use maladaptive coping skills like self-harm, restriction, or suicidal actions? Once you’ve identified how speaking with an abuser could make you feel and how you could respond, you should also check in with yourself to determine how equipped you are to handle them in the short term and long term. When we don’t have healthy coping skills or are in a heightened emotional state, it’s best to build up coping skills and take time to regulate before even thinking about speaking with someone who hurt us.

When we talk about risks, we might place a heavier emphasis on physical risks like getting abused or assaulted again. The emotional risks involved with reconnecting with an abuser are equally important to weigh. When you picture speaking with your abuser or seeing them again, what feelings and thoughts does it stir up? If it makes you want to isolate, hurt yourself, have a panic attack, or go into a flashback or other PTSD response, it’s okay to focus on your healing and put the idea of seeking closure from an abuser on the back burner. Regardless of whether you’re thinking about reconnecting with an abuser or want to move on in other ways, taking stock of who you can call in a crisis or lean on if recovery brings up unmanageable thoughts and feelings is a good idea.

Remember That Its About You

Sometimes, conversations are meant to benefit both people or lead both people to a greater understanding of each other. In the case of seeking closure from someone who has hurt us, it’s all about what we need to gain from the conversation. Even though your abuser or assailant may benefit from your interaction with them, the main purpose of this conversation is for you to seek what you want from this person so that you can move forward from the harm they did to you. If they’re unwilling to give you an apology, listen, or use the conversation to cause more harm, protect yourself and leave. Even if they’re mad or offended that you’ve left the discussion, it doesn’t matter as much as your feelings and needs as the harmed party in the situation.

Know (and Set) Your Limits

Though you might feel comfortable having a conversation with an abuser or assailant to a certain degree, you can — and probably should — still set boundaries around the discussion with your well-being in mind. For example, you might not want to hug the person when you meet. You may have some topics, areas of discussion that are simply off-limits for you. You may want to mention a couple of things that, if they happen, will result in your leaving immediately or taking other kinds of action. You might want to insist on someone else being with you. You may have a boundary that you will leave the conversation if they start to yell or speak disrespectfully to you.

You might also want to set limits on the amount of time you’re willing to spend on the conversation. Having a conversation with someone who has hurt you can take a lot of emotional energy. With a time limit, you can devote a certain amount of time to the discussion and then move on to self-care. Since rehashing the past can lead to high emotions or unpredictable reactions, setting a time limit also gives you a convenient excuse to leave if the conversation takes a turn for the worst. In the event you find that you want more time, you can always ask to schedule a second time to talk.

Whatever your boundaries are, it’s important to communicate them clearly and firmly with the person you’re engaging in conversation with or are planning to engage in conversation with. Abusers tend to test our boundaries or make us think that they know what’s best for us better than we do, so holding your boundaries can be a good way to protect yourself while seeing if an abuser has truly changed. Safe people respect boundaries and limits without question. Unsafe people try to push them. While reducing limits may not be a safe idea, you can always add more or reinforce boundaries to make them more rigid for emotional and physical safety. You can also end the conversation at any point, even if you don’t have a reason for it. Wanting to end the conversation is reason enough!

Have In-Person Interactions in a Public Place

Holding a closure conversation in a public place can help to ensure that your assailant or abuser will be held accountable if they try to harm you again. In some situations, an abuser won’t care if you’re in public and still harm you. Additionally, bystanders may not come to your rescue or intervene if your abuser decides to hurt you in public. Still, being out in a public place is less risky than being at home or in a secluded area alone with your abuser. Lower risk, of course, does not mean no risk or a guarantee of safety. It’s just the lesser of two less than ideal options. It also may make you feel more comfortable having other people around. Additionally, it keeps the other person from knowing where you live or other details about your personal life if they aren’t aware.

Bring a Trusted Support to the Conversation

A trusted support person serves two purposes in a conversation with an abuser or an individual who has caused harm. First, they can recognize signs that you may be or are unsafe and help to remove you from the situation. Second, they can comfort you and provide emotional support before, during and after the conversation. They can also reduce the chance that your abuser may try to gaslight you. Even if an abuser gaslights you after the conversation, having a witness means that you can ask them if you’re remembering the encounter correctly and make it easier to counteract the effects of gaslighting on your healing.

Debrief with Someone Else You Trust 

Whether the conversation goes exactly how you wanted it to go or it went south, it’s wise to go over the details of the discussion and how it made you feel after it’s finished. If you see a therapist that you trust, speaking with them can help you process your feelings and integrate the experience into your healing journey. Even if you don’t see a therapist or don’t feel comfortable telling your counselor about it, processing what happened with another person or even a journal can help you move forward with healing. Since seeing someone who hurt you and speaking with them can trigger⁠ emotions and post-traumatic stress symptoms, having support after the conversation with an abuser can be grounding. Our direct services such as message boards, live chat, and texting can also be great ways to debrief after speaking with an abuser along with any other time you need to process a situation that felt unsafe or activating. You can access them here.

Take Care of Yourself Before, During, and After

One of the best ways to reduce emotional harm in an interaction with someone who has caused you pain is to take good care of yourself. That care can look like engaging in hobbies or other activities you love and that bring you comfort, pampering or treating yourself in some way, extra therapy sessions, cuddling with a pet or other loved one, or allowing yourself to rest and do nothing. Meeting needs like rest, food, water, socialization, and hygiene all count as self-care. Whenever you’re preparing to do something stressful, self-care can easily fall by the wayside. By making it a priority, you’ll be better prepared to recognize when something doesn’t feel right in the conversation and continue keeping your best interests in mind as you interact with your abuser or assailant.


Wanting to have a final conversation with someone who isn’t in your life anymore is normal. Missing your abuser is completely normal, too! When someone used to be in your life, it takes time to adjust to the loss of the relationship and your grief is valid.

With abusers, having closure can be more complex because you do have to consider your well-being and how that interaction could be harmful.

As we mentioned above, your safety should come before anything else. It should also be solely about what you want and need to move forward without considering what would be helpful for the person who harmed you or other people in the situation.

Considering what healing could look like on your terms is powerful. Abuse takes away our sense of agency and autonomy. As we recover from traumatic events, we reclaim those aspects of ourselves. Whether you try to talk with someone who harmed you (keeping in mind our harm reduction strategies above and potential safety risks) or find peace about what happened through another means, your choices are valid. It takes strength to get away from abusers and it takes strength to recover, so you should be proud of yourself for thinking about the best ways for you to find peace after a traumatic experience.

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