Anyone you are disclosing to should respond to you with acceptance and belief, empathy, encouragement and support. Many people will.
But some people won’t respond to an abuse disclosure appropriately, and who doesn’t may come as an extra-harsh surprise. When people respond poorly to our disclosures of abuse, we often experience a form of secondary harm that can add to the trauma we have already acquired, so it’s not like poor responses are no-big-deal things we can always just brush off. This is some of why choosing who we tell, when we can, very carefully, is so important.
So many people just don’t know jack about emotional abuse (including some people who have themselves experienced or engaged in it), and because of some cultural and individual beliefs about abuse, abusers, victims of abuse and relationship dynamics in general, you may get some responses or reactions that make you feel pretty lousy. Nothing is going to make getting any of these responses feel any better, but it can be helpful to at least prepare yourself for experiencing them, and to think about how you might respond to them.
“Are you sure you’re not just unhappy?” “Are you sure this was/is abusive?”
People who haven’t had to do it themselves often don’t realize how hard it is to name abuse of any kind and tell someone else about it, so sometimes people will say something like this because they think you’re being dramatic or trying not to take responsibility for your own part in an unsatisfying relationship. Some people feel disbelief because you, your relationship or your partner didn’t match their ideas about what abuse, someone abused, or someone abusive look like.
With responses like these — or others like them — a simple, direct statement that yes, you are sure may be all you want to say, and it should also be all that you need to say. You can also let them know that you’ve spent a lot of time answering those questions for yourself, and that you only came to them after you were very sure of the answers.
“But they always seemed so nice/I never saw them do anything to you”
Emotional abuse is often covert and easier to hide than physical abuse is, including because it can involve someone not doing things rather than actively doing things. Things like withholding love and affection, stonewalling, selectively ignoring a partner, and even being kinder to others than to their partner are all things it can be hard for others to see or recognize as abuse, especially if the abusive person doesn’t do those things in front of others, as they often won’t. Same goes for things like weaponized joking or teasing, dismissing or minimizing feelings, or shifting blame.
People who abuse other people also often learn how to hide their abuse in plain sight. Gaslighting is often a big part of emotional abuse, and pretending like everything is fine when it isn’t is not only abuse in and of itself, it also helps hide the abuse from others. Many people — and especially people in something abusive — feel intense pressure to perform relationships as being okay, or being okay in them, when they are not. Abusive partners, in particular, often engage in abuse if and when the person or people they are abusing don’t perform or don’t do so convincingly: covering for abusive people is often part and parcel of any kind of abusive relationship.
With a response like this, we want to focus on the fact that someone being nice to someone else doesn’t mean they didn’t abuse us, nor does them never seeing anything the recognized as abuse mean it didn’t happen. Abusive people aren’t usually abusive to everyone, they tend to be selective, often choosing people (and usually unconsciously) who they can get and keep the most power over the most easily and reliably.
You can also give someone like this some examples of how this person treated you that they didn’t see, and potentially include any times where they did, in fact, see this person being abusive you to you, they just didn’t recognize it as abuse.
“They have always been wonderful to me/but I like them so much/I don’t want to stop having them in my life”
People who have had any kind of relationship with a person who abused you are going to have their own feelings about that person and their relationship with them. They also will usually need to make some choices of their own about that person at some point. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. What’s not okay is for someone to choose you as the person to voice or process those feelings with. You’re not the right person for this, at all. Instead, they can talk to a friend or a partner about it, to a co-worker, another kind of community member, or a therapist. You’re who needs to be centered in a discussion where you are disclosing abuse, not them.
You can say something like: “I’m sorry this is hard for you, but I’m not the right person to say that to or bring this up with. I’m the person this has directly happened to, and I need to be centered here instead of you.” You can also ask them not to glorify someone or their relationship with someone who you have just told them has harmed or is harming you, because doing that is hurtful and suggests, whether they mean it to or not, they either don’t care about abuse, don’t think abuse is abuse, or don’t believe you. You can also ask for any boundaries you want or need moving forward should they choose to stay in relationship with that person.
Relatedly: “I’m really upset about this.”
Again, they get to have their own feelings. But unless this is a statement coming from empathy for you, and they want to engage with that upset by being upset with you in a way that feels okay to you, this is another thing where you’re not the right person to bring this to, and you can let them know that. You can ask them to talk with someone else — a therapist, a friend, their own partner — to share those kinds of things with. You can also ask them to ask you if and when they want to share their own feelings, and to understand that you might say no.
“Can’t you work this out together?”
You may need to explain to someone who says something like this that unless more than one person in a relationship is themselves abusive, being abusive isn’t something the person abusing and the person being abused can — or should even try to — solve together. It’s for the person being abused to get safe, start to heal from, and to begin a life without abuse, and for the person doing the abusing, should they choose, to stop and learn healthy ways of behaving instead (which is sadly rare).
Couples therapy, which someone like this may ask you about, is not something generally ever recommended for people in an abusive relationship. In fact, as therapists who work with or are informed about people who engage in abuse will generally tell you, abusive people who earnestly want to change will be extra challenged by trying to change in a relationship where they have already been abusing someone: once an abusive dynamic has been established, it’s really really hard to change it, and that also keeps an abused person in it still in danger. It’s not uncommon for people who want to change to be told by helping professionals to leave the relationship they are in, or take a break, and do that work outside of that relationship.
The idea abuse is something for a person being abused to try and fix is often part of abuse-enabling beliefs, like the belief that if the person being abused just acted differently, the abuse would stop. While abuse can’t happen without both a person who is engaging in abuse and a person they are abusing, abuse is always the doing of who is doing the abusing, not those they abuse. The person doing the abusing is who needs to do the work to change their behavior. A person being abused, by all means, can also seek out help, but that help should be to help them feel supported, heal, and do what they can to learn how to get out of and stay out of abusive dynamics.
You can share that the best way to “work it out” when it comes to abuse is for someone in the relationship to identify and name the abuse — which is what you’re doing in trying to tell them about it — and then leave the relationship so that both people involved can be free of abuse and each has the chance to do what they need to to get and stay free of it and do their own work healing and learning new ways to behave and interact, should they choose to heal and change, including anyone doing the abusingexternal link, opens in a new tab.
“I don’t know what to say.”
You can tell someone who isn’t sure what to say that you just want their belief, their care and their support. It might even be that you don’t need them to say anything, and would be happy for them to just give you a hug, hold your hand, sit with you, or volunteer at any point you need to ask for some specific help. Or, maybe you need them to say some specific things you can fill them ion on, things like, “I believe you,” “I’m so sorry this has been done to you,” or “How can I help?” Sometimes people just don’t know what to say because they worry they’ll say the wrong thing and hurt you more: offering up what they can say can really help people like that.
What about people who don’t believe you, or take your partner’s side?
My best advice is to create distance from those people if you can, especially when you’re just starting to tell other people, are planning to leave, leaving, have recently left, or are trying to start healing from abuse. You just don’t need disbelief or someone you can’t trust when it comes to interacting with the person abusing you, especially at a time like this. You need to surround yourself with people who believe you, who won’t do anything that makes you any less safe or that gives the person abusing you more weapons to abuse you with — and that includes a relationship with the person abusing you — and who are able to support you, not undermine you or participate in the abuse from your partner, including unknowingly. Someone like this is showing you they either can’t or won’t do that. It’s absolutely acceptable to tell someone like this that they aren’t safe for you when they’re acting like this, and that until and unless they are able to prioritize your safety and well-being, you need to change, limit or even stop your contact with them.
It’s a lot to have to deal with disclosing abuse and then changing your life to get free of it and heal from it already. Thinking about who else you may want or need to permanently cut out of your life can feel even more overwhelming and sad, so unless that’s something you want to think about or do, you don’t have to. You can always make passive space between yourself and people like this for now — as in, you don’t have to tell them you’re not talking to them, you can just ghost them for the time being — and then circle back to them or thinking about them later on down the road. Some of them may eventually get it and even get better at this without you having to do any emotional labor for them, and others may not, but for right now, you’ll do best leaving them to their own work (or not) while you do what you need to take care of yourself and get safe.
