WHAT IS WORKING TO HELP 

(This content is adapted from a presentation Sharmen has co-presented at a national counselors convention. It is geared toward an audience of counselors, pastors, teachers, leaders, and coaches who come alongside others as people-helpers. For the sake of simplicity, and because Sharmen’s niche audience is women, much of the language here refers to women as the victim and men as the perpetrators. However, we readily acknowledge that both men and women can play either role.)

First of all: NOT COUPLES COUNSELING!  If they are bringing crap to the table, all we have to work with is crap.  Deal with the individual junk so they have substance with which to collaborate.  There must be the individual wherewithal to maintain FREEDOM, RECIPROCITY, AND MUTUALITY to build a marriage relationship that is transparent, connected, authentic and life-giving like God has written on our hearts for it to be.

So IF they insist on couples work, here are some guidelines:

Address the irresponsibility  An abusive person will cry foul when something’s not working for them…. Without ever acknowledging that they poked, and poked, and poked until she exploded.  We have got to get behind the explosion and confront the poking.

The misplaced responsibility is  emotional laziness.  An emotionally abusive person puts the full weight of responsibility on the other person to not only name what’s wrong, but to come up with the solutions, and those solutions better not mean anything he has to change.

So the irresponsibility looks both like not owning their own bad behavior, and not putting anything thought into how to eradicate it.  Call it out for what it is.  Change will not happen until the doer feels their own pain and owns their own steps.

Address the entitlement:  He does what he does because he wants what he wants, and that does not include honoring her as a separate person.  She does NOT have to stay in the marriage.  She does NOT have to give in to his demands.  He is not entitled to her listening ear when he is raging at her and bullying her. She Does NOT have to explain herself or prove her worth or prove the depth of abuse.  She DOES have her own right and responsibility to show up as her own person. Unalienable, God given right!  Give her a voice and a choice! God cares very much how his daughters are treated!

Don’t be afraid of a separation!  This marriage is already on a divorce track.  A separation will not make that more likely, and may be the one thing that gives it a fighting chance to survive.  It will make necessary room to clear their heads, mark the end of the old and the beginning of the new, define the transition and make a workable plan for the future.

Address the real results of real behavior. Not the intention. Or the motives.  When you stomp on someone’s toe every time you see them, they are not going to allow you to see them. When you lie to someone you break the relationship and they learn you are not reliable.   When you dismiss her, she knows you cannot be counted upon to hear her or protect her. When you’re a jerk, no one wants to be around that.  When you cheat, you ruin your own reputation. There are very real consequences to every action.  We reap what we sow, and this is not a forgiveness issue.  It is a repentance issue. 

Trust doesn’t make someone trustworthy.  Forgiveness does not make the abuse stop.

Repentance is about going and doing differently.  Destructive behavior will have to be dealt with, not simply excused away.

Address the Trauma of this relationship.  Trauma work is a vital part of individual work, and I’ll touch on that in just a minute… but in the context of this relationship, it is important to connect the dots to how our desperation for safety and security is being playing out in the triggers, the control cycles, and the self-destructive-self-protection.

Address the consequences of sin.  Where there is sin, there is death. Death of desire, of feelings of love, of hope, of motivation, of faith. What has become dead is NOT resurrected just because there is an apology, even IF there is very real repentance. God does not automatically remove consequences. They are still a very real part of what must be worked through, and if the work they’re doing is solely to alleviate the consequences, they’ve missed the point.  Ultimately, the work is to be changed by God, no matter what consequences still have to be navigated, including the potential that the marriage cannot be restored.  If marriage were the point, there would be marriage in heaven.  There isn’t, according to scripture.  God is the point and he wants your surrendered heart.

Address the spiritual warfare element.  Marriage issues aren’t really marriage issues!  They are symptoms of root individual issues being played out in the context of a relationship.  This is about each person being faced with a choice of surrendering to God vs. doing what is right in your own eyes. And any movement toward surrender will be actively, fiercely opposed by a very real enemy. Satan seeks desperately to make sure we are all distracted, disabled, defeated and deceived.  This is a war for our souls!

Tap into Resilience

God always leads toward light and life and freedom, not toward death and oppression.

What matters for all of us, including those in this marriage, is how we show up, making the most of what God gave us to care for, steward, and manage, with deference to Him.  This isn’t just about making a happy little life together! Eternity hangs in the balance. And marriage is a gift that allows you to not have to walk that out alone.

What to Watch For.  The nuances of language are powerful!  How they use words is more telling than what they’re telling you about.  If you listen, you can tell exactly who is powering over who.

One is trying to understand.  She’s seeking insight, and looking for a collaborative effort to stop the harm and to reconnect.  She’ll often use very apologetic sounding language, as if she is a burden to the conversation. They’ll stumble over their words and apologize for not knowing how to say what they mean.  It’s almost as if she’s asking permission to show up, or seeking forgiveness for having a different opinion or perspective.  They apologize for “hurting” their spouse by talking about what has happened, even when it is real, observable behavior, as if talking about it is what made it harmful.  You can tell this person is not normally given the space to speak her own mind.

The controlling partner is telling you how it is with no room for anything other than his perspective. They use coercive language.  They demand agreement and get offended easily when they don’t get it. Any sharing of her heart or request for change is taken personally as an assault on his character. They are looking only for the other to change – for example, if she would just forgive me, we could move on. Or, if she would quit holding me to her unrealistic expectations, we could get along fine.  Or, she’s just hypersensitive.  It doesn’t matter what I do it will never be good enough for her.  You will hear that the controlling spouse’s goal is to rectify the current crisis in some way – to just get back to “normal,” so he doesn’t have to keep sleeping on the couch, they can stop wasting time with counseling, or so the divorce will be dropped.

You will hear in her use of language that her goal is exactly the opposite of his: She is seeking to use the current crisis to change the status quo because she is not interested in getting back to his “normal.”  She is asking for a total change in direction.

I also watch to see how he responds to what SHE says SHE needs for healing. He doesn’t get to tell her what she needs for healing.  There will not be healing or reconciliation if he continues to power over her perspective, thoughts, desires, and requests. If she says she needs space, or no contact, for example, and he decides she needs a dozen red roses and an incredible apology letter, what do you think is probably going to happen with those flowers and that card?  They become one more example of him deciding he knows better than her.

This is the framework I use when assessing a couple::

• What is happening?
• What needs to happen to collaborate, resolve, and reconnect?
• What needs to happen in the future to stay connected?

It’s not about trying to figure out who’s right or wrong, whose version of events is correct, making one see it like the other, or fixing it today in this hour.  The journey is about collaboration that brings connection.  Listen instead to what they’re saying they have left to work with and help them take what they’ve got and make it work together for them to walk this life together.

They can learn to fight for connection rather than self-destruct!  What are they authentically bringing to the table?  If her thoughts, ideas, needs or influence is silenced, he will get the very thing God said was not good: To be alone.

FOR INDIVIDUAL HEALING:

If an individual has been systematically silenced, given little to no room to speak about concerns, hopes, and opinions, they will be hypervigilant to ANY implication about what they’ve done/have not done to contribute to or maintain the abuse. Plus, they did not come to counseling because THE SPOUSE was unhappy with the status quo. (They might have come to counseling based upon ire that the status quo has been upset…)   Don’t ask questions about what her part has been, or what she’s doing to “fix” it, or how she could have been different.  She is exhausted trying to fix what he broke.  Her healing is going to require first identifying where she’s lost her sense of personhood, beginning with her ability to speak for herself.

Process the Trauma  This is true for both parties!  We do not live in the world we were created for, and no one gets through life unscathed.  The lessons learned and lies embraced through the trauma are the driving factors to disconnection.  Both will need to process what trauma has done to them.  There will be triggers that may take years of work to resolve.  Trauma teaches us to view everything -even the good- as a threat with a string attached.  It makes us keep an external frame of reference with a false belief that we must control the environment to be safe, rather than an internal frame of reference (I have the wisdom and capacity to navigate this environment.)  Being stuck in trauma makes it very difficult to see alternatives or make choices or acknowledge the good.  A victim has been groomed to endure, to see all good things as fleeting or meaningless with a blow following right behind.  You will have to help her see her way through with a lot of grace and patience. Again, this is not a forgiveness issue, it is a repentance issue, which requires addressing the trauma of the behavior that brought death.

Unresolved trauma negatively impacts every aspect of thinking, feeling, and attachment. Your client’s work will need to include validation of their experience and their very normal reactions to a broken, evil world.  Take the time to include room to process trauma and the ensuing stages of grief.

Quietly Detach She will also need to quietly detach from her abusive spouse. By this, I mean to detach emotionally from the lies being spoken over her, from the coercion to think like him, agree with him, or take on his beliefs as hers if they are not.  The most important boundaries any of us can have are those in our own head, and protecting the environment of our own thinking.  She needs room to clear her head of the confusion and the fear, and permission to think for herself!  She’ll need to untangle the scripts she’s learned to live by, and give herself permission to disengage from destructive interactions with good boundaries.  Part of detaching includes no longer being in his head, thinking for him, managing his managing his anger, or rescuing him from his own destructive behavior.

This includes letting him own his own healing process as well. As long as she is driving his bus, he doesn’t have to do anything.  We want him to do his own work to come out of hiding.

This does not mean they have to separate or divorce!  I’m talking in terms of emotional space – which might mean separation or divorce if they are totally unable to build safety into their current environment.

Your client may or may not be able to get out of the abusive relationship but can certainly take steps to get away from the abuse and put protective elements into place whether she stays or goes.  The priority for healing is to help her find a place of safety in which she can begin to clear her head and take a better inventory of what she’s got to work with.

Find her own footing She is not “the relationship” and she is not simply an extension of her spouse.  She is an individual, bringing herself to the relational table.  Help her to establish a foundation of truth, steadfastness, purpose and mission that is hers to own and walk out.

The biggest hurdle will be overcoming her sense of not even being worth the effort or that she is dishonoring God by speaking up for herself.

As she is learning to seek truth and pursue it, she will also need to be very discerning about what her own church and friends and family are saying to her as well.  They may be well-meaning but steeped in complacency and toxic theology which defies the heart of God and enables the disordered relationship.

She will also need to give herself permission to guard her own heart (as the wellspring of life!).  And this includes guarding her heart from her own anger, which is sure to arise once she becomes aware of the injustice she has experienced.  Anger is not a bad thing!  It is a part of the grief process, as well as recognition of the injustices she’s been dealt.  But, instead of letting the anger push her to become even, in which she harms herself by becoming like him, I teach women to use that energy instead to motivate them to stand firm against sin and fear and stay true to the healing process God is calling them to.

Depending on the complexity of the issues involved, any number of therapeutic approaches can effectively help, but the ultimate goal is to get under the façade and self-protection to find the authentic self and build authentic connection.  Recovery, on both sides of the street, requires coming out of hiding and bringing oneself to the table.

No one is a pre-programmed robot with no ability to choose their next steps.  At any given moment, no matter what our life-long habits have been, we can choose to do something differently.  Our job is to help them see the choices that will create a context for a healthy relationship, keeping in mind that the nature of free will – and love- is that it is up to each person to choose.  God does not take away free will by changing people who themselves are not asking for it.  He does not change those who are willfully, freely choosing to defy him.  He never coerces, manipulates, forces, or demeans in order to get someone to be in a relationship with him. Because love requires free choice.  As does surrender! Apply these concepts to create a context in which changing becomes a response to an invitation to link arms and live out a healthy relationship they love being a part of.

An abuse victim does not come to counseling in the same state of mind as someone simply having trouble communicating, holding to boundaries, dealing with stress or depression or loss. There is a whole layer of devaluing, trauma, biochemistry, and brokenness that must be considered. If you don’t take into consideration the trauma of abuse, you will more than likely be heaping more harm onto the victim.

Someone used to powering-over to get his way does not come to counseling in a state of mind that he needs to change anything about himself. He is there for the counselor to fix the relationship, fix his wife, fix anything but him. And while he may appear to agree to make changes, they will be short-lived unless he sees great benefit to himself that doesn’t require sacrifice of his power and control.

Our job as coaches and counselors is to dig beneath the presenting issues and create the context for our clients to figure out how to take what they have and use it to build a great connection and a great marriage that does not feel like an institution.

As a shepherd of God’s people, no matter what your capacity, victims of abuse need your voice to help them find their voice, and to stand in the gap for their hearts as they fight against being consumed by this brokenness. We are fighting a battle in God’s story of redemption.  Protect the wounded in a way that makes his love evident.

Our prayer for you as you go from here to be a conduit of His ministry to their hearts is this: May you go in the strength of the Power of the Holy Spirit within you, to discern truth and to bring comfort and healing.