Responding to Someone Experiencing IPV
Responding to Someone Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence
3:30How to Respond to Survivors
Responding to Someone Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence
Responding to someone who is experiencing intimate partner violence can seem overwhelming, and it's normal to want to get it right when helping others. Remember that there isn't one "correct" way to handle every situation.
Practice Responding to Different Situations
Click on the helpful messages below each scenario to learn why they work and what to avoid saying.
A friend tells you their partner has been hurting them
Your friend says: "I need to tell you something... my partner has been really controlling lately and last night things got physical."
Which responses would be helpful? Click to find out:
A client seems hesitant but mentions relationship concerns
The person says: "Things at home have been... tense. I don't really know if I should talk about it."
Which responses would be helpful? Click to find out:
Someone confides they're in an abusive relationship but says they're not ready to leave
They say: "I know it's bad, but I'm not ready to leave yet. I still love them and I think they can change."
Which responses would be helpful? Click to find out:
Key Principles for Responding:
- Listen non-judgmentally - Your role is to support, not to judge or fix
- Believe them - Validation builds trust and counters isolation
- Honor their autonomy - Support their decisions, don't make decisions for them
- Acknowledge complexity - There's rarely one "right" answer
- Know your resources - Be ready to connect them to specialized help
Community Accountability Model
Responding as a Community
Intimate partner violence is a socially supported behavior, learned through observation, experience, and reinforcement. People who cause harm learn these behaviors through our culture, communities, schools, family, personal experience, and peer groups.
The community-accountability model of male violence against women illustrates the different systems that can support or discourage violence against women. It shows that community-based solutions are needed to address intimate partner violence.
The Men Stopping Violence Community-Accountability Model
This model depicts five levels of community influence. Click each level to learn more about how communities shape behaviors and how change ripples throughout the ecosystem.
How the Model Works
The five levels of community are depicted as nested circles. The arrows illustrate how each level influences and interacts with the others—going both directions from the individual to progressively larger communities, and from the global community back to the individual.
This demonstrates:
- This ecosystem works together
- Any changes to one level, or the messages reinforced in each level, will naturally impact the others
- Impacting messaging at ANY level can work to prevent intimate partner violence by disrupting existing reinforced messaging
- By changing the mindset, behaviors, and beliefs of individuals and even primary and micro-communities, those changes ripple throughout the ecosystem
Taking Action and Knowing Resources
Challenging Unhealthy Assumptions
This model shows that individuals are shaped by what they see and experience in their community and our society at large. It looks at the contributions society makes to individual development and the way it influences their treatment of others.
Learning about violence against women and its historical and cultural context invites individuals to shift the way they view the world and their place in it.
People are taught that the use of coercion, dominance, and control in relationships with women reflects their internalization of social norms communicated through their day-to-day interactions within primary communities, micro-communities, and macro-communities. They are challenged to accept responsibility for making choices that prevent destructive behaviors.
The Role of Media and Culture
The role mainstream media plays in the reinforcement of historical and cultural contexts is a clear example. The way TV shows, movies, and news outlets discuss and portray violence against women can have an impact on how individuals view the issue.
The media can also influence our ideas on how men and women should act, or "gendered stereotypes," instead of valuing people as whole human beings.
By examining the many ways society reinforces sexism and the use of violence against women, we can identify actions that might be taken on personal, cultural, and institutional levels to end the tolerance of abuse. As a community, we can nurture a society where violence against women is unacceptable.
Know Your Resources
It is crucial to have resources ready when survivors disclose to you. Being prepared helps you provide immediate, practical support.
Conclusion
Ultimately, understanding how to recognize intimate partner violence and intimate partner sexual violence will prepare you to support individuals who choose to disclose their circumstances to you.
By understanding:
- The types of abuse
- How power and control are used to perpetuate abuse
- How intimate partner violence intersects with sexual violence
- Why survivors stay and how to support their safety
- How to respond with trauma-informed care
- How community accountability creates systemic change
You can be a better ally and resource for survivors who reach out to you.
Successfully completing this course does not make you an intimate partner violence service expert, but it prepares you to have informed, supportive, and educated interactions with survivors you may encounter.
To be a successful ally:
- Collect resources and information that you can share
- Challenge harmful attitudes in your communities
- Support survivor autonomy and decision-making
- Continue learning and growing in your understanding
We each have a role to play in ending intimate partner violence and by working together, we hope to achieve that goal.
Quiz
Question 1 of 3
Trauma-Informed Response
What is the MOST important thing you can do when responding to someone experiencing intimate partner violence?