Domestic Violence: Turning Points

Turning points are events and circumstances which have helped women experiencing domestic violence  to either overcome the barriers to help-seeking or disclosure and/ or begin to view their relationship differently. Reaching the point of "I'm not going to take this any more" is usually a gradual process that occurs over time (often years) and may involve leaving the relationship and returning to it a number of times, as well as navigating through a number of turning points. I have walked this journey with many women over many years, and have found the concept of turning points to be very useful in working respectfully with these women. It is really important that we don't become another person controlling their lives.

Types of turning points

In the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse Issues Paper 4 Working with women: exploring individual and group work approaches Dr Lesley Laing discusses a number of qualitative studies and identifies the following as turning points:

• Fears for their own physical safety – a point where the physical risks of staying began to outweigh the risks of leaving.
• Growing concerns for their children’s safety and well-being, particularly if the children are frightened or upset or began to exhibit behavioural problems.
• Other family members becoming involved in the violence and being subjected to threats from the perpetrator.
• Loss of hope about change – that there was little hope that they or anyone else could do anything about their partner’s abusive behaviour and, more importantly, that they were not responsible for the behaviour.
• Increased self-esteem and confidence through study and work – helping them to realise their own sense of worth and capabilities and that their situation was neither normal nor acceptable.
• A series of losses – loss of love, loss of positive traits in the partner, loss of the possibility of change, loss of self, loss of security and loss of meaning in coping.
• No longer incorporating violence as part of a system of meaning relevant to them.

A copy of the full paper can be found here:

http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Issues_paper_4.pdf

A useful tool

This card from the Everyday Goddess set with paintings by Katharina Rapp provides the perfect metaphor for discussion about turning points.  The card set is produced by Innovative Resources and was available from:

www.innovativeresources.org (although it is no longer listed in their catalogue, it may be worth enquiring).

I have used it to acknowledge that my client may still love the perpetrator (the heart shape of the fence), to explain that there is a gap where she can leave any time she chooses, but that she is held inside the fence by the things that make up the palings. We then talk about how palings are removed from the fence by turning points – the first one often being that the relationship was not all she had hoped it would be, and the final one being “I don’t deserve to live like this anymore and I'm not going to take this anymore”.  Then we explore for how many palings she thinks she has removed from the fence and the nature of the palings that remain. Sometimes I can offer a different perspective for her to consider on some of the remaining palings, whilst still respecting that this is her journey. Most women understand that when nearly all the palings have been removed there is nothing to keep them within the fence.