If someone says domestic abuse to you what do you think of?
Most people will go to sexual abuse or physical abuse, it’s also harassment and stalking, financial abuse and digital abuse.
Financial abuse maybe needs some explaining if you’ve never suffered from it. When you get paid it goes into the joint bank account, you have no control over this account, all the money is managed by the abuser and if you are lucky you get a tiny allowance, you’ll do all the shopping together so they can see what’s being bought and they will pay for it, this enables them to keep you close because you have no money to do anything else. You can’t save to leave because you have no money to save they have control over ALL of it!
Digital abuse – again if you’ve never suffered from it you might not understand it. You might be allowed social media accounts but they also have access to all of them, they monitor every message you send and receive, they can see every picture you like or make a comment on so they get you to the point where you might scroll but you don’t do anything just in case you click like on the wrong thing and get punished for it. They will also have access to your phone, your tablet, your laptop and they will check them to make sure you aren’t doing anything they don’t approve of.
It’s worth understanding what these look like so you might be able to recognise them if a friend is being abused – it’s possible they have no way of telling you because of the digital abuse, and often times they won’t be seeing you because the abuse isolates them, so how can they ask you for help?
When people say someone in an abusive relationship should just leave, yes they should and if they could they would, but it’s one of the hardest things they will ever have to do.
At Global Empowerment Movement we are working hard with survivors of abuse and also arming them with the tools so that they don’t get themselves into another abusive relationship – something that sadly happens way too often.
We are running the second of our FREE workshops on Sunday – An Introduction To Dare to Soar. The link is in our bio.
#abuse#abusecare#16daysofactivism#noexcuses#healthyrelationships