What is your reaction to the vignette in chapter 10 about Kate and Bill? Intimate partner violence (IPV) may feel confusing and anxiety provoking. Have you ever worked with a client who ha

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hitting walls, hitting a partner, and sexual coercion are but a few examples of these terrorizing acts. IPV is both complex and terrifying. Power, control, insecurities, impulse control, and failure to manage emotions and stress are core features of IPV (Brown, McGriff, & Speedlin, 2018). In these cases, a person (or people) imposes dominance over a partner, child, or other family member and creates chaos and mayhem. This form of violence is not only abusive in a literal sense, but it also cuts at the fundamental layer of the recipient’s sense of being. It can destroy a person’s sense of trust and threaten a person’s ability to sustain trust in others. After all, “If someone who is supposed to love me can act this way, what can I expect from others who don’t?” People who experience IPV not only suffer the injuries of the abuse but they also suffer a profound sense of betrayal.

Kate, a 40-year-old fashion model, was married to a man who alternated be- tween seeming adoration and emotional abuse and who ultimately resorted to physical violence. Her once loving husband, Bill, ran the gamut from proclaiming his love to pulling her hair and dragging her across the floor, calling her deplor- able names as he did so. Bill punched holes in walls, screamed profanities at Kate, and would then recoil in despair, begging Kate not to leave him. Bill sought an emergency appointment for couples counseling during Christmas week, asking the counselor to please see them as he was at risk of losing the most amazing woman he ever met. Kate and Bill are in the throes of IPV.

IPV is described by the World Health Organization (2010) as “behavior within an in- timate relationship that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors” (p. 11). Although both men and women experience IPV in their relationships, women are subjected to IPV at disproportionately higher rates than men. They are also at a higher risk for sustaining injury and even death (Black et al., 2011). In addition, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals experience proportionately greater instances of IPV than their dominant heterosexual counterparts (Walters, Chen, & Breidig, 2013). Psychological or physical aggression inflicted by an intimate partner can create a wound so profound it leaves the receiving partner in shock, bewildered, and sometimes immobilized, distort- ing a person’s perception of worth, sense of control, and logistical options.

IPV also injures a person’s sense of mattering in the world and place of belong- ing at home and in larger contexts. “You bring this out in me” are fighting words in IPV, designed to shift responsibility for the traumatizing behaviors to the partner. Spouses blamed for “making me act this way” may not always believe this to be true, but they often question themselves. They may also carry some of the societal fallout that comes when others pass judgment on how they should manage the situation. Anyone who has been part of an IPV relationship knows just how dif- ficult it is to sort through these myriad feelings.

Counselors working with IPV recognize the crises these experiences bring and the often traumatic consequences to such violations. The family systems theory tradition of couples counseling calls for counselors to consider the circular causality in conflicted situations, in which one aspect of the system affects the other (Barnwell & Stone, 2016). This concept has been criticized, and we believe justly so, for its potential to blame the victim or hold the victim responsible for the abuse along with the perpetrator. The family systems concepts of first- and second-order change, however, may be helpful in working with couples who experience IPV. In the case of Kate and Bill, described earlier, first-order change would involve Bill learning new and nonviolent ways to

Duffey, T., & Haberstroh, S. (Eds.). (2020). Introduction to crisis and trauma counseling. American Counseling Association. Created from amridge on 2024-02-28 04:09:31.

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communicate with Kate but continuing to believe he holds the power in the relation- ship and finding other ways to make her stay. Changes of this sort do not ultimately support lasting change. Second-order change, however, would require that Bill and Kate develop a relationship founded on mutual respect and shared decision making, and RCT provides a pathway for creating this type of change.

Feminist theories and RCT conceptualize IPV dynamics by considering who holds the most power in the relationship. They also consider how social and cultural contexts influence the couple dynamics and how these contexts can be introduced and navigated to empower the relationship, support the person with less power, and bring awareness to both parties (Hurless & Cottone, 2018). These models also consider the relational histories (images) of the couple and how these may influence their perceptions of what caring relationships look like (Jordan, 2018). In addition, counselors use their position to advocate for each person’s safety while navigating the disconnections and relational expectations or images each carries (Brown et al., 2018). Counselors attend to building connection while helping both individuals and the couple engage in the challenging work of mutual understanding and eliminat- ing IPV behaviors. Counselors are clear in articulating that abuse is never accept- able, and they clearly identify the accountability factors that must be in place for IPV to cease and for couples to move toward shared honor and respect.

In working with couples like Kate and Bill, relationally engaged counselors would consider variables such as the context of the situation, identifying who holds the power in the relationship and in the larger culture, how power is negotiated, a shift from victim blaming to advocacy, and societal variables (Brown et al., 2018). They recognize a person’s right to be free of injury within a relationship and use a direct yet relational frame for conceptualizing abuse. Relationally competent counselors use the power of the relationship to support injured clients while offering a valuable connection to the perpetrating partner. Although recognizing that multiple contexts exist in a dynamic, and there are times when mutual aggression and abuse exist, these counselors do not engage in the traditional “every person plays a role in this” response that family theory can promote. Rather, they use the principles of advocacy and social justice as baselines for their work (Maghsoudi, 2019).

There are various methods for providing counseling to couples experiencing IPV. Individual counseling is the historically preferred method of treatment be- cause of the perceived risk of increased violence following conjoint counseling and concerns about victim shaming (Rowe, Doss, Hsueh, Libet, & Mitchell, 2011). Others see conjoint counseling as beneficial for IPV because, together, the couple and counselor can navigate the often turbulent and volatile terrain characteristic of domestic violence (Antunes-Alves & Stefano, 2014; Hurless & Cottone, 2018). IPV advocates to educate the public on domestic safety and to research ways to eradicate IPV (Brown et al., 2016). Counselors support clients in developing emo- tional regulation skills, effective communication patterns, and compassion for self and others, recognizing that sociopolitical, environmental, fiscal, and entrenched patterns contribute to the preponderance of assaults committed every day.

Infidelity

Few experiences can pierce a person’s soul more than learning that one’s spouse is having an affair. To imagine that one’s partner is intimately involved with another

Duffey, T., & Haberstroh, S. (Eds.). (2020). Introduction to crisis and trauma counseling. American Counseling Association. Created from amridge on 2024-02-28 04:09:31.

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