Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 3 Episode 7: Understanding and Validating Survivors' Acts of Resistance

• Ruth Stearns Mandel & David Mandel • Season 3 • Episode 7

Share episode

Too often, conversations about domestic violence define survivors as “passive trauma survivors” with the emphasis on the negative mental health and addiction consequences of the perpetrators’ patterns of behavior. And while these impacts are real, they only tell part of the story.  

On a daily basis, survivors engage in small and large acts of resistance to coercive control and domestic violence. Based on their knowledge of the perpetrator, their assessment of the system, and available support, survivors engage in targeted strategic actions that are important to their own safety and the safety and well-being of their children. Not just passive recipients of abuse, survivors actively use a variety of behaviors to carve out physical and emotional “safe zones”—a term coined by Dr. Evan Stark, author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. These acts of resistance can include:

  • Lying the the perpetrator
  • Defending their children from abuse
  • Fighting back physically
  • Standing up for what they and their children need
  • Ways to defy the perpetrators’ rules
  • Places in the survivor’s mind where she fantasizes about freedom or retreats to when he is abusing her

In this episode, Ruth and David discuss:

  • How these acts of resistance are often decontextualized from the perpetrators’ pattern 
  • How survivors’ acts of resistance, particularly survivors from Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities, are often criminalized 
  • The importance of professionals recognizing these acts of resistance as part of the process of partnering with survivors and avoiding “failure to protect” practice 

David and Ruth also showcase the audio from a video called “Warrior Women,” produced by Orana House, a refuge in Western Australia, that showcases survivors’ acts of resistance. Watch the video.

Send us a text

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

SPEAKER_04:

Back?

SPEAKER_01:

And we're back. You are joining us for a Melbourne, Australia episode of Partner with a Survivor.

SPEAKER_04:

You are.

SPEAKER_01:

We're here as part of our Asia Pacific swing here, and uh our uh last two episodes were recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And here we are, and we're gonna talk today about acts of resistance. That's right. Who are you?

SPEAKER_04:

Um who am I? Who are you? This is an existential question.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm sorry, who are you? Let's introduce ourselves to people who are new to the podcast.

SPEAKER_04:

So my name is Ruth Stearns Mandel, and I am the eLearning Communications and Strategic Relationship Manager for the Safe and Together Institute. I'm also your partner.

SPEAKER_01:

Hence the partner with the survivor part of partner with Survivor.

SPEAKER_04:

That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I am David Mandel, Executive Director of the Safe and Together Institute, and um we do this podcast regularly, though a little more regularly sometimes.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm just trying to get back to regular.

SPEAKER_01:

And this is a podcast about all things domestic violence related. And if you haven't listened in, we do interviews, we do different topics, we do conversations between Ruth and myself.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

And we really try to illuminate what we think of as domestic violence informed practice and a pivot to the perpetrator, and then also partnering with survivors.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. And this podcast is is used widely with uh professionals across many sectors. Uh Safe and Together Institute is a systems change organization which creates a common language and focus on keeping children safe and together with their protective parent, partnering with survivors in order to hold the non, the violent parent accountable as a parent for their violence. So that's what our common goals and values are. So because we can all focus on that um and we can all agree upon that, so many people, so many good people across many different sectors are working to bring that reality about. And I gotta say, I know I'm really rough on professionals, sometimes intentionally so sometimes cranky survivor comes out so that you get used to hearing the anger of survivors and you learn how to manage that as a professional without hurting us. And I also recognize the amazing work and the difficulty of working in these systems while seeing the impact to families and to kids. And so I just want to say thank you to all of those professionals out there who are working hard in these spaces to bring this reality into being.

SPEAKER_01:

So you want people to know that you're more than just a cranky survivor.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm much more than a cranky survivor.

SPEAKER_01:

And and I've watched you this week as we we've met with people uh from different sectors who we're working with. Just your your deep appreciation for them and their leadership and their work and their their I am at the end of the day a practice person.

SPEAKER_04:

I assisted doctors in doing better practice. I just want people to do effective, efficient, ethical practice.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it. So today's episode is around acts of resistance and and since its inception, um, the safety of the model has been deeply committed not only to partnering, but the underlying assessment and conversations that help us do partnering. And and one of the biggest ones is really recognizing survivors' protective efforts and doing that in a really broad way. And then and the and the backdrop to this is is is in my career, I've watched people really narrow down their assessment of survivors' acts of resistance or protection for their kids to did she go to refuge? Did she call the police? Um, uh, did she go to counseling? Is she leaving the relationship? And and and really just sort of looking and saying, oh, if she's doing that, she's being protective.

SPEAKER_04:

And probably on the flip side of that, if that's the measurement of protection that people are engaging in, I'm suspectful that you saw them demonizing her physical acts of resistance and other self-protective behaviors that have never classically been considered protective, including active resistance to coercive control, which may include physical uh self-defense against that control, um, physical acts of resistance to violence against self-defense, um, and um behaviors which classically have been uh categorized and manipulated easily by perpetrators as us being abusive.

SPEAKER_01:

So when I think about this, you know, you listening to those things that you're talking about, I I also think about, and and we're gonna play a video from from uh some colleagues of ours in Western Australia in a moment that this is a wonderful example of widening out the conversation, is is I think on one hand we have this sort of vilifying or misidentifying or misinterpreting certain behaviors or not acknowledging certain behaviors as protective. And the other side is this this really dominant paradigm of psychology and mental health, which is deeply focused. And again, I'm always saying uh, you know, I'm a mental health practitioner by training and really respect the work that's done in the trauma field deeply, and it's so important, but we have to recognize that that paradigm is very deficit focused and is not designed to list or or talk about acts of resistance, it's it's looking for pathologies, uh harm, uh treatment modalities, ways to support people from he in healing, all those things, all so important. Again, I can't say that too often. And we have to recognize that gap in that field.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I think there's another I think there's another really big piece.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And that is the perpetrator's pattern in and of itself. That part of the perpetrator's pattern of behavior, which is consistent and we can identify across cultures very easily, is that they manipulate and decontextualize survivors' acts of resistance to them. And because professionals are so uh primed for that, they often fall for that.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. It's it's it it that mental health paradigm or that substance misuse paradigm um is uh makes professionals vulnerable. You know, it's it's a tool. I mean, again, it's a tool that we have to appreciate, use, but really understand that that orientation, and we'll talk more about it, is is really can prime professionals to be manipulated by perpetrators. So let's we so we got um uh a link, we got an email the other day from a colleague in Western Australia from Orana House.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, I was so excited. I kind of I kind of did a lot of like jumping up and down and lots of Ruthy excitement. Um and the way that this was described to us was that um they wanted to have a video which educated their communities around them about acts of resistance to domestic violence and to coercive control so that they could speak directly to survivor's strengths. So this is this is really an attempt to to talk about survivor strengths and educate communities about acts of resistance. Um most people lack the um contextual understanding of domestic violence and coercive control. Uh and so the need for us to educate our communities around us about the right of a survivor to resist that is really important to our safety, our long-term understanding of domestic violence and who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're gonna have a link on the um in the show notes to this, but but right now we're just gonna it's a video, we're gonna play the audio. And and a shout out to Regina Collier who sent this to us.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, thank you, Regina.

SPEAKER_01:

And thank you for you know kind of sharing this with us and and saying how you felt like this aligned with Safe and Together and our focus.

SPEAKER_04:

And I really love it when people send us these things. You know, we're all kind of struggling along in in these siloed uh sectors, and we need we need to share information about the resources we've made. So thank you and send these things along to us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's it's Warrior Women is what the video is called, and it was written and developed by Rana House Refuge Staff and Survivors of Domestic Violence, and it was produced um uh in conjunction with Sunburnton films. So listen in.

SPEAKER_00:

There are silent female warriors amongst us. One in three. They are many beating a quiet, lonely drum. Society sees them as weak, as accepting, as responsible, as they just don't leave. They are not victims, they are resourceful, resilient, strong women who live each day with domestic violence. She is a warrior waiting to be unleashed. He is a survivor, like no other. She has surveillance skills, watching and monitoring his mood. She is highly skilled in risk management, fighting to protect her family. She is a safety partner, preventing his violence and impact. She is powerful to masturbate. So you think she has no dignity? Resistance is dignity. Resistance is trying to stop or prevent his violence. Doing nothing is actually doing something. Her outward self may be timid and vulnerable, but she can switch to her inner warrior in experience with resistance. Do not judge her. Listen up to her. Commend her for her strength, and support her to unleash her inner warrior and switch her life around for good. Say no to domestic violence and support the outright of all warrior women.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I do love it too. That's amazing. So a shout out to the Aurana House uh team and then the survivors who worked on this. This is uh a great piece. And visually, you can't see it. You know, hopefully you'll click through to it um from the show notes. Visually, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's powerful. There's capes involved, you know, the terms of warrior women and and heroes. And so I I would love for us to talk about you know what they name here and some of those acts of resistance. Because I think people really need to hear what that phrase means in the full range of things. And there's there's there's so much in the video here, and and I really appreciate it. I was I was thinking earlier about Evan Stark's uh reference to safety zones, even that survivors find, you know, and they find ways to kind of carve out safety in the midst of or or or relative safety in the midst of abuse and course control. And that sometimes that's just in their in in the way they think inside themselves about who they are or where they go, um, you know, how they imagine a different life, how just they it's just about holding on to yourself in the midst of uh uh um behaviors that are that are that are designed to wipe away your autonomy, your selfness, your your your personhood. Um so the simplest things, you know, can be acts of resistance, like not buying the flavor of ice cream he likes, and then saying, I forgot.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, oh I didn't do that, or or or um lying. I mean I always think about lying because because I think professionals really have an ethos about valuing disclosure, integrity, you know, honesty, and we really equate honesty with engagement, you know, with systems. But but lying is such an act of resistance.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, yeah, if you know that you're gonna be abused no matter what for your choices, um you have to protect yourself um from that violence. You know, it's interesting that that that people will use such behaviors like lying, which we, you know, find unacceptable socially. We want people to disclose what's real and what's true, um, against a victim who lies to preserve their physical, emotional, psychological safety against a person who's willing to cross their boundaries and control them and remove their liberties or physically violate them. And we'll use that against them rather than contextualizing it to how creative survivors have to be in order to protect themselves, how the perpetrators creating the circumstance where the person feels that they have to protect themselves in in those extreme ways because the perpetrator is unable to control their behaviors.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, I'm I'm thinking about you know acts of resistance also being shaped by um systems response or failures of response or failures to engage in sort of how survivors are not only assessing the perpetrator's pattern, and that's what we talk about um survivors being experts in the perpetrator's pattern and and and us needing, if we want to be in alignment with them, to do our best to understand the perpetrator's pattern. But also really them surveying the the environment, whether it's family or friends, whether it's it's employment, whether it's it's the police or courts, and and developing their strategies in relationship to to all those things.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Um you know, and and I think it really is we we've started with at the at the safety of the institute with our mapping tool, asking people to map perpetrators, patterns, and manipulation of systems, because my acts of resistance of a survivor are gonna be shaped by do I think they're gonna believe me or believe him? Do I think he's gotten in first with his narrative and how am I gonna respond? And so do I just shut up because every time I say something, it's gonna be twisted against me.

SPEAKER_04:

I really want to get down to some particulars because acts of resistance can look bad.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Acts of resistance aren't pretty, right? And that's the number one thing that practitioners really need to get. Right. You're gonna have judgment.

SPEAKER_01:

Which is what the video says. Don't judge her, right?

SPEAKER_04:

And you need to remember that and you need to contextualize those behaviors back to that. So let's talk about some very um common acts of resistance um that are considered uh problematic for people. All right. And I'm gonna I'm gonna go right to the behaviors, and I'm gonna be very explicit about them. This is an adult show.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

We work with populations that have these issues, so everybody needs to be big enough to have these conversations. So let's talk about, for example, uh a child who's cutting themselves. That's an act of resistance. Okay, that's pathologized. There's a lot of judgment attached to it, that this child wants to kill themselves, that they're in danger, that they're psychologically damaged. What is the most fundamental thing that we can control? It is our own bodies. When we have a perpetrator that takes away our ability to control our own bodies, where we live, how our bodies feel, what we can do with our bodies, regaining control by causing ourselves acceptable amounts of pain to ground ourselves is often a strategy of survivors that is misidentified as self-destructive behavior rather than the fact that we're in an untenable position, we're being forced into contact with the perpetrator who's removing our personal liberties and is often crossing our physical boundaries in ways that are violent or sexual or dangerous, and we are reasserting control over our own bodies.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

That is an act of resistance that is often pathologized and used against survivors, and people need to learn to contextualize it and explore it. So I I I have a couple more in my mind. I just want to keep going along.

SPEAKER_01:

Keep going along then.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay. Um, people who cheat on their partner who's abusive to them. That is often used against that victim to blame and shame them for the abuse. That is an act of resistance to an abuser who has taken over your life and is not allowing you to make your own choices to leave them and find a nourishing relationship. And people need to stop using that to blame and shame survivors and need to contextualize it back to the fact that that person is entrapped, that they're experiencing physical and emotional harm all the time, which is a malnourishing behavior. And a fundamental need of humans in relationship is to be safe, touched, loved, and to be able to have nourishment. And that person has a right to seek that nourishment, even though the person is entrapping them and not allowing them to leave. Please stop blaming survivors who are trying to find nourishment and using relationship and sex as an act of resistance because they're not allowed to leave their relationship and they've attempted to many, many, many times. So that's sort of those sort of things where we've actually seen people justify perpetrators' behaviors of violence to their partner because their partner cheated on them. Well, they've been abusing them for years, they broke their vows by abusing them. Let's get clear. All right. So let's talk about some of the more gritty acts of resistance, physical acts of resistance, of violence back towards the perpetrator in order to enact our freedom. These are often also demonized and used and called reactive abuse. Stop using that term. We have a right to self defense. We have a right to defend ourselves physically against somebody who is attacking us violently. We get to grab them by the hair, punch them in the face, kick them in the balls if they are attacking us. We We get to fight back. We get to scratch, we get to bite, we get to scream, we get to call them names. If they are removing our personal liberties, if they are demeaning us constantly, removing our ability to have contact with our friends and family, physically violating us, forcing us into sex, demeaning us and our children, and physically abusing us. Stop decontextualizing our acts of resistance to our perpetrator. It doesn't look pretty.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're you keep using the term decontextualize, and and for practitioners, you know that part of the answer to this, understanding what you're saying, Ruth, what we talk about is you have to keep talking about the perpetrat, do that pivot to the perpetrator, to their behaviors, because that's the way you're going to understand the context for these acts of resistance. It is because on the surface, if you take an incident-based approach or a mutuality kind of approach to this, you can say, oh, they're both violent. And what you're putting in, you know, in a really elegant and and passionate terms, is sort of saying, you know, don't jump to conclusions, don't assume that fighting back or being fighting is a quality of coercive control or or violence or or any way.

SPEAKER_04:

It is statistically real that women, black women, indigenous women, Latin women, Latinx women, fight back. When somebody said to somebody that I was in a relationship with who was abusive to me, you should watch out. She's too Latina. You know what that meant? It meant I fight back. I fight back.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, then you just would stand up for yourself, that you would have your own autonomy on a respect and point of view.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm not gonna just roll over and take it. No. So I I think And that we're criminalized. Women who are more melanated, the more melanated you go, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

I have lots of skin privilege, but the more melanated you go, the more criminalized you get for your verbal and physical acts of resistance to a perpetrator. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, which is just all the parts of structural racism and colonization. I I think that, you know, for for people that we we dove right into the the really important deep end of this, because I think if you get this at the level that you're talking about, or you get it when you think about suicidality as a as a resistance. And I think it so flies in the face of of the um um of the framework that I think is dominant in mental health. And again, this doesn't mean that we're saying ignore somebody who's cutting or ignore somebody who's suicidal at all. Understand why, but have an ability to talk to them in a language that helps them understand. So I'll I'll give you a very immediate example of this. We're working in New Mexico and the United States with um both child protection and and the women's sector to help them use the safety of the model to do better coordination and collaboration. So we're doing this, what we're calling a Kickstarter collaboration pilot and short-term intensive work with them to kind of get them both sectors to use our mapping tool, our survivor strength material, um uh our ally guide, our choose to change toolkit. Just they're very focused on the tools. And and we had uh we're doing these sessions and we had one of the women's sector workers tell a story where she said, I had this um woman come in and sit down for counseling and say, I feel crazy. I think I need a diagnosis. Right. And the the advocate said in the past, she would have just made a referral based on that presentation to a mental health program. And she said, but because of safety together, she did a pivot to the perpetrator and she said, Well, before I do that, can you tell me about your partner's patterns of abuse and control and those kind of things? And and so they talked about that for a while. And at the end of this conversation, um, the survivor said, Oh my god, I'm not crazy. I'm just reacting normally to what to the abuse. And I think we have to work really as professionals to um see the acts of resistance, name the act of resistance, right, validate those acts of resistance as normal, as healthy, as natural, as common, you know.

SPEAKER_04:

Right, but also to contextualize it back to the power dynamic.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh it and this is really important that people need to learn how to look at power dynamics. When you have one partner, right, who has a tremendous amount of financial power and control, who has a tremendous amount of physical advantage over you as a person, uh, let's let's you know make them a little bit more powerful, even give them a security guard. They're wealthy, they have security guards, right? They guard them. If they perpetrate against you and nobody does anything, it sends a clear message that you're in this position that you can't win. You're surrounded. Nobody's gonna believe you. Nobody's gonna believe that they're a bad guy, right? They have a lot of money to cover it over, they have a lot of ability to threaten you, they have a lot of physical ability as well. And so when you engage in acts of resistance against this person, one of the easiest things to do is to decontextualize the power dynamic and say, we're coming from an equal standing, we're from an equal footing. There's there's no difference between you and me. And you engaged in this behavior, it's like a tick box. How many times were you violent? How many times was I violent? How well can I describe your violence? How well can you describe my violence? Right? And so if you forget about who holds power and control, then it's very easy to fall into a place where you're going to blame somebody for their act of physical resistance to that violence. And it's very important for you to remember that those acts of physical resistance don't follow a linear format. Just like how you see kids react later to stressful situations or melt down when they're anticipatory of something coming. Those acts of resistance have to be contextualized even more granularly to that.

SPEAKER_01:

I I think what people may see is, for instance, you know, a survivor who when the when the police show up is yelling and screaming.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, may it may be because in that moment with the cops there, they feel safe enough to yell and scream.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Because they know they're not gonna get hit right then.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, the the the the uh survivor who gets angry in front of the professional, you know, or the survivor who knows with their particular partner that if he's not drinking, they can be in his face about certain things or complain or point out his flaws. Right. Because when he's not drinking, he's not gonna hit her. Because so that that idea of these safety zones are carving out spaces for for for action, you know, wherever you can find them, um, is really important for professionals to understand because that's so commonly where people say, well, she doesn't seem scared of him, she doesn't seem scared of him. And this has been a problem with the context thing that you just talked about, is is uh one of the more ubiquitous tools in the family violence field has been the conflict tactic scales, right? Which is really a series of tick boxes of behaviors, and it's been used to sort of say women are just as violent as men. And and it it it really is about decontextualized behaviors.

SPEAKER_03:

It's just decontextualized behaviors.

SPEAKER_01:

And it and it's that's really important to recognize the limitation of that too much.

SPEAKER_04:

So one of the things is that there needs to arise a real container around the assessment of these patterns of behaviors, and that is making sure that you understand the power and control dynamics, who has control of the money, who has physical power and control, um, who has the patterns of behaviors, of removing personal liberties. Um, because survivors will engage in the removal of personal liberties and what it looks like for their perpetrator because they're trying to keep tabs on them. Because if you have a particularly violent abuser who you know will come home and create chaos and violence, you absolutely want to know when they're gonna be home.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

You wanna know.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

You want to prepare the kids, you want to prepare yourself, you may want to have dinner perfectly on the table, you may need to have everything cleaned up perfectly because if not, you're gonna get abused. You may need to have the children's homework done because those are the laws, the rules, and maybe they've never even been spoken, but they've been they've been uh affirmed by violence towards the children, and you're trying to protect your children from that. So it can look like all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And I think it's it's really, you know, understanding and thinking about strategies, and and part of it for me is, and this was what came through to me years ago as I was listening to survivor stories and talking to them, is that um, you know, we we unfortunately have been burdened with uh in the domestic violence field with the language of learned helplessness, about about trauma, all these things that sort of kind of focus on survivors as passive recipients as of the violence who are impacted in these ways. And again, there's a balancing act because we have to, I don't want to minimize trauma. And it's so important to have a stream of of thinking and conversation, engagement, and validation, which is really about I'm gonna go in looking for your active acts of resistance or strategizing around safety for yourself and your kids, and I'm gonna seek those out. And this is really part of our six steps of partnering, right? And you know, I'm gonna seek those out. I'm gonna assume, I would always tell practitioners, assume she was safety playing for herself and her kids before you ever showed up.

SPEAKER_04:

Do you do you know what I call learned helplessness?

SPEAKER_01:

No.

SPEAKER_04:

We learned that you were not gonna help us.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh-huh. Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Teachers, yeah, professionals, police. We learned you were not gonna help us. And in fact, that calling and engaging you was gonna make our lives much more dangerous.

SPEAKER_01:

And and and that old language of learned helplessness again obscures, covers up, misinterprets all the ways that survivors are actively on a minute-to-minute sometimes basis, strategizing, planning, figuring that out. And and and oftentimes um gender double standards obscures all those efforts because we just think, well, she's the mom she's supposed to do it. But I think about the um the the survivor I worked with years ago who said to me, he's ruined every holiday. There was abuse. You know, I don't know if it was Christmas coming up or Easter coming up or or some other holiday, but she said, This year, I'm gonna do whatever I need to do to placate him to keep him happy, because I want my kids to have memories of their childhood and holidays that are positive. Oh, yeah. And I could feel in her, you know, I could feel in her saying that this iron steel resolve, which is, you know, I can't stop him from being abusive all the time, but I am gonna try to manage the crap out of this situation so that my children have something where where they have positive memories of Christmas as a family. And and you could go in and judge that and say she should leave, she should do this, she should do that. But but if you did that, you'd be like, she's gonna go. But you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss it. It's not okay what he's doing. This is our we we're complex, smart professionals. We have the ability to say to her, it's not okay with what he's doing to you and the kids. And it's so amazing that you have this ability to um strategize, to plan, to figure out. And I hear how committed you are to your kids having positive memories of their childhood, which he's been actively attacking and trying to undermine.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't think that people realize how much of the world gets formed around the abuser. How much how much the daily life of people who are living with these highly reactive, coercive controllers and abusers is shaped by their their reactions and responses to the world and the way that they throw their shit off on other people, really. That's the only way to describe it. Um and and so, you know, to me, the the fact that people haven't been able to see that that response and that reaction is is just a way to try to keep the peace in our homes. Like we're told we're supposed to, it's our responsibility by society. Um, and how really what we're judged by at the end of the day is that we tried to do that at all sometimes, and that we failed, that we couldn't, because that person was so incapable of change. And we're we're held responsible for that.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. That's right, and and I and I think that um it shows up in so many different ways of the work. I I I I tell this story, and uh it's a US-based story about a uh child protection case where a weapon was used and and they lived in a rural area, and the mom retreated with the kids to a safe room in the house, but knew that if she called police, it was likely to be escalating of his behavior. So she calls um uh his family who come and talk him down and get the weapon from him. But the response from professionals was, why didn't she call the police right away? Because the police were eventually called. But because she would have died. That's right. And it would have died. Somebody would have died. So part of this is a is a like like you said a minute ago, a plea for people to remain curious, non-judgmental, recontextualize. These are all the steps that we're asking you to take to really um uh embrace this idea that survivors are always protective, engaging in protective efforts, acts of resistance, even if you don't um understand them automatically, and that they're strategizing and to see them as partners in their own safety and the safety of their kids. I I think about the um uh the case where the he was destroying all the the kids like sports equipment and school supplies, and um and so she started they were living in the house together post-separation because the lawyer said you don't give up the house. Right. And and so she started bringing all those things into her bedroom and nine locking the door and sleeping with them. And and then so of course, then he went to the court and said, There's something wrong with her, she's enmeshed with the children, look at her, she's sleeping with all their things and and and in and an act of resistance and an act of protection. Right. He attempted to to twist it to make it a deficit. And so we have to, you know, as professionals, really be aware that our inability to see those strengths, to see those acts of resistance, they make us more vulnerable to being manipulated by per perpetrators in in their their um their work. So, you know, when we think about what to do differently, and there's so much, we could talk about so many different acts of resistance. Calling the police an act of resistance, not calling the police an act of resistance. Going to see a therapist is an act of resistance, it's not going to see a therapist is an act of resistance. It's it's all about context.

SPEAKER_04:

You have to look at at this family, at this ex this particular circumstance, and do a really good pattern-based behavioral assessment. And, you know, we know that takes more time. We know that takes more energy, we know that takes more exploration and more skills, and at the end of the day, it's what we need, survivors need, is for us to be able to be um intelligent enough to recontextualize the behaviors in the relationship back to the power and control.

SPEAKER_01:

It it um it is something that takes more time and more energy, but what I'll say is that um it's important to remember that it's an intervention in and of itself. I think a lot of times a lot of folks who are in case management positions or not doing direct clinical work or therapeutic work or don't run a program, think, well, the answer is to get them to that program. The answer is to get them to that service. And safe it together is very much about both services when they're appropriate, but also how much work can be done in interventions that are done from the folks who do the case management or set the system objectives. And and so really remember that this conversation where you don't blame a survivor for what the perpetrator is doing, you don't assume that they're ignorant, stupid, unaware, in denial, but you go in and treat them as folks who are actively safety planning and say, I want to learn from you.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and and a shout out to our colleagues at Response Based Practice in in um uh in Canada, you know, where um they really have have really made this an art form, for instance. And I was like kind of Alan Wade and his team, where they really do some tremendous work around acts of resistance, and and listened to Alan talk a number of years ago, you know, he would say, Well, if you can approach somebody who's a victim of violence, not through this mental health lens, not through this, how did that make you feel? That ubiquitous question, how did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_03:

It hurt.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, what's that?

SPEAKER_03:

It hurts.

SPEAKER_01:

It hurt. I was angry. Ouch. But but because that that again takes you by itself, doesn't take you to a behavioral um assessment, which is okay, describe to me what you did after he did that, or how did you response based practice? How did you respond? The the the trick and the key to that is to ask that question in a non-judgmental way, in a curious way. But in doing that, you're gonna find out amazing things. Oh, when he did that, I went to the other room, but I didn't lock the door because I knew if the door was he heard me locking the door, he would break it down, and so and then I turned on a TV show because so he could hear that I was I was in the room and where I was. You can hear that sort of um the the strategy that happens at that micro level based on his pattern of behavior, or I didn't want to leave the house because the kids were there and they were sleeping, I didn't want to leave him alone with the kids. I mean that the level of thought that survivors put into the simplest actions are these acts of protection and resistance.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And and to have that ability to ask those questions. Questions. And then to validate, and I still think about that woman I met in a coffee shop. We were talking about the safety of the model and her journey as a survivor. And she wasn't going through her master's program, and I was describing the part of the model that was validating of survivor strengths and protective efforts. And I said, Well, one of the things we're training professionals to say is, I see how hard you've been working to keep yourself and your kids safe. And I said, Did anybody ever say that to you? You've dealt with lawyers, therapists, judges, da da da, all these folks. And she said, No. And she starts breaking down crying in this coffee shop because nobody she had been in contact with multiple systems had just simply said, I see how hard you've been working to keep yourself and your kids safe. And so there's one takeaway that I want to give professionals is that phrase.

SPEAKER_04:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

That connected up to curiosity, to non-judgment, to exploration, to understand things that may initially look like deficits may actually be part of a pattern of resistance. And to really step into that world of that the folks in response-based practice talk about, but also the world of of really seeing, particularly through a gender lens, what survivor is doing every day to kind of keep their kids on track, to help them heal from trauma, to um to keep their house stable, to keep it nurturing as they have control over. So I'm gonna I'm gonna put the kids to bed. So maybe I get 20 minutes or 15 minutes where he's not around, where I get to snuggle with them, and it's part of the bedtime routine, but I'm trying to comfort them, I'm trying to give them a place to feel safe.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. And a lot of times, so you can see how easily that act of resistance gets contextualized back to they're too enmeshed.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Because the kids only want her to put them to bed.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, the kids only want her to put them to bed because it's become a soothing routine because their other parent is violent and unpredictable, and kids don't want to snuggle with violent, unpredictable people. It's a naturally scary thing. It's like living with a hot iron or a loaded gun all the time. You don't know what's going to happen. And kids don't like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Or the act of resistance is to let him put the kids to bed because you know if you try to interfere with them, he'll be become abusive. He'll become abusive if the kids won't go to sleep, and there'll be violence more exposure to the violence. And so it's it's it's uh every act of resistance can be misunderstood if they're not it's not contextualized. Um we had a judge in a court ruling really understand that a uh uh a mother who took the kid across state lines was protective, not alienating, not kidnapping, because they were able to contextualize that act to the pattern of abuse. And and once it was seen in that line, it's like, oh, that's a normal, healthy behavior of a protective parent to flee to someplace safe with their child.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. Um especially when systems won't intervene. That's right. Or they're gonna if the police will not intervene, if the courts will not intervene, if nobody will intervene and our lives are in danger, right? We have a fundamental right to protect our children in their own lives.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. Um, and so we want you to walk away from this with with this sort of wider understanding of of um acts of resistance, build that into your lexicon.

SPEAKER_04:

You know what? I want more than that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

I want more than that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

I am proud of myself, that as a child I resisted my abuser. I am proud that I resisted my abuser so consistently that he had to injure me in order to get what he wanted, and that I still carry the reminders of my acts of resistance to his sexual assault and his physical violence and his demeanor of me. I feel proud. I feel strong, I feel connected to myself in a way that's powerful and good, that I can look at myself and say, There were times when you were being attacked, and you did not let that person cross your dignity. And there was a space where I had to react, I had to push back, I had to fight. And I got hurt. And I've heard from adult abusers to me as a child that I was hurt because I resisted. I would resist again. I've heard from adult abusers to me that I got hurt because I resisted. I would resist again. I have my dignity. I have that right. I want more. I want kids and survivors who act in resistance to be seen as heroes, as brave. I want that. That's what I want. See us. See us.

SPEAKER_01:

Nothing for me to add to that. I think that's a great place for us to end. So um, thank you for that. And I I do always appreciate you carving out that space and pushing professionals and practitioners to really go the next step for survivors and to connect with them and to give them language, like you just did, for how to talk to survivors about these acts of resistance. Um you have been listening to Partner with Survivor. Um, you know, it turns out the end of the episode, I'm still David Mandel, executive director of the Safe and Together Institute. The same person who started. And um, if you want to um share this, we hope you share this. We hope you like it. You know that you listen to it on all your streaming platforms, that you subscribe, that you follow us on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, at Safe and Together. Um, please follow me on on Twitter at David Gmandel.

SPEAKER_04:

And you can go to Academy.safe and Together Institute to learn more, to learn how to do this.

SPEAKER_01:

To do partnering, this particular course on partnering. Yeah, do the partnering. You can do it, do the partnering course because it's really, you know, gets into this this way professionals can really um engage in um uh partnering and identify expertise. Also, download our ally guide, yes, which really can help with us. And it's a free resource on our website as well. Um, and um, you know, stay in touch, give us ideas for shows, share your stories, and I think with that we are out of the middle of the