Prior to the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men were victims of domestic violence. Black women, in particular, were twice as likely as white women to encounter an offender armed with a handgun, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Post-quarantine data is still populating, but there is a disturbingly consistent trend of Black women experiencing domestic violence disparately. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, yet the fight against DV is ongoing. Advocacy that reflects awareness is crucial in order to support domestic violence victims and survivors.
Black Love spoke with licensed therapist and trauma expert Candyce “Ce” Anderson — a clinician who also is a survivor — about the various forms of domestic violence, myths and misconceptions, and viable resources for victims, survivors and supporters.
Candyce “Ce” Anderson: There’s a whole bunch that goes into how someone can be abusive, at the core is power and control and so, people can assert power and control psychologically, emotionally, sexually, financially. Think of domestic violence as an umbrella and under that umbrella is Intimate Partner Violence, which is what most people know about and focus on. That’s the violence between two intimate partners or people that have children in common. The others include elder abuse, parent and child, sibling, and roommate abuse. Physical abuse is noticeable and easily identifiable type of abuse. So the hitting, choking, punching, hair pulling, slapping happens, and property damage is also tied into physical abuse because your home, your property, that’s an extension of your physical.
Emotional abuse is being embarrassed in front of other people, having your accomplishments put down or held over your head. Doing things that demean or minimize you as a person and then say they’re joking with you, calling you sensitive when you say, “That doesn’t make me feel good.”
The psychological is when we talk about how the brain operates cognitively. [The term] gaslighting has been around for about 50+ years and now it’s a buzzword. Gaslighting is when someone causes you to call your sanity and your reality into question. Someone who is putting forth a false narrative and it leaves the other person, usually the target or the victim of abuse, to doubt their own perception and doubting their own perception leads them to feel emotionally distressed. It leads them to feel disoriented, it leads them to feel emotionally unbalanced. It causes an issue in their ability to cognitively function and be based in the reality of what is happening.
Another psychological tactic used in this power and control is called moving the goalposts. A lot of times, a victim of abuse will say, “Okay, if I can just cook better,” or “If I can make the house cleaner, if I can get the kids to be quiet, I can do this, then the abuse will stop.” So then once that goal is reached, guess what? The abuser moves the goalposts. Now the goal is for you to go above and beyond and do this other thing that is likely unreachable, unattainable.
Isolation is when the abuser purposefully starts to exclude other people. ‘You’re talking to your mother too much. Why do you guys talk on the phone so much? You need to cut that. I don’t want to share you, I love you so much. I want you all to myself.’ You’re like, oh, wow, he/she really cares about me and they’re so protective of me. When really, it is making you believe that they’re the only one and everybody else is either unimportant, a non-factor, or a threat to the relationship.
When I would interview a person or they would come in, for my support, they would say, “We got together, we got married, he wanted me to stay home; we got pregnant, we decided to have a child, I left my job. And now, I don’t have a means of making my own money, I have this huge gap in work experience. And so it makes it difficult to become employed, to be self-sufficient, so I can support myself.”
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Black Love: In this era of social media, myths and misconceptions about domestic violence spread at an exponential rate. For example, people are surprised when they hear about male victims/survivors. Share some that you have seen and your thoughts on dispelling them.
Anderson: People don’t have the knowledge, and in many cases, people don’t believe facts when given the facts.
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