Female survivors of psychological abuse by intimate partners can benefit from participating in a counseling group in order to manage the challenges to their health and well-being resulting from their abusive partnerships. While nothing can change the fact that the women have faced trauma, the effects of the trauma can be managed through resilience. The American Psychological Association describes resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress” and as a process that benefits from connection with others in relationships and groups (2012).
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is pervasive, and many, perhaps most, women experience it. Thompson et al. (2006) state that 25 to 54% of women experience IPV in their adulthood, with 35.4% of cases being “non-physical” (p. 452). Furthermore, the prevalence of IPV spans all income and education levels (p. 455).
Psychological abuse, as a specific form of IPV, is especially pervasive as well as pernicious, particularly for women. Psychological abuse consists of “verbal denigration and intimidation (e.g. put downs, insults, being overly sarcastic), having a possessive or controlling partner…and a partner’s use of threats (e.g. breaking objects to intimidate, threatening physical harm)” (Arriaga and Schkeryantz, 2015, p. 1332). In their systematic review, Carney and Barner (2012) estimate the prevalence of psychological abuse at 80%. Female survivors of psychological abuse can have a variety of mental and behavioral health effects such as PTSD and work life dysfunction (Rogers & Follingstad, 2014), can have physical effects, such as chronic disease, that are similar to the effects experienced by survivors of physical abuse (Thompson et al., 2006, p. 453; Coker et. al, 2021), and can have “greater difficulty recovering” from the effects from psychological abuse than from physical abuse (Follingstad et al., 2009, as cited in Arriga and Schkeryantz, 2015, p. 1333). Furthermore, they experience these effects more frequently than male survivors of psychological abuse (Coker et al., 2021). In their longitudinal study, Beeble et al. (2009) found that psychological abuse affects women’s quality of life more than physical abuse (Beeble et al., 2009).
Social support is crucial for female survivors of psychological abuse. In the process of IPV, women can become isolated from friends and family through demands by their abuser or through friends’ and family members’ fear of getting involved (Beeble et al., 2009). However, social support has been shown to reduce poor mental health outcomes by one half in abused women (Coker et al., 2004) and to enhance quality of life after psychological abuse in particular (Beeble et al., 2009). Sippel et al. (2015) theorized in their “transactional model of resilience” (p. 4) that there is a “bidirectional relationship between systems-level resilience…and individual resilience” whereby the resilience gained on a personal level can synergize with resilience manifested through social networks. In spite of the many challenges for healing after abuse, it is not uncommon for women to report “personal, spiritual, and interpersonal growth throughout their journey following adversity” (Adnerson et al., 2012, as cited in Howell et al., 2018, p. 440). Based on the transactional model of resilience, such transformative gains made by survivors can empower other survivors in a group process and vice versa.
Social and technical gains in resilience can be made in a counseling group for women with a history of psychological abuse by an intimate partner. Survivors may be confused by and unable to disentangle their partner’s abuse patterns from their own personal traits and may internalize depression, alienation, and hopelessness in the absence of “positive social bonds” (Rogers & Follingstad, 2014, p. 608), so experiencing universality through the group process could be therapeutic for the isolated women (Yalom & Leszcz, 2005). Furthermore, the women may benefit from a framework from which they can begin to articulate their ex-partner’s abuse, and discussion among others with similar experiences can build this literacy. For instance, the women can learn and share valuable information such as how various “reticent behaviors” of vulnerable narcissists are often not obvious and that vulnerable narcissism has been linked to violence and criminality (McCaw et al., 2007, p. 7; Bogaerts et al., 2021; Hepper et al., 2014).
The proposed plan is for a counseling group for female survivors of psychological abuse from an intimate partner who have been out of contact with their abuser for a minimum of 90 days. The primary goal is to increase the resilience of these women through therapeutic social bonds and awareness-building. The 90-day minimum minimizes potential dangers posed by abusive ex-partners and ensures the survivors have begun to curtail their commitment to the relationship, a factor which otherwise significantly confounds their ability to perceive their distress as emerging from the relationship (Arriga and Schkeryantz, 2015). Additionally, in the 90 day period, survivors may have begun their individual journeys of resilience through measures such as “cognitive reframing, mindfulness meditation, and physical fitness” (Sippel et al., 2015, p. 5) which will make them valuable contributors to the group according to the “transactional model of resilience” (Sippel et. al., 2015). The group cohesion that would result would help ensure positive health and wellness outcomes such as through the prevention of developing of PTSD (Rubin & Johnson, 1997, as cited in Nicholas & Forrester, 1999).
The focus will be narrowed to histories of psychological abuse alone due to both the high prevalence of psychological abuse in society and the tendency for other forms of IPV, such as sexual or physical abuse, to be taken more seriously than psychological abuse which, if expressed in a session, could exacerbate feelings of isolation and despondency in the participants who had singly experienced psychological abuse. Beyond screening for this parameter, rules for group members would be established to prevent diminishing the experience of some participants relative to others’. Members will be recruited from women’s shelters and mental health clinics, and the group will comprise 8-12 adults, a number typical of counseling groups (Gladding, 2020, p. 13). The length of the sessions will be 90 minutes, a time limit typical of group sessions, and the number of the sessions will be 6-20 sessions (Gladding, 2020, p. 33; Nicholas & Forrester, 1999). If the group were to meet for any longer than 20 sessions, the individuals in the group may become excessively reliant on the therapist or other group members, producing a counterproductive “banding together against the big bad world” effect (Nicholas & Forrester, 1999, p. 331). The sessions will be held in the biggest local church available for hosting the meetings in order to create feelings of safety and to provide resources. Specifically, there may be many people in the parking lot at any given time, which would deter stalkers, and the church may have resources for developing spirituality, which, along with social support, has been associated with the development of resilience (Howell et al., 2018).