A note before you read: if someone controls or monitors you, they may be able to see your internet activity. If you need to, close this page and clear it from your history, and come back from a safer device, like a library computer or a trusted friend’s phone. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, by text (text START to 88788), and by chat at thehotline.org.
Nobody searches for “domestic violence.” People search for “why do I feel like I’m walking on eggshells” and “am I overreacting” and “why do I feel crazy in my own house.”
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this year’s theme, “With Survivors, Always,” asks something specific of all of us: to understand what abuse actually looks like, because most of it never leaves a mark. If the word “abuse” feels too big for what you’re living, or for what you’re watching someone you love live, stay with me for a few minutes. This piece is about the pattern, not the label. The label can wait. The pattern is what matters, and the pattern is what the research says predicts danger.
In this article
- The eggshells feeling
- Conflict is not the same thing
- The hub and the rim
- The forms that leave no bruise
- More common than almost anyone says out loud
- What your nervous system already knows
- Why naming the pattern matters
- Doors that are open right now
- Frequently asked questions
The eggshells feeling
It usually starts as a feeling, not an event. You check their mood before you speak. You rehearse ordinary sentences. You notice you’ve stopped mentioning a friend’s name because of what it sets off. You apologize to keep the peace and can’t quite say what you did. From the outside your life may look fine, and that mismatch, the gap between how it looks and how it feels to live in it, is itself part of the pattern. You are not crazy for feeling it. The feeling is information.
Conflict is not the same thing
Every couple argues. Conflict, even loud conflict, happens between people who remain equals: both people can disagree, both can get space, both stay themselves afterward. Abuse is different in kind, not in volume. Abuse is a pattern in which one partner comes to fear the other, and their world gets smaller: fewer friends, fewer choices, less money of their own, less room to be a person. If you’re looking for the line, don’t count arguments. Ask who is afraid, and whose world is shrinking.
The hub and the rim
Advocates who built the field drew this as a wheel decades ago, and it still holds. Physical violence is the rim of the wheel. The hub, the thing at the center that everything turns on, is power and control. Some wheels have a thin rim or none at all: no hitting, ever. The hub does the damage anyway, and the research is blunt about why it matters. In a major study of intimate partner homicides, a highly controlling partner, especially around a separation, was one of the strongest predictors of the most serious danger. Control is not a lesser form of abuse. Control is the engine.
The forms that leave no bruise
The pattern wears many costumes, and most carry no physical mark. Isolation: engineering distance from your people, until the abusive partner is the only voice in the room. Emotional and psychological abuse: ridicule, threats, monitoring, the steady rewriting of your reality until you doubt your own memory. Financial abuse: controlling the money, sabotaging work, running up debt in your name; in one study of survivors who sought domestic violence services, 99 percent had experienced economic abuse, and advocates consistently name financial dependence as one of the biggest practical barriers to safety. Digital control: demanding passwords, tracking location, going through your phone. Each of these is a spoke on the same wheel, and each one is about the hub.
More common than almost anyone says out loud
The CDC’s national survey found that about 1 in 3 women and about 1 in 8 men in the United States have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner with a related impact on their lives, and roughly 3 in 10 women and 1 in 5 men report psychological aggression by a partner. Those numbers mean this is not rare, not a private failing, and not confined to any kind of neighborhood, income, education, orientation, or faith. It is the checkout line and the school pickup. If it’s you, you are in enormous company, none of whom caused what someone else chose to do.
What your nervous system already knows
Here is the lens we use in the therapy room. Living inside a pattern of control keeps a nervous system in survival mode, and survival mode is good at surviving: it scans, it appeases, it keeps small, it keeps the peace, because keeping the peace has been the safest available move. Choices that look confusing from the outside, staying, softening the story, going back, are usually survival logic working exactly as designed from the inside. There is nothing wrong with the person surviving. The question is never “what’s wrong with you for staying.” It’s “what happened to you, and what did it cost to carry it.”
Why naming the pattern matters
Because the pattern, not the bruise, is what predicts danger, and because seeing it earlier opens doors earlier. Naming it does not commit you to any particular next step, on any particular timeline. It means you get to stop asking “am I overreacting” and start asking “what do I want, and who can help me think it through safely.” That second question has professionals whose entire job is to help you answer it, for free, confidentially, whether or not you ever leave, whether or not you ever call it abuse.
Doors that are open right now
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is free, confidential, and available 24/7: call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Advocates there will not pressure you to do anything. Here in the Rogue Valley, Community Works in Medford runs a 24/7 HelpLine at (541) 779-4357, with advocacy, safety planning, court support, and the Dunn House shelter; in Josephine County, the Women’s Crisis Support Team answers 24/7 at (541) 479-9349. For Native and Indigenous survivors, StrongHearts Native Helpline is at 1-844-762-8483. And therapy has a place in this picture too: individual, trauma-focused therapy, for making sense of what happened and what you want, during and especially after. What we do not recommend is couples counseling while abuse or control is active; abuse is not a relationship problem, and shared sessions can be unsafe. If therapy is a door you want to open, Helping Hand Therapy sees clients in Central Point and Ashland and by telehealth across Oregon, and the first conversation is a free 30-minute consultation: request an appointment here.
Frequently asked questions
Is it abuse if they never hit me?
Abuse is a pattern of power and control, and many of its most damaging forms, isolation, degradation, financial control, monitoring, threats, leave no physical mark. If you are afraid of your partner and your world keeps getting smaller, that pattern deserves to be taken seriously, with or without violence.
Why do people stay?
Because of real things: fear, money, children, housing, love, faith, immigration status, and the fact that leaving can be the most dangerous period, especially with a highly controlling partner. Staying is usually survival logic, not weakness. The better question is why a person chooses to abuse, and the responsibility sits there.
What should I do if this sounds like my relationship?
You don’t have to decide anything today. Talking to an advocate is free, confidential, and commits you to nothing: 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or locally (541) 779-4357 any hour. If your devices may be monitored, use a safer one. Your timeline belongs to you.
Can therapy help?
Yes, individual trauma-focused therapy can help survivors during and after an abusive relationship. Couples counseling is not recommended while abuse or control is active, because abuse is not a communication problem and joint sessions can be unsafe.
About the author
Michael Higginbotham, LPC, is a Licensed Professional Counselor and co-owner of Helping Hand Therapy, with offices in Central Point and Ashland, Oregon. He works from an existential and trauma-informed perspective and is EMDR Basic Trained, working toward EMDRIA Certification. Helping Hand Therapy offers person-first, affirming care in person and by telehealth across Oregon.
Helping Hand Therapy, Central Point (billing and clinical) and Ashland (clinical), Oregon. Serving the Rogue Valley and all of Oregon by telehealth. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, thehotline.org, 24/7. In any crisis, call or text 988.