Monthly Q&A: Trying to Help When Someone You Love Is Being Abused

This month’s Q&A focuses on one of the most painful and complicated positions many people find themselves in, trying to support someone they love who is living with abuse.

Many of you here are in abusive relationships, or have been in one. But I also know that a large number of you are part of this community because you are worried about someone you love. Someone you can see slipping away, changing, shrinking, defending the indefensible, or turning against you in ways that feel shocking and deeply painful.

Helping a loved one who is being abused is one of the most distressing and powerless positions a person can be in. It brings up fear, anger, grief, confusion, and often a kind of heartbreak that is hard to put into words. It is a constant emotional balancing act between caring deeply and feeling completely shut out. These questions reflect that pain.

I am not answering these questions as a mental health professional, as I am not one. I am answering as someone who has lived inside abusive systems, including a cult, an abusive marriage, and post-separation abuse, and who now studies the psychology of coercive control. What I share here comes from lived experience, reflection, and knowing first-hand what helps and what causes harm.

Q1. How do you help someone who is stuck in an abusive relationship and won’t listen? She denies anything is wrong, defends her partner, gets furious if I raise concerns, and her children are being harmed by staying. I hardly recognise her anymore. I love her and feel bad for her, but I also feel so angry that she is tolerating this.

I know this pattern well. When I was in a cult, my parents and my best friend tried to tell me what they were seeing. They named it as a cult, but I would not listen. I defended it fiercely. Likewise, in my marriage, if anyone hinted that my husband’s behaviour was not okay, I immediately jumped to his defence. I spent years making excuses for him, smoothing over awkward moments, laughing things off, and minimising what was happening, even when parts of me knew something was deeply wrong.

When someone is psychologically entrapped, this behaviour is a survival mechanism. Acknowledging reality can feel more destabilising than pretending everything is fine and normal. The mind often prioritises short-term safety and the status quo, rather than facing the overwhelming obstacles involved in accepting the truth and breaking free.