Five Roles That Members of Families with Domestic Abuse Play
And how that can provide a framework for us to understand how we can more effectively process and engage with the 2024 Presidential Election.
This is a really important conversation that impacts all of us. As such, we’re including a voice recording of this Substack, so you can listen while you’re driving to work, out for a run, or other activities you do while you consume media:
The NYT is at it again this morning.
I mean, at least this isn’t the top story on the website. Congratulations to our friends in the UK who have ousted conservatives from the majority in the British Parliament. As a note, conservatives lost 249 seats in the Parliament in one election, and not necessarily because Labor politicians have done an amazing job promoting their policies, but because British people have seen the destruction that the Conservative Party, starting with David Cameron, has done to their economy and communities.
Fear not. Scroll down a smidge and you’ll find, albeit in smaller bold font, “Major Democratic Donors Devise Plans to Pressure Biden to Step Aside” and “President Biden’s Verbal Stumbles…” Yah, I’m not even going to finish that sentence.
I want to speak to our expertise here. Julia and I are relational therapists, not politicians or journalists. Whoever the Democratic nominee is—Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, a random Democratic governor, Michelle Obama—is going to get our votes because the Democratic Party has shown that has a better plan and execution for creating jobs, engaging in international politics, and protecting the rights of all citizens.
Plus, Project 2025, the Republican platform, communicates the end of democracy as we know it. In fact, we’re already seeing it being implemented in the judicial systems, both in smaller courts, through the behavior of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and Aileen Cannon, and most notably, in the Supreme Court.
If you’re interested in a summary of the intersection of journalism ethics and politics, I highly recommend
’s article The Future of America: Biden, Obama, or Bust.
Getting back to our expertise. On Monday, I posed this question, four days after Thursday’s debate, “What Happens if We View Thursday's Debate through the Lens of Domestic Abuse?”
Today, the day after Independence Day, I want to extend this metaphor to our larger nation.
A quick note, family therapists typically talk about two types of domestic abuse:
Situational couple violence. Both partners engage in violent responses that are reactionary to a particular circumstance, such as a disagreement, difference, or a string of events that happened to the family system. In opposite sex couples, research suggests that men and women engage in this kind of violence equally, and is almost exclusively connected to emotion regulation.
Intimate terrorism. One partner is invested in controlling the other partner emotionally, financially, and psychologically. In his 2008 book A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence, Michael Johnson centers his work around the concept of coercive control, which he defines as:
“Getting someone to do something they do not want to do by using or threatening negative consequences for noncompliance. Effective coercive control requires the perpetrator to make it clear that he or she is willing and able to impose punishment ‘if necessary through threats and intimidation. Intimidation often does not involve a direct threat, but rather “a display of the capacity to do damage.”"
Friends, we are all actively engaged in a system of intimate terrorism.
Sure, many communities (i.e. the Black community and trans community) have combatted systemic violence against its own people for a long time.
However, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and author of the introduction of Project 2025, expanded the threat to everyone this week, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Remember how COVID-19 tore down class and social barriers so that everyone was impacted and restricted by the virus and public health recommendations?
Project 2025 works like that. I highly recommend subscribing to
and my friend for ongoing breakdowns of Project 2025, and how a Republican nomination will screw all of us, even those who it proclaims to protect.Back to domestic abuse. Despite some of the skirmishes that happen on social media, this is not a situational couple violence situation. The Republican Party is engaging in intimate terrorism.
And we are all family members, engaging in different strategies to cope with what’s going on.
So what do we do about this? It’s important, first, to understand and be honest about the gravity of the situation that we’re in.
In every family of domestic abuse (this is true with substance use as well), we see children and family members take on multiple roles to try and protect the system:
Blame the other parent for not setting stronger boundaries, all the while refusing to call out the bad behavior of the abuser. The NYT, Washington Post, and other mainstream media sources are playing this role to a T, most notably over the last couple of weeks. Not once have these institutions suggested that Donald Trump, the figurehead of the abuse, drop out of the race. Again, Seth Abramson provides more insight on how they are doing this.
Align with the domestic abuser, because they have learned that an abuser, especially one who has the resources to consistently avoid repercussions, has power. There’s a variety of ways that Republican talking heads are doing this. They gaslight, and claim that the Democratic Party is actually the abusive one. They justify, most notably through the implementation of dominionism, a theology that reflects an authoritarian God, and a parallel process in the family system with an authoritarian male figurehead. They sabotage. Aileen Cannon is pulling a masterclass in sabotage by shutting down Jack Smith’s testimony against Trump and continuing to delay, delay, delay. And if you delay long enough, you’ll find other saboteurs. Such as Clarence Thomas. And Sam Alito. And Brett Kavanaugh. They threaten. Again, I refer to the comment that Kevin Roberts made, although we also have real life evidence of this through the January 6 illegal coup.
Deny the existence of domestic violence through avoidance. I fear that this is where most of us sit. We know how bad things are, but we don’t want to talk about it. Or we fear that talking about the abuse is futile, because there’s nothing that we can do to stop the scourge of power grabbing. In systems with domestic violence, many family members avoid discussion about the abuse itself. Which makes a ton of sense, because talking about active abuse requires engaging with grief, the risks of boundary setting with the abuser, and the potential violent, more targeted response from the abuser, and an uncomfortable amount of accountability.
Become the symptom bearer. In family systems theory, we believe that children and adolescents often develop symptomatic psychological conditions and behavior—anxiety, depression, impulsivity, and defiance—as a way of communicating that something is off about the structure of the larger family system. However, children also have a need for security and stability, so they’ll act out in a way that forces the family to gather around the problematic behavior of the child. It’s important to note that in systems of violence, the symptom bearer takes on additional risk because the behaviors of defiance and impulsivity may receive backlash from the abuser, unless they are performed in a way that corresponds with the behavior and intention of the primary abuser.
Overfunction for the family system. Overfunctioning involves a person or persons engaging in behavior to attempt to sound the alarm and create change that’s outside of their scope of practice or sphere of influence. The child who overfunctions in an abusive family system is still a child; they likely don’t have the skillset or resources to enact change, but they fight like hell to pick up those skills on the fly. In some sense, this article is a reflection of that. I am acknowledging that there is a problem in multiple segments: journalism and the advancement of American politics. I am, occasionally, making recommendations for people on how to their jobs better. I am also neither a journalist, nor a politician, and any recommendation that I make is outside of my scope of practice, or my expertise. It should also be noted that overfunctioners tend to be oldest children. Guess where I am in the birth order.
One more thing to note. In situational couple violence, both partners typically have the wherewithal to reflect on their behavior, take accountability for the harm that they’ve caused, and, often with the help of a family therapist or other mediator, can co-construct a new structure for a more equitable, more transparent family system. I have overseen this process with many families.
In intimate terrorism, the abuser does not take responsibility. Trump will never take personal accountability. Thomas and Alito will never take personal accountability. The myriad of demagogues, both political (i.e. Kevin Roberts and Mitch McConnell) and theological (i.e. James Dobson and Bill Gothard) will never take personal accountability. The folks who have chosen to align with the domestic abuser may take personal accountability at some point, but it will come at great cost to their sense of self, theological understanding, and community structures.
This leaves both the continuation of the family system (in this case, the values of democracy) and evolution of the family system to ensure that intimate terrorism (in this case, the rise of Christian nationalist autocracy) loses its energy is up to the rest of us. Which is really, really hard work. And again, outside my pay grade and scope of practice.
However, the first step—acknowledging the dire realities of the situation that we’re in and the roles that we play in our attempt to survive the violence—is certainly attainable.
For now, I want to ask you to consider three questions:
When you think about your position in this family ecosystem of the USA, what role do you most align with?
What do you enjoy about this role?
What do you least enjoy about this role?
I hope that the comparison of the current political climate to domestic abuse, and most notably intimate terrorism, can be a helpful metaphor for processing what’s going to be an extremely contentious presidential process. On Monday, I’ll talk more about the developmental process of family violence, before switching gears to talk about a completely different subject: Sex.
After all, surviving a family with domestic abuse requires us to become not so consumed with the chaos that we forget to engage in the other pleasures of life.
Please share this post with other folks!
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Have a great weekend! Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia
My mother is a malignant narcissist, so I dealt with that abuse on top of being indoctrinated in Christian Nationalism. We are living through a tsunami of psychological abuse at the hands of Republicans. Thank you for explaining to every American how we are being intimately terrorized every day, all day long. (I'm also the oldest child.)
My dad was violent growing up and has never once taken responsibility, despite being married and divorced 6 times. When my mom voted for Trump in 2016, I was gobsmacked. I didn’t understand how she could fall for the same behavior again.
Your analogy is perfect and hopefully gets people to see this in a new way.