The Other Side of Help: Negative Effects in the Help-Seeking Processes of Abused Women

Abstract

Data from 32 in-depth interviews with abused women in outreach groups demonstrated that respondents first sought assistance from informal helpers by telling the stories of their violent experiences. Telling was a significant social act since it made public their “fictions of intimacy” (Tifft 1993), affected their perceptions of their relationships, and altered others' definitions of the couple. In part because help providers often reduced the complexity of intimate relationships to incidents of violence, well-intentioned help provision frequently had unintended negative consequences. It was not necessarily the help women wanted and the assistance was often based on a definitional contingency, or acceptance of others' definitions of the situations and others' prescriptions for action. This contingency placed the women in the same relation to the supporters as they were to the abusers, that is, others controlled the definitions of their experiences and their identities.