10 CONSEQUENCES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The consequences of intra-family violence are, a priori, closely linked to living together at home. Violence is known as physical or psychological coercion exerted on a person to vitiate her will and force her to perform a specific act.

Violence is almost always used to intentionally subdue another person. Whoever attacks intends to impose his point of view on the other. In this way, the victim of violence, in turn, is largely annulled within his personality.

Violence does not only include insult. It includes other ways to lower the other through: control, vigilance, mood swings, constant disapproval, intense and continuous humiliation, threats, emotional blackmail, etc.

One of the cases of violence carried out within the family or home is violence against women, currently known as gender violence. This type of violence is a form of discrimination against women, as the name suggests, due to their sex or gender.

Another of the cases of violence is that exercised against the children of the house, which can trigger serious problems in the correct subsequent development of the little ones.

Family violence encompasses any act or action that may pose a risk to the health, physical or mental, of a member of the family. In general, the term is often used to avoid the risk on the smallest since they are the most vulnerable.

It is important to understand that family violence is a social fact since children, men and women who are abused can displace this violence to other spaces around them in the future.

That is why this type of violence does not understand race, sex or social class since its threat can affect any area of ​​society. To prevent its risk from spreading to other areas, primarily through children, it is necessary to understand the consequences that this risk may entail.

Consequences of domestic violence

1- Normalization of violence

One of the first causes of violence in children is that they are immediate witnesses of it.

In other words, constantly attending to episodes of continued violence at home means that they can come to understand violence as a normal attitude in their lives. Believing, therefore, that this is a pattern of logical relationship.

However, children are not always going to be aware of this type of violence. This is observable when parents have a cold relationship with each other and without love. The lack of affection can generate an unconscious emptiness that wreaks havoc on the relationship that children have with their partners or friends.

2- Stress and stomach pain

Both children and women who suffer some type of violence in the home can trigger episodes of stress, anxiety or even depression.

Curiously, living within family environments with risk of threat makes children also somatic this violence in headaches, stomach pain or malaise in general without any apparent explanation.

3- Fear of loneliness

As a consequence of the episodes of violence experienced, the children will also generate sensations or emotions related to the fear of being alone or even the fear of dying.

Anger or tension are also consequences of violence experienced continuously. Living constantly in a state of alert involves an alteration in the nervous system and, in the long run, problems related to the health of the heart.

4- Internalization of machismo in women

One of the serious consequences of aggression towards women is that they assume the sexist roles that their aggressor tries to instill in them.

Dangerously, being the object of internalization of sexism and machismo means adopting a passive attitude towards violence.

Thus, as the first collateral damage, children will be the first to receive these values, which can be counteracted through an education, in other areas of society, based on respect and equality.

5- Lack of confidence

One of the first elements that is tried to correct in the case of women who have been victims of gender violence or children, is self-esteem.

Self-esteem, understood as the positive assessment that the subject has about himself, is essential to be able to get out of a case of constant aggression since it allows to adopt enough confidence to be able to flee from the aggressor.

In this sense, the first thing is to realize that you are a victim of a case of violence, and from there, seek help.

Thus, the first premise is to work with the will of women, free from any type of conditioning.

The psychological support will not only focus on reinforcing the confidence and security of the person but also on educating in values ​​of equality, obtaining autonomy and modifying maternal and filial relationships distorted by the situation of violence.

6- Isolation

As a consequence of this violence, the abused woman will gradually move out of her circles of friends, either because of a feeling of guilt, which we will mention later, or because of fear or fear of receiving new attacks.

In the case of children, they can show a certain distance in their relationship with classmates, which prevents them from asking for help and causing a state of self-absorption.

7- False guilt

At some point during the violence, the woman may feel guilty for having produced in her romantic partner the situation of violence that she experiences at home, and the aggressor's behavior itself.

Thus, the victim may come to think, after a process of internalizing macho and sexist roles, that she deserves the expletives of her partner for having left him alone or having moved away to, for example, enjoy a while.

8- Violence calls for violence

Children who are participants in violence in their childhood show patterns of aggressive behavior in spaces such as the schoolyard or within classrooms in general.

Thus, children who have observed how violent behavior patterns were reproduced at home, or specifically how their fathers attacked their mothers, will be able to act as aggressors with their partners.

9- Violence crosses the borders of the home

Once more advanced forms of abuse have been carried out on the children and the partner, the aggressor tries to control their external relationships. These include phone calls for example with colleagues from work or school.

A paradigmatic case is the sabotage of family encounters where the person attacked is humiliated or mocked.

Among other examples, this violence can be detected in the aggressor himself when observing the irresponsibility that he has to take care of his children.

10- Maintenance of the patriarchy

This violence against women not only has risks at the local level, but also at the global level.

Not assuming patterns of equality in the social imaginary, fed by the clichés and stereotypes that feed the media, means letting the patriarchy or "parental government" maintain its dominance and extortion over the freedom of men, women and men. children of the future.

Violence against women

The origin of violence against women within the family has its origin in patriarchy. Historically, the authority and power of patriarchal organizations is exercised by men over children, women and the family itself.

In patriarchy, there is an attempt to control the woman's body and its productive force is oppressed.

In this sense, and to prevent violence from escalating, it is important that the woman detect the early stages of violence by her partner. Which begins with threats, breaking objects, irony or teasing, to continue with pushing and grabbing, slapping, rape, fractures and ending in burns, drowning or even death.

In this case, the woman who suffers gender violence has a set of psychosocial characteristics such as:

• Fear
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Incommunication
• Changing self esteem
• Uncertainty
• General demotivation
• Eating Disorders
• Little power in decision making
• Patterns of violence in his childhood
• Sleep disorder
• Frequent anger

Thus, violence in the home does not usually start suddenly. In this line, there are mechanisms of progressive increase of this.

Thus, the abuser's control tactics can change from one to another and progress towards gender-based violence is usually very slow, so that identification signs are blurred until their recognition is very difficult.

At the beginning of the relationship, the controls will be little serious and will be made up of good intentions. However, these guidelines will almost always make the woman a victim of gender-based violence.

Pyramid of gender violence

Violence escalates on a protracted scale through three stages: climbing, peaking, and descending. The first escalation takes place with the “gestation of dependency and isolation”.

There is a wide range of coercive tactics on the part of the aggressor, such as gaining financial control, persuading you to quit work, or distancing yourself from someone who can support you. A very common case is that the abuser suggests to his victim that he spends a lot of time with his friends and little with him.

As a consequence, the woman generates a false feeling of guilt for abandoning her man.

After this first rise in the pyramid of violence, comes the rise to the top, or failing that, the so-called "forceful assertion of dominance."

This phase consists of creating an intense fear reaction in the victim through a very established action of force. In general, it is usually some type of physical aggression or use of serious threats or damage to some type of personal value object.

Immediately afterwards, the aggressor enters the third and final phase of the pyramid called "repentance." In it, the aggressor apologizes to his victim, giving him gifts. This phase is also known as the "honeymoon".

However, the tension will begin to show itself over time. It is not possible to clearly say the time that elapses between each stage since their durations are highly variable in each person and abuse relationship.

The only certainty is that, in this cycle of violence and abuse, the attacks will follow each other with a more frequent rhythm, being more dangerous for the victim.

Family mediation

Mediation allows parents to reach an agreement in a climate of respect, cooperation and solidarity with their children, who are more sensitive to this violence at home.

To do this, couples can ask a third party to intervene in a neutral way. Which receives the name of family mediator and whose purpose is to create a space for dialogue and consensus between both parties.

However, when there is a member unable to assume their responsibilities, mediation will not be advisable, and in many cases, unfeasible.

Thus, in places like Spain, state laws prevent mediation in cases of violence.

Specifically, Law 1/2004, of December 28, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence, in its article 44.5 “prohibits family mediation in cases in which one of the parties to the civil process is a victim of acts of gender violence (…) ”.

References

1. "What is gender violence?", Psicogenero.com.
2. Ángeles Álvarez: “Guide for women in situations of gender violence”. Council for Equality and Social Welfare. Junta de Andalucía.
3. Marta Fontenla: "What is patriarchy?" Women in network. El Periódico Feminista, mujeresenred.net.
4. "Cycles and stages of development of violence." ManyVidas Psychology, muchovidas.com.
5. "Reports: Effects and consequences of violence and domestic abuse of women", Women for health, womenparalasalud.org.