Regaining Courage to Leave Abusive Relationships: Theoretical Framework

Intimate partner violence encompasses a wide range of physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse. Factors that affect a woman's decision in staying in dysfunctional relationships include economical dependency, isolation, lack of social support system, learned helplessness, lost sense of self, fear of safety, re-victimization, and cultural barriers. This article will present a model of micro-changes that would facilitate empowerment and encouragement from the humanistic orientation. In this paper, we investigated the micro-process of regaining courage and potential ways of overcoming barriers that may occur in an abusive relationship via exploring and processing underlying feelings and needs. We integrated humanistic perspectives with the transtheoretical model of change for the theoretical conceptualization. The process is illustrated in case examples.