Episode Details

Are you considering trying to convince your husband to go to therapy? Or making a therapy appointment for your difficult husband? Is your husband’s therapist making things worse? Anne Blythe, M.Ed. covers the 5 things you need to consider before making a decision.

If you need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Many professionals avoid using the word “abuse” and instead use words like “harm” or “mistreat” because they don’t want to hurt the abuser’s feelings. A therapist who uses the word “abuse” holds the perpetrator accountable and acknowledges the very real pain that the victim is experiencing.

5 Thing To Watch For If You’re Condsidering Helping Your Husband go To Therapy:

1. Did your husband make the appointment without you mentioning that he needs therapy?
2. Think about why you want him to go to therapy. Is it for a basic thing that he should already know how to do, like tell the truth?
3. When an abusive man has appointments set for him by his victim, he uses the therapist to manipulate his victim. Is there a way to determine if he’s abusive before you suggest therapy to him?
4. If he’s abusive, he’ll use the therapy as leverage for more emotional and psychological abuse.
5. Since a therapist is likely to pin the cause of his abuse on common inaccurate reasons like childhood trauma, addiction, or personality disorder, etc, the abuser will be happy to use that “diagnosis” to justify his behavior and continue his lying and manipulation.

Transcript: Your Husband’s Therapist – 5 Things To Watch For

Anne: It’s just me today. I want to talk about your abusive husband’s therapist. It’s the most natural thing to consider finding a therapist for your husband when he exhibits abusive behaviors like lying, manipulation, basically any unhealthy behavior. Anyone’s going to tell you to go to therapy, right? But at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we know something therapists don’t know.

We know what women who have been through this know: Abuse happens in the context of our society and the socially acceptable ways that people interact. Men know that to assert control, they’ll need to manage their image. So it was the girlfriend who became his wife. All the people at their church, their clergy and their therapist view him as a particular sort of person. So he has control, and he can maintain that control.

And over time, he’ll chip away at her sense of self and her support system. So she becomes more and more unsure and isolated. He pulls her more and more away from her own internal warning system. These men are smart. Men know that women resist abuse. Men know that women don’t like lies