land, sky and sea

things to remember:

nerd has a lot of pent-up anger, might pretend you are his dad

My Golden Rule advice on how to help is to try to do the exact opposite of what an abuser would, on a deep level. 

(I’m going to use “she” meaning the survivor for short hand in the following, not to assume gender or pronouns, just for brevity in explaining)

for example– 

abusers think they know what she needs better than she does

allies acknowledge that she is a smart, competent person who knows her own life and deserves autonomy over it  

abusers think for her and tells her what she should think and should want

allies think with her, and ask her what she thinks and wants 

abusers isolate her from other people and decide who she can see and who she can’t

allies respect her decision to see whoever she wants, and don’t enact social punishments for making “wrong” choices

abusers tell her that her emotions are wrong and she needs to stop feeling them

allies validate her emotions no matter what they are, and reaffirm her right to feel them

abusers argue with her to win, and to establish their version of reality as correct

allies argue with her (as will happen sometimes) with the goal of reaching a shared understanding, and to establish a common reality that makes sense to both your experiences 

These things seem simple, but when you really commit to them, they’re genuinely hard in practice. It’s tempting when she argues with you that her abuser really loves her to try to assert what you see as the truth (that they’re abusive) and to assume she needs to be corrected because she’s not thinking right, but all you’d be communicating to her is that everyone thinks she’s stupid. It’s tempting to say “if you go back to them, I’m not going to keep visiting you” in the hopes that she’ll stay out, but it will only end up cutting her off from you as a resource. It’s tempting to imply that she shouldn’t love her abuser because they don’t deserve it, but it would only be implying to her that you don’t respect her emotions and she’ll stop trusting you with them. 

The key is not to be the savior who can swoop in and get her out of there (as much as that’s probably the fantasy of both you and her at some points).