1Whatever is driving it, behaviour that frightens someone is frightening. The reason behind it does not soften what it was like to stand on the other side of it.
Two people can do something that looks identical from outside and mean quite different things by it. That difference matters for what will help the one doing it, and it changes nothing at all about the fear in the room. Hold both: the account of why, and the plain fact of the effect. If you notice yourself using one to cancel out the other, you have lost the thread.
Islamic evidence
You thought it was trivial but to God it was very serious (Quran 24:15). The gap between how an act feels to the one doing it and how it lands on someone else is exactly what is being named.
“When you took it up with your tongues, and spoke with your mouths things you did not know [to be true], you thought it was trivial but to God it was very serious”
Qur'an 24:15
Psychological evidence
Who gets harmed by a partner is not always who people picture. A systematic review and meta-analysis found transgender people experience a disproportionate burden of intimate partner violence compared with cisgender groups. Reading a situation by whether it matches the expected shape leaves real people out of view. The review pools prevalence studies, so it establishes that the burden is heavier without settling why.
Peitzmeier SM, Malik M, Kattari SK, Marrow E, Stephenson R, Agénor M, Reisner SL. (2020). American journal of public health · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Explaining a behaviour and excusing it are two different acts, and keeping them apart is what lets you do either one well.
Feedback
none yet2Working out what someone meant by hurting another person is a conversation for the person who did it. Said to the one who was harmed, they were not really trying to hurt you lands as being talked out of your own experience.
Anyone who has been on the receiving end of violence has usually spent a long time being told it was not what it was. Even a kindly meant explanation can sound like one more voice on that side, and people walk out over it. If a question about motive genuinely matters for their safety planning, ask what they noticed and what they expect next, rather than telling them what it all meant.
Islamic evidence
God does not like bad words to be made public unless someone has been wronged (Quran 4:148). The person who was wronged is given room to say plainly what was done to them.
“God does not like bad words to be made public unless someone has been wronged: He is all hearing and all knowing”
Qur'an 4:148
Psychological evidence
In a small randomised trial with women who had left emotionally abusive marriages, forgiveness therapy reduced depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress more than an alternative treatment. Worth noticing is where that work sat: with women who had already got out, taking it up for themselves. The sample was small, and nothing in it supports pressing a reframe on somebody who has not asked for one.
Reed GL, Enright RD. (2006). Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · doi
Review detail
Why it works. A person needs their own read on danger trusted, because that read is part of what keeps them alive.
When not to. If the person is still living with the danger, safety planning comes before any discussion of what it meant.