If you’re in immediate danger, call 911.
If you need to talk to someone, contact The NDVH.
Here for the free Short Safety Plan?
Here it is. No email, no signup: The Short Safety Plan
If that file name is a problem, there’s a version that saves and opens as a recipe book. It’s a cover, not a lock. Nothing you download is safe on a device someone else can reach: Quick Recipes from Mama’s Kitchen
If you want the rest, it’s here:
Log | Safety Plan Workbook | Bundle
The Log records incidents and shows patterns over time. The Workbook is the complete safety plan. The Bundle includes both. Each sales page links to a discreet version.
What Is Safety Planning for Domestic Violence?
Safety planning for domestic violence is the act of thinking through practical options for escape and enacting physical and emotional protection from domestic violence and abuse.
Why Is It Important?
Practical options for protection from domestic violence are important to have before you need them (again). When your anxiety makes your thinking fuzzy during an abusive event, your mind will remember your safety planning strategies so you can act on them instead of on emotion.
When adrenaline is pumping through your veins it can be hard to think clearly or to make logical decisions about your safety. Having a safety plan laid out in advance can help you to protect yourself in those stressful moments.
Safety planning for domestic violence is the best way to protect yourself, emotionally and physically, from the effects of abuse and the acts of your abuser.
Working through a safety plan for domestic violence is important for several reasons:
- Safety planning for domestic violence helps you stay calmer and better able to protect yourself while living in an abusive relationship, as you prepare to leave, and after you’ve left.
- It reveals problem areas in your emergency escape plan. Knowing the problem areas beforehand empowers you to find solutions for them before you must escape a violent incident.
- Safety planning forces you to acknowledge the abuse in your relationship. When you’re in denial about the abuse, nothing can change and you remain at risk for violence, including rape and death.
- Safety planning for domestic violence and abuse is the best way to detach from verbal and emotional abuse. When you can detach from abusive words, you’re likely to deflect the emotional damage they can cause.
- Thorough planning will help you to leave and be able to refrain from returning to the relationship. It’s better to think through your domestic violence safety plan than to pick up and leave immediately, only to go back to the abusive relationship because you weren’t ready to stay away.
Verbal abuse rarely stays only verbal. The Safety Planning Workbook helps you plan for your safety more broadly, whatever this turns into.
Purchase “Domestic Violence Safety Plan Workbook: Stay Safer Whether You Stay or Leave” $13.00Need this to look like something else? Get the discreet version instead →
Secrecy While Safety Planning
It is very important that you keep your safety plan confidential. Be very careful who you ask to help you with your safety planning for domestic violence. Ensure the people that you trust understand how important it is to keep your plan a secret. Honesty with your helpers is important, but be honest only to the extent that you feel safe.
Realize that deciding to help a domestic abuse victim is difficult for your helpers, too. The fewer people who know, the safer you will be. Even if you want to stay in the relationship, helpers who tell your abuser about the plan are not helpers. Your abuser will not like that you’ve talked to anyone about the abuse.
Choose Survival Over the Whole Truth
Perhaps you prefer to be open and honest with your abuser. Lying or omitting information can feel like a compromise to your integrity. However, it is more important for you to survive than to be honest. If you feel tempted to tell your abuser about the plan, ever, please reconsider. Once your abuser knows you have a safety plan, life becomes more dangerous for you (and your kids).
Safety planning for domestic violence encompasses much more than a plan to leave the abusive relationship. However, most people, including your abuser, do not know that. Your abuser will most likely assume you plan to leave them if they know you have a safety plan.
Leaving is statistically the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship. Domestic violence is all about power and control, and when someone leaves, the abuser loses power and control over them.
~Wendy Mahoney, executive director for the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Yes, leaving is dangerous. That’s why safety planning is so important, and why secrecy during safety planning is paramount.
Something to do when you’re afraid.
Always believe death threats. There’s no reason to chance it. Get out, then write it down so your brain can move forward from the fear to think. That’s what the Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log is for. A place to keep track of what they say and do to you, revealing the patterns that are warning signs for the next time.
Purchase “Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log” $9.00Need this to look like something else? Get the discreet version instead →
The Safety Planning Process Made Easier for You
The Safety Plan Workbook isn’t only for physical danger. It’s a place to think through your situation clearly and plan around it, on days when the fog lifts enough to do that. You need a safety plan even if you plan to stay in your abusive relationship, because your abuser is unpredictable and you do not know when the last night at home will be.
I’ve developed this safety planning workbook for you. You can download it here for $13 or purchase it from Amazon. It’s the same product, but the bound workbook edition at Amazon will take longer to get to you. The Kindle edition arrives immediately, which is fine if you want to write your plan in a journal or notebook.
The safety plan is comprehensive, meaning it gives you a lot to think about. The more you think about now, the less you’ll have to think when your adrenaline is pumping and you’re bumbling around packing a bag, forgetting to put panties and bras in with the mismatched t-shirts and sweatpants. Forgetting work clothes altogether.
The safety planning process will never be easy, but having the right tools to guide you through makes a difference.
Trust your memory, then plan with it
The Log helps you trust your own memory again; the Workbook helps you plan with it. Together they’re $19, about $3 less than buying separately.
Purchase “Incident Log and Safety Plan Workbook Bundle” $19.00Need the bundle to look like something else? Get the discreet version instead →
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