Mindful Advocacy

When Self-Advocacy Can Be Dangerous: SABOR, Domestic Violence, and the Reality of Speaking Up

We love the idea that self-advocacy is always safe.

In wellness and empowerment spaces, the message is familiar: Use your voice. Set the boundary. Know your worth. Leave what doesn’t serve you. It sounds clean and liberating—and in many contexts, it is.

In domestic violence, it’s not that simple.

In an abusive relationship, self-advocacy can be risky. Naming the abuse, setting a boundary, or planning to leave can trigger escalation, surveillance, or violence. At the same time, long-term escape and recovery are almost impossible without some rebuilding of self-advocacy. That tension is exactly why I created the SABOR Self-Advocacy Bill of Rights—and why we have to talk differently about what “speaking up” really means when someone is living with danger.

Self-Advocacy in DV Isn’t The Same as Self-Advocacy at Work

On paper, the SABOR framework looks straightforward:

• Right to Know Myself
• Right to Speak Up
• Right to Know My Rights
• Right to Stay Persistent
• Right to Set Boundaries
• Right to Trust Myself
• Right to Say No
• Right to Self-Compassion
• Right to Follow My Dreams
• Right to Celebrate My Wins

These rights are universal. They belong to you whether you are thriving, struggling, or surviving.

But “using” those rights in a domestic violence situation is not like using them in a staff meeting or a doctor’s office. Abuse is about power and control. When a survivor begins to reclaim power—by trusting their own perception, saying no, or seeking help—the abuser may escalate to reassert control.

That’s not a failure of self-advocacy. That’s the reality of coercive control.

What Helpers Often Miss About Risk

Advocates, therapists, and well-meaning friends sometimes underestimate key risks survivors are already calculating.

Retaliation and escalation.
Leaving, disclosing, or drawing firmer lines can be some of the most dangerous moments in an abusive relationship. A survivor may “comply,” stay quiet, or delay action not because they lack courage, but because they are prioritizing immediate survival.

Systems as new arenas of control.
Family court and other legal systems can be re-traumatizing. Survivors describe being disbelieved, having abuse minimized, and facing ongoing “legal abuse” as ex-partners use filings, custody disputes, and procedures to maintain contact and control.

Mandatory reporting and child welfare consequences.
For parents, seeking help can trigger child welfare involvement. Mandatory reporting has been criticized for deterring survivors from disclosing and is associated in some cases with harmful outcomes like family separation.

Technology-facilitated abuse.
Phones, shared plans, cloud accounts, smart devices, and children’s devices can all be used to monitor, track, or intimidate. In that landscape, a text to a friend, a hotline call, or a drafted safety plan may not be private.

When we give generic empowerment advice—“just leave,” “you have to say no,” “you owe it to yourself to speak your truth”—without acknowledging these realities, we risk sliding into a subtle form of victim-blaming. If she doesn’t or can’t act the way we expect, we treat it as a failure of courage instead of a reflection of danger.

How SABOR Applies When You’re Not Safe Yet

The SABOR Self-Advocacy Bill of Rights is not a performance checklist. It’s a foundation. In a domestic violence context, many of these rights are first exercised internally, and often quietly.

• Right to Know Myself
  Abuse systematically erodes self-awareness. Gaslighting teaches you to doubt your own feelings and perceptions. In DV, this right might look like privately naming what is happening: “This is abuse,” even if you can’t say it out loud yet.
• Right to Trust Myself
  When someone has spent years convincing you that you’re overreacting, dramatic, or “crazy,” trusting your instincts is radical. In DV, this might be honoring the knot in your stomach as data—even when the outside world tells you “he seems nice.”
• Right to Know My Rights
  Knowing legal and personal rights doesn’t mean you must act on all of them today. It means you have information: what protection orders are, what custody laws say, what your options could be—so if and when you are ready, you are not starting from zero.
• Right to Set Boundaries and Right to Say No
  In some abusive situations, an overt boundary or a hard “no” can escalate harm. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost these rights. It means you may exercise them strategically: setting boundaries in safer domains first, using internal boundaries (“I won’t believe his version of me anymore”), or planning for future, external boundaries when conditions change.
• Right to Stay Persistent
  Persistence in DV is not about repeatedly confronting an abuser. It’s about continuing to look for safer options, revising safety plans, trying again after systems disappoint you, and honoring that your slow, careful steps are still movement.
• Right to Self-Compassion and Right to Celebrate My Wins
  Survivors are often harsh with themselves: “I should have left sooner,” “I should have known better.” Self-compassion here is not a soft extra—it’s protection against internalized blame. Celebrating “small” wins—saving an important document, talking to one trusted person, calling a hotline from a safe phone—is not trivial. In context, they are significant acts of self-advocacy.
• Right to Follow My Dreams
  In active danger, this right may feel theoretical. But long-term, imagining a life beyond the relationship—work, study, parenting, rest, joy—is part of what makes leaving psychologically possible. It’s not naive; it is the blueprint for what comes after.

In other words: SABOR doesn’t demand that you shout your rights from the rooftop. It reminds you that they exist, even when you can only whisper them to yourself.

Strategic, Supported, and Risk-Assessed Self-Advocacy

So what does mindful self-advocacy look like in domestic violence?

• It is strategic: every step—disclosure, documentation, boundary-setting, leaving—is evaluated against current risk, including the pattern and severity of abuse, access to weapons, technology, and children.
• It is supported: not done alone, but in collaboration with trusted advocates, friends, or professionals who understand coercive control and will follow your lead rather than pushing their own timeline.
• It is risk-assessed: grounded in trauma- and violence-informed thinking that prioritizes minimizing harm and avoids pushing disclosure or action that could re-traumatize or increase danger.

Self-advocacy here is not about being louder. It is about becoming more resourced, more informed, and more connected to your own rights and reality—so that when an opening appears, you have enough inner and outer support to step through it.

For Advocates, Educators, and “Empowerment” Spaces

If you teach boundaries, self-advocacy, confidence, or healing, assume that some people in your audience are in active danger.

Your frameworks need to hold that:

• Saying “no” can sometimes provoke violence.
• Going to court can sometimes worsen a survivor’s situation.
• Calling a hotline or writing down a safety plan can sometimes be discovered.
• Staying—for now—can sometimes be the safest choice a person can make in an impossible situation.

Self-advocacy is still essential. But in domestic violence, it must be mindful: strategic, supported, risk-assessed, and deeply respectful of the survivor’s own reading of risk.

That’s what SABOR is for—not to pressure anyone to act faster, but to remind them that, no matter how controlled their circumstances, their rights have not disappeared. They are still there, waiting to be reclaimed, one careful, courageous step at a time.

Ready to Learn More?

If you want structured support to build these skills, SABOR Foundations is my on‑demand, self-paced course based on the Self‑Advocacy Bill of Rights. It’s $197 and walks you step‑by‑step through reconnecting with your voice, your boundaries, and your inner authority.

If you’d prefer to do this work in community, you can join the SABOR small group cohort, where we move through the same material more deeply in a supportive, guided space.

You can learn more and sign up at http://courtneytrevino.podia.com/services.