Ep. 36: Non-Fatal Strangulation: How it's Introduced and Escalates- Dr. Dana Anderson

We're reconsidering everything right now. What is time post-COVID? What is truth in Trump's America? Is You've Got Mail secretly a movie about a creepy gaslighting stalker? We can't answer the first two questions, but we have opinions about the third. We on Hot & Bothered are revisiting romance movies of the past and asking, what were these movies teaching us? What did we not even realize they were teaching us? Hot & Bothered is me, Vanessa Zoltan, a pop culture critic and nice lady with opinions, and Hannah McGregor, a bona fide professor of media studies, loving love stories, and also just a little bit concerned. Come listen to Hot & Bothered. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere, ACAST.com. Welcome to Why She Stayed, the podcast where we talk about what really goes on inside of abusive relationships and marriages that makes it so hard to simply just leave. I know the confusion all too well, and I created this podcast to help you find words for your experience. My goal is to educate, validate, and empower you to trust your instincts and see that you are not alone. I'm your host, Grace Stewart. All right, welcome back to Why She Stayed. Today I have a special episode for you guys about a topic that I really wanted us to cover heading into the holiday season, because around this time, violence can actually increase in a lot of ways. We're going to be talking about strangulation and how that becomes introduced into the abuse cycle and try to help you all really see through some of the hidden ways that your abuser may be asserting themselves over you in this way and why it can be so insidious and why those insidious ways do fall into the same statistics. I'm honored to be here with my guest, Dr. Dana Anderson. She's a forensic psychologist out of California, and she investigates the psyche behind perpetrators and killers just to understand their risk level to society and why they do the things that they do. So I just wanted us to have an open conversation about nonfatal strangulation and why the mindset of someone who does this is actually what makes them so dangerous. So it's an honor to have you on today, Dr. Anderson, and welcome on. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And I really want this episode to just be educational and also interactive with questions that many of you asked through my Instagram stories. So I'm going to also include some more in-depth resources in the description of the episode just in case we don't cover everything. So I'm going to include articles about the topic in general and then also how it's being introduced in the bedroom, since that was my number one question. So Dr. Anderson, I was hoping you could just first give us some background about the work you do. Like what is a forensic psychologist and why are you passionate about it? Yeah. So I'm a forensic psychologist, and I think there's a lot of misconceptions on TV about what a forensic psychologist does, because I think people initially, their mind is drawn to CSI and you're at a crime scene, and sadly, television portrays that, which isn't quite accurate. So what does a forensic psychologist do anyways? And do we go to crime scenes? Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but forensics means in the legal system or in the court system. And we typically think of that of the criminal justice system. And so a psychologist is essentially answering the legal question for the court. And that is often about their mental state. And so, no, I'm really not going to crime scenes. I may be going to court, but the reality is I'm doing a lot of investigative work. And that includes interviews and a lot of review of records. And I do about 15 interviews every single month at the local jail. And so I'm usually interviewing defendants who are facing criminal charges. So I also work in civil court. So you could be suing someone for damages of prior abuse. And so I may be hired for the defense or for the plaintiff. So forensic isn't just the criminal court, right? I'm also in family law court. So I'm involved in a lot of highly litigious cases where someone's mental state is being questioned. And most of the time, I'm court ordered. That means the judge or the court has ordered me to answer the question. And so those folks, whether they like it or not, they are being evaluated. And I'm interviewing them to get information about them. And so consent is different, meaning there is no confidentiality. I'm writing this to the judge, to the court, and the prosecution is going to get a copy. Your defense attorney is going to get a copy. The judge is going to get a copy. And this is going to help inform the court. Wow. So this involves a lot of evaluating the mind of someone who's a perpetrator or who is facing possible charges for a crime, if I'm understanding that correct. Correct. For the role of a forensic psychologist, one of the most common types of evaluations is competency to stand trial. So I see a lot of individuals, they could be charged with murder, rape, domestic violence, arson, any number of crimes. But for competency to stand trial, I'm assessing their mental state right now on whether you can work with your attorney, understand your charges, and you're ready to go to court. So typically, defendants in custody, this is not shocking, but they're under the influence of something. Right. On a side note, I'm seeing tons of fentanyl use, fentanyl withdraws, and going back and forth, shooting up meth and fentanyl. So it's not uncommon for someone not to be well enough, stable enough, psychiatrically stabilized to go to court, right? So there can be medical and mental issues. And so I interview them. I have some pretty interesting interviews. Wow. And so that's a specific type of legal question that I answer for the court. But I also do sentencing recommendations for violent offenders, sex offender evaluations. I've worked with a lot of dangerous individuals, and I've learned a lot, and my passion is preventing violence. And when you get a file that's volumes and volumes, and this person has already murdered people, right? You go back to the very beginning, like, how did it start? How did we get here? Right? Those are the questions I have before it all happened. And so you look at the people they came into contact with and the victims, and how could I help prevent this from happening, right? What could save your life? What information do I have that could help you survive or live? How could we just avoid encountering one of these individuals? Absolutely. Well, a little fun fact is that at one point, I was just someone searching on the internet, you know, is this strangulation or does it count if whatever? And then I would input the situation that I was going through when I was trying to leave my ex. And I remember nothing seemed to quite fit my experience perfectly because of how masked some of the things he was doing was. And at the time, I had come across one of your TikTok videos that you made. I think it was around 2022 about the strangulation statistics that we're going to be talking about. And it really just helped validate me at the time. And so to be sitting here with you now is a full circle moment for me. And that's why today, I really just want to speak to the person who's sitting here asking themselves, does my experience fit into these statistics, if it's really covert and manipulative, the way my perpetrator is going about it, how they can start introducing it, and also weave a lot of your questions in there that you asked through social media. So I was hoping we could start off by just talking about what exactly is strangulation and why does using the correct language for it matter so much? Right. So strangulation is an external blockage, right? External. Choking is internal obstruction of your airway. So we've been using the wrong term forever. We've been saying choking when it's not, it's incorrect, and it's the wrong term. But society has constantly restated the term choking repeatedly. That's actually incorrect. So anytime we hear that, we want to sort of correct that language, right? Because it is actually strangulation. So there's just been a lot of misinformation, just even people being like, what is strangulation? How do we qualify this? And specific language was added to the domestic violence penal code to actually add the word strangulation, suffocation, blocking, impeding one's airway or ability to breathe. So someone preventing you from breathing, that's scary. At the most terrifying core of events that could happen to you would be someone trying to take your ability to breathe away. And it doesn't require a lot of strength or pressure on your neck, right? Not at all. And it can take seconds. So one of the things I think people would want to understand is that oxygen is traveling to your brain, and if that's prevented, then what is going to happen, right? So cell death in your brain, right? And what if blood flow can't travel to your brain? And what if it stops? It doesn't take a lot for this to happen. And you can suffer brain damage, right? And there are unintended health consequences as a result. It's putting you in a very vulnerable position. And so at some point, I became interested, people are like, why are you interested in strangulation? That's weird. Like, honestly, I've been, you know, but so I grew up with watching my dad strangle my mother as a child, and it happened all the time. And I really was confused about why anyone would want to hurt another person. And I was just a kid, so I would, you know, I'm being given mixed signals, like, what am I supposed to do? Like, am I supposed to call the police, and then I'm being yelled, don't call the police. My mom's yelling, call the police, and I'm like, they're in front of the phone, right? So I can't really get to it. So I really just didn't understand. But I wanted them to stop. I wanted this to stop. So I did seek to understand it more. And then I came to find out that it was common in other relationships. My mom's mom was strangled, like it was just a form of ways to control. So eventually, you know, I went back to school, I decided to find out more about strangulation survivors. And I did my dissertation on strangulation survivors. I actually really wanted to interview the perpetrators, but that was very difficult to do, right? Getting access to those records or interviews or not having a budget. So I did my own study, and I interviewed female survivors of non-fatal strangulation. And it was a phenomenological study. So I just spent hours with each of them trying to understand their experiences, genuinely. When was it introduced? How did it play out? Like their experiences were all very unique. And I can tell you, it's so insidious. It's so, so insidious the way. One of the things I'll tell you is that it seemed as though these men, they were in a relationship, they were testing your boundaries by small things over time. But then that putting the hand on your neck was also a test. And it was introduced in private moments in the bedroom where you were doing something consensual. So they're introducing something new that you're actually not sure you're consenting to. And so over time, learning from women is that it increased, or they would present putting their hand on their partner's neck at other times, right? Now you're in an argument, or now you're in the kitchen, right? Now there's more force on the neck. And now you don't feel safe. Now you're scared. And so it was really insidious. And most of the time, there's no marks or injuries, and it's really just their word against yours. So it made it very complicated for these women to know where to turn to, who to tell, and what does reporting look like if I don't actually know if I have any injuries, or it's really not that bad. I don't... Right. Exactly. And I'm really glad you brought up how insidious it can really be, because that's one of the messages I really want to drive home, especially on this episode. In fact, one of the questions I got was, does there have to be a lot of pressure for it to be considered strangulation? Does breathing even have to be cut off? And I really liked this question, because what I'm finding is that many perpetrators are doing it, they're starting to do the motion of it, but not necessarily squeezing. And this is confusing so many victims, because when we think of strangulation, we automatically think of squeezing, hard pressure for a certain amount of seconds, have to go unconscious. We have a vision in our mind. But what I'm seeing so much of the percentage of the time is that the perpetrator's doing whatever accomplishes asserting themself over you in this way with as little ability as possible for you to identify that there was a boundary violation, for as little way as possible for you to identify it as violence or something that they're getting away with. And just so they can say, well, I never hit you, or I didn't flat out wrap my hands around your throat. So what I really want to drive home is that it's more so about the message that he's sending you. It's the implied threat of impeding your breath, and it's what the abuser is demonstrating, no matter how they act it out. So what I'm seeing is many of them are doing it like grabbing motions, but not necessarily squeezing or squeezing hard. They're doing these quick grabs and then letting go or placing their arm across your neck as if it's like a playful or a playful choke hold, quote unquote, that kind of thing. In fact, I was reading an article online that said more than two decades of research have revealed that strangulation is the calling card of a manipulative, controlling, dangerous man. This is because strangulation indicates a particular dynamic, which is course of control. When a victim's throat lays in the hands of their abuser, a message is sent, one that says, I can kill you at any time. So even if it's not, oh, hands wrapped around the throat, and it's outside of the bedroom, and it doesn't just happen like that, but nonetheless, it's about the message that he's sending you, no matter how it starts to become introduced into the dynamic. And I think one of the biggest issues we're having mentally is obsessing over the thought of like, does my experience fit into these statistics? Because we're constantly trying to evaluate how bad our situation is and have something to use as a gauge for like, you know, how bad our situation is. So when we hear the statistics of, oh, 750% more likely to be killed by this person when they start placing their hands on your throat, we're finding it hard to like, find comfort in those statistics. I know that sounds like a weird way to put it, but we're finding it hard to reassure ourself that what we're experiencing is that bad when we look at the statistics, because we're obsessed with thinking like, does my experience count within that? And so I'm saying, if your person is sending you a message that they're not opposed to impeding your breath in some way, even if it's just squeezing you tight, and you just feel so weird about the situation, I believe symbolizing impeding your breath in any way does count towards those numbers. Agree with that? I do agree. That message is clear. So look, they're saying I can kill, but hey, you know, I won't, I'm not doing it, see, but I can, you know, I'm not going to right now. I can, but hey, here's what I want to put into perspective for some people. If someone just had a gun in their hand and you're just having a conversation and they're just holding this gun and just having a conversation, it's kind of like, let's just say they pointed at you. They didn't say they were going to kill you. Let's just go like, so what's happening here? There's a message. So while we'd be quite terrified if someone's pointing a gun at us, even saying absolutely nothing, right? Even if it wasn't loaded, the gun is being pointed at you or there's, you're like, this is a message, message received. So I want people to think about it like that. So the threat of strangulation is terrifying. That's a crime in itself or even the motion of it. It's still domestic violence. I'm at risk for death. So what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to be very careful about my next move because you know what my goal is to not die, right? And women are pretty smart and pretty clever. So they're going to not die. They're going to be very careful after something like this happens because they know their next moves are, they're at high risk, right? Because you can go report it. You might go tell someone. Right. And to answer the question of what if they just seem to be messing around? What if he genuinely seemed to be playful, but I'm confused about my experience? This is probably my second most asked question. My answer to that is that I've found in life that non-abusive men generally don't play like that. They don't do that and then turn around on you and say that it's unattractive, that you can't play with me like this or it's a turnoff and I'm going to go find a woman who is playful like this. That is them coercively controlling you when they're saying stuff like that. One of the questions I got was that my ex justified strangulation of my neck by saying that he was just trying to calm me down. And a few of the most common justifications that I hear from perpetrators in justifying, oh, doing it playfully or actually strangling you like more overtly, some of them include, oh, I was just trying to get you to be quiet. I was just trying to get you to wake up and listen. I was just trying to shake some sense into you. I was just trying to get through to you. Saying again that they're just trying to calm you down. Another one is I only did it to emphasize my point or they're just saying it never happened at all. So do you see how they take control of the definition of what would count as strangulation and they just try to justify it? Oh, I was just trying to get you to calm down. What kind of an excuse is that? Or I was just trying to emphasize my point. So they feel highly justified in these things. And my opinion is, again, non-abusive men, they don't play like that. They don't treat you like a little sibling and then whine about and claim that it's unattractive that you can't play like that. And so I also want to mention that I think there's power. This is why I think there's power in using the correct terms for abuse and using the term strangulation instead of choking, because I think saying choking kind of minimizes the offense in a way we don't realize it. I think perpetrators would rather us say choking because they can more easily normalize that term in our mind as whatever they want it to. Would you agree that there is significance in using the correct term for it? Yeah, because when I think of choking, I just have an imagined scenario. I'm at a restaurant and I have something lodged in my throat. So this is something I put in my mouth and I did and like it's right. So but strangulation is violence. It's not it's nothing to do with like choking on food. And so it's so important that we talk about how serious it is and documenting your injuries. Even if you say, well, I'm not even really sure I have any injuries. So you may not know because they could be internal and there could be damage to your voice box, right? So you really want to be medically evaluated. And even if you say, I just don't think there's anything. I mean, it wasn't really that bad. Well, let the medical doctor decide that. And also medical records are crucial for prosecution. So get things documented. And because I review a lot of medical record data, and when it comes to prosecution, get it, get it in the medical records. And if we're deciding between a misdemeanor and a felony, like they're looking for some evidence there, right? Of how bad the injuries were, right? And we don't want it to be dismissed like, oh, that never happened, right? Go and get medically evaluated. And you can also go to see your therapist, right? That's documentation, mental health documentation. Like if you suffer trauma or other injuries that are documented, that can be useful, even in civil law cases. Right. One of the questions someone asked me was, is it considered bad if there are no visible marks? And do you think they pick this method because it's more subtle bruising or because it can't, it doesn't always show external signs? So they're asking like, is my situation that bad if there were no visible marks? Well, let's go back to what the definition of domestic violence is. And it's all about power and control, and it doesn't require physical violence. It doesn't require any injuries at all. So power and control. So I don't need to have injuries to know I'm not safe. Absolutely. And then they also asked like, do you have to have bruising for it to be considered strangulation? What if you go to get examined and there's no external bruising? Would that still be considered strangulation by definition? So there's a lot of injuries that can be internal and that aren't going to be visible to the naked eye. If you have an external injury, you probably have an internal injury, right? So, but there's a lot of things you can't see, right? And you can get medically evaluated. In fact, there are certain agencies or hospitals that will have staff that are trained on strangulation. So there's the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, and they train a lot of professionals to know how to respond to strangulation, ask the right questions, and do a medical exam. So I've attended the advanced strangulation training, and I have a certificate, and a lot of people have had that additional training. And I would recommend any healthcare worker to get the training and know how to respond to it, know what questions to ask, and know how to document it. You can go, you know, typically to your local domestic violence shelter. Look, counties, states, jurisdictions vary, but where I live now, there's qualified people that can do these evaluations, and only have you evaluate it once, right? With the police there and document it. Right. And I think, again, we're often so caught up on, does my situation count towards those statistics? Does it count as strangulation? Because at the heart of it, we're always trying to reassure ourselves that our situation is bad enough to walk away from. And again, in a way, we're trying to find comfort in the statistics that could maybe reassure us. And my answer is, you don't even have to have marks. Even when someone is strangled more overtly, only like 50% of the time are there visible external marks. So yes, it is that bad, even if there's nothing showing. And that's one of the reasons I believe the perpetrator chooses it, because they can again say, I never hit you. And they know they can explain it away and leave behind little evidence for it. I want to go over many of the questions that I got from everybody through Instagram story, just so you can see that you all have a similar train of questions. And this proves the insidiousness of it that's happening. People said, is covering my mouth and nose considered strangulation? What about grabbing quickly and letting go? Is that still strangulation? What about grabbing your throat with little pressure, but for intimidation? Is it bad if it was a quick three seconds out of rage? What about a headlock? Grabbing your throat and saying they're just massaging it when asked to stop. Grabbing you by the face and holding your head slash face. What about sleeper holds playfully? What if he pushed me by the neck? What if he stopped as soon as I said it hurt? Pinning you with his arm across your chest, laying on top of you such that you can't breathe. Pushed my face with a pillow or into the bed suddenly. And so do you see how often they're doing the motions of it and doing these quick grabs to assert themselves and send a message, but again, not always squeezing. So whatever accomplishes sending you that message with as little ability for you to identify it, that's, I think, what's happening. Would you agree, Dr. Anderson, that many of the questions we got were following that same pattern? Honestly, I was deeply disturbed and horrified and so saddened and sickened that this is so commonplace, that such a profound number of people responded asking questions and how can you even exist in life? How can you thrive when you're living in fear and you're living with this oppressive thought that the person you live with has sent you a message that they can control how you live, but not only how you live, but when you live or when you die, think at the peak of your fear, right? So it's so horrifying that the level of violence or that we've gotten to this, I mean, think about when you're a little girl and you're growing up and you want to just be in a loving relationship or have a family, all the things you dream of, did you ever get to the point where you're thinking you fear the man you're with wants to kill you? This is all too common for women and so how did we get here? And I'm a woman, I mean, what I would fear the most would be in a relationship with a man who wants to harm me because that's the reality of how women die and so you let someone in your life and you're in an intimate relationship and then suddenly things are changing and you want to just simply leave, but it's really not that simple because you're in fear. Exactly. It's complicated to navigate leaving a relationship. So we often hear the statistic about 750% that if your partner starts putting their hands on your throat that you are 750% more likely to be killed by that person. Are those statistics correct or are there any other ones that come to your mind surrounding strangulation that you think are really, would be most important for people to really just kind of hear? Yeah, I wanted to mention a study where, this is where they got that statistic that you're at an increased risk for death. So San Diego County did one of the largest research studies on strangulation. So 300 women, these were misdemeanor cases that were filed in San Diego County. So they went to understand more about the level of domestic violence in these cases and strangulation was all too common in these relationships and later women that had been murdered. So they go back through time, psychological autopsy, and that same person that killed them had also, there was documented history of that same partner strangling them. And so there are certain questions that will be asked to you if you go to any domestic violence shelter or, and it's called the danger assessment scale. And there's questions there that I encourage everyone to go look at and you can just go online for free and do it. Just go through the questions. And one of the questions is, has your partner strangled you? Does your partner own a gun? Like all these different questions. And so take that assessment and you can get a score and it's going to tell you at your, your risk, like if you're at high risk for death and this is the screening tool that's used all the time. And this is what this research is based off of. So we know that women who have been murdered it's, it's this by the partner who had strangled them previously. So again, it's not just, so it is the message that they can. And then the question is, will they? And so that's why when a woman leaves someone whose main theme was power and control over you and giving you messages that they can kill you. When you leave, you're at an increased risk. So it's very terrifying during that time period to have an effective safety plan and having no contact with that perpetrator, right? Because they're also very fearful that you could report them, file charges, that's going to significantly impact their life or restrict them. And so they're out to get you to, to change your mind, right? To maybe lure you back. And so it's very important that you don't have contact with them. So you don't go back. So you can't be brainwashed. You keep yourself safe. If you go back, you're at an increased risk because now they know, you know what? She might leave me again and we can't have that. And over time they can be more, even more insidious. So it's like, now we know that caused injuries. Well, I'm not going to do that again, right? So you can take a, even your, you know, a choke hold from behind, but they can take their leg, wrap it around or their arm. You can take your arm. I mean, you can, there's all kinds of ways to compress or restrict someone's breathing and call it something else, right? Or say it's something else or get you in a very compromising position where you're not able to leave physically, you are not able to move. Right. I think this is a good lead into another question I got, which was, what if it was just a one-time error, never happened again? Is that the worst? Is it really bad? Can he really change? And I will say there's a lot of weaponized incompetence involved in this. To an abuser, everything is a misunderstanding. Everything's a miscommunication. Oh, I didn't know. You didn't like that. I thought that was our thing. They do make it seem like it was just an error. And again, I find that non-abusive men, they don't play like this. This person has likely been gaslighting you in many ways, enough that we're all here and have found my page, have found my resources, which tells me, which is an indication that this person has also been gaslighting you over a long period of time. And that stems from them being an abuser by character, by nature, which means it's not just an error. Things like this are not just errors. Another question I got was, what if it happened but has not happened in like two years? Does that mean they're not abusive anymore or that it wasn't actually what I thought it was? And to that, I say escalation doesn't always look like this specific trajectory that goes in like a certain line because the abuser knows when they need to pull back. They kind of know where this line is that they need to not cross this time. And so escalation can also look like a reverse where they pull back on some of their physical behaviors and they just decide to control you in other ways that accomplish control in ways that are less identifiable. So I think this is part of the reason I get so many questions of, well, what if he just put his hands over my mouth or pushed me by the face? Because escalation sometimes just looks different. It doesn't look one way. We know if someone wants to keep you from breathing, smothering you, and suffocation is another term you described earlier, and if someone's hand is over your mouth or nose, and I can't breathe, that's suffocation. So you can't have a defense saying, gosh, I had no idea that could cause death, right? When someone can't breathe, right? Your heart stops beating. And before the penal code changed and had that additional language in there, it was harder to prosecute like for murder or attempted murder. So you're trying to prove intent. And so throughout the years, as the laws have changed, you'll see different states and jurisdictions where it's a misdemeanor or a felony, but there's been an increased amount of research and education and training. And so for the most part, it's viewed as a felony, although it can be a wobbler, like we're on the verge of a misdemeanor or a felony. But you really don't have to improve intent for strangulation anymore. So it is implied that this is a way to die. And so it's important that we're talking about this. So the abuser may attempt to say, well, gosh, I had no idea. It was just so serious. Like I didn't know you were going to pass out. We were just playing. It was fun. And that was one of the comments and some of the questions people were saying, well, what if it's we were having fun, we were playing, or he said he was being funny. It's like, but you're not anymore. And so in a healthy relationship, you should always be able to say what you're thinking and feeling. And if they're pushing you past that point where you're not comfortable, that's abuse. And I think the biggest issue is that when we're in the cycle of abuse, we have trouble remembering, did I seem like I was comfortable with this? And your abuser is blending it into things so effortlessly. Everything's so fluid for them. So they start introducing it to where you feel like, oh, I seemed like it was something that I wanted. And this leads us into my number one most commonly asked question is why is it such a sex thing these days? And do you think the prevalence of porn enables abusers when violence is masked as intimacy? And yes, I do think that the prevalence of porn and everything that it shows makes them more dangerous and makes their mindset even more sick, the things that they require of us and the things that they are so attached to normalizing. So I think the questions we really need to be looking at when trying to understand this is things like why are they so attached to making us do degrading things even beyond putting hands on the throat? Why are they so attached to degrading us as if it's a need? And why are they so defensive about it? Do you actually want these things or are they just making you feel like you have to be a certain way to keep their affections? And I think that when it comes to the topic of consent, the waters are getting too muddied when it comes to consent because the abuser, they're notorious for making you feel like you're always just about to lose them. Or they'll say that they're going to find a woman who's more willing to do the things that they want. They'll just straight up tell you, you do actually like it. And it's really about the atmosphere that they're in. or creating that, again, says you have to do certain things to keep their affections with you, or they're blending it in so effortlessly that you think it's just your guys' thing. So I think the biggest question we need to ask is, what actually is the makeup of this person that you're in the bedroom with? What are you actually dealing with is the question, because I found if you're at the point where you found my page, my podcast, again, this is likely someone who's been gaslighting you outside of the bedroom, someone who you are confused about, and that points to what their makeup truly is. That tells me that, yeah, they're being rough in a violent way in the bedroom, and they are slowly normalizing it, and they're really fixated on objectifying us. They're so attached to that. So I would say it does fall in line with the same statistics because, remember, the dangerousness of it is the mindset behind the person who sends the message that they have that right to impugn your breath, that they're in control, and it's a power thing. They feel really justified in doing that. When I spoke about this on TikTok last year, I was speaking about statistics about nonfatal strangulation. I have never had a post with so many people coming at me, and they were so defensive about it. I wasn't even attacking people about what they're doing in the bedroom, but people were threatening me, extremely offended by the topic of nonfatal strangulation. So we have to ask, why are they so defensive about it, and why are they so obsessed with it? And that was the only time I ever considered turning off my comment section besides when I talked about play fighting. So it's interesting. The only two times I was attacked viciously on social media was when I talked about putting your hands on your partner's throat and also about play fighting. So it's interesting. Would you agree, Dr. Anderson, that the questions we received on this topic were overwhelming and that it's coming out in this way with so much prevalence? Yes, I have seen strangulation introduced in the bedroom as one of the most common ways it's introduced. And you're just in your most vulnerable time. You're being intimate with a partner. You're in a bed. You're sleeping. You're with somebody you potentially love. So then to slowly introduce it, kind of testing your boundaries. So that's how I've seen it introduced. I think that's the hard part. When I dealt with this with my abuser, with my ex, I remember the way he did this strangulation, what I now consider strangulation, is he just quickly grabbed me by the throat and kind of pushed me down into the couch cushions, and then he let go. And then he did it again. And so to me, I was like, well, it was a quick grab. He didn't really squeeze me. He didn't. He was just asserting himself over me. And I, for the longest time, struggled to call that strangulation because I felt like, well, it just doesn't sound like... I don't know. I just thought he was supposed to hold me longer for it to be that. So when I heard the statistics on it, I found it difficult to lean into those statistics to reassure myself like, yeah, he's dangerous. I should stay away from him because of the way he would do it, but skirt around it. So what I want people to also listening to the statistics Dana's sharing, those statistics about 750% are going to be applied to your situation, even if he's just asserting himself over you in this way. Again, the danger of it is that they're sending a message to you, and they're more likely to escalate. So it's hard. And strangulation is the escalation because you didn't on your first date just go out and they started strangling you. So it's... Exactly. Violence always increases in frequency and severity over time. Strangulation is at the highest lethality. That is the high level of violence, if you're getting to the point, right? So at no point do you want to be in a relationship with someone who's making you feel afraid, scared and feeling like you have to fight for your life or beg for your life or question your sanity or walk on eggshells. And so one of the things that can be really helpful is that if you are experiencing any level of domestic violence, you can file a claim with crime victim assistance through the DA's office. You can get free therapy, you get like an insurance sort of number, and you can get up to 40 sessions as being a direct victim of violence. I always tell people like, treat yourself like a queen, like this is a serious process to even be in a relationship with someone, there's certain criteria to even meet up or even go on a date. So just take it very serious entering into a relationship. Because once you've already crossed the boundaries of intimacy, they do feel like that there is some, there is a connection with you or some ownership or relationship, and now you're in a relationship, right? So before you get in one, make sure you're really, look, run a criminal background check, go to PI, all the things like do everything you need to do. Take it very serious. Take dating serious. Because right, it's so hard to leave once you're in one. But once you're out, just make sure you protect yourself from being in the same situation again. And just, you know, look, all these losers are on dating apps. I'll tell you a story. I helped a client. She came to me for therapy. Her boyfriend filled out her entire application, which was all kinds of red flags, like... Wait, so her, she had a boyfriend who filled out an application for her to see you as a therapist? Yeah. And it was super manipulative. And then on the way to therapy, he insisted he was coming. But she never showed up. After I found out, because I called, called, called, never didn't, was wondering if she was okay. I was genuinely concerned. Well, I found out later, he dumped her off on the side of the road, called her a cunt and left her walking. He didn't want her to go to therapy, but if she was, he wasn't going to let her go to therapy. So eventually she found her way to me and he had been strangling her. And I was working on helping her realize the level of dangerousness. So this, and she was at the highest risk for lethality. So eventually she, he did try to strangle her to death. The final time was she had actually left and he came back and she was walking on the sidewalk. She got out of her car. So she was just minding her own business, going to her house. He came out of nowhere and he grabbed her by the neck. She fell to the sidewalk and he left her. But we'd, we'd been working, I'd been working with her to have a plan. So she called 9-1-1, the police came, they're responding to her. He comes back like to, right, to, to manipulate her. To try to control the narrative. Control the narrative and try to talk to the police. And the manipulation was just off the charts. So he went to jail. He does a small amount of time in jail. It's like a misdemeanor. So sadly that happened. He ends up going right back on a dating app and he's posting pictures. It's the same. So he's right back fresh on these dating apps. And she sent me the screenshots of him on these dating, dating apps, a very dangerous man. So just know, and I work with people in prison or right in jail, they're all on these dating apps. Okay. Don't risk your life by just casually connecting with people through these platforms. Just take it very serious. You don't really know who's on the other side and they can look very attractive or maybe even not have a criminal record or have all kinds of stories for you. But one of the things you'll notice is that they're very available because they don't have a job and they're looking for a place to live. They're very parasitic. So what if someone wasn't in a situation where they were able to call 911, get it documented in the heat of a moment, and maybe they didn't even get a physical evaluation right after it happened. One of the main reasons being that as it takes them so long to even put a word to what they experienced, that that's why there's often delayed documentation because they're being told by their perpetrator, that is not what that was and what happened was not serious. So they delay getting documentation because they're confused about what they even experienced. So what if someone now years later, they have been away from their perpetrator for a year or more, realizes listening to this, oh my gosh, he was violating me through strangulation signs, and I would like to report him. Can that person still make a report? Where should they go to if it's been a long time and there wasn't documentation? You can still make a report. You can still contact the police on a non-emergency line and document your report, and you will likely be given an incident number and it's documented. So I know you were talking about people feeling confused and really unsure what happened or trying to make sense of it. And I know on your first podcast episode, you guys talked about the benefits of journaling and putting information on your notes app or sharing it. So here's the thing. For clarity and peace of mind, document things for your own understanding and recollection of events. And you can always go back to these things and say, wow, wow, this was much worse than I thought, or wow, I was confused, but you know what, I'm much clearer now. And so, yeah, I highly recommend documenting as a way to help bring clarity to your own thoughts. And you can go back through, and if you're looking at months or years of this abuse and you go, what if you brought it to your counselor or you brought it to the police and you said they may provide you some shocking feedback that this is much more horrific than you'd originally thought. And so when in doubt, just document. And so you are, you've been conditioned to doubt yourself. And so in condition to not be believed and to be gaslit, right? So that psychological manipulation, it impairs your judgment and your thinking, and you're really not able to think straight. So you need a second opinion, right? And so partners that are really pathological and try to control you, they don't really want you talking to other people, right? They're going to limit your contact with other people. And it's really important that you stay connected to other people, you know, sister, aunt, friend, mom, cousin, someone, or a therapist or someone. And they don't want you to talk to these other people because these other people are going to have insight about your situation and they don't want you to hear that. Absolutely. Do you know if, I read on the internet recently that it was a quote that said, stalking is murder in slow motion. Do you believe that the combination of stalking behaviors and a history of them asserting themselves by putting their hands on your throat? Do you think that makes them especially dangerous? Yes. So why are you stalking me anyway? If you told me before you're capable of killing me or hurting me, and now you're watching me and you're following me, then what? Like how far would you go? Right? Right. Is that dangerous statistically though, as far as like the danger assessment that you talked about earlier? The stalking behaviors and kind of the persistence behind it. Stalking can even look like them just persistent, making persistent unwanted contact with you. Does that actually make them more dangerous? Because I know, for example, if someone strangles you while you're pregnant, that statistically means they're more likely to kill you, I believe. Yeah. So right. Not only do they have utter disregard for your life, but someone else's life too. Guess who are the cop killers, right? They're disregarding lives. Okay. Your life, your kid's life, your unborn child's life, your family's life. They take other people down with them and not just you. Okay. And think about suicide because there's a fine line between suicide and homicide. Because I'm thinking my life, I have less regard for my own life, right? Then that can also extend to the lives of others. So if I'm willing to go, it's not a big deal to take anyone else with me if I'm already willing to go. And so a lot of these men, they'll choose, they use a gun and it's a murder-suicide and they will kill their partner and then take their life. But to them, it doesn't matter. They were going to die anyway. And so they just want to do it on their own terms. So they're taking you out with them. Keep in mind, it can also be very manipulative if they're making statements often and maybe they're appearing not to be suicidal, but they're using it as manipulation to get you to do something they want you to do by like, don't leave me while I'm going to harm myself. So then they're controlling you. And that plays out a lot in relationships and it's very dangerous. So they're just using their words to get you to stay, but it's feeling very scary, right? One question that someone asked me was, if someone strangles you one time and they say they won't do it again, do you believe them? What are your thoughts on that? Well, you have to think about how does anyone get to the point where they're wanting to harm you, physically harm you, and control you at that level? It takes a lot to even rise to that level of violence. So they're already there. So a lot's happened to get them to that point. So it's likely they're going to be using a lot of other forms of manipulation and violence. And like everything increases in frequency and severity, they know cut to chase what they need to do to have the maximum level of violence, right? So it's a learned behavior and over time they can be like, zero to 60, they're just going to go to that again. If they've done it once with you, so that begs the question, they've done this before in another relationship and how many times? And so that's a deeply concerning behavior, right? Because strangulation is lethal, right? So if you're in a relationship where anyone is using lethality, then that's a dangerous relationship. Exactly. But I want to ask you, so over the course of your career, is there anything that you found particularly interesting or like, I don't know, pivotal in the way that maybe legislation has been developed or anything pivotal that's happening in the space where the crossover between domestic violence and homicide and patterns that you're seeing? Yes. There is new legislation that just passed this year on September 27th in 2024 and this is known as Joanna's Law. It's also known as SB 989, so SB stands for Senate Bill, so this just went into effect. And so this is a law that's going to mandate that coroners and law enforcement agencies conduct thorough investigations into deaths of individuals with a well-documented history of domestic violence, especially in cases where it appears to be suicide or an accident but there's a significant history of domestic violence and it's looking suspicious. And I can tell you all too often I'm hearing from women and even getting cases sent to me where their loved one is deceased and they don't believe they killed themselves. And as a forensic psychologist, I do psychological autopsies, I go back through everything leading up to that death and maybe it wasn't suicide or an accident. And so documentation please, no matter where you're at in your relationship, just document it and this can help. And then after death for the decedent, for those looking at all the records, and I wanted to say also I had a sister reach out to me to do a pro bono case. Their sister was being strangled in a relationship, her name was Kayla Siego and she was eventually found hanging in her basement, dead. And she had been being strangled periodically before that? Wow. Correct. And there was a restraining order and she had left him and I looked at all the information and I'm here to say that people can make a staged suicide but the evidence won't line up. But how this connects to SB 989 is we got to reopen these cases and look at it and they should be doing a more thorough job before they close out the autopsy or rule it as a suicide. So it's very important. So I'm hoping that law will actually provide some additional finances to some of these agencies for doing these investigations and taking it seriously. I'm curious, did you study the Gabby Petito case at all during the time that that was happening? Because I remember seeing the police video of the incident that happened several days prior to when she was killed. And what really stood out to me about the video footage of her was the way she was so confused by what she was experiencing with her perpetrator. And I think that's the place so many of us are in who are listening to this is like they're so convinced that it's their fault or that it doesn't quote unquote count as strangulation escalating. And I don't know, I haven't studied her case enough to say that he was starting to put his hands near her throat prior to that. But when I watched that video footage, it reminded me of where so many of us are in that place of we don't even know what to call it. So her cause of death was manual strangulation. So you got to wonder, right? If strangulation was the ultimate cause of death, do you think that was the first time? In my experience, the way strangulation plays out, it's insidious. There's a no point with the people I interviewed where there was just this horrifically violent strangulation in the beginning. No, it didn't start like that. It would be expected that it increased in severity over time. And then the final cause of death. And so while maybe we don't know if it wasn't documented, there would be an assumption that it was presented in and throughout the relationship to get to a lethal measure where you murder someone through manual strangulation. And again, the message is clear. I can kill you and I could kill you. But I'm going to exert control over you in the most insidious way possible so that you struggle to identify what you're experiencing. I completely agree. Well, I want to kind of close out today with one question I got through my Instagram question box, and that is, what if it hasn't happened yet, but I feel that it's going to escalate to that? And I want to let you know that there's some research out there that indicates that a woman's intuition of whether or not her partner will become violent is one of the greatest predictors of future escalating violence than sometimes any other warning sign. So if you're in a situation where you feel like you are confused, or maybe something like this hasn't happened, but you sense that your perpetrator would not be opposed to impeding your breath in some form, I would encourage you to trust that intuition and trust that voice inside of you that's telling you something is wrong, and I sense that this person could possibly be capable of that, that they wouldn't be opposed to it. So I'm also... Go ahead. Yeah. And your intuition, what is that? It's your physiological response to maybe fear. So your body is telling something to you. So and also, I was in a relationship and it was controlling, and look, I wanted to leave. So I did, but that person stalked me for years and years after that. And when I got a restraining order, so I'm telling you it got worse after you leave, but he did threaten to strangle me one day in a very interesting play of words where I felt like, wow, that... And he hadn't ever before, but I thought, I followed my restraining order with that language that he used. And he did say, don't you know what I could do to you? Don't you know? He knew what he could do and I believed him. So believe them. And here's another tip that helped me. I left audio messages to myself about my experience. I still have them, but they were messages to myself like, I'm filing a restraining order. I don't know if I've gone too far. Is this right? I didn't really mean for it to get this far. I really just don't want any of this. I left myself audio messages because it's all very overwhelming. Going back and listening to them, it was like, wow, what doubt I had in myself for my own judgment. Like, wow. But it was really powerful to go back and look at your own written words, your own audio messages, your own thoughts at that time, and get a clear perspective when you're out of the relationship and say, wow. And I also kept a stalking log that went on for years of every single thing. And there were hundreds of incidences. And so it all can add up to be so much. So trust your instincts and document. That's so important. I love that. So I also want to mention that I'm going to include as many resources as possible about this subject in the description of the episode. So definitely please check those out. I'm going to link articles that I personally think are helpful or things that may answer more of your questions. So check out any of those. And just share the episode with anybody who you think could personally benefit from it. It could even be someone who, again, is in the space of educating other people or who wants to learn more about the topic and how it often tangibly plays out in a relationship. So I just really appreciate having you on, Dr. Anderson. It's been an honor to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So let's get to middling.