What Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” Gets Right About Abuse
By Chantell Prestcott-Hollander, M.Ed., LCPC, NCC
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and Taylor Swift’s Patient Zero has put something important into the cultural conversation: sometimes we don’t recognize a pattern until women start comparing notes.
In the song, that comparison is direct. One woman seemingly reaches out to the woman who came before her after beginning to recognize troubling patterns in her own relationship. Instead of rivalry or competition, there is recognition: Did this happen to you, too?
In real life, though, comparing notes is rarely that straightforward. Maybe we’ve heard things. Maybe we’ve watched a friend become quieter, more anxious, or increasingly isolated. Maybe one partner is always apologizing while the other is always being excused. Maybe every story somehow ends with the same woman being blamed. Or maybe something simply doesn’t sit right.
Let’s normalize women looking out for other women.
That doesn’t mean assuming we know what happens inside someone else’s relationship, diagnosing people, spreading rumors, or deciding that every unhealthy relationship is abusive. Not every unhealthy relationship is abusive, and conflict itself is not abuse. Abuse is fundamentally about power and control. It can include intimidation, manipulation, isolation, humiliation, monitoring, threats, financial control, sexual coercion, or repeatedly making someone question her own perception of what is happening.
These less visible forms of abuse are not uncommon. According to the CDC’s national data, more than one in four U.S. women report experiencing coercive control by an intimate partner during their lifetime. That can include being isolated from friends and family, having a partner monitor where they are and what they are doing, having money controlled, or having decisions taken away from them.
Sometimes the signs we should be paying attention to aren’t bruises. They’re changes in freedom, confidence, connection, and autonomy.
It is also important to remember that people who behave abusively are rarely abusive to everyone. They can be funny, generous, successful, popular, a great friend, or a beloved family member. That is part of what makes abuse so confusing, both for the person living it and for everyone around her. “But he’s always been wonderful to me” may be completely true. It just doesn’t cancel out someone else’s very different experience.
Pay Attention to the Story Surrounding the Relationship
Sometimes one partner slowly becomes the explanation for everything. She’s too sensitive. She’s dramatic. She’s jealous. She makes him angry. You know how she is. Meanwhile, the other person’s behavior keeps getting explained away. He’s under a lot of stress. He didn’t mean it like that. That’s just how he is. There are two sides to every story.
Of course relationships are complicated, and conflict itself is not abuse. But when one person is consistently blamed and the other is consistently excused, that is worth noticing. Friends and family can reinforce that dynamic without meaning to, simply by repeating those explanations, laughing along with the characterization of a partner, or dismissing things they have seen with their own eyes.
Looking out for one another also means paying attention to what we are being recruited to believe. If someone repeatedly invites us to see their partner as unstable, unreasonable, jealous, or responsible for their behavior, we don’t have to automatically accept that framing. We can care about someone and still refuse to make excuses for the way they treat their partner. Sometimes being a safe person means being willing to say, “I don’t think it’s okay to treat her that way.”
You Don’t Need All the Answers to Be a Safe Person
We can notice when someone who once seemed confident becomes unusually anxious, withdrawn, isolated, monitored, apologetic, or afraid of upsetting her partner. We can decline to participate when a woman is repeatedly made the villain of every story. And we can remember that knowing someone as a friend, coworker, sibling, or neighbor doesn’t necessarily tell us how that person behaves with an intimate partner.
Sometimes looking out for someone is as simple as asking, “Hey, I’ve noticed a few things lately. Are you okay?”
If she tells us something concerning, we don’t need to interrogate her, decide whether it is “bad enough,” or immediately tell her what to do. A better place to start is: “I believe you. That doesn’t sound okay. How can I support you?”
Being a safe person also means resisting the question, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” Leaving an abusive relationship can be complicated and can carry very real risks. Support, autonomy, and individualized safety planning are far more helpful than telling someone what we think she should do.
What Happens When We Stop Keeping Our Information Separate?
One woman experienced something. Another noticed something. A friend heard something. A sister saw something. An ex remembers something. On its own, each piece may seem too small to mention, and each person may assume she doesn’t know enough to say anything. Sometimes it is only when those experiences are allowed to sit alongside one another that a pattern becomes visible.
That, to me, is what Patient Zero gets right.
We don’t need to become detectives in other people’s relationships. We need to become safer people for one another. We can check in. We can listen without immediately rushing to defend the other person. We can refuse to participate in scapegoating. And we can accept that someone may have experienced a side of a person we have never seen.
At StrongHER®, we believe self-protection begins long before a physical confrontation. It begins with recognizing patterns, trusting what you notice, practicing boundaries, using your voice, and knowing how to respond when something doesn’t feel right. It also means building communities where women can speak honestly about what they are experiencing and be met with support rather than judgment.
Protecting ourselves matters. Looking out for each other does, too.
This October, let’s do both.
If you or someone you know needs support, the National Domestic Violence Hotline provides free, confidential support 24/7. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org.
About the Author
Chantell Prestcott-Hollander, M.Ed., LCPC, NCC, is a licensed clinical therapist, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), trauma-informed educator, and founder of The StrongHER Initiative®. A Krav Maga black belt and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai practitioner, she combines her clinical expertise with nearly two decades of work in self-protection, boundary-setting, and violence prevention to help women and girls recognize risk, trust themselves, use their voices, and develop practical skills for personal safety.
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