This post was written anonymously by a staffer at The Second Step in February 2026.
1 in 3 teens in the U.S. will experience physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from a partner before becoming an adult (Love is Respect).
This staggering figure is one I didn’t realize I myself am a part of until working at The Second Step. My 16-year-old relationship seemed completely normal to me at the time, except for a few seemingly random instances of physical violence. He was very silly, sweet, and well-liked, and yet once in a while, he would fly off the handle and hit me in the head if I was “annoying” him. I couldn’t make any sense of it, and it was filed away in my brain under “Unfortunate Incidents of the Past” for years. I went years without explicitly thinking about it.
I finished high school, broke up with that guy, went to my dream school, and landed a job I was excited about at The Second Step. I felt like my life was on track. But I still jumped when people tapped me on the shoulder. I still had a hard time holding eye contact (I still do). I was still afraid of being “annoying,” which was very difficult to parse out from being myself. I hadn’t pursued any sort of relationship in 7 years. It’s weird – it was simultaneously all I wanted, and also the most terrifying and unappealing thing in the world. It was a different type of loneliness than simply being “single.” It was isolation, confusion, and stagnancy.
I thought I was moving forward with my life for those 7 years, but I wasn’t. Time was just passing. I developed aversions, addictions, coping mechanisms, and coping mechanisms for those coping mechanisms. I was breaking weeds off at the stem, never fully removing the complex system of roots.
My first week at The Second Step, I did 25 hours of trainings on domestic abuse and heard the words “Being hit even once is physical abuse.” But I had been hit a couple times and that wasn’t abuse? Suddenly, I was aware of the box in my brain. I would open it more and more over the next couple years, thinking “Oh is that why I…?” and discussing with whatever therapist was in-zone at the time. While none of my coworkers knew this, I couldn’t have been working at a better place for this sort of realization. The compassion for survivors and dedication to understanding that I was surrounded with laid the foundation for that mindset within myself.
I consider The Second Step to have given me one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given – the chance to release a decade of shame that I didn’t know was holding me back.
There are special vulnerabilities to being a teenager and experiencing these things. You are in your prime for learning—able to quickly absorb lessons (negative or positive) about how relationships should look/what you deserve, as well as coping mechanisms. At the same time, you have the least relationship experience you ever will and know very little about what to expect and what to accept. This is why it is so important to teach the young people around us, through words as well as actions, that they deserve healthy relationships and what those relationships do and don’t look like.
When teens experience common symptoms of abuse like a drop in grades, change in demeanor, and even substance use (I experienced all of those things), their stories are often missed and met with anger and punishment. How many of these students are labeled “problem children” and is there really any such thing?
Dig deeper for the youth in your life. Have real, judgement-free conversations with them. It’s amazing how common stories of grooming and teen abuse are, and albeit anecdotally, almost everyone I’ve talked to about it has a couple stories from their own school. At my school it was the football coach “dating” two students (which we now would definitely call grooming), the Vice Principle grooming another, and likely a few stories that I will never know. You might have one or two of those stories from your school, and the teens you know might have those stories already. We don’t need any more of those stories.
It’s a full-circle and healing feeling to work for a place now that has a Prevention Education program to intervene in these kids’ lives where I wish someone had in mine. There is so much shame and embarrassment woven into the teenage experience, let alone when you are experiencing something so stigmatized as abuse, and that shame is a very effective inhibitor to learning. When I hear about The Second Step’s Prevention Educators using TV show characters and games to teach kids about healthy and unhealthy relationships, I feel very confident that that information is traveling to them on a different frequency than their shame. That is to say, I believe in their method and feel that it will help to prevent a lot of suffering. I feel lucky to have found The Second Step when I did and to be a part of breaking that cycle for other teens.
Learn more about Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.
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