Savannah Doherty, a first-year doctoral student, recently had her work published in Deviant Behavior. Joined by her co-authors, Dr. Lindsay Leban, in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Ter’Ricka F. Brundidge, doctoral student at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, they examine the literature on the cognitive strategies employed by women experiencing intimate partner violence to make sense of their victimization and maintain positive self-concepts Using a qualitative meta-synthesis approach and applying neutralization theory as a unifying lens to synthesize findings from 16 qualitative studies, the authors identify four neutralization techniques: self-blame, denial of significance, minimization of severity, and sympathy for the abuser. They also find that these neutralizations are dynamic and can dissolve in response to catalytic events, including escalating abuse, recognition of patterns, concern for children, and outsider input.