When I ran a program for men who had been violent and abusive with their partners, we would always try to have contact with their partners. Why? 1. We wanted to hear about her experience of the abuse, as we didn't trust what we were being told by the men in the group 🧵 I wanted to learn from her more about his pattern, whatever she was willing to tell us so we would know if he was anywhere close to the truth about his behavior. She was completely at choice can and could tell us that information in confidence. 2. We wanted to give her...

This Tweet is for #domesticviolence survivors and their loved ones: Survivors are most likely to disclose their abuse to a loved one before ever calling the police or leaving. Unfortunately they don't always get the best response. Even well meaning friends & family...🧵 may blame them, question their decisions or flat out fail to recognize what is happening. "What did you do to provoke the abuse?" or "It's your job to forgive him."

When I worked with abusive men, there were some clients who were active alcoholics & also abusive. Some of them who stopped drinking continued to be abusive. They came to our program because they had assumed that once they stopped drinking their abusive behavior would stop. 🧵 What they found out was that their abuse continued even after they entered recovery. It's different for different people but it's important not to assume that just because someone stops using alcohol or other drugs they will automatically stop being abusive...

This Tweet is for men: Yesterday I was in taxi in NYC & observed a scene that is repeated thousands (millions?) of times a day: a young woman waiting at a bus stop alone (going to work? going to care for her children or her elderly mother?) doing everything she.... could to ignore an older man hitting on her. I imagined her trying to figure out how to not encourage him while preparing herself from any potential escalation to anger & perhaps violence if he didn't get the response he wanted. Men put women in this position everyday...

I worked with abusive men for almost two decades. For most of these men the primary underlying emotional issue tied to their unacceptable violence and control was not anger. It was fear. And they expected their a partner to change so they wouldn't feel their fear... They were willing to use abuse & violence and control to get what they wanted. There is no equivalency between the fear I'm talking about & the fear they produced in their family. Their behavior terrorized and diminished others. Never okay....

The #JonahHill victimization of Sarah Brady got me thinking about the traditional individual therapy frameworks & how poorly suited they are for dealing with perpetrators of abuse. Here are a few points to consider: 1. The therapist only hears from the abuser, not the victim.. 2. The focus can often be on healing the abuser, not on the victim's safety, well-being or healing.
3. The focus is on often on the abuser's experience, feelings and inner world, not on their behaviors as they impact others....

@SallyRMelb The general understanding of trauma and the resulting initiatives focusing heavily on psychological symptoms resulting from the witnessing or experience of physical violence. While more nuanced understandings exist and are practice including trauma with profound neglect.... @SallyRMelb ...they are not the dominant interpretations. Frameworks that center coercive control need additional pathways to harm than just psychological one. We need broader understandings of impact on functioning like effects on housing, employment, family and social relations, education

Thanks @outofhiscontrol for sharing this. Exactly what I was looking for. I'm going to comment on this knowing it is draft form.

https://twitter.com/outofhiscontrol/status/1495769021567971335

In reading the case study after para 195 I was happy to see how high quality mental health services for a child survivor was presented. My other reaction was to the invisibility of her perpetrator father, who she is still having contact with.