Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979
Psychologist, Social Worker, Counselor, & MFT!!

Section 1
Track #1 - Introduction & Grooming for Violence

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Introduction
Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute. This course is entitled,"I Made Him Hit Me" Strategies for Battered Women.

Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth. The Institute has provided quality education since 1979.

Hi. My name is Catherine Appleton. I will be the narrator of this CD set. We appreciate that you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing Education Credit.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. dealing with battered women. As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting. However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute. Also each track is very content dense. So feel free to replay the track to review the content.

At the end of each CD track, a question will be asked. The question at the end of each track corresponds with the questions in your Answer Booklet. Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your answer booklet. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions. They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD set.

Each of the questions that are included on this CD set is also reprinted in your Answer Booklet. These questions are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it. For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Answer Booklet prior to listening to that CD track. By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer. So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Answer Booklet, read on to the next question in order to give you a “heads up” to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question.

For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “therapists” or “mental health professional.” However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations. When you hear the word “therapists,” if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term “therapists” cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example. I will also use the term “client” for the purposes of brevity. However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose “client” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting.

Regarding pronouns and gender brevity, I am in full agreement that women can be just as powerful, controlling, and manipulative as men in relationships. And it goes without saying that this dynamic can happen in same sex relationships as well. However, for the purposes of brevity in this CD set we will mainly deal with women who are battered by men.

On this CD set we will discuss such topics as: Grooming for Violence, The Dog Collar, Four Techniques for “If Only” Destruction, Unraveling Guilty Feelings, Resolving Failure Expectancy, The Pyramid of Self-Hate, Personal Terrorisms, Pains and Pluses Journaling, Illusions to Avoid Responsibility, and Killing Her Dragon.

Now let’s get started. As an introduction to battering, before I start a discussion of physical abuse, I would like to talk briefly about emotional abuse. Have you found like I that batterers use emotional abuse as a grooming process for the physical abuse to follow? I’m sure you have found like I that grooming is a way the abuser has of “testing the waters” for the tolerance level and boundaries of his victim.

Here’s how this grooming process unfolded for Shannon, age 31. Shannon mentioned some of the comments her husband, Aaron, made regularly. Shannon stated tearfully, “He teases me a lot. He makes fun of the way I drive, the way I walk… He even criticizes the way I make the bed in the morning. I know he’s just affectionately teasing me. Aaron probably thinks my stupid little ways are cute, but after a while it does make me really feel stupid. I am not sure I can do anything right.” Shannon later revealed an incident during which Aaron shoved her onto the bed face down followed by a couple kicks because he felt the bed wasn’t properly made.

What is your first step in helping your possible potential battered woman that may be being groomed? Have you found, like I, that a way to help this type of client is to simply increase her awareness of the emotional abuse? I reminded Shannon that what she was calling "affectionate teasing” might in fact fall into one or several of the following four types of verbal abuse… I broke them down this way for Shannon… belittling, mimicking, insulting, and ignoring.

1. Belittling.
I find it helpful to discuss with clients like Shannon to be aware of actions or verbalizations that are resulting to making her feel smaller or ashamed of herself or her actions. I told Shannon that belittling could include laughing, smirking, and jokes like the ones Aaron would make about her driving. At one point, Shannon stated, “Sometimes he repeats things to me very, very slowly, as if I didn’t get what he said the first time, and as if I am a four-year-old.” I asked Shannon whether she thought it might be possible that Aaron was actually belittling her by treating her as if she were a child, rather than affectionately teasing her?

2. Mimicking.
After explaining belittling, I asked Shannon to consider whether or not Aaron’s jokes ever included mimicking. I gave her examples such as imitating a frustrated tone in her voice, or mocking something she said. Shannon burst into tears and exclaimed, “Yes, yes, my God, he does that and I felt it was okay because I am such a horrible person.”

3. Insulting.
As you know, all verbal abuse is not as subtle as some examples of belittling and mimicking. I asked Shannon what she thought about the idea that regularly insulting a loved one is not loving behavior, and is in fact abusive. I pointed out to Shannon that when Aaron tells her she can’t make the bed correctly, his communication results in an insult her competence.

4. Ignoring.
As you know, emotional abuse, which may be actually a grooming behavior for physical abuse to occur in the future, is not always verbal. Ignoring Shannon’s words, actions, and needs can of course be an abusive behavior. Shannon just felt that Aaron’s ignoring her was another indication of how unworthy she was of his time.

As you know, this list does not include every way that a person can be groomed for physical abuse through emotionally abuse. However, I find it is helpful in simply giving clients an idea as to what kinds of behaviors are included in emotional abuse. This short, simple list helped Shannon to recognize and admit that a problem with emotional abuse existed in her relationship. I reminded Shannon that even though each of these behaviors seems small on its own, these small behaviors can actually end up being a grooming process for Aaron’s later physical assaults.

In this track we've looked at how physical abuse can start for your client via emotional abuse as a means of grooming them for the violence of physical abuse. .

In the next track we will discuss what one client calls the “dog collar” of control and a client Personal Power Exercise.

QUESTION 1
What are four types of emotional abuse that a batterer may use to groom his victim for future physical abuse? To select and enter your answer go to Answer Booklet.