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Section
1 Question
1 found at the bottom of this page Introduction The purpose of this course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc., who batter. 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 Healthcare Training Institute. Regarding completion of the Answer Booklet…at the end of each CD track, a question is asked. This question corresponds with a question in your Answer Booklet. Merely write the correct letter on the blank line that precedes each question. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions. They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD. These questions are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it. For this reason, to facilitate answering 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 know the content to listen for that contains the answer. So just a hint, after you answer a question, read on to the next question in order to give you a "heads up" to listen for the content that contains the answer. 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 situation. 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 deter you from hearing the content of a track 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" to the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. In addition, it is clear that not all batterers are male and all battering victims are female. However, for the purpose of brevity in this course, we will generally refer to the batterer as a male and the victim as a female. By no means is this an attempt to diminish the legitimacy of cases in which the reverse occurs. So when I refer to a male batterer, in your mind, if you have a female batterer, mentally transpose the terminology in order to hear the essence of the treatment message. So let's get started...We will discuss such topics as: altering attitudes, team pacing and playfulness, the three stages of abuse, red flags to violence, expanding choice points, overcontrollers vs. undercontrollers: masked dependency, nice guy positioning strategies, the invisible dragon of shame, checkpoints for change, goal-setting, problem goals, and therapeutic ruts. First of all, let's look at ways in which Group Intervention is used in altering the attitudes of clients who batter. As you know, group sessions help a client to expand his social network. For example, Daniel, age 30, found that group members were willing to help him become non-abusive, to alter his attitudes. Daniel had been married to Sarah for five years. He was court-ordered into the anger management group after a battering incident following his son's birthday party. Through the course of several sessions, Daniel stated, "It was my son Jake's first birthday, and Sarah had her mom and sisters over for a party when I got home from work. I went into the living room and told Sarah to fix me a sandwich. She told me she would fix it in a minute. I told her I was hungry NOW, so she would fix the sandwich NOW! I grabbed her by the arm and threw her into the kitchen. Later that night, I slapped her. Then I started hitting her harder. She was screaming for me to stop. I ended up shoving her down and grabbing her neck till she was gasping for air, just to keep her quiet. I guess the neighbors must have heard something and called the police." Have you found, like I, that many court-ordered clients are confused as to why they are being referred to the anger management group? I often hear statements like: "I don't know why I'm here; they just told me to come," or "I really don't have any problems, but I was told I had to be here so I could get my children back." Daniel expressed his confusion when he stated, "It's not really my problem; she's the one with the anger!" As you can see, Daniel was trying to reflect blame away from himself and onto Sarah. He stated, "I work all day and make all the money and she just stays home with our son. So it seems like the least she can do is make me dinner. But, it all happened so fast; I didn't really know what I was doing. Sarah asked for it! She wasn't listening to me. I had to make her listen somehow! Well, at least I didn't kill her!" Before entering the legal system, Daniel did not recognize his behavior as abusive. Thus, he saw no reason to change. I found that three methods of Altering Attitudes were helpful with Daniel. As I discuss these methods, think about how you might use them with your Daniel. #1.
Broadening Definitions To help personalize the definition of abuse, I asked members of the group to make a list of behaviors they considered abusive. I wrote their answers on a flip chart. Answers ranged from pushing to slapping to choking. After working on this list, it became more clear to Daniel that abuse has a much broader definition than the one he had learned by observing his father's pushing and slapping of his mother. Thus, to Daniel, abuse was a normal way of communicating. #2.
Learning Empathy At first, he was only able to identify the consequences or negative aspects that affected him. These consequences included the arrest, court involvement, and the very real possibility that Sarah might leave him and take his son with her. I
wanted to increase Daniel's awareness of what he might consider the pay-offs of
abuse. When I asked Daniel, "What do you think were the pay-offs of your
actions?" he drew a blank. I urged Daniel to recall the point when he chose
to use violence against Sarah. In addition to identifying the initial point of
violence, Daniel needed to identify just why he felt violence was necessary at
that moment. I asked Daniel what went through his mind when he started hitting
Sarah. Daniel stated, "It was pretty soon after Jake was born and I felt
like Sarah was being lazy. She was using the fact that she'd just had a baby to
boss me around and make me responsible for Jake." Daniel said, "She
was nagging me and that drives me up the wall! I guess I thought I had to shut
her up. I threw her across the floor and kept punching her in the head. She didn't
say another word the rest of the night." I asked him if he felt that getting
her to shut up was the benefit and he said, "Yeah, she stopped nagging me
didn't she? I got my way, and afterwards I didn't feel so tense. Plus, we're always
really happy for a while after we make up. " #3.
Recognizing the Effects of the Media For Daniel, whom we discussed earlier, his marriage was all about dominance and forcing his will onto Sarah. Daniel stated, "To me to be top dog is what it's all about. I can't let her push me around. If I let her do that, what kind of man would I be? God made man first, which means men are supposed to rule women. A wife is supposed to do what her husband tells her to. And damn it, she better." I suggested to Daniel that there were other media examples of men who did not need to dominate women in order to show their strength. In
this track, we talked about three methods of Altering Attitudes. Those methods
were: Broadening Definitions, Learning Empathy, and Recognizing the Effects
of the Media. In the next track, we will discuss the advantages of working
as a male-female therapist team. QUESTION
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