Can Abusive Men Change? The Truth About Domestic Violence Intervention

Domestic violence intervention—what works, what doesn’t, and what survivors need to know. My guest, Nada Yorke, LCSW, a former probation officer, breaks down expert insights, real-life experiences, and the psychological patterns behind abusive behavior. If you’ve ever wondered whether an abuser can truly change, this episode will give you the answers you need.

LESSONS LEARNED

Most abusers do not change without intensive intervention and accountability.

True change requires long-term commitment, not just apologies or short-term efforts.

Batterer intervention programs have mixed success; traditional therapy alone is often ineffective.

Combining education, support, and accountability leads to lasting change.

Survivors should focus on their own healing rather than waiting for an abuser to change.

Teaching kids how to communicate and navigate emotions is key prevention!

Safety planning and support systems are essential for those in or leaving abusive relationships.

RESOURCES

If you found this episode helpful, please share it (top right hand corner, drop down, “Share” to text or email) with a young person or someone who works with youth. Let’s equip the next generation with the tools to navigate online relationships safely!

National Domestic Violence Hotline

LoveisRespect

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence

Batterer Intervention Programs Standards

Nada Yorke's Website

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Reach Mandi through her website AwareAndPrepared.Life or Instagram @WomenAwareAndPrepared

Transcript

 I cover two different angles of this. So I go in and I share my story, um, for places like IVAT or places like schools or even, um, victim service provider types of things. And I share my story and then there's, it's like two prongs.

So one is I am going in on the prevention angle, but I am also, and sharing like what I wish. I would have known before I got into that situation. And then I'm also sharing about the healing aspect of it. Cause everybody goes, whoa, holy crap, your story. How are you? Okay. Like we never would have guessed, you know, just by looking at you, we wouldn't have guessed that that happened to you.

So how the heck did you get through that?  And that's what they want to know. So that's what I share.  So kind of that resilience piece too. Exactly. Yes. So I am a resilient speaker. So I go out and speak at different,  you know, schools and also employee resource groups. I'm trying to get into that as well  but my heart is really with the teenagers and helping them prevent  this kind of thing happening to them. So that's why I loved your work 

yeah. I, I love, um,  I love being able to come in from the perspective of, you know, the family is a unit and if you could heal dad, could you make a ripple effect through the whole family? Oh my gosh. That is a hundred percent aligned with what, yes, we are a hundred percent aligned.  Yes. 



I'm so excited to introduce you to somebody that I met about a year ago, and her and I just really connected because we are so aligned in our advocacy work. So Nada thank you for being here with me today. I'm so excited.  Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be part of the work you're doing and being able to speak to others about how important it is to, um, to work with trauma and to work with families and even men who cause trauma.

Yes. Thank you. And that's how, when I met you, I was just like, wait, what, what do you do in your curriculum? And I looked through it and I was like,  Oh, my gosh, like this needs to be pretty much in every single school, like, and everywhere like teenagers really need that information. Um, so please, first of all, tell us your background and how you got into doing this work and what, you know, kind of what you're finding.

Okay. Um, so yeah, I've just had a really fun  career, several careers now. Um, so I started off, I'm a retired probation officer out of California. I worked mostly adults, although I started with the juveniles.  And I have to admit my, uh, I worked in the juvenile institutions, developed programs for the kids, did some juvenile supervision and just really had a heart for some of these kids.

But you know, you could have this really cool 15 year old that you knew that you had to send back home into a dysfunctional home and hope he lasted till he was 18 and could get out.  And so that was always, you know, kind of a hard, hard thing to, to deal with. But, well then when I became an officer, they put me in the adult division.

And of course I wanted to work in juveniles, save the kids, you know, but I sat in the parking lot and cried my first morning because I thought, Oh no, I have to work with these horrible adults.  But what I found was working with the adults was like working with juveniles with less hormone problems. Oh my gosh, so many of them, you know, came out of those same dysfunctional homes and made bad choices and ended up in the adult system. 

So it really changed my whole mindset, you know, and then I started to realize if I could work with mom or dad and help them get themselves squared away. They could go home and raise their own kids and I do it in the system. Yes. Yeah. So it was, um, it was really just a very rewarding career. And in my last, I would say my last eight, nine years, I got involved, um, with the domestic violence.

piece.  And while it always existed on my various caseloads, whether it was in the homes of those kids I worked with or with the adults that I had on my drug specialized caseload. Um,  I just didn't see it because in the criminal justice world, if a charge is dismissed, it doesn't count. You put these horse blinders on when you're making sentencing recommendations and such.

And so even though it might be in their criminal record, If it didn't have a conviction, you just act like it didn't happen.  So when I moved into our Victim Witness Unit, I went to the law enforcement agencies and I said, I have these, this list of 16, 20 violent crimes, you know, crimes were, um, I mean, all the way from DUI to robberies to, you know, assaults on people,  homicides. 

And so we would provide services through California Victim Witness Program.  So when I went to these. Agencies. I said, I need all of your police reports so that I can assign it out to my officers and we can contact these folks and let them know their services available. What was shocking to me was 75 to 80 percent of those reports every single week from whether it was the county sheriff or the city police  were domestic violence. 

And I thought, where in the world did these come from? I never saw them. But what I didn't realize is I didn't know what I was looking at. And I was missing it because of the, um, the way we did our work. So it really changed my trajectory in working, um, with my future cases. Uh, being able to recognize where I saw domestic violence arrest, where there's smoke, there's fire.

You know, it's not like police officers have nothing to do all day, but to go around and knock on doors and say, are you not getting along? Let me take somebody to jail. So it just doesn't work that way. And that caused me.  To get interested in well, what is available there? Because as a probation officer working a specialized  drug caseload and a specialized gang caseload, and these were with adults,  I saw where we could interject programming interventions.

To actually change behavior.  And so I thought, well, what's out there for domestic violence? And it was kind of like this, its own little Island, you know, that the ones who provided the work kind of kept to themselves. And just, it was like, Oh, just trust us. We know what we're doing. And it was like, okay, but they had high dropout rates.

High recidivism rates.  And so when I retired, I went back and got my master's in social work and I did my internship at a maximum security prison where I got admitted. You're so brave.  Wow.  I loved working with those men because you know what I found was they just wanted to be good men. They wanted to be good dads. 

I had one man who joined because, and they were all voluntary. He joined because he didn't want his grandchildren to be raised in the home of violence that he had raised them in. Wow. Yeah. And so he saw that opportunity to maybe learn something different and then be able to have a positive impact for his grandchildren.

Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. It was so encouraging. In fact, I, uh, I was not able to finish the program with the men because. Being a maximum security prison, there were a lot of  lockdowns and I said, it's not a homework class, you know, we have to meet.  So I was with them for like a year and a half. And what had happened is when I signed them up, I was doing research and I said, I'm. 

You know, this cost is this program is not going to cost you anything, but I am doing research and I can't take you to that chair, but I am going to ask for your word that you'll stay with me and finish the program. So I had no voluntary dropouts. The only people I lost were people who were either paroling or had gotten their points down so they could go to a lower, lower level. 

Got it. Wow. Yeah. So they were very interested in what they were learning. In fact, one man was leaving. He said, I wish I could, um, he said, I wish I could stay just for this class because I'm learning so much. Oh, wow. That says a lot.  Yeah. I said, well, what you taught me was how can I expect you to love and respect somebody else?

If you don't know what love and respect. Looks like or feels like, but now that you do, yes, I do expect that now. I do expect you to move forward in what you've learned and applying what you've learned.  And so it was very rewarding. And I told them, I said, if you hear about this going on in the jails and prisons, pat yourself on the back.

It's because your courage to come and participate that has motivated me to just continue to do this work. Yeah. Wow. That's so, wow. That's amazing.  And what, what interesting,  it's like you ended up in these different places, but because of that, that helped you piece everything together to do the very important work that you're doing now and, and really get into that and help break that cycle of violence that would go from generation to generation to generations.

Exactly. In fact, the name of our program was called Breaking the Cycle, the one we did at the, in the community after that finished, because a colleague of mine was working with a, um, a program that ministered to homeless people and, um, and trying to get them into housing and into, you know, permanent housing.

And what she found was so many of them kept going back and forth to jail because they couldn't afford the better intervention program. Yet, you know, here they were in these, uh, abusive relationships and, uh, they couldn't afford to get the help. So she got a grant for private funding  to take. It was, uh, from a anonymous Christian organization.

We kind of tailored it with fathers who behave badly. That's who we're working with. Oh gosh.  So about restoring that family. Because you know one of the things I learned at Victim Witness often times as I'm interviewing women who've been through abuse  so many of them were either not wanting to leave the relationship, they just wanted the violence to stop.

So it wasn't about kicking him to the curb just, you know, get his attention and make him stop being violent.  And the other piece was if they did leave If he did not get help, those children were still being exposed to an aggressive, abusive father. He just found somebody else. Right.  And so, and there are many men that I've interviewed when we talk about their family history and they'll share how, well, my mom left my dad when I was really young, but you know, he was abusive to the next three girlfriends.

Yeah. And yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. And  I really was. 

Um, what's the word taken back, I guess, when you are not,  I was really imprinted when you and I were talking before and you said that you went and you were teaching the teenagers about all of this and  what did they tell you?  So that was, we had a pilot project, um, and one of the things that came out was how they did not. 

No, they, you know, they were learning things they had not learned at home. And that's one of the things that whenever I share this with the men in various programs that, Hey, I've come out with a youth curriculum and they're like, Oh, that is so wonderful. I need that for my kid, you know, because even now that they're learning how to do things differently, they realize that their own kids have been impacted enough that they're seeing that aggression.

That. Abusive, you know, kind of behavior or just the effects of trauma. And so I think, you know, so many, this program in a sense was motivated by these men telling us that if I'd learned this, why didn't I learn this in high school? Why didn't I learn this when I was younger? Right, right. Yeah. And what specifically were they wishing that they had learned  how to communicate in a more positive way?

So like using I statements, you know, we talk about that. Um, can you,  can you explain that? Sorry, can you explain that just a little bit for listeners? Yeah. So the I statements comes from, um, if you look at John Gottman's work, he's done a lot of couples work. And what they find is  when we approach somebody with. 

You make me mad.  It's accusatory. It puts you on the defense. Um, of course you're going to argue back. No, I don't, you know, that's your problem. You don't say you're not really solving the issue. I statements are, are getting into yourself and saying, how, how do I feel and what do I need? Um, and so rather than throwing a temper tantrum, you know, when you're two years old, you throw a temper tantrum because you don't know what words to use, but. 

It's, you know, as we, as I've worked with the men, it's kind of like, how many of you want to be a 40, you know, a 40 year old man acting like a two year old having a temper tantrum. Right. And so nobody's, you know, feels good about looking at themselves in the mirror after doing that. And so it's how can you get your needs met in a way that is  That truly is more productive and is cooperative in your relationship.

So things like he uses of  terminology of a harsh startup versus a soft startup. So, for example, let's say I want my husband to hold my hand.  There's two ways I can approach it. I can complain, say, you never hold my hand. What's wrong with you? Why don't you ever hold my hand? You make me feel like I'm not even important. 

Yeah, that's really going to motivate him. Or, he'll be like, I'm not going to hold your hand ever now, you know, but or I could approach and say, you know, I just love it when you hold my hand. It just. You make me feel like I really like you want to be with me and I feel valued and treasured and I just want you to know I just love that.

So of the two, my need is I want my hand held.  That's my need. Um, and it makes me feel good when he does that. It makes me feel bad when he doesn't. And so tapping into what are my feelings and then how do I communicate that in a way that becomes a win win. Where he feels good about meeting that need, and I get my need met, because isn't that the ultimate goal?

And so, oftentimes in abusive relationships, what we see is very counterproductive behaviors trying to get their needs met.  And so, that's, you know, where, where we try to come in and help them. Plus we also, um, you know, one of the things you'll hear a lot in, um, from people who are abusive is, well, they just push my buttons. 

And yeah,  I remember interviewing one man at the jail and it was so funny because like I said, my whole trajectory changed after being in that unit for three years. So I came back and I was doing  these interviews at the jail. And this man I think he was there for it was either drugs or a theft crime or something but I noticed all this domestic violence in his record.

So I said so I'm curious. I noticed you've been arrested a lot for domestic violence.  Oh, well, those are all dismissed. I said, yeah, I noticed that, but I was just curious. I mean, how is this somebody, you know, a relationship you're in that just seems to really have a lot of problems.  No, it's not the same person.

I go, Oh, he goes, we have a, she just pushes my button and I go, you attract to the button pushing women. So maybe if you could get some counseling that might help you not attract to the button pushing women, would that be of some benefit to you? He's like, well, I don't know. Is that exist? I said, yeah, I think you could.

And what I learned though. Was it didn't exist in the prison. That's part of why when I retired, I wanted to go into the prison and try to implement a program because it wasn't there. They were not at that time teaching this.  And so I think it's so, uh, so one of the analogies I share with the men is I use a light switch example.

And I said, if I go over to the light switch and I flip it, you know, what's going to happen while the light will come on or go off. And it's dependent on me flipping that switch or pushing that button.  But what if, unbeknownst to me, somebody went and cut the power behind the wall to that button?  I could go over there and push it all day, and what would happen?

Nothing. Exactly. And that's what we want for you. I cannot help you control the rest of the world to not push your buttons. But I can help you take away the power. Of that button so that when people push it, you don't respond, react, well, react is mostly what they do not respond. And so being able to help them understand it's about empowering you  to behave in a way that gets your needs met, but also doesn't violate other people.

Right. And this is way deeper than just an anger management course. Absolutely. Absolutely. There is definitely a difference between anger management and, and domestic violence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So you're teaching them more of  like the core skills, not just how to manage your anger, but it's how to actually communicate better and, uh, spot your emotions and know what those are, right?

Yes. And be able to regulate them. Yeah, it was kind of like a temperature gauge, you know, regulate themselves so that they're not just  going off like a rocket every time somebody does something they don't like, right, right, comfortable with.  So now, how has all of your research been implemented? Like, what does that look like now? 

So the, um, so we had. What they call statistically significant results on the prison program. So, where we were able, what I was looking at there was just simply to reduce the minimization and denial. Uh, because that is such a core aspect of domestic violence. Uh, a lot of minimize,  minimizing and denying their own behavior.

So, when we look at that. Oh, 100%. Yes.  I've seen it myself. Yeah. Yeah. You saw that yourself, right? Yes. I was told, you know, after I was  a specific instance of abuse and then, uh, my former husband said, you know, well, I've been going to anger management class and what I did to you was nothing compared to what the other guys, you know, have been doing.

And so major minimization  very much. And you know, it's interesting. I, um, so I, I work with a number of colleagues in this field, um, and.  You know, one of the,  one of the things and then of course the facilitators who use my curriculum, one of the things I'm really big on is that  what we do and say in those programs,  she will pay the price for the next six days.

And so when programs are very, you know, confrontive and kind of a negative way, shaming way, um, when They allow conversations like what you're talking about that allow somebody because one thing I have found with domestic violence offenders, they grade themselves on a bell curve. Oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah. So I don't show burning bed. I don't show sleeping with the enemy because what they do is they look at that and they go, Oh, that's a batter. Oh, I don't do that. So I guess I'm not, or like your experience of, Oh, well you think. What I did was bad. You should hear these other men. So we don't go there.

We just don't go there. Um, and I, I'm a bit of a, an island. I have a couple other colleagues who are on the same island with me, but we are somewhat pushing against the tide of,  because I believe in having victims centered. Um,  program and that means that I'm keeping  her. It could be him. You know, we do have female batterers and we have same sex batterers. 

But just for simplicity,  I believe that their partner,  this needs to be a win when their partner goes to a group there, you know, then there needs to be a feeling of. Yeah, that was worth it for you to be gone from me for two hours to to go to this group. That was worth it for me. I feel like I'm starting to see some changes. 

And of course, the changes are not going to happen overnight. And that's one of the hard parts. Yeah. By the time they get into a program, usually the partner wants. They want a new person showing up in  the doorway.  They've already endured a lot. They really have. They really have. And that was something, um, I was on a call the other day and we were talking about what could we do to reach out and have programs Send men to the program sooner before they're court ordered. 

Um, and so, you know, a couple of different things. Um, a couple ideas that were, we were kicking around, certainly with therapists, helping therapists understand. In fact, I just put in a workshop proposal for NASW  to talk about, you know, hidden, um, how did I phrase that? Um, Basically, that the domestic violence is hidden, and if you don't know what you're looking for or what to hear, you're going to miss it during couples counseling, right?

Yeah. And, and now we know couples counseling is a really bad idea for people who are in that situation to do that together. Like I. That was not a good idea for us really wasn't exactly. And the sad part is if a counselor or a pastor, I've, I know a pastor, a dear friend of mine, um,  that, uh, one of my, one of my friends in Bible study actually shared about how this pastor, who I just adored, but he was not familiar with domestic violence at the time.

By this point, he was, but back then he wasn't. And unfortunately it was kind of like. When I was Susie. Do you think if you just got dinner on the table by five? Well, you know, I mean, all day. Do you think, Oh, that's something you is too hard to be able to.  I mean,  what is she gonna say? She sits there and goes, Uh, no, sure.

I can make sure dinner. Oh, my nothing to do with her having dinner on the table. You know,  Yeah. In fact, at one point she finally left him and she had called me and I said, well, let's meet at Starbucks and we'll talk. And then as we're talking,  I go, does he have any guns?  Oh yeah. He has guns everywhere. I'm like, okay.

Like we are sitting, I am no longer an armed officer and I have no bulletproof vest on. I was thinking, Oh my God, we're like sitting decks here at this outdoor, you know, cafes and because that whole idea of safety was just over her head. Yes, the idea of even thinking that he could be, yes, you know, that it could get that bad.

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah.  And so, yeah, I've watched one of the videos I show  during the training and actually we were showing it at the jail. Um, and it's, uh, Eminem and Rihanna's, uh, Love the Way You Lie.  And if you've, uh, never seen it, it's,  it's this, they portray in this music video, this couple that is having domestic violence and, and it's showing you the cycle.

So like I'll have the men analyze, okay, where do you see the cycle of violence? You know, who's in control, et cetera.  And, um,  and at the end, what basically the Eminem's character says is, if you ever try to leave me, I'm going to tie you to the bed and set. this house on fire.  And so you're seeing these flames coming up through the, through the video.

And at the end, you get the impression that that's exactly how that ended. And then they awake and it's a dream sequence, you know, it was just a dream. But I said, do you think when they started off, when we first saw them, do you think that's where they thought the relationship was going to end? And so I was telling the, uh, the men at the jail. 

I said, part of the reason that we've asked the jail to not release you early, but to allow you to get some of these classes is because I can't tell you how many domestic violence homicides that I worked as an advocate, and he was still sitting there with the murder weapon in his hand. He, he was the one who called 9 1 1 and I don't think he woke up that morning saying today's the day I'm going to kill my partner, orphan my children and go to jail for the rest of my life  because all the red flags were there and they didn't recognize him. 

He didn't recognize how close he was to being lethal. And that's why we want you here. And so it was really funny. Whereas the men were kind of confronting me because I had. Advocated for the jail not to release them as early as they could have.  And when I got done saying that, they almost looked at me like, It was almost like they just had to hold themselves back from saying, Oh, well, thank you.

Oh my gosh. It wasn't that they wanted to be in jail, but they finally understood this wasn't about punishment. This is about you learning.  Some new behavior so that you don't make that choice. I said, I don't want you sitting in that chair for 25 of life, right? Yeah, exactly. So and with all that guilt that goes, I mean, I've interviewed on that flip side as an advocate I also worked as as a Sentencing officer and I've sat in those locked rooms with men who were going away for the rest of their lives because in that moment They made a horrible decision.

But what you what they didn't recognize was how many forks in the road happened up until that moment that they could have taken a different path. And that's what we want to do. So that's kind of why my curriculum, um, the domestic violence is called another way choosing to change. And a lot of my, um, um,  The  motif, if you will, or is about pathways.

It's about a fork in the road, you know, which way it's a waterway with a bridge. You know, is there another way over, you know,  the way you're living right now? Right? It's about choices. Yes. Yeah. And I think the more choices that people recognize they have, the better options they, you know, the better choices they can make.

100%. Yeah, exactly. So now  you're, you're in the,  you're in California. I'm in Washington now. I still do a lot of work in California, but I'm I'm in the state of Washington now. Got it. Got it. And so now, um, some of the prisons have the curriculum. Are there schools also that have the curriculum? Well, so I just, um.

I just came out with the youth curriculum just this last, um, I guess November, December, and I have several folks who've reached out saying we want to implement this in our juvenile institutions.  And I received a call from a woman who had actually done her internship at one of the better intervention programs who used my curriculum, years ago, and here she is now a school counselor in the mental health department.

And she came across. This curriculum and my name and she said, Oh, my goodness. I love your work. What? Tell me about your youth program. So she's working, talking with her colleagues about hopefully being able to implement in their school district in the fall. So I offer like I do fidelity training now to help people learn how to use any of the curriculum that I've designed. 

And so, uh, that's what we're focusing on now is just getting everybody trained so that they can roll it out. And then I have a couple of researchers who, um, who I've been real fortunate are willing to work with me and trying to measure. Because I really think it's important that we measure what we're doing.

If it's not working, let's do something different.  I'm not about just, oh, let's just do it and say it was good. You know, I wanted to make a difference. For example, we did the community program I was telling you about.  We, I looked at recidivism rates and when we saw that the men who graduated, first of all, we graduated almost 70 percent of the men, which is almost unheard of for a 52 week program.

That's a really, really great number.  Um, so of those who graduated six months later,  not one of them was rearrested for new domestic violence. Whereas the ones who didn't complete the program, who dropped out in those early 90 days, um, we had like 30, 33 percent of them had been rearrested.  Well, then I went, you know, so I did incrementally, I looked at their, um, the recidivism.

And when we got up to eight years of the ones who graduated, less than 20 percent had been re arrested for domestic violence. Whereas the ones who didn't graduate, it was 63 percent of  those five out of seven went to prison on their new domestic violence charges.  So we just, you know, just to look at it from that perspective was just amazing. 

I think what's really lacking though, is we really still want to get more input from their partners. Yes. That would really tell us what's really going on. Do you feel safe at home? Right. Is it, are you able to express what you want or need without fear of triggering? An event, you know, negative,  right, right.

Yeah. Yeah. That would be another important piece.  Wow. Wow. Well,  my gosh. So what is your,  what is your dream that that you see with what you've done so far in your work moving forward? Wow.  So I, I really would like to see the youth program implemented. I'd like to see what we can do to, um. you know, develop some measurement scales to see what is really, what changes are we helping make, you know, um, it's  sometimes you don't know what you changed, you know, it's kind of like cutting a tree in the forest, you know, if nobody's there, does it make a sound?

Um,  so some of that we may not know till anecdotally, you know, much later, but I do think, um, you know, just my overall goal is just to help. families heal. And so being able to help the, um, the people involved in the abuse, being able to help them change that trajectory, uh, being able to  help their kids change a trajectory of either being abusers or being involved in an abusive relationship.

Um, so yeah, I'd love to just.  Throw job security out the window, you know, that is a probation officer. If I do a good job, you know, maybe I won't have any more people on my caseload. So we know that's probably not going to happen, but at least we can make, I tell them the story of the starfish. And I, I do this at the beginning of the group when we first start a new cohort.

Um, and the story of the starfish is this man is walking down the beach and he sees this figure in the distance and almost looks like it's dancing. And as he gets closer, he, he sees this young boy and the young boy is picking up something. He says, son, what are you doing? He says, well. The sun is coming or the tide is, um, going down and the sun is coming up.

And if I don't throw the starfish back in the water, it'll die. And the man looks around and says, son, there's a thousand starfish. You couldn't possibly make a difference. And he picks up another one and throws it in. He says, well, made a difference to that one.  Yeah. And that's when I said that at the prison, one of the men who was,  who had an incredibly violent background  had tears in his eyes. 

And cause I said, this is why I'm here. Is to make a difference for you, for you all.  And when I looked at him with tears in his eyes, I thought, my goodness, has nobody ever told you that you have enough value as a human being to spend time with you and to try to help you?  Um, and so that's, that was really just impacting to me that every little bit we do can really just make such a ripple effect and difference. 

Definitely. Yeah, 100%.  So how, now that you've done all this amazing work, how do we find it? Like, how do we?  Where should we go to see your work?  Oh, so, um,  let's see. I'm, I actually have some virtual, because of, of the pandemic and everything going online. I now have a couple of virtual assistants that help with a lot of the technology piece, because that is not where my brain goes.

So we have a website. Um, it's yorkconsulting. com  and it has, um, I do a lot of trainings. That's probably where I focus a lot of my energy is trainings. Uh, for those who are doing this work, uh, I'll be starting up what I'm calling inner circle gatherings where we can meet once a month and, you know, uh, go over ideas and, and work through any issues that they might be having in their groups.

And then, um, of course the curriculum it's available either on Amazon or on the website. So, and I just came out with a new anger management curriculum. And what we find is a lot of times people end up in anger management. You had brought this up earlier. They'll end up in anger management, but they really should have gone to domestic violence program. 

So I weave a little bit of that relationship piece into the curriculum, but it really is designed more for the road rage person. You know, they don't know their victim. They just. Like blew up. Yeah. My, my feeling is usually if you're blowing up on the road, you're probably blowing up at home too. So make sure we touch on those issues.

And then of course, looking forward to the youth program, being able to see that get implemented maybe in the fall. So yeah, so the books are available. Um, I provide a lot of different trainings, uh, so that people can  try to find something that fits for them if they want to get into this work. And who exactly are you training?

What types of people?  So I train, um, facilitators of better intervention and anger management groups. Um, I'm able to provide CEs now for, uh, for professionals. So I just got that set up this year. Um, so I do advanced trainings as well as the fidelity training, which is specific to my curriculum. But I also do advanced trainings for anybody.

Like we have two classes coming up, one on attachment and one on stocking, and that'll be the end of March. Wow. Yeah. So, and I'll probably offer it again one or two more times this coming year. And then I also trained probation officers and I trained therapy and I work with therapists do workshops for them.

So kind of trying to. You know, connect into those, those areas where folks are coming through, um, and, and I'd love to do some pastoral work, uh, get  some pastoral trainings as well. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's definitely needed. Huh. Very interesting. Okay, cool. So it's York consulting. com. Yes,  so it's why? Oh, why?

Oh, R. K. E. Consulting. com.  Okay, great. And I will drop that in the show notes so people can go there and just make the click and then  go see your work. And if they want to contact you, they can do that through your website. Right? Is that the best way? Yes, absolutely. They can sign that. And I do have, um, on YouTube.

I do have some training. So if they're already doing some, uh, better intervention work, they can also, um, look at the trainings. Those don't cost anything. And they're on, on YouTube on the public channel. Cool. What is the, what is your channel called there?  I think it's just not a York. Your name. Okay. Yes.

Got it. I'll find that too and put it in a show notes so people can see it. Thank you.  Cool. Well, thank you to connect. Yeah. Thank you for being here. We really appreciate your time and your work. Thank you. Mandy. I sure appreciate what you're doing. And I'm glad that our paths have intersected to be able to yeah, we're very, we're very aligned and that we think that I think that.

Yeah. Women's safety is not a burden only for the woman. I believe that women's safety and the safety of everybody else too, is a community issue. And I believe like you do, that it really. It starts in the family, breaking those cycles of abuse and helping people understand, you know, how to actually have a relationship and live peacefully and still communicate and get your needs met, but, you know, not have to involve violence and trauma.

Exactly. Exactly. Because it does. It takes so long for the body to heal from that. It does experience. Yeah. Yeah. This is like 20 years later in my instance. And yeah, it's still your body is just not the same. Yeah.  Yeah. We're wired for safety. And when you are  in an environment that's unsafe, then you're just constantly firing on all cylinders.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you. We appreciate you. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate this, too. Appreciate you. Take care. Take care. Thank you. You too.