Season 2 Episode 11: “We Need a Revolution”: Integration of Trauma Healing and Behavior Change for People Who Choose Violence

The discussion of the relationship between histories of trauma and the perpetration of abuse is often fraught. Many people are worried that any consideration of the trauma histories of perpetrators will become an excuse for violence. Others advocate for the need for a more holistic approach, especially for those perpetrators who are also survivors of intergenerational traumas related to colonization and racism. 

Building on their previous episode, Trauma-Informed Is Not the Same as Domestic Violence–Informed: A Conversation About the Intersection of Domestic Violence Perpetration, Mental Health & Addiction, David and Ruth turn their attention to the relationship between trauma histories and the choice to act in abusive, violent, and controlling ways. They anchor the conversation to following three main points:

• Adult and child survivors' realities and stated needs should be reflected in our conversations about perpetrators' trauma and behavioral accountability. 
• Trauma histories do not cause someone to engage in violence, and violent and abusive behaviors do not heal trauma (and in fact impede healing). 
• A perpetrator pattern–based approach to measuring behavior change can help make trauma and addiction work more domestic violence–informed. 

David and Ruth also highlight how the work of the She Is Not Your Rehab is an example of how to bridge the conversations around behavior change and healing. (And Ruth does a shout-out to Jess Hill, author of See What You Made Me Do.)

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Speaker 1: [00:00:15] And we're back  [00:00:15][0.3]

Speaker 2: [00:00:15] and we're back and you are listening and joining us to partner with a survivor vacation ED.. Thank you. We had, you know, as if you know us knows that we like recording while we're traveling, whether it's vacation or for work because we're thinking and talking a lot. And so this episode of part of the survivors is  [00:00:37][22.2]

Speaker 3: [00:00:38] brought to you by David and Ruth saying vacation.  [00:00:42][3.9]

Speaker 2: [00:00:43] That's right. Yes.  [00:00:43][0.6]

Speaker 3: [00:00:44] So surrounded by the ocean ocean.  [00:00:45][1.5]

Speaker 2: [00:00:46] And we deeply  [00:00:46][0.3]

Speaker 3: [00:00:47] it. So you may hear some chicken  [00:00:48][0.9]

Speaker 2: [00:00:48] chickens in the background,  [00:00:49][0.5]

Speaker 3: [00:00:50] you know, so be aware, chicken aware  [00:00:52][2.0]

Speaker 2: [00:00:53] and we might be visited by Sebastian the cat.  [00:00:56][2.5]

Speaker 3: [00:00:56] He's very  [00:00:57][0.2]

Speaker 2: [00:00:57] sweet. No Tiberius here on vacation doesn't go on vacation with us like this. And you might hear a gecko.  [00:01:03][5.9]

Speaker 3: [00:01:04] No, you don't hear geckos, baby.  [00:01:05][1.3]

Speaker 2: [00:01:06] We don't know. OK. All right. I just thought that there might be gecko sounds we could hear.  [00:01:11][5.3]

Speaker 3: [00:01:11] Oh, it's time to tell them what we're talking. OK?  [00:01:12][1.1]

Speaker 2: [00:01:14] So this is a follow on episode to our last episode, which was our most actually listen to listen to episode in the first 30 days, probably about 1000 downloads in 30 days. And this was about how being trauma informed is not the same as being domestic violence informed. And obviously, we hit a nerve with people with this and we kind of knew we weren't right. And it was really about how while it's so important to be focused on the experience of survivors around this sort of mental health  [00:01:44][30.1]

Speaker 1: [00:01:46] clinical  [00:01:46][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:01:47] trauma perspective, that there were certain inherent dangers and risks and gaps in that practice. So we talked about that and obviously it was something that people really seem drawn to. Mm hmm. So we decided at that point we'd also do an episode on on trauma  [00:02:02][14.8]

Speaker 1: [00:02:04] and and people  [00:02:05][1.6]

Speaker 2: [00:02:06] who choose violence. I think this is a much more fraught subject in some way.  [00:02:09][3.6]

Speaker 3: [00:02:10] People get all our spicy about this one,  [00:02:12][2.1]

Speaker 2: [00:02:12] you know, and it's and it's it's really we're going to try to anchor in some some kind of critical things. Yeah. To make this a safer conversation. Yeah. We're going to tie it back to the work of of. She's not your rehab. Matt Matt and Sarah Brown. And some of the things that they're doing around this and looking at  [00:02:29][17.1]

Speaker 1: [00:02:32] men's healing  [00:02:32][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:02:33] in the context of also stopping domestic violence.  [00:02:37][3.6]

Speaker 3: [00:02:38] I think the other critical thing is to say, you know, the conflict between whether we fully focus on incarcerating people who choose violence or we talk about rehabilitation has not been fully expanded because we haven't had good practices. We do know that incarcerating those who choose violence for long periods of time based off of the Chicago study can actually have adverse effects for survivors that morbidity increases, particularly among the marginalized.  [00:03:11][33.8]

Speaker 2: [00:03:13] You're talking about the study of looking at black women whose partners were arrested and who died young or younger. They died young and the women died younger. Yes, and they're not drawing the lines to exactly what the mechanism is, right?  [00:03:24][11.1]

Speaker 3: [00:03:25] These are all needs to be explored further.  [00:03:26][1.7]

Speaker 2: [00:03:27] But there was there was there was pointers. Directions towards there may be this deeper, wider harm,  [00:03:33][6.0]

Speaker 3: [00:03:33] but also establishing the baseline that, you know, as a child survivor, we really do want to have contact with our parents. We want them to heal. And it's actually incredibly violent and offensive to hear professionals say that's not possible or to not even try to not even attempt to do so and to only focus on incarceration. They're really only thinking of containment in that case. And they're not thinking about the repercussions or the desires of survivors. In fact, minimizing them and calling us trauma bonded because we want to have a loving, safe contact with our parents. And that's a level of violence in those professionals that actually needs to be addressed.  [00:04:19][46.4]

Speaker 2: [00:04:21] Well, it's it's it's people saying that when a survivor says, Well, I want him to get better, I want to be a family with him. I want him to get help  [00:04:29][8.9]

Speaker 1: [00:04:31] that  [00:04:31][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:04:32] how quickly that can  [00:04:33][0.8]

Speaker 1: [00:04:33] be labeled, that  [00:04:34][1.4]

Speaker 2: [00:04:35] she's in denial. Yeah. And I remember a conversation I had with with some child welfare professionals and and we're talking about a case where they got involved because of the dad's violence. And he was going through a court mandated men's behavior change program and they were a couple was separated under a court order and they had met with the mom. And she said, Well, when he's done with the program, I want, I want him to come  [00:04:59][24.2]

Speaker 1: [00:04:59] back  [00:04:59][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:05:01] and they're like, Oh, you know, we're really concerned that that she's in denial and she doesn't get it. And.  [00:05:05][4.4]

Speaker 3: [00:05:06] And they wanted to take her kids  [00:05:07][1.0]

Speaker 2: [00:05:07] well, they want to stay involved. I don't remember the details, but but they were focusing on her. I said, can we slow this down a little bit?  [00:05:14][6.9]

Speaker 1: [00:05:14] Can, can, can.  [00:05:16][1.6]

Speaker 2: [00:05:16] Can you tell me a little more? And you know, has he ever been sent to a program before? And and they said, no. So this is the first time  [00:05:23][6.3]

Speaker 1: [00:05:24] and  [00:05:24][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:05:24] is this is a government sponsored program. It's paid for by the state and they said yes. So you're upset with her or you don't trust her because she's hopeful that a program that he's never attended before  [00:05:36][11.9]

Speaker 3: [00:05:37] that use a word  [00:05:37][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:05:38] that you say workers funded by the state. Right. That it might actually make things better for her. And that you're blaming her for being in denial versus I mean, I think it's this idea of gaslighting. I think a way to survive is just can't win. And it's like it's OK for her to hope that he can get better. It's OK for her to believe that something that the state is offering him might make things better, especially if it's the first time he's going through a program. And and what we need to do is have a conversation with her about her hopes and her fears. And you can't put your what you believe is your academic knowledge or you're kind of like these programs don't work right? Belief on her and then judge her for for being wrong or in denial.  [00:06:18][40.0]

Speaker 3: [00:06:18] I would like to just point out that the fact that all of that energy is being dumped into judging her rather than making better programs is violent. It's presumptive, it's coercive, it's violent. If you think these programs don't work, then start investing money in making better programs.  [00:06:37][18.6]

Speaker 2: [00:06:38] And and what I would say is and also talk to her about her hopes and fears and how does she assess your own safety and was real change look like those are the conversations I would always have with survivors who were who were when I was working the men in the men's behavior change program. So. So this is this context of looking at about how we all think and talk about people who choose violence and their trauma histories, which is real. And I want to say a few things kind of. I made a list at the beginning of the hour preparation for this about three things I think will ground us and then we can talk about whatever you are. You know what we do.  [00:07:13][35.5]

Speaker 1: [00:07:15] One is that  [00:07:15][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:07:17] along the lines of what we just were talking about, that we need to look at this issue through the eyes of adult and child survivors  [00:07:26][8.8]

Speaker 1: [00:07:27] and their  [00:07:28][0.3]

Speaker 2: [00:07:30] complex relationships with people that use violence. Yeah. And I wrote a blog post a while ago years ago that a one dimensional view of perpetrators of violence doesn't serve our relationship with survivors. Like if we just sort of see  [00:07:45][14.7]

Speaker 1: [00:07:46] people  [00:07:46][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:07:46] as a monster, then we're actually not in alignment with survivors. And I think this I would just say this complexity view that we're going to talk about and that people may be upset about different pieces of this, that that if you can't sit in that complexity, then you have a really hard time aligning yourself with survivors, particularly of survivors from marginalized communities that experience a life minimization. You take it a little bit further.  [00:08:08][21.9]

Speaker 3: [00:08:08] Okay, I'm going to say that if you can't engage in complexity, that you're actually harming survivors and their children and you are feeding into a cultural narrative that survived that, that people who are perpetrating that violence are monsters. Therefore, we miss a lot of perpetration because the reality is is that people who harm us are really complex. They're funny. They're they're successful. They're loving, and then they're violent.  [00:08:37][28.6]

Speaker 2: [00:08:38] You just come on. You just reminded me that  [00:08:40][1.8]

Speaker 1: [00:08:40] I when I I  [00:08:42][1.8]

Speaker 2: [00:08:42] ran a men's behavior change program years ago,  [00:08:44][1.8]

Speaker 1: [00:08:44] and  [00:08:44][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:08:45] we often would have facilitator some who were had been women sector advocates or had been or still were and were splitting their time. And and one thing is,  [00:08:54][8.5]

Speaker 1: [00:08:54] one of  [00:08:54][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:08:55] the things I heard over and over again was that working on men's behavior change program for almost all those women sector workers. So that made them better advocates for those women because I think it let them feel and see and have a direct experience of this person and or people like the partner because they weren't always working or weren't working with the exact partners. And and so I think for me that what they said was sitting with these, these men, we got a better understanding of of the women working with. And I've heard that over and over again. But I'm thinking about one particular person who started doing men's behavior change groups and said, Oh, these guys aren't violent  [00:09:37][42.0]

Speaker 1: [00:09:39] acts like  [00:09:39][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:09:39] what? And she said, No, no, these guys are very different than the guys. I see a court. She was a court advocate  [00:09:45][5.4]

Speaker 1: [00:09:46] and and you realize  [00:09:47][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:09:47] that she couldn't. At least my take was she couldn't hold up both. And if she could sit and have a reasonable conversation with them because in  [00:09:54][6.3]

Speaker 3: [00:09:54] court, she would assume he wasn't violent in  [00:09:55][1.4]

Speaker 2: [00:09:55] court, she just saw somebody present or not talk or say guilty or not guilty or whatever. It was very limited and just sort of police record.  [00:10:01][5.3]

Speaker 3: [00:10:01] And this is real for judges. That's right. This is this is real, you know, for for high powered advocates who have never dealt with with direct. With people who have chosen violence and who are really just cursorily focused when you strip the humanity out of somebody who's in an intimate relationship who's perpetrating violence, you are actually doing violence to that person and to the survivor and an injustice. I understand that you're trying to create a hard boundary where the system has not created a hard boundary. But it is not beneficial in the long term. And actually, in the long term, we'll continue to allow judges, lawyers, advocates, police officers and all the public right to mis identify who is doing these behaviors because they are expecting somebody who is always violent, who's belligerent, who is incapable of communicating in a manner which seems to be logical, reasonable, calm and collected. This is not how this works and the narratives that we have that we've perpetrated with all of the, I call it, advocacy advocacy porn with the man with his balled up fist and the woman in the corner with a black eye has really, really, really solidified blindness in us as a collective.  [00:11:26][84.9]

Speaker 2: [00:11:27] So so what we're saying is if, if,  [00:11:31][3.4]

Speaker 1: [00:11:31] if  [00:11:31][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:11:33] we're looking through the eyes of survivors, many survivors will have empathy for what their partner went through as a child or what he experiences as a man in a colonizing society or a very racist society,  [00:11:47][14.8]

Speaker 1: [00:11:49] and  [00:11:49][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:11:51] they don't want to be abused.  [00:11:52][0.8]

Speaker 1: [00:11:52] Yep.  [00:11:52][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:11:53] And and so if if she knows that he grew up with a dad who was abusive or sexually abused him or an uncle sexually abused him, she may have great empathy for  [00:12:02][8.9]

Speaker 1: [00:12:02] him and caring and  [00:12:04][2.5]

Speaker 2: [00:12:05] and in fact, appreciation that he has a difficult time at different points and she wants him to get help. And I think that can't get labeled as denial or pathology or pathology. So let me lay out the three things that we could cause you and I could easily go down. So the three things are, you know, keep seeing this through the the view and the eyes of the adult child. Survivors in trauma histories do not cause I'm going to explain this more detail do not cause violence  [00:12:37][32.0]

Speaker 1: [00:12:39] and  [00:12:39][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:12:41] violence. The use of violence and perpetration of violence or control doesn't help heal trauma histories. Those two things are together an  [00:12:49][7.9]

Speaker 3: [00:12:49] ongoing perpetration compounds  [00:12:50][1.0]

Speaker 2: [00:12:51] compounds. We'll come back to that. And then the third one is that the key through to this kind of complexity is looking and  [00:12:58][6.8]

Speaker 1: [00:12:58] centering  [00:12:58][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:13:00] and measuring behavior change through the eyes of the adult and child survivors. Ideally, but but not assuming that if I do trauma treatment with him, that automatically his violence or control is going to stop or I'm going to do addiction, work with him that automatically those things are going to get better. They might.  [00:13:18][17.5]

Speaker 3: [00:13:18] There's one other piece to that that violence and coercion are on a sliding scale. And even if you believe as a professional that somebody is still in some level on that sliding scale. Right. But there is safety and stability to the best measure that we can identify. It's not up to you to dictate to the survivor and their children how they're going to have contact with that person. It really isn't if you default to removing children because there's still a level of coercive control. But the survivor says, I can manage this. You're perpetrating violence. You're causing trauma, intergenerational trauma that is going to compound itself.  [00:14:00][42.0]

Speaker 2: [00:14:01] And in what you're saying is professionals need to be more collaborative with survivors around their understanding of what their experience is, what they're having versus just sort of imposing a professional lens and saying, this is this, you know, and and anything outside this is you're in denial or you're having, you know, you're a trauma survivor yourself and you really can't see this clearly. So I think going back to the first thing you know, which is that seeing this through the eyes of the adult and child survivors,  [00:14:27][26.3]

Speaker 1: [00:14:29] you know, for me,  [00:14:30][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:14:34] you know, really, it's very important to be thinking about that. My understanding of this is as a professional, as a male, as somebody who's not black or indigenous or a brown or, you know, or is that I have to really understand what the diverse experience of survivors are. And over and over  [00:14:56][21.9]

Speaker 1: [00:14:56] again,  [00:14:56][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:14:57] you hear from people saying, we need to prioritize not only the cessation of violence, but the healing of our community and stopping the overincarceration of our men that we need alternatives that don't involve arrest, but still. Center or removal or removal of kids with cell center, safety and well-being and well-being, both of the family, but but our community  [00:15:18][20.8]

Speaker 1: [00:15:20] and and I really, for me,  [00:15:22][2.3]

Speaker 2: [00:15:23] the conversation about men and who who choose violence and their trauma histories, I've become much more sensitized to whether it's colonization or or or or child abuse in the context of a family or racism, that those  [00:15:39][16.5]

Speaker 1: [00:15:42] realities need to be integral  [00:15:44][2.1]

Speaker 2: [00:15:45] and in how we we work to stop domestic and family violence.  [00:15:48][3.5]

Speaker 1: [00:15:50] And that we can't  [00:15:50][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:15:51] make them secondary.  [00:15:52][0.4]

Speaker 3: [00:15:52] If not, if you if you do, you've lost your humanity, man.  [00:15:55][2.3]

Speaker 2: [00:15:56] And and so, you know, I think it's really important to understand  [00:16:00][4.8]

Speaker 1: [00:16:02] that  [00:16:02][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:16:04] survivors, whether they're looking at this lens of cultural trauma or his childhood trauma or or we're looking at kids  [00:16:11][7.7]

Speaker 1: [00:16:13] whose  [00:16:13][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:16:14] dad was violent, they they want us. To help him get better. And his suffering in many cases and not going say all because some survivors have been so hurt by somebody, they're like, Yeah, no, I don't care, I don't care what happens to him. He didn't care about me and care about the kids. But but I think a I would say if I say a large majority or a large portion, you know, survivors do care about their partner's suffering despite. Despite what he's done to them.  [00:16:49][35.2]

Speaker 1: [00:16:50] Right.  [00:16:50][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:16:51] And I've always been amazed when I did calls with survivors and they say things to me  [00:16:59][7.8]

Speaker 1: [00:16:59] like, Well, I  [00:17:01][1.9]

Speaker 2: [00:17:01] don't want to have anything to do with him, but I want him to get help and get better so he can be a good dad right to our kids.  [00:17:09][7.7]

Speaker 3: [00:17:10] And the reality is, is that in the systems we have, that person will have contact with their children. That's right. Now there's many who are working to make sure that particularly dangerous parents do not have that contact with children and that needs containment, particularly when they're so violent and controlling. But it most likely will be that a child will either want to attempt to, even despite court orders, or will be mandated to have contact with that parent.  [00:17:44][34.2]

Speaker 2: [00:17:45] And I think, you know, I think of another example of this where people have been disdainful. So I guess part of what's coming in focus for me today is we're talking about this again. This is how  [00:17:54][8.8]

Speaker 1: [00:17:55] much we will  [00:17:58][2.3]

Speaker 2: [00:17:58] use professionals we used sort of there, there under there, quote unquote professional, understand the problem to actually judge survivors. Yeah. Instead of instead of, you know, it's a part of this work around this, it's the perpetrator that we're just talking about. Is is is it may actually help us to better work with him, but it actually helps us partner better with her because the example I'm thinking about is the survivor who partner is violent with them and also has a drinking problem, right? And what she says is I want him to get help for his drinking. And I've seen professionals judge that person, say, Oh, she doesn't understand there to like people who are very much in a domestic violence framework. She does understand that drinking doesn't cause violence and and there are two separate problems, and she's in denial on the violence because she wants to focus on the addiction.  [00:18:45][46.9]

Speaker 1: [00:18:46] And I'm like, OK.  [00:18:47][1.5]

Speaker 2: [00:18:49] Don't judge her, can we approach the conversation with her in a collaborative partnering way  [00:18:55][5.3]

Speaker 1: [00:18:56] and say,  [00:18:56][0.2]

Speaker 2: [00:18:57] Well, of course you want your partner to stop drinking because not only is the drinking a problem because it's tied to the violence of the drinking, it's a problem because it it makes him absent from the household emotionally and spends money. It, you know, it disconnects him from the kids. I mean, we could list 10 of the ways addiction is a problem for a family, not just the violence. And can we say, of course, we want to help him with this addiction and we want to make sure that addiction work ties back to you and the kids being safer and things getting better for you and the kids? I just say now, is that so hard versus judging her and saying, What's wrong with you? You don't understand that  [00:19:35][38.0]

Speaker 3: [00:19:35] it's hard because a lot of people don't know what the next step is. After that, they they they they they don't know how to ground themselves in behavioral practices, which will concurrently follow a process of rehabilitation, either in the mental health sphere or in the addiction sphere. So we feel like what we really need to do is we really need to offer concrete practice advice about how to do those steps at the same time.  [00:20:02][26.7]

Speaker 1: [00:20:03] Okay.  [00:20:03][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:20:04] You know, the first thing I would say to people is is in the addiction field and an addiction and trauma fields are pretty tightly wound together. Yeah, because we know that people who have been traumatized, you know, will turn to alcohol and other drugs at higher rates than people blown up and traumatized. It is really hard. I want people understand why I'm making these connections because it's that they're so tightly bound together in so many cases is we need a framework  [00:20:27][23.6]

Speaker 1: [00:20:28] in that  [00:20:29][0.3]

Speaker 2: [00:20:29] addiction work where we don't jump to the fact that she's codependent or in denial that you stop using those words  [00:20:35][6.1]

Speaker 1: [00:20:37] to  [00:20:37][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:20:37] think about about what's going on with her and then make those addiction programs. More domestic violence and form like a shout out to our friends at Odyssey House and in Victoria in Australia, the  [00:20:49][11.8]

Speaker 3: [00:20:49] first domestic violence form freestanding addiction.  [00:20:52][3.2]

Speaker 2: [00:20:53] That's right, it's a shout out to Odyssey House  [00:20:55][1.5]

Speaker 1: [00:20:55] and and  [00:20:56][0.7]

Speaker 2: [00:20:57] that that make those programs more domestic violence informed. So they're looking at that person who's found them who who is both an addict and is choosing violence, choosing control and develops one, a program  [00:21:08][10.5]

Speaker 1: [00:21:09] that that  [00:21:10][0.8]

Speaker 2: [00:21:10] deals with both things at the same time or collaborates with the men's behavior change program at the same time in a very active way, but doesn't ignore treat the violence that control as a symptom of the addiction or a secondary issue, but really centers it as well,  [00:21:27][16.7]

Speaker 3: [00:21:28] right? Because again, going back to the healing process, if you have addictive tendencies and you are being violent so you can separate those two, that the addiction cycle will somehow be feeding into the shame or the need to control. And so we can see these two feeding into each other, even if they're not causing each other  [00:21:52][24.1]

Speaker 2: [00:21:52] or saying coercive control and the consequence of that as a as a trigger for relapsing. If I were acting in this way to my partner and I thought I would stop after I got sober now, am I going to? Am I going to more likely be a risk for for drinking or drugs?  [00:22:07][14.5]

Speaker 3: [00:22:07] Again, if you have high levels of trauma and you feel like you need to control the environment around you? And I feel the entitlement to do so. That's a lot of pressure, right? Eventually, you're going to have to break that pressure somehow. And again, feeding back into that addictive cycle where you need to that cessation of that mental thinking and control in order for you to feel like your body is going to be able to be OK. You know, I mean, these these these things are not causal, but they do have cyclical impacts on people.  [00:22:37][30.7]

Speaker 1: [00:22:39] And I think we just need  [00:22:41][2.3]

Speaker 2: [00:22:42] to be able to to think about this. These programing the programing in different ways. Again, that really centers the experience of adult charts of virus, which may give them education and say, you know where addiction trauma programs educating survivors around pathways of healing for for people who choose violence and how to kind of manage safety during that experience, don't assume because he's on his medication that you're going to be safer. Don't assume because he's come to therapy, that you're going to be safer, you know, get yourself support. These are really basic things.  [00:23:14][32.7]

Speaker 3: [00:23:16] The problem is, too is is that as the systems currently exist, you know, those people who have been mandated to an addiction program, right, or to some type of mental health treatment because of their violence, right, with the assumption that it will cease once they do that, often manipulate that and use that against the survivor by saying, I've completed this program. I'm an addiction therapy. I'm in. I'm in trauma therapy, I'm in counseling without the the the person who's facilitating that therapy, having any awareness of the behaviors of that person. Now where we're always wanting to try to practice back to this experience of the survivors if they want to have involvement in that process. But things like HIPA  [00:24:06][50.4]

Speaker 2: [00:24:07] in the U.S., here in the U.S., you have to be clear what happens because this  [00:24:10][2.5]

Speaker 3: [00:24:10] is a privacy law? That's right. So how do you how do you deal with tying that back to the survivors experience in the light of privacy laws for mental health and addiction?  [00:24:21][10.4]

Speaker 1: [00:24:21] Well, you expect  [00:24:23][2.0]

Speaker 2: [00:24:24] that that person signs releases so you can talk to their partners. And again, this has always been my argument.  [00:24:28][4.3]

Speaker 3: [00:24:29] If the partner wants to involvements  [00:24:30][1.1]

Speaker 2: [00:24:30] well, but you still can ask him to sign a release, even if she doesn't choose to talk to you, you still need that to at least initiate the conversation with her. In some cases, but I think again, it's about breaking down the siloed thinking around mental health and addiction work where it's at a very much focused on the person sitting in the treatment room with you. And people talk about the family and the well-being of family, and they'll talk about addiction as being a, you know, a systems issue and as abuse a disease by and look at the entire family. But those models often don't really focus and on how the how that functions around domestic violence or coercive control. And I think that you get the release assigned, you look for information. You know, if somebody is involved with the criminal justice system, then you you don't rely solely on arrest, but you look and see if there's no history and kind of think about this person in the context of their pattern of of of drinking or using other drugs or their mental health issues. But it's I think we need a revolution  [00:25:30][59.3]

Speaker 1: [00:25:32] in  [00:25:32][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:25:32] the way we look at mental health treatment, addiction treatment, because I think that a lot of these programs are not considering. The president, of course, took control in their client base, and therefore they're not thinking about the safety needs or the wellbeing needs of the family members connected to this person.  [00:25:56][24.0]

Speaker 1: [00:25:57] And it's it's what  [00:25:59][1.3]

Speaker 2: [00:25:59] I said in other settings, which is I think the domestic violence field struggles with how to deal with the sort of the the trauma, the mental health issues, particularly people choose violence. You know, they're and they're and their harm to themselves, what's going on inside themselves. And that is painful. The addiction and the mental health fields,  [00:26:23][23.8]

Speaker 1: [00:26:24] they need  [00:26:25][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:26:25] to get better at thinking about the harm this person that they're working with has done or maybe doing to the people around  [00:26:31][6.1]

Speaker 1: [00:26:32] them, right?  [00:26:32][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:26:33] And that there's sort of an imbalance in both those fields. But I think we need to come to some sort of equilibrium around it. Mm-Hmm. So I think that the that first thing you know is this idea of  [00:26:44][10.7]

Speaker 1: [00:26:45] of making  [00:26:45][0.7]

Speaker 2: [00:26:46] sure that any intervention where people choose violence around their trauma is deeply tied to the perspective and the experience and the outcomes for adult child survivors. Right. So that that's the first thing. The next thing that is to me is very grounding is to say  [00:27:05][19.2]

Speaker 1: [00:27:06] that  [00:27:06][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:27:08] being a trauma survivor doesn't  [00:27:11][2.8]

Speaker 1: [00:27:12] make you  [00:27:12][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:27:13] the language kind of falls apart here, doesn't force you, doesn't cause you to become violent or be controlling. And I know there's a statement hurt people. Hurt people. Right, right. That's that's kind of the meme, right?  [00:27:25][11.7]

Speaker 1: [00:27:25] And I think that we  [00:27:28][2.3]

Speaker 2: [00:27:28] have to really wrestle the fact that while kids who grow up with domestic violence their home are at greater risk for repeating the cycle either as a perpetrator or as a as a survivor, that the vast, vast majority of kids who grow up in those homes do not repeat those behaviors or  [00:27:48][19.7]

Speaker 3: [00:27:48] we'd all be falling apart or we  [00:27:49][1.4]

Speaker 2: [00:27:49] all be falling apart, right? We start thinking about that is doing the math in my head. I'm not really good at math anymore, but you start thinking about if that was a guarantee that you have three kids in the household debt to parents and their three kids, and that this year more kids and more people in the population that are being abusive, you know, and that just doesn't work mathematically. And I think I find that people are often really surprised when I cite these numbers because I think that just most people walk around assuming one. Now, I think that most people that we work with who are choosing violence have some form of trauma in their history. But then again, a lot of us have trauma.  [00:28:26][36.8]

Speaker 3: [00:28:27] But there's another piece there and that's that's, you know, some type of of entitlement. You know, the biofeedback of of getting what you want and nobody holding you accountable. Having that supported by pastors, by religious leaders, by family members, having it be termed as normal part of intimate relationship of the right of the person, you know. So we really we really haven't gotten to a place in our responsibility as a culture and professionals where we can truly pin what is what is the causal piece? Well, because if you allow somebody, if they get, they get benefit from coercive control. If if they are traumatized by the chaos of what they grew up in and their response to the trauma of that chaos is that they want to control other people because they're fearful and they're not able to do the work in order for them to face their own self. Then that entitlement that getting something back and never having those behaviors put boundaries around and being told that's not acceptable and not getting what they want, but actually not being connected to other people because of those behaviors and feeling isolated and alone because they're perpetrating. If they don't ever experience that and they experience getting more wealth, getting, you know, social status, keeping a partner that they want to keep controlling their children in ways they want to control. Why would they ever stop?  [00:30:09][101.7]

Speaker 2: [00:30:09] Well, you just reminded me of something I used to say all the time, which is, you know, people would want to overlay the addiction model onto domestic violence all the time and and they'd say, well,  [00:30:18][9.1]

Speaker 1: [00:30:19] he he's not  [00:30:21][1.9]

Speaker 2: [00:30:21] going to change until he hits bottom. And it would be sometimes people would say that to me and I'd say, but if he's got people underneath him that he's keeping down, does he ever hit bottom because he always he always can feel better than some other people? He's always got some people kind of to create a cushion under under a true bottom for him. And so I think it's really people are amazing in their ability to sort of if they've got. Something else to blame and justify their behavior. They can avoid feeling they may not avoid all the external consequences, but they but but they often don't connect it back to themselves. Right. But but I think  [00:30:55][33.8]

Speaker 1: [00:30:55] that  [00:30:55][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:30:58] that when we're talking about this issue of  [00:30:59][1.8]

Speaker 1: [00:31:00] of people  [00:31:02][1.1]

Speaker 2: [00:31:02] choosing to be violent and not coming from their trauma histories, I think we have to have the ability to say, OK, we haven't really spent a lot of time studying and  [00:31:13][11.2]

Speaker 1: [00:31:13] looking at  [00:31:14][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:31:17] people who grew up in abusive homes who don't repeat the cycle. It's always a study I wanted to do, which was to look at sort of how did the kids who come from homes where there was violence  [00:31:28][11.5]

Speaker 1: [00:31:29] and  [00:31:29][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:31:32] what were the factors that led them not to repeat it as a kid? I mean, as adults, I'm sorry not to repeat as an adult. You know, instead of, I think we talk about the violence.  [00:31:40][8.9]

Speaker 3: [00:31:41] Are you talking about also being being the victim? Are you talking about  [00:31:44][3.2]

Speaker 2: [00:31:45] both sides, but particularly about the violence acting out the violence? And I am interested in males, about males who grow up in households where there's violence and what are the factors? Because we know  [00:31:54][9.6]

Speaker 1: [00:31:55] a lot, a  [00:31:56][0.8]

Speaker 2: [00:31:56] lot of people, grandmas, households and say, I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to do that or my dad to be different. And they actually follow through on it. I would love to like somebody to study. Well, this is me calling out, though the research out there I would love like you did find a man who grew up in households with violence,  [00:32:13][16.8]

Speaker 3: [00:32:14] just violence or coercive control,  [00:32:16][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:32:16] violence, coercive control. All of it depends on, you know, how you are put together and say OK and and talk to their partners and say, I want to make sure that you haven't been abusive and you're not like, That's real. But then I want to I want to sit down with you and hear your story. And how do you understand what you're what? You're what your dad did and and how did you make sense of it? And did you have a struggle not to follow his footsteps? Or was it easy and who supported you? And what did you need  [00:32:40][23.6]

Speaker 3: [00:32:40] to do in order to?  [00:32:41][0.9]

Speaker 2: [00:32:41] Yeah, or what or what? What did you experience? And I think there would be I think we need more of that because I think we need to live without this understanding that sort of, Oh, it's that simple. Oh, because a lot of the men in our groups, they have violent backgrounds. That means everybody who's violent has it. It's funny,  [00:32:56][15.5]

Speaker 3: [00:32:57] you know, because when you listen to a lot of different stories of of healing work being done with with particularly those who have experienced intergenerational trauma in the context of colonization, you'll hear a range where you know, somebody will say, Well, I experienced my my father being physically violent to my mother and I said, I'm never going to hit a woman. Well, they never would hit a woman, but they'd be coercively controlling. Right. OK, so. So they were able to dial back that physical violence, but they somehow felt that the coercive control was beneficial to them or was appropriate. Right? You know, so. So we have to kind of talk about all these different forms,  [00:33:37][40.1]

Speaker 2: [00:33:38] and I think we have to talk about going back to your point earlier that I think that  [00:33:41][3.3]

Speaker 1: [00:33:44] dealing with fear  [00:33:44][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:33:45] by trying to control other people is I always say it's a normal human thing. Wrestling with the urge to control is something all humans, men and women, regardless of your background, have to wrestle with. And I always think of it as somewhat a spiritual issue. But that's me. Hmm. But but that I think that we have to recognize, like you said a few minutes ago, that different people because of sexism, because of racism, because of economic disparities, they have more room to maneuver and to kind of more tools at their disposal, more ways to get out of consequences.  [00:34:21][35.3]

Speaker 1: [00:34:23] And that that  [00:34:24][0.5]

Speaker 2: [00:34:27] that that this is one of the reasons why we  [00:34:29][1.9]

Speaker 1: [00:34:29] see men's  [00:34:31][1.7]

Speaker 2: [00:34:31] violence  [00:34:31][0.0]

Speaker 1: [00:34:32] being  [00:34:32][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:34:33] more prevalent, more severe, leading to more deaths. You know that women who use violence because there are women who use violence or even use coercive control, but there's there's less of it, and there's just disparities all the way through this. So I think there's room to maneuver thing. If we just think about, Oh, you were hurt and therefore and I was a kid,  [00:34:51][17.8]

Speaker 3: [00:34:51] I want to bring this back to a system conversation, actually, because we're still looking at perpetration in light of that, that entire relational, private, you know, physical violence or coercive control. Wealthy perpetrators tend to use systems to perpetrate their violence. And we haven't been we haven't been mapping that. We haven't been mapping how systems are being used by, you know, those who have a lot of money. And I'm going to I'm going to not fully name it. But, you know, recent examples in Australia where people who have had historical allegations of sexual assault have used the courts in order to silence people who are trying to look at that pattern. And that's a very powerful form of. Troll, which we've allowed as a society and we've given validity to, and we've said, well, we all get recourse to the legal system, right? We all have that recourse, but nobody's looking at how the legal systems are being used. How police are being used in order to manipulate when you have a powerful perpetrator who has money and power and control. So we really do need to pull that into the conversation. Somebody may not be being physically violent. They may, you know, have geographic distance from their victim. And so but that doesn't mean that they're not still perpetrating.  [00:36:23][91.7]

Speaker 2: [00:36:24] And I think you're raising for me, the question about just sort of when we look at the linkages between trauma histories and violent behavior and coercive control that we need to make sure that we're really going slow and thinking about when we how are we defining trauma history?  [00:36:43][18.8]

Speaker 1: [00:36:43] Yeah.  [00:36:43][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:36:45] And and then what do we think the mechanisms, the connection between actually those things and  [00:36:50][5.0]

Speaker 1: [00:36:51] and  [00:36:51][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:36:53] acting out violently? You know, you know. And yeah, and are we are we really just doing simplistic equations or really trying to understand all the pieces, including choice making? I mean, and I  [00:37:06][12.9]

Speaker 1: [00:37:06] I  [00:37:06][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:37:07] I get it. I work with Ben, who could tell me, I mean, this is one of the things that sort of to me speaks to it. I think that we still get kind of kind of stuck in this loss of control model.  [00:37:18][11.0]

Speaker 1: [00:37:19] Mm hmm.  [00:37:19][0.1]

Speaker 2: [00:37:20] And somehow that people stop making decisions so that trauma survivors don't make decisions. And and almost every guy I worked with and I worked with hundreds of guys that when I asked them to describe why they did X versus Y, why they got assaulted versus didn't, they could tell me they could tell me their thought processes, actually. So it wasn't this black box. This sort of like I was flooded with emotions I don't remember and I blacked out. I think we have very much this blackout model like sort of. And and I don't know if we don't want to dove into these experiences or look at them too closely. But I would hear over and over again, for instance, that I started walking away and I start thinking, I can't let her make me look like a punk. And so he was. Now, this may have been informed by his childhood experience of humiliation or shame, and we could. I'm happy to go there, but if you don't understand that for that guy that he was actually choosing to step away from the scene and not get violent, and then his internal self-talk was, I'm going to be a punk. If I walk away, she's going to get the best of me. All of a sudden, she's the enemy. She's becomes an object threat, and I have to rebalance the power by getting abusive to her. If we don't get inside those experiences and break them apart or understand how they're connected, but still see that that person has a choice and and are responsible, and we're going to talk at the end of the the show about Matt Brown. And she's not in rehab because there's so much in the work that Matt and Sarah Brown are doing that it's sort of it's consistent with this, but but that  [00:38:58][98.8]

Speaker 1: [00:38:59] that you can't you can't  [00:39:02][2.4]

Speaker 2: [00:39:02] justify harming somebody else by the fact that you've been harmed. Right? So, you know, I just think we have a very simplistic way of thinking, Oh, trauma survivor, violent person. The trauma explains the violence, and that's all we need to know. And if we treat the cause, the danger is if we go off, we treat the trauma history automatically. Mm hmm. The abuse abusive, violent behavior is going to go away, and that is the one that most dangerous assumptions we can make.  [00:39:28][25.4]

Speaker 3: [00:39:28] I'm going to say that it's a dangerous assumption to make also, because if we don't face the systems and the ecosystem around the perpetrator who are supporting those behaviors and telling them that, you know, it's their right, and now I'm not talking about physical violence again, like, I really want to pull this out of that physical violence paradigm because I feel like that's the base that's like the lowest base that we can start from. I'm talking about coercive control, and I'm talking about ways that we've legitimatize perpetration right in our systems and ways that we've supported it by saying it's a person's right to do x ray without looking at the pattern of how they're using those systems, the pattern up of how they're harming other people. You know that that we're we're now creating the ground, the fertile grounds, the very fertile ground of support for those behaviors.  [00:40:26][58.0]

Speaker 2: [00:40:27] Well, if we if we think about in a really broad way that being a trauma survivor increases our experience of anxiety, the world feels less safe. Let's be really kind of kind of layperson kind of, you know, that makes us feel less safe in the world. This is our anxiety, it may lead to depression. You know, it may give us all these these experiences that that we wouldn't have if we were if we weren't abused. And then I'm told you can  [00:40:54][26.8]

Speaker 1: [00:40:54] you can  [00:40:55][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:40:55] do others, do things to other people to manage your internal state.  [00:40:59][3.5]

Speaker 1: [00:41:00] Yeah. And in fact, if they're not  [00:41:03][3.4]

Speaker 2: [00:41:06] acting the way, quote unquote they should, they're actually responsible for your internal state. And therefore the justification becomes that that you made me do it, you made me do it. And so we when I did see what you made me do, what is right there to show just how? So when I was doing men's behavior change work, we create an operational profile for  [00:41:27][21.2]

Speaker 1: [00:41:27] working with men and and it included things like  [00:41:34][7.2]

Speaker 2: [00:41:35] and it was really meant to be like, Well, what are the things that allow this person to keep acting the way they do? And this wasn't looking at the external world that you're talking about. It's really like the work, his internal world. And we would identify and label things like denial of impact of the behaviors on others, the harm caused others and even himself. And that that denial of responsibility, like if I can, if I can keep denying that it's my fault that you're hurt physically or emotionally  [00:42:06][30.9]

Speaker 3: [00:42:08] or that you shouldn't be hurt right now, what I did has.  [00:42:10][2.5]

Speaker 2: [00:42:11] But all but I have a right to do that. So then you go, you  [00:42:14][2.8]

Speaker 3: [00:42:14] go the other. My religion tells me that my deeply held beliefs says  [00:42:18][4.2]

Speaker 2: [00:42:19] I can do that. So what you saw, what we created was this kind of interweaving of things. So you just actually spoke to one of the other things, which was entitlement thinking.  [00:42:26][7.4]

Speaker 1: [00:42:28] And we named a  [00:42:29][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:42:29] number of flavors of what we call flavors of entitlement thinking. And one was flat out misogyny. You know, the women are are are considered stupid or dangerous to sort of sub flavors like they're out to get you or they're so lower than you that you have to control them or  [00:42:45][16.2]

Speaker 3: [00:42:46] that they're manipulative  [00:42:46][0.3]

Speaker 2: [00:42:47] and dangerous. But that's OK, right? Or or chivalry? You know, I have to protect you. I'm opening the door for you. That's right. And how grateful. That's right. I was thing. Wow. It sounds like you've experienced them.  [00:43:00][13.8]

Speaker 1: [00:43:02] And and then  [00:43:03][1.0]

Speaker 2: [00:43:04] and then some version of logic. I'm right and logical. Emotional, yeah, emotional, right? And then the last one was victim entitlement. I will never go through that again.  [00:43:14][10.1]

Speaker 1: [00:43:15] Yeah, I will.  [00:43:16][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:43:16] Nevertheless, I was hurt. I was right, right? And and so my  [00:43:19][3.8]

Speaker 3: [00:43:20] relationship didn't work out right. I was rejected.  [00:43:22][2.1]

Speaker 2: [00:43:22] I was cheated on before.  [00:43:23][0.6]

Speaker 3: [00:43:23] Therefore, I get to  [00:43:24][1.1]

Speaker 2: [00:43:25] do this and I get to protect myself. I get to. And so you could see how that then plays into the other one, which is denial of impact. And then the third piece in that kind of trifecta of things was needing wanting to avoid feelings of helplessness and fear. Yeah, I can't tolerate being afraid or being vulnerable or being vulnerable, so I can't tolerate so or  [00:43:47][22.4]

Speaker 3: [00:43:47] men are not vulnerable.  [00:43:48][0.5]

Speaker 2: [00:43:48] And then  [00:43:49][0.2]

Speaker 3: [00:43:49] people. That's right. We're going back into that.  [00:43:51][1.7]

Speaker 2: [00:43:51] That's right. And so when you put those three things together, I'm not I, because what I thought was if actually you can tackle any one of those three  [00:44:00][8.6]

Speaker 1: [00:44:01] that  [00:44:01][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:44:01] you can begin to get movement because my experience is a lot of guys, once they got connected to the harm, they were like, actually felt it and saw it, that that was a motivation like that they owned it, usually  [00:44:11][9.5]

Speaker 3: [00:44:11] towards their children, not to  [00:44:12][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:44:13] them. That's right. You know, for Pierce, the entitlement that you could get some traction or you can help them tolerate their emotions of fear. Like each of these, three things would give you the ability to get some traction with a guy that did great change. But their, I guess, their points of traction and that's what we called an operational profile because it was a way to kind of actually do the work. It wasn't a broader analysis. It wasn't it wasn't about the systems, but was around sort of sitting with somebody and and working with them. I think we  [00:44:42][29.2]

Speaker 1: [00:44:42] need more  [00:44:44][2.4]

Speaker 2: [00:44:45] of that, I think. I'm not saying that's the that model is the only model, but I think we need more of that ability to sort of  [00:44:50][5.5]

Speaker 1: [00:44:53] connect  [00:44:53][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:44:53] the dots because if, if, if he's a trauma survivor, he's going have a lot of those things in spades. You know, I don't wanna be a victim again. You know, may have trouble regulating his fear and his his feelings of helplessness may feel like it's going to destroy him.  [00:45:10][16.5]

Speaker 3: [00:45:10] May have adopted rigid gender norms so that he can protect himself, right?  [00:45:14][4.1]

Speaker 2: [00:45:15] And so I think we need to do better at exploring these connections and to create programing and kind of interventions around them. But but the the second the sub point of this second thing, which is that really to understand that choosing violence or choosing control doesn't help you heal your trauma history.  [00:45:36][20.7]

Speaker 3: [00:45:36] Also, choosing coercive control does not help you change your trauma history. And professionals choosing to be coercive does not heal somebody who's choosing violence. The pure containment of somebody who's choosing violent does not heal that there's no rehabilitation in that and there are people who need to be contained, right? They need to be removed from the ability to control other people. That's one hundred percent. But we are not working on healing. We're not acknowledging that people need to be healed. That's why we are part of that process. Not only just that, it shouldn't just be in the sphere of men's behavior change programs where there happens. Mental health professionals, addiction professionals, advocates, lawyers, judges should all be aware of these perpetrator patterns, these patterns of behaviors and how this is being used, how behaviors are being used, how the legal system is being used in order to put a boundary around those behaviors and say, you must not do this because in the absence of of, you know, disconnection in the absence of saying this is not OK in the absence of somebody else, besides the victim standing up and saying, this is this is wrong, that person is going to continue to do those behaviors. And in fact, if they gain something or perceived that they gain something, whether they perceive that they gain stability, whether they perceive that they gain power and control, whether they perceive that they self protect themselves from their own behaviors, that those being exposed is actually what they're trying to protect, then they're going to keep doing it. And this takes a level of bravery and focus on the part of those who are who are putting up those boundaries. We're tired of doing it on our own, folks. We really need you to help us. We're asking you to do better at this, which means learning what those behaviors are and how to create a boundary around them.  [00:47:46][130.0]

Speaker 2: [00:47:47] When I think we're asking people to think about breaking down dichotomy, is they because I think  [00:47:51][3.9]

Speaker 1: [00:47:51] that that and and in  [00:47:54][2.8]

Speaker 2: [00:47:54] a culture and society where survivors voices have been so marginalized and so not heard  [00:47:58][3.9]

Speaker 1: [00:47:59] that I  [00:47:59][0.2]

Speaker 2: [00:47:59] think and for good reason, I just want to say this that that when some people start talking about helping people who perpetrate violence heal, that the world goes, I mean, just and just makes people so angry. Right? Because where were people talking about my healing and who was there to stop me from being hurt? And I remember I was given I was at a conference and excuse me, a number of years ago  [00:48:23][23.7]

Speaker 1: [00:48:25] and  [00:48:25][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:48:26] it was about I was on. A panel is given five minutes to talk about innovations and with other people, but innovations in the work with with men's behavior change. And and I talked about that operational profile and I talked about the avoidance of fear and helplessness and as part of it and  [00:48:41][15.1]

Speaker 1: [00:48:42] and  [00:48:42][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:48:43] in five minutes, right? And you can do a really good justice to those those concepts in five minutes.  [00:48:48][4.5]

Speaker 1: [00:48:49] And I had two women  [00:48:51][2.7]

Speaker 2: [00:48:52] come up to me and they were advocates, and I think they were both survivors  [00:48:54][2.0]

Speaker 1: [00:48:55] and they were. How dare you  [00:48:57][2.0]

Speaker 2: [00:48:58] talk about those men and their fear? They're not afraid. The women are the ones that are afraid and sort of I kind of got a full kind of blast of their outrage and their  [00:49:12][14.2]

Speaker 1: [00:49:13] anger that  [00:49:14][1.3]

Speaker 2: [00:49:16] that that was the view they they they had that that was the only acceptable conversation to have. And I think that we need to bridge the gap and be able to talk about  [00:49:25][9.1]

Speaker 1: [00:49:27] about healing in a way  [00:49:31][4.2]

Speaker 2: [00:49:33] for for people to choose violence that does not  [00:49:35][2.4]

Speaker 1: [00:49:36] give an inch  [00:49:36][0.4]

Speaker 2: [00:49:37] on safety. Does not give an inch on self-determination and stability and stability and satisfaction. Quality of life for adult child survivors. And that we have to wrestle with the complexity of that. The professional need to do that, but that if we want to be allies to communities that have experienced intergenerational trauma, that I still experience the trauma of colonization or, you know, racism  [00:50:01][24.2]

Speaker 1: [00:50:03] that that  [00:50:03][0.7]

Speaker 2: [00:50:04] that we need to see that in those people who are choosing violence or being abusive or controlling and to see us, somebody said to me and to me the other day saying, just, I'm working with  [00:50:16][11.6]

Speaker 1: [00:50:18] you,  [00:50:18][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:50:19] indigenous clients, and there's just this just anger and depression.  [00:50:22][2.9]

Speaker 3: [00:50:22] There's there's something, you know, something I want to say to survivors. Yeah, our anger doesn't heal us.  [00:50:28][5.5]

Speaker 2: [00:50:29] OK, it's real, can you? Can you  [00:50:31][1.8]

Speaker 3: [00:50:32] expand  [00:50:32][0.0]

Speaker 2: [00:50:32] that because you got some people who could say, Oh, my anger is a good, healthy response, that you would have  [00:50:36][4.3]

Speaker 3: [00:50:37] something to say that the anger is a great boundary setter. But if if our anger. Are is preventing us from being able to look holistically at solutions if it's locking down in a singular action and saying that that's the one action that we can take if it's limiting diverse conversations by other survivors about what they need and what they want, then it's actually becoming a form of coercive control.  [00:51:06][29.2]

Speaker 1: [00:51:07] Right?  [00:51:07][0.0]

Speaker 3: [00:51:08] OK. I really want to say that, you know, we have a responsibility to work on our stuff to heal ourselves. We have a responsibility as well to voice the pieces where professionals have failed to support that and have actually caused more harm. We have that responsibility. But if we can't have these conversations and if we shut down the voices of other survivors who say, I need this to heal and we say, no, no, no, there's only one way for you to do it, then we are being coercively controlling, OK? Somebody may be upset with that. But right? But you know, the pathway that I most see this conversation happening right is oftentimes and I'm just going to say it, white advocates who are telling minorities how to how to deal with their own perpetration, how to deal with their healing, you know, and so we have to we have to get better at not just focusing on the pain of what was caused. And that's real. And it's absolutely ongoing and it hasn't been resolved because it's being minimized because our systems are blind and are perpetrating against us. Professionals are perpetrating against us, but we have to be able to land in a place where we realize that part of the problem is that we don't get to tell other people what their needs and experiences are, that we have to collaborate with each other in order for us to create an environment where we can heal together.  [00:53:03][114.7]

Speaker 2: [00:53:03] And you're really talking about about the importance of listening to diverse voices of survivors with different perspectives. Absolutely. And and and in  [00:53:11][7.6]

Speaker 3: [00:53:11] fact, the reality is, is that the voices that should be the loudest, the voices who should be funded right as part of the solution right should be the voices who are most represented in the carceral systems in the family court systems. Those are the voices that we should prioritize because those are the voices that are being perpetrated against actively right now, not the people, not not not the people who are not most represented. So. So so when we look at that, when we look at the industry and when we look at advocacy, are those the voices that are the loudest right now are those are the voices that are funded right now? Are those the voices that are the biggest part of offering solutions to the problems because they understand their communities and experiences? The answer is no.  [00:54:00][49.0]

Speaker 2: [00:54:02] Right. So you're talking about the the place are saying if if Aboriginal community is three percent of the population of Australia, but women are represented at some rate of 10 times, ten times that in the prison system, I guess the average  [00:54:17][15.5]

Speaker 3: [00:54:18] Aboriginal women and their solutions should be prioritized and should be funded,  [00:54:22][3.9]

Speaker 2: [00:54:22] right? So that's so, so again, going back to what this means for looking at the intersection of people who choose violence and trauma, you know that perspective about including cultural trauma histories  [00:54:35][12.3]

Speaker 1: [00:54:36] and and  [00:54:36][0.6]

Speaker 2: [00:54:37] trauma of colonization in the way we we think about those people who choose violence, think about their the lateral violence spread by colonization, you know, by looking at  [00:54:47][9.8]

Speaker 3: [00:54:47] the lateral violence spread by our system.  [00:54:49][1.6]

Speaker 2: [00:54:49] That's right. You know, and so so I think this is for me why this is so important and  [00:54:54][4.8]

Speaker 1: [00:54:54] again, that  [00:54:55][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:54:56] that we can do that. I believe we have an obligation to really wrestle with. What does it mean to talk about healing for people who choose violence, healing their trauma histories without budging and still centering, ending the violence and  [00:55:13][17.5]

Speaker 3: [00:55:13] focusing on that  [00:55:14][0.7]

Speaker 2: [00:55:14] person and better outcomes for the adult survivor? And I think this is where we are in the fields and we need we need to move in this direction and that the third thing you know is this the behavioral approach of the safe and together model, the perpetrator pattern based approach, which says, you know, you need to look at the pattern of the behaviors. So there's nothing about being trauma informed in the work with men who who are who are choosing violence that. Precludes this this behavioral analysis of their pattern or the harm, and I think this is just when you keep asking me, how do we operationalize, let's be specific. Well, to make sure that  [00:55:51][37.1]

Speaker 1: [00:55:52] that we are, we are  [00:55:53][1.4]

Speaker 2: [00:55:53] looking at both their their behaviors and the way its impact on people's safety, self-determination and satisfaction. What are those patterns of behavior? And then also looking at their their history of being abused as a kid through colonization, through racism and looking at them as a whole person and saying, OK, how do we work with this person to to make their life better? How do we make their life in their family better? So one thing  [00:56:21][27.8]

Speaker 1: [00:56:21] is you can't keep  [00:56:23][1.3]

Speaker 2: [00:56:23] doing these things to your family members. We're not going to we're not going to dichotomies you're healing from, from the harm to others. And again, we're going to read Matt Brown's She Is Not Your Rehab seven principles, and you're going to hear all this stuff in there. But you need to really. You can't have you can't sort of do one or the other necessarily. And and but you need to sort of say, OK, is this person? Are they identifying their behavior? Are they? Can they claim the harm? Are they changing their behavior?  [00:56:53][29.3]

Speaker 1: [00:56:54] And that  [00:56:55][0.9]

Speaker 2: [00:56:56] and there was a whole white paper we wrote about this that really kind of laid out this behavior change, namely claiming, yeah, Naomi clammy and  [00:57:03][7.2]

Speaker 1: [00:57:03] changing. And. And I want to see that embedded in  [00:57:07][4.0]

Speaker 2: [00:57:09] in addiction programs I once had embedded in mental health programs. I want those mental health and addiction practitioners to be just as savvy and thoughtful and assess the harm to others. They are about assessing self harm and to make treatment plans, you know, and engagement plans where they say to somebody saying, Look, you came here because of your addiction, but looks like we've identified that you're also been doing these behaviors to your partner. We want you to go another program at the same time you're trying to get sober. We're going to look at your treatment of other people as central to your addiction. Right? And I think really good addiction programs where people, you know, work the 12 steps and do, you know, make amends. There's a really strong component about this. I mean, it's just not so alien to the addiction community, but I think we need to be really much more proactive about talking about these things and making these linkages  [00:57:56][47.7]

Speaker 3: [00:57:58] and that that's not a one and done action, right? That's an ongoing effort, right? You know, and that that effort is is is is focused on the way that the person who who does that, how they how they move on through the world and with their partner in that regard. You know, I think that's the other thing, you know, I want to get to Matt and Sarah Brown because I feel like they're really doing the work on the ground with, you know, with families and with men. And I feel like, you know, we need to look at sort of the the supports that we put in, both for families and men on the ground. But then we need to embed these concepts, like you said, in addiction programs and behavior change programs and our judicial systems and the measures for if somebody has changed and if there are a safe parent, you know, or if they have changed their violent behaviors or coercive behaviors. So do you want to read some of the principles that he uses to work with men?  [00:59:03][65.3]

Speaker 2: [00:59:04] So if you're not familiar with with Matt Brown and his partner, Sarah Brown, that they are creating a movement? Yes, out of New Zealand called she is not in rehab. And we met Matt and Sarah on our last trip abroad before the pandemic and and spent a lot.  [00:59:21][17.1]

Speaker 3: [00:59:21] I got to hug them because we weren't pandemic.  [00:59:23][1.3]

Speaker 2: [00:59:24] And in Christchurch,  [00:59:24][0.8]

Speaker 1: [00:59:26] and Matt  [00:59:28][2.0]

Speaker 2: [00:59:29] grew up with tremendous abuse in his home from his dads and his spoken about it on a TED talk has spoken at our recently most recently for us at our Asia Pacific Conference, which here was a huge hit and really thank him for doing that. And there's a book about to come out. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm giving all the promo in the plaques because I just think everybody should be connected to them. And and Mazza Barber, he cuts hair  [00:59:59][30.5]

Speaker 1: [01:00:00] and he but  [01:00:02][1.8]

Speaker 2: [01:00:02] he does more than that, which is he talks to many, creates a safe space for men to talk. And in his barbershop and has reached out to diverse men has that he talks about having all sorts of men sit in this chair at his barbershop and talk to them. And and so out of those experiences, they just talked about 25000 hours of talking to men, which is really profound.  [01:00:26][23.6]

Speaker 3: [01:00:27] He has like a  [01:00:28][0.4]

Speaker 2: [01:00:28] Ph.D in talking to men,  [01:00:29][1.3]

Speaker 1: [01:00:30] talking. And anyway.  [01:00:31][0.8]

Speaker 2: [01:00:32] And so we're just going to read directly from they've got a Facebook page, they've got a website. She is not your rehab, they've got a book coming out soon.  [01:00:38][5.9]

Speaker 1: [01:00:40] But I think they.  [01:00:41][1.0]

Speaker 2: [01:00:42] And Sarah, have put into words a lot of this, but we've been talking about bridging this gap between the healing and the responsibility for changing behavior. Yeah, so there are seven points here. Once she is not responsible for your emotional rehabilitation,  [01:01:00][18.1]

Speaker 3: [01:01:03] seamless foundation  [01:01:03][0.4]

Speaker 2: [01:01:04] since foundation, but it's a basic this idea that that somebody else isn't supposed to be there to meet your emotional needs, right? You know, to your healing is your responsibility and yours to take initiative for and manage. So again, when people think about, you know, if you're working with with a man who's been abusive, if this is  [01:01:23][19.2]

Speaker 1: [01:01:24] clear or  [01:01:24][0.4]

Speaker 2: [01:01:25] you know, and if you're working with somebody who's got addiction issues or you're seeing them because their trauma history. Ask yourself, am I clear with them around these things? Three. Any healing needed for you cannot come at the expense of her healing, health and well-being. That's a great one. You love that way. I love that one, too. Any healing needed for you can come at the expense of her healing, health and well-being. That is that, to me, is the central  [01:01:52][27.0]

Speaker 1: [01:01:52] bridging of that healing and behavior change that, you know,  [01:01:59][6.9]

Speaker 2: [01:01:59] and that's really an antidote to that.  [01:02:01][1.6]

Speaker 1: [01:02:04] I think  [01:02:04][0.2]

Speaker 2: [01:02:04] the narcissistic interpretation people may make in a 12-Step program with like my sobriety comes before anything else,  [01:02:10][6.2]

Speaker 1: [01:02:11] right?  [01:02:11][0.0]

Speaker 2: [01:02:12] You know, and so it really gives license to some people to or  [01:02:16][3.9]

Speaker 3: [01:02:16] me making amends with you, even if you don't want me to do this  [01:02:19][2.4]

Speaker 2: [01:02:19] fast. Right, exactly. Myself on, you know. You know, and even though that's really not, if you really look at the 12 steps, I can do this if I if it doesn't harm other people, I mean, there's really built into that. But people take that and they don't do it the way it's designed. She can support you, but she can never do more for you than you're prepared to do for yourself.  [01:02:39][20.6]

Speaker 1: [01:02:40] Yeah.  [01:02:40][0.0]

Speaker 2: [01:02:41] And to me, that strikes at the sort of, well, if she didn't do acts, I wouldn't do. Why? No. If you are not supposed to act abusively, you have to do it even when she isn't being nice to you, right?  [01:02:51][10.1]

Speaker 3: [01:02:52] And then you have to make decisions about your relationship. That's right,  [01:02:55][2.3]

Speaker 2: [01:02:56] regardless of what anyone has done to you. It is now time for you to take ownership of your own life and be commit to living it wholeheartedly enough to do any work needed. Your childhood trauma wasn't your fault, but your healing is now your responsibility. Yes.  [01:03:11][14.8]

Speaker 1: [01:03:13] And so again, it's  [01:03:14][1.5]

Speaker 2: [01:03:15] asking people to step away from this defense of the world's dangerous. I've got to I've got to protect against them.  [01:03:21][6.5]

Speaker 1: [01:03:22] And when they been there,  [01:03:23][0.9]

Speaker 2: [01:03:24] when I perceive the dangers, I get justified in doing whatever I what kind of attitude,  [01:03:26][2.7]

Speaker 3: [01:03:27] you know, I really love those seven principles as a person who has survived child abuse and then coercive control. And and and that's kind of what I was saying that that last one, can you read the last one  [01:03:41][14.0]

Speaker 2: [01:03:41] again, regardless of what anyone this is number five, regardless of what anyone has done to you, is now time for you to take ownership of your own life and be committed to living it wholeheartedly enough to do any work needed. Your childhood trauma wasn't your fault, but your healing is now your responsibility.  [01:03:55][14.3]

Speaker 3: [01:03:56] And yeah, and I'm going to say, you know, even the trauma that we experience in adulthood is not our fault either, but it's still our responsibility to heal. Yeah.  [01:04:04][8.2]

Speaker 2: [01:04:05] Six True change comes from genuine growth. Growth happens once we hear healing starts when we begin to feel our pain and which is really that's a tough one. Well, it's a tough one because I think that's the connection back to being abusive. Why it doesn't help you heal your trauma. Because if I keep turning my pain on to you, putting on you, then I'm actually not living through. I'm actually not living through  [01:04:29][23.3]

Speaker 1: [01:04:30] what  [01:04:30][0.0]

Speaker 2: [01:04:31] I need to live through. As hard as it is, as hard  [01:04:32][1.7]

Speaker 3: [01:04:33] as it is.  [01:04:33][0.3]

Speaker 2: [01:04:34] And learning how to to to experience it without feeling like I'm going to die  [01:04:39][5.1]

Speaker 3: [01:04:40] or I'm going to never be OK.  [01:04:41][1.1]

Speaker 2: [01:04:42] OK, right? And so I think that's so important.  [01:04:44][2.5]

Speaker 1: [01:04:46] And then seven  [01:04:46][0.4]

Speaker 2: [01:04:47] hurt people never really hurt people because what we will not transform, we transmit on those around us and healed people do indeed heal people. The question is, will you have the courage to heal? So those are the seven principles and these are from She's not your rehab.  [01:05:03][15.9]

Speaker 3: [01:05:04] Yeah. And I love I love the pure self-responsibility of it. You know, it doesn't hedge in any behavioral way. And it really lands in that space of continued and ongoing coercive control. And violence is not a strategy for healing that it is. It is really just going to continue that cycle and it's going to continue it inside yourself. You won't get to a place where you can you can heal if you continue that. So, you know, to me the fact that mental health programs and addiction programs have not centered, this means that we've enabled a lot of perpetration by giving people a sense that they have an excuse.  [01:05:47][42.7]

Speaker 2: [01:05:47] Right, right. I think that and  [01:05:50][2.2]

Speaker 3: [01:05:50] I think that that's what those advocates were reacting to. They were reacting to the fact that our systems have basically. Given carte blanche for people who have experienced violence to continue to perpetrate violence, and that's 100 percent wrong, right? It's 100 percent wrong. And you know what I was trying to say earlier about the anger was that's not going to solve the problem. It may create a boundary, right? And we may feel like we urgently have to create that boundary because our systems are failing us, which is absolutely 100 percent correct and real, right? And we experienced that every day in advocacy. But a boundary like that is not actually going to solve the problem. It's constantly going to be defending against perpetration.  [01:06:33][43.4]

Speaker 2: [01:06:35] So it feels like, you know, we're we're almost back to where I felt like it was 30 years ago. And that's not a bad thing, which is that once you sort of clearly labeled that these behaviors clearly identify them, clearly see them, clearly understand them clearance in the harm they do. You know, the abuse, the course control the violence  [01:06:53][18.6]

Speaker 1: [01:06:55] that there and that year that you look at, how do we  [01:06:57][2.7]

Speaker 2: [01:07:00] say this is an OK, you need to stop this and look at the range of things we have, whether it's incarceration at the extreme end to community intervention or family intervention, all these things. But there's a clear culture of this is not OK, and we name these things right. It's not just physical violence that after that, once you've set that kind of in place that we have to  [01:07:19][19.0]

Speaker 1: [01:07:19] all be creative and committed  [01:07:23][4.1]

Speaker 2: [01:07:25] to a conversation about what the processes of change, real change and what is an evolving.  [01:07:30][5.8]

Speaker 3: [01:07:31] And if we don't have that conversation, we pressurize survivors to manage that right. We pressurize survivors to draw that boundary. If we can't be brave enough as professionals and as systems to have this holistic conversation right, then we are foreseeing that on survivors and their kids. And that's not OK, right? It's not our responsibility.  [01:07:55][24.4]

Speaker 2: [01:07:56] So I hope people take this this podcast episode as an invitation to really explore and know that we don't have the answers. And this is a conversation, a conversation. It's a conversation we're trying to bite in. And you may agree or disagree with different things we've said, but that we need to really break down some of the dichotomies around how we talk about trauma, how we talk about addiction, how we talk about domestic violence perpetration are choosing to choose behaviors that harm other people and  [01:08:24][28.1]

Speaker 3: [01:08:25] how we talk about containment and how we talk about healing and rehabilitation as  [01:08:30][5.4]

Speaker 2: [01:08:30] well. Yeah. And that this is a theme we're going to keep exploring, I think, across other podcasts in other ways.  [01:08:37][7.3]

Speaker 3: [01:08:38] Well, I would love to explore this conversation with the people who are most impacted by the systems because I feel like solutions need to arise out of those experiences and those voices, you know, and and we recently had our Asia-Pacific conference. And, you know, Jess Hill said the most beautiful thing, I guess for me, the highest compliment one could ever have. And that is that though there's quite a lot of passion in the debate about whether to criminalize coercive control and on, you know, one end of the spectrum, you have people who have been highly harmed by the systems and the systems as they exist are very overpoliced and racist towards those communities. And then people who feel very strongly like this is going to move the cultural dial forward in in not having so such high dual arrests and really being able to identify perpetration clearly. And at times, that debate has become very passionate and very, I would say, emotionally violent in some ways and dismissive. You can't dismiss people's experiences. But we were able to create a container where diverse voices came in and spoke very intimately about the problem, the experiences and just said something really lovely where she said, I feel like you created a loving container where we could have these conversations. And that's really, really important.  [01:10:08][90.6]

Speaker 2: [01:10:09] Important to me, too. Yeah. So you've been listening to partner with the survivor, and we didn't even introduce ourselves at the beginning.  [01:10:15][6.5]

Speaker 3: [01:10:16] They were on  [01:10:17][0.6]

Speaker 2: [01:10:17] vacation. There are many cases of who we are and similar think to to Ruth Stern's Mandel. That's me. Now you have strategic relationships, e-learning and communications.  [01:10:28][11.0]

Speaker 3: [01:10:29] And David Mandel, I'm going to introduce you to the executive director and founder of the Safe and Together Institute.  [01:10:34][4.6]

Speaker 2: [01:10:35] So you mean listening to us talk  [01:10:36][0.9]

Speaker 1: [01:10:37] about trauma  [01:10:38][0.9]

Speaker 2: [01:10:39] and I guess, addiction and behavior change in people who choose violence? And so thank you for joining us. And please, if you like this podcast, share it. Subscribe to it on whatever platform you're on  [01:10:51][12.1]

Speaker 3: [01:10:52] and if you would like to be on our podcast if you have things. That you want to express as a survivor, as a professional, please do contact me because we are trying to create this inter system conversation where we can all do better at domestic violence informed practice.  [01:11:12][19.6]

Speaker 2: [01:11:13] And if you want to learn more about the safety other institute, go to safe together, inside.com or follow us on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter. And also, if you want to take a class with us, you can go to Academy Dot Save for gender in sitcom.  [01:11:27][14.5]

Speaker 3: [01:11:28] And there are free and there are paid courses on there and there is a coupon code. It's partnered all lowercase. All right. And we're out and we're out.  [01:11:28][0.0]

[3963.3]