Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
These podcasts are a reflection of Ruth & David’s ongoing conversations, which are both intimate and professional and touch on complex topics like how systems fail victims and children, how victims experience those systems, and how children are impacted by those failures. Their discussions delve into how society views masculinity and violence and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world as professionals, as parents and as partners. During these podcasts, David & Ruth challenge the notions that keep all of us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures and as families into safety, nurturance and healing. Note: Some of the topics discussed in the episodes are deeply personal and sensitive, which may be difficult for some people. We occasionally use mature language. We often use gender pronouns like “he” when discussing perpetrators and “she” for victims. While both men and women can be abusive and controlling, and domestic abuse happens in straight and same-sex relationships, the most common situation when it comes to coercive control is a male perpetrator and a female victim. Men's abuse toward women is more closely associated with physical injury, fear and control. Similarly, very different expectations of men and women as parents and the focus of Safe & Together on children in the context of domestic abuse make it impossible to make generic references to gender when it comes to parenting. The Model, through its behavioral focus on patterns of behavior, is useful in identifying and responding to abuse in all situations, including same-sex couples and women's use of violence. We think our listeners are sophisticated enough to understand these distinctions.
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Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel
Season 5 Episode 13: Coercive Control & Children Conference Podcast: The Role of Language in Global Responses to Domestic Abuse
What if understanding power dynamics could transform the way we approach domestic abuse and trauma? Join us for this special live recording of the "Partner with a Survivor" podcast, where we invite you to explore the delicate intricacies of relationships alongside hosts David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo from the Safe and Together Institute.
Ruth, known for her "Cranky Survivor" persona, opens up about how this unique character serves as both a personal expression and a strategic response to the challenges faced by victim survivors when dealing with institutional behaviors & professional biases. Together, we navigate the critical importance of embracing survivor feedback—anger and all—while we unravel the deeply ingrained social and gender biases within professional practices.
Dive into the heart of coercive control and break down the complex layers of what is called "mutualized" violence, which we call 'acts of resistance' to a perpetrator's coercion & harm. Our conversation challenges the status quo by examining who truly holds power and control in relationships, especially in contexts riddled with bias against marginalized women. We don't shy away from the difficult but necessary task of confronting systemic issues and weaponized responses to survivor anger, urging professionals to recognize anger as a healthy and natural response to boundary violations. In this episode, we champion the importance of safe environments for survivors to express their emotions and set boundaries, particularly in the face of systemic challenges.
As we wrap up, we shift our focus to the evolving language within the Safe and Together framework. By moving away from North American-centric jargon, we aim to align with global conversations and maintain core principles through adaptable language. The episode concludes with a discussion on fostering healthy professional relationships, emphasizing collaboration across genders to ensure child and community safety.
Reflect with us on how these insights can be applied in your own life, and help us continue our mission by sharing your feedback and suggestions for future topics.
Listen to prior episodes about professionals, victim blaming, acts of resistance & power dynamics:
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/episode-2-partnered-with-a-survivor-podcast/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-7-understanding-and-validating-survivors-acts-of-resistance/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-5-episode-2-womens-use-of-force-in-intimate-relationships/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/season-3-episode-3-minisode-on-worker-safety-well-being-when-workers-have-their-own-histories-of-abuse/
https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/episo
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
and we're back we're back and, uh, this is a special ask me anything. Partner with a Survivor for the North American European Course of Control in Children Conference by Safe and Together. I'm David Mandel, ceo of the Safe and Together Institute.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:And I'm Ruth Ramundo Mandel and I want to do a little bit of a land acknowledgement. So Safe and Together Institute recognizes the traditional custodians of the land and honors those elders past, present and emerging. And currently we are on Tunxis Masako land and it snowed today. Today was the first snow, so we have a beautiful blanket of fresh snow, which I'm not quite excited about, but it's really good because we haven't been getting a lot of rain. So welcome everyone, and I think you wanted to start off.
David Mandel:I did, and this is our first podcast in front of a live studio audience. This is kind of very cool. It's gonna be a short one, about 40 minutes, yeah, and we're gonna ask each other a question, each of us a question to start, and then we're going to open up. So you know, hopefully people are out there We'll have questions. If not, we've got more questions. We've got Nicola and Leah in the wings. So, ruth, you know we put this podcast together. Actually it was your idea. You came to me and said you know, let's do this podcast, partner with a survivor and let's talk about, um, how this uh works and um, so what? I, I, um, I'm really curious. You know, where did the, the persona cranky survivor, come from?
David Mandel:deep inside my bones how much much of it is a persona, how much of it is it really you?
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Okay, well, the answer is that it's both. Having been a person who grew up in an institution and experienced a lot of institutional behaviors both in that institution and then post institution, where I was seeking assistance, I have a lot of empathy for the way that victim survivors navigate through the environment. But one of the people who really influenced me was a woman by the name of Courageous Fire, and I always give her credit for this because she's amazing and you should look her up. And I always give her credit for this because she's amazing and you should look her up. And she does a training where she teaches professionals how to engage, particularly with Black women, and she pulls up the main archetypes that are believed in our society about Black women, which also applies a lot to Hispanic and Latina women and she does this as a way to try to train professionals into not responding to those particular sets of behaviors, especially during trauma and threat, in further harmful ways. Again, it's a strategy for partnering.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I feel like all of us are really not good at conflict.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:We avoid it, we try not to engage in it.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:When we're in a professional capacity and we feel like we're being criticized, our immediate defensiveness comes up and, after having been in the medical field I knew that the way that people respond to those moments of conflict and challenge to their practice is an integral part of their ability to do effective practice and that in the medical field people who don't respond to that well practice.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:And that in the medical field people who don't respond to that well often are people who have multiple malpractice suits against them. And so for me it's a way to try to anesthetize inoculate professionals against that reflexive behavior that when they hear anger and criticism and real alarm from survivors, particularly women, who are of different cultures than them, then they respond by doubling down, by removing self-determination, by labeling that victim survivor as the problem and problematic, because they're really pushing on the practices and the ways that that professional is behaving. So in a way it's a dual strategy. Absolutely Cranky survivor leaves deep in my bones and there was no way I could keep her from coming out. But that it's a very intentional strategy. That when I feel that outrage inside of my body at the illogic, the insanity of our collective behaviors when we're dealing with victim survivors, that it's so important for people to hear how that impacts victim survivors in a real, tangible way and hear the anger and outrage and pain and suffering, confusion and the loss of self-determination that's happening.
David Mandel:You know I love Cranky Survivor.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:That's a good thing.
David Mandel:I love Cranky Survivor as you and I love Cranky Survivor as the persona. And all I'll say to add to that is just, I think, to professionals, if we want to assume the mantle you know claim to be domestic abuse informed and trauma informed, by which a lot of us aspire to, which is appropriate that, um, we need that ability here. Survivors anger, anger the system, anger how they've been treated.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:not personalize it, not, um, you know, uh, not take it on, not deny it, listen to it and understand it being abusive or being they're being abused in their organization, their practices being abusive of institutional unaccountability impacting them, and you see an organizational response where somebody stands up and represents the institution and takes it personally. That is absolutely a sign that their organization is not dealing internally with issues in their practice, with problems with their policy, with professional unaccountability, perhaps even professional criminality. There is no reason that, as professionals, we shouldn't be trained into conflict management that allows us to hear that type of anger without responding like children, very defensively, with a lot of emotion. We're professionals, right? Isn't that the definition of professionalism?
David Mandel:Sorry. So that's cranky survivor question. Do you want to ask me?
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I absolutely do, and then we'll take questions from the audience. I absolutely do, but I need to get my glasses because I'm blind. So one of the things that I'm curious about and I think it's really important to name the fact that we're working with relationships and that that can be deeply personal, even though we're professionals and we're trained to work with people around violence. We're professionals and we're trained to work with people around violence, but you know, as a man working to disrupt male violence and gender double standards, what's been your biggest personal struggle about engaging this work and living that as a value?
David Mandel:You know, we create these questions and that was, you know, a huge, huge question for me. You it, I think for me what I'll say is it goes back, you know, decades in some sense. Where you know, I, um, was asked when I went through my first training with the duluth um organization, a domestic use intervention project which is famous for the power and control wheel and coordinated community response, and I got trained by Ellen Pence and um. They asked us in the training to to focus and, and you know, acknowledge where we've been controlling. And it was, you know, and I thought I had done a lot of work even at that point. It was not new to me.
David Mandel:I, I looked at patriarchy and gender and men had some education around feminism. I was young, I was in my early 20s and but it was a profound question to really just directly say look at your controlling and acknowledge. And I had to look back at my past at that point in relationships and acknowledge where I'd been controlling. And for me it's been a journey, constant journey. I think of it as a spiritual one, not just a one about gender, but about acknowledging where I'm powerless, acknowledging where I have control, being very focused on being as consent based as I can in my relationships and and one of my favorite examples of it is is where I do doing work with men I was looking at sort of conflict resolution.
David Mandel:Again, this is going back years and saying it's uh, when I say I'm sorry, it's not quite the same same thing as saying I'm wrong and and so I really kind of looked at you know sort of embracing, sort of admitting I was wrong as a practice when I made a mistake or did something might have hurt somebody, or just acknowledge that I didn't know. I just I really kind of try to embed that and I think where it kind of comes into gender is you know, men are taught that you're not supposed to admit that you're wrong. Men are taught that you're not supposed to admit that you don't know Men are taught that you're not supposed to kind of accept limits or powerlessness or feeling afraid, or feeling afraid and you know I don't want to say, you know, at this point are there tensions around it?
David Mandel:still, sure, but it's a, it's a this point. It's a real practice for me to kind of look at those things yeah, that's.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I think that's so important, um, to acknowledge that so many of these responses we have to not being in control, to being afraid, to not knowing, have been shaped and formed by our views around gender control, competency, and really sit and reflect on how much we respect people who have the ability to cleanly and clearly say I made a mistake, that was wrong of me, I didn't know, I was afraid, or whatever you know, just to acknowledge that. So I, I, I love that, I love that as a practice.
David Mandel:Yes, thank you. So all right.
Speaker 3:So so let's open it up to the studio.
David Mandel:See, you know, and I don't know if, if you want to raise your hand, alexia, if you can help us, or Jumi, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. We have a question from Dr Carol Jones. She says I work with a lot of soldiers and their families. What are your thoughts about bi-directional violence?
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:That's. A lot of people you know talk about that as mutualized violence. You know, we have a little bit of a different perspective on it. It's really important that when there's two people that are displaying behaviors that would be considered violent, that there is an analysis done of who has power and control in the relationship. People are really bad at understanding power dynamics, right? That's one of the key things about this is that in understanding violence, you do have to understand the power dynamics of the situation, and a lot of times when people use the term mutualized violence, bidirectional violence, they're actually naming that survivors engage in what I call acts of resistance and sometimes that includes physical acts of resistance and that we have neutralized every single action.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:We've said it's all equal. Well, it's not all equal. That's absolutely incorrect. If you have a person who's sitting on the ground and their perpetrator is over them screaming and yelling at them and they get up and push that person or they slap that person, that is not the same interaction. There is not the same level of control or power or fear within that situation, and so, where we spend a lot of time on ascertaining the motivations of people who are violent to each other that don't know each other, we make a really horrible assumption that people who know each other are on equal footing, and that's not real.
David Mandel:What I would add is I love that. What I would add is that Carol is one is this is the value of a coercive control approach, because you need to contextualize it and you know, if somebody is shown that they're willing and able to use violence, then somebody may strike first because they're worried about worse violence happening, but just to kind of to land this you know, with with the perpetrator pattern mapping tool, you know, and then the safe at the other model.
David Mandel:What we do is we'll tell people, map each person's pattern, of course, control and actions taking to harm the kids, and and look at that and look at them independently, actions taking the harm of the kids and and look at that and look at them independently. The value of the perpetrator pattern-based approach is it cites the pattern in the person, not the relationship. So you're going to look at both people and you're going to list both their behaviors separately and their patterns and their patterns across relationships and their patterns to their kids and past partners, maybe outside the relationship, maybe somebody the relationship, maybe somebody's law enforcement, maybe somebody's a gang member, maybe somebody's got training in martial arts, you know, and you put all those things together and what I'll tell you is it used the term bidirectional, ruth kind of used the term mutual.
David Mandel:My experience is coming from a state where we had at once a 15% dual arrest rate, you know, which is really high, but mostly men and women, you know, male and female getting arrested. That this was something I was confronted earlier in my career quite a bit and it worked really well and rarely. What I'll tell you is when you got down to the behavior patterns of each person, it was rarely mutual. Sometimes it was unclear, rarely was it situational kind of mutual, equal, both people were not afraid. Usually there wasn't wider patterns of control, but almost always this approach actually showed you. You's why I love the model behavioral approach. It would show male perpetrator and female victim, but times it would show the reverse, which is, show it's sensitivity.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Yeah, I think there's one more point that we need to make about that language, because that language is often leveraged and used more often against women who are of minoritized status. Just FYI, there's a lot of bias about that. You know, in communities that have historically been focused upon by carceral entities that those women give as good as they get, and actually what those women are doing is they're engaging in legitimate self-defense for their physical safety and also for their self-determination and their freedoms, their liberties, their rights and their dignities. So I want to just point out that when that mutualizing, bidirectional language is used, there's often an element of the female survivor being a woman who is from a marginalized population, and that is an absolute bias. And that's where spicy Latina comes in.
David Mandel:Which is different than cranky survivor.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Which is different than cranky survivor, because it is an archetype that people overlay on women of certain ethnicities and races.
David Mandel:Okay, Alexia. Next question Do you have anything else coming in?
Speaker 3:Yeah from Esther. Can you suggest some modalities that a survivor can use to release the anger, not stuff it in or tone it down? It's not about anger management, it's about owning it and releasing it so it doesn't make us sick.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Oh yeah, let me give you some strategies. I love this question and it is true. You know, if you've had your liberties removed, if you've had your self-determination removed, if you've had your bodily autonomy removed, if you've been treated like a punching bag, you are going to be angry. That is a normal human reaction to having your boundaries crossed. And first that's the first place I want to start Anger is not the problem. Anger is a physical response. It is a biological, hormonal, physical response to having our boundaries crossed, our self-determination removed, or to being injured and harmed repeatedly by someone. And so, for me, working with the anger is first acknowledging that it has some value, that it is valuable as an emotion, that it doesn't always equal violence, that it's not actually a problem.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:And I want to look at anybody who makes their anger a problem, who's been abused, and say you are so brilliant. Look how brilliant your body is. It knows exactly when your boundaries are being crossed. It's telling you and no one is paying attention. And it's happening over and over again.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Of course you're angry, be angry, but let's talk about how, once you're in a place where you're safe and you're not constantly being triggered and your boundaries are not constantly being crossed. So hear that you have to be in a situation where you're safe to truly deal with that pent up anger. Everybody needs to hear that you have to be in a situation where you're safe to truly deal with that pent-up anger. Everybody needs to hear that If you have a survivor who's still being stalked, who's still being abused, who's being abused by systems, they are legitimately going to still be angry. Do not try to take that from them, because their body is telling them that people are doing things that are harmful for them. That's a good thing, but what can be done to help us to heal after we're in a situation where we're safe is to, first of all, really love the way that our anger gave us information, say thank you, you're awesome. You told me you did that, you did a good job. Nobody else responded. You told me you did that, you did a good job. Nobody else responded. You knew exactly what was happening.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:And then also to really just have conversations about it, to express it I'm feeling very angry right now. I'm feeling very frustrated. I do this with you and you're he's really good at when I get angry because, believe me, when I come against industry stuff, frankie Survivor comes out and she's ah, and I'm Latino, so very expressive and you're very good at just knowing that this is anger is an appropriate response to the things that we're seeing, that it's not being directed at somebody, it's generalized anger. So anger gets translated into blame that doesn't have any grounding in reality, or into self-destructive actions or into further abuse of other people, demeaning them, harming them, removing their liberties. That's when anger is no longer beneficial to our experience in the world and is harming other people. I don't know if you want to add on that.
David Mandel:I don't have a lot. I don't want to add anything to your experience as a survivor and speaking as a survivor to another survivor with how I train professionals and talk to professionals is really trying to teach or support professionals in supporting women and supporting survivors in their room to maneuver and engage in acts of resistance.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:And express it.
David Mandel:One of the things I do when I train family court professionals is, I say we're so, of a parental alienation being used as a weapon against survivors? Right, and it's a way to shut survivors up. Right, it's a way to shut survivors anger up Survivors protective capacities.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Depends to draw boundaries.
David Mandel:Draw boundaries, draw boundaries. And so one of the questions I asked a group of report writers in Family Corps is tell me where you think it's actually appropriate and correct and good parenting for a survivor to resist her children having contact with the abusive parent? So actually, instead of skirting around the issue, I want to run right at it. I want to directly kind of say to people look like a parent who actually says no, you can't have my kid because you're going to sexually abuse them. And if they're angry that's okay, if they're boundary that's good. That's, in fact, something we should applaud. We should applaud that kind of anger, we should applaud that kind of boundary setting, and I think we tiptoe around these things well, we want them to be mama bears, but we don't want them to be mama bears.
David Mandel:Let's be honest I love that, and we don't want to direct it at us, and we want them to do it when we think it's appropriate we want women to be like I will die for my children, but they people don't internalize what that actually means, but only on only under the conditions that I think that she should do you can only die this way.
David Mandel:Only under the circumstances I deem as being justified.
David Mandel:Yeah, so, yeah, absolutely so, that's the only thing I want to add is that we need, as professionals and for those of you who don't listen to our podcast and haven't, this is often we talk about these different perspectives, but for me, I'm focused on the professional saying run towards survivor's anger, like, embrace it.
David Mandel:Ask yourself how prepared you are to hear survivors be angry at you, angry at the system, angry that if you're like, for instance, child protection, survivors should quote unquote be angry that you're showing up in their life because somebody else's choices and behaviors. Absolutely, that's a normal, healthy reaction because they're being forced to deal with a system because of somebody else's problems, and so I think it's. I want to create more space. You know all this. The coercive control concept is so useful because it's about it helps keep us focused on. People have the right to maneuver the room, to maneuver the room for action, and that room for action should be dictated and shaped by the circumstances. So somebody like you said, just to wrap up, you know it's a natural, normal response, and if professionals aren't trained to be embracing, of that.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:There would be something wrong with that person if they were not angry.
David Mandel:Yeah, that's right, so that's it, so all right.
Speaker 3:Any other questions?
David Mandel:Yeah, what's next, alexia?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have a two-part question from Lauren. Lauren says we rightly put so much emphasis on the language that we use and document in the safe and together framework. Do you feel that the safe and together will ever use the term abuse rather than violence and do?
David Mandel:you think it matters oh yeah, global sense of the model we actually do use the term we're really shifting and we're shifting through our language and it's it's a slow project to help a whole country shift with us.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:So keep it up, brett. Yeah, thank you.
David Mandel:So we're trying to use first is no language is perfect.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:No, it's not.
David Mandel:You know people will talk about the word perpetrator and people have different issues and with that. But we're trying to actually change in recognition of feedback we've gotten and the advancement in the field. Remember, the model is started about 20 years ago, so there's a constant kind of updating we're trying to do and so you'll hear us more frequently use domestic abuse informed.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Yes.
David Mandel:Because we think that's more reflective of the global conversation, the language used in places in the United Kingdom, and we're're trying to decenter North America, particularly United States, in our work. And so absolutely and, and. What I would say is and, and even then the word won't be perfect.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Yeah.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I talk a little bit about the nature of language actually philosophy and English major over here Can't help myself of language actually philosophy and English major over here Can't help myself and that is is that somehow we believe that we're going to get to these finite definitions and our language is always going to be the same. I want to challenge that notion a little bit. We always have to evolve with the strategies of perpetrators and the language that they are using and the way that language in our industry is being used by them to leverage their power and control. Which means if we find that all of a sudden there's a pattern of people using a specific term in a specific way to hide their perpetration, that means we all have to address that pattern and shift with that. That is so challenging in systems that are static and non-dynamic. But life is dynamic, people are dynamic, language is dynamic and we are coming from an English language framework.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:There's a lot of other languages that have a lot of different words and ways to communicate violence and that's why one of the reasons why relying on those jargon pieces is problematic. They don't shift with people's behaviors, they don't describe behaviors, they're a label, right? So then when you label something as this, people assume they know what you mean. No, we need to go deeper. We actually need to talk about behaviors, because behaviors give context. If we live in the world of jargon, we don't actually tell the story of what's going on and we don't contextualize it. And decontextualization is the favorite tool of perpetrators, favorite tool. Decontextualize it. Make everything equal. Use the jargon. Let's use the jargon. You notice how easily manipulated that is.
David Mandel:The last thing I'll kind of add to that's a great question is about the Institute, is we're actively we actually try to balance a couple of things, which is listen and contextualize to the local environment and evolve and evolve and also and this is some great feedback we've gotten is also stay true to our principles and what is essential about the model and an example of that is not about the word domestic abuse or domestic violence, but the word partnering. And I got approached in a family court setting with saying well, you know, courts don't partner. I love that. Courts, we don't partner with anybody. And the way you can make I can sort of not make fun of it but just to be like, of course not, but that's true. Courts need and we want courts. Let's be really clear, all the kind of jokey aside we want courts to be objective. We want them to to start from a neutral place, not prejudging anybody based on race, ethnicity, demographics, gender, gender. Look at evidence, you know, and be evidence based. We want that told.
David Mandel:Well, that partnering language doesn't work for the court.
David Mandel:I had to think about it and we may still evolve around this, but I still kept that language in the training for a family court and what I said was let's break down the behavior behind partnering, which is kind of what you said, ruth, which is that partnering really what it means in the court setting is we start from neutral and objective.
David Mandel:We don't prejudge, we use a transparent behavioral lens or understanding, of course, control and action taking the harm of the kids. We apply that equally to both parties, fairly to both parties. We gather the evidence about those behavior patterns and the harm they create and then, based on that, if we end up with which we do a lot of times with a primary aggressor who's consistently engaged in these abusive behaviors harmful to kids, has not engaged in change in a meaningful way, and we have on the other side of protective parent, that it makes sense that the court will make decisions supportive of and in alignment with the protective parent, full stop. Now, whether you call that partner or not, that's about children's best interests, children's safety. It's in line with what the court's mission is and what their statutory responsibility is. So I kind of presented that back to them. They said that makes sense to us. We're okay with the language if it's kind of explained that way, and that's why they're getting underneath the jargon, even our own jargon at the Institute is so important.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Right, yeah, and constantly assessing how it's playing out in practice, in all reality. That's a very important thing, that's right.
David Mandel:All right, we have time for one more question, maybe two, depending on how we answer. So, alexa, anybody else kind of on deck?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this next question is from Gina. Which aspects of coaching have you found to be the most effective in supporting practitioners and making the shift in practice, beyond documentation with families?
David Mandel:Oh wow, that's a big question.
David Mandel:I'll take this as a behavioral modification, yeah no, I'll tell you, what I've had the most fun with and I think is super effective and I've done it in versions of this in different settings is I will often get, in trainings but other settings, people saying when they hear the model say well, when do you hold the victim parent responsible? Okay, for what, what do we hold? Well, right, exactly. So, when you know, and and and. There's different ways to deal with it, but one is a kind of coaching, experiential way. Okay, and so what I'll say to them is all right, can you go along with me? You can do this in a one-on-one setting or in a small group setting. It doesn't need to be in a training setting.
David Mandel:I'll say okay, so you're absolutely right that if I'm a victim parent, a survivor parent, I have legal responsibilities to my kids and I have things I have to be accountable for legally as a parent. Nobody's going to argue I won't argue with that, and I doubt the survivor will argue with you about that that they care about the kids. They want to take care of their kids. I said okay, so what I want you to do and this is the coaching slash, role playing I tell it to that person you're the social worker. I'm the mother, so this becomes very experiential. You're going to talk to me about my responsibilities to my kids. The only ground rule is you cannot blame me for my partner's behavior.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I've seen him do this a million times.
David Mandel:That's the only ground rule. You can't blame me for what the perpetrator's done and the effects of what the perpetrator did. And what I can tell you is, for instance, from a coaching point of view, giving people that experiential and they'll say well, this is what I would say to mom. I'd say, no, you have to talk to me as if I'm the mom, because it's in the embodying. So this is one of the takeaways in the embodying, in the practicing, I think.
David Mandel:A lot of times talking about, like you said about jargon earlier, it lets us kind of hide from ourselves and from some of our more difficult challenges. But but when, when they do that, I have to tell you, almost every single time, people will stop and start. They'll be like well, mom, I think you should, oh, that's going to sound bad. Well, mom, you really need. Oh, that's like. And so what they're really doing is they're trying to find a way to blame her for his behavior, what he's doing to the kids. But when they hear themselves say it out loud, or they're about to say it out loud, they catch themselves. And I think, from a coaching point of view, whether they end up getting it or not, everybody else gets it watching it.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:You know it's so funny because this is totally going to reveal. I grew up in the 80s, I think of like Pac-Man, where Pac-Man keeps running under the wall Right and he's trying to, and it's really true, now I've got the Pac-Man noise, maybe we need a video game, a partnering video game?
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:the pac-man noise like the scooter. Maybe we need a video game, a partnering video game, um, but you know, I I think that one of the things that's so important to remember is that we have all been raised, trained, grown up in the soup of mother blaming and victim blaming and ignoring the violence of violent men or skirting around the issue, trying to avoid it, covering it up, being afraid to address it. Because we're afraid, because it's hard, confrontation is hard. We know that we're going to become a target and so we've all been raised in this environment. We all have those habits and the real way to deal with that is for us to collectively support each other in modeling different behaviors through that type of behavioral approach. So if you have training, you know people who are heads of training and you notice that a worker is struggling with this, do some actual role-playing and behavioral role-playing so that they can really get the feeling of doing that in real time. Right, you know, it's important.
David Mandel:I think, going back to the anger thing, you know, you know I might say to somebody okay, I want, I want to role-play this, or I'm going to give you, I'm going to coach you to go back out and talk to mom, and I would do this all the time. We have our six steps of partnering and that's really, you know, really kind of a guide for us around coaching workers.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:For a little while. There was a, there was a, there was a image floating around a partnering as dance steps. Because I was trying to do some physical behavioral stuff with people.
David Mandel:So we might pull that back up and shoot it out for you guys. But you know to say to people, instruction could be to coach them. I said go back out and validate mom's anger, you know, or approach mom and the only rule is you can't blame her for his behavior and you can't make her anger about her situation or problem. So let's or let's role play that specific instructions and these kind of when you have this map that lets you break down and safety, other really in my mind, is meant to give you that map.
David Mandel:Cause sometimes when people see me doing things, all I'm doing is using the model, All I'm doing is focusing on behaviors, All I'm doing is pivoting to the perpetrator and just applying that rigorously over and over again. And so you know, coaching people to be like okay, tell me about his pattern of behavior, Tell me what that looks like, and if they're doing something else this is the key Bring them back to that. You know, if there's talking about his childhood history, make a note and just say, okay, we're hearing about his history, but I'm not sure what the relevance of that history to his current pattern is. So there's a lot of ways we can coach, but that's just kind of a rubric to think about. So we have four minutes.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Sadly, we have to start to wrap up here, yeah, and it's been wonderful doing this at our conference. I hope that you all enjoyed the experience and always, as always, we want to hear from you about the topics and the practice information that's important to you. So if you have suggestions for the podcast, if there are things or people or organizations that you would want us to highlight, to interview, please let us know. Yeah, yeah.
David Mandel:Yeah, and I really value this concept that you brought to life. You know that we brought to life. It was your concept of the podcast to have our dialogues, you and I, and to model this.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:Well, it's kind of funny. So maybe this is a bit cultural, but I've noticed that a lot of people think that they aren't existing in relationships. As professionals, we're in the business of healthy relationships, people. That's what we're trying to facilitate here in this world, both for the well-being and safety of children, but also for the well-being and the functionality of our communities and our societies, which means that men and women need to be able to work together and collaborate together real in real time. Real in real time.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:So giving people an example about how a professional who has a lot of industry experiences responds to somebody who's a survivor, especially in anger criticism, deep pain, is a really important behavioral modeling of how men and women can collaborate and work together to change the reality that we're living in right now. It is possible. There are good relationships, there are good collaborations, people who are out there that are nurturing and sustaining our connections and relationships, and lots of people doing amazing things. So let's really reflect in and on ourselves how we're approaching this work, if we really are internalizing the work itself and we're bringing it to our own relationships and our own communities and our own families, because if we're not doing that, then we're not actually doing the work that we need to do.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:That's great, that's great so so this has been partnered with the survivor, the live version, the studio audience version.
David Mandel:I'm still David Mandel.
Ruth Reymundo Mandel:I'm still Ruth.
David Mandel:Ramundo. Okay, and with that we are we're out. We're out.