Steve Halley, LSCSW
Welcome to our blog. These posts share some of the many tried and true tools, skills, and techniques that the Family Peace Initiative has found to be valuable through the years.
We hope that this Facilitator's Tool Box will become a resource for you in your own quest to be the best facilitator you can be. We will be adding new blog posts monthly. Enjoy!
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Over the past month, the Family Peace Initiative underwent a huge transformation, switching all of our services to an online format. I will briefly share a bit of what has been learned as we jumped into the water, headfirst, believing we must do this to provide needed services and ultimately protect victims during this pandemic. With courts shutting down and many services shuttering, we knew we might be the ONLY service with an opportunity to keep contact with those who batter. Ultimately, we have arrived on the other side of a transformation that would have never occurred without the existence of the coronavirus. Here are some of our findings and general thoughts. I hope you find them helpful.
I am sure you have seen collusion in your group. Here is an example. As Stan arrives for his Monday evening battering intervention class he is clearly agitated. Class begins with a “check-in”. When it is Stan’s turn, he states his name and reports that he is feeling angry because “my ex-wife is a bitch”. Before he can say anything else, another group member chimes in, “Oh, you got one of those, too.” Soon, in almost orchestrated fashion, some members of the group are talking about their ex-wives, bitches, and how the system is stacked against men in general. The conversation can take on a life of its own as group members commiserate with each other. Depending on the strength of other members, they may be hard-pressed to offer a different view.
I was excited to hear another Malcolm Gladwell book was out. No matter if you read The Tipping Point, or The Outliers, or David and Goliath, or his new book, Talking to Strangers, you are bound to learn more about a subject, and see things in a different light. I always find his insights intriguing and provocative. It reminds me of Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”. I think of this often when I listen to a domestic violence professional explain on a Facebook post or other media that domestic violence is caused by “male entitlement” or “male privilege”. Before they have even completed the sentence, I cringe: it is a good soundbite, but the statement is missing “the rest of the story”.
In November, I attended the 24th Annual BISC-MI conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is always a treat to spend three days learning, sharing and connecting with others dedicated to intervene effectively with those who batter. I left the conference with new ideas, validation, and a renewed sense of “we are all in this together”. There is a wide range of approaches to working with those who batter, which the conference showcased nicely. Within this wide range, there were some important common themes. One of these themes, repeated multiple times throughout the three days, is the need for facilitators of programs to “do their own work”. This reminded me of Alice Miller when she said,
“In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual “wisdom,” we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.”
Sadly, the story is frequently the same when working with women in the prison setting. Regardless of the crime, from drug crimes to violent crimes, the story told by incarcerated women is one filled with trauma. I had been in private practice for over 10 years before we brought our Peaceful Families Program to the only prison in Kansas for women. I am trained in EMDR, I have worked with troubled kids for several decades. I am no stranger to trauma. However, entering the women’s prison was different. The experiences that incarcerated women have had in their lives often takes trauma to a new level.
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
