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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I remember playing “tackle the man with the ball” during recess in 5th grade. I hated this game. I didn’t mind “tackling the man with the ball” but I was terrified of being the one getting tackled. I did not want my classmates to know I was afraid, so occasionally, I would muster the courage to grab the ball and run. The blood thirsty mob would join in pursuit, and just as I was about to be tackled, I would throw the football over my head, high up into the air, and someone else would pick up the ball and run. I had effectively given my fear away to someone else.
My work with those who batter reminds me of “tackle the man with ball”. Many who batter go to great lengths to look brave, courageous or manly, but when the façade wears thin and fear becomes intolerable, anger, violence and threats are useful tactics to hand off the fear to others “like a football”. This need to give adverse feelings away to others is a direct result of growing up in “The River of Cruelty” where fear is considered weakness.
Here in Kansas, everyone who gets referred to a batterer intervention program undergoes an assessment prior to engaging in the program. One question we ask is how they were disciplined as a child. A few questions later, we ask about experiences of physical abuse. The answers that people give to these two questions says a lot about how cruelty is passed from person to person and from generation to generation.
Commonly, when the question about discipline is asked, the answer goes something like…
“Oh, I was a bad kid growing up. I got whoopings all the time when I got in trouble.”
I follow up with a question like…
“What did a ‘whooping’ look like in your experience?”
If you are not familiar with Yoda from the movie Star Wars, you are missing out. In this movie, Yoda comes to the aid of Luke Skywalker who has crash-landed on a mysterious planet. Yoda earns Luke’s trust and trains himto be a Jedi Knight. Yoda eventually helps Luke to use his new-found powers to pull his spaceship out of a quagmire. Now, Luke is ready to do battle with Darth Vader and the dark side! Without Yoda, Luke would have had a problem that would have seemed impossible to solve. He certainly would not have been prepared to battle Darth Vader. Figures like Yoda are examples of “enlightened witnesses”. This is a term Alice Miller used to describe the important people who guide us, teach us and accept us at critical moments in our lives.
Most batterer intervention programs work to help those who batter take responsibility for their abusive and cruel behavior. This is believed to be a critical step in the process of change. At the Family Peace Initiative, we too, focus on this critical step. However, over the years, we noticed continuing obstacles for many participants in being able to move toward responsibility. Often, these obstacles centered around the cruelty and trauma participants had experienced long before they became cruel to their partner. With this realization, we expanded what it means to be “responsible” to include responsibility for "healing the impact of the cruelty that was inflicted on them during childhood." Adding this dimension over 10 years ago seems like one of our most significant improvements in helping people become nonviolent. It is as if we found an important missing puzzle piece to our work.
At the Family Peace Initiative, we have several trained victim advocates on staff as BIP facilitators. They bring a knowledge of victim centered work and domestic violence dynamics that absolutely make us better. I was surprised to learn that advocates can pay a high price with their colleagues when they get involved in our work. They receive comments such as "What is making you go to the dark side?", like they are betraying victims by helping provide services to those who batter. Contrary to their colleagues' assumptions, many advocates report becoming better at their work with victims after they became skilled at working with those who batter.
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