Convicted Abusers Reflect on Their Violent Behavior

all right let me have them introduce you to them to you do brief version to your name what you did and what group number you're off um John I'm group number nine ninth week had a little altercation with my wife and grabbed her arm and which was that's the physical abuse that I committed it to my wife my name is Paul I want class 19 and I'm here because I dumped my wife's purse out on top of her and she called the cops and when I pressed charges but the DA picked it up as being a violent crime my name is grant I violated a restraining order fraud on mark Michael I got him find my wife I slapped him fight for date hundreds push the wall caught my wife cheated on me punch that guy several times did her a couple times lot of screaming and yelling and pushing and stuff please got called I got arrested and not here we got a lot of stuff to do tonight let me just kind of think - progress reports I gotta take care of Robert we're gonna bring grant into group and then we've got to do acceptance and encouragement okay so let's bring Robert in so Robert introduce yourself to them and tell them what you did to get yourself here named Robert um we had just had one of my youngest sons we were both working a lot me my wife you know we started you started arguing and I got mad and I threw the remote our TV remote and it busted and the batteries flew out and hit her on the arm she had a bruise in her arm no I mean I always grew up knowing that you know you don't hate women you know I always grew up that way you know and I'm not perfect you know obviously I'm here um I you know I take even if you weren't here you would be perfect yeah and I take responsibility but at the same time I mean this is not my first class this has happened before I've had multiple classes this is actually my third class I'm trying to you know change I mean sometimes I don't think I just react and ask you some hard questions yeah you guys Mia do you want what do you think about this being your third time in group first thing that comes to my mind it's ridiculous because I should have learned from the first time I did it apparently and it's confusing for me too as well because I'm saying man like what like why can't you get it I can get other things but I couldn't you know I couldn't get that I mean I grew up in a hostile home you know I mean I I used to get hit abused that doesn't work it doesn't work because in reality for me i legit was pissed me off more all I did was put more fuel and more fire in my heart and what kept the cycle Gong it completely kept the cycle going it and as it kept going I kept picking up bits and pieces of different things and by the time I got to my relationship I got this whole cluster of sort of stuff that I'm thinking well how is that even here and I got to deal with it and the biggest poem the biggest pole that I can think of if that would make you want to participate in all this is aren't you tired of things going awful let that be your motivation I want something better for myself and my partner oh yeah who else but I think I have made you know a little step towards doing better in remote I mean honestly I mean I don't I don't you know like I don't yeah but it wasn't intentional like don't matter you know I know so what it is but I have gotten better though you bet I know okay I'll give you that but what I want you to wonder what you to try to avoid is minimizing it if you make it smaller in your mind well I only threw the remote I didn't mean to do it it makes the violence less important and then you're less likely to use your tools to stop if you realize what I did was wrong even if it was verbal even if I didn't mean to do it it was wrong I need to use my tools every day all day this can never happen again you see the difference all right so we'll finish the accepting okay go all right let's get started John I want you to read for me two paragraphs starting here acceptance acceptance is an important and powerful message for partners to send to each other you demonstrate acceptance of your partner when you do the following things number one show faith in your partners decisions and then even though it doesn't say that I'm gonna add even if you don't agree Dave's added number four even if you don't agree I mean just give me an example of that show faith and your partner's decision even if you don't agree you went out and got a DUI good job no no that's not okay so if your partner decides to go away for a weekend with a friend that you think is a bad influence do I want you to have a good time that's exactly that's can you stop her no I guess you have to support her decisions no I don't yes you do then go live by that rule anything that I disagree with you're right sweetheart no that's good you're doing great good job and hold allow everything to be okay hold on you're adding parts of the rule that we're not saying it's what I don't agree with it on the bottom I understand that it doesn't say that you have to it's a show faith in your partner's decisions it doesn't say that you have to stuff your feelings it doesn't say that you can't have communication about it but you can't control their decisions that's this whole part is about acceptance they get to do what they want to do even if you don't agree with it even if you don't like it and it's your job as a partner to be supportive and have a conversation and if they still want to do it they get to do that but you're looking at this through the lens of unhealthy relationship and that's the part that you've got to take those goggles off I'm mom and I'm not trying to be stubborn about those I'm not gonna agree with everything that's correct you're saying if I show faith in her decision notice it doesn't say agree okay showing faith is not agreeable explain that not hooking up I'm not the faith isn't about hey we have a serious problem here because there's problems listen to that this is not a this is about a decision that you're unsure of what their outcome will be have faith in her that she will make the right decision when she does different okay are we ready okay okay well I'm in a little bit of a trickier situation in the sense that I didn't actually do anything physically violent except break the grip that my mother had on my daughter her grandchild because she was dragging my child along to the point where I thought she was gonna pull her arm out of the socket I remember seeing red and refreshing every urge to just throw a haymaker and knock her out because when you hear your child crying in pain and you're watching that person hurt that child you don't want to let them keep doing it she called the cops because once again she was drunk and she sent me to jail saying I had assaulted her I showed the officers where she'd scratched me and they said well since you have a restraining order we're just gonna take you let me clarify about what we do it in ingria so our group is only for you so in here we're only going to talk about grant we don't want we can't talk about mom we're not gonna talk about that that's why cuz they're not here and I can't help them I can only help you okay so the legal part of what happened is you violated the restraining order by not having peaceful contact when you grabbed her hand and then you slapped her which is assault so that's the part we want to focus on and hold on so who's got questions for grant about his violence or his history do you know character defects it's something about yourself that you need to change so for example if if I have a temper that's one of my character beauty acts so it sounds like what Bowen is suggesting is maybe you should take a look at yourself in and identify it what are some of the things about yourself that you do need to change take an inventory does that make sense anybody else have thoughts or questions for grant Oh stepping back a little bit on the character defects and how would you define character defect who she's morality Neely's so sometimes we may have been raised to view a certain issue in a certain way and as we get older and types change we need to take a look at that and see if the way we were raised looking at that particular issue is still working for us okay so growing up in a time period you could have a certain set of morals with time marching on that actually can become a character defect and if you don't change yes yes I agree good point any thoughts about what he said I mean it's not that I don't like Who I am it's I hate how I have knee-jerk reactions even if they're only thoughts even if it's nothing I've ever acted on the the impulse of like if somebody yells at me the first thing I want to do is square my shoulders off and look them straight in the face because that's what I always witnessed as the way to respond to hostility we learned that from socializing you know especially as men you know it's like Oh be strong be mask in but don't be aggressive don't be mean don't be hostile and you know be nurturing and supportive and kind but not lose your masculinity or your [Music] essentially what is defined as being man anything using the hostel hostel thank job because I want to bring in what you said it so it sounds like what you were saying earlier is it's not that you don't like yourself but you don't like what you've learned yeah okay the good thing about what you're gonna discover maths classes we're gonna give you the tools that you didn't you know well here because of some form of craziness and or behavior and you're gonna have a ton of information just thrown at you like sorry does happen Muir you just jumped in superswim issue the SUNY you're gonna come and get it and maybe absorb it and taken from the one you can we're not here against you we're here with you because of our behavior and we're all here because we want to improve it so the sooner you can just jump in as Clin the sooner you're gonna get it so all these outside circumstances because we all have them fathers gun stepmother Wars you know whatever that stuff doesn't really matter you're here because of you and you're here because you want me to prove yourself and we're you just give up obviously it's court mandated treatment so you didn't decide on your own that you need to be here but that's the that's the typical hard part that people have to get over that hurdle and like you were saying the faster you get to that place that quicker you're gonna absorb all kinds of great tools that we're gonna teach you any other questions for a grant no so what I want you to do this week is I want you to find your three physiological warning signs that tell you you're about to lose it so what you're gonna do is you're gonna start to use your body as your first line of defense any thoughts all right you guys have a good week behave yourselves [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Atlantic

Views: 126,189

Keywords: the atlantic, short documentary, short film, documentary 2019, group therapy, men in therapy, therapy for men, anger management, angry men, batterer intervention program, atlantic selects, therapy, therapy session video, therapist

Id: AGCmvL0iXc8

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 15 2019