'Why do women stay?" That question haunts anybody who has
observeddomestic violence. But a far more practical question is, How can
the men be stopped? Maryland psychologist Steven Stosny, Ph.D., has
developed a remarkable and effective treatment program for battering men.
Even a year after treatment, an astonishing 86 percent have ended the
physical abuse, and 73 percent have stopped the verbal and emotional
abuse. The national dropout rate for battering programs is one out of
two; Stosny's is only one out of four.
Treating batterers is something that most therapists shy away from.
How did you get into it?
I became interested in spouse and child abuse at the age of two. I
grew up in a violent family, where we had police and ambulances coming
l:o the door. It took a while for me to gel: up the courage to go into
this field, and when I started a group with severe batterers, I wanted to
learn how they got that way, to learn how to prevent abuse. I was
surprised when they stopped being abusive.
So how do you approach batterers?
Our program is based on the idea that most batterers can't sustain
attachment, and because of this, they become flooded with feelings of
guilt, shame, and abandonment, which they regulate with aggression. We
teach them a five-step technique called HEALS. First, we start with the
concept of Heal. Our clients learn that blame is powerless, but
compassion is true power, and has the ability to heal. Next, you Explain
to yourself the core hurt that anger is masking: feeling unimportant,
disregarded. guilty, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable. All
abusive behavior is motivated by these core hurts. Then you Apply
self-compassion. Let's say your wife calls you a brainless twit, and you
feel she doesn't love you. You want to punish her for reminding you that
you're unlovable. We teach men to replace this core feeling with
self-compassion. "She feels unloving, but she still loves me. My instinct
might be to call her a filthy slut, but she said what she said because
she's hurt and feeling bad." Then you move into a feeling of Love, For
yourself and your wife. And finally, you solve the problem by presenting
your true position without blaming or attacking the other person: you
say, "I care about you, but I have a problem with your calling me a
brainless twit." You are healing your core hurt through love rather than
anger.
So you're saying the batterer is really trying to heal his hurt
core, and he can do it with compassion instead of abuse. Still, how can
someone used to physical aggression learn to be so rational?
We call it teaching Mr. Hyde to remember what :Dr. Jekyll learned.
These men have to learn emotional regulation and the rewards of change
based on compassion. We ask them to remember an incident that made them
angry, to feel the anger again, and follow the steps of HEALS 12 times a
day for four weeks. It almost works like a vaccination. You feel the core
hurt for five seconds at a time when you practice, and you develop an
immunity to it.
Why is your dropout rate so low?
It's a 12-week program, and if they don't do their homework, they
go to jail. We have surprisingly little resistance. I also say "If you
don't feel much better about yourself, we'll give you your money back.
You'll like yourself better when you're compassionate." I've treated over
1200 abusers in my career, and even the antisocial ones--no matter how
justified they felt at the time--never felt proud of hurting someone they
loved. Our group is about becoming proud.
Does this work even for the true sociopaths, the ones Jacobson and
Gottman call Cobras?
These people are not afraid of the criminal justice system and they
don't usually come to treatment. Most people in treat ment are different.
They're the dependent personalities who only hurt ones they love, and who
get over-involved in the relationship. If sociopaths and people with
antisocial personality disorders do come into treatment, they don't learn
compassion. But they do learn to use emotional regulation techniques to
keep from getting upset. Some of them use this as another form of
superiority--you're going to get hysterical and I'm not--but it's better
than beating up their wives in front of the children. It's a form of harm
reduction.
Why does this work better than traditional treatment?
Most treatment programs focus on how men's domination causes
domestic violence. We say that the real gender variable is that culture
doesn't teach men to regulate their negative emotions, or sustain trust,
compassion, and love. Numerous studies have shown that. We socialize
girls and women to have an emotional vocabulary, and this has nothing to
do with education level. We look into the eyes of little girls and reward
them when they cry or express other emotions, but when a little boy
expresses emotions, we call him a sissy. Boys are taught to keep
vulnerable emotions submerged, and don't develop an emotional
vocabulary.
And if you can't tell sadness from loneliness from disappointment
from rejection from being devalued, the bad feelings get overloaded
easily. The strongest emotion is anger.
What about the women? Do you counsel them at all?
Tags:
abandonment,
abusive behavior,
batterers,
child abuse,
domestic violence,
dropout rate,
feelings of guilt,
guilt shame,
men,
national dropout,
treatment,
true power,
verbal and emotional abuse
