Managing anger — like a man
THE first thing people who work in anger management tell you is they don’t like that term.
Derek Robinson runs the Wicklow MOVE programme — standing for Men Overcoming Violence.
“We’re dealing with men who are violent and abusive. They don’t have an anger problem, they have a violence and abuse problem,” he says.
Pat Dermody is a psychotherapist with the Hazelton Clinic in Cork. “Everyone has anger. It’s one of the four base emotions along with joy, fear and sadness. People say ‘I want to get rid of my anger.’ You can’t get rid of your anger.” Dermody points out that its only when that anger is expressed in what he describes as an unhealthy way that problems tend to arise.
“If we use it to get our own way, to sabotage ourselves and others, to frighten someone into submission, to control people or outcomes of situations, to shift blame from me to the other person, to show disrespect, to criticise, to disrespect, to intimidate, victimise or to bully, then we have a problem.”
Most crime rates have fallen since the recession began in 2008. Yet violent incidents continue to draw intense media focus and public debate. In 2011, there were 12,612 incidents of domestic violence disclosed to the Women’s Aid National Freephone Helpline. It’s very likely the true number is much higher. Published crime statistics from the CSO only include crimes that become known or are reported to the gardaí. The statistics agency have said offences relating to domestic violence are grossly under-recorded.
It’s become increasingly common now for the courts to compel violent offenders to participate in anger management programmes. When the judgement comes as a result of domestic violence, these men tend to end up with MOVE.
Founded in 1989, MOVE is a structured group programme for men who are or have been violent in an intimate relationship. “We run perpetrator groups for men,” says national chairman of the organisation, John Griffin. “Our ethos is around the protection of women and children. That’s the way MOVE operates.”
There are centres throughout Ireland, all of which provide the same community-based group programmes. Men find their way to MOVE in a variety of ways, not just through the courts. They’re referred by a social worker, the HSE or a health professional. It also happens that men get Googling and show up on their own.
Even then, it’s not simply a matter of walking onto the programme, Griffin explains. At the first interview, an assessor sets out to discover how bad the domestic violence is, and how much responsibility the man is taking for it. ‘Partner contact’ lies at the heart of the MOVE process. Once the assessor has spoken to the man, he’ll then get in contact with the man’s partner. “In the first interview, the man tends to minimise things. He won’t tell the extent of the abuse and the violence. You get a lot clearer picture from the woman.”
In the third part of the assessment, the man is then challenged with his partner’s testimony. “He’s asked, ‘How much responsibility are you going to take for this? Are you prepared to make realistic changes in your life and commit to the programme or is it just something you’re doing so you can get access to your kids?’”
Problems sometimes arise when the man has been directed by court order to attend an anger management course. If he refuses to take responsibility for the violence, MOVE won’t work for him, so he won’t be allowed onto the programme. Griffin points out that in a group setting, a man refusing to acknowledge the reason he’s there will be extremely divisive.
“You have men coming and saying, ‘I only pushed her’, ‘I only gave her a little slap with my hand’, ‘I’m not really violent’…” Frequently however, says Griffin, this kind of denial will crumble when challenged. In his experience, the vast majority of men will tend to come round and acknowledge that they have been abusive.
“Once you say to them, ‘Look you have an opportunity here to do something about it and make the environment for your children safe, you have an opportunity to get your relationship with your partner on a healthier footing.’ You’d want to be very different kind of a person not to want that.”
As the group programme begins, MOVE keeps in close contact with the partner. In part, this is to give her the support she needs. In part, it’s to monitor the man’s behaviour as the process progresses.
Derek Robinson, who runs Wicklow MOVE also works with individuals under the Anger Management Ireland banner. He explains that the MOVE programme is built around a series of 12 steps — though it should be said that it bears no relation to the AA programme. For two hours once a week, the men meet and use those steps to centre a discussion around their own abusive behaviour.
If there’s a newcomer, he introduces himself and is asked to talk about the behaviours which brought him to the group. Nobody gets an easy ride. “He will say, ‘This is who I am, this is what I’ve done.’ But it’s not a case of sitting down and moving onto the next person. One of the lads will question him: ‘You know when you said you only pushed your wife…’ It’s challenging but it’s not confrontational . In 20 years of running the group, we’ve never had a violent episode at a meeting.”
Two of the facilitators on the Wicklow group have been through the programme. Robinson explains that Donal — not his real name — came to Wicklow MOVE as a violent man. “He had lost his first marriage because of his violence. He was in a second relationship with three children. His partner gave him an ultimatum. He came into MOVE and attended weekly for two years and after that, his partner confirmed he was completely non-abusive. So in the third year I invited Donal to run the programme with me and he’s still with us.”
Robinson says the partner is at the heart of the programme, if she feels threatened, MOVE will act on that fear.
“Anything we do, we do with the partner’s safety in mind,” says John Griffin. “We meet regularly with the partner contact workers. We find out if there’s anything we need to know in the group, if there’s anything that we need to talk to the man about. Generally it’s done in an open and an honest way. It’s not about saying one thing to the partner and another thing to the man. It’s about both parties moving on so that everybody can feel safe in the house.”
While the MOVE programme deals exclusively with abusive relationships, there’s a growing anger management industry which offers support to those whose violent and abusive behaviour doesn’t fall into that category. Therapists, hypnotherapists, psychologists and clinics around the country offer a variety of treatments.
Not all are directed exclusively at men. “With men,” says Dermody. “Anger is generally this explosive thing. For women anger is stuffed inside. A lot of it is to do with gender roles and what’s expected of them. Women will tend to attack themselves, men will attack others. That’s not a hard and fast rule but it does tend to be predominantly one or the other.”
He says one of the central myths around anger is that it’s inherited: You’re just like your father. You’re just like your uncle. This kind of determinism contributes to the sense of powerlessness that people experience around their own anger: I lost control, I lost the head. There was nothing I could have done about it. “They believe anger is outside of their own ability to deal with. Distorted thinking is huge in anger.”
Much of the work involves ending those myths and allowing the person to see they can reclaim control of their behaviour. “When I hold on to control myself and I don’t give over power to other people, I’m in a better position to be able to deal with things.”
Part of the process too involves become more familiar with what Dermody calls the triggers, the clenched fists, the biting lip, which signify rising anger. “By stopping myself doing it, by being aware and stopping, I give myself a second or two to notice that I’m staring to get angry. Now I tend to be more careful about it”
Derek Robinson of Wicklow MOVE explains the four basic principles of the programme.
1. VIOLENCE IS A LEARNED BEHAVIOUR: “Don’t misunderstand that term. This doesn’t mean you learn it from someone else. It means that at some stage in your development, or at some stage in your relationships, you learned that the way to get your point across, or to resolve an argument, or the way to get what you want is to become verbally loud, verbally abusive or physically threatening.
“The best example of learned behaviour is the three-year-old who wants the sweets. Mammy says no, he throws a tantrum, she gives him the sweets. He’s not doing it because his brother’s doing it, or because his father’s doing it. There’s no deep psychological problem. The three year old just wants the sweets.”
“Yes, the man may have problems in his own life and these may be contributing to how they are as a person but what’s underestimated is the simple idea that this is a habit. What we do in MOVE is teach simple techniques to help them break that habit and replace it with a habits which are non-threatening and non-abusive towards others.
“We don’t assume there’s anything wrong with the person. They’ve developed a habit that needs to be broken and that’s what we do.”
2. VIOLENCE COMES FROM YOUR BELIEFS: “The fifth step in the programme says it’s not the event which causes you to become angry, it’s your belief about the event.
“Take the example of three lads waiting at a bus-stop. The bus passes by half empty. The first fella says, ‘That driver saw me and drove past. I’ll kill him.’ He’s bullying, shouting, roaring, everyone hears it and gets a bit of it. The second guy is a bit annoyed. He thinks, ‘Your man didn’t see me, I’m going to be late for work.’ He stresses himself out and gets upset. The third guy says, ‘I missed that bus. What time’s the next one? Half an hour? I’ll walk to work. It’s a good day and I need the walk.’ The same event happened to each of them, but they each had a different belief about what happened.
“MOVE is about challenging the thoughts and beliefs that cause a person to respond in an aggressive and angry and bitter manner.”
3. VIOLENCE IS A DECISION TO ATTACK: “We don’t accept in MOVE that I lose control, that I lost the head, that I can’t control myself, that I didn’t mean it, that I was drinking. We say that if you slow any violent incident down, even a verbal assault, and you look at the build up, there are always decisions and choices being made. There’s always an opportunity to stop doing what you’re doing. But the violent person makes a violent choice.
“At MOVE, people are invited to make a decision that it is not OK to be abusive towards others. No matter what someone else has done to me, I’m now making a decision that it’s not acceptable to behave like that.”
4. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: “No matter how badly you have been treated in the past, or no matter how badly you believe you’re being treated currently, you are responsible for your own behaviour. If your wife is being completely unreasonable and unfair and difficult, then she’s responsible for that, but she’s not responsible for how you react to it.
“That’s usually accepted by people in principle. It’s hard to argue with, but it’s extremely difficult for the abusive person to practise. The violent man finds it extremely difficult to walk away when he feels he’s being treated unfairly, but that’s what taking responsibility for his own behaviour entails.”
A former addict explains how facing up to his problems has helped him get his life back on track.
I was very heavily in involved in addiction for years. Drugs and alcohol. I was in one relationship where I had two boys. That broke up. I just wanted to live my life, I didn’t want any responsibilities. Afterwards, I met this other girl and I don’t know how we ended up sticking together but we had two kids. Then, about five or six years ago, my addictions became a lot worse. To cut a long story short, I ended up in a treatment centre.
As part of the programme, my partner came in and was asked what I was like to live with. She said she lived in fear of me, and that both my children lived in fear of me. The way she explained it, it wasn’t physical fear that I would hit them, but it was fear of my moods and the way I was.
I was controlling them without actually knowing it. I was so caught up in the addiction at the time I didn’t realise how bad it was.
One thing that my partner said to me was she could tell by the way I came in the door and the way I put the keys down exactly what mood I was in. She’d know that she’d have to keep out of my way.
While I was in the treatment centre, I had this major stand-off with one of the other guys in there, and when I was finished my treatment, one of the conditions was that I would attend an assessment with MOVE — Men Overcoming Violence. After the assessment, they told me there’s a place here for you. You’re showing all the attributes of someone who is abusive in a relationship. I knew that I wasn’t entirely right, but it was still a massive shock to go through the assessment. I felt hard done by when I came out afterwards. How dare they tell me how to live my life!
But I went along. Every Monday night. Some nights there might be six of us in the group, sometimes nine. I remember sitting there, somebody was talking about a specific situation where they lost the plot, and I said, ‘Hang on a second, you’re completely wrong there…’ It’s when you start telling somebody what they’re doing wrong, that’s when you realise, hang on, I’m guilty of doing that as well.
I never hit my partner or my kids, but it’s the mental torture I put them through. I was completely selfish. You’re my family, you’re to do what I say, I know what’s best. It was completely one-sided.
I won’t say there was a light-bulb that went on, but it was after six months I knew I was taking steps to correct my thinking. There were fewer and fewer occasions that I had to bring something to the group. But after a while, the group pointed out to me that while I was very good at watching myself in the home, outside the home was a different matter.
Road rage was a big issue with me. I was leaving things build up inside at home, I was able to suppress it there, but the moment I got an opportunity outside to vent, I took it. I pulled two guys out of cars in the space of a month. What was explained to me was that before you fly off the handle, there’s a physical tick that we all have. It’s different in everyone. I feel this huge burst of heat coming through my body and I know I’m going to explode. It was a case of catching up with myself… I spent so much time trying to slow things down. Everything was going at a million miles an hour.
I don’t think you can ever say you’re cured. I think you’re going to be a work in progress, on your guard against it.
There’s no situation now where I feel uncomfortable, but it’s like being an alcoholic or an addict like I am. I’m only one drink away from going back to it again.
I can’t remember when I had an incident last. Myself and my partner are getting married next November. She’d never have dreamed of marrying me before. I hope I’m not jinxing myself now, but our life is peaceful. We’re not without financial woes, same as everyone else but there’s no abuse anymore. We’re more united as a family more than anything else.
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