Domestic Violence

So I graduated from a master’s program in clinical mental health counseling, and got my first job at a state funded agency that works with victims of domestic violence. It’s downtown in one of the big judicial buildings where people go to get married or go to court for their divorce. If someone is a victim of domestic violence, they are referred to our agency by their lawyer or social worker, and our office provides not only counseling services, but also assistance with housing, clothing, food, or to get help with issues such as immigration and orders of protection.

My department is the counseling. Adults and children arrive, and there are snacks. The snacks are important. The waiting room being a comfortable and refreshing place is important.
They move from the waiting room to my office where we talk about what is on their mind. Play therapy is where a child processes the difficulties in their life through the action figure, play dough, or crayons. The child communicates with the counselor about what’s going on not by verbally describing the A,B,C,D of their struggle, but by playing with external objects which display their struggle through action, shape, and color.

The adults talk about their problems. This is okay, and is how adults process (although drama and play therapy for adults is a thing!).

I want to talk about domestic violence. I want to talk about what it’s like to be a man and to hear about domestic violence every day.

When I was a teenager and all through my 20s I would have anger outbursts. These looked like punching a large driveway trash can, thrashing a low hanging branch of a tree to smithereens, screaming alone at the top of my lungs in the car, and of course punching walls and doors. These days, the most effective and non-dramatic outlet for my anger is through push ups, although I have done some angry public shadowboxing recently.

Anyways, my point is that I have had lots of moments of violence against inanimate objects in the past 15 years. I have not, however, violently punched, kicked, slapped, or choked any people in the last 15 years. I ask myself why?

The main reason I think is that violence was never shown to me by my parents and role models growing up to be a viable outlet for anger. My mom would cry and leave the room, my dad would stew, and occasionally raise his voice, but there was no violence.

When I hear about domestic violence happening in homes, I assume that this is a symptom of generational trauma that continues into the present day. Someone's great grandfather beat his wife and kids, so they abuse their kids, and so on...
One of my grandfathers sometimes slapped my grandmother and their kids, and I am told that his dad beat him. So that could have been passed down to me through my mom, but she broke the chain of generational trauma.

My plea is to encourage individual men to break chains of generational trauma and not resort to physical violence against another human being when anger happens.

Punching/slapping/pushing/destroying inanimate objects is better
Exercise is better
Screaming into a pillow is better
Therapy is better
Martial Arts is better
Any kind of art is better

I don’t know how the ripple effect of this post will carry into the world, but my hope is that anyone who can contribute in any way to the destigmatization of anger and anger outbursts is doing good in the world. THERE IS NOTHING MORE NORMAL THAN TO BE ANGRY, but let’s collectively decide to direct that anger into almost anything other than another physical body (even though the frustration is often directly because of another physical body) 

So those are my thoughts on domestic violence. Extend compassion and empathy to all men. Extend the same to all women. Our world can be better.

P.S. Objectification of another person seems to be a precursor to DV. I am working on this in my own life- treating people as people (not as vehicles to get something). Thinking about people not as means to an end, but as ends in and of themselves...