LIHU‘E — Birthing educators, yoga instructors and practitioners, athletes and others understand the importance of deep, cleansing breaths. But can something so simple actually work to avert potential family-abuse situations?
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on domestic abuse on Kaua‘i.
LIHU‘E — Birthing educators, yoga instructors and practitioners, athletes and others understand the importance of deep, cleansing breaths. But can something so simple actually work to avert potential family-abuse situations?
Not always, but it’s one of the strategies taught by Dennis Mendonca in the YWCA’s Alternatives to Violence program.
Other strategies include positive self-talk (including thinking), time outs, and avoiding or minimizing situations, thoughts and actions that can trigger angry responses.
Physical and sexual violence often is “an issue of power and control,” and that coercion, threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, using children, economic abuse, denial, blaming and minimizing are all tactics that can be involved, said Mendonca, director of the ATV program.
Physical abuse may be only one aspect of the kinds of abuse happening, with the “big three” on the batterer’s part being denying any such abuse happens or happened, making light of the abuse, minimizing its seriousness and blaming (“If you wouldn’t have done this I wouldn’t have hit you”), said Mendonca.
“It’s crazy to blame a woman for getting hit,” he said, adding that no healing can come if the batterer denies any such abuse happened.
“You have to become accountable,” he said. Mendonca teaches this in his ATV classes, made up mostly of men who have been mandated by a state court judge to attend an alternatives-to-violence program after a criminal conviction involving anger issues or violence.
Besides the YWCA program, there is a smaller, similar program offered through Women In Need, he said.
Mendonca, who holds a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and also does private counseling, said the cycle of violence involves three stages: tension building; lashing out; repairing process.
“It doesn’t go away by itself. These cycles are pretty regular,” he said.
When men first come into the ATV group meeting room at the YWCA facility on ‘Elua Street in Lihu‘e, they are angry with the courts, resent the cost of the program ($40 at intake, $20 per group session for 26 weekly classes) and the fact that they usually have to take time away from work to attend the sessions, and routinely want to argue facts of the case and make excuses for their behaviors, Mendonca said.
Many come in with voices edgy and mannerisms caustic, and he tries to teach them to speak in soft voices, and take home and to work what they’ve learned.
He teaches them to feel comfortable talking about their situations, learning “the language of accountability.”
“When anyone in the room speaks the truth, we all benefit,” he said.
Stopping the blaming is also an initial goal, followed quickly by talking about what’s going on inside them, and giving them opportunities to learn new behaviors, said Mendonca.
Speaking out instead of acting out
Ideally, he teaches men how to speak out about their feelings so they don’t have to act them out, he said, noting this is easier said than done.
“We’ve done a better job getting women into medical and law schools than getting men to talk about their feelings,” he said.
Men often don’t realize how self-talk (including thinking) affects their reality, which determines their reaction, he said. The self-talk can serve to escalate or calm a situation.
“Self-talk is really about interrupting that anger process,” involves anger management, accountability, and collaboration (seeing the partner as an equal), he said.
“When we’re controlling our partner, we’re losing the best part of them. My goal is anything less than kindness should not be allowed in a relationship,” he said.
A small percentage of men get so worked up in a relationship that they resort to physical violence.
“In truth, most guys in the room are not that different from you and me,” said Mendonca.
Unemployment and other financial stresses can have the affect of shortening one’s fuse, though less than half the men in his ATV classes have substance-abuse issues in addition to their anger issues, he said.
“It really goes back to attitude,” said Mendonca.
With an attitude of equality comes economic partnership, shared responsibility, non-threatening behavior, respect, trust, support, honesty, accountability and responsible parenting, among other shared traits, he said.
It’s not just the immediate family responsible for curtailing family abuse, he said.
“We need to develop community responses to domestic violence, that it’s everyone’s responsibility. In truth, it’s all our kuleana,” he said.
Toward that end, Mendonca also seeks to utilize rehabilitated clients as an “agents of peace alumni” group to teach calming skills to others, he said.
The domestic-violence-response movement grew out of the anti-war and civil-rights movements, where people were empowered to stand up for their rights and question authority, Mendonca said.
A lot of the ground-breaking awareness and response work came out of Duluth, Minn., he said.
Professionalization in the domestic-violence-response venue has meant those working in the field routinely require master’s degrees or higher, and that has “given us a deeper understanding of the motivation of power and control issues,” and 30 to 40 years later a deeper interpretation of those patterns of behavior, he said.
The Kaua‘i Domestic Violence Prevention Task Force monthly meetings are open to the public, and this month’s session is April 29 from 9:45 a.m. to noon at the Queen Lili‘uokalani Children’s Center on Kali Road near The Garden Island newspaper building in Lihu‘e.
“It’s open to anyone interested I making a difference,” said Linda Pizzitola, task force coordinator and a co-worker of Mendonca’s in the YWCA ATV program.
The task force’s mission is “bringing safety and harmony to Kaua‘i’s families through community outreach and collaboration, offering empowering solutions and resources for prevention, education, intervention and treatment of domestic violence.”
Contact her at linda@ywcakauai.org or 245-5959, ext. 244.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com.
