So right now, perhaps millions of people around the world are involved in a relationship in which there is violence occurring and they feel controlled and perhaps terrified of their partner.

And there they feel trapped, They feel like they can't get out, they feel like they aren't going to be able to find any resources, and they might even feel terrible about themselves, as if they deserve their partner to control them and beat them and to punish them for bad behavior.

And it's a crisis, and it's happening all the time.

It's happening in the United States, happening in your town, and it seems like just a terrible thing that in twenty sixteen, that in our modern society, with all our bells and missiles and our iPhones and all this kind of stuff and our internets, that we would still have these kinds of relationship where someone is punishing someone else and dominating the other person and making that first that person feel like they can't do anything on their own and can't live their own life the way that they want to live it, and can't even get out of their relationship.

They can't even break up or divorce out of fear of being killed.

You know this is a problem, a crisis in our society, and so as a part of trying to raise our awareness of this and maybe how to treat it, I thought I would ask my colleague, doctor Michelle Finley, come on the podcast to talk about it because it is her area of expertise.

Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you glad to be here.

This is the Psychology and Seattle Podcast.

I'm your host, doctor Kirkonda.

I am chair of the Couple in Family Therapy Program at Antioch University, Seattle, and I'm also a licensed marriage of family therapist Michelle.

Doctor Michelle, why don't you induce yourself?

Well, yeah, so, I am one of the core faculty in the Couple and Family Therapy program at Antioch University.

I've been in Seattle for since June of last year.

So, and before that, I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, where I spent a number of years working with survivors of intimate partner violence, particularly in a AD.

It's considered a dual program, so we worked with survivors of intimate partner violence and also survivors of sexual assault.

So what does that mean to work with intimate partner violence?

And you use maybe we should talk about the term.

Sure, people are used to the term domestic violence or wife beating.

These are common terms.

How do those situate within the intimate partner violence term?

Yeah?

I think when I think of domestic violence, I tend to think of that more broadly as including other people within a household, people who consider each other family, where there's some kind of violence, whether it be physical, sexual, emotional, psychological aggression like between siblings, yeah, or child abuse.

It's just a more inclusive term.

But you'll still if you were to google domestic violence, you'll still probably run across more statements or facts and figures that I think are more accurately represented through the term intimate partner violence.

Okay, So I try to I worked with survivors of intimate partner violence, and our services were provided or were for survivors and also their children who were maybe somehow exposed or witness to that intimate partner violence, but not necessarily survivors themselves in terms of child abuse.

But we can, I mean, yeah, yeah, So and the short is IPv.

Yes, intimate partner violence Okay, And what was it like to work with IPv people?

It was really in some ways it was.

It's extraordinarily challenging, and not because of anything that they were doing, but just it really does a number on you in terms of your how you view people and viewing people as as good you know what I mean, and kind of having that intrinsic good about people, and so it kind of shakes that exactly.

It's your view that people were good and that you learned about how evil people could be.

Yeah, yeah, I would, I would say so, you know, especially in times when you just feel especially really bogged down and just overwhelmed with some of the stories the specific details that a lot of survivors would give about what they lived through, what they endured.

So in that sense, it was it was very hard work, but it was also very rewarding and the sense that you really not not all the clients that I worked with, but many you really got to see such a huge progression and their growth.

Not only were they surviving and frankly still alive and out of many of them had gotten out of the abusive relationship, but they began you could see the change in terms of their their's their own confidence, their self esteem, like they just you really see them.

I mean, it's kind of cheesy, but they really blossomed, you know, So it was really cool to be able to to be a witness or remotely have any kind of part in that process.

It's really extraordinary good.

So the treatment really works.

Uh yeah, I think so.

And in that context, it's a and maybe we can get into it a bit later, But in that context, with a lot of people who come in needing support through a domestic violence shelter, oftentimes they have experienced the more I guess what am I trying to say?

They they've experienced the more severe manifesting of intimate partner violence, where there's really a pattern of power and control over that person as a human being and over the relationship that they were in.

So it's a different level of intimate partner violence that I think really kind of comes up in a lot of people's imaginations when they first think about intimate partner violence, and it certainly gets talked about a lot through media, and it's certainly what really crosses through many domestic violentce shelters doors.

So within that that's the treatment approach that we would use that's been proven to be quite effective, would be more of the phase based model of trauma therapy because oftentimes survivors of intimate partner violence that's quite abusive, pervasive pattern power and control, they are more likely to develop symptoms of post traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and other related Yeah, that makes sense.

So you're kind of alluding to the notion that I a p V.

Intimate partner violence doesn't always include the element of control and domination.

Yeah, exactly.

And that might be for for maybe some listeners out there a bit like uh huh, like heart maybe hard to kind of swallow, you know, or to maybe accept.

But there's there's growing literature to show that shows that there's a lot more intimate partner violence going on, but it's not necessarily The reason for that isn't necessarily because of power of one partner having power and control over the other or the over the relationship.

But there's still abusive behaviors going on.

Uh, And it could even be physical violence and that type of intimate partner violence, which in the literature is referred to as what's called situational couple violence, and that's where relationships, for example, men and women can be perpetrators of that type of violence at pretty even rates, and it's usually thought of as being an issue of these are people who have a really hard time managing their anger, have a really hard time knowing having the skills to manage their conflict, and it's really about getting out of control based on a particular situation.

Hence hence the name.

Does that make sense, Okay.

So situational couple violence intimate partner violence is seen as a problem for both in heterosexual relationships, both men and women perpetrators, and it's an issue of emotional regulation and communication.

And I'm guessing drug abuse is probably alcoholism is probably in there as well.

People people fight much more when they're drinking.

I don't know if people know that out there, but when I'm working with couples, one of the first things I'll ask about their conflict is the difference between when they're drinking and when they're not.

And sometimes just a matter of cutting back on drinking can help a couple's relationship, or even quitting drinking altogether, or not talking about intense things while you're drinking.

But anyway, the point is is that there.

But it seems to be like in terms of the taxonomy that those kinds of situations to me are quite different.

And I'm glad that they have a different category, but I would say that, you know, a greater, so to speak, problem is when you have someone being dominated terrorized in this almost well in a terrible abusive way, and that those should be highlighted.

And so what do they call those?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So what you're referring to that terror, that dominance, the power and control, that that being a pervasive pattern within the relationship.

The literature kind of vacillates between calling it either intimate terrorism or coercive controlling violence, and those are kind of pretty much used interchangeably.

I find myself mainly referring to it as intimate terrorism.

Right.

I like that better because a lot of the abusive spouses are not using violence at all.

They're using threats.

Of violence, right, yeah, absolutely.

Or you know, other kinds of control, money control this kind of stuff exactly, And so the terrorism part makes more sense to me.

It's a funny word though, in our society today, right, because I'm sure if you said it to the general public, they'd be like, so the husband straps on a bomb on his chest, and you know, you know, but yeah, okay, but let me ask you, because people probably want to know what is it actually like day to day working with IPv people, because you know they're probably wondering.

Okay, so you mentioned a shelter.

You worked in the shelter, Yeah, so you have.

It's usually women who are They somehow get a hold of someone that directs them to the shelter often or to someone that knows about someone who knows about the shelter.

Maybe it's a therapist, or maybe it's a police officer or a friend or somebody, and they say, look, you should call this number, and then they start working with over the phone, sometimes with a counselor about like what kind of situation they're in and what they could do to be safe, and and the shelters giving them look, if you want to, you can come in and you know, here's what we would do, and blah blah blah when you're ready, and and a lot of times it takes a while for the abused partner to gear up the motivation to actually take that leap, because it's a huge leap of just moving in the middle of the night, just moving out with your with your kids and worrying about the repercussions.

Because that's more dangerous.

Right because right, because you've outed not only have you left, which the perpetrator will take issue with, but you've also outed the perpetrator to the legal system and to a whole bunch of people, and that is incredibly threatening to the perpetrator, and they will kick into their normal abusive, controlling behaviors like violence and threats of violence and potentially even killing people, which which happens.

And so so then they end up in like describing a typical.

Story, yeah, actually, yeah.

So they end up in the shelter, living in the shelter.

It's usually an unmarked building of some kind because and they keep the shelter's address is secret, you know, they don't give out.

Ours was different in that sense.

But I totally know what you're saying.

And there's plenty of shelters that operate like that, especially in smaller communities and not necessarily small, but I seem to know more about the ones that are in smaller communities.

But our shelter people knew.

But we just had a ton of security, a lot of security.

Yeah, I mean, it was kind of Fort Knox as it should be, you know, but we had our big sign and you know, if you remotely were from the area.

You knew what that place was about, so, so people were staffed.

It was twenty four seven, there was no you know, so that was yeah.

Right, So they have locked doors and a reception person in security, right, and it's it's basically like a big dorm, yeah, for people, And there are counselors on site and resources and social workers and this sort of thing.

And you were one of the therapists, yes, and so you were working on trauma recovery with these people once they were in the shelter, right, And they'd be in the shelter for how long?

Oh man, that just depends.

Some could have been there for up to about a year.

Some even maybe some exceptions, especially if there's issues with visas, you know, not being a US citizen, those kind of factors that would just of course create more vulnerabilities and require more time in the shelter.

But some people could be there for maybe as little as a couple of nights too, you know, probably the average was maybe like maybe a few months or something like that.

I'm kind of ballparking that one a little bit.

And then would you work with them after they left?

Yeah?

Well, see, for me, I actually weren't.

More of my caseload were folks who had at one time stayed in our shelter but were out and living on their own.

But I had a lot of many mini med clients were also still living in shelter, so I kind of saw both, which that was another interesting You just see them at different points of their journey, which is interesting.

So would you see those clients after they left the shelter.

Would they come to your office in the shelter or did you have a different office, Just curious.

No, Yeah, they would come back.

Those who had lived there but still want to do therapy would come back, and they did have it.

We were all connected, like it was very easy to get to the shelter part of the facility the place, but my office was still you know, they weren't walking through shelter to get to my office when they came back.

Mainly for confidentiality and privacy of clients who were living there.

So some people might not understand or be able to empathize with the victims with the survivors of IPv of terrorism and what could we say to help them understand what what it's like.

Because what a lot of people, I think think is like, well, if that happened to me, I just leave them, you know, or I would fight back, or that's you know, that's bs I.

But what they don't understand is, I think the the what the effectiveness of the terrorism, especially if you have kids, right, and how it how it progresses over time, and how it breaks down your identity.

What else can we say to help you understand?

I think you're Yeah, there's plenty of clients that I see where that is part of the power and control again with the intimate terrorism typology of IPv, where they begin to feel on some level that it's their fault, that they're to blame, that there's no hope, this is what I deserve and and you know, there's varying levels of consciousness or awareness of that and telling those kinds of things of themselves.

But that's what I what I really found is a lot of people, you know that they were they were still bonded to that person who was also their abuser.

So there's there's lots of layers here.

There's that's part of the abuse, that's part of of keeping you under that person's control, right, is believing that you're worthless, believing that you have nowhere to go, that nobody's gonna want you, You're you're no good, you know, you're whatever.

The messages are so that self esteem, self confidence stuff like what you're saying, there's also the sincere desire and and love for that person still, And that's what I think other what people who maybe haven't experienced it, or even have, but maybe who still hold a lot of shame around their own inability to leave or or recognize that whatever it is just besides understanding, you know, for the most part, people aren't dating people that are one hundred percent abusive, always all the time out the gate, you know what I mean.

Like like if we go down the street and somebody like punches me, I don't.

Know that person and then ask you out on a date, now I'm gonna.

Be like, hell no, get away from me.

But if they took me out on a nice day they asked me, they didn't punch me first, They asked me on a date and I like them, and it was really nice and they wind in down you know, sweet talk and really kind and all that stuff and had a puppy.

I don't know, I'm just throwing silly things out there, but you form a bond as you would with any person that you've you know that you're in a romantic relationship with.

Right, and a lot of these it's a bit terrorists, if we might call them that.

They are.

They've learned over time that they tend to become abusive, and therefore, in order to seduce someone into being with them, they have to to some extent act on their good behavior, and they'll become they'll be very romantic and very giving and and very they'll also have I mean, I'm talking about a typical profile that I've seen of the of the terrorist type right, right, and it's it's it's someone who has been in relationships before and again they know that eventually it gets to a point where they feel extremely extreme anxiety when they're when their girlfriend or wife is is not under their control.

And so you know, for to some people, some terrorists are I'm just guessing sadis they're just psychopathic satus who just enjoy terrorizing people.

But I would, I would, I would guess that the majority of them are basically trying to manage an attachment problem through violence, like they might have been taught that that way.

You know, imagine you're you're a.

Man and you're married and your wife comes home two hours late from work, well, it's natural to have kind of a question like, well, I wonder what happened?

Where were you?

Right?

What happened?

And if you're not satisfied with the answer, over time, you might become you know, might have a question mark there.

Like it would be natural to have just a flash of a thought of like I wonder if she's cheating on me?

Right?

Well, and that thought is terrifying for anyone.

The notion that you're going to lose your loved one, that they're going to leave you is terrifying because we all need secure attachment.

Well, if you come from a place of abuse and a place of insecurity, in a place of attachment problems and a place of violence, frankly, then you're going to try to solve that problem in the way you know how.

And the way that you know how to solve that problem is to stop her from coming home late from work, right, And so you will say to her you will never do that again.

And if you do that again, you know you don't want to deal with me.

And so it's not like just trying to this is you know, if someone just generally violent.

Then they're they're just violent with everyone on the street.

They're just they're violent with someone in the grocery store, they're violent with the police officer, and they're violent with their with their wife.

With these terrorists, they're typically only violent with with the person that they're they're intimate with, right And so it's in my view, this this like extremely dysfunctional way of trying to manage that normal attachment insecurity that everyone feels.

And then it but it's it's snowballs on each other because when you physically and abuse and terrorize your wife, she tends to pull away emotionally, and that creates more insecurity for the perpetrator.

And so the porptrator tries harder and says, Okay, well, you're not even going to work anymore, you know, and you're not going to have any friends, and you're not gonna look at me funny, and you're not going to oppose any of my opinions, and and it just and it just becomes more and more elaborate in terms of this this control.

Well, uh, the person who goes through this a number of times and gets and has women leave him, he eventually learns I have to really act on my best behavior to get someone to like me, because I'm so desperate for a relationship, and so I have to really suppress this this thing that I get that I do sometimes.

And then so they become really nice, and they date in the beginning in this very very nice way, and they're almost too nice to some extent.

They're very romantic, and they're very giving and very generous, and then once you're in their relationship and they become needy of your attention, then they try to control all of it because they need all of it.

Yeah, I mean, you are describing a lot of what has been validated in the literature on the issue, and of course just more anecdotally what I've seen and heard from my clients too.

I want to kind of circle back briefly to the other thing that I want people to know as far as you know, well, the whole question why doesn't she just leave?

And then I'll come back to what you're saying about that kind of profile.

So there's the attachment stuff we talked about, you know, there's that being part of the abuse of believing that you are not worthy, this is what you deserve.

What else am I going to do?

Or also part of the abuse that maybe there's financial or economic reasons that prevent them from being able to leave, or being isolated from family and friends, so they don't really have a clear path out and all of that.

It's also connected to that in the intimate terrorism framework that we're talking about.

For a for a survivor to try to leave or attempts at leaving, they are at more risk, at more risk of being killed by their partner during that time than in any other time during during that relationship.

So I just read an article the other yesterday actually that I think there was like one hundred and twenty, no, one hundred and twelve people in January of this past of this year were killed by their partners.

Eighty eight percent a female partner killed by a male partner.

And I think fifty seven percent of that one hundred and twelve were due to gun violence.

And I want to say maybe the ninety percent somewhere pretty very pretty high.

That was when they were leaving or said they were going to leave.

So the lethalergies Washington or United States across the US, Yeah, in that one month alone.

And that doesn't count all the other violent ass.

Oh, no, that's just violence leading into homis to.

Death, breaking broken bones exactly, you know, complete, you know, just.

Right, serious injury that warrants medical attention, et cetera.

No, that's just no, that is right, that's exactly.

But that's just to illustrate that when when when partners, when victims try to leave, it can have devastating consequences.

And so I think people underestimate that when they think about it, and there's a lot of victim blaming.

And I also think that it's really an interesting indicator within our society that that's our knee jerk reaction is to say, you know, why why why does why doesn't she leave?

Or why does she stay?

Or some variation is that the question that we should ask is, you know, why does he do that or why does she do that?

I should you know what I mean, with the onus on the person who's doing the behavior, you.

Know, blaming the victim.

It's easier to blame the victim, right, So we should say that both men and women are perpetrators.

When it comes to the more severe cases of control, it's more men than women.

And we should also say that the you know, a viable hypothesis is that men and women are socialized differently, and men are socialized to control and to be the man, and women are socialized to be weak and to be subservient and to you know, listen to their man.

And there are explicit messages and implicit messages, and so if our society wasn't binary and weird in this way, my guess is you wouldn't see that disparity as much, and you probably see a lot less of this sort.

Of thing happening.

Because as a man, you're told you must be in control, you must be assertive, you must never question your decisions, you must lead.

You must have no emotions, you must have no needs, you must have no vulnerability, you must never ask for help.

You must be the alpha male.

So there's just tons of these very overt messages and in our culture as well.

And then you enter into a relationship, and then you grow up probably being traumatized to some extent relation, and so you're very insecure about life and you're not sure about whether or not you're lovable or whether or not you're good enough.

And then you enter in a relationship and then things start to go a little weird and you start feeling scared that you're never going to be loved, Well, what are you going to turn to?

Well, you're going to turn to what you've been socialized to do, which is to take control, be assertive, lead, take action, and be the man of the house.

And it's an extreme version of it, of course, but it makes all the sense of the world.

If we socialized boys differently, maybe they would actually say, well, when you come home from more late, I just have to say, it makes it kind of freaks me out, and so I don't know, maybe you could just call me or text me or something because and it.

Also gets in the expectation of So there's those messages that men that are socialized and internalize often.

But then it's also what they internalize about women right too.

You know, women should be controlled and they have the power, and that this.

Is maybe not necessarily thinking this is my property, but having those ways of interacting as if they have no will or no desires on their own, you know, aliens.

I'm sure even to us progressive Seattleites, who still for the majority of us, when it's a heterosexual marriage, the woman will take the name of the man, and almost never in reverse.

And I and I don't want to poo pooh that cultural norm.

We could debate that, but the point is if aliens saw that, they would say, oh, I get it.

The woman is the man's property, or the woman's identity is less important or something.

So even today there or are overt, you know, things that we're doing that are clear messages to boys that women are possessible, that they are things to possess, and they are things that you can control.

And so yeah, all these things play into one's decision making when you are threatened attachment.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

So you wanted to get back to another thing I said about.

The profile, Oh yeah, in terms of the way I'm portraying, right portrator.

Oh yeah, yeah, So yeah, with the perpetrator, and again speaking in the context of more of the type of intimate partner violence that's characterized by pervasive pattern power and control.

There's also been a lot of research Seattle folks probably know John Gottman and the Gotmans.

We're looking at typologies of the batterer too, and you might already know about this or familiar Looking at Gotman, I think initially broke it down as type one, type two, not not very creative but then got a little more creative, and I think identified the type one batterer as being Cobra's type two being pit bulls.

And within that, that's kind of looking at what distinguishes people in terms of the type of violence that they enact in their relationships, and Cobras were characterized as by having more psychopathology and in terms of like what you I think you alluded to, like even if maybe being to the point of like yeah, exactly, yeah, that that more of that extreme narcissistic personality disorder, that those kind of things that that's not all but a good number of them, but a good number of them will have those features or characteristics if you've got a healthy dose of narcissism or borderline for that matter as a male, or psychopathy, and a dash of sadism as well.

But even without sadism.

You will absolutely have as an option available to you violence as a way of trying to control the people, you know, as a way of saying, well, of course you should be doing this because I think it's right and you're nothing and I'm everything, and if that's your personality, it might it makes sense.

Yeah, not to say that, of course, It doesn't mean, oh, you have narciss personalities order that you're just doomed to be an abuser, But it's just saying that those were the common characteristics that seem to come together in a certain type of bad word.

The gotman and his colleagues identified as the cobra, and and and that really emerged with his whole you know, And he did that a lot of those observational studies and observing couple's work through conflict, and when he hooked them up to test their their level of arousal physiologically, he found that the cobras were actually physiologically calm, even though they were being pretty belligerent and had all the horsemen, the four horsemen you know, or you know, the well minus stonewalling but contempt belligerents, critics criticizing their partner.

So you would think that person would be pretty activated, but they weren't, Which.

Is in contrast to the bull who bodily stress arousal in reaction to relationships to the conflict.

But it is different than when I was talking about couples who engage in situational couple of violence, where the pit bull, who also is the perpetrator an intimate terrorism relationship, they are more at risk of borderline, I think is one of the characteristics that they found within that typology, but a lot of inability to self soothe, to control their emotions, to handle to manage their anger in a more effective way.

So in that sense, they can look they tend to struggle in similar ways that couples who are mutually aggressive toward one another can struggle, but it tends to be more pervasive because it's still trying to establish control over their partner, even if it's motivated or coming out of a different ideology.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, personality and emotional.

Right, right, So if you're a narcissistic or psychopathic and you believe that you're awesome and everyone else is not, and your spouse is getting in your way, then it's just a logical choice that you're going to start to make that person know that they're wrong because you're a god and the other person is not.

I and I actually know you know clients that are like this.

Whereas if you are borderline or have relationship insecurities and attachment.

Those attachment things not that they don't exist.

For the quote unquote cobra the type one.

But that attachment stuff is just more salient.

It's like more palpable too.

It's more triggered, you know, the conflict triggers that fear of losing the person, which causes the body to become very stressed out, and then you become it becomes hard to you know, regulate your emotions and becomes hard to regulate your behavior, and you want the feeling to stop, and you'll a shortcut is to just punch the person in the face and say you're going to stop this and I'm going to win this argument and this and.

It's over, you know.

Whereas what we want to do with people like that is to help them recognize those triggers, recognize those cues, calm themselves down, regulate their emotion, and come at it with a more functional way of resolving that conflict, which they ultimately want.

But are you saying that pit bulls, some pit bulls are intimate terrorists and some pit bulls, Oh, that's a good question, and more situational violent people.

Yeah.

And I feel like that's where it kind of gets a little confusing to me in the literature, because when I read Gotman it.

It seems to kind of come out of more of that intimate terrorism place.

And it's but then when I read other literature like Sandra's Stiths and that these were these names may be meaningless.

But other people who are doing work of working with couples where there's intimate partner violence like Sander's.

Stith and her colleagues at Kansas State have a whole program where they work with situationally violent couples, and some of the characteristics that they talk about sound an awful lot like the pit bull.

Nothing sounds like like Cobrad's are clear like that is not amenable to any kind of couple treatment model.

But when you read some of her work, it's like she seems to be more open to working with someone who may have characteristics that Gottman identified and called the pit bull or type two batterer.

So I feel like it's a little I think we're still kind of not sure.

There's still more room to grow and to figure out about their ability to make gains within a couple contexts.

I think there it's been demonstrated there that they're amenable to to treatment gains in terms of, like you said, being able to better manage and regulate themselves.

But as far as within the couple context, I'm not I'm not as sure about about those outcomes.

Yeah, I mean, I see entirely possible to me that the pit bull type could be either the terrorist or the situational in that if you have two pit bulls and neither one of the pit bulls is interested in terrorizing the other person, then you're going to see two people being violent with each other when they're upset at each other.

Or when you have one pit bull and that person manages conflict through through violence, then you're going to see more of the terrorism side of things.

And so it's but it is interesting to delineate between perhaps the narcissistic and the psychopaths with everyone else essentially.

Yeah, well, and like you said, like with that the attachment piece, you know, I think that if there's if it's more closely connected to issues with attachment and emotion regulation and conflict, that to me more inherently implies that their systemic interaction things that can I guess, for lack of a better phrase, it gives me more hope at the interactional level, the relationship level, to make those changes.

And that's why if you do want to do what's still in many people's eyes is controversial, which is the relational work with couples where there's intimate partner violence i e.

Situational a couple of violence.

You really have to get good at screening by screening in terms of what is it intimate terrorism or is it truly situational?

And let's talk about that.

So are you saying that one is indicated for couple's work and one isn't.

Yes, absolutely, so intimate terrorism is definitely not appropriate.

That pattern of violence is not appropriate for conjoint any kind of conjoint or couple treatment.

It's not helpful, you're saying, not helpful.

How is it not helpful?

Well, first, it it can maybe exacerbate or escalate the violence or the harm to the victim in that relationship.

It's also just more clear that there is a primary aggressor if there's even a secondary aggressor, so it's more perpetrator victim dichotomy in that context.

So couple therapy is if there's that foundation, then it's going to increase the possibility the possibility of harm and be unsafe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thinking I'm guessing is that with situational violence, you have equal power essentially, and therefore you will avoid things when you have a symmetrical power where the couple comes in and the abusive terrorist person is monitoring everything the victim is saying exactly, and then upon leaving the session might beat.

Right that person to take it out on them.

Yeah, and then you come into the next session and that person is saying, yeah, things are getting better, and there's no opportunity for the victim to speak freely, absolutely without worry of being consequence.

It's not as if couples therapy or family therapy doesn't work.

It's that to me, it's like you just have to The principle of the spirit behind the rule is you have to create a safe, confidential place for the victim to start exploring how they feel.

And for both of them to feel I think, and I mean especially the victim to talk about the dynamics in a way where there's not going to be adverse consequences.

So, yeah, you're right, it's not something inherent to couple or family therapy, but it's how it then gets used.

If you could somehow manage to create that in couple's therapy, then you could do it, but that would be a hard thing to pull off and you would never really know.

Plus there are many people that treat couples while seeing them individually at the same time, and so so anyway, But when it comes to symmetrical power, then it's about let's work on ways the two of you can conflict in a more constructive way.

How can we use our words, how can we notice our emotional life and how can we regulate that, and how can we have more bonding.

So that you just feel better.

It's just normal family therapy.

Yeah, it begins to mirror more of the traditional pathway pathways for couple therapy.

And I will say another key thing is I mean you have to look not only at the typology of the violence itself, So is this a pervasive pattern power and control intimate terrorism?

That's no good.

You also have to look at the level of like we talked about earlier, the severity of any mental illness, the severity of any substance abuse issue that's going on, the severity of the violence that's going on.

So if even if it's maybe they're both really got going at each other in a more symmetrical way, but it's still the escalation is such that it's dangerous.

So okay, it's not intimate terrorism necessarily, but it's still the danger level of such that couple's therapy may not be is likely not appropriate.

And the last thing, well probably not the last thing may be forgetting something, but fear.

The level of fear that any partner expresses, and you alluded to that earlier, that's a big indicator too, and in many ways that might trump whatever you as a clinician you delineated based on their pattern of how they interact.

Well, that is the main delineating pattern that we will assessed for right is is do.

You feel afraid?

Right?

Is the question if you're a clinician out there, that's that's one of the main questions.

And it's complicated because the answer could be sort of an exploratory process.

But the main question you want to try to get them to provide an honest answer to is.

Are they afraid?

Because if you're in a situational violent situation in the less severe forms will say you're not You're not afraid that the other person is going to kill your kids or kill you, or I mean the thing that I want to say that I that I didn't really emphasize it previously, is that there's there's something that happens.

And I've actually discovered this personally, and it took me a while to figure out personally, in that when someone presents behavior that is that is out of the norm, that that or that feels very different from you, there's this natural worry of well, what else are they capable of?

If they're capable of that weird thing, then I really can't predict their behavior.

I remember learning a long time ago that there's this sort of cultural social contract that everyone signs and you follow that so that so that you don't scare other human beings on this planet.

You know you're you're walking down the street and and.

You know someone's approaching.

There's there's a protocol if if you're in a particular situation, maybe you have eye contact, but maybe you don't.

If someone says hello, you just say hello back.

But you can even just take a non You can even just take a non Doctor Michelle just dropped her pen.

Sorry, And the mistake that doctor Michelle is making and she thinks this is a super professional podcast and that dropping her pen and making a noise is a bad thing.

That is not the case, my friend.

So if I was walking down the street and I walked up to someone and said something like I watched the news last night and they said the weather was going to be very interesting.

Okay, have a nice day, And this what that other person because I broke the contract of expectations, even though I was nice or random, there's a little bit of anxiety that the person has of like, wait a second, they're not following the protocol.

What else are they capable of?

And to some people, this is actually a terrifying thing you can do to someone if you just do something out of the ordinary.

For some people it's it terrifies them.

Okay, so expand that out to your spouse.

When angry got so angry that he picked up the TV and smashed it through a window, this is a real thing.

If he's capable of taking the TV and throwing it through the window, when when I just came home two hours late from work, My god, what else is he capable of the mind can go all sorts of places.

Yeah, he could kill me.

He could kill my family, he could kill my kids, he could kill my pets, he could kill everyone.

He could kill us and then burn the house.

I mean, lots of killing involved, but it's like, what else could he do?

Because he did that, what else is he capable of?

And that is terrorism.

That's the scary part of it is not even sometimes people will say, well, sometimes I just want him to hit me so I can get it over with, you know, just like I know he's going to hit me, so I'll provoke him.

He'll hit me, and because I know what hitting feels like.

But there's this other fear of like what else is he capable of?

And that is and if you have never experienced that before, understand that that is a terrifying experience to wonder what someone that is involved in your life, living in your house, that at any moment they could just go off.

That is that is a terrifying thing to people.

And another element that if I may doctor Michelle go on with, is that your mind starts to this is when the psychodynamics start to kick in.

Is when your your mind starts to figure out a way to cope with all this.

Oh yeah, as a victim.

And like you said, you want to love this person.

You do love this person, but at the same time you're terrified of and so you start figuring out a mental trick to justify it all or to make it all make sense, or to and to just sort of cope with the situation.

And one of the things you start doing is you start believing that you're very much in love with this person and that the violence is no big deal, and that it's well, you know, all men are like to.

Kind of minimize, yeah, the severity of what's happening.

Yeah, right, this just means he really loves me, or he's very passionate, or she's she's just very much in love with me.

It means, you know, that's she's so in love with me, she resorts to this behavior.

You're later on, after they leave the relationship, they look back and they say, oh my god, I was deluding myself.

But it's this is natural for humans to do.

Hard when you're in it, to have that clarity or to be like, oh okay.

Because you have no way out in your brain, you're just you're your unconscious It's like, how do I deal with the situation?

You know?

I like to bring up this example.

Every liberal knows that we're you know, ruining the planet with our greenhouse gases.

Yes, yet how many of us drive cars and take airplane rides.

Well, how do we cope with that?

Well, we just go into denial.

I'm not really, I'm just driving my car or I have no other way to get there.

So we all go into denial when we have conflicting, you know, things in our minds.

And for victims, that happens too.

Yeah.

Oh gosh, yes, And I like that you're pointing that out and saying that, you know, we all have these tendencies or experiences and and so there's that fine line of not completely stigmatizing or pathologizing the people who find themselves in abusive relationships and also really acknowledging the severity of that just how not okay and inappropriate unacceptable that that that should it should not be near to the proportions that it is in this country and across the world.

Yeah, it's terrible.

And they are often.

Discounted by by the law and by the legal system, uh or the well, I mean one big thing is that police officers are the people that respond to these calls.

You know, some a neighbor says, I think they're getting violent next door.

I think, you know, Yeah, the police officers show up.

The vast majority of them have no training, I mean the ability like you're trained in intimate partner violence.

But imagine going to a house in the middle of one of these events and trying to decide who's the perpetrator and who's the victim, and decide what you should do.

Should someone go, should should they stay, what's safe?

That is a incredibly complicated situation.

Yes, and one could argue that there's no human on the planet that could accurately assess the situation in that moment, given the limited data that you have in that moment, and yet we require police officers to somehow do this awesome job in that situation.

There are some police officers that are trained to.

Right absolutely lethality assessments and being more connected to shelters in the area, and we had that.

We were pretty fortunate to have any if any one of the people involved in a domestic violence call met certain criteria on this lethality assessment, then they would call us directly the police officer, put the person who's been identified as the at least the primary victim, and then go from there and really just it would be our job to really try to make up kind of beef up the severity of what's going on and try to really convey that pretty strongly.

So, yeah, right, so things are getting better.

But you're right, but even within that, there's it's not full proof.

You know, there's not no no kind of screening or assessment that's going to be one hundred percent in getting what you want.

So, did you ever come across and I don't want to say that this would even be possible or or at the very least common, but did you ever come across a situation where the victim was manipulating the entire process where they perhaps there was violence more situational between the two or maybe even the quote unquote victim was the perpetrator to some extent and the other person was acting in self defense and then just manipulated the entire system into labeling the other person as a perpetrator.

Yeah, I mean I have had some exposure to that.

I mean, I would I want to say that that is not it my it's my experience.

It's not like this common thing.

It can't be common, but it just occurred to me, like, wait.

But it can happen absolutely, And I will say I've seen more of that dynamic when working with male survivors who are in heterosexual relationships or the person that was their perpetrator was a female.

And that's the other thing I like to point out about the abusers in an intimate terrorist relationship.

They'll use whatever their privilege, some kind of privilege.

And I think if you, even though quite rare, if a female perpetrator within that context will use can use that perception of women as victim, and she'll use she can use that in a way to further perpetrate violence against her partner.

There are women who suffer from narcissic personality disorder, who have been abused growing up or seen violence right, and have attachment security problems, and even though they are socialized the opposite, they decide that they're going to manage this attachment problem or just wanting a relationship with terrorism and violence, right, And that's totally possible.

It's not as common given our culture and given our system.

And I do feel like I saw maybe a small handful of cases where it seemed that way either either a it was through the experience and working with a male survivor who struggle with the abuse itself, but also as a male survivor not being believed or or people or his partner using that to make it seem as though she were the primary victim when that wasn't actually the case.

Or I've seen it even within a female client where I'm like where my spider sense was tingling, like I don't know about that, Like something's not quite isn't adding up, you know, And it's really uncomfortable because it really can get tricky because there is such uh, the the goal.

The goal is to not blame anyone, and you believe people when they tell you that they've had this experience and I and I firmly value that sentiment, you know, And so it's really complex and challenging when there is that part of you that's like, oh crap, I'm told to believe.

I have to believe you, but I don't believe you.

And is that my problem?

Is that because I'm a you know what I mean, the product of the society.

This is, yeah, the victim blaming culture.

Or is this do I need to trust more of what I might my instinct?

You know?

It really kind of messes with all of that.

The same happens when it comes to child's sexual abuse or physical abuse, so it may be more child sexual abuse, and that we know that society and family members will blame the victim, discount their story, right, and so by the time they come to us, we are likely to say, no, I believe you.

I believe you.

No one else believes you, but I believe you, and you deserve better and this should not have happened to you.

And then they start saying so in a normal situation where you have someone who's actually being victimized, they will start blaming themselves and they won't want to tell anyone or they did tell someone and they didn't they weren't believed, and so by the time to come to us, we're like overly believing of them and telling them, do not discount your experience, do not tell yourself you're to blame.

The other person is to blame.

You know.

And so we kind of get ahead of them a little bit and to some extent try to get them to recognize that they're not to blame and that the other person is to blame.

We're trying to make this fair and just.

But when someone comes along with the signs of a victim, and we just go into that language and that assumption that anything they say is that indicates that they're to blame, should needs to be you know, discounted.

No, you're not to blame for this, and but they're actually the perpetrator.

Then after a while you might wait a second, So how does this work?

You know, like I said the same with child abuse.

A five year old, you know, child comes and says, you know, I'm being physically abused.

It's my fault.

Your natural instinct is, no, it's not your fault.

It's it's I can't see how this would be a victim.

Maybe doesn't apply to this situation, but but but yeah, I see that sometimes when I have worked with couples in what I saw as ambiguous situations, maybe it was more situational as yeah, and they're highly contentious and and and the marriage is highly conflictual, and both people will say the other person is the perpetrator, and I'm not there, so it's impossible for me to tell.

But in our.

Society, it's much easier for in a heterosexual relationship for the woman to get support on that than for the man and so so, and she knows that, and of course when they tell her that she's not to blame, then she's just going to eat all that up, and so having said that, the solution isn't to be more skeptical of people at the point.

The solution is to just try to understand the bigger picture while validating people and trying to reduce the violence, and perhaps have it as just a little bit of an alert of our bias when we hear men's accounts of violence, because you know, you say that the majority of terrorism is perpetrated by men, and you brought up that men don't feel like they can come forward.

That is absolutely true.

I mean, women who are being abused don't feel like.

They right, there's underreporting no matter.

Who, but men, by God, to be a man in an abusive relationship is disgraceful.

And the amount of resources available for a man who's being abused is like, I mean, them getting in touch with someone who can help them is pretty slim.

Plus again, they might worry that they're going to get blamed, so again it's impossible to tell.

And of course our culture is clearly teaching boys to dominate women and women to be dominated, so that will cause that disparity.

But I just wonder about all the men that are suffering.

Sure, and I will say, like I know, with our Center and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, I think have come pretty far, but still have a ways to go, I think, but they've come quite far in terms of being trying to be more inclusive, particularly of men or non heterosexual couples or various genders, and trying to be open to their experiences and connect them appropriately to support and safety.

But you're right, I mean, I still think that the message in the culture is that this is, you know, primarily a women's issue.

This happens to women, and you know.

And perhaps more and perhaps a lot more.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be helping doing our part to help men too.

Sure.

Yeah, so you mentioned non hetero sexual relationships and that sort of throws everything off too in terms of gender, right, because when you have abusive lesbian relationships, well, tell us, tell us.

About the research on that.

Like, I know that anytime you have an oppressed culture, a stressed out culture, stressed out group of people, right, there's there tends to be all sorts of symptoms as a result, suicidality, depression, and even perhaps violence.

But I don't know.

Yeah, and there's conflicting just like the statistics are are not exactly not exactly the same or identical depending on the source.

For heterosexual into a partner of violence.

The same is true among lesbian gay couples.

But from what I've read, most sources report similar prevalence rates and talk about the unique ways that that privilege looks different and how that can be used as as part of the abuse.

But there's not much out there in terms of defining typologies of batterers and those types of in those relationships, or the typologies of the abuse itself in similar way that I just was outlining to you.

With heterosexual couples, what the literature that I have read seems to suggest that you can maybe place them along those similar lines, But there's just not the data there that there is for heterosexual couples.

So when what was I going to ask you?

Oh, and while you're remembering, I will say that I think the numbers that that they do have with LGBT population are kind of where are similar to the numbers that you have when you just look up statistics on IPv.

And it's not it's not distinguishing situational couple violence.

You know, it's assuming a pattern of power and control over a partner.

So there's there's that piece.

Oh, I know you had said that privilege plays out perhaps differently in same sex relationship.

How so yeah, uh, well, and maybe this becomes less and less as as people as there's less stigma and more and more people are coming out, but the coming out process that can be a point of privilege that can be used against a partner, the threat of outing them at their place of employment or their family.

That's one.

That's one example.

I still think that there are privilege points of privilege even within gender or if there's if they're of different ethnicity or race.

And that's also true within straight couples too, But but those are examples of how that privilege can can kind of play out.

I also think again along the gender thing, whether it's lesbian or gay couples, there's still power dynamics in terms of money, in terms in terms of yeah, money, in terms of age or even identification along the gender continuum.

You know, she is the more masculine one, right, or.

Having more dominance in that sense, or you know, being a top versus a bottom, and that the list goes on in terms of those those ways that that power can can and privilege can manifest and then be used against each other.

My kind of quick rough like thinking that I have about privilege is, whatever it is in the larger society, it can get used and reflected within the smaller microcosm of that relationship as part of the abuse, whatever that is.

It's just easier to identify male privilege and in a straight relationship and how that manifests and an abusive dynamic or abusive pattern.

And so I think the same is true, like you were saying economically, age being white versus black, or whatever, you know, religion.

I mean, really, I think if you're if you're abusive and you want control over your partner, you're going to use whatever you know what I mean, You'll use whatever that that means of privilege to maybe help maintain that power.

Right, So what else can we say about intimate partner violence?

Can we say?

Well, I hope anyone who's listening just recognizes that it's very complex, and it's not to suggest that any stereotypes or traditional understanding of intimate partner violence is not true.

It absolutely is true, but to note that it really touches way more people than I think we maybe want to admit or realize, and it really ranges from the intimate terrorism where there's lots of fear, power and control, to the situational couple of violence where people just are being inappropriate, putting their hands on each other, tearing each other down with name calling or verbal aggression.

It's inappropriate, but you know, it's not characterized by that level of fears.

So there's just a whole range in which intimate partner violence manifests itself in relationships, and it really touches everybody.

Let's talk about treatment for a second.

I sure early in my career was asked to join a what they called a domestic violence perpetrator group treatment group.

It's if you don't know, if you get charged with domestic violence or I think this assault for if assault forth degree, you are, often your sentence is to go to domestic violence treatment or to get an assessment for treatment.

And the assessment usually delineates between anger management, which which is probably addressing the pit bulls or addressing the situational violence people.

And maybe also catching some pit bulls in there.

I think you're right, right, But and then so you have the anger management classes, which is just learning how to manage your anger as opposed to domestic violence treatment, which was focused on your views and your your thoughts of your privilege and the way you deal with your own issues in general.

It's not just because the delineation is does this problem have a problem with anger globally and if we help them with their anger, they will it will help them with their spouse and at work.

Or are they targeting their spouse with most of their anger if not all, and trying to control that person and reactive to that person relationally.

It's a different profile and requires a different treatment treatment thing.

And so the anger management class was only like ten weeks, whereas the domestic violence treatment was for a year, and you would meet in the perpetrators would meet in a group, and there would be the DV specialist and then I was a therapist in the room, and it would be there would be different it was like a class slash group therapy, and there would be different modules that we would go through in different worksheets and stuff like, you know, what are the different messages we get about women?

What are different messages we get about men?

And how do we see marriage and how do we see relationships?

And the really interesting thing that I learned early on because I had a pretty rudimentary view of perpetrators.

I just thought of them as just being assholes and just like controlling jerks, you know, just people I could never relate to.

Basically, just like evil, just like pure evil.

And of course I think we could probably come across a few people like that, but for the vast majority, in my experience anyway, these were normal guys, likable guys who were struggling with what they had gone through in their life and were just taught a wrong way of dealing with conflict.

And when you confronted that, and it would take time, it wasn't just like, let's teach you.

There was this there was this phase that they would go through.

In the beginning, they'd be like, I don't know why I'm here.

This is bullshit, you know.

And then over time, because people are at different stages, you'd have people in the group that were at their last month and you have people in their first month.

And so the people in the last month were enlightened and they would see the guys in their first month and they'd be like, yeah, I used to say that too, You'll get over that, or yeah, you know, and they were our best therapists, because they would just slam a guy, just be like, dude, you got to wake up, Like the stuff you're doing is horrible and it's gonna it's gonna harm your relationships and it's wrong.

And you know, and I used to be like you too, so I get it, but you're gonna have to get rid of that bullshit, you know.

Wow.

And we would just sort of, you know, let the group happen.

The DV specialist was there to address, to bring the worksheats, and to have kind of the bigger picture, and I was there to address the emotional side and the process side between people.

And I can still remember like three of those guys in that group, and I really liked them, and we would talk about we would review their story of their stories of violence, and we would particularly review the story that got them in trouble with the law and just hearing their story evolve, you know, when they first told the story, it's like, so my wife, you know, we were just sitting in the parking lot and all of a sudden, she just starts totally freaking out, and so, you know, one thing led to another, and you know, we were both kind of going at it and yeah, we probably I probably shouldn't have given in, but you know, what are you going to do?

I don't know.

I mean, she's she's you.

If you guys met her, you would understand she's crazy.

And then forward six months where they're just like, I have a problem with controlling people.

I am enacting.

I mean, they wouldn't use this language, but you know, I'm essentially enacting my male privilege and.

They wouldn't say those things about it.

I'm essentially being a douchebag man or something what.

They would say.

And I now know that that is wrong and unfair to other people.

And the way I saw it in the past was was very distorted and strange, and I don't know, maybe my dad taught me that.

I don't know, like why I was thinking that stuff, and I still have urges to do that, but I I you know, really I use all my skills to like to try another way.

I talk about things more.

My wife likes me a lot more now.

I'm learning to tolerate it when she has criticisms of me.

And I'm not drinking as much anymore, you know, just like total different stories as they went.

Uh So, so that's my experience of did you ever treat perpetrators.

Not in a group format?

I've either done like individual therapy.

Was it similar to that or yeah, it could be Yeah in a way.

I mean they didn't have kind of that that Peter accountability, you know what I mean that you're talking about.

But yeah, and I'm guessing the ones that I'm working with didn't weren't the most pathological, like they really fit more of that.

I just don't have the skills and the and the tools, you know, and and to some degree that many of them did have that that that when when working with a male perpetrator, that male privilege piece that, but it wasn't as entrenched or to the extent that those more severe patterns, you know.

So they were Yeah, it sounds like you had success with them because they were not as pathological.

Right, Yeah, I do think that when yeah, when you're able to when there's some some level of motivation like okay, things, I do want things to be better with my partner.

But even if they're still also like I don't know about this, I don't know if it's going to work, or you know, like maybe not having a lot of confidence that it could change.

But I think if there's some little window of hope that they want it differently, that to me, I think can get that right.

There can be a good assessment tool to make that differentiation in terms of their viability for making this kind of changes.

So right, And and did you find, similar to my experience that a main focus was changing their attitude and their.

Perception of the whole thing.

Yeah, that they basically had to admit that they were wrong and that they should not have done X, Y, and Z.

Right, the responsibility taking is huge.

And that they didn't do that in the beginning.

Absolutely, Oh, totally yeah.

But it's interesting that you say that with their experience because there's a whole like meta analysis looking at like batter intervention programs and they're overall not effective really, but it's but they what they said was that they thought it would be more effective or some seem to be better, like more hopeful, more promising, but on the whole they weren't.

But they suggested that they could be better if they did a better job of really teasing out the types of people that were in the group.

You know, so maybe if there are more guys like the ones that it sounds like you worked with they could be more successful, But it sounds like they were just kind of throwing in the more pathological perpetrators with those guys who, yeah, just just struggling.

That's surprising to me that they're finding.

So what are you saying?

The meta analysis showed that the typical treatment programs.

Don't work for batter's intervention.

The court ordered batterer intervention programs.

What does work?

That's a good question.

You know, I'm still not certain if I know the best practice for perpetrators, but I am, But I do know that a lot of the the general model of trauma therapy is appropriate for survivors of intimate partner violence, the more severe types of forms of intimate partner violence.

And then this versioning work with groups of couples and situational couple of violence is showing promise.

And it's interesting because they're in those in those samples, these are couples who will meet either individually with with a co therapy team, or they'll have a co therapy team with a larger group of couples coming together.

And when they work through you know, safety planning, they work through you know, lots of psycho education on what is intimate partner violence and all the manifestations, like it's not just physical violence, you know, and really educating them on that, how to control their anger, how to manage conflict better.

They do all the stuff, you know, and then they kind of go into more of a traditional couple's therapy phase, you know, working with emotions and satisfaction in the relationship, and they're really showing positive outcomes indirectly lowering violence because they're improving those those skills in the relationship, which is really pretty cool.

Yeah, as a couple in family therapists like you and me, we see the power that having everyone in the room can have.

Yeah.

Of course, as you're saying earlier, it's not indicated and not helpful when someone's being currently terrorized because they're not able to talk about, you know, the truth, right, But we see this all the time.

If you're a therapist and you primarily see individuals, you know that a lot of people come into you talking about their partners or their children or their parents, and you're there listening and just thinking, man, that that husband or that wife is a jerk.

Why are you dealing with that?

Imagine actually having that person in the room and then that person says, well, actually I said that because blah blah blah, and you're like, oh, okay, now there's two sides of the story.

I'm getting.

Not only that, but now you can actually facilitate something right then and there.

Right So with with violence between people, if both people feel safe enough to talk in therapy, it's not just so I got angry.

And I you know, did this and that, and you know, let's problem solve.

It's okay, what happened, and both people tell their story and then they support each other.

It's another thing, and they hear each other struggling, and they can bond in in session together and you can facilitate things right then and there.

Okay, when this happens, what can you say?

Okay, say that to her, Okay, say that to him.

What can you know?

It's all right there in front of you.

And it terrifies many therapists because they are afraid of the chaos and what could happen.

And I can say that it is scarier.

And in the situation if there is situational violence, it's not just the chaos of dealing with lots of high conflict and volatility potentially in the room, but it's also not wanting to be responsible in any way for potentially things maybe escalating or becoming violent, having a violent recurrence.

And I will say with the promising treatment, these conjoint promising treatments, there's there's a fair amount of separation of partners and doing that separate time work and then bringing them to other and key strategic way.

So it's not just okay, we're just gonna all be in the same room, and it's and that's the other thing.

It's even more important maybe arguably to have a co therapist who's who's helping to facilitate that.

How come well, I think.

In terms of being you know, being better able to maybe assess potential risk or increase in risk, it is just better when there's another person, another another head is involved.

Two are better than one exactly.

And I also think just logistically and practically to be able to do what kind of where we're going, where they're going as far as what seems to be appropriate conjoint treatment is so you can do that separate time, you can one therapist can work individually with this per part of the couple, and the other therapists can work with the other.

So right, so when you have two therapists in the room, the counter transference becomes more diffuse and less less likely to totally cloud one therapist.

Yeah, that's a good you.

Know, you're particularly if both people and I think you're saying this.

So wife goes with one therapist, husband goes with a different therapist, and then a couple's therapy all four people get together.

Right, So if you're the wife's therapist and the husband starts acting a little squirrely, the husband's therapists might be biased to accommodate that and to give that the benefit of the doubt, whereas the wife's therapist might be a little bit more skeptical about what the husband's saying.

And so when the therapists get together outside of therapy or even inside therapy and uh confer and consult, then there's going to be more likelihood of catching those blind spots when when we're.

Just by ourselves.

Yeah.

Absolutely, co therapy is way expensive compared its twice as expensive and difficult to do.

Whenever I'm in grad school teaching my students and we start doing these co therapy situations or even groups of therapists working with families, we're always like, oh my god, we should be doing this all the time.

It's so much better, it feels so much better, it's so much more effective.

And actually research has shown that particular models of groups of therapists working with a family, like say three, four or five therapists working with a family in one session, can be so effective that the family only needs like a fifth the amount of therapy time, and so it actually works out to not be any more expensive in the Yeah, yeah, but our culture is such that there's so many different barriers to doing that and so many different incentives to see only one person and to have one therapist and to work for a very long long time.

The insurance company will pay for that without any questions.

You start doing all these other things and there's all sorts of questions and probably they won't even pay for it, even though research shows science shows that actually is more effective in the end.

And it is hard because like in my class on this issue, we're learning about going back to Sandra Sith at k State and she has a program it's called Domestic Violence Focused Couple Therapy, and we're learning that we're reading that treatment manual and we're going to speak with her in a couple of weeks and it's really exciting.

But then there's this part of me that's like, Okay, well, if my students, if any of us in this room are really serious about this, especially the situational couple violence, and they want to do that relational work, how can they go about doing that?

You know?

Do they have to move to Kansas and join their institute?

You know what I'm saying, Like, what given, given just how involved it is in terms of multiple excuse me, practitioners involved.

And the reaction from the community.

I mean, our industry and the people that watch us are so stupid when it comes to what marriage and family therapists do.

That when they even learn that you're seeing two people, two clients in the same room at the same time, there are some people that say that's an ethical I have a friend of mine who was treating a family and met individually with the parents and the kids and then saw them all together and did all the things and was successfully sued for doing that.

And yeah, and.

Primarily because she saw the I think it was primarily because she saw the couple and saw them separately and saw them together.

It was something like that.

And I just remember thinking, my god, like the amount of stupidity going on out there, I mean, and so it's so much easier just to fall into that easy groove of one therapist, one client and you never talk to anyone else when we know, as family therapists that so much more can be done when everyone's in the room.

No, totally.

And that's the other thing I get a little concerned about.

And I'd be curious when we when we interview her basically to ask her opinion about this is you know, what can folk can folks who want more training on this but are not necessarily in a position where they can be a part of the institute or team to do this work.

What are the what is the scope of their work with this population where they can be more directly systemic and their work when appropriate, like what we were talking about with situational couple violence, you know, and not get in over their head or do something that we to be unethical or just yeah, not appropriate.

Well, the short answer is you would be that consultant and supervisor.

Yeah, and in this region, which is a viable solution, you might be, you know, one of the only people in the area and definitely qualified to provide that supervision for people and to guide them ethically and to help them and support them in that area.

And sometimes that's all it is.

I myself, as a supervisor for postgrad people, am frequently pushing people to involve more families and to not fall into that routine.

Divide and conquer.

As my one supervisor, I had used to say, yeah about family therapy, Yeah, you know, but I totally know what you mean, Like it's still it does take I think more work to kind of make it that, to make it actual a family therapy session or a couple therapy, you know what I mean.

Then, Yeah, a fellow professor at the university who is a postcrid from Antioch, from the CFT program.

She was in my classes and then she graduated, went into private practice and worked in an agency No DA DA and then she came back she's like, I want to work talk about her career, and we talked about maybe her teaching, and then she assistant taught some of my classes and then now she's teaching and Laura Matthews, she's an adjunct instructor and she wants to create an institute that focuses on family therapy cool and which is funny to think about, because think about all the family therapists who you know, who call themselves licensed marriage of Family Therapists in Seattle, and how many of them actually do family therapy?

I mean so much of many of us do couples therapy because that's pretty common, and many of us will see kids and teenagers and then drag the parents.

In every now and then.

Yeah, but how many of us do pure fight.

Yeah.

Where we advertise ourselves is I am a family therapist and I always see the family and I might break off occasionally into one on ones with you, but what I do is family therapy and I'm going to see families.

It's just strange in our world today that that is that that she could say, I'm going to start an institute that's going to do something new and it's called family therapy.

Well yeah, well, but it also kind of harkens back to the people and our who developed who were the pioneers and family therapy, Like they had institutes MRI, you know, the acrobat, you know what I mean, Like there was that and maybe I don't know how conscious they were of this, but maybe that is like to Laura's point, kind of what you have to do to more consistently do family therapy in the in the purest sense of that phrase.

I don't know, because most people aren't seeking family therapy, they're seeking individual therapy.

And then you have to convince them, right.

And so yeah, now, having said all that, if you're interested in a couple of family therapy, or you're a student yourself, you know, there's a wide variety of things that you might be interested in, and family therapy might be one of them.

You don't have to be interested in that.

You can do individual couple children, you know, one or two people, but there's a lot that can happen when you bring everyone in and between you and me people, it is it is.

It's exciting work, it's chaotic.

You have to be confident, you know, but not too comment.

There's things you can.

Get away with to to not have things go badly for you, like just facilitating conversations.

That's why I tell you, is like what do I do when five people come in the office.

I'm saying, you know, you're not dealing with five people, You're dealing with a family.

And so when someone says something you can all you got to do if you don't know what else to do?

Just say, just turn to someone else and go what do you think about that?

And then if you don't know what else to say, then just turn to someone else to say, what do you think about that?

And if that's all you need to do the entire session, and you can be an excellent family therapist by doing that, and you release yourself as a family therapist if even having to interact, because sometimes for half an hour, they'll just be interacted and you're just there containing the situation.

And so and also between you and me therapists out there, family therapy goes by way faster.

I mean, you know, it's a job, it's a it's a job, and there are times with couples and families where the hour just races by and I'm like, my god, we just kind of That's why for some people, couples and families are seen for more than an hour for that reason, because it's exciting, it's moving, it's dynamic, it's there's things happening between them, and there's all these different people trigger each other and and it's it's very dynamic in that way and can be quite exciting.

So if you're if you're thinking about it, I encourage you to do it because I think it's fun, and I'm sure you'll think it's fun too.

You should try it sometimes.

All right.

Well, that does it for another episode.

Thanks for joining us out there.

Please take care of yourself because you deserve it.

You truly do.