As a child, I experienced child abuse and neglect, and as a result, I spent most of my life in treatment centers, counseling, and incarcerated. During those dark times, I learned to identify, process, heal and make the personal changes needed to live a complete and successful life. My past, life experiences, and suffering have instilled a passion and purpose for working with troubled teens, men, women, and families experiencing the same things (anger, rage, and resentments) that I experienced as a young man. I have always had a passion for counseling troubled and misguided individuals who lack proper role models and direction in their lives. I believe having someone to talk to (a friend or mentor) would have made a tremendous difference in my life. Last year, I developed a youtube channel advocating and addressing issues regarding domestic violence and anger management issues. I earned my certification as an Anger Management Instructor through the National Anger management Association and moved forward with my business plan. I recently earned a BA in Family Life Education at Spring Arbor University, and now I attend the University of Michigan, pursuing a Masters’s Degree in Social Work. I am currently employed as an intake specialist for a local homeless shelter, where I can provide a safe and secure environment and services to the homeless community. I’m committed to helping others live a successful, fulfilling life through honesty and transparency.

David S. Abernathy Sr.

Dave’s Story YouTube

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Anger Management

Anger can be a helpful emotion for taking action if something in your life is not correct. However, managing your reactions and behaviors that stem from anger can differ between making positive changes or constantly dealing with the negative consequences. CBT is one of the best methods for the treatment of anger. Still, it is also an empirically supported form of therapy that emphasizes the identification of triggers and replacing them with more adaptive responses (Murphy & Eckhardt, 2005). CBT for anger management also improves your physical health, career, and relationships.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Domestic Violence

Fortunately, most victims of domestic violence today do have one or more ways out if they know that options exist and can use them. The growing awareness of how pervasive and destructive domestic violence is in American society is an outrage. It has spawned a wide variety of programs, shelters, educational endeavors, legal changes, law enforcement initiatives, and other efforts to prevent and halt the growth of this tragic epidemic for victims and perpetrators. The specified course of treatment for perpetrators of domestic violence typically consists of between 16 and 52 weeks of participation in a psychoeducational group, also known as batter intervention programs (Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009). Most batterer intervention programs (BIP) are of the educational variety, based on the Duluth Model of Power and Control or Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) models. The rest are on various process/psychotherapeutic approaches (Price & Rosenbaum, 2009). A rigorous meta-analysis found that CBT and couples therapy was superior to the Duluth Model in reducing recidivism rates and domestic assaults (Miller et al., 2013).

References>

 

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander, along with every form of malice. Ephesians 4:31

Batterer Intervention Programs

The primary goal of offender programs is to end the violence and keep victims safe by encouraging batters to accept responsibility for their behaviors and change their underlying entitlement beliefs. While counseling and CBT approaches can provide essential services, they do not hold batterers accountable or challenge their underlying assumptions that validate the use of violence and power and control over their victims. Counseling services should not be a substitute for batterer intervention programs based on gender understanding and power and control relationships between partners.

Furthermore, the anger management model fails to explain or confront the batter’s selective targeting of abuse and may serve to increase the batter’s skill in nonphysical control over others (Murphy & Eckhardt, 2005). Therefore, some stress or anger management techniques may be used as long as it is emphasized that anger or other emotions are not at the root of battering. In addition, couples counseling has proven ineffective in most domestic violence cases. Batterers may retaliate with violence in response to counseling if the victim speaks up about what’s going on in the relationship and reports the violence. It can be extremely harmful if power cannot be redistributed in a relationship because the batter is unwilling to give up their power and control over the victim (Paymar, 2015). In cases where batterers need mental health services or substance abuse treatment, they should be referred to these services, and these services should never be considered a supplement for batterer intervention programs. Furthermore, care should be taken to ensure that intervention programs and counseling do not undermine each other. Finally, practical risk assessment and management are essential components of an effective batterer program, requiring well-trained practitioners. Accurate risk assessment can protect victims by identifying which batterers are most likely to re-offend. In addition, risk management techniques can increase accountability and supervision of the most dangerous offenders. However, accurate risk assessment or categorizing types of domestic violence can be challenging, and incorrectly assessing risk can prove fatal for victims. Moreover, if risk management is not reliable and effective, victims may be lulled into a false sense of security, exposing them to greater risk (Paymar, 2015).

References>

We use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions as well as the Duluth Model in our programs for anger management and domestic violence prevention.

What is The Duluth Model?

Since the early 1980s, Duluth—a small community in northern Minnesota—has been an innovator of ways to hold batterers accountable and keep victims safe. The “Duluth Model” is an ever evolving way of thinking about how a community works together to end domestic violence.

A community using the Duluth Model approach:

  • Has taken the blame off the victim and placed the accountability for abuse on the offender.
  • Has shared policies and procedures for holding offenders accountable and keeping victims safe across all agencies in the criminal and civil justice systems from 911 to the courts.
  • Prioritizes the voices and experiences of women who experience battering in the creation of those policies and procedures.
  • Believes that battering is a pattern of actions used to intentionally control or dominate an intimate partner and actively works to change societal conditions that support men’s use of tactics of power and control over women.
  • Offers change opportunities for offenders through court-ordered educational groups for batterers.
  • Has ongoing discussions between criminal and civil justice agencies, community members and victims to close gaps and improve the community’s response to battering.