Why Does He Do That? With Lundy Bancroft and Sarah K Ramsey
Will he change? How will you know if the change is real? How do you protect your kids? And why the legal system is backtracking in this area.
Will he change? How will you know if the change is real? How do you protect your kids? And why the legal system is backtracking in this area.
I promised that in the next installment in this series I would address what groups can do, including established domestic violence programs. What I’m writing about in this post is groups that work to provide services for survivors of abuse. (I wrote in the last post about the need for groups that are focused…
(This tirade is a little different from the more measured writing you may be accustomed to from me, so take a deep breath. The piece is in two parts, both of which are below.) Part 1 The abusive man learns early in life, from his surrounding society and beyond, that when he becomes an…
In the first three posts of this series, I laid out a collection of concerns regarding the direction that domestic violence work has taken over roughly the past two decades. The issues I’m raising are ones that have been brought to me by abused women themselves and by program staff, many of whom are also…
The Current State of Domestic Violence Services, Part 3 In the first two parts of this post, I wrote about trends that I’ve observed in domestic violence services that concern me a great deal. The movement has been derailed into seeing abused women as victims of individual misfortune, rather than recognizing that they are…
The Current State of Domestic Violence Services, Part 2 A few months ago, I wrote a blog post laying out a substantial set of concerns I have regarding the direction that domestic violence work has been heading in across the U.S. and Canada. I promised in that post that I would write a second post…
The Current State of Domestic Violence Services I am deeply concerned about what is happening with domestic violence services in the United States. There’s been an alarming increase over the past ten or so years in the number of women who are reporting bad experiences with programs to me and to people I work with.…
A terrific podcast has recently gone up where an adult brother and sister discuss their experience growing up with a father who abused their mother. They open up about how the experience has affected their lives, and discuss the kinds of healing they have done to overcome the emotional wounds they experienced. I…
[This post is excerpted from Lundy’s new book The Joyous Recovery: A New Path to Emotional Healing and Freedom forthcoming in January 2019.] KEY CONCEPT #1: ENTRAPMENT One of the defining characteristics of abuse is that you can’t easily get away from it. If you could, you would. The entrapment element is always present.…
I’m known for gathering abusive men’s secrets and turning them over to the other side. A couple of people have said to me, for example, that having a copy of Why Does He Do That? is like getting your hands on the other team’s playbook. So now I’m going to do it again. And this…