February and March 2010 Shows

BEYOND WORD LIVE SHOWS (thus far)

FEB 20 - Male Victim of Domestic Violence (very first show on BTR/RLRN)
FEB 27 - Vietamese Victim of Domestic Violence

MAR 6 - National Lymphedema Awareness Day
MAR 13 - no show
MAR 20 - Rural America, part 1
MAR 27 - Meet Debby Tucker



MAR 28 -- BEYOND WORDS EXPOSE show

This show will be designed to wrap up the shows that we have had so far and some resources that will be useful to the person looking for some additonal information on these issues.

National Domestic Violence Hotline
http://ndvh.org
1-800-799-7233

National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline
http://loveisrespect.org
1-866-331-9474

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
http://ncadv.org
(303) 839-1852





SOME BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:


WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER: TURNING BAD BREAKS INTO BLESSINGS
by Maxine Schnall


NOT TO PEOPLE LIEK US: HIDDEN ABUSE TO UPSCALE MARRIAGES
by Susan Weitzman, PhD


THE DANCE OF CONNECTION
by Harriet Lerner, PhD



A WOMAN LIKE YOU: THE FACE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
by Vera Anderson (1997)
This is just a great book to read a sampling of other survivors' stories.



TRAUMA AND RECOVERY: THE AFTERMATH OF VIOLENCE FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO POLITICAL TERROR
BY Judith Lewis Herman, MD (1992)

Of particular interest in this book is the section entitled, "Diagnostic Mislabeling" (pages 116-117) and goes on to say:

This tendency to blame the victim has strongly influenced the direction of psychological inquiry. It has led researchers and clinicians to seek an explanation for the perpetrator's crimes in the character of the victim. In the case of hostages and prisoners of war, numerous attempts to find supposed personality defects that predisposed captives to "brainwashing" have yielded few consistent results. The conclusion is inescapable that ordinary, psychologically healthy men can indeed be coerced in unmanly ways. In domestic battering situations, where victims are entrapped by persuasion rather than by capture, research has also focused on the personality traits that might predispose a woman to get involved in an abusive relationship. Here again, no consistent profile of the susceptible woman has emerged. While some battered women clearly have major psychological difficulties that render them vulnerable, the majority show no evidence of serious psychopathology before entering into the exploitative relationship. Most become involved with their abusers at a time of temporary life crisis or recent loss, when they are feeling unhappy, alienated, or lonely. A survey of the studies on wife-beating concludes: "The search for characteristics of women that contribute to their own victimization is futile. ... It is sometimes forgotten that men's violence is men's behavior. As such, it is not surprising that the more fruitful efforts to explain this behavior have focused no male characteristics. What is surprising is the enormous effort to explain male behavior by examining characteristics of women."

While it is clear that ordinary, healthy people may become entrapped in prolonged abusive situations, it is equally clear that after their escape they are no longer ordinary or healthy. Chronic abuse causes serious psychological harm. The tendency to blame the victim, however, has interfered with the psychological understanding and diagnosis of a post-traumatic syndrome. Instead of conceptualizing the psychopathology of the victim as a response to an abusive situation, mental health professionals have frequently attributed the abusive situation to the victim's presumed underlying psychopathology.

An egregious example of this sort of thinking is the 1964 study of battered women entitled "The Wife-Beater's Wife." The researchers, who had originally sought to study batterers, found that the men would not talk to them. They thereupon redirected their attention to the more cooperative battered women, whom they found to be "castrating," "frigid," "aggressive," "indecisive," and "passive." They concluded that marital violence fulfilled these women's "masochistic needs." Having identified the women's personality disorders as the source of the problem, these clinicians set out to "treat" them. In one case, they managed to persuade the wife that she was provoking the violence, and they showed her how to mend her ways. When she no longer sought help from her teenage son to protect herself from the beatings and no long er refused to submit to sex on demand, even when her husband was drunk and aggressive, her treatment was judged a success.

While this unabashed, open sexism is rarely found in psychiatric literature today, the same conceptual errors, with the implicit bias and contempt, still predominate. The clinical picture of a person who has been reduced to elemental concerns of survival is still frequently mistaken for a portrait of the victim's underlying character. Concepts of personality organization developed under ordinary circumstances are applied to victims, without any understanding of the corrosion of personality that occurs under conditions of prolonged terror. Thus, patients who suffer from the complex aftereffects of chronic trauma still commonly risk being misdiagnosed as having personality disorders. They may be described as inherently "dependent," "masochistic," or "self-defeating." In a recent study of emergency room practice in a large urban hospital, clinicians routinely described battered women as "hysterics," "masochistic females," "hypochondriacs," or, more simply, "crocks."

See another related article, "Blaming the Victim: Domestic Violence and the Codependency Model", by Greg Dear, http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/narcissism/Codependent.html

and, yet another related article, "Are women who live with abusive partners codependent?", by Clare Murphy (July 8 2009) http://www.speakoutloud.net/tag/codependency/


FAMILY AND FRIENDS' GUIDE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: HOW TO LISTEN, TALK AND TAKE ACTION WHEN SOMEONE YOU CARE ABOUT IS BEING ABUSED
By Elaine Weiss, MD (2003)

This is an excellent resource for someone who may know of someone that is going through a domestic violence relationship.


MEN'S NON-VIOLENCE PROJECT
http://mensnonviolence.org/about/

THE PIXEL PROJECT
http://www.thepixelproject.net/vaw-facts/about-violence-against-women/


*************************************************************************************
(in regards to the Lymphedema issues discussed on March 6th)

The National Lymphedema Network (NLN)
http://lymphnet.org
http://www.lymphnet.org/lymphedemaFAQs/legislation/actionAlert/LE_Act2010.htm << (specifically with information on HR4662)

Lymphedema Community
http://lymphedemacommunity.com















If you, or someone you know is being abused by his/her intimate partner, please call (or have them call) 1-800-799-SAFE.