Week 1: What counts as violence?
Purpose of the exercise
- Broaden abusers’ understanding of violent behaviour. Provide a consistent way of defining violence.
- Educate men about the different forms of physical abuse, physical intimidation, and sexual abuse.
- Increase men’s recognition of and taking responsibility for their own violence.
- Motivate men to think critically about how they minimize, rationalize, and justify their own violence.
Week 2: Negative versus positive self-talk
Purpose of the exercise
- Help men recognize thoughts which lead to abusive behaviour.
- Help men recognize that violence isn’t a spontaneous act; it is preceded by negative self-talk which paves the way for their violence.
- Demonstrate that abusers have control over how they think and act.
- Build awareness of positive self-talk and each person’s responsibility to use it to avoid violence
Week 3: Effects of violence on women
Purpose of the exercise
- To acquaint men with the short and long-term effects of their violence on their partners.
- To dispel myths about women which lead to victim-blaming. For instance, a man may say that his partner changes her mind about the relationship “just to jerk me around” or to “play games with me”, rather than recognize that she is ambivalent about the relationship because of his pattern of being nice sometimes and abusive other times.
- To help abusers develop understanding and empathy for their partners feelings.
Week 4: Quick fixes versus long term solutions
Purpose of the exercise
- To help men who batter to recognize the difference between “quick fix” and “slow fix” ways of addressing the effects of their violence and rebuilding trust with their partners.
Week 5: Psychological, economic and sexual abuse
Purpose of the exercise
- Broaden men’s understanding of the various forms of abusive behaviour.
- Recognize the connection between physical abuse and other forms of abuse.
Week 6-7: abusive versus respectful communication
Purpose of the exercise
- Assist abusers to identify and take responsibility for each type of verbal abuse in which they engage.
- Sensitize abusers to more subtle forms of controlling behaviour and the effects of these behaviours on their partners
- Educate men about cooperative, supportive, and respectful ways of communicating with their partners.
Week 8: the effects of domestic violence on children
Purpose of the exercise
- To make the abuser more aware of the damaging effects of exposure to violence.
- To help abusers overcome their denial and rationalizations about these effects, e.g., “children haven’t really been exposed to abuse.”