Week 9-12: Getting a relationship history
Purpose of the exercise
- To get more information about past relationships, to look for patterns of abuse and controlling behaviour in different relationships and to involve group members who otherwise might not initiate contributions. The patterns of abuse uncovered in this exercise lay the ground work for developing a participant’s goals.
Week 13: Focusing on positive attributes of partner and/or ex partner
Purpose of the exercise
- To help abusers remember the positive aspects of their current or past relationships. It can also serve to “re-balance” what is often a skewed picture of a current or past relationship
Week 14: the benefits of stopping abuse
Purpose of the exercise
- To encourage abusers to identify how they are bargaining with their partners about giving up abusive behaviours and to recognize that ending their abusive behaviour is their sole responsibility and should not be conditional.
Week 15: Ending relationships respectfully
Purpose of the exercise
- To show abusers that there is both possible and desirable to end relationships in a non-abusive manner.
Week 16: Jealousy
Purpose of the exercise
- To show members the effects of jealousy on their partners, and to encourage them to stop using jealousy to abuse or control their partners
Week 17,19,21,23: Goal setting
Purpose of the exercise
- To focus group members on their patterns of abuse.
- To set priorities in terms of personal change.
- To advocate for the wishes of the partner as expressed to program staff through collateral contacts.
- Goal setting should focus the group member so that he can make the most use of the limited time and also provide him with a map for future behaviour after he leaves the program
Week 18: Roadblocks to communication
Purpose of the exercise
- To improve the communication skills of group members, which will then improve their ability to replace the negative responses that limit their relationships.
Week 20: Mid-point evaluation
Purpose of the exercise
- Evaluate progress so far
- Self retrospection of the group members individually
Week 22: Dishonesty
Purpose of the exercise
- To let abusers reconsider the effects of lying on others, to inventory the various ways in which they lie and to discuss the alternatives to lying.