Family Issues

Family Issues

Family and Abuse

What is a family? A family is any group of individuals who are banded together through marriage, kinship, adoption or mutual agreement whether hetero/homosexual. Kinship means related to grandparents, aunts and uncles. There are six goals of the family and they are an opportunity to express ideas and feelings, to have no family secrets, to having a valuing of everyone's values, opinions and feelings, must have rules and have flexibility and yet enforced with consistency, have positive energy shown in a systems theory support system that allow for opportunities for growth and change.

Factors related to Spousal Abuse

There are myths that anyone can be abused in relationships involving various situations only in a small percentage of the population, the person as justification that they were abused, and if alcohol or drugs were the cause of the abuse and if it was predictive. For the victim focus on the behavior of victim(s) not between the abuser. Wants the violence to end and the relationship to continue victims learning to be judged, critized, and blamed by someone that they trust(ed) and love(d). They learn to distrust people and the environments and they learn to feel unlovable and worthless. They learn to take too much responsibility for the other. They feel as incompetent helpers and develop belief they deserve abuse. They learn to live with the terror along with the tension and the emotional and physical pain, as well as learn to fear to act immobilized and believe that love is pain, abuse and betrayal.

There is no Thinking, Feeling or Trusting in living with abusive living, such as (BATTERING). In battering issues there is low self-esteem controlling how to handle or manage feelings or modeled by parents. In this type of issue it tends to be controlling in every aspect of living, as in money, working, checkbook issues, personal actions, and the victim's relationship begins to isolate from others and family and threats are made.

Why do victims deny abuse?

The reasons why the victims deny abuse are they tend to minimize the effects of abuse and hope things will get better. They tend to feel ashamed and do not want people and others to know. They may also not have means for self or family to survive and help them make more informal choices in regarding how to survive and tired of the cycle of violence. Batterers will begin to beg the victim not to leave. There will be escalations of batterers feelings. Victims become co-dependent and recognizes the patterns of abuse. The human service worker helps to build a safety (action plan) to beat the cycle of abuse and understand what the victim will lose and acknowledge the losses and have to tell victim to keep spare keys in a spare case hidden and then get a (PFA- Protection from Abuse) form and alert neighbors to the signals that there is a problem and have any important papers that may be needed.

The victim experiences loss of dreams held by him or her, the loss of belongings, losing the loss of approval from family and even religious areas along with the loss of children and friends. The victim could maybe have a suitcase hidden at a friends house and have neighborhood telephone or cell phone numbers for help, and make sure how to get legal help. Protection from Abuse orders or PFA's in emergency cases can be gotten as well as teaching them survival skills or how things were done in the past and help them identify the triggers and get out.

Ways to help the batterer

There are anger management and assertivness training classes that teach how to get better interests and try to understand why maybe they are batterers, and how to give themselves a more healthy way to look at themselves. You can share with the batterer to give them a 'TIME-OUT' when becoming irritated with whatever at the time and call a friend if possible or take a walk or even make a behavioral contract (this may help, but the human service worker will need to see if this is still done in various situations). Mantipulation + Control = financial ideas that at times clarifies the cycle of violence and the worker will need to find the myths.

Next article in Family Issues will deal with Child and Elder Abuse