Nicole Berg concludes this column on gender with a two-part exploration of domestic abuse, a pervasive issue, yet still very much unreported.
Part 1: setting the scene
This column began one year ago as part of Coaching at Work’s Campaign for Gender Equality. Over the year, we’ve examined gendered personality traits, gender conditioning, expansion into our respective ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ ranges, life balance, emotion and social group dominance.
Together, these have shaped our thoughts on culturally ubiquitous beliefs – and actions that stem from these – and how we may begin to address these in our lives, the lives of our clients and in our respective spheres of influence.
Our examination of gender balance would be incomplete if we didn’t visit a pervasive and yet often taboo issue – gender-based violence and, in particular, domestic abuse.
This issue hits home for me for a number of reasons. It’s affected dear friends. It’s affected family. It’s affected others who have disclosed abuse or described it in different terms – including coaching clients. It’s affected me.
In this two-part article, I aim to unpack these complexities so that we as coaches and mentors can all be best equipped to address abuse when we spot it.
The basics
If you’re like me, it’s still a shock to the system every time news of a celebrity, professional athlete, or ‘everyday’ person accused of domestic abuse hits the media. Yet statistics show the prevalence of abuse: 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are affected by domestic abuse in their respective lifetimes. This includes an estimated 1.3 million women and 600,000 men in the UK last year alone.1
Despite the fact that most incidents go unreported, there is an average of one domestic abuse call to police per minute.2
Given its prevalence, hearing of domestic abuse should (sadly) not come as much of a shock. The reason it does is due largely to its taboo nature, and the stigma that can be attached to individuals who experience it and who perpetrate it. I have fallen into both of these areas.
To do my part in ending stigma and breaking the silence, enabling abuse to be tackled openly and completely, I share with you my own experience.
Prior to this, it’s best to make clear the definition of domestic abuse, which is “any incident of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, and emotional [elements]”.3
What does this look like?
Before coming to the UK in 2012, I managed a Canadian city’s emergency shelter and crisis line for women experiencing abuse. Many women at the shelter shared their stories, which differed sometimes beyond imagination, but what they all had in common was the cyclical nature of the abuse, which I illustrate for you now.
My story: A snapshot
For legal and moral reasons, I keep my context quite vague, but I want to share with you the specifics of what abuse can look like – particularly psychological and emotional abuse, which tends to feel trickier to define as opposed to physical abuse.
I recall watching one scene unfold as a teenager – I was a bystander, and a man was screaming at a woman inches from her face. I was almost willing him to hit her, just once and hopefully not very hard, so that I would know that a line had been crossed and I could get help; what was going on just wasn’t right, but this was my view rather than the law.
Thankfully, one year ago, psychological and emotional abuse among intimate partners or family members, including ongoing coercive or controlling behaviour, became illegal in the UK (it now carries a maximum five-year prison sentence).4
My own experience of abuse is that the person in question could and would always find something to be angry about. Stirring my tea too loudly. A room not being big enough (when I didn’t stop what I was doing and exit to clear space). Looking at them, which elicited accusations of smirking at them. Co-existing in the same space in silence, speaking to others in murmurs when they were around – and yes, stirring carefully.
We learned to do everything carefully; if not, I provoked a ‘tsk’, a sigh, a muttering, a telling off, or an out-and-out tirade. Despite best efforts, tirades came regularly.
Codependency and the episodic cycle of abuse
This describes the behaviour of individuals experiencing abuse: they adapt their actions in an attempt to manage or control the behaviour of someone acting abusively.
This is codependency: a person experiencing abuse takes on responsibility that isn’t theirs, and whose happiness depends on the happiness of someone else. This is in contrast with a person perpetrating abuse, who reframes problems so there is someone to blame – their ‘victim’.
By controlling their ‘victim’, they exercise control over their problems. In short, domestic abuse is a dynamic in which one person takes on too much responsibility and one person takes on too little.
This also aptly illustrates the first and second stages of the cycle of abuse from the perspective of those experiencing it.
The first stage is ‘tension-building’, which is often described as walking on eggshells – doing everything carefully.
It’s a deeply unsettling stage, in particular because it inevitably leads to the second stage, the ‘explosion’. This is an incident which is significant enough to release the tension that has built up – a physical, sexual or verbal attack.
The third and final stage in the cycle of abuse is the ‘honeymoon’, where the person carrying out abuse is apologetic and remorseful. In my experience, this was comfortable, rather than tension-filled, silence. A reprieve, before the cycle began again.
The self-perpetuating nature of abuse
I’ve also acted abusively myself. After some time experiencing abuse, I began to fight fire with fire, so to speak. I adopted many of the person’s strategies in my interactions with them – yelling, tirades, twisting their words, name-calling, aggressive posturing. Conflict was always win/ lose, and from this time, I found myself ‘winning’ – but it came at a cost.
These behaviours became habits: strategies not for dealing with the person, but for dealing with conflict in general.
It took me years to address the short temper I’d developed, and even longer for emotion – which, having alternated been viewed as weakness or used as a weapon, I’d all but disowned – to be present in my conflict resolution and my life in general.
And I still to this day catch myself with controlling thoughts about my husband of seven years: Why didn’t he say this in the email to our friends? Why didn’t he take his dirty dishes to the kitchen when he went to grab a drink? – which of course can come out as controlling words.
Unlearning is a process that takes dedicated time and attention.
References
1 Office for National Statistics (2016). Crime Survey for England and Wales. Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences: Year ending March 2015
2 E Stanko, ‘The day to count: A snapshot of the impact of domestic violence in the UK’, in Criminal Justice, 1(2), 2000
3 NHS Barking and Dagenham (nd), What is Domestic Violence/Definition Accessed 4 November 2016 from: http://bit.ly/2gBCSIC
4 Home Office (nd), Guidance: Domestic Violence and Abuse. Accessed 4 Nov 2016 from: http://bit.ly/1Y3a7AA
Join the conversation
Domestic violence: have you worked in your coaching on this issue? If so how? Have your say. Go to: http://bit.ly/2h97kGE
Next issue: How can domestic abuse be dealt with by an employer? A comparison between workplace bullying and domestic abuse; an evaluation of coaching and domestic abuse and actions we can take as coaches and mentors (and family members and friends) to support those affected by abuse.
- Nicole Berg is CEO and founder of leadership and development consultancy, Charis Coaching. Coaching at Work has partnered with Charis Coaching as part of its Campaign for Gender Equality.
www.chariscoaching.co.uk