AIBU to feel uncomfortable with the Freedom Programme approach to DV?

[FeelingBewildered]

NC for this. I have an extremely complex DV background, spanning 11 years with an ex, still ongoing with coercive control, now only able to be done through courts and agencies etc- legal but obviously an abuse of the processes to CC. Ex is mentally unstable as recognised by courts and now at the point where it’s piqued the interest of the police who believe I may have enough to put together a file for the CPS.

I was referred to the Freedom Programme and was sold it as an experience that would open my eyes and help me understand more, as whilst I am under no illusions that what I’ve been through is wrong, due to growing up in a DV household and having had my own go on so long, I am aware that there are things that I have internalised and consider normal when they are not.

I watched the first video in the group yesterday and was disgusted for lack of a better word. I came out feeling like I’d just watched a propaganda video. I watched a few more and I feel that even more so.

It just sits wrong with me. It reduces DV to this black and white issue, the simplicity of which is akin to a Spot the Dog book. There is zero nuance or nod to anything other than Man Bad, Woman Good. The ‘facts’ given in support (Aristotle’s women are deformed not put in context and extrapolated to cover all of Ancient Greek civilisation). ‘Henry the Eigth had six wives’- nothing further just a statement- cherry picked and so taken out of context they remind me of Trump. Mental descriptions of normal behaviours (pointing?) without the context of how a normal behaviour can be weaponised. Surgeons sneer at women’s vaginas (many nurses have told her so) as a stand alone statement.

I genuinely thought my head was going to explode. I found it reductionist to the point of harmful… you just can’t reduce something as complex as DV to that. I could see that it’s supposed to prompt things that resonate so people say ‘oh shit that was me’ but it’s so… I don’t know, it made me so uncomfortable watching it. I felt like I was being sold the idea that any time any of these things are experienced, you have been the victim of abuse.

i went online and all I could see was rave reviews, claims of lives being changed and saved, a definitive work on DV. Calls for it to be taught in schools. I don’t think I can sit through twelve weeks of this.

I feel like I am going crazy because all I can see is praise when I just see oversimplified bollocks that honestly, I could see being damaging.

Mentioning this now- my partner was in a relationship where his ex was the abusive one. I’ve witnessed it first hand, and if the genders were swapped, people would be baying for blood. Maybe this is contributing to my view. Don’t want to mention it as a drip feed.

Someone will come along with personal experience of the Freedom Program, but here's my own of a different, but equally life-changing one: the Twelve Steps.

I totally understand that feeling of "propaganda" being speiled out and that it can be off-putting, but in my fellowship we suggest newcomers to listen to the similarities and not the differences.

I heard many generalisations that just didn't apply to me, or things that I thought were a load of rubbish when I arrived, but I was desperate for the outcome of what was on offer. It was a life or death decision for me to just cherry pick the points that were useful to me personally.

As someone who has always been quick to poo-poo anything that I thought was bullshit I'm amazed and grateful that I stuck with it. I've never stuck with anything before in my life!

I wish you well in your recovery from the trauma you've endured 🙏🏻

Thankyou for your response- I’ve also been through the 12 steps. I took great exception to parts of it and hated AA in general actually (may be just the groups in my area) but I see your point. That you take what you need and resonates with you in order to get to where you need to be is very true. And AA works for many many people.

I do like the personal responsibility aspect of AA though. Taking accountability for those times you as an individual have done something you shouldn’t have. That’s what’s missing here (I’m not saying DV victims are responsible for abuse, not in any way shape or form, the buck stops with the abusive person) but that where one person has been abusive it equates to the other person having never done anything wrong.

That’s something I experienced when it all fell out of bed with the booze- that despite my then partner being a drinker too, because my issue was worse, he therefore had no hand in anything and every problem ever could be laid at my door. That was a huge huge obstacle to overcome going through this and as a result I absolutely believe in being honest and responsible for your own actions if you are going to ask others to be accountable for theirs.

food for thought, thank you.

It’s training you to spot patterns. Patterns are inherently going to be based on stereotypes and generalisations. That’s ok, fine-grained judgments and nuance can come later. Let yourself build up some good gut recognition of all the ways shitty men can be shitty in ways that might slip past your guard. The good ones won’t mind!

Thank you. Normally my pattern recognition is excellent and I can map things out in my head and it’s spot on, but I’ve become aware that some things are so ingrained from childhood that I can’t see it. I read an article about a prosecution for child abuse and was sitting thinking oh that doesn’t sound too bad, I had xyz happen and that was ok. Stopped and realised no- it’s all bad, simply because that happened to me doesn’t mean the ‘lesser’ thing isn’t also bad. Ironically these things only apply to me as well, I’d rip someone to shreds for even thinking about going near my own children.

Thats why I wanted to do this, to have the talking points and have the things pointed out that I’m still blind to. I just didn’t realise this was the format. I’m pathological about fairness and justice and things being correct, and that’s what is driving me nuts since seeing it; but I’m aware I need the talking points.

It needs to be reduced to a black and white issue.

it is a black and white issue.

too many people accept and give explanations for things that are abuse and they shouldn’t be trying to explain it they should be walking away.

Its early days yet if you've only so far watched one video. Not everything on a programme is going to resonate with everyone.
It's probably not that helpful to think in terms of 'if the genders were reversed' though. They weren't, and the focus of the programme is not on instances where they are. It's a programme for women, so it's not going to centre male experience. It's not about being 'fair to men' it's about helping women become more confident.

I haven’t seen the videos, but I trust your judgement OP. DV is a complex beast, it’s not black and white. I thought your example of how normal behaviour can be weaponised a good one.

Another example of the complexity is that my abusive ex would treat me very well when other people were present. It gave me false hope that he was trying to be better. But really it was part of the abuse, to deliberately tease me with what we were before he became abusive and could be again. It was all to keep me hooked on staying and supporting him. I would have left him a lot sooner otherwise.

I don’t know if the first video is basics and then perhaps they add the complexity in later videos or not? But I hear you.

I've done a similar six week course, although it wasn't video based, it was a group of women and run by my local women's refuge. It was based on the FP.

I found it extremely helpful and as we got more into it in subsequent sessions, the penny dropped. I realised that the abuse I had been subjected to was far more serious, complex and subtle than I had realised.

A lot of things I had thought were normal in a long relationship were actually abusive, I had just become so used to it that I had normalised it.

You say that you don’t think DV victims are responsible for their own abuse-but that is kind of what you’re saying, isn’t it? And it’s what society has told women for generations.

@Octavia64 I wish it were but I can’t think of any instance where it is. If someone walked up to you and punched you on a first date, you’d just tell them to bugger off and never see them again; but DV isn’t linear like that it’s an enmeshment. At some point you pull the string and unravel it but it’s literally the fabric of your life and cutting off is never without consequence.

Then so often leaving is not the end. 6 of my 11 years have been post relationship and they’ve arguably been worse, and it’s still escalating. If I could have walked away I would, and it’s why I’m fighting so hard to end it once and for all.

@CurlewKate that’s not what I’m trying to say, honestly. I always explain this clumsily. What I mean is this- DV is always wrong, and I’m not excusing that behaviour. But I can see times in my relationship where I behaved in a way that wasn’t the best, and that was a reaction to the situation. Not an excuse for DV. I can also think of times when I was an absolute bitch and that had nothing to do with abuse, and I have to look at that, be accountable for it and not place the blame elsewhere because I was in an abusive relationship- and it’s still not an excuse for DV.

I don’t think it’s helpful to any discourse to allow the actions of one party to erase the actions of the other, because we are humans, we are complex, we will do things right and we will do things wrong. So if we don’t erase one set of actions but instead look at them as well and tease out why, you can have compassion for yourself. Not in the name of accepting part of the blame or excusing someone else’s behaviour but more so understanding, because the last thing anyone wants is to end up in the same situation again. If we know how we got there and are honest there’s far less chance of that. I had to do a shit load of work before I got anywhere near another relationship, and I know I would have been doomed to repeat the cycle if I hadn’t.

I hope that’s a little clearer, although I’m not sure it is 🫠

@AmberTigerEyes absolutely. That’s why think coercive control is the cruellest of all, because ultimately you do it to yourself: you change yourself, you don’t go out, you make your world smaller. Yes, there’s a puppet master but it’s by your own hand.

then someone asks why you didn’t just say no, or not do it? It’s the question I hate the most because the inference is always that it can’t have been that bad.