This informative and helpful guide will assist your clients in making positive strides toward a nonviolent life. Some of the tips and suggestions that are further explained in this workbook include:
- Acknowledge to yourself and to others that you have a problem with anger, abuse, and control
- Address mental health and chemical use issues if they are present in your life
- Come to know that, when you become abusive, you are always feeling inadequate, powerless, and unlovable
- Realize that controlling and abusive behavior hurts you and those you love
- Understand that anger is different from abuse and control
- Recognize that becoming abusive is always a choice
- Instead of blaming others, take responsibility for what you feel, how you think, and how you act
- Accept that you cannot control or change other people
- Remember that you can always take a time-out
- Think about the possible consequences before you become controlling and abusive
- Identify what triggers your anger and your abusive and controlling attitudes and behaviors
- Notice what you are thinking: Your thoughts can increase your escalation or calm you down
- Become aware of all your feelings, not just your anger, and learn to respectfully communicate them to others
- Turn conflicts into positive problem-solving opportunities
- Control, abuse, and violence are learned: Think about the messages you received from your family and from society about what it is to be a man
- Redefine manhood as nonviolent and nonabusive
- Take the risk to count on other men for emotional support
- Learn to feel a genuine sense of pride by taking control of how you view the world and how you act
- Start to believe that you can truly change the controlling and abusive parts of who you have been