COVID-19 has been a time of extraordinary stress –financial worries, job loss or trying to work from home, children out of school, worries about family members. All of this occurs with a backdrop of a pandemic that brings ongoing anxiety and uncertainty. We know that the first country to be locked down – China – was the first country to report a surge in calls to domestic violence hotlines. This pattern has now been repeated in other countries.
Working with couples where there has been aggression is often seen as controversial. Certainly, it is not advisable to work with couples where there has been gender-based violence occurring for some time that has the elements of power and control. In such cases, the standard approach is to refer to anger management programs and (in the case of male on female violence) to programs for battered women.
However, in situations where it has been the first time of aggression – these are couples who will not typically follow up on referrals for anger management or support groups. Instead, they arrive at our door, hoping for help to understand how the violence happened and how to repair the subsequent relationship injury. Most approaches to couples counseling, however, are not terribly skillful at knowing what to do with those couples when they arrive in our waiting rooms.
This webinar will address the needs of those couples by giving us skills to assess the situation and whether we can help or need to refer.
