No one would think Brian needed a program like ours.  His friends, his sister, and his colleagues all considered him to be easygoing, funny, and kind – we came to think so too.  But the Brian who sometimes came home to his wife and son was a very different guy.

If Brian drank just a little too much alcohol – maybe while out watching sports, meeting a friend, attending a celebration – he came home tense and ready for a fight.  He expected his wife to have a problem with him, and he found one if she didn’t.  That part was hard enough, but what happened sometimes was worse.

If Brian’s wife challenged him or raised her voice, he became explosive.  Sometimes he was physically threatening, moving close to her with his fists clenched.  Sometimes he called her names he couldn’t believe once he sobered up.  Because he always sobered up, and always felt terrible about what happened.  

But like so many other men, Brian didn’t seek help when he knew he needed it.  And so, like so many other men, it took the worst thing happening for him to call.  

He’d been drinking and was playing with his young son at home.  When the boy bumped his head, his wife, already nervous about what might happen, reacted and grabbed their son away.  Brian began yelling that he hadn’t done anything wrong.  In the ensuing argument, as Brian pursued and struck at his wife, their son was somehow bruised on his face.

At his first session, Brian barely spoke for his tears.  He always felt guilty after an incident with his wife, but this time his son was injured too.  And now he wouldn’t see his son for months if ever again.  And now there were criminal charges too.

Brian came to us desperate to change.  He had already quit drinking but he soon learned how much else there was to address.  We worked with him to understand his patterns of reactivity and the pains underneath.  We taught him to hold his guilt and shame in a way that allowed him to connect with others instead of harm them.  We challenged him to always return to the pain he caused others, to find a way to hold his actions and their impact as true and real despite the pain they caused him to think about.

Over the course of the two years he remained in treatment, Brian never stopped feeling guilty.  He never stopped regretting what he had done, and he came to regret not seeking help sooner.  But his guilt became something he could visit, feel, and move away from again.  The other clients in his groups learned to hold him accountable to engage kindly in disagreements rather than avoid, fester, shove down.  They supported him when he met someone, a new potential partner, and helped him figure out how to tell her what had happened.  And they celebrated him when, more than a year after the incident, he saw his son again.

Brian may never reconcile with his wife, and we wouldn’t expect her to want him back after what happened.  But we can wish that someday, he and his son can talk about that worst day of Brian’s life.  And we can wish that Brian, a man who has done something terrible, has worked hard enough to earn back a chance at closeness, love, and peace he never had until now.

“You can be so nice,” they’d tell her, “but when you get so mean it makes me hate you.”

Cynthia’s wife and teenage children were thrilled she sought help.  It had been too long of tiptoeing around mom’s trigger points and tolerating her intensity when she became upset.  They had learned to better anticipate her moods and tried not to ask for much if she had “that look.”  They learned to say “yes mom” even if they disagreed.  They learned to grit their teeth and think of nicer places when she said harsh and critical things.

Cynthia herself wasn’t too happy either.  She could tell that her family was wary of her, and it was that same feeling of “being on the outside” that most frequently resulted in her dangerous moods.  Her intense wish to be close to the family, the disappointment she felt when she wasn’t, and her near-inevitable lashing out ended up keeping her “outside” in the most painful way.

Therapy hadn’t helped much before.  As Cynthia described it, most of her previous therapists deeply cared about her pain at feeling apart from her family and were skilled at identifying the events in her history that may have played a role.  It helped.  But none of them were willing to fully address her harshness, even when she directed it at them.  Cynthia wondered if they, too, were wary of her.

At Courdea, Cynthia found it harder than expected to take responsibility for her behavior and try to change.  It hurt too much to consider the impact of her words on her family members and how much she created the rejection she most feared.  But gradually, she began to better tolerate the truth of what she’d been doing.  She found a few ways to stop the harsh words before they came out of her mouth.  She began to notice when she felt unwanted or “on the outside” and tried to find a way to ask for what she really wanted: connection.

Cynthia’s road was long and still is.  The kind of change she wanted – to replace her harsh reactivity with bids for love and care – is possible but cannot happen overnight.  It took years to get where she was when she first came in our door.  

But to her family, who loves her, mom’s commitment to change meant something.  They began to feel closer to her, just a little bit, and cheered her onwards.

Greg told us that coming to therapy that first time was stressful, anxiety-producing, and annoying.  “I hate this,” he told his therapist at the first appointment.  But nothing compared to the first that preceded it: getting arrested.

Greg was referred to us by a Philadelphia pre-trial diversion program for first-time offenders.  He was given the option of seeking treatment for harmful behavior or taking his case to trial, and he decided that the unknown of therapy was better than the unknown of prosecution.  He arrived to his first appointment like many who are referred by the court:  nervous and defensive with an undercurrent of disappointment and shame.

Though the incident of his arrest was the first time the cops were called, it wasn’t the first time he had been harmful towards his wife.  What Greg would later learn to call his “highway” mentality – as in, “my way or the highway” – led him to become explosive if his wife refused to comply.  He had yelled, called names, broken things, thrown things, even once tore a sliding closet door down during an argument while his 8-year old son sat in the next room.  If he wanted to be sexually intimate with his wife and she refused, he’d become critical, cold, and later withhold money she needed.  “I never hit her,” he first said, but admitted he would force her out of the room when he wanted the argument to end.  The night of his arrest, he pushed her through a doorway and she fell over a chair, alarming the neighbors enough that the police were called.  His wife’s bruises were undeniable proof that something was really wrong.

Greg needed help a long time ago, but for a while he refused to think so.  He had scared his wife significantly, regularly, but he had not married someone who cowered.  So it took some time for Greg to stop saying “she fought me too” and start saying “she fought me back when she felt scared.”  It took some time for him to admit that he hated the feeling when things didn’t happen as he said, that it made him feel weak, ineffective, less than a man.

Greg resisted coming to Courdea and he was not happy during his first sessions.  But our process of reflecting back his pattern of harmful behavior and the impact it had eventually touched something in him.  In session, he remembered seeing his mother pursued by his father, him getting in her face and screaming.  He remembered feeling scared and realized his son must feel scared too.  He remembered a moment when, as a child, he thought “I never want to be like him.”  He wept in our offices and wished for a different way to be.

Accepting the harm he’d caused was an important first step, but Greg had much more work to do.  In group treatment, he learned to identify and name his emotions, especially “disappointment” and “anxiety.”  He learned to anticipate his escalation and calm himself down.  He learned to repeat the mantra “it doesn’t have to be my way to be good” and became more curious about his wife’s perspective and ideas.  He became a more creative father and more stable employee.

Because he was able to engage thoughtfully and consistently in treatment, Greg was able to have his court case expunged.  But all agreed that the greater benefit was felt at home.  His wife remained wary of him, ready for that “highway” mentality to return.  It did return sometimes, but with less intensity, less punishment, and without physical violence.  His wife was eventually able to say “here comes that highway Greg” and he would (most of the time) be able to pause, breathe, and try again.

When Greg left our program, we challenged him to find other men to hold him accountable.  Not those would co-sign on his abusive attitudes and ideas.  But men who would challenge him to remain decent, attempt peacefulness, and encourage him to make things right.