Living with the Dominator

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However I am very much not in a violent relationship so that wasn’t the purpose I was reading this for. I was raised in a violent home and was a victim of the abuse mentioned in this book as a child. I am now a 29 year old woman suffering the consequences and have struggled my whole life with anxiety, low self esteem and feelings of guilt and shame.I am trying to understand what happened in my childhood and was recommended this book to understand how my parents relationship may have impacted on me.

The programme, when provided as an intensive two day course, is also suitable for men, whether abusive and wishing to change their attitudes and behaviour or whether victims of same sex domestic abuse themselves. I published ‘Living with the Dominator’. I wanted to reach everyone who was unable to attend a Freedom Programme. I initially wrote the ‘Freedom Programme’ to educate women, girls, men and boys. Then in 2008 I published ‘Living with the Dominator’. I wanted to reach everyone who was unable to attend a Freedom Programme. A woman should never be allowed to leave or end a relationship, no matter how abusive or violent it is.

One of our facilitators has been playing one of the animations to the women on her programme every week at the end of each session. Another uses them at the beginning as a 'warm up' to help to make the session run smoothly. Another of our facilitators uses them for her Freedom Programme for women with learning disabilities. The ‘Rules of the Game’ are the beliefs of The Dominator. This is how he expects women to behave! It is also how he thinks he should be able to behave! The Dominator has hundreds of ‘rules’. Lets look at a few of them: I also realised that abusive men do not understand their own behaviour. They do not realise that they decide to use violence when they realise that their other tactics are failing. The Programme was primarily designed for women as victims of domestic violence, since research shows that in the vast majority of cases of serious abuse are male on female. Attending a programme with other women going through the same situation offers confirmation of what is happening, as it can all be very confusing. And the strength of the staff and information shared in an upbeat positive way is amazing. "

The Dominator uses various and numerous tactics to keep these rules in place. Here I have described some tactics The Dominator may use to keep each of the above ‘rules’ in place: As it is a rolling programme you can start the programme at any point and can catch up on any missed sessions when they are repeated. The Freedom Programme examines the roles played by attitudes and beliefs on the actions of abusive men and the responses of victims and survivors. The aim is to help them to make sense of and understand what has happened to them, instead of the whole experience just feeling like a horrible mess. The Freedom Programme also describes in detail how children are affected by being exposed to this kind of abuse and very importantly how their lives are improved when the abuse is removed. Women should be responsible for all childcare’ – moans when he has to ‘babysit’! Threatens to take the children away.I am the author Pat Craven. When I was a Probation Officer I ran courses for male 'perpetrators’ of violence against women and children. For two years I sat among groups of men who had injured, raped or killed their victims. I realised that abusive men use a range of tactics to control women. I was fortunate enough to meet and work with Sharon when she was the Advocacy Manager at Woman’s Trust and I was working for Westminster City Council. During this time Sharon developed and managed the Independent Domestic Violence Advocacy Service.. Thank you so much for all the support you have given me. You really have been amazing, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to cope with Child Protection without you. The amount of strength you have given me is totally priceless, even with.. I listened to everything they said and became determined to impart this information to the people who had no understanding of such violence. This included other ‘professionals’ and the women and girls whose lives could be changed or even saved if they were just given this vital information. A woman should provide services and act as an unpaid servant’ – does nothing around the house to help, Burn everything he cooks.

If attending our face to face sessions you will receive a free copy of ‘Living With The Dominator’ and a copy of The Home Study Workbook which is a supplement to ‘Living With The Dominator’. Without the support and constant reassurance of Sharon, I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be where I am today. I am forever grateful to her. She is extremely dedicated and knowledgeable, having her on my side when dealing with someone as persistent.. We have recently commissioned the wonderful Offshoot Film Company to animate the entire Freedom Programme. If we look at this cycle, we can see that at no point is The Dominator actually angry or out of control. He is choosing his behaviour and is in total control of what he is doing and saying! If you're reading this and think, "it was ages ago", "I won't gain anything by talking about it", "it wasn't *that* bad".... please just give it a go. You have nothing to lose by trying. I thought all those things too but have now completed the course, created great friendships and am onto the next phase in the process.Women are accused of ‘breaking the rules’. we may say ‘NO’!. We may say we are leaving. We refuse to have sex. We go to work. We make friends and go out to see them. It is worth pointing out that women do not actually know what the ‘rules’ are. They change constantly and what we think is a rule, ends up not being a rule. We don’t know what the right thing to say or do is and when we think we have worked it out, we are still wrong – hence the saying ‘Walking on eggshells’! The book is good in that it is concise and informative. There are many elements of abusive dynamics that people rarely consider, and the links to wider society and how abusers' beliefs can become internalised in everyone were really interesting to me. It places a lot of abuse survivors' issues into context and highlights warning behaviours so you can protect yourself in the future. There are also some images that are vaguely funny but don't detract from the points, which is good.