← Compassion in a T-Shirt
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl. Welcome to Compassion in a T shirt. In this episode we're exploring a powerful and confronting how do we respond to violence with both accountability and compassion? My guest today is Ken McMaster, coming to us from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Ken is a social worker, trainer, author, podcaster and a longtime friend from the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, or mint. He's also the founder of hma, a leading organization dedicated to building safer communities through evidence based interventions. Over more than three decades, Ken has worked with men who use violence, helped shape national policy and trained thousands of professionals in how to support behaviour change in ways that are skilful, respectful and effective. This is a conversation about justice, healing and hope. And so I bring you Ken McMaster.
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B
Oh, yours.
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C
All right, well, Ken McMaster, welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
- [01:22]
B
Yeah, thanks Dan. Lovely to be with you today.
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C
You've been working in the field of domestic and family violence and sexualized violence for several decades, if I may say. And what first drew you to work with men who perhaps use violence and to have some of these really tricky conversations with people?
- [01:45]
B
Yeah, I guess, Stan, there's a professional story and then story. So that's kind of interesting, isn't it? So the professional story is that I was working in Elkhon Drug clinic and a lot of guys coming through with substance use disorders and we also just noticed that they were also engaging in abusive behaviors in their relationships. So that was back in 1983. So yeah, I've been around a wee while. So that really got us kind of thinking. Well, we're doing behavior change around addiction issues, so why aren't we doing behavior change around abuse of practice or violence? So I remember sitting in with my first group and fellas, we sat in a room and we started the conversation and always they say that the rest is history. Right? Because I've been incredibly privileged to be on the ground floor in a field of practice as it grew from nothing. In some ways. We know the violence has been around a long time. Historically we look at the data, but in terms of bringing it out from behind close closed doors into the kind of present day, that's, that's a relatively recent phenomenon, it's 40 years old. So. So having done that work, of course, when sexual violence started to really come out, also around the late 80s, you know, because I worked in that field, people said, oh, you'll probably be able to work in this field. I'm going, well, not so sure. Let's back up here a little bit. So I was involved in establishing a community based agency that actually work with men who sexually abuse against children and Also for adolescents, 12 month program for adults, quite an intensive piece of work and an 18 month program for adolescents. And so you know, given that that was my field of practice as you start to build, you know, we were learning as we went really Stan. We were thinking, trying things out and it was a rich time of experimentation and thinking practice models, things like that. So that really got me thinking. Of course, you know, I didn't end up sort of chairing some committees for var as government ministers in terms of family violence and, and, and, and, and just had this involvement with the field for over that time. The personal story though is, is my dad was bipolar. He came back from World War II, stationed up in this league and you know, I guess, you know, you psychologists, so you know that bipolar when people are well, they're well when they're not well and they're not well. And of course, you know, that was really misunderstood. It wasn't got understood. So when dad was well, he was fantastic. Well, it was a nightmare. So you know, I guess I got some lived experience of that as well. And so I guess I was drawn probably to this field for. I guess there's always, I think there's always some personal motivation sometimes. So here I am. Yeah.
- [04:34]
C
Yes, I, I did the math. So it's, it's sort of 40 odd years, you know, since 1980, 83. You, you kind of almost sort of stumbled into it in a way or it just, just one thing led to another. And you're sort of mentioning things like the alcohol and drug kind of aspect to it even, but the way that it developed to many and varied ways that these difficulties can arise in families or in domestic situations and so on, and the kind of the, I guess the physical violence or physical abuse, but you know, kind of under this sort of area of work is also that more sort of sexualized behaviors as well?
- [05:17]
B
Yeah, and it's kind of interesting because I think that was also coincided with probably the second wave of feminism that actually, you know, we were starting to say actually what happens behind closed doors? You know, what is that behavior? So that's often been quite hidden, but all of a sudden we're now putting a shining light on that and we were gazing at that and saying, well, what really goes on? And if this was to happen in public, how would we respond? Well, we've got very clear responses in public, but actually we've got the same responses that happens when this happens. In the private. So. So that was a. So that was a journey also. And I. I remember at the time, we were kind of, you know, we're basically men responding to men. So we weren't doing the cogender thing back then. We were very much men saying, well, we have a responsibility to work with our brothers and idea of thinking about, you know, we're all. We're all part caught up on that socialization that. That male construction of masculinity. So, you know, we. We can't distance ourselves. And it's been one of my kind of missions in life has been, you know, so often othering is part of the story. Right. As part of. I go, well, I'm different than you. You've been violent, but I'm not. But actually, that whole idea, and I remember writing in one of the very first books I wrote, was this idea that one man's violence to one woman is a message to all women, but also impacts all men. So that idea that we're not immune from the impact of other men's violence in terms of our own relationships and what that means in terms of our lived experience.
- [06:51]
C
Yeah, in a way, I feel like there's a couple of things that you said there that kind of become a part of the answer to my next question. But, you know, that personal lived experience that you've had, but also that sense that men aren't immune to other men's violence and in some ways aren't potentially immune from their own violence in a way. And, you know, there's sort of. There are some really difficult confronting things to think about there. But my question was going to be about compassion. You know, sometimes people might feel that these behaviors really are so abhorrent that to imagine feeling compassion or having that compassionate motivation towards those men would be very difficult to do. And, you know, rather than just the unacceptable nature of the behavior and perhaps even that sense that they should be punished rather than anything. I mean, what are your thoughts. Thoughts there? What are some of the ways that you're able to stay in that compassionate motivation in such a tricky field of behaviors?
- [07:57]
B
Yeah, well, it's interesting. I'm just here, your question I'm reflecting back on. A couple weeks ago, I was up in Darwin working with a group of corrections people and doing a couple of days on family, domestic and sexualized violence. And I said, one of the questions you're going to have to resolve is, can you be compassionate to somebody who has harmed somebody else? That's the fundamental question. Now when I think about that I think about, because again, if we come across punitively, then the risk is that we turn people off, we don't engage. And you know this from the work you do in the compassion space that we've got to show compassion for the person's story. That doesn't excuse the behavior because we're talking about often quite risky, but often very high risk behaviors got long term kind of tail. But we've got to find a way to connect. And one way to connect that I've found really helpful is to think about what's the story, what's your story that's got you sitting here. And rather than just looking at the behavior, I kind of like the Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry kind of work and then those ideas. But actually it's not what you've done, but what's happened to you. And I think that distinction is a kind of useful one because at that point we can connect. And if I connect and say. Because I might just say something like, so a lot of guys that come here, they've often had a bit of a rough start in life themselves and they find themselves kind of doing the same behaviors that they might have been exposed to. I'm not sure if that's your story, but you might have a different story. But that's often a common story we hear. And it's almost at that point you see the resistance kind of just drop away. And it's that idea you are acknowledging part of what's got me sitting with you. There's often this generational kind of patterning and transfer of kind of learning in some ways. Right? And often we'll use that descriptive and say, so you were gifted away of being. And it isn't working so well for you and your family and your kids. And a lot of guys, when you think about a lot of the work we're doing is trying to find that, creating a little bit of dissonance around that idea. Do I want my kids to be exposed to that? And that's often a strong motivator for a lot of guys. They'll often sort of shift at that point and go, well, this is my lived experience. But actually I don't necessarily want my kids to have that experience. So often that's a point I think of change. And so we just, I think, holding that space. And I think in some ways I think about that idea that I love Bill Miller's work around that idea of just thinking about power. We think about that idea that a lot of guys are caught up in A power dynamic that actually, that idea, when they come in, they often feel quite bullied to be with us. If you think about a talk at a conference on the Gold coast last year, and I was talking about touch points, I'm, you know, think about actually, and this was with a group of clinicians, you know, in the room. I'm saying think about the touch points that many users of violence will experience before coming to us. So they've been chewed out by the judge, they've been chewed out by probation, maybe they've been chewed out potentially by the police. And of course, they come with a real sense of resistance. So this has been rehearsed. So we in some ways are saying one of the risks in our field of practice is that we end up getting men who have been pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed. And, you know, we think about an MI kind of frame around sustained talk and change talk a lot of times rehearse the sustained talk and the expectations will be the same. So when we meet someone who's in that space and we go, actually, yep, yep, it's not your first choice about being here. I get that. So, you know, and you'll have a story to tell and you have a way of making sense of that or what's going on, because you would have done some thinking about that. So again, I'm appealing to that sense of them being a thoughtful person now. They might be thinking of that in a very narrow kind of frame around with a lot of kind of justification distortions, which is, you know, as we know, has a function of kind of being able to self. So. So, you know, but we kind of. We start from that place, right? And we start to just walk from that place. So I think that's where, you know, being compassionate to their story is really a fundamental practice idea.
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C
I think there's an Abraham Lincoln quote that goes something like, I really don't like that man. I should get to know him better, or something like that. And that's kind of what you're describing, I think, is if we just capture our perspective on a person just based on the latest story of what's happened and so on, then it might be very difficult to kind of move towards that person. But if we can understand the whole person and their sort of their life experiences, and we're just so shaped by all that might have happened before and become this version of ourselves that we are now based on all of that. And to have insight and awareness and understanding around that story, we get to see kind of the humanity, I guess, in the person, not because we are approving of the more, you know, the more recent behavior, but because we're just trying to understand and connect and help that person to, to feel understood in, in amongst all of that.
- [13:35]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and again, if I think about some of the narrative I was trying to narrative work and, and this idea, there will be other stories that sit around and there'll be stories of resistance that even the men themselves have engaged, and they may have engaged in those stories of resistance as children in their own family of origin. So they might have stood up against dad, they might have actually tried to protect Mum, they might have tried to protect their siblings. And so, you know, so, so that tells me that actually they haven't necessarily like what's happened and yet they find themselves. And so often I hear the story of guys saying, I didn't want to be like my dad, but I feel I've now become my dad. And so, you know, and again, if you think about compassion, we also need to have some compassion for their dads, you know, so where do you think your dad learned this stuff from? You know, and, and so all of a sudden you're going, oh, okay, so maybe he was, he's had an experience that actually meant for limitation in terms of his ability to be much more present and, and thoughtful and caring.
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C
There's, I, I suspect there's just a lot of kind of shame that's built in for these men and, and, and blame, you know, and that in some ways what we're trying to do by taking a compassionate approach is to, is to well, to at least not kind of exacerbate those feelings of shame, because that's much more of a threat system, kind of an emotional state, when people are much more likely to either, you know, lash out and be more angry or even violent, or perhaps, you know, hide away and never come back sort of thing. So what, what are your thoughts there about the role of shame, perhaps in all of that?
- [15:25]
B
I, I think it's central really. I think whenever we engage, whenever we're called out on our behavior, there's that moment of kind of a recognition. Right. So, so particularly we know that, that when men get arrested for, for violence, when it comes much more in that sort of policing, public kind of identification. And it's that idea, if you think about, you know, the, about that experience of all the steps along, people are judging you, they're judging you, they're judging you. Those touch points, as I said before. And so, you know, I guess we've got to hold shame in place. Some people, restorative justice might say shame's a good thing, it actually can promote some change. But what we're trying to do is I think around just acknowledging that, you know, how do we help men to face shame in a non shaming kind of way. It sounds like a bit of a contradiction, right? But how do you face the reality that you may have engaged in some shameful acts towards other people? And that's okay to hold that. But then the idea is that the resolution to shame is not to sit in it and wallow in it, but actually then to take agency to do something about it so you don't actually sit in this place again. So how can we sit together in some partnership ideas and kind of work it from there? Right to go actually. So this doesn't. Because often the men will feel, you know, when we start to really unpack what they've done, you know, that's a difficult conversation to have because you start to face self. And of course, you know, you think about, you know, the function of cognitive distortions, you know, and justifications. It's really about to protect the. To protect self. And I think in some ways, you know, I think about that idea that if we think about, for me, when I think about, you know, harmful behavior towards other people and I think about some trauma experiences too, because we want to bring that kind of notion through into the work. My sense is that what we're doing also, if you think about the impact of trauma on violence, one is, you know, if you've had trauma experiences, you're going to avoid. Be into avoidant patterns of behavior, right. So, you know, social media, alcohol, drugs, you know, pornography, all the kind of things that people do to. To be more avoidant of being present. The second thing you're going to have is of course mistrust and more formal kind of ideas. And you know, we saw that with COVID And the third thing is you're going to have much more reactivity. So they're the three things that are going to sort of fall out of that experience. So, you know, I think in some ways when we are inviting people to be much more present with themselves and what they've done, then, you know, shame will wash over. But that's okay. I think that's okay. And we can hold that. And I guess if we think about, if we are holding a respectful space, then we can actually do some, I think some really deep therapeutic work.
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C
Yes, the sort of the fear based trauma and the shame based trauma. There's all those sort of in the background there and trying to work out, you know, how to create a sense of safeness whereby the person not to avoid those feelings, but to start to consider that and to approach that and to move through it in compassion focused therapy. One of our little sayings is it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. What do you make of that as a kind of a way to sum it up?
- [19:10]
B
I think that notion I said before that often we patterns of behavior and doesn't make it okay. It doesn't mean that it doesn't give permission to do what I do. I've sort of be the grown up in the room. But again, if we think about. I think what we're often working with is particularly there's been trauma experiences and the majority of men actually who engage in more the higher risk stuff. Like there's a. We can talk about some of the other sort of low risk behaviors but. But again the high risk stuff, we generally have a trauma story in there some ways. Right. So. So when I, when I think about that, I think about that idea that it doesn't excuse what you've done, but it helps us to understand what you've done there. If we think about that idea that a lot of the work we're doing in sort of behavior change programs, particularly for men who engage in domestic family and sexualized violence, we're really talking to the adaptive child. I think think about that idea because that's about survival, it's about adaptation. And we know that actually one of the key pieces of work we need to do and then it comes back to the shame idea too is if we can understand the role that trauma plays out in my current lived experience or my living experience, then I can go, okay, I know that's my trigger. I know that actually if I've had abandonment issues as a child and that actually in my adult relationships I'm probably gonna. When I see my partner distancing from me, I'm probably going to have a reactive moment at that point I'm probably going to go, oh, I'm getting uncomfortable here. So what do I need to do when I have that distress? I to grab tighter. So I need to control more. And so if I can understand the role of those experiences on me, I can then mitigate that. And I think that's the work we do in the programs. We say actually this is a lived experience, this is an adaptation. But actually it doesn't make controlling behavior and limitation, isolation and all that does make it okay. You got to manage that. It's up to you to manage this.
- [21:32]
C
Yes. It's not an excuse, but it helps us to really understand how the person's got to this point, but also what to potentially do to manage that, I suppose, and sort of moving forward in a way. I mean there's just so much threat system going on there for these men, isn't there? And it's sort of partly the shame, but also the fear out it comes as anger and it's really that threat protection motive and how they've adapted to the threats that they've been on the receiving end of as well. And so it's trying to think about ways to manage all of that.
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B
Yep. Yeah.
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C
What are your thoughts about the men and self compassion? Does that become a part of where you sort of where you work in your programs to sort of find ways that the men themselves can start to really absorb some of these ideas and to approach themselves from this perspective of understanding and understanding the shame and understanding. This is the version of myself. And you know what would be really most helpful for me? What do I need right now? You know, is there a self compassion component for the men themselves?
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B
I think there is really because again there's an exercise we've constructed that we call it working backwards to work forwards. Right. So it's putting the kind of the abuse of practice in a contextual kind of frame and it really starts with a conversation around, so what was it like for you as a child? What was your experience of life and how did you kind of, how did you manage? So I guess we are connecting to that younger self in some ways because I think the men need to be compassionate to their younger self yourself also. But also we want to create a kind of compassionate link too. So we might say. So how did your caregivers, whether it was a mum or dad in the same sex relationship, doesn't really matter. But how would your caregivers do to try and keep you safe and protect you? And so then we can sort of start to bridge back into, you know, what are the things that your partner's been doing to kind of protect your children if that's the case. So we can sort of make some compassionate links between women's experience of trying to sort of manage the moments of those high risk moments particularly. So we're creating I think some kind of compassionate threads. And also what that does, it starts to help people say, well actually what I'm seeing here is actually my mum's way of showing resistance. She couldn't do Much. But this is how she did it. She said she, she tried to manage dad's behavior or whatever, or she, she sent us to the neighbors for a bit just to try and get us out of the kind of situation she thought things were going to blow. So she did a whole lot of things to try and protect us. And of course, if you think about that idea, we, we can start to then bridge that in terms of so. So what things you. Part of doing and what that does. Because there's often quite a lot of sort of anger in that relationship because often it's, it's blown apart. The separation. There's. There's those ideas. So at that point we are l stories together and then we can sort of bridge that also to so what behaviors are you doing that's similar to your dad, but also what do you think you're teaching your kids here? Now that's a more tricky conversation, but it's a pretty powerful one really, because social learning theory, we learn. And again, you'll often hear the guys at that stage saying, I don't want my kids to be doing what I'm doing. So there's often a strong motivation, I think, to create a different narrative, a different story, a different outcome.
- [25:22]
C
And you know, I'm hearing sort of the. The three flows of compassion there really for, for men, you know, exploring just them opening up to receiving compassion from perhaps the therapist or the facilitator and so on. And you know, that's probably scary enough because they had, you know, the people who maybe should have cared for them were the ones who mistreated them early on. And so receiving compassion can feel kind of threat system activating. So we sort of ease them into. And then there's kind of like how might they start to cultivate compassion for those around them, for their partners, for their children, based on what they've observed before with their own mum say. And I love that reframe of resistance. That resistance is adaptation and trying to find protection really. And so being able to really connect with that and understand and empathize with the behaviors of, of the people that are really around them at the moment. And then the third flow is the self compassion piece too. Being able to soften their own shame and identify, you know, what these feelings and thoughts and behaviors, what that really is telling us about perhaps what the need is now and how to actually meet that need. So there's, you know, the three flows are really kind of moving about, you know, in this process.
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B
Yeah. And of course you think about, you know, Me, the guys have not had that ability. Right. We know that. It's kind of interesting when I think about, we did a piece of work a couple of years ago with Youth justice in New South Wales around sort of youth, you know, this is adolescents who are starting to engage in abusive practice. Right. And again, they're often with parents initially. But then those patterns, you know, if those patterns don't get sort of dealt with pretty early, they take those into adult relationships and then, you know, often by the time things come out from behind closed doors, you know, they'll be in two and three relationships. And so those patterns become quite entrenched. And so we're working with often a lot more complexity at that point and a lot more reinforcement. Right. But again, it hasn't worked because again, there's a high cost. But again, we would suggest that some of our high risk guys particularly, you know, may have been in two and three relationships. So and often those range, as you go through the life courses, there's going to be children involved. So you think about the impact on a significant number of children. So, you know, I'm a firm believer that we need to sort of get in early with our adolescents, you know, young guys and also young women. There's a number of young women will be using violence also in their relationship, in their family of origin stuff early on. So just getting that stuff really trying to get that really sorted early and trying to break those kind of patterns.
- [28:21]
C
You mentioned anger a moment ago, and I think your book Feeling Angry, Playing Fair, I think sort of hints at this idea that sort of anger as an emotion isn't necessarily itself the problem, but how it's kind of used or how it's expressed, I guess can be. Could you say more about that bit then too, this anger response and what that can lead to?
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B
Yeah, well, the field really started many years ago using Sonken and Durfey's work, particularly back in the very early 80s, was all about anger management, basically. Now you don't need to be angry to be violent. Right. Sometimes it's about coercive control. So it's clearly it doesn't always go together. But I think in some ways anger is one of those emotions. I think that is quite primary. In some ways it tells us that something's not right. But what we also know from men who engage in violence, whether it's in public violence or in that private space violence, intimate violence, we know that they often have some, what we call false emergencies. Right. So they'll often read situations that are quite Neutral as risk. And so they're seeing things actually that are unreal. So I'm at a party and I see my partner talking to a young, younger, more attractive man than myself, you know, you know, so, so do I, do I have a reaction to that? And, and, and you know, do I start to, does my cognition start to go, oh, she seems to be enjoying herself. She's not, she doesn't laugh much with me, but she's laughing with this fella. So what's going on? You know, so, so again those kind of cognitive things have become quite intoxicating at that point. You know, I think that that's where we get into some problems. Right? So, so I might have a ping, I might have a kind of oh, what's going on there? But again, I just got to manage that. Right. So anger is often one of those things that indicates that maybe I'm feeling some threat here. And, and then I've got to, I've got to, I've got to do some real busy self talk at that point and go, no, come on, you know, I mean you get a long time and it's not there. So, but again, so I think the emotion is useful. It's a primary emotion but you know, it can come up, I think the secondary emotion as well. I feel sad, I feel rejected. You can't do that to me. That can become angry at that point. I can get in that sort of self righteous kind of anger space at that point potentially. So I think we will always try to sort of pull the stuff out now. You know, sometimes just some emotional regulation skills are always useful. I still use the anger management stuff. I think it's helpful timeouts, helpful and sometimes you just got to down regulate and particularly in times of distress. And we know that's really important in this field around distress tolerance ideas, particularly at those times of incredibly high risk. So separation, incredibly high risk time when most women emerged, often high risk time for really harmful behavior. And of course that's the whole idea also around going back to the gender socialization issue, Stan, is that idea of, you know, who's around me, just hold me at that point. And if I'm the sort of traditional bloke that goes, no, I'm fine, I can manage it by myself, that old sort of male masculine kind of identity thing, then we're in trouble. So that idea of actually these moments actually when you need to have those people around you, that's the resilience kind of question. Who do I go to? Who are my mates? Can they hold me through this process, but also not reinforce a whole lot of my distress distortions. Well, I often call them distress distortions. You know, the anger that often, that point, you know, she's got the kids, she got the house, she's, you know, she's shacking up with somebody else. And it's not fear and those kind of victim stance kind of belief structures and thoughts. So, you know, we're always trying to halt those moments, I think, that are pretty important around risk. So, you know, who we hang with, I think at that point becomes pretty important. So, you know, I see anger as. Okay, I think it's a great emotion. Golly, I, you know, you just, you can't live in the world and not have reactions to what's going on. You know, I get angry about climate change. I think, what are we setting up for our grandchildren and things like that down the track? And I get angry that actually our government just pulled $4 billion out of pay equity. Well, pay equity is about women in low incomes. Women live longer than men, so that means they'll have less to retire on. So you've then actually got a whole thing about poverty. So you think, yeah, I get angry about that stuff. Of course I want to be angry about it. I want to have a reaction to that and I want to actually. And hopefully that might fuel me to do something about it. What we want the guys to do in some ways is get angry about sometimes the messaging that they've had about as being about being male and these rigid kind of stereotypes that they fall into. Get angry about that. Don't get angry at your partner, but be angry about actually how you've been shaped, maybe at this more structural level, and then do something about it. And so we are inviting men to be softer. We're inviting men to think about the influence of structure in terms of gender. We're asking men to also think about actually, can you step into the social, emotional kind of space within families? And there's lovely. This piece of research has come out from Australia a couple of weeks ago actually, and it is saying some pretty scary stuff in some ways. But in terms of the rates of emotional violence that's come up now, that may not be surprising given we've been through Covid and I think that the extra additional stress that was there on families, but there's a good sort of study that 62% of guys who also engaged in violence within their relationships had also mental health issues, depression and anxiety. Interesting, that idea. So we see that stuff. There's A good news story in here, Stan too. And it's kind of that idea that 48% of guys, the guys had strong connections to their dads. Children who have strong connection to dads are 48% more, less likely to use violence than their adult lives. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Now I've been trying to make sense of that, right? And it's kind of interesting, that idea. Now if you've got engaged dads, and I think this is a key issue, if you've got engaged dads, that means that they're going to have more empathy for their children because they're engaged in their children's life. If they've got more empathy for their children, they're probably going to have more empathy for their partners. And so that means actually that they're going to have more kind of ability to sit with distress or the other things that come up from time to time. So I think that's kind of interesting, isn't it? So the absentee dad thing, I think for many men, and many men that we end up working with in programs have got absent dads. So they haven't got engaged dads, they haven't had engaged dads in their lives. I wonder about that idea of actually connection of because often that's been relegated to mums or women to do the social, emotional, heavy lifting, I think. But I just think about that idea of if dads are engaged in that stuff and that caring. I just wonder how that spreads out as a great kind of life skill. What do you think about that?
- [36:14]
C
Well, you sort of said so much there. That's really interesting and got me thinking. In lots and lots of ways it, it feels like it's, it's something to do in that emotion regulation kind of place. It, it feels like a, you know, in some ways all roads lead to Rome with that. You know, like if, if young boys and men are able to be role modeled but also learn themselves or develop a sort of different way of relating to their own emotions and they're able to sort of regulate certain emotions not to get rid of them because as you say, anger, for example, is a very natural emotion. Anger, anxiety and sadness are kind of like the big three. And if we can develop ways to regulate those things, then we're much less likely to, you know, find more destructive ways of dealing with them, I suppose. And having a connected engaged dad makes it much more likely that you might still see anger in, in that person, in your father, but you might also see, you know, the ways that, that, that person regulates it. I mean, my poor old dad used to get intensely frustrated and angry around tax time when he had to do his books, you know, and he would sort of. And it's funny, I find doing my accounting very difficult as well. So I, I picked up a couple of things. One was difficulties with accounting, but the other was, okay, well, how do we work towards managing those feelings when they're there and kind of working them through, containing them a little bit, managing those things, doing what we need to do. So you sort of get to perhaps soak up some of those bits and pieces. And I was, you sort of mentioned, you know, like in times of separation that might be, when, you know, women might be murdered and that sort of thing. And you talked about some statistics there about, you know, perhaps there's more emotional kind of violence, you know, in this more recent survey. But I mean, in the 40 years that you've been doing this, how are we going with it? You know, how are our interventions, you know, kind of helping or working or improving or, you know, how are we managing that in a, in a societal level? Are there, is it overall a positive story that we're getting somewhere? Is it not changing or getting worse? What's your hunch?
- [38:46]
B
Yeah, well, big question there, Stan. Well, look, when I started, we ran programs on the Smell of Naughty Rag, right? That old Kiwi Australian saying that we had no resources, right? But we did it because we knew it was important. And so when I think back to those days and when I think about the amount of resource that goes into programming, programming now, you know, it is significant. We, we've built, we've built a workforce. And so, you know, when I think about where we're at and I think about the intervention stuff that's now available to men, I think that's fantastic. We've also said actually that, you know, what you do in private actually is a public affair. It's not just a private affair, it's a public affair. So, you know, you can't get away with these behaviors in private and think it's okay. So we have done some criminalization stuff. Now there's a whole debate about whether that's a good thing or not, or whether we've overdone that, whether that's just taken resources into a more criminal justice imprisonment type custodial stuff rather than a front line in terms of intervention stuff. So these are tension points in terms of policy. There's always those tension points in terms of where you put your resource. But we've got Programs now running pretty much in a lot of places through Australia, New Zealand. And I do a lot of work with program providers in terms of upskilling and program design and those sort of things. And I'm really impressed by the kind of the commitment that people have to get in and get mucky, because as you say, it's not an easy sort of area of practice. We know that kind of. We think about the stats. People often say to me, well, is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Well, it's a great question because we've tended to widen our definition a bit in terms of what we understand violence to be. So if you go back sort of 40 years, we're very much based on the sort of physical and sexual violence stuff. But we now start to talk about coercion, which you may not have any physicality at all, but highly kind of controlling behavior. And we start to look at the whole kind of emotional stuff now, the stuff we also know. But the base rates have pretty much still been the same. They haven't changed the lot. So in this last survey I mentioned from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, they said about 11% is physical. Now, that's interesting because that's been pretty consistent. We think that's probably higher in some subpopulations. It goes up to about 30% in some sub populations, gang populations, sometimes some indigenous populations. We see those kind of. Those rates go really much higher. And sexual violence is round about the 2%. So we think that's kind of interesting. That's been pretty consistent. So things haven't changed. But I think what has changed, we're now putting. We're shining a light on it effectively and saying actually what happens in the privacy of the household is a public issue and we can't not see that. So I think that's a good news story, Stan, in some ways that we're not there yet. Golly me, you know, I'm sort of thinking we. We are. We are probably that we still have this high, high underreporting. We still think that maybe 20 to 25% of cases get reported. So there's a whole lot of stuff still happening that we don't see. And of course, if we think about the story, if you look at women's safety surveys that offer. We often what. What they often throw up is that if you look at actually the kind of pathway to disclosure, it often starts with, in terms of gender violence, the woman's saying, don't do that. Then second step is often go to their friendship network. Third Step is they might then go to family. And then really the fourth step is really those more formal systems, family court protection orders or DVOs in the case of Australia. And so those more formal policing kind of practices. But what that tells me is by the time you get to the policing practice, there's been a pattern going on for some time. So that would also indicate to me that generally the behavior's got more entrenched and probably has got much more risky. So. Yeah. So, you know, I'm kind of optimistic that we are somewhere along the way, how far we are, I don't know. I do worry about what's happening to young men in terms of social influence. And I was thinking about talking before, I was thinking about the Netflix series Adolescence, which is a profound story actually of shame. Now, the father's shame about the wee boys behavior on the soccer pitch. This is not a boy who's the sporty boy. This is a boy who's artistic, but actually in a male kind of world, he's got to be sporty. He's got to be competent in these other spaces and not competent in these softer spaces, these creative spaces. Now, you know, and I think that story is all about the shame of the boys picking up the shame of his dad. His dad's ashamed in that story. I don't know if you remember, but he talks about when I was in the goal, I was not very good on the field. They put me in goal, I wasn't very good in goal, and the dad looked away and was getting a hard time from the other men about his boy. So, you know, I think this idea of shame is also really caught up in the gender politic as well.
- [44:42]
C
Yeah, it's, it's. It leaves us with mixed feelings, doesn't it? All of that, that you've just said. I mean, the hard reality of, of some of the numbers is, is tricky. It's, it's sort of, it can feel, you know, sort of leave. You leave one feeling a little bit despondent, to be honest. You know, that, that still those types of behaviors and the effects on people and the effects on women and children and, you know, it sort of breaks your heart a little bit to think that there is so much of that seems to be continuing. And yet, on the other hand, yeah, there's many, many advances that we're making. Not least this notion that we're sort of creating much more of a responsibility for men just because it's happening behind closed doors. It's, it still, you know, needs to be addressed. Still needs to be worked with. It's interesting that that idea of, you know, more criminalizing, though, of that means in a way more shame, which we already know is. Is part of the. The problem. And it, it just, I suppose it's just that notion of we keep chipping away, keep doing good work, you know, getting into the muck, as you say. And, and I mean, how do you. How do professionals do that, this deeply challenging work? How do we sustain ourselves when we're working with men who are so complex and their behaviors so concerning and risky? What are your thoughts there for people in the field?
- [46:24]
B
Yeah, well, I think support's a big one, right? I think just having support. And also I think we need to. You know, I remember, Stan, when I first started working with men who sexually abused against children. I had young children at the time. So, you know, and I wasn't sure actually whether I could, because the question I had to ask myself was, can I sit with these men? You know, can I sit with these men? And the reality is that when you work in those fields, you know, you do get there is some toxicity that rubs off. You know, you sort of. In the sexual violence space, you know, you can have some really intrusive kind of thoughts that come in at the worst of times, you know, sort of times in your private space, you know, so we don't always turn those things off. So, you know, I think one of the things is being able to have really robust conversations about the impact of the work. And that comes to really good supportive environments where people can talk about what's happening, but also talk about the effect of the work on them, because you can get pretty jaded, right? You can think about that idea that the world towards all unsafe and all men are not okay. Well, that's not the true. That's not true. You know, if you look at the research, you know, 35% of guys have engaged in a environment, you know, significant amount of that emotional. But it also means that actually 65% haven't. That's a good story, isn't it? That's a good story. And sometimes we've got to actually think that, you know, not all men are risky. You know, now we've got to manage our privilege and those sort of those things that come from class and all those kind of those privileges kind of conversations, intersectionality stuff. But, you know, I think in some ways we also want to be able to go, you know, I always say, you know, get out in nature, you know, think about sort of just have friends that you can have a good sort of laugh with and that idea that actually do the work, do the hard work, but also just, just have, have stuff that's replenishing. I think that's really important. Otherwise, you know, I think it becomes really tricky. And also, you know, the thing I think that's helped me to survive is having diversity in what I do. So, you know, not been up in front line all the time and you kind of open up the space for other ways to kind of think about it. I'm doing mostly kind of upskilling and training these days, so. So, you know, time and the tools is limited. So. Yeah, yeah.
- [48:53]
C
Yes. It brings us full circle in a way to just the importance of the three flows of compassion for workers as well. You know that so much of their time is spent really cultivating and maintaining and doing the hard work to keep that compassionate motivation for the men they're working with. But equally, we need to open up to receiving the compassion from those around us, our colleagues, our friends, you know, being able to let people in and then those kind of self compassionate things, the walking in nature and you know, having diversity and all of those is kind of taking active steps in a self compassionate way as well.
- [49:35]
B
Yeah.
- [49:36]
C
Well, Ken McMaster, thank you. I mean, it's just such a, an incredibly important field of work, you know, just in terms of the ripple effect or the tidal wave effect sometimes of how it can, you know, kind of affect others. And yet, you know, I really appreciate the way that you've just persisted and doggedly worked away in this field for so long and you know, done some amazing work. But also thank you for speaking with me on compassion in a T shirt.
- [50:07]
B
Oh, Stan, it's been absolute pleasure. And you know, like, you know, I think if we think if you come back to the, I think the practice, you know, it's all about engagement. And so, you know, we know that, you know, partnership, acceptance, compassion and empowerment are kind of central to what we do. And if we can't, and I think if we can't find a compassionate link with somebody, then I think maybe that's a challenge because we've got to, I think we've got to work at that. And that's what, you know, in terms of motivation. Of course we say that's what we bring to the table. We respond for our half of the conversation. But if you walk in and I'm judging you and, and you feel judged by me, then we're not probably going to get very far. Yeah. So thanks so much for inviting me to come and have a yarn with you today.
- [50:55]
C
Beautiful. Thank you very much, Ken.