Help seeking and shame

As we talked about before, mothers are the primary target of violence within the family. This is true whether or not there is a history of domestic violence / intimate partner violence in the family. Therefore, most of the course will focus on mothers specifically. In later chapters the activities we do can be applied to fathers as well; however, it is important to understand the impacts unique to mothers. The most common and damaging impact on mothers is shame.

Mothers report the following impacts when reaching out for support:

• Mothers largely report not being believed
• They report feeling that they have failed as a mother
• They fear that the violence will lead to a report to Child Safety and they will lose their children

Think about conversations you may have had with peers or clients. Are you indirectly reinforcing these aspects of shame and fear?

Example: Mothers Day Group

My co-facilitator and I ran a special mothers’ only session to celebrate Mother’s Day. We bought all six mothers a flowering plant and gave them special cakes to celebrate. In talking about Mother’s Day, four of the mums started to cry. Each of these mothers had 15 – 17-year-old sons and explained that this group was their first Mother’s Day. Think of the level of shame and hopelessness these mothers carried with them when their first Mother’s Day celebration came after 15 years within their therapy group. This is the level of attachment breakdown and hurt we are dealing with when working with these families.