by Ann Maree Goudzwaard
A few years ago my favorite[1] professor at RTS Charlotte wrote a book called What’s your Worldview? In it, he used an interactive method similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) children’s gamebook series. It invited the reader to “make key decisions or choices at a number of points in order to determine the outcome.”[2] It was quite genius actually—not at all surprising because my professor is a GENUIS. But what I found fascinating about this method is that I think I’ve witnessed something similar in the counsel of domestic abusers.
In my last post, The Shape of Oppression, I mentioned that the church has been “overly focused on the man’s behavior in cases of abuse.” To further clarify, when counselors focus on the husband’s behavior in the home without considering the environment, we can unwittingly fall into the abuser’s net. That is; he wants to manipulate the outcome of his counsel and, by making key decisions to direct our attention to what he does rather than what he thinks, he successfully controls his counselor and what they counsel.
Just imagine a scenario where a husband is accused of coercive control. Counselors and pastors don’t
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