Violence and Abuse in the Home
Page Four
1. Having been raised in a family where abuse and violence were common. If a child is raised in such a home, violence seems natural. He sees it continually, and before long he acts it out in his own life. Studies of adults guilty of violence and abuse show that a high proportion of perpetrators were raised in a home where they experienced abuse themselves. In short abuse is often learned and repeated.
2. Underlying personality problems. People do not just suddenly choose to abuse another person. Abusive behavior flows out of underlying personality problems. Feelings of inferiority, desires to control, deep resentments, and a general inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for one's life all lie beneath the overt abusive actions. These are the things that cause abusers to strike out at people.
A person who is well adjusted and peaceful doesn't find it necessary or natural to abuse those around him. Through the years I have given psychological tests to many men who were abusers. And in nearly every case, their tests revealed they had serious personality deficits which had never been diagnosed and treated. The problems nearly always include anger, difficulty being sensitive and emotionally close to others, along with some history of problems in their own families as they were growing up.
3. Unmanaged anger. Underneath nearly all abuse are strong feelings of anger. Whether verbal, physical, or sexual, abuse is above all an angry attack on another human being. Coupled with this anger is typically a very limited ability to be sensitive to the needs, feelings, and rights of others. Abusive personalities are so tied up in their own frustrated desires and wishes that they lash out unthinkingly at others. In essence, they blame others for their misery.
4. Alcoholism and drug dependency are additional causes of violence and abuse in a family. The U.S. Attorney General's Task Force found that alcoholism was a major factor in abusive families regardless of their location. It was the same in Alaska and Hawaii as it was in Texas, New York, and Ohio. Since drugs and alcohol often lower self-control, their use increases the tendency of angry people to act out their hostility.
 Feelings of inferiority, desires to control, deep
resentments, and a general inability or unwillingness
to take responsibility for one's life all lie beneath
the overt abusive actions. These are the things that
cause abusers to strike out at people.
5. An unhappy marriage or family life can trigger fighting and quarreling which eventually escalates into full-scale abuse. Some parents become abusive because they do not know how to manage their children. After repeatedly trying unsuccessfully to discipline a child, for example, a parent's anger can escalate to the breaking point. This can be especially true with a difficult-to-manage child, like a child suffering from ADHD. Despite the parent's best efforts, these children still tend to be hyperactive, inattentive and a bit out of step. Finally, the parent reaches his/her breaking point.
As one woman told me, "Before our son was diagnosed as having ADHD and we began to get professional help for him, our family was almost torn to pieces. What made it worse was that no one knew what the problem was, and all of the correction we tried to give him didn't improve things. We were at our wit's end."
6. Spiritual factors. Anyone can become angry and feel like acting abusively. But people who lack a solid spiritual grounding often have less motivation to face their potentially destructive anger. The Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Apart from God, people have an unredeemed nature and an even greater tendency to minimize their problems, avoid seeking help, and controlling their potentially hurtful actions.
7. Vocational unhappiness and financial pressures sometimes trigger abusive actions. Many parents are working eight hours or more a day at a job which they absolutely dislike or which is unsuited to them. They come home exhausted and frustrated and take their frustrations out on their families. Normal, healthy parents don't abuse their children no matter how tired and upset they are. But less mature and emotionally settled adults can "lose it" under the pressures of work and life. One day my son, Kevin, asked a group of 50+ people to finish a number of sentences on a form. One read, "I wish my boss ___________________."
Eight of the group filled in the sentence so that it read, "I wish my boss were dead!"
8. Similarly, frustrations over financial problems can trigger verbal and physical abuse. When there is a lack of funds for food, housing, clothing, or other basic needs, everyone can become frightened, angry and uptight. When this financial hardship continues over a period of time, the pressure can grow until it bursts out in abusive language or acts.
 Continued on Page Five
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