The Nonviolent Families Process assumes that violence in families affects family relationships. Families seeking a nonviolent style of relating need to incorporate a process of change.
Many things, initially manifest as family violence, are best addressed on a level of intervention that supersedes the family. Clear up issues that are better resolved on an individual level or as a couple before working as a family on violence. Sometimes problems appear to be individual but actually are family problems invested in an “identified patient”. Placing family problems all in the lap of one person, as if it is all that individual's problem, thereby takes the focus from where it belongs, the family.
Examples of issues that need to be addressed outside of the family include individual pathologies, alcohol or other drug abuse, anger control issues, couple problems that end up affecting the whole family. For example, if a couple do not respect each other, and that lack of respect shows itself in the way they constantly address each other, it is to be expected that violent expressions, not to mention a generalized lack of respect, will be picked up by the whole family. What needs to be addressed in a separate forum, such as marriage counseling, is the lack of respect the couple has nurtured over their years together.
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