Training with Victims

[kravmdjeff]

At Krav Maga in Maryland, I’ve recently made some good connections with local organizations (Howard County Domestic Violence, the STTAR center for victims of trauma, etc.)…and every time I talk to these staff workers at these locations, they get really excited about the potential partnership and training that can occur for their staff and their clients.

I’m curious to hear about any other experiences instructors have had training rape victims, victims of other sorts of domestic violence, etc. Any initial thoughts?

[runnergirl]

See my post on the bad situation thread.

I think the instructor mentality/personality matters a lot, as would co-ordinating with a therapist.

[emil]

Hey Jeff, I have and there’s been a variety of responses
-Some folks are too traumatized to to do any kind of contact training. They really want to do something too soon after the incident and when they encounter drills, yelling, pushing shoving it becomes too much and they quit. You’ll see that sometimes when you are yelling next to them or giving \”spirited\” instruction they cringe and shut off.
-Some folks have had a limited time to process and still have residual anger. They tolerate the process pretty well, although sometimes their partners complain that they might be too rough or have poor control
-Some have done a significant amount of work on processing the incidents and you may not even tell that have experienced any sort of trauma. They might be ver intense, make some of the most committed students but that’s it, until one day they may say something.

I’d say overall there’s a significant number of people in krav classes with a history of being victims of some sort of violence. For me the challenge has been to take off the social worker hat and put on the instructor one and remember they are not there for me to counsel, but teach them how to protect themselves. Although, sensitivity is always a plus of course. This is an interesting subject though, glad you brought it up.

[kravmdjeff]

You’re a social worker? My wife is doing an internship currently for that (although not specifically with assault victims)

I got to talk with John Whitman over the weekend and he had some good pointers, although there are some other resources as well…mostly I was looking for ground-level thoughts and ideas.

[Author]

Posts