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Florence Terry talks with Fi Glover about Anger Management
Originally broadcast on Radio Four’s ‘Saturday Live’ programme
Click the link below to hear the full interview (15 minutes) or you can read a transcript of it below.
Transcript of broadcast
Presenter:
Now when you think of the victims of domestic violence you most likely think of women being beaten threatened physically or verbally abused, and it is usually men who carry out violence in a relationship, but not always. Women can be the aggressors too and for ten years our next guest Florence Terry abused her husband when she lost her temper she would shout and scream at him but would also kick and slap him and sometimes she would even smash up the furniture during their rows. Her husband Paul never sought help during that time constantly forgiving her for her outbursts, and it wasn’t until she sought to seek help that she managed to stop her patterns of behaviour Florence joins us now, good morning
Florence:
Good morning
Presenter:
When did you first lose it with your husband? I mean was it over something trivial?
Florence:
Well certainly my reaction was completely disproportionate, yes
Presenter:
So he hadn’t done anything, he hadn’t threatened you, he hadn’t put you in a position where you were needing to come to fight back over something?
Florence:
Not at all
All that he had done was to pay off a loan and that had put us in overdraft and got overdraft charges.
Presenter:
Were you a particularly fiery type of person anyway where you quite surprised at your reaction and we know what you did?
Florence:
I was completely surprised and shocked
No, generally I’ve always tried to be in control and what people mostly see of me is the gentle and controlled side so we were both completely shocked it was 18 months into our marriage.
I’m upset thinking about it.
Presenter:
No, no for sure and did that attack involve anything physical or was it the power of words then.
Florence:
No physical I was cross with him he, wisely, left the room and I unwisely followed and when I went into the other room I continue to be verbally violent and then I hit him
Presenter:
How many times and how often did that kind of things start to happen?
Florence:
I know that I don’t remember everything, um, The next time was perhaps 18 months, when you said smashing furniture, my furniture smashing was 18 months later when I slammed down a table and I broke the leg off and then it was more frequent than 18 months for the next 8 1/2 years until I got help, so it was 3 months and I thought I’ve sorted this and it won’t happen again and then it did happen again and then it was the month then perhaps 3 months but it wasn’t apparent that the fact that it was recurring and I knew it was out of control.
Presenter:
And what did your husband, Paul, who incidentally is very happy for you to be talking about this today you’re still together what was his reaction to it, did he ever fight back?
Florence:
He never fought back, no he says that the reason he didn’t fight back was the fact that he wasn’t scared of me, he’s bigger than I am.
Also, he saw me as a bottle of pop, explosion and then it would all be over which doesn’t mean that he didn’t get upset he was upset
Presenter:
Did his reaction make it harder for you to accept what you were doing and the seriousness of what you doing?
Florence:
I always thought it was really serious and really unacceptable and I was upset listening to the way Grace responded to the call from Carol earlier just to go ‘yes you were absolutely right’ and to laugh.
I wasn’t able to laugh at myself I just, I was beating myself up about it and very aware of how unacceptable it was.
Presenter:
Did you tell anybody what you doing?
Florence:
No, because I was so ashamed and that was the problem, if I had been able to tell people then I would have been able to get help earlier.
Presenter:
And every time you did it did you think ‘that will be the last time that I’ll do that’, did you feel huge remorse every time?
Florence:
Huge remorse every time, absolutely, and thinking that it wouldn’t happen again, that it would be the last time. I don’t know how long that went on for, probably about eight years.
And then I thought ‘No’ and say ‘I’m sorry Paul this is going to happen again because I can’t stop it’.
Presenter:
So what was the tipping point for you in actually getting some help?
Florence:
Firstly, deciding that I couldn’t stop it, that it wasn’t a question of me trying harder, that I needed to get help.
And then just not being able to live with the hypocrisy of it, the fact that other people wouldn’t have know that I was doing it and I knew that I was doing I, and that it was unacceptable. So the hypocrisy drove me over the barrier of my shame.
Presenter:
Right, and where did you go to sort yourself out?
Florence:
Well, I was lucky because of where I was working, a flyer came in about anger management course and so I signed up on it.
Presenter:
Now you say ‘where you were working’ and there is an irony in all of this because you were practicing as a divorce lawyer, so you must have, on a daily basis, been seeing couples who got angry with each other and were finding it difficult to deal with the relationship.
Florence:
Well, not just irony but also shame. I notice that I didn’t say that because I was working in a divorce lawyer’s office, to me that was part of the hypocrisy that I was helping other people to deal with their conflict, I was securing injunctions for people who were suffering violence but I knew that I was doing the same thing.
Presenter:
So when you went on the anger management course did you have that overwhelming sensation of relief that finally, you could say ‘this is who I am, this is what I am doing’?
Florence:
Not in terms of saying it, no I was just terrified and so upset and so ashamed. But after I’d said it then came the relief, yes. The relief because I said it because people would still talk to me and it wasn’t ‘Keep away from us you wife (husband) beater’ and because I was given tools so the relief to go on the course thinking, I wasn’t even sure that I would get any help, that was part of the problem of booking, I just thought ‘is there a solution?’ and if I try and get a solution and it doesn’t work then it’s been even more painful to be doing it, feeling completely hopeless
Presenter:
It’s very interesting Florence, that you used the term ‘wife beater’ because that’s the common thinking
Florence:
Did I say Wife Beater? That’s interesting
Presenter:
But the stigma attached to a woman hitting a man far outweighs the horrible stigma of a man hitting a woman, that must have been part of it, the fear of telling people that this is what you were doing to a bigger man.
Florence:
Oh, absolutely. The shame and embarrassment … I wasn’t listening properly because I can’t believe what I said, ‘Wife Beater’, um but I know that it was partly what was so difficult was because I am, as you can see, a petite woman.
Presenter:
You are a tiny, tiny woman
Florence:
So and I would say I am a feminine woman, not an unfeminine woman and so therefore the shock that I knew that everybody would have to react to me in a different way. So having created the secret in the first place then to say what I’d done, I knew that people were going to have to reform their view of me.
Presenter:
Did you find thought that people didn’t take your crimes as seriously as they should have done because you are a tiny woman attacking a much larger man.
Florence:
Absolutely, and that was painful for Paul, that some people laughed when it was very serious.
Presenter:
Was he ever in a very physically threatened situation? Did you really really hurt him during your fights?
Florence:
No. Did I hurt him, yes because I would say that verbal and physical violence in any way is hurtful. But of wounding him, no, or putting him in danger, no.
Presenter:
Isn’t that part of the problem of addressing women hitting men? Just the notion that you can’t be doing them, that that much damage, your fist isn’t going to be as bad as his fist would be?
Florence:
Yes I think so I think that therefore the focus is on the men’s violence to women and I think it needs to be equally on women’s violence to men, women’s violence to children, employers violence, I’m talking about verbal violence as much as physical violence to people they work with, etc, I’m passionate about it
Presenter:
Why didn’t Paul get some help earlier on, why didn’t he tell anybody what was happening?
Florence:
He didn’t get help because he didn’t think he needed help, because he never felt threatened, I didn’t use weapons, and he also, … so he didn’t think he needed help, but even if he had thought he needed help, his shame would have stopped him.
Presenter:
And how does he feel about everything being so out in the open now?
Florence:
He is pleased about it, he came to the studio with me today because he is glad it stopped and he knows that the reason it stopped is because I faced my shame and sought help so both of hope that by me talking about it other people will be able to face what they have done and are able to access help.
May I tell you something about what a client said to me this week?
Presenter:
Certainly
Florence:
He said to me, ‘by sharing what you’ve done you have shown me I am not alone and, don’t take this the wrong way’ he said, ‘that helps my self-esteem’. And helping with their self-esteem helps them to seek help.
Presenter:
Sean, one of our listeners, texted in saying that this is appalling sexism, that if this was a man we would have rightly condemned him for his violence and not invite him onto the radio, and I have to say, Sean, that in the interests of exploring the subject we would invite a man on the radio who was doing the same thing. But that is constantly the reaction, isn’t it, that the sexism involved in turning the tables makes it a more kind of complicated situation to unpick.
Florence:
Yes and I’m sorry that people condemn men who are violent, because it is not, in my experience, both as somebody who was violent and with the people that I work with, and I know that you are going to come onto the work I do now, people don’t do it because they are bad they do it because of the problems that they’ve got, the pain they’ve got, the associations their brain makes, etc. and it’s because people are labeled ‘bad’ that they find it difficult to seek help because I was afraid of being labeled ‘bad’ that I couldn’t seek help.
How does a man who thinks that people are going to call him a wife-beater, how does he seek help? I just think it is an unhelpful approach
Presenter:
So the work you do now, I mean again it’s making your own personal situation very public, isn’t it? Did you always think that you would want to carry on helping people? I mean there might be a time when you want to go ‘OK this has happened to me, I’ve dealt with it enough, you know I just kind of want to get on with my life now’?
Florence:
Ah, I certainly don’t look at it that way, no because I think that England, no doubt other parts of the world, have got a problem with recognising the seriousness of verbal, that’s my real passion, I think everybody else understands the seriousness of physical violence now, but I don’t think they understand the seriousness of verbal violence and my work as a divorce lawyer, I think there wouldn’t be so many people who get to the doors of my office if they understood how wounding words are and actually understood their own anger because I think England is very good at thinking that anger is bad rather than just a feeling and therefore squashing it and it comes out in passive aggression and people get hurt so I think that as people understand about their feelings and can accept them then they are going to be more loving in their relationships … and world peace (laughs)
Presenter:
So this is what you teach…. (laughs as well) …it’s a lovely sentiment … this is what you teach in your courses? Are they available to all or are they specifically for people who have committed acts of domestic violence?
Florence:
They are for people who would like to ‘behave’ more as they would like to, even when they are angry, Some people don’t even think they can feel anger, and they want to feel angry, some people know that they are passive-aggressive when they are angry, they do sarcastic jibes or whatever rather than coming out with it. Other people never know that they are angry.
Actually, it’s not so much for people who are violent, perhaps a domestic violence programme would be more appropriate for them, and it’s about helping people to understand why it is that they are angry, knowledge is power. Then being able to reduce the things that trigger them, reduce the level of their anger and help them to communicate wholesomely rather than aggressively when they are angry.
The interview ends with Florence
