Male Domestic Abuse...a taboo topic that needs to be highlighted. The men who come to therapy having suffered domestic abuse can present as ashamed and de-masculated. Society as a whole needs to stop the attitude that men cannot be victims of DV. The clients I have worked with have felt that they should not come forward for fear of being judged as "weak" or "exaggerating" about the abuse, fear of not being believed, stripped of their manhood and made to feel guilty for "being not good enough". I had a client who tolerated the abuse for 48 years before he realised that if he did not get out alive whilst he could, he may come out in a coffin. Extreme I hear you say... but to him it was very real. Thanks to therapy, he was able to build on his self-esteem, confidence, find his identity(he felt stripped of that too), more importantly, he felt alive again.

Let's break the silence and speak up...men matter too.