Talking the Middle Ground: Working with Distorted Thinking Without Colluding or Escalating

 

Mā te kōrero, ka ora. Through conversation comes wellbeing.

I want to sit with that whakataukī for a moment, because it carries a real challenge for those of us who work with men who use violence. Conversation is our medium. But some conversations are harder than others. And some of the hardest ones happen in the split-second when a man says something distorted, harmful, or resistant, and we have to decide what to do with it.

This is the territory I have been thinking and teaching about for a long time now. A colleague Rodney Vlais has coined this ‘The Middle Ground’. It has been a central construct in motivational interviewing practice.

The Split-Second Decision

Picture the scene. You are in a session. A man says something that stops the room. Maybe he minimises what he did. Maybe he blames her. Maybe he justifies the violence by pointing to his upbringing, his mental health, his use of substances. The room freezes. You have a second to choose.

Most of us feel the pull in two directions. We can challenge him directly, name the distortion, push back. Or we can let it slide, stay in the relationship, keep the session moving.

Both of those moves carry risk. And most practitioners know it.

When we challenge head-on, we risk rupture. He digs in. He starts rehearsing his own position out loud, polishing the argument, building his defence. Every direct push against the distortion can actually deepen it. This is what motivational interviewing researchers call sustain talk rehearsal. We have all seen it. The more we argue, the more articulate his counter-argument becomes. We feel like we have made him accountable. We have done the opposite.

When we let it slide, we risk collusion. We have implicitly agreed that the story he is telling is acceptable. He leaves the session feeling validated, with no reason to think differently.

The middle ground is the third option. Both feet planted. Relationship and accountability held at the same time, neither one abandoned.

Three Stances

Over the years I have come to think of practitioner responses as sitting somewhere on a line between two traps.

The collusive trap looks like becoming matey with the man, empathising with his victim stance, signalling agreement with sexist comments even subtly, or avoiding the tension of raising difficult issues altogether. He feels validated. He does not need to take responsibility or think differently.

The persecutory trap looks like butting horns, no empathy, no curiosity about his life or the oppression and trauma he has faced, and an inability to manage our own internal reactions. We might moralize. We might think we are holding him accountable. The research suggests we are doing the opposite. He stays in defensive mode and never has to think differently.

The middle ground sits between these. Respectful. Empathises selectively, and not with violence-supporting narratives. Curious in tone, not moralising. Sympathetic to the oppression and trauma he has faced, without using those things as an excuse for his behaviour. And holding the safety of those affected by his violence at the centre of everything.

We Are All Storytellers

Before we can work well with distorted thinking in others, I think we need to understand something about how all of us, practitioners included, construct the stories we tell about our own lives.

I sometimes ask people in training to think of a time they had a falling out with someone. What did they say to themselves about the conflict, about the other person behaviour, about their own? Who did they choose to talk to about it? And what did they leave in, and what did they leave out, in the re-telling?

The honest answer, for most of us, is that we chose someone who we knew would be sympathetic. We shaped the story to make ourselves look reasonable. We left out the parts that complicated the picture.

Men who use violence are doing the same thing. Their story passes through reception, perception, and interpretation before it ever reaches us. By the time they open their mouth, the narrative has been shaped and reshaped to make it liveable. The voices most often left out are the people most affected: partners, children, others who have been harmed.

Understanding this does not mean we agree with the distortion. It means we understand why it exists, and we can work with it more skillfully.

A Three-Step Response

When a man says something distorted or harmful, I find it useful to work through three moves.

The first is to understand, reframe, and reflect. Show that you heard what was said, and gently move it. The aim is not to correct him, but to reflect something back that opens a door rather than closes one.

The second is to invite accountability and get buy-in. Make space for a different posture. A genuine invitation, not a confrontation.

The third is to move the conversation forward. Motivational interviewing is directional, not directive. We are always going somewhere. The goal is not to win an argument in the room. The goal is movement toward whānau/family wellbeing.

Let me give you an example. A man says: “I inherited my dad’s temper.” The collusive response validates that framing entirely. The persecutory response challenges it directly. The middle ground might look like this: “You know what violence is like from the inside. You have thought deeply about why you act this way. That must have been hard for you and for others in your whānau. Given that legacy was passed onto you, how open are you to exploring ways to disrupt the pattern?”

Affirm. Empathise. Invite.

Another example: “I can’t remember what happened, I was out of it on drugs.” The middle ground response might be: “When you take drugs, you can’t guarantee others around you are safe. What worries you most about being unsafe at those times? How interested would you be in looking at strategies for when this comes up again?”

Reframe. Appeal to ethics. Invite focus.

In both cases, the distortion is neither accepted nor attacked but instead worked with.

The Question We Keep Coming Back To

One of the questions I find most useful in this work is this: how are these thoughts, feelings, or behaviours taking me closer to, or further away from, family wellbeing?

It is a simple question. It is also a confronting one. And that is exactly why it belongs in the middle ground. It does not accuse. It does not moralise. It invites the man to locate himself on a path and to take some responsibility for which direction he is heading.

That is the work. That is what we are trying to do every time we sit across from someone who has caused real harm and is not yet ready to fully own it.

Holding the Space

In a polarised world, the middle ground is under pressure. There is a pull toward clear camps: with survivors or with users of domestic, family and sexualised violence, challenging or colluding, confronting or enabling. Those binaries feel safe. They feel principled. But the research, and my experience over forty years of this work, tells me they are not effective.

Holding the middle ground is not a soft option. It takes more skill, more self-awareness, and more discipline than either of the alternatives. It requires us to manage our own reactions, to empathise without colluding, to challenge without persecuting, and to keep the safety of those who have been harmed at the centre of everything we do.

Mā te kōrero, ka ora.

That is what we are aiming for. Through conversation, wellbeing. But only if we have the courage to hold the space well.

 

 

Published on Wednesday, June 17th, 2026, under Motivational Interviewing, What Ken thinks

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