The Violence Within Us

31/08/2008 by Ellie at TFP.

I have been reflecting a lot on how much violence has been reported in the news recently.

Violence against women: in Sudan, Afghanistan and Domestic Violence

Violence against men: interrogation techniques

Violence at home and abroad: a young Honeymoon couple murdered in the Caribean; a young Arab boy killed in Hastings.

There is so much that at times I feel quite overwhelmed by it.

Unfortunately I can also see that it does not take much to switch on the violence in me!  I can easily go from being in a calm zen state to being a screaming banshee.

Society’s response is often to try to resolve the situation by resorting to restrictions: …..this should not be allowed or there should be a law against this……. and indeed the main response of the government to knife crime is to talk of stiffer penalties.

The increase in electronic messaging in our society means that we can be less aware of how our behaviour impacts on those around us.  This may go some way to explaining the levels of violence we see around us.

If I am feeling vulnerable my instinct is to lash out (in my case verbally).  On reflection I invariably see that my response was over the top and also that I reacted to my perception of a situation and this perception was based on my assumption of what I thought the other person was doing or thinking!  .

But, most importantly, this assumption would be heavily dependent on how on I was feeling at the time of the interaction rather than on fact!  At Talking for Peace we continually emthasise the importance of self-awareness in relation to our feelings.  If we hit the pause button before reacting we are more likely to get a resolution to our perceived threats rather than attracting an aggressive reaction in return

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