The wheel of violence.

all of us--men and women alike--have experienced violence of some kind. All too often, we see it first in our own families or witness it in the families of others. Maybe a father shakes his son to quiet him, a sister hits a younger brother, a child gets beat up after school. Not every family contains violence, of course; however, family violence exists on a sort of continuum. Near one end, a mother may yell, "If you don't shut up I'm going to stop this car right now and rip your tongue out!" (I actually heard this once.) At the other end of the continuum, there is the severe violence or even death we so often see reported in the daily news, such as in the Susan Smith or Menendez brothers cases.

Parents often use violence or the threat of violence to make a point. "I told you not to go out into the street!" they yell, perhaps accompanied by spanking or yanking arms. Some young people are told that they deserve such punishment, that "it's for their own good" This is confusing: how can an accident like spilling milk warrant a beating? "If they love me, why are they hitting me?" the child rightfully wonders. Young people are very sensitive, and to them it feels terrifying to suppose that at any moment their parents might turn on them in rage.

In addition to family violence, television contributes to a mind-set of violence. There is a growing debate in society concerning the relationship of television violence to societal violence. Although this relationship is hard to pinpoint, the fact is that most young people in this country watch an enormous amount of television, during which they see many acts of violence. One can hardly flip channels without witnessing a murder, beating, or sexual assault. News programs are chronicles of violent events. Even cartoons and video games are violent.

We all tend to take out our pain on others to one degree or another, even if only in fantasy. We do not do this because we are inhuman; rather, we do this because we want help with whatever we are dealing with, so we "bring it up again," so to speak. We also do it because terror is hard to live with. We feel powerless and helpless when terrified, and we want to get rid of this feeling. Acting out on another makes us temporarily feel more in charge--though, of course, this is an illusion; we are never less in control than when acting out violence. Again, loving attention would enable us to safely release the terror of violence, but such attention is rarely available in the "don't feel" society we have all helped to construct.

Many of us opt not to act out on others; instead, we turn terror and rage and humiliation onto ourselves, which is just as unfortunate. For example, some of us become accident prone or reckless to the point of endangering our lives. Some of us talk to ourselves in the most vicious manner. Others enter abusive relationships. Are tattoos and body piercing a form of self-hurt? Have you ever destroyed your artwork, writing, or other creative things? There is a myth that men are violent and women are not. This is simply not true. Women in general are just a little less likely to turn it on another and a little more likely to turn it inward, through fantasy, negative self-talk, and so on.

I'd like to point out that, as violent as the world literally is with all the domestic abuse, murder, and warfare, and as horrendous as any individual violent event actually is, the world is still not anywhere near as violent (at least for most of us in this country) as we imagine it is. By this I mean that our accumulated fear of violence is much greater than our actual experience of it.

For example, on June 1, 1989, I was raped at knife-point. This was a traumatic event that took me, a year to recover from; even today, at times, I must work on it. Yet the fact is that this happened to me once. Out of the whole year, I was raped on one day in 1989 and on the other 364 days I wasn't (not that other, less hurtful things did not occur on some other days). Most of the time life is relatively safe for me, whether or not I can notice this, partly because I arrange my life and my relationships to provide love and security.

Why, then, did I take so long to recover? Well, a big hurt does take a lot of time to heal from, and there is no "right" length of time for recovery from anything. But, too, I wasn't just recovering from that one event. The rape reminded me of other countless events from childhood on that I was dragging along with me and hadn't yet released fully. Again, I am not denying that some people do experience violence daily, such as those participating or victimized in war. And any woman who chooses not to war. And any woman knows the daily fear of violence (which is actually a kind of terrorism). I just wanted to make the point that the fear of violence is often out of proportion to the experience.

This fear is very intense. We are naturally afraid of being physically hurt, and that is why violence is the glue that holds various kinds of oppression in place. The threat of being harmed is always there, and so many of us just come to ignore various abuses. We become numb. A great many of us are held in place by this generalized terror of violence.

Unhealed violence is a kind of knife that slices people apart from one another. Violence erases humanity. Violence makes us fear and mistrust whole groups of people. One reason violence isolates is because personal violence makes us ashamed. We feel ashamed to have hurt another, and we feel ashamed to have been a victim of violence. A beating feels shameful and humiliating, and the survivor often internalizes that he or she (or the group) somehow deserved it. Witnessing violence often feels shameful as well, especially if we feel powerless to interrupt. Plus, violence is often a family secret. Getting close to others might mean that they will find out. Thus, the more violence we witness or experience, the more shame we are likely to feel, and the emotion tends to make us want to hide. Shame is such an uncomfortable emotion that we go to great lengths to avoid it. The result is often painful isolation and patterns of quietness, invisibility, shyness, and other hiding behaviors. The very thing we need to talk about in order to heal instead gets buried deeper and deeper.

I have been able to experience first hand how violence separates people. After I was raped, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. The man who attacked me was of a particular ethnic heritage. And I noticed immediately after this incident that any person of that heritage would immediately remind me of the rape, and I would feel very scared. I knew this was unreasonable, but I couldn't seem to help it, given certain attitudes that my culture has instilled in me over the years.

Fortunately, I was able to release a great deal of my terror instead of storing it. After a few weeks, I was able to see that only men of that heritage seemed scary; women did not. I also started to notice that very young people and elderly people of that heritage did not seem scary. Slowly over the ensuing weeks, partly because I consciously worked on overcoming these feelings, I gradually noticed that most men of that group were not scary either but fine human beings very much like me--people okay to talk with and to get to know. Sometimes people still seem scary to me (possibly I still have some work to do), but now they might be male or female or any age, religion, or race. I was able to work through my irrational feelings about an entire group, thanks to having a healing outlet for my terror. I am free to continue with warm, caring relationships.

But what if I hadn't? What if I had no resource to deal with this rape or was unwilling to receive help? Many people are so traumatized by an event--be it rape or incest or warfare or whatever--that they repress at any cost. How easy it could be then to hate an entire group of people. I myself temporarily took a single incident involving an individual and pasted it onto an entire group of people. I did not do this actively; rather, I avoided contact. Other people might have acted out more vigorously. Propaganda creates a similar situation--hatred is stoked so that individuals become blurred into one mass enemy.

Likewise, the rapist did not see me as a person either. If he did see me as human, he would not have attacked me. Who knows what violent incident sparked his attack? I was caught up in a long chain of violence, perhaps generations long.

Whether you are a perpetrator or a victim, violence takes its toll. Something terrible had to happen to even the most vicious among us to make us want even to consider hurting another. For example, nearly every rapist can recall atrocious stories of rape or physical abuse in their own histories, which they later act out on others. Although some people have been damaged to the point of no remorse--and thus really are a menace to society--most of us feel terrible about the ways in which we have hurt others. Such feelings also get stored as shame and keep us further, apart.

Our system of incarceration for crime fails miserably exactly because it is a system of punishment. People need to accept responsibility for the crimes they commit, and some people are so dangerous that they must be removed from mainstream society. But the criminal-justice system does everything it can to blame, shame, ridicule, beat down, and break the spirit of people who have broken the law, while it does little or nothing to relieve the stored feelings of terror and rage that helped cause the crime in the first place. In fact, through policies of ridicule and violence, and through the violence that prisoners act out upon themselves as a group, incarceration adds to the accumulation of stored feelings. The experience of being locked up increases personal isolation and drives an even deeper wedge between "us" and "them."

Many people who have had friends and family members hurt through violence understandably want the perpetrators to pay and pay dearly for the crime, especially if the crime caused death. But at the same time, prison populations serve as a socially acceptable dumping ground for society's stored violence. Perhaps this explains our popular fascination with ever more draconian forms of punishment; after all, they deserve it, right? How vividly we can imagine and hope for the cold sword of justice--or have we found a captive audience on which to vent our own stored feelings of violence?

While there are many theories on how to deal with those who commit crimes, the system as it is set up now simply doesn't work. Most people leave the prisons and jails in worse shape than when they entered, though fortunately some are able to recover and turn their lives around. However, most offenders will continue to commit crimes, sometimes the day they are released, because nowhere along the way is much attention given to dealing with the underlying causes, which relate not only to violence but to economics as well. Given the set-up we have today, continued violent crime is inevitable. No wonder our prisons are bursting at the seams.

I've talked about how unhealed violence causes people to act out on themselves or others, but this does not happen all the time. Often we store our violence and employ coping mechanisms to help us keep it stored until we can get some attention for healing and releasing. This is the purpose of addictions.

Addictions are coping mechanisms to control stored feelings and can range from alcohol abuse to chronic overeating, intellectualizing, or criticism.

Then, too, although I have been speaking about the terror of violence, there are other emotions involved as well. Grief and guilt are two examples. When a loved one is harmed by violence or our homes are broken into and favorite things stolen, we feel grief, outrage, and an assortment of other emotions. These also need to be released or they will be stored, acted out, or coped with in a variety of unhealthy ways.

Violence is so painful to witness, to endure, or even to perpetrate that frequently we find ways to numb ourselves to its effects. Again, this is the purpose of addictions. We find ways to separate ourselves from the pain so that we can go on with life. Frequently we do this by "forgetting" that it ever happened. Many incest survivors suppress memories of their abuse for 20 or 30 years. But the problem with "forgetting" is that we throw out whole chunks of ourselves in the process.

Sometimes instead of forgetting an event, we just forget the feelings associated with it. As a result, we become emotionally neutral. As a lay counselor, I once worked with a woman who recalled a date rape in a tone so matter-of-fact that she might have been giving me a recipe. Feelings associated with the event were so terrifying, she appeared to have erased them. The problem was, she tended to erase all her feelings about everything, and such emotional control was severely limiting her relationships. She was not only numb to the point of painlessness; she was numb to the point of joylessness as well. She was certain that, if she let a strong feeling surface and come out, it would unleash a neverending flood of emotion that she would not be able to control. Fortunately, she had the courage to persist.

Sometimes our minds remember and our emotions are available but our bodies "forget " When this happens, body awareness is low. There may be little physical sensation, a high threshold for physical pain, or a sense that the body is strange and alien. Again, body numbness not only blocks out the trauma of physical pain; it tends to block out all sensation, such as hunger or fullness or even ill health.

Although numbness insulates one from the effects of uncomfortable events, it has many destructive side effects. When people are not aware of how they are affected, they don't notice how others are affected either. Thus there is little empathy for others. Relationships tend to be rather flat. We don't notice or care when we hurt others. Such a climate is ripe for continued violence.

I've already discussed how violence limits our ability to remember and feel, as well as our ability to trust and form close relationships with others. In a very real sense, violence stunts our personal growth. Violence makes us fearful and, the more fearful we are, the less we are willing to take risks, the less we want to explore, and the less we are willing to learn. Witnessing or experiencing violence makes us feel weak, afraid, and powerless. This is true whether we are a perpetrator or victim. Feeling afraid and powerless in one situation can quickly spread to feeling afraid and powerless in related situations. Eventually, we can become paralyzed in entire areas of living.

These areas of living may seem to have no apparent connection. For example, on a given day, I may not feel able to write. What does this have to do with violence? Possibly nothing. But on the other hand, one way I dealt with violence in my own life was to become as invisible as possible. The more I write, the more "visible" I feel, especially as I publish. Thus writing at all tends to push my comfort zone. The days I can't seem to write may be days I still want to feel invisible. Why do I still feel a need for invisibility? Probably because I still have stored feelings around violence. And so it goes, like a slow turning wheel.

One significant way out of this neverending cycle is to provide and get good attention so that the release process can begin. Listening relationships that support emotional release are one of the safest and most effective places to do this type of work. This work is not only useful; it is imperative.

When you choose to listen to someone speak about violence, remember that it isn't happening now to either of you. Be willing to hear that story as many times as necessary for the stored emotions to be released.

Lastly, it is useful to remember that we've all hurt others at one time or another, violently or not. All of us need to remember the gentleness and goodness that is at the heart of who we are. We need to remind each other about what we are doing right. And if we have been victimized, we can learn to stand up for ourselves and once again assert personal power.

There is nothing too difficult about listening to another human being speak about fears, hopes, dreams, and traumas. An ability to be there for another is part of our human equipment. As more and more survivors find the courage to use listening resources to uncover buried outrage, the escalation of violence will finally cease. This process takes time, but I have the greatest hope that one day we will interrupt all incidents of violence. Everywhere.

Kathy Sitarski has worked as a peer counselor in Blooming, ton, Indiana, helping people to deal with the trauma of violence. This article is adapted from a book she is coauthoring on women's issues.