The uncomfortable truth behind violent behaviour, is that often the victim becomes an offender, and the offender can be the victim. That man who is violent? Well, often he is an abused child who is now grown up. The woman who abuses her partner? Yes she is frequently dealing with her own traumatic experiences. We see in jail, we see it in schools, we see it across society… Hurt people, hurt people. Its undeniable that painful, abusive or traumatic experiences are often a key underlying cause behind what shapes a violent person. Almost nobody is born bad. And so the bullied becomes the bully, and the cycle of violence repeats itself and repeats itself and repeats itself. Travelling through generations of family lines, and across society like a disease. Yet this perspective is so rarely taken into account within advocacy; with nobody willing to shine a light on the uncomfortable fact that most people who are abusers, were (or are) abused themselves. So how do we break out of this binary and reductive narrative of good vs bad, and man vs woman, to address violence as a societal disease and a generational issue, with a myriad of cultural, social and environmental causes? How do we break the cycle of violence? ~ Sources – Professor Don Dutton Erin Pizzey Prison Study Bullying Images by – Mathias Reding, Bryan Woolbright, Camilo Jimenez, Dan Cristian Padure from Unsplash. #domesticviolence #domesticviolenceawareness #psychologhy #criminology

2022-10-29