the invisible violence we inherit, and then repeat
moving with violence is a symptom of internalized violence against oneself.
when I see my parents yelling, controlling, or engaging in threatening behavior because something doesn’t go their way,
I am witnessing generations of repeated self-suppression,
internalized over generations of repeated cycles of pain, trauma, and violence.
Self-suppression is suppressing your natural desires and urges,
erasing natural parts of you that make you human,
in order to fit into a rigid box of external expectations,
because it was the only way your ancestors could survive under colonial violence.
It’s putting the expectations of the outside world before your own needs.
It’s being unable to accept oneself and situations exactly as they are.
It’s dishonoring your own life force energy.
Rubbing your hands together on your knees, verbally flagellating yourself, begging for your life by screaming the opposite - PLEASE KILL ME - to someone about to slice your head off with a sword. (yes, just like in the Korean historical dramas)
Overthinking about how you acted and how other people might feel about it instead of trusting yourself to have behaved according to your own values, because they might take it personally and act harmfully towards you in retaliation.
Numbing how you feel, pushing down your emotions with mindless consumption, because you associate emptiness with not having enough compared to others and that’s shameful.
Clamping down your exhaustion and frustration in order to run around to please others and meet external demands. Disconnecting from your parasympathetic response in order to do that.
Overconsidering the feelings of others and then feeling burnt out, left behind, and utterly drained after giving and giving while getting nothing back but empty platitudes.
Giving into gaslighting from yourself or others, that how you feel doesn’t matter and you should just go ahead doing the thing that you “should” do instead of asking yourself what your heart wants to do.
Fixating on how you look from the outside to the point where you’re neglecting and exploiting the way you feel on the inside.
Each time you put the needs of an ever demanding outside world over your own, you are betraying yourself.
Each time you don’t choose yourself, your relationship with yourself, your sense of self-trust, shrivels up a little.
Each time your self-trust is harmed, you may find yourself moving in unconscious, harmful ways, projecting the violence that has been projected onto you into the world.
I share these reflections as I’ve been moving through a painful awakening to the ways in which I perpetuate the bitter generational patterns my ancestors had to adopt in order to survive when it was physically unsafe for them to move through life guided by ease and trust.
The good news is, you don’t have to keep repeating the cycle.
It starts by choosing yourself, in however incrementally small decisions:
Choosing to take a slow long inhale and a slower longer exhale before responding to a raised voice pressuring for, demanding an answer.
Taking time to tend to your body, feeling fully your emotions with the support of tools like your breath, meditation, journaling, yoga, or qi gong.
Actively turning towards uplifting sources of energy that nourish you, replenish you, and speak to your soul.
Of course, this is easier said than done in a world that continues to move as fast-paced as it does, and we can only honor that we are doing the best we can.
May you be filled with compassion for yourself today as you navigate everything that is in front of you.
You are loved beyond your wildest comprehension.
You are doing an incredible job.
Everything will be OK.
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