A Hidden Child Called Violence

“Violence is the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development or deprivation.”

-WHO-

There are different forms of violence.

Domestic violence, violence at work, physical violence, violence caused on emotional levels, violence against women or children, sexual violence and a dozen more types, but the violence I want to talk about is a type that not many of us are not aware of: the violence we commit towards ourselves.

I have been observing myself recently for quite a while and I realised, I am committing a lot of violence against myself. We all do and we are not at all aware of it.

Observing the way we treat ourselves defines our self-value and it starts with the first moment when we get up in the morning and goes on until we lie down to sleep.

The devil is in the detail.

It is in the kind of food we eat, the friends and people we surround ourselves with, the job we do to earn a living, the sports and hobbies we spend our free time with and also the partner we share our love and sex-life with (by the way, sex actually is a very vulnerable moment as it has the subtle but powerful act of penetration http://jamiecatto.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/the-vulnerability-of-penetration/)

My self-observation weeks indeed were very interesting.

It started off in the morning with the fact that I refrained from having breakfast, which meant I kept my body off energy sources but I downed about 4 coffees. My heart thought we’re going off for a trip on a MAYDAY rave.

On my way to work I already had thought about how fat I had become, thinking not the best thoughts about myself and how lazy I had become since I wasn’t surfing anymore. Having arrived at work with a full load of self-hatred about my sport-attitude I gulfed down a chocolate croissant and because it felt like it had fallen through my stomach instantly, I just gulfed down a second one.

Great, I had thought, 500kcal and not a single vitamin, there I was again, pouting over my stupidity.

I also liked the way I was planning a 1h run and some yoga after work but ended up going to the Chiringuito having 3 sunset beers and instead of going home to cook something nice, I decided to stay out, ordered a dodgy baguette and downed another Tinto De Verano.

Only that week I had realised, I’d been actually drinking every day, even if it was just one drink to socialise.

Then, another evening I found myself trying to watch a movie with some friends and before I knew what was happening I was sat in between 3 smokers, blowing their drug-fume into my face and watching a movie full of violence and non-sense conversations. And funnily, instead of leaving, I tried to drink that situation beautiful (others drink their boyfriends beautiful, lol) and joined the destructive round with another drink.

There are more moments like that and I can’t even count them because when going into detail it would take a whole book. It also includes the way we think about ourselves and the way we speak and we really do have an incredibly awful way of talking bad about our abilities, our physical appearance and our character. If I asked you what you would love to change about yourself, there will be at least 3 things popping up in your mind instantly. Answering the question about what you love about yourself will probably take a bit longer to answer.

But what I have realised and want to share with you is, that it is incredible, how often we all commit violence against ourselves.

How often I go against my nature, against my health and against my own person and my needs.

To commit violence against ourselves means we don’t respect ourselves, non-respect means non-love – it means hatred and ignorance.

But, I was wondering why we do commit that much violence against ourselves.

What is violence?

I think, that unexpressed, bottled-up and un-dealt anger is what causes violence in the first place, whether the violence is actively committed or passively.

Anger itself is a big issue, but basically I think that anger is a form of frustration. Frustration and tension is created when i.e. our needs don’t get fulfilled, our expectations correlate with reality, when ideas in the real world aren’t met etc.

In general, all this tension and frustration bottled-up and not properly dealt with leads to anger and whenever anger turns inwards it leads to violence in any kind of form.

I think, that the self-harm we commit and aren’t aware of is a very important issue, because it is hard to love and treat others well if we don’t learn to love and treat ourselves positively.

I myself have learned as a child and later at school how to violate my own nature; to violate my needs and my health for the sake of others’ approval, in order to fit in and make others happy and meet their expectations – their ideas about me.

But what I haven’t learned is to love myself and to care for myself and to care for my health and to care for my spirit.

How to surround myself only with people who live healthy, have a healthy drive to follow their bliss in live. How to talk nice about my abilities and to concentrate only on doing the things I love in life, rather than fighting and suffering for things I don’t like for the sake to make others happy.

What is the opposite of violence I am wondering?

I reckon, one might call it COMPASSION or even LOVE.

To me now after these 2 weeks of self-observation I am quite devastated about the way I treat myself and I think I will have to work hard to cultivate compassion, tolerance, patience and forgiveness for myself.

And to find out where my inward turned anger comes from and to deal with it properly, because I know from experience that anger isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it can give us energy to understand ourselves and thrive for better.

I always have a choice.

We all do and we make the choice in our minds before we actually act.

But we all do always have a choice and at the moment I feel I don’t want to choose AGAINST myself anymore.

I want to start choosing FOR myself.

We all are beautiful beings and each one of us deserves much better than we allow.

So take you some time and LOVE yourself, take a look into the mirror and simply smile.

:D