Behaviour Hurts Quotes

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain.

Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that’s not what love is all about. Loving behaviour doesn’t grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn’t hurt, it feels good. Loving behaviour nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.

Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male ruling class and femininity is the behaviour of the subordinate class of women. Thus gender can have no place in the egalitarian future that feminism aims to create.

About the expression "Hurt people, hurt people".. Hurt people are not going to stop HURTING other people until they receive the memo that it is WRONG, (or if there are actual consequences for their behaviour.) Feeling sorry for them and understanding where they 'came from' is not helping to stop the cycle of abuse.

They were not asked to adhere to the same rules. If there were countless guidelines women had to follow; cover your drink, stick close to others, don't wear short skirts. Their behaviour was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. When did it become our job to do all the preventing and managing? And if houses existed where many girls got hurt, shouldn't we hold guys to a higher standard instead of reprimanding the girl? Why was passing out considered more reprehensible than fingering the passed out person?

Judge no one until you know their circumstances. No matter how awful they seemed, sometimes there was a valid reason for their behaviour. Granted, some people were just mean and corrupt, but not always. Many people were just in pain, and by acting out, they were only trying to protect themselves from being hurt more.

But your fear is not only hurting me, it's hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be. Consider how often you have dismissed your own appearance, behaviours, emotions, and aspirations for being too feminine or masculine. What might your life be if you didn't impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?

The only way to understand the reason behind someone's hurtful behaviour is - Understanding that every action is driven by an underlying emotion. Emotions especially the negative one's are our reactions to the conflict between our beliefs and reality. The influence of these negative emotions, causes us to act in ways that hurt others. So if someone hurts you, it actually indicates that they have an unsatisfied need or a wound that needs attention.

If your mother lived your life as though it were her own-never allowing you a moment of stress or frustration, routinely sleeping in your bed when you had a bad dream, never setting limits or establishing boundaries, seldom or never letting you out of her sight, excusing and failing to provide consequences for your negative or hurtful behaviour, insisting on a daily chronicle of every detail of your life, all in the name of maternal love-then you never had to grow up and take responsibility for your actions. You remain a child.

Hurting excellence is one way in which mediocrity gives itself the moments of pleasure.

You know, anger has a bad rap,” I ventured. “Anger is the fuel you use to drive up feelings of hurt and pain from your unconscious. It’s how people tell others that they’re displeased with their behaviour.

I don’t reply. Surely Tucker wouldn’t bring someone back to a room knowing that I’ll be in the bed too, first shot. He wouldn’t do anything with her after last night, this morning and this afternoon, second shot. Although he is all over her and has been since we got here, third shot. Maybe I didn’t drop my knickers quick enough, fourth shot. He’s probably laughing at me for everything I told him about the dream and stuff I wince and slam the now empty jager bomb glass down.

Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the individual or their behaviour? It’s possible to rule a passion, but an obsessive passion that a person is unable to rule is an addiction. And the addiction is the repeated behaviour that a person keeps engaging in, even though he knows it harms himself or others. How it looks externally is irrelevant. The key issue is a person’s internal relationship to the passion and its related behaviours. If in doubt, ask yourself one simple question: given the harm you’re doing to yourself and others, are you willing to stop? If not, you’re addicted. And if you’re unable to renounce the behaviour or to keep your pledge when you do, you’re addicted. There is, of course, a deeper, more ossified layer beneath any kind of addiction: the denial state in which, contrary to all reason and evidence, you refuse to acknowledge that you’re hurting yourself or anyone else. In the denial state you’re completely resistant to asking yourself any questions at all. But if you want to know, look around you. Are you closer to the people you love after your passion has been fulfilled or more isolated? Have you come more truly into who you really are or are you left feeling hollow?

Nobody joins the NHS looking for plaudits or expecting a gold star or a biscuit every time they do a good job, but you'd think it might be basic psychology (and common sense) to occasionally acknowledge, if not reward, good behaviour to get the most out of your staff.

The sudden and uncalled for coldness with which you treated me just before I left last night, both surprised and deeply hurt me - surprised because I could not have believed that such sullen and inflexible obstinacy could exist in the breast of any girl in whose heart love had found place; and hurt me, because I feel for you more than I have ever professed and feel a slight from you more than I care to tell. My object in writing to you is this: if hasty temper produces this strange behaviour, acknowledge it when I give you the opportunity - not once or twice, but again and again. If a feeling of you know not what - a capricious restlessness of you can't tell what, and a desire to tease, you don't know why, give rise to it - overcome it; it will never make you more amiable, I more fond or either of us, more happy. Depend upon it, whatever be the cause of your unkindness - whatever gives rise to these wayward fancies - that what you do not take the trouble to conceal from a Lover's eyes, will be frequently acted before those of a husband's. I know as well, as if I were by your side at this moment, that your present impulse on reading this letter is one of anger - pride perhaps, or to use a word more current with your sex - 'spirit'. My dear girl, I have not the most remote intention of awakening any such feeling, and I implore you, not to entertain it for an instant.... I have written these few lines in haste, but not anger.... If you knew but half the anxiety with which I watched your recent illness, the joy with which I hailed your recovery, and the eagerness with which I would promote your happiness, you could more readily understand the extent of the pain so easily inflicted, but so difficult to be forgotten. - Excerpts from a letter by Charles Dickens to his fiancee of three weeks, 1835

Dear Jessa, I’ve started this letter so many times and I’ve never been able to finish it. So here goes again . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Riley is dead. I’m sorry for ignoring your emails and for not being there for you. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish it had been me that died and not Riley. If I could go back in time and change everything I would. I’m sorry I left without a word. There’s no excuse for my behaviour but please know that it had nothing to do with you. I was a mess. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone for months. And I felt too guilty and didn’t know how to tell you the truth about what happened. I couldn’t bear the thought of you knowing. I got all your emails but I didn’t read them until last week. I couldn’t face it and I guess that makes me the biggest coward you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never replied. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I don’t even know how to ask your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it. I’m just glad you’re doing better. I’m better too. I’ve started seeing a therapist – twice a week – you’d like her. She reminds me of Didi. I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who needed therapy, but they made it a condition of me keeping my job. She’s helped me a lot with getting the panic attacks under control. Working in a room the size of a janitor’s closet helps too – there aren’t too many surprises, only the occasional rogue paperclip. I asked for the posting. I have to thank your dad ironically. The demotion worked out. Kind of funny that I totally get where your father was coming from all those years. Looks like I’ll be spending the remainder of my marine career behind a desk, but I’m OK with that. I don’t know what else to say, Jessa. My therapist says I should just write down whatever comes into my head. So here goes. Here’s what’s in my head . . . I miss you. I love you. Even though I long ago gave up the right to any sort of claim over you, I can’t stop loving you. I won’t ever stop. You’re in my blood. You’re the only thing that got me through this, Jessa. Because even during the bad times, the worst times, the times I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping, the times I’d think the only way out was by killing myself and just having it all go away, I’d think of you and it would pull me back out of whatever dark place I’d fallen into. You’re my light, Jessa. My north star. You asked me once to come back to you and I told you I always would. I’m working on it. It might take me a little while, and I know I have no right to ask you to wait for me after everything I’ve done, but I’m going to anyway because the truth is I don’t know how to live without you. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. So please, I’m asking you to wait for me. I’m going to come back to you. I promise. And I’m going to make things right. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll never stop trying for the rest of my life to make things right between us. I love you. Always. Kit

Sometimes what we imagine is much worse than reality. When people stop communicating their feelings to each other it becomes much easier to hold back. When something happens that you'd usually tell your wife or husband it becomes difficult because you're no longer talking as openly as you once were. Soon you start to withhold more and more from one another, holding less intimate conversations, until eventually you begin to appear secretive, hostile even. Passive recipients of each others behaviour, rather than active partners. One day you wake up full of resentment and bitterness. You want your wife to pay, take responsibility for their part in making you feel this way. You want to hurt them.

Transgenderism depends for its very existence on the idea that there is an ‘essence’ of gender, a psychology and pattern of behaviour, which is suited to persons with particular bodies and identities.This is the opposite of the feminist view, which is that the idea of gender is the foundation of the political system of male domination. ‘Gender’, in traditional patriarchal thinking, ascribes skirts, high heels and a love of unpaid domestic labour to those with female biology, and comfortable clothing, enterprise and initiative to those with male biology. In the practice of transgenderism, traditional gender is seen to lose its sense of direction and end up in the minds and bodies of persons with inappropriate body parts that need to be corrected. But without ‘gender’, transgenderism could not exist. From a critical, feminist point of view, when transgender rights are inscribed into law and adopted by institutions, they instantiate ideas that are harmful to women’s equality and give authority to outdated notions of essential differences between the sexes. Transgenderism is indeed transgressive, but of women’s rights rather than an oppressive social system.

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden — but it’s there. The effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain.

anger has a bad reputation. It’s a negotiation device that helps us stand up for ourselves, to say, in effect, “Get off my turf; you’re stomping on my sense of self. Stop crossing into my backyard.” Then it’s up to the other person to deal with your anger—to decide whether it’s a legitimate problem that requires a change in his or her behaviour. “Your mother was hurt, and then she considered it, and she hasn’t mentioned her ‘mother fantasy’ since,” I said. I emphasized that anger is a signal that someone wants to be treated differently, which is healthy; cruelty is when someone deliberately wants to hurt someone else.

The sour old cow gave me a sum much more difficult than any I had encountered before: say, a four-digit number divided by a three-digit number. I guessed how to do it, and got it wrong. Without offering help, she told me to do it again. I failed a second time; she warned me to try hard; I did; I failed again; and she told me to hold my hand out and, grasping it firmly, she caned the palm three times, hard. My first reaction was astonishment: none of my kindergartens had been Catholic establishments, so I was unprepared for this kind of assault. Then it hurt, a lot! My precious palm! When I first started having therapy twenty-five years later, this was one of the first traumas I recalled, and I was astonished at the power of the feelings that came flooding back: anger—no, fury; self-pity; humiliation; a deep, deep sense of hurt; and a pure indignation at not so much the unfairness, but the insanity of punishing someone physically for getting an answer wrong. It is terrifying how much of this deeply unkind, utterly pointless, in fact, mind-bogglingly COUNTERPRODUCTIVE kind of behaviour was meted out to children over the centuries by half-witted, power-crazed zombies like this heinous old bat—a large proportion of such psychopaths allegedly acting in the name of an all-loving God. (A

I’m always talking about the internet and what’s happening now, so cancel culture is something I’m interested in as a phenomenon, but I don’t want it to come across like I’m butt-hurt about it because, honestly, I don’t really care. Because what is cancelling? People start a social media account and once they get more than 300 followers they can’t see their audience as anything but an audience, something to be performed to — which is why you get the weird thing of your mate who works in a brewery talking on Facebook like he’s talking to a packed convention centre. When you’re performing to an audience, the only human inclination is to be the benevolent protagonist. You’d never assume the role of the antagonist — that’s why trolls exist with anonymity. People who actually put themselves out there, online, their role is to be the good guy. We’re not aware of the solipsism of this behaviour because we’re all doing it. So once a week, culture generates a baddie so all the good guys can go: ‘Look how good I am in opposition to how bad he is.’ And the reason we forget about whatever morally [dubious] thing that person has done a week later is because we don’t care. It’s all literally a performance. There’s a purposeful removal of context in order to seem virtuous that happens so constantly that people can’t even be arsed.

Wild animals enjoying one another and taking pleasure in their world is so immediate and so real, yet this reality is utterly absent from textbooks and academic papers about animals and ecology. There is a truth revealed here, absurd in its simplicity. This insight is not that science is wrong or bad. On the contrary: science, done well, deepens our intimacy with the world. But there is a danger in an exclusively scientific way of thinking. The forest is turned into a diagram; animals become mere mechanisms; nature's workings become clever graphs. Today's conviviality of squirrels seems a refutation of such narrowness. Nature is not a machine. These animals feel. They are alive; they are our cousins, with the shared experience kinship implies. And they appear to enjoy the sun, a phenomenon that occurs nowhere in the curriculum of modern biology. Sadly, modern science is too often unable or unwilling to visualize or feel what others experience. Certainly science's "objective" gambit can be helpful in understanding parts of nature and in freeing us from some cultural preconceptions. Our modern scientific taste for dispassion when analyzing animal behaviour formed in reaction to the Victorian naturalists and their predecessors who saw all nature as an allegory confirming their cultural values. But a gambit is just an opening move, not a coherent vision of the whole game. Science's objectivity sheds some assumptions but takes on others that, dressed up in academic rigor, can produce hubris and callousness about the world. The danger comes when we confuse the limited scope of our scientific methods with the true scope of the world. It may be useful or expedient to describe nature as a flow diagram or an animal as a machine, but such utility should not be confused with a confirmation that our limited assumptions reflect the shape of the world. Not coincidentally, the hubris of narrowly applied science serves the needs of the industrial economy. Machines are bought, sold, and discarded; joyful cousins are not. Two days ago, on Christmas Eve, the U.S. Forest Service opened to commercial logging three hundred thousand acres of old growth in the Tongass National Forest, more than a billion square-meter mandalas. Arrows moved on a flowchart, graphs of quantified timber shifted. Modern forest science integrated seamlessly with global commodity markets—language and values needed no translation. Scientific models and metaphors of machines are helpful but limited. They cannot tell us all that we need to know. What lies beyond the theories we impose on nature? This year I have tried to put down scientific tools and to listen: to come to nature without a hypothesis, without a scheme for data extraction, without a lesson plan to convey answers to students, without machines or probes. I have glimpsed how rich science is but simultaneously how limited in scope and in spirit. It is unfortunate that the practice of listening generally has no place in the formal training of scientists. In this absence science needlessly fails. We are poorer for this, and possibly more hurtful. What Christmas Eve gifts might a listening culture give its forests? What was the insight that brushed past me as the squirrels basked? It was not to turn away from science. My experience of animals is richer for knowing their stories, and science is a powerful way to deepen this understanding. Rather, I realized that all stories are partly wrapped in fiction—the fiction of simplifying assumptions, of cultural myopia and of storytellers' pride. I learned to revel in the stories but not to mistake them for the bright, ineffable nature of the world.

In attunement, it is the infant who leads and the mother who follows. “Where their roles differ is in the timing of their responses,” writes John Bowlby, one of the century’s great psychiatric researchers. The infant initiates the interaction or withdraws from it according to his own rhythms, Bowlby found, while the “mother regulates her behaviour so that it meshes with his... Thus she lets him call the tune and by a skillful interweaving of her own responses with his creates a dialogue.” The tense or depressed mothering adult will not be able to accompany the infant into relaxed, happy spaces. He may also not fully pick up signs of the infant’s emotional distress, or may not be able to respond to them as effectively as he would wish. The ADD child’s difficulty reading social cues likely originates from her relationship cues not being read by the nurturing adult, who was distracted by stress. In the attunement interaction, not only does the mother follow the child, but she also permits the child to temporarily interrupt contact. When the interaction reaches a certain stage of intensity for the infant, he will look away to avoid an uncomfortably high level of arousal. Another interaction will then begin. A mother who is anxious may react with alarm when the infant breaks off contact, may try to stimulate him, to draw him back into the interaction. Then the infant’s nervous system is not allowed to “cool down,” and the attunement relationship is hampered. Infants whose caregivers were too stressed, for whatever reason, to give them the necessary attunement contact will grow up with a chronic tendency to feel alone with their emotions, to have a sense — rightly or wrongly — that no one can share how they feel, that no one can “understand.” Attunement is the quintessential component of a larger process, called attachment. Attachment is simply our need to be close to somebody. It represents the absolute need of the utterly and helplessly vulnerable human infant for secure closeness with at least one nourishing, protective and constantly available parenting figure. Essential for survival, the drive for attachment is part of the very nature of warm-blooded animals in infancy, especially. of mammals. In human beings, attachment is a driving force of behavior for longer than in any other animal. For most of us it is present throughout our lives, although we may transfer our attachment need from one person — our parent — to another — say, a spouse or even a child. We may also attempt to satisfy the lack of the human contact we crave by various other means, such as addictions, for example, or perhaps fanatical religiosity or the virtual reality of the Internet. Much of popular culture, from novels to movies to rock or country music, expresses nothing but the joys or the sorrows flowing from satisfactions or disappointments in our attachment relationships. Most parents extend to their children some mixture of loving and hurtful behavior, of wise parenting and unskillful, clumsy parenting. The proportions vary from family to family, from parent to parent. Those ADD children whose needs for warm parental contact are most frustrated grow up to be adults with the most severe cases of ADD. Already at only a few months of age, an infant will register by facial expression his dejection at the mother’s unconscious emotional withdrawal, despite the mother’s continued physical presence. “(The infant) takes delight in Mommy’s attention,” writes Stanley Greenspan, “and knows when that source of delight is missing. If Mom becomes preoccupied or distracted while playing with the baby, sadness or dismay settles in on the little face.

What we don’t say is: of course not all men hate women. But culture hates women, and men who grow up in a sexist culture have a tendency to do and say sexist things, often without meaning to. We aren’t judging you for who you are, but that doesn’t mean we’re not asking you to change your behaviour. What you feel about women in your heart is of less immediate importance than how you treat them on a daily basis. You can be the gentlest, sweetest man in the world and still benefit from sexism, still hesitate to speak up when you see women hurt and discriminated against. That’s how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because changing it seems like too much bother. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turn away or yell, as a child might, that it’s not your fault. Of course it isn’t your fault. I’m sure you’re lovely. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to do something about it.

How easy it is to blame the present on the past, and allow history to shape the future. How many of us justify our current behaviour by reference to events long gone? Is this true within your relationship? Are you allowing past mistakes to dictate your destiny? If pain has been inflicted by a loved one, you may search for reasons and explanations that simply can’t be found. You pick away at the scar that is trying to heal, and cause the blood to flow again. You seek reassurances that you may never truly believe. The scar becomes ragged and ugly to all who can see it, and you become the walking wounded, waiting to be hurt again. Accept that your history has changed you. Rejoice in your survival. Let the wounds heal to form a stronger, more resilient you, and remember that forgiveness is not something we do for other people—we do it for ourselves. So forgive yourself for being a victim. Look positively to the here and now. Put the past behind you and think of it as somewhere you once visited, and possibly didn’t like very much. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Buddha

If we could present an attainable ideal of love it would resemble the relationship described by Maslow as existing between self-realizing personalities. It is probably a fairly perilous equilibrium: certainly the forces of order and civilization react fairly directly to limit the possibilities of self-realization. Maslow describes his ideal personalities as having a better perception of reality—what Herbert Read called an innocent eye, like the eye of the child who does not seek to reject reality. Their relationship to the world of phenomena is not governed by their personal necessity to exploit it or be exploited by it, but a desire to observe it and to understand it. They have no disgust; the unknown does not frighten them. They are without defensiveness or affectation. The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy and envy. Their behaviour is spontaneous but it corresponds to an autonomous moral code. Their thinking is problem-centred, not egocentred and therefore they most often have a sense of commitment to a cause beyond their daily concerns. Their responses are geared to the present

John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his name, once confessed: “I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.” Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behaviour will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behaviour. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations – configurations – of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other – when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.

Of course, we all deserve compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for the fact that we are born into a world with many rough edges, and kindness towards the calluses and scars that we've formed as a result. Kindness, but not laziness or irresponsibility; not blaming those who have hurt us for our state, whatever that state may be, and valuing ourselves enough to not tolerate toxic behaviours.

The part of our brain that keeps track of our position in the dominance hierarchy is therefore exceptionally ancient and fundamental.17 It is a master control system, modulating our perceptions, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. It powerfully affects every aspect of our Being, conscious and unconscious alike. This is why, when we are defeated, we act very much like lobsters who have lost a fight. Our posture droops. We face the ground. We feel threatened, hurt, anxious and weak. If things do not improve, we become chronically depressed. Under such conditions, we can’t easily put up the kind of fight that life demands, and we become easy targets for harder-shelled bullies. And it is not only the behavioural and experiential similarities that are striking. Much of the basic neurochemistry is the same.

When you think your partner is not doing his or her share, ask yourself whether being resentful and faultfinding will help you or your relationship. •​Practice the Three A's: awareness, appreciation, acknowledgment: 1.​Become aware of your partner's efforts. Try to notice the little things he or she does for the good of the relationship. 2.​Appreciate that those efforts demand compromise and sacrifice and that your partner loves you enough to try. 3.​Acknowledge your partner's contributions. Don’t keep your appreciation to yourself. •​After you establish a track record using the three A's, you might find that your partner's behaviour spontaneously changes. Sometimes people do things you don’t like because they don’t feel appreciated. •​If you still feel short-changed by your partner's lack of effort, ask yourself if your objections are fair and reasonable. •​If they are, try to express any hurt and frustration you might feel without sounding critical. •​Tell your partner what changes you would like him to make. Ask if he thinks these changes are fair and reasonable, and if he is willing to make the effort. •​Ask him if there are any changes he would like to see you make.

I think I'm too wounded to move. I have no idea if any of this is my fault or if it's his fault or if it's no one's fault. The only thing I know is that he hurt me. And he hurt me because I've been hurting him. It doesn't make what he did right in any sense, but a person can understand a behaviour without excusing it.

did, it hit me. It just hit me. It felt like someone had slammed a plank of wood into the side of my head. I couldn’t breathe or think straight. I couldn’t make my hands work to call room service. I had lost everything and I knew that I was entirely, completely to blame. I knew that I had hurt the woman I loved more than anything in the world. I know you tried to tell me this, tried to tell me what I was doing to you, to us and our family. I used to watch your mouth move, saying the words, but hear nothing. In the darkness of my silent hotel room I finally heard you. I got it and it shattered me. I didn’t move for three days after that until security came to check on me. I lay in the bed and I relived every moment of pain I caused you and the kids. I forced myself to remember each incident, each fucking time I hurt you. And while I was doing that I saw the awful parallel with my father and my childhood. I knew the psychology behind it because I’m not an idiot, but I had never connected the dots of my own abuse with those of me when I was the abuser. In my head the reasons for my behaviour had always been justified. It was ridiculous that I couldn’t explain away my father’s abuse but I could explain away my own.

Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family … but when it came to her maid … she seemed to have little concern for her feelings … such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding … was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself. Most morality … was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance. You simply could not create your own morality because your experience would never be enough to do so. What gives you the right to say that you know better than your ancestors? Morality is for everyone, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That … was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it.

The door opened behind us and several of the cheerleaders shrieked as Darius strode in wearing his Pitball uniform, making a beeline for Tory. She was only in her skirt and sports bra, looking to him with her brows arching. “Flans on a Friday!” Geraldine exclaimed mid-lunge. “This is the ladies room and Jacinta has her Petunia out!” She pointed at Jacinta who was struggling to get her panties up her legs, getting entangled as she stared at Darius’s back in alarm. Darius rolled his eyes, ignoring the chaos around him as he fixed Tory in his sights while I fought a grin at the two of them. I couldn’t believe what Caleb had done for them and I was so happy that there was a way they could be together sometimes. Even if that did involve a threesome with two Heirs, at least she was enjoying herself. Get it, Tor. “Cheerleaders sometimes support a certain player on the field,” Darius said as he pushed his hand into his pocket and took out a navy ribbon with the word Fireshield on it. “Will you cheer for me today, Roxy?” He held it out for her and I swear she actually blushed. “I’m cheering for Darcy and Geraldine too.” “We don’t mind,” I said immediately. “Do we Geraldine?” “By all the rocks in Saturn’s rings, of course we don’t!” Tory shrugged in answer, a smile playing around her mouth and he leaned forward and wrapped the ribbon around her throat and tied it in place. “They’re normally worn on the wrist,” Geraldine whispered to me overly loudly. “This is most romantic.” “Good luck,” Tory said and he nodded before heading out of the room. I bit my lip, looking to her for a comment while Geraldine rested a foot up on the bench, pressing her elbow to her knee and perching her chin on her knuckles as she gazed wistfully at my sister. “What?” Tory asked innocently. “You know what,” I teased and she fought a grin, glancing over her shoulder as if checking to make sure he was really gone. Then she cast a silencing bubble around thethree of us and her expression became anxious. “It’s not that I don’t like the sweet side of Darius, but…” she started. “But what?” Geraldine gasped. “What is it?” I pressed gently when she didn’t elaborate. She sighed, looking a bit guilty. “I just miss our back and forth. This isn’t him. It’s just a nice version of him. I want the real Darius, not some watered down version. And I need to be sure the real Darius isn’t going to hurt me again. Like what happens when one day I piss him off and make him lose his temper again?” Geraldine’s jaw almost hit the floor, but before she could try and convince Tory otherwise, I spoke. Because I knew my sister, and I was starting to get a fairly good read on Darius too. And she had a point. He was on his best behaviour right now, but that couldn’t go on forever. If they were going to find some way to make this work, she needed to know what long-term Darius looked like. And besides that, she lived for being kept on her toes. (Darcy)

I tried to date, like a normal twenty-something, but it didn’t work out. There’s something off about you when you’ve been abused, when you’re damaged, broken. You’re different. Men can sniff out the pain in you, like dogs picking up on a scent. I’d put my makeup on, wear my nicest dresses, go on dates and try to be on my best behaviour but they never bought it. They could see the cracks in my eyes, the holes in my soul, the emptiness waiting to be filled. Men aren’t knights in shining armour – that’s fairytale bullshit. They’re not looking for someone to save. Men like simple girls. Off-the-shelf girls. Ready to go. Easy company. Decent hearts. They’re not there to heal you or rescue you. I thought my looks would help. A bat of my lashes will make a man do a favour for me, but it won’t make a good guy fall for me. My pretty face isn’t valuable enough currency to make up for the scars. The men I dated picked up on the trauma, the voids, the hurt, and they didn’t want it in their lives. They didn’t want it in their homes. They didn’t want its legacy in their children.

But your fear is not only hurting me, it’s hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be. Consider how often you have dismissed your own appearance, behaviours, emotions, and aspirations for being too feminine or masculine. What might your life be if you didn’t impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me? What if you were to challenge yourself every time you feel afraid of me—and all of us who are pushing against gendered expectations and restrictions? What if you cherished us as archetypes of realized potential? What if you were to surrender to sublime possibility—yours and mine? Might you then free me at last of my fear, and of your own?

When Bond was born he personified an aspect of male identity that was prevalent after the war that of the protector. Man saw their role as being the one to protect their families from external threats. An ability to resort to violence when necessary was part of this. Meaning that emotionally men had to harden and reduce their empathy. The role of protector is an aspect of male identity that is now less necessary. The great majority of men go through their lives without ever having to fight and those who use violence against others are no longer admired or tolerated. It is the lack of love, particularly in childhood, that can lead to the toxic behaviour and violence that we need to protect ourselves against. Craig’s Bond gradually learned that his armour hurt and isolated him as much as it protected. He came at the end of five film arc to open himself up, leave himself vulnerable and accept the consequences. This was necessary he finally understood, even though it will lead to his death.

they asked her, "can time heal you?" she answered, "you are the key to healing, not time. hurt, trauma, and dense conditioning will continue sitting in your mind, impacting your emotions and behaviour, until you go inward. what heals is a self-love, learning to let go, self-awareness, and building new habits." (intention)

The reason we are hurt so much it is because we are choosing to be considerate to people who choose not be considerate when it comes to us. The very same people you are choosing to do everything in your power that they are happy .They are getting everything they need and want , are choosing the opposite. They are doing everything in their power to make sure that you are not happy, and you are not getting what you want or need. The people you want to do everything for, are willing to do nothing for you. They have the power to make you happy, but they choose not to.

If there is nothing but Nature, therefore, reason must have come into existence by a historical process. And, of course, for the Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce a mental behavior that can find truth. There was no Designer…. The type of mental behaviour we now call rational thinking or inference must therefore have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection…. Once, then, our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth. Those which had a cause external to ourselves at all were (like our pains) responses to stimuli. Now natural selection could operate only by eliminating responses that were biologically hurtful and multiplying those which tended to survival. But it is not conceivable that any improvement of responses could ever turn them into acts of insight…. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known.

Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family...but when it came to her maid...she seemed to have little concern for her feelings. It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. Theat understanding...was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself.

A 16-year-old was brought to me by her parents. I would like to call her Eva. Her gait was teetering, she was tall, very slim and finely built. She sat down and unwaveringly looked at her parents; she did not make any contact with me. She had noticeably vigorous hair and during examination it transpired that she had a very tense abdomen which hurt with pressure. Her parents reported that she had walked at ten months but hadn't crawled. Speech development occurred very quickly, and she could straight away speak perfectly in full sentences. Eva had trouble with toilet training. For a long time she suffered from extreme constipation. When asked about Eva's eating behaviour, her parents initially said that it was good.

The term ‘gender’ itself is problematic. It was first used in a sense that was not simply about grammar by sexologists – the scientists of sex such as John Money in the 1950s and 1960s – who were involved in normalising intersex infants.They used the term to mean the behavioural characteristics they considered most appropriate for persons of one or other biological sex. They applied the concept of gender when deciding upon the sex category into which those infants who did not have clear physical indications of one biological sex or another should be placed (Hausman, 1995).Their purpose was not progressive.These were conservative men who believed that there should be clear differences between the sexes and sought to create distinct sex categories through their projects of social engineering. Unfortunately, the term was adopted by some feminist theorists in the 1970s, and by the late 1970s was commonly used in academic feminism to indicate the difference between biological sex and those characteristics that derived from politics and not biology, which they called ‘gender’ (Haig, 2004). Before the term ‘gender’ was adopted, the term more usually used to describe these socially constructed characteristics was ‘sex roles’. The word ‘role’ connotes a social construction and was not susceptible to the degeneration that has a afflicted the term ‘gender’ and enabled it to be wielded so effectively by transgender activists. As the term ‘gender’ was adopted more extensively by feminists, its meaning was transformed to mean not just the socially constructed behaviour associated with biological sex, but the system of male power and women’s subordination itself, which became known as the ‘gender hierarchy’ or ‘gender order’ (Connell, 2005; Mackinnon, 1989). Gradually, older terms to describe this system, such as male domination, sex class and sex caste went out of fashion, with the effect that direct identification of the agents responsible for the subordination of women – men – could no longer be named. Gender, as a euphemism, disappeared men as agents in male violence against women, which is now commonly referred to as ‘gender violence’. Increasingly, the term ‘gender’ is used, in official forms and legislation, for instance, to stand in for the term ‘sex’ as if ‘gender’ itself is biological, and this usage has overwhelmed the feminist understanding of gender.

Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family and she had always been kind to Mma Ramotswe, but when it came to her maid—and Mma Ramotswe had met this maid, who seemed an agreeable, hardworking woman from Molepolole—she seemed to have little concern for her feelings. It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding, thought Mma Ramotswe, was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself. Mma Ramotswe knew that there was a great deal of debate about morality, but in her view it was quite simple. In the first place, there was the old Botswana morality, which was simply right. If a person stuck to this, then he would be doing the right thing and need not worry about it. There were other moralities, of course; there were the Ten Commandments, which she had learned by heart at Sunday School in Mochudi all those years ago; these were also right in the same, absolute way. These codes of morality were like the Botswana Penal Code; they had to be obeyed to the letter. It was no good pretending you were the High Court of Botswana and deciding which parts you were going to observe and which you were not. Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned. You could not say that you would observe this prohibition but not that. I shall not commit theft—certainly not—but adultery is another matter: wrong for other people, but not for me.

All of us, have our antenna up for people who might harm us in one way or another, not just people who might hurt us physically, but also for people who might treat us unfairly, take advantage of us, cheat us or fail to do their share. And we react very strongly to be misleading by other people, is part of human nature, to guard against being hurt and exploited.

Reducing physical aggression One of your son’s really annoying habits might be a tendency to hit or kick or push or grab when he is frustrated or angry. This is quite typical behaviour for an impulsive, very physical boy. He can get overwhelmed by his upset feelings. He may aim his blows for maximum impact, or he may be lashing out indiscriminately, not really knowing what he is doing. Either way, for his own sake and for the sake of everyone around him, you want to help him develop better impulse-control. The more you talk about his hitting, the more your son will think of himself as someone who hits and someone who gets told off for it. Instead, I want you to Descriptively Praise him when he is not hitting, kicking, biting, pushing, etc. You might be thinking, ‘But when he’s not hitting it’s because he’s not even angry. He’s not even thinking of hitting, so why take a chance and remind him that he could be hitting right now?’ You might prefer to say nothing at all about his misbehaviour. I’m asking you to notice and mention the absence of the negative, which I know seems very counter-intuitive. And if the annoying behaviour is a recurring problem, you will need to notice and mention when he is not doing it wrong many times a day. At odd times throughout the day, even when he is not upset and therefore not even tempted to be aggressive, you could simply say:   You’re not hitting.   You’re keeping your arms and legs to yourself.   When the baby knocked down your tower, you screamed, but you didn’t hit or kick. That showed self-control.   When he is angry but not reacting physically, you could add, ‘You’re controlling yourself,’ or ‘You’re not hurting anyone,’ (and remember to keep your distance if you can see, or even just sense, that he is in a volatile mood and might become aggressive).

Cruelty is not something you can just sugar coat with a smile, with laughter, with a hug or with an act of kindness. It is a diabolical behaviour that will keep popping up behind that smile, behind that laughter, behind that hug and behind that act of kindness. 'A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.' (Proverbs 11:17)

When people keep themselves poised in neutral observation, they can't be hurt or emotionally ensnared by other people's behaviour.

Often, a carceral logic of 'care' — sometimes reiterating abuse through public harassment, shunning and punishment — takes the place of the transformative approaches that leave space for people to take responsibility for their behaviours, and change. Surely, for any healing to happen, indeed for liberation to be possible, we must know ourselves and others to be both hurt and hurting, harmed and harmful — and to be fluid: always capable of being otherwise.

They are good at testing the limits. They continue until someone becomes too angry and puts his foot down. And, of course, then the Yellow feels hurt. He just wanted to …

You know, anger has a bad rap,” I ventured. “Anger is the fuel you use to drive up feelings of hurt and pain from your unconscious. It’s how people tell others that they’re displeased with their behaviour. The man calling you Tonto is disrespecting you,

When you face a heart break or caught your partner doing wrong things. You are hurt, not because what your partner did. But you are more hurt, because of what you did for them and all the sacrifice you made.

Anger is the fuel you use to drive up feelings of hurt and pain from your unconscious. It’s how people tell others that they’re displeased with their behaviour.

The behaviours of abuse are also survival-based, learned behaviours rooted in some pain. If you can look through the lens of compassion, you will find hurt and trauma there. If you are the abused party, healing that hurt is not your responsibility and exacerbating that pain is not your justified right.

The saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ essentially means knowledge hurts, that essentially means excess of knowledge is painful.

Honourable Breeze - a behavioural haiku from the chapter, “Poetic Justice” Honourable Heart? You were spreading smear campaigns. Is that honesty? Honourable mind? You committed forgery. Your cyber libel. Honourable soul? You intentionally hurt, Con, scam, and slander. Honourable mouth? Your habitual offenses Fraud, lies, bullying. Dishonourable. Politicians’ instrument: Machiavellian. Justify your end? with your Machiavellian ways? Note: crime does not pay! Crowned thorny cactus, you pretend to be “yellow,” Ask funding from them. Thorny toxic lies, You discredit whom you scammed. Your: libel, slander. Manipulator, Fraud, bully, provocateur, Machiavellian! Politicians served: You’re a very good person. Thorny irony. People you slandered, Scammed, libeled, deceived, abused. Forgery you did. Your former victim, From twelve or ten years ago: said, “you’re a devil.” “Move away from her,” Your past victims had warned me. I thanked their warning. Warning was too late. Thorny, toxic harridan: you used and abused! Honourable Breeze? For people who benefit from your deceptions. Honourable Breeze? For dirty politicians, Donations and votes. Honourable Breeze? for needy politicians: delivered service. Delivered service? At the expense of others, you manipulate. Manipulations, your catch-me-if-you-can games, Your confidence games! Politicians’ smears, means won’t justify your end, Machiavellian bitch! ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Life Unfolds © 2021 Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn

People are likely hurt or killed by what they keep , rather than what they let out. Whatever you choose to keep with you. You will later use. If you keep hate, pain, grudges, anger, secrets, feelings, guilt, knowledge, information, memories, evil heart or good heart. Question is what are you choosing to keep with you? Will it not harm you or sabotage you. Choose to find someone to talk to.

And there it is, the point which it all boils down to eventually. The point where there are no words, no theories, no explanations for behaviours that baffle and infuriate and hurt. Just that. Men.

In my life, I had no one to disappoint or to let down. Spectres did not haunt me. I very ably created my own prissy set of standards: hesitant, over-polite, submissive. I only became attractive (to myself) when I broke out of that and had bursts of rip-roaring, disgusting behaviour. It was funny and hurt no one.

Adjustable girls’ are desirable, good girls. The English word ‘adjust’ is used so often in raising good girls that it has become a Hindi word. Adjustable girls automatically change their bodies and behaviour to please others; they fit in anywhere and obligingly slip, slide, squeeze and shrink into the tiniest physical and psychological spaces. Beta, thoda adjust kar lo , darling, adjust a little. You learn it when sitting in a car, legs tightly squeezed together, while the men sit back with their legs apart; you learn   it when you can’t  wear tight clothes, pants or dresses in front of disapproving visiting relatives; you learn it when you are not allowed to speak back to that idiot   of an uncle who calls you dark, fat, hairy or stupid and pities you; you learn it when you are scolded for being upset about anything; you learn it as you watch your brother get the bigger chocolate or go to a better school or college and you pretend it does not hurt; you learn it when you are left at home but the boys go out; you learn it when your mother does nothing when your father    is rude to her, scolds her, demeans her or hits her. As many mothers say to their daughters, Apne aap ko thoda adjust kar lo , you adjust yourself. This is a deceptively benign way, bit by bit, to start erasing any signs of an independent self in girls. It teaches girls to discount themselves and makes girls available at a permanent discount in the world. In marriage it is reflected in dowries and at work in lower salaries.

One of the most common things that people who abuse or hurt others have – whether their behaviour stems from past trauma, brain structure, inadequate socialization or anything else – is the assumption of entitlement.

Perhaps no one except a victim of sexual assault, or someone who is familiar with how people behave after trauma, could believe that it was entirely possible that someone who was assaulted could write this letter to their attacker, to try to normalize a terrible situation, or to make the attacker feel better for being rejected after the abuse. It can seem perplexing from the outside, this pull that many women experience to make things better for those who have hurt us. The impulse to smooth things over to keep ourselves safe, as well as the constant messages many of us have received in our lives to “make things nice” no matter what harm has been done, can be so deeply rooted that it often results in behaviour that can later appear nonsensical to an outside eye. (The betrayal of oneself that results from this “making things nice” with an attacker can also make one bleed on a subterranean level.)

The core message here is that our moral and ethical principles can overcome our fear of compassion and guide us to compassionate actions. I am reminded of this time and time again in therapy. There are moments when patients reveal things that they are ashamed of, things that society stigmatises. But as a therapist, if I am going to engage in compassionate help with this patient, I need to override my emotional response and recognise that this person needs connection. This is liberating, and leads to questions like, 'What happened in this person’s life that led them to be violent towards a stranger?' It is a cognitive process that takes training, but it enables me to stay present so I can be an agent of therapeutic change. There is a saying in trauma and forensic literature that 'hurt people tend to hurt people'. What is paramount here is to recognise that the patient, the person, wants to change, and I want to help them with that, to try to stop the hurt. Shaming and punishing are not effective motivators and encouragers to positive behaviour change. Compassion offers a completely different opportunity.

Men.’ And there it is, the point which it all boils down to eventually. The point where there are no words, no theories, no explanations for behaviours that baffle and infuriate and hurt. Just that. Men.

Step 4: Write letters to the parent, sibling, or peer who helped cause your lifetrap It is important to ventilate your anger and sadness about what happened to you. One thing that keeps your inner child frozen is all your strangled feelings. We want you to give your inner child a voice – to allow your inner child to express his or her pain. We will ask you to write letters to all the people who hurt you. We realize you will probably have to overcome a lot of guilt to do this, particularly in regard to your parents. It is not easy to attack your parents. They may not have been malicious. They may have had good intentions. But we want you to put aside such considerations for a time, and just tell the truth. Express your feelings in the letter. Tell them what they did that was hurtful, and how it made you feel. Tell them they were wrong to behave as they did. Tell them how you wished it could have been instead. You will probably decide not to send the letter. It is the writing and expressing of your feelings that is most important. It is often not possible to change the feelings or behaviour of your parents, anyway. You should know this from the start. The purpose of the letter is not to change your parents. It is to make you a whole person again. A letter like this can set the record straight. It can tell your story aloud, perhaps for the first time.

It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding, thought Mma Ramotswe, was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself.

To consider others with love means forever remembering the child within them. Our wrongdoer may be fully grown, but their behaviour will always be joined up with their early years. We’re so keen to treat others like the adults they are that we overlook the need occasionally to perceive, and sympathise with, the angry and hurt infant lurking inside.

I am glad I had an opportunity to tell him that his behaviour was hurtful. I will try to forgive him for my mother and sisters’ sake,

You may not like it, but you need to take constant feedback about your behaviour with others. Sometime we keep hurting everyone around us without having any clue.

Forgiveness is not forgetting what they have done to you. Forgiveness is acknowledgement. Acknowledgement that they hurt you, whether intentionally or by design, and that you had no control over their behaviour. Nothing you could have done would have prevented them from hurting you. Forgiveness means that you simply refuse to allow what they did to you to control you any further.

It didn’t hurt to be polite. Connie had learned from how Mo fell in with the behaviour of witnesses, putting them at their ease by accepting hospitality.

But your fear is not only hurting me, it’s hurting you, limiting you from being everything you could be. Consider how often you have dismissed your own appearance, behaviours, emotions, and aspirations for being too feminine or masculine. What might your life be if you didn’t impose these designations on yourself, let alone on me?

The civilised, higher move is to understand that they are behaving badly for a reason which they are in no position to tell you about, so under pressure are they from their more primitive minds. Maybe they have had a hard day. Maybe they are worried about something. Perhaps they have felt squashed and sidelined in their career and now having someone squeeze in in front of them on the road is too much to bear. Instead of simply seeing them as the dangerous enemy, we can recognise that they are distressed and that their bad behaviour (the impatient horn the swearing behind the windscreen) is a symptom of hurt rather than of ‘evil’.

Once we are able to interpret someone’s pain-inducing behaviour as having roots in their own pain, we’re on the threshold of a remarkable steps. It then appears that in truth, no one in this world is ever simply ‘nasty’. They are always hurt – and this means that the appropriate response to humanity is not fear, cynicism or aggression, but love. Once we relinquish our egos, and loosen ourselves from the grip of our primitive defensive and aggressive thought-processes, we are free to consider humanity in a much more benign light. We might even, at an extreme (this might happen only very late at night once in a while), feel that we could love everyone, that no human could be outside the circle of our sympathy.