Unsafe People Quotes

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” (p.97)

People with a style of denial and blaming are definitely on the list of unsafe people to avoid.

...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.

Survivors feel unsafe in their bodies. Their emotions and their thinking feel out of control. They also feel unsafe in relation to other people.

Unsafe people will never identify with others as fellow sinners and strugglers, because they see themselves as somehow “above all of that.

All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system.

I lie to her. Because this world is not safe. The people who are supposed to protect us, the people we are supposed to trust -- I know that sometimes they are the ones who do the most harm.

We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe “liars” is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.

All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they'd really lost. All across the country, people felt they'd really won. All across the country, people felt they'd done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland. All across the country, people looked up Google: Irish Passport Applications. All across the country, people called each other cunts. All across the country, people felt unsafe. All across the country, people were laughing their heads off. All across the country, people felt legitimised. All across the country, people felt bereaved and shocked. All across the country, people felt righteous. All across the country, people felt sick. All across the country, people felt history at their shoulder. All across the country, people felt history meant nothing. All across the country, people felt like they counted for nothing. All across the country, people had pinned their hopes on it. All across the country, people waved flags in the rain. All across the country, people drew swastika graffiti. All across the country, people threatened other people. All across the country, people told people to leave. All across the country, the media was insane. All across the country, politicians lied. All across the country, politicians fell apart. All across the country, politicians vanished...

But sometimes, when she'd be all by herself, walking home late in the evening on a crowded street she'd be afraid of her own shadow following her...

People used to die naturally. Old age used to be a terminal affliction, not a temporary state. There were invisible killers called “diseases” that broke the body down. Aging couldn’t be reversed, and there were accidents from which there was no return. Planes fell from the sky. Cars actually crashed. There was pain, misery, despair. It’s hard for most of us to imagine a world so unsafe, with dangers lurking in every unseen, unplanned corner.  All of that is behind us now, and yet a simple truth remains: People have to die. It

The detection of a person as safe or dangerous triggers neurobiologically determined pro-social or defensive behaviors. Even though we may not always be aware of danger on a cognitive level, on a neurophysiological level, our body has already started a sequence of neural processes that would facilitate adaptive defense behaviors such as fight, flight or freeze. 

Normal people who weren’t raised by mentally ill goats probably took the feeling of safety for granted. They only noticed when they suddenly felt unsafe. When the hands reach up for under the bed and grab their ankles, they scream, whereas I’m like “Wait, can you scratch my knee before you kill me?

Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised. That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).

American society is uncomfortable with the idea that some people’s lives are difficult past the point of sanity and that they aren’t necessarily to blame. There’s no way you can argue that everyone has a difficult life. This is an incredible culture; the majority of people live in amazing comfort, with real dignity, maybe more comfort and dignity than any other culture in the history of the world. We live relatively safe and sane lives, which, if you’ve ever loved anybody and therefore feared for them, is a wonderful thing. But part of our moral responsibility is to keep in our minds those whose lives are unsafe and insane. In this way, fiction can be like a meditation, a way of saying: Though things are this way for me right now, they could be different later and are different for others this very moment.

Today's young people have gay friends whom they love. If they view the church as an unsafe for them, a place more focused on politics than on people, we just might be raising the most anti-Christian generation America has ever seen, a generation that believes they have to choose between loving and being Christian.

If there was a moment that determined the course of my future, I'm pretty sure this was it. I had two somewhat simple choices. I could make a run for it and go back to Uncle Al's. Back to the bonfire where my cousins and dear sister would be drinking and revel in the normalcy of a Saturday night and forget I ever went to this horrid place and ran into this weirdo. Or I could go with said weirdo up the stairs in this decrepit old lighthouse, which was most likely condemned and unsafe, towards some unknown person (or thing) that was walking around, potentially waiting to murder us in horrific ways. It didn't seem like a very hard decision to make. In fact, I think 99.7% of people in the right frame of mind would have picked from column A and gone on with their merry lives. But for some freaking crazy reason, I thought that maybe, just maybe I should go with this stranger up those kelp-ridden stairs and toward the lair of unimaginable horror. You know, because it was the more interesting alternative.

Playing nice" comes naturally when our neuroception detects safety and promotes physiological states that support social behavior. However, pro-social behavior will not occur when our neuroception misreads the environmental cues and triggers physiological states that support defensive strategies. After all, "playing nice" is not appropriate or adaptive behavior in dangerous or life-threatening situations. In these situations, humans - like other mammals - react with more primitive neurobiological defense systems. To create relationships, humans must subdue these defensive reactions to engage, attach, and form lasting social bonds. Humans have adaptive neurobehavioral systems for both pro-social and defensive behaviors.

The reality is that fat people are often supported in hating their bodies, in starving themselves, in engaging in unsafe exercise, and in seeking out weight loss by any means necessary. A thin person who does these things is considered mentally ill. A fat person who does these things is redeemed by them. This is why our culture has no concept of a fat person who also has an eating disorder. If you’re fat, it’s not an eating disorder — it’s a lifestyle change.

Despite the behavior by some that she considered unfathomably dangerous only fourteen days ago, she also gets it. People in the new world fall into two categories: safe and unsafe. But who’s to say which lives the better, fuller life?

What was reckless, I decided, was the way people were writing off huge swaths of the world as unsafe, unstable, unfriendly, when all they needed to do was go and see for themselves

Allowing bullying in the classroom is equivalent to excluding learning from the classroom. If bullying is present in the classroom it causes the classroom to not feel like a safe environment, and people do not learn in unsafe environments - except for those things which they feel will ensure their present safety.

it is easier to mock and deride individual fat people than to fix food deserts, school lunches, corn subsidies, inadequate or nonexistent public transportation, unsafe sidewalks and parks, healthcare, mental healthcare, the minimum wage, and your own insecurities.

As a therapist, I have many avenues in which to learn about DID, but I hear exactly the opposite from clients and others who are struggling to understand their own existence. When I talk to them about the need to let supportive people into their lives, I always get a variation of the same answer. "It is not safe. They won't understand." My goal here is to provide a small piece of that gigantic puzzle of understanding. If this book helps someone with DID start a conversation with a supportive friend or family member, understanding will be increased.

The modern obsession with protecting young people from “feeling unsafe” is, we believe, one of the (several) causes of the rapid rise in rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide, which we’ll explore in chapter

It isn’t just racism. Being part of an oppressed minority group—being queer or disabled, for example—can cause C-PTSD if you are made to feel unsafe because of your identity. Poverty can be a contributing factor to C-PTSD. These factors traumatize people and cause brain changes that push them toward anxiety and self-loathing. Because of those changes, victims internalize the blame for their failures. They tell themselves they are awkward, lazy, antisocial, or stupid, when what’s really happening is that they live in a discriminatory society where their success is limited by white supremacy and class stratification. The system itself becomes the abuser. When my boss said I was “different,” I thought it meant broken. Now I think it meant something else.

traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

The reporting rate is even lower in New York City, with an estimated 96% of sexual harassment and 86% of sexual assaults in the subway system going unreported, while in London, where a fifth of women have reportedly been physically assaulted while using public transport, a 2017 study found that 'around 90% of people who experience unwanted sexual behavior would not report it... Enough women have experienced the sharp shift from 'Smile, love, it might never happen,' to 'Fuck you bitch why are you ignoring me?'... But all too often the blame is out on the women themselves for feeling fearful, rather than on planners for designing urban spaces and transit environments that make them feel unsafe... Women are often scared in public spaces. In fact, they are around twice as likely to be scared as men. And, rather unusually, we have the data to prove it.

Unsafe people blame others instead of taking responsibility.

Unsafe people lie instead of telling the truth.

Unsafe people only apologize instead of changing their behavior.

To best deal with unsafe people, we first need to understand what causes us to be unsafe. For the problem is not just outside us; it is inside every one of us.

Everyone needs air, water, food, shelter, and clothing all the time, Monday. Everyone needs care when they’re sick or hurt, love when they’re sad or scared, someone to tell them no or stop when they’re being unsafe. Everything else people need sometimes—and it’s a lot—is special. All of us have special needs.

I wish I had something reassuring to tell you, but I don’t. It’s not safe out there. People are rioting and looting. There’s no telling what could happen to you, if you went out there. We need to play this safe.

abridged list of things to let go if you want to be happy: old versions of yourself / ideas about who and what you were supposed to be / other people’s expectations of you / societal expectations of you / gender norms / heteronormativity / internalized ideas about what your life is supposed to look like / the idea that romantic love makes you whole / relationships that cause you more grief than they’re worth / people who cross your boundaries / family that makes you feel unsafe or unwelcome / the need to make your happiness look like everyone else’s

That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).

As colleges and universities became dominated by the Left, tolerance and diversity fell by the wayside. The rising hostility toward liberal values like free speech has made entire college campuses unsafe places for people who align with the Right.

Not knowing how to regulate their own painful, aversive feelings, such as shame and anger, makes people with BPD walking powder kegs. Because of their deficits, they tend to regulate emotional pain with actions that bring quick, short-term relief, such as cutting themselves (parasuicidal acts) using drugs or alcohol, shopping or overspending, binge eating, anorexia, gambling, or engaging in unsafe sex. The consequence of these behaviors is usually more emotional pain. Alternatively, they may cope by avoiding or dissociating from the trigger or the actual emotion they are feeling. Some people with BPD may have developed too much control of their emotional responses. They may be described as emotionally over-controlled or emotionally constipated.

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can—and should—also be people who confront. What is not confessed can’t be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: “I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols” (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn’t discount someone who “has something against you,” labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do.

Ah, adventure! Ah, romance! Ah, courtly graces and the noble gestures! Don't you wish you knew people like that? Don't you wish we could still walk around in cloaks and boots and breeches, with leather doublets and flowing white dueling shirts and swords strapped around our waists? Of course, if we did, given the way things are today, there'd be people out there lobbying for sword control, and we'd need a National Sword Association and bumper stickers that would read "Swords don't kill people, knights kill people," and there would be a five-day waiting period and background check before you could buy a rapier. We'd have drive-by lungings and people would be afraid of children carrying broadswords to school. "Milady" would be regard as a sexist term and feminists would go absolutely berserk if any woman called a man "Milord." Ralph Nader would probably get quarter horses banned because they are too small and unsafe in a collision and someone would figure out a way to put seat belts and air bags on our saddles. That's why people join the SCA and read fantasy novels, because the real world sucks.

The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about "them." The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or a felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of the crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he'll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the 'hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up-failing to live by one's highest ideals and values-is part of what makes us human.

He eventually became an executive for a firm. This meant that he actually executed persons with showers of legal documents proving that they owed him quantities of money which they did not have. 'Firm' actually means the manufacture of useless objects which people are foolish enough to buy. The firmer the firm the more senseless talk is needed to prevent anyone noticing the unsafe structure of the business. Sometimes these firms actually sell nothing at all for a lot of money, like 'Life Insurance', a pretense that it is a soothing and useful event to have a violent and painful death.

In a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous and materialistic, there is a dire need to help people discover their purpose and understand that we all have a need towards investing in an egalitarian, humane, just and responsible society or otherwise tomorrow eve our own children shall be unsafe.

Can I ask how it impacts your relationships in a toxic way?” “I’m just noticing things. All the time. Bad behaviors. Like, I tend to categorize people as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe.’ And when I don’t like somebody, I see them as unsafe and I can’t deal with them. And then whenever anybody’s upset, I’m not good with sitting with their discomfort. I’m always trying to help and fix. And some people have told me I have a tendency to make things about myself. And I’m negative and I’m always complaining about my life. And I always feel like I’m having a crisis because I’m still not good enough at self-soothing.

the issue of dependency lies at the core of the human experience. If our needs aren’t met during infancy when we’re utterly vulnerable and helpless, if our parents make us feel unsafe in the world from early on, it will shape our ability to trust and depend upon other people for the rest of our lives.

1. Because of our lengthy, vulnerable childhood – where for so many years we rely upon our parents to meet our needs and protect us from the dangers of the world – the issue of dependency lies at the core of the human experience. If our needs aren’t met during infancy when we’re utterly vulnerable and helpless, if our parents make us feel unsafe in the world from early on, it will shape our ability to trust and depend upon other people for the rest of our lives. Consider

For example, suppose I said that selling unsafe products was wrong because it hurt people (and hurting people is wrong), and you responded by saying that everyone does it. Your statement would be irrelevant because whether everyone does it doesn’t affect whether it’s wrong—unless you define “right” as “whatever everyone does.

Receiving forgiveness when we know we’ve truly blown it is a humbling and growth-producing experience. It’s the only thing better than forgiving someone else. On the other hand, an unsafe person who is unable to forgive can be very destructive. Instead of forgiving, she condemns: She centers on my failings. She won’t let go of the past, even when I’ve confessed, repented, and made restitution. She uses my weaknesses to avoid looking at hers. She sees me as morally inferior to her. She desires justice more than intimacy. Unsafe people are often good at identifying your weaknesses. They can quote the minute and hour you hurt them, and recall the scene in intimate detail and living color. Like a good attorney, they have the entire case mapped out. And you are judged “guilty.” Yes, we need to be confronted with our weaknesses. Unsafe people, however, confront us not to forgive us, but to condemn and punish us. They remove their love until we are appropriately chastened. This, obviously, destroys any chance for connection or safety.

We’re going down to the Margarita Grill to smell the lobster, then we’re going to watch the sunrise, and in between we’ll probably have hot, unsafe animal sex.

Barry was a nice guy. But I realized we weren’t connecting. What I had thought was a relationship was actually auditory masturbation; I served as an audience to Barry’s conversation with himself. What an empty experience! If unsafe people are self-centered, safe people are relationship-centered. And that priority shows itself in the all-important action of empathy.

He says that it was people who were safe and well fed who invented good and evil so that they would not have to worry about the people who were hungry and unsafe. What a man does depends on what he needs. It is simple. You are not a murderer. You say that murder is evil. José would say that you are as much a murderer as Landru or Weidmann and that it is just that fortune has not made it necessary for you to murder anyone. Someone once told him that there was a German proverb which said that a man is an ape in velvet. He always likes to repeat it.

Contempt. Back in February, “herd immunity” had been a new concept for the people… A man called George. He was alerting the officer to the fact that he was about to die. You’d have to hate a man a lot to kneel on his neck till he dies in plain view of a crowd and a camera, knowing the consequences this would likely have upon your own life. (Or you’d have to be pretty certain of immunity from the herd—not an unsafe bet for a white police officer, historically, in America.) But this was something darker—deadlier. It was the virus, in its most lethal manifestation.

I've been sexually assaulted, physically attacked, felt unsafe in my own house, and nearly killed myself because I'm transgender. Now I'm not saying that its the same struggle as racism. But what I will say is that if people are intentionally ignorant you can't fight them with words. Sometims you have to fight back. Or scream. And you know what. That's life. Despite the lies you may have been told no one won their rights by asking for them nicely. People fought for them. So ya I'm sorry if what I said may "offend" a few white people, but I'm going to fuking say it anyways.

If you have a comfortable connection with your inner sensations—if you can trust them to give you accurate information—you will feel in charge of your body, your feelings, and your self. However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

By processing information from the environment through the senses, the nervous system continually evaluates risk. I have coined the term neuroception to describe how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life-threatening. Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in primitive parts of the brain, without our conscious awareness.

If I walk out of my office today and get hit by a drunk driver, that will not be my fault. But it will be my responsibility to deal with the outcome. I am the one who has to go to the doctor and get surgery. I am the one who will have to go to the physical therapist. I am the one who will have to grieve. And I will be the one who has to work through the anger and do the forgiving. Those things are all my responsibility, even though I did not choose to get hit by a drunk driver. Unsafe people do not do that hard work. They stay angry, stuck, and bitter, sometimes for life. When they feel upset, they see others as the cause, and others as the ones who have to do all the changing. When they are abused, they hold on to it with a vengeance and spew hatred for the rest of their lives. When they are hurt, they wear it like a badge. And worst of all, when they are wrong, they blame it on others. Denial is the active process that someone uses to avoid responsibility. It is different from being unaware of sin. When we are unaware, we do not know about our sin. Denial is more active than that. It is a style and an agenda, and it can be very aggressive when truth comes close. People with a style of denial and blaming are definitely on the list of unsafe people to avoid.

People who are uninvolved in character growth can be unsafe, because they are shut off from awareness of their own problems and God’s resources to transform those problems. Instead, they act out of their unconscious hurts, and then hurt others.

However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic — they develop a fear of fear itself.

As long as the book is read, people would die for it. She had been wrong to wait, wrong to think a safer time and place to stand for the truth would find her. Truth made the world unsafe. Truth spurred evil into action . There would be no end to evil, not in this world, not while the book was still open.

Few people can be happy," says a famous philosopher, "unless they hate some other person, nation or creed." "Creed" refers to what people believe, and I believe that everyone in the world should feel as welcome and safe as I did in that library. But of course that is not how the story goes. People are unwelcome and unsafe all over the world, and it is other people who make them feel that way. We all do. We are miserable at home, or at school, scared when we walk the streets, and we are terrorized in all sorts of places, ghastly and desperate, all over the globe. Not all suffering is the same, and we are not all suffering at the same time, but every person or nation or creed as had their turn, or is waiting their turn to suffer to to force suffering on us, sometimes so terribly that for some of us, at some moment somewhere in the world, the only escape is into the world of the imagination, because we cannot really imagine what is happening and what we have done.

BALDWIN: There’s no such thing as safety on this planet. No one knows that much. No one ever will. Not only about the world but about himself. That’s why it’s unsafe. This is what the whole sense of tragedy is really about. People think that a sense of tragedy is a kind of … embroidery, something irrelevant, that you can take or leave. But, in fact, it is a necessity. That’s what the Blues and Spirituals are all about. It is the ability to look on things as they are and survive your losses, or even not survive them—to know that your losses are coming. To know they are coming is the only possible insurance you have, a faint insurance, that you will survive them.

The reason so many people feel unhappy, unsuccessful, and unsafe is they forgot where their true happiness, success, and safety lie. Remembering where your true power lies reunites you with the Universe so that you can truly enjoy the miracles of life. And, most important, so your happiness can be an expression of joy that elevates the world.

However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside.

As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay the rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he’ll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the ’hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives and with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up—failing to live by one’s highest ideals and values—is part of what makes us human.

Growing up gay is still a very isolating and annihilating experience for too many young people. While you are a gay little boy, our society—in its classrooms, its playgrounds, its religious institutions—has no place for you and doesn’t want you to exist. You are erased. A gay little boy doesn’t know who he can turn to, doesn’t know who to trust. He hears people whispering, he watches TV, and he realizes how unsafe the world can be if you don’t fit in.

The truth was that they did not really have a mature connection at all. They had a rescuing connection. When she was in pain or in need of help, they were close. Other times, things were stormy. As we worked together, Jerry realized that he was a rescuer. He picked people who couldn’t meet any of his needs because they were so needy themselves. He would then step in and rescue them. Jerry had learned the rescuing pattern early in life from a needy mother who was unable to be satisfied. No matter what he or his father did, it was never enough. And with all of his mother’s crises, he learned to feel the closest when he was stepping in and taking care of her. It was his deepest connection with her. And now he had found the same sort of connection with someone else who needed rescuing. So he was unable to leave. People who need rescuing are not taking responsibility for their life. And people who do not take responsibility for their life are not safe, even though they may be very nice. Ultimately, they are not growing, and they are not fostering growth in the people who are rescuing them. Their life has spurts of sentimentality, but not a lot of mature love. Because a rescuer needs an unsafe person to rescue, rescuing always leads to unsafe people in one’s life.

It is the most difficult thing a person can be asked to do. And knowing that it is for the greater good doesn’t make it any easier. People used to die naturally. Old age used to be a terminal affliction, not a temporary state. There were invisible killers called “diseases” that broke the body down. Aging couldn’t be reversed, and there were accidents from which there was no return. Planes fell from the sky. Cars actually crashed. There was pain, misery, despair. It’s hard for most of us to imagine a world so unsafe, with dangers lurking in every unseen, unplanned corner. All of that is behind us now, and yet a simple truth remains: People have to die.

The Allies housed a hundred patients there. Before that the Germans held it with a small army, their last stronghold. Some rooms are painted, each room has a different season. Outside the villa is a gorge. All this is about twenty miles from Florence, in the hills. You will need a pass, of course. We can probably get someone to drive you up. It is still terrible out there. Dead cattle. Horses shot dead, half eaten. People hanging upside down from bridges. The last vices of war. Completely unsafe. The sappers haven’t gone in there yet to clear it. The Germans retreated burying and installing mines as they went. A terrible place for a hospital. The smell of the dead is the worst. We need a good snowfall to clean up this country. We need ravens.

In fact, the more you look, the more connections you find between Canada geese and people. Our population has also increased dramatically in the past several decades—there were just over two billion people on Earth in 1935, when live goose decoys were made illegal in the U.S. In 2021, there are more than seven billion people. Like humans, Canada geese usually mate for life, although sometimes unhappily. Like us, the success of their species has affected their habitats: A single Canada goose can produce up to one hundred pounds of excrement per year, which has led to unsafe E. coli levels in lakes and ponds where they gather. And like us, geese have few natural predators. If they die by violence, it is almost always human violence. Just like us.

Regardless of whether they identify with queerness, asexual people do need to recognize that if they are heteroromantic or aromantic, they may be seen as a reminder of straightness; when queer people create their own space, they sometimes don’t like to feel that someone they count as straight (or benefits from heterosexual privilege) is in it. There is much evidence of a need for a “safe space,” and people who don’t identify as LGBT are far more likely to be coming from a position of ignorance and may behave/speak/dominate in ways that heterosexual people tend to do. In short, LGBT people want to have a space where what they hear from the heterosexual world all the time is not going to come up when they’re in this supportive atmosphere. Some LGBT folks feel unsafe discussing their issues in the presence of people who haven’t experienced them or couldn’t experience them.

Fine people on both sides? I was disgusted. Here was the same man I’d gone on television to defend when I believed it was appropriate. While I hadn’t been a supporter at the start of his campaign, he’d eventually convinced me he could be an effective president. Trump had proved to be a disrupter of the status quo during the primary and general election. Especially when he began to talk about issues of concern to black Americans. Dems have taken your votes for granted! Black unemployment is the highest it’s ever been! Neighborhoods in Chicago are unsafe! All things I completely agreed with. But now he was saying, 'I’m going to change all that!' He mentioned it at every rally, even though he was getting shut down by the leaders of the African American community. And what amazed me most was that he was saying these things to white people and definitely not winning any points there either. I’d defended Trump on more than one occasion and truly believed he could make a tangible difference in the black community. (And still do.) I’d lost relationships with family members, friends, and women I had romantic interest in, all because I thought advocating for some of his positions had a higher purpose. But now the president of the United States had just given a group whose sole purpose and history have been based on hate and the elimination of blacks and Jews moral equivalence with the genuine counterprotesters. My grandfather was born and raised in Helena, Arkansas, where the KKK sought to kill him and other family members. You can imagine this issue was very personal to me. In Chicago, the day before Trump’s press conference, my grandfather and I had had a long conversation about Charlottesville, and his words to me were fresh in my mind. So, yeah, I was hurt. Angry. Frustrated. Sad.

I have no problems questioning the basis of any decision, where the knowledge came from, and the inference fundamentals. It’s become second nature to me - almost like wearing a seatbelt. It’s not a vulgar interrogatory. I’ve mastered how to question others in a positive, informative, and polite way that doesn’t make them feel as if I’m questioning their integrity or intelligence – I’m not. I’ve found that people who present well-thought out decisions are often eager to explain the knowledge and reasoning behind those decisions – and I value this as a learning opportunity for myself and others. On the other hand, those who are evasive, secretive, or vague about the basis of their decisions and solutions should always be considered unsafe. Experience has shown me they often times are. In the end, the degree of confidence I place with any decision or solution determines the confidence and weight I give to outcomes and those who provide them.

Pornography can be harmful to sexual healing in many ways. It conveys the idea of unlimited sexual access to women, children, and men. Pornography exploits the people who act in it as well as the public who buys it. It uses sexual stimulation to make money, reinforcing the commodity view of sex. Pornography evokes strong emotions, such as fear and shame, and encourages sexual arousal to abusive ideas and images. Pornography often depicts sex from the perspective of someone who has unsafe, impulsive, compulsive, and extreme sexual interests. It frequently perpetuates destructive and false impressions about sex. People are reduced to objects that are used for stimulation and that can be controlled by other people. Staged scenes in porn can make sexual violence and humiliation appear pleasurable, increasing our tolerance of coercion in sexual relationships. The sex in porn is typically devoid of genuine affection, respect, responsibility, and connection. And without these pillars of healthy sex, it tends to reinforce a type of sex that can never fully satisfy.

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your co-workers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is in fact far more conservative than sticking with the status quo. Richard Branson doesn’t work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Ballmer or Carly Fiorina. Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells—and helped the company trounce Kmart—probably worked fewer hours than you do in an average week. None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they’re not smarter than you either. They’re succeeding by doing hard work. As the economy plods along, many of us are choosing to take the easy way out. We’re going to work for the Man, letting him do all the hard work while we put in the long hours. We’re going back to the future, to a definition of work that embraces the grindstone. Some people (a precious few, so far) are

avoiding death is avoiding life, dodging life is inviting death. For most people, if life becomes unpleasant or burdensome, then, knowingly or unknowingly, they start dodging life. Once you start dodging life, you are invariably inviting death. There is no better method in the world to dodge life except to invite death. Either you do it consciously or you do it unconsciously. One major contribution to the multiple, complex ailments that you see on the planet these days is that people are trying to dodge life and, in the process, are inviting death. The body is only cooperating with this. The body is just fulfilling your desire to invite death. Ask, and it shall happen! People are trying to avoid life because they think it is unsafe. You should know that the only safe place on the planet is your grave. Nothing happens there. There is no safety in life itself. Like I said earlier, tomorrow morning you may be dead, no matter how much security you create for yourself. I am not wishing you this, but it does not matter how healthy you are, how well you are right now, tomorrow you may be dead. It is a real possibility. So there is no such thing as security in this life. The moment you start seeking security, naturally, you become death-oriented. Unknowingly, you will seek death.

Bernard is caring, helpful, and enjoyable to be with. Everybody loves him. And he really loves people. But Bernard is a relational sprinter, not a marathoner. He’s there for you if you’re there. But it’s hard for Bernard to keep you in mind when he’s off helping another person. This trait has caused Bernard to be unsafe with his friends and family. They have learned the hard way that you cannot depend on him. He commits and commits and commits—but he does not come through. If you ask him to return the lawnmower he borrowed last week, don’t block out your mowing hours on your schedule anytime soon. Bernard isn’t a bad person, nor is he insincere. But he loves the intense warmth of being close to a person in the here-and-now. It gets somewhat addictive to him, and he can’t delay gratification to help a person who isn’t around, when another, in-the-flesh person is available. And so he routinely disappoints himself and his friends. He flunks the time test. For example, when Bernard and I would plan dinners or nights out, he was often late, and sometimes he wouldn’t show up at all. Of course he’d always have a great excuse about some emergency or crisis. Finally, I realized I wasn’t a “crisis,” so I didn’t make the cut. I learned that, over time, I shouldn’t depend on Bernard.

This revolution in the role of government has been accompanied, and largely produced, by an achievement in public persuasion that must have few rivals. Ask yourself what products are currently least satisfactory and have shown the least improvement over time. Postal service, elementary and secondary schooling, railroad passenger transport would surely be high on the list. Ask yourself which products are most satisfactory and have improved the most. Household appliances, television and radio sets, hi-fi equipment, computers, and, we would add, supermarkets and shopping centers would surely come high on that list. The shoddy products are all produced by government or government-regulated industries. The outstanding products are all produced by private enterprise with little or no government involvement. Yet the public—or a large part of it—has been persuaded that private enterprises produce shoddy products, that we need ever vigilant government employees to keep business from foisting off unsafe, meretricious products at outrageous prices on ignorant, unsuspecting, vulnerable customers. That public relations campaign has succeeded so well that we are in the process of turning over to the kind of people who bring us our postal service the far more critical task of producing and distributing energy.

There, at the top of the stairs, was the world: acres and miles of open land, an arc of the planet, curving off and lighted in the distance under the morning sky. The building we had just passed through was, it turned out, only the entrance to an open dig, where Chinese archaeologists were in the years-long process of excavating a buried army of life-sized clay soldiers. I saw what looked like human bodies coming out of the earth. Straight trenches cut the bare soil into deep corridors or long pits. From the trench walls emerged an elbow here, a leg and foot there, a head and neck. Everything was the same color, the terra-cotta earth and the people: the color of plant pots. Seeing the broad earth under the open sky, and a patch of it sliced into deep corridors from which bodies emerge, surprises many people to tears. Who would not weep from shock? I seemed to see our lives from the aspect of eternity. I seemed long dead and looking down. For it is in our lifetimes alone that people can witness the unearthing of the deep-dwelling army of Emperor Qin—the seven thousand or the ten thousand soldiers, their real crossbows and swords, their horses and chariots, bared to the light for the first time in 2,200 years. “In the pictures of the old masters,” Max Picard wrote in The World of Silence, “people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.

The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world. The notion that a vast gulf exists between “criminals” and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about “them.” The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay the rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he’ll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the ’hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives and with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up—failing to live by one’s highest ideals and values—is part of what makes us human.

• No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We will talk about almost anyone about our physical health, even our sex lives, but bring depression, anxiety or grief , and the expression on the other person would probably be "get me out of this conversation" • We can distract our feelings with too much wine, food or surfing the internet, • Therapy is far from one-sided; it happens in a parallel process. Everyday patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves, • "The only way out is through" the only way to get out of the tunnel is to go through, not around it • Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt" • Attachment styles are formed early in childhood based on our interactions with our caregivers. Attachment styles are significant because they play out in peoples relationships too, influencing the kind of partners they pick, (stable or less stable), how they behave in a relationship (needy, distant, or volatile) and how the relationship tend to end (wistfully, amiably, or with an explosion) • The presenting problem, the issue somebody comes with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely. • "Help me understand more about the relationship" Here, here's trying to establish what’s known as a therapeutic alliance, trust that has to develop before any work can get done. • In early sessions is always more important for patients to feel understood than it is for them to gain any insight or make changes. • We can complain for free with a friend or family member, People make faulty narratives to make themselves feel better or look better in the moment, even thought it makes them feel worse over time, and that sometimes they need somebody else to read between the lines. • Here-and-now, it is when we work on what’s happening in the room, rather than focusing on patient's stories. • She didn't call him on his bullshit, which this makes patients feel unsafe, like children's whose parent's don’t hold them accountable • What is this going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to? • Neuroscientists discovered that humans have brain cells called mirror neurons, that cause them to mimic others, and when people are in a heightened state of emotion, a soothing voice can calm their nervous system and help them stay present • Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth. • The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at • How easy it is, I thought, to break someone’s heart, even when you take great care not to. • The purpose on inquiring about people's parent s is not to join them in blaming, judging or criticizing their parents. In fact it is not about their parents at all. It is solely about understanding how their early experiences informed who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits) • But personality disorders lie on a spectrum. People with borderline personality disorder are terrified of abandonment, but for some that might mean feeling anxious when their partners don’t respond to texts right away; for others that may mean choosing to stay in volatile, dysfunctional relationships rather than being alone. • In therapy we aim for self compassion (am I a human?) versus self esteem (Am I good or bad: a judgment) • The techniques we use are a bit like the type of brain surgery in which the patient remains awake throughout the procedure, as the surgeons operate, they keep checking in with the patient: can you feel this? can you say this words? They are constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back up so as not to damage it.

The weightless rhetoric of digital technology masks a refusal to acknowledge the people and resources on which these systems depend: lithium and coltan mines, energy-guzzling data centers and server farms, suicidal workers at Apple’s Foxconn factories, and women and children in developing countries and incarcerated Americans up to their necks in toxic electronic waste.2 The swelling demand for precious metals, used in everything from video-game consoles to USB cables to batteries, has increased political instability in some regions, led to unsafe, unhealthy, and inhumane working conditions, opened up new markets for child and forced labor, and encouraged environmentally destructive extraction techniques.3 It is estimated that mining the gold necessary to produce a single cell phone—only one mineral of many required for the finished product—produces upward of 220 pounds of waste.4

It is socially unsafe if you risk being mocked, laughed at, joked about, scaffolded, castigated. In such a disrespectful interaction, people are losing face. The safety issue sometimes irritates managers (in my practice). They argue that no heads are being chopped off. So why would you not be safe? They feel that people should say what they mean anyway. But in a position where you can be ridiculed or punished for expressing ideas, people will hide and hoard information to protect themselves.

Would you expect a mutiny?’ ‘Mutiny in the sense of outright revolt and refusal of command? No. But from some of the people I expect muttering, discontent, ill-will; and nothing makes work slower or more inefficient or more unsafe than ill-will and its perpetual quarrels.

There are certainly ways to educate people, and to dispel myths and fears that the birth families (or birth countries) are bad, dangerous, and unsafe for the child, and should not be part of his/her life. There is a small percentage of cases where the danger may be real, and in these cases the child should certainly be protected, but—even then—not from everyone in his/her family of origin.

you are making trigger decisions. Those kinds of decisions are often made by people who are fleeing. This is not a bad thing. I merely say to remind you to always be careful. Trigger decisions can often lead to unsafe situations. If you are going to run, try to run toward something instead of away from it. She

Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell the gadgets to millions of people,” wrote Victor Papanek in 1971: Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed.

There is no religion that should have a right to take other people's lives. There is no religion that should make other people feel like victims. There is no religion that should make other people feel 'unsafe'.

was interested in human reaction, human behavior in emergencies. The general picture was the following. In most cases, everyday workers displayed great courage and responsibility after the accident. They realized that these events had dangerous consequences, but they didn't have enough information to estimate the real extent of the disaster. Authorities at different levels tried to interpret the known information in the most soothing manner—and the higher the authority’s level was, the more obvious this manner was. They weren’t preventing the creation of panic—and they often talked about this later—so much as they were trying to distort the objective picture of those terrible events. Although the majority of people demonstrated courage during the disaster, they weren’t brave enough to tell the truth to others, or to come to serious decisions. Unit 3, situated in the same building with the unsafe Unit 4, went on working. Ventilation of Units 1 and 2 went on working also, gradually filling the rooms with radioactive aerosols. More and more people were affected by nuclear radiation.

Safe people know that they are subject to change. They want to mature and grow over time. But unsafe people do not see their own problems; they are rigidly fixed and not subject to growth (Prov. 17:10). These people can be dangerous, and they will only change when there are enough limits placed on them that they are forced into great pain, humility, and loss. Without this confrontation, unsafe people will remain defiant and unchanged.

If we pay attention, it becomes clear that many people have already internalized seeing themselves as ‘customers’. For example, when some express their discontent with any government or corporate policies or services, they often demand changes as ‘taxpayers’ rather than as citizens. Is it implied in this language that those who do not (or cannot) pay taxes, albeit temporarily, have no rights to object as citizens? Is this why poor neighborhoods in America are usually run down and unsafe? If so, we must be careful about accepting this reality, because each one of us at any given point in our lives may be in a place where we may not be deemed as worthy consumers or taxpayers by the system. Seeing oneself as a customer is more about one’s income and payment to exist in the system than it is about their basic human rights or even their real value.

Now, as I said, I am all for your Second Amendment rights. I think you should be able to have guns. It’s in your constitution. What I am not for is bullshit arguments and lies. There is one argument and one argument alone for having a gun, and this is the argument… “Fuck off. I like guns.” It’s not the best argument, but it’s all you’ve got. And there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I like something. Don’t take it away from me.” But don’t give me this other bullshit. The main one is, [In American accent] “I need it for protection. I need to protect me. I need to protect my family.” Really? Is that why they’re called “assault rifles”? Is it? I’ve never heard of these fucking “protection rifles” you speak of. Protection? What the fuck are you talking about? You have a gun in your house, you’re 80% more likely to use that gun on yourself, than to shoot someone else. And people think, “Well, that’d never happen to me.” You don’t know that, because you know what? ♪ From time to time We all get sad ♪ ♪ One day you’re happy Then you’re sad ♪ ♪ And then, uh-oh ♪ Protection. I had a break-in in Manchester, England, where I was tied up, I had my head cut. They threatened to rape my girlfriend. They came through the window with a machete and a hammer, and Americans always go, [In American accent] “Well, imagine if you had a gun.” And I’m like, “All right. I was naked at the time. I wasn’t wearing my holster. I wasn’t staring at the window waiting for cunts with machetes to come through.” What world do you live in where you’re constantly fucking ready? You have guns ’cause you like guns! That’s why you go to gun conventions! That’s why you read gun magazines! None of you give a shit about home security. None of you go to home security conventions. None of you read Padlock Monthly. None of you have a Facebook picture of you behind a secure door going, “Fucking yeah!” Like you’re going to be ready if someone comes into your house. You have it at all fucking times. By the way, most people who are breaking into your house just want your fucking TV! You think that people are coming to murder your family? How many fucking enemies do you have? Jeez, you think a lot of yourself if you think everyone’s coming to murder you. See, if you have it readily available, it becomes unsafe. You have it in your bedside table, one of your kids picks it up, thinks it’s a toy, shoots another one of your kids. Happens every fucking day, but people go, “That’d never happen in my house ’cause I’m a responsible gun owner. I keep my guns locked in a safe.” Then they’re no fucking protection! Someone comes into the house, you’re like, “Wait there, fuck-face! Oh! You’ve come to the wrong house here, buddy boy. I tell you what. I’m gonna fuck you up! Okay. Is it 32 to the left or 32 to the right? Your mother’s birthday? Why the fuck would I know your fucking mother’s birthday? Maybe if you didn’t leave the window open [In whining voice] ‘because it’s too hot in here,’ we wouldn’t be getting fucking murdered, right?

Viacen Male Enhancement UK Male Enhancer pills are dangerous. Studies directed by researchers and urologists find a significant measure of unsafe substances in people. These substances incorporate lead, form and yeast that when they are taken into the body at unreasonable sums can cause irreversible issues. The ever fatal Escherichia Coli microscopic organisms have even been bound in the things in those medicine. It is the incessant guilty party for gastroenteritis and urinary tract diseases. At the point when E. Coli is left untreated, I realize it can prompt much rarer cases with respect to model pneumonia, peritonitis and septicemia.

If they have positive and secure experiences early on, they can feel safe and build positive relationships. If they have negative experiences, they see the world as unsafe and develop skills to negotiate the land mines of life. When that happens, their ways of coping might appear crazy to others.

As people begin to feel unsafe, they start down one of two unhealthy paths. They move either to silence (withholding meaning from the pool) or to violence (trying to force meaning in the pool).

She was surprised to find that the more psychological safety a team felt, the higher its error rates. It appeared that psychological safety could breed complacency. When trust runs deep in a team, people might not feel the need to question their colleagues or double-check their own work. But Edmondson soon recognized a major limitation of the data: the errors were all self-reported. To get an unbiased measure of mistakes, she sent a covert observer into the units. When she analyzed those data, the results flipped: psychologically safe teams reported more errors, but they actually made fewer errors. By freely admitting their mistakes, they were then able to learn what had caused them and eliminate them moving forward. In psychologically unsafe teams, people hid their mishaps to avoid penalties, which made it difficult for anyone to diagnose the root causes and prevent future problems. They kept repeating the same mistakes.

Unfortunately, for many people the movement toward self-realization is disrupted due to neglect, rejection, abuse, or other forms of childhood trauma. The child subjected to this early wounding is unable to say: “My parent has personal problems which are having an effect on me”, but rather the child is only able to conclude that the world is unsafe. Hence, they become plagued by what Horney calls “basic anxiety” which initially renders them helpless and overwhelmed, but over time propels them to find ways to cope with life despite their fears. They develop what Horney calls unconscious “neurotic trends” which sculpt their personality so as to give them the semblance of safety in what is perceived to be a threatening environment. And when they emerge into adulthood these neurotic trends do not disappear, but rather they continue to influence their attitudes and behaviors and wreck havoc on their well-being. Rare is the individual who lives completely free from these unconscious relics leftover from childhood.

What is the first thing young people ask about in job interviews today: What are the health benefits? When I asked a savvy focus group of New Yorkers in their mid-twenties, “How safe do you feel—about sex, money, relationships, marriage, street violence, job security?” The response was urgent and unanimous. “None of the above. Unsafe on all levels. At all times.” And

Look at this. Do you know what this says?” “Travis and Etty, surrounded by little glittery hearts?” he answers. “No, it says we are safe. We need to do something that is unsafe.” The frown on Travis’s face makes me think he isn’t getting it. “The best love stories have action… adventure!” I argue. Also, action usually raises tension. And tension usually equals a good argument. So, that’s it. That’s my answer. We go to the Congo; we stumble upon some drug lords and bam− if that’s not conflict I don’t know what is. Except, I can’t go the Congo because I have to work tomorrow. But the theory is still valid. “I would suggest skydiving, but I know because of the height issue that’s out,” I put my finger to my mouth in concentration. “Because that’s the only reason why that wouldn’t be a good idea,” Travis says. “Should we go to the casino and bet it all on red?” I ask. “Have you forgotten you’re still taking overtime shifts to pay off the inflatable day of fun?” Travis argues. “I’ve got it!” I exclaim, shooting my arms up in victory. “Let’s go drive down to the docks and see if we can witness a crime.” “Where are ‘the docks’?” Travis says, smiling indulgently at my new idea. “I’ve heard people say that in movies,” I say, shrugging. “I was hoping you would know where it is.

I saw this vividly when I visited my parents’ home, where two of my three sisters, Susan and Cris, were still living. They ran up to me excitedly when I walked in the front door. “Can you play Monopoly with us?” they asked. Now, Monopoly was a favorite family addiction. We’d spent many rainy days bankrupting each other. But now things were different. I was a spiritual man. I had priorities. So I said what I thought any spiritual man would say: “No thanks. Monopoly doesn’t change your life.” My sisters were crushed. They didn’t say anything at the time, but I learned later that they felt like I’d changed. And not for the better. Yet Harry would have approved of my refusal to play with my sisters. I’d seen him say the same things several times to friends who wanted to play tennis or see a movie. At the time, I thought he was being spiritual. Now I know that his criticisms covered up his inability to make deep relationships. Instead of making me more “spiritual,” Harry brought out the worst in me. I became aloof, critical, and judgmental. Harry was an unsafe person because, while I was around him, my other relationships suffered.

4 Times to Get Tough . . . 1. Self-Respect—You don’t have to take everything on the chin and lose the respect of yourself and others in the process. Don’t be a doormat or a pushover by allowing people to disrespect or run over you. Stand firm in your beliefs and values. 2. Self-Preservation—Understand and set boundaries. Decide what is and what is not acceptable in how people treat you. Claim your power to live life on your terms and not at the whims of others’ unreasonable requests and demands. 3. Protecting others—If you are a parent of a child or a caretaker of the elderly or disabled, it is your moral duty to defend them to the end. 4. Self-Defense—Have you ever felt threatened, unsafe, or abused because of another’s behavior? Assert yourself and do whatever is necessary to ensure your safety. Being kind DOES NOT mean you should excuse such behavior.