Can a violent person be re-educated to not be violent? This blog-post asks that question. This is not a solution on how to cure a violent person within your family or one that is harming you or your loved ones. This post only asks the question to how violence can be stopped before it occurs and how people can learn ways in dealing with their problems other than with violence. If you are in a violent or abusive relationship, or know someone that is suffering from abuse or domestic violence, please contact one of the institutions listed at the end of this blog-post.
Violence: exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse, an instance of violent treatment or procedure, injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation, intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force, vehement feeling or expression (merriam-webster.com).
You can find it everywhere, it’s not hard to ignore. Violence on the streets, in the classrooms and schools, in the home, portrayed and idolized in movies, in songs, literature…violence has always been a part of our culture. That doesn’t make it right, especially not when violence is directed at the weak, the innocent, the fragile and those that cannot protect or help themselves. I am not just speaking of children, but of men and women, the elderly and the younger generations. Violence doesn’t just stop from affecting an individual because of age or gender.
Abuse comes in many forms; verbal, physical, psychological/emotional. Often the abuser has suffered from diverse forms of abuse him/herself at one point or the other during their lives. Is that an explanation for then abusing others, for continuing the cycle of violence? Actually there are psychologists that will try to explain that an abuser that knows nothing different than to hurt or harm others, sees no wrong in their doings.
Now I do believe that there are individuals, that if taught nothing but pain and hate, they will grow up believing pain and hate are a lifestyle form and normal. Until of course they are confronted with other individuals that live differently, they will not know that the hate and pain inflicted upon them was wrong and continuing down the same path will just cause more suffering. Then again, I also believe that we all have a sense of morals instilled into us. How, I am not sure, but let us call it common sense. If it hurts, it is wrong. If it causes others agony and pain, it cannot be right. Simple common sense that all individuals acquire sooner or later in their lives.
So what makes people practice violence on others? Are they just mean? Evil? Suffer from psychological disorders? Well, to answer that question one would have to analyze the psyche of each person individually and then determine whether or not a mental disorder exists, and to which extent. There are many psychological disorders, which have even been classified over generations with something called the DSM-IV-TR, which is a classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder an d indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner. 2009. pg. 491). Once a disorder has been properly diagnosed, it’s origin has to be determined before any treatment can be implemented. I personally do not believe in prescribing medication as a solution to a problem. Medication might help to an extent, but it doesn’t heal the disease or the illness, it just calms it down for a limited amount of time.
What needs to be done in many cases is to educate individuals that violence is not the answer to their problems. No matter what they learned during their childhood, no matter how often they personally suffered from violence, it was never right and cannot have helped that individual except to create hurt, anger, shame and possibly animosity or even hatred towards the violent person. I know of many people that were beat as children. If you ask them whether or not that was such a great idea, to have been beat by their parents, they answer that it didn’t kill them, it was not all that bad and they turned out pretty good adults. Often these same parents believe that beating their children is the answer to their lack of understanding of how to raise their own children.
Other parents I have met have suffered from extreme physical punishment as children and believe because of that their children need no form of parenting or punishment if they do something wrong. These children grow up wild, doing as they please, knowing no consequences to their actions. Finding a balance between the two is not easy, but since violence starts somewhere, and it is often the consequence of a violent childhood, it needs to be stopped before it causes a cycle of even more violence.
I think that parents should really take parenting classes. I have no idea how we can stop the continuous cycle of violence that reigns in our country. It has to start somewhere, with one generation passing it on to the next generation of children, that will one day become parents. Education is a powerful tool. Teaching parents how to deal with their children is just part of the lessons that they should learn, parents also need to learn how to handle themselves.
Learning to understand ones self, will teach one to understand others better. It may not make a lot of sense, but think of it this way, the phrase leading by example didn’t just fall out of the sky. It has meaning, it has depth. It shows that one cannot ask of others what one is not willing to learn or cannot do. A parent cannot ask of a child to be honest if the parent is a liar. One cannot ask of others to be understanding and open-minded if one is close minded and lacks any compassion for others. Educating parents about themselves first will teach them a better understanding of how to understand and raise their children.
There are people that have quite diverse opinions on homosexuality. The same lack of understanding can be found when it comes to religion. Mutual understanding is non-existent, it is not even attempted because each party has their own viewpoint and is unwilling to accept the others. Now I personally believe that homosexuality is something that an individual is born with, but am also willing to accept that there are individuals that believe otherwise. I will not say that my viewpoint has not created many harsh attacks against my persona as well as against my family, yet it is our reaching out to others for understanding that might make a difference to those that lack the same.
People of a certain opinion expect others to automatically accept, understand, and think the way they do. Without the willingness to understand other viewpoints, one cannot expect anything from others. That is just a plain fact. To get to a point where one knows the difference between two viewpoints, one has to learn about both of them. That is also a part of educating ones self. Learning that there are other ways to deal with anger or with hurt is a step in the right direction. A cycle of violence and abuse can be stopped, one just needs to understand why it is important to do so, and how to do so.
The first step to stopping violence is in recognizing that something is wrong, the next is finding out why it is wrong, the third would be finding out where it all began and then figuring out what to do to stop it. I am not implying that an overall healing of a violent person within the family is going to be a free pass for a happy ending. It is not. It is a long hard battle and many times, in many cases, violence is so severe within relationships that the only solution is to leave the violent partner. I am saying that if one ever suffered from violence in the past that this cycle does not have to continue. Learn how to deal with what has happened, learn how to not commit the sins committed upon you, and stop the violence.
STOP FAMILY VIOLENCE
http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/
FAMILY VIOLENCE PREVENTION FUN D
Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook
http://www.dm.usda.gov/shmd/aware.htm
NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
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