GyaniNani's Reading Room

Tag: addiction

  • I Have Walked Away Too Quickly

    A GyaniNani confession about anger, regret, dhairya — and learning to stay long enough for the story to change.


    I have walked away too quickly from many things in life.

    Most often, from jobs.

    When I felt deeply hurt, angry or unfairly treated, my instinct was rarely to wait. I would react. Sometimes I would argue. Sometimes I would simply decide that I had had enough.

    And then I would resign.

    There was something almost satisfying about the decisiveness of it.

    If you don’t value me, I am leaving.

    If this is unjust, I will not tolerate it.

    If I am unhappy, why should I stay?

    At that moment, walking away often felt like courage.

    Wisdom usually arrived later.

    Sometimes much later.

    Then came the questions.

    Could I have handled that differently?

    Could I have stayed and fought instead of leaving?

    Could I have waited until the anger settled before making a decision that would affect the next several years of my life?

    Some of those decisions cost me professionally. Some brought financial insecurity. And some left me wondering whether what I had called courage was, at least partly, impatience.

    So today, when I write about धैर्य — dhairya, I am certainly not writing as someone who has mastered it.

    That would be dishonest.

    I am writing as someone who is still learning.

    Perhaps I have simply become a little better at creating a space between feeling and acting.

    And increasingly, I wonder whether that small space is where peace begins.

    Slowly, slowly…

    There is a Kabir doha I have heard countless times:

    “धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय।
    माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ऋतु आए फल होय॥”

    Slowly, slowly, O mind. Everything happens in its own time. The gardener may pour a hundred pots of water, but the fruit comes only in its season.

    I understood the words.

    I am not sure I understood the wisdom.

    As a working mother, I spent years negotiating calendars.

    School timings. Office timings. Homework. Illnesses. Meetings. Children’s activities. Travel. Deadlines.

    I had a husband who was—and remains—extraordinarily supportive.

    Yet I still wanted to do everything myself.

    I wanted to be available to my children. I wanted my work to continue. I wanted the household to function. And somewhere in all this, I think I also wanted my children to become independent quickly.

    Perhaps many working mothers will recognise this contradiction.

    We want our children to need us.

    And simultaneously, because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, we desperately want them not to need us quite so much.

    My children did become independent.

    But not because I hurried them into becoming so.

    It happened slowly.

    They stumbled. They learnt. They managed. I really thank them for their patience with me.

    They became strong.

    They became resilient.

    And somewhere along the way, I became resilient too.

    My husband, of course, seems to have possessed that resilience long before the rest of us discovered it.

    Looking back, I understand Kabir differently.

    You can water the tree.

    You can nurture it.

    You can protect it.

    You can show up every day.

    But you cannot command the season.

    There are things in life that will simply not ripen because we are impatient for them to do so.

    When passion takes over the rudder

    Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet:

    “Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.”

    I wish I had listened to my parents who always tried to amke me calm. Wish my younger self had good ears.

    I had plenty of sail.

    I have always cared deeply about my work. About fairness. About women. About children. About injustice. About doing things properly.

    That passion has given me tremendous energy throughout my life.

    But passion can also make you respond very quickly when you believe something is wrong.

    At several points in my professional life, I allowed the sail to take over the boat.

    I felt wronged.

    I became angry.

    I responded.

    And sometimes, I left.

    Later, when the storm had passed, reason would quietly return and ask:

    Was resignation really the only response available to you?

    Sometimes it was.

    Leaving an unhealthy situation can be an act of courage.

    But I also know now that not every battle has to be fought by leaving the battlefield. Did Arjun leave the battlefield in Mahabharata after seeing his guru and grandfather on the other side? No, he didn’t. May be because he had the lord- Krishna as his guide.

    Sometimes staying requires greater courage.

    Sometimes negotiating requires greater courage.

    Sometimes waiting for your anger to settle requires greater courage.

    Dhairya is not submission.

    It does not mean tolerating injustice.

    It does not mean becoming so “peaceful” that other people are allowed to walk over you.

    Perhaps dhairya simply gives reason enough time to reach the rudder before passion steers the entire boat.

    Then Buddhism found me….as I didn’t have patience to look for wisdom.

    One professional experience taught me this more powerfully than anything else.

    There was a period when a senior colleague was extremely unhappy with me.

    Our relationship deteriorated badly.

    Some colleagues around us added their own stories about me—many of them untrue—and the environment became increasingly hostile.

    It seemed that every possible difficulty was being created for me.

    I wanted to leave.

    Of course I did.

    That was what I knew how to do.

    But this time I was also deeply broken. There were days when I could barely imagine how I would continue through the situation.

    And somewhere during that period, Buddhism appeared in my life.

    The Dhammapada says:

    “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.”

    It sounds beautiful when printed on a page.

    It is considerably less beautiful when you are expected to practise it with someone who is making your life miserable.

    I struggled.

    Then I began trying something that initially felt almost absurd.

    I started praying for him.

    Not for his defeat.

    Not for him to receive some cosmic punishment.

    Not even for him to suddenly realise that I was right.

    I tried to pray for his happiness.

    For his wisdom.

    For something good to happen in his life.

    Initially, I probably said the words without feeling them very deeply.

    But I continued.

    And slowly, something changed.

    I cannot claim that my prayers magically transformed another human being.

    That would make a much neater story than life usually provides.

    But I know something changed inside me.

    I was no longer waking each day carrying quite the same amount of anger.

    I began seeing the situation differently.

    I stayed.

    And life moved.

    Eventually, he received a better professional opportunity and moved on.

    My own circumstances improved.

    Years passed.

    And here is the part of the story that still makes me smile:

    Today, we are on very good terms.

    Imagine if I had walked away at the height of my anger.

    Perhaps I would have carried another wound.

    Perhaps another professional relationship would have ended bitterly.

    Perhaps I would still remember him only as “the man who made my life miserable.”

    Instead, I stayed long enough to see the story change.

    That experience gave me a sentence I now believe far more deeply than any quotation I could borrow:

    Dhairya can change the ending.

    Not always.

    Some situations must be left.

    Some relationships must end.

    Some injustices must be challenged immediately and fiercely.

    Patience should never become an excuse for tolerating abuse or silencing resistance.

    But sometimes, the ending we can see from inside our anger is not the only ending available.

    We simply cannot see the others yet.

    What does this have to do with peace?

    Perhaps everything.

    Perhaps very little.

    I am careful here.

    Wars do not happen because two people simply forgot to be patient.

    Wars emerge from histories, inequalities, power, territory, ideology, political ambition, fear, oppression and competing claims to justice.

    Dhairya is not a substitute for politics, diplomacy or justice.

    And yet…

    Every large conflict is also lived through human minds.

    Someone feels threatened.

    Someone strikes.

    Someone retaliates.

    The retaliation becomes justification for another retaliation.

    Positions harden.

    Listening becomes betrayal.

    Compromise becomes weakness.

    Eventually, each side possesses a long list of reasons why it is the other side that must stop first.

    And I find myself wondering:

    At what point in that chain did we lose the capacity to pause?

    Not to surrender.

    Not to abandon justice.

    Not to tell the oppressed to wait patiently for their suffering to end.

    But to pause long enough to ask:

    Must the next response resemble the previous one?

    Have we understood what the other side fears?

    Can strength sometimes mean restraint?

    Can we remain firm without becoming consumed by hatred?

    Thich Nhat Hanh, who knew the devastation of war intimately, expressed an idea with extraordinary simplicity:

    “Peace in oneself, peace in the world.”

    I understand that sentence differently today too.

    Inner peace does not mean withdrawing from an unjust world and meditating while everything burns around us.

    Perhaps it means ensuring that when we enter the struggle, we do not carry so much unexamined anger that we reproduce the very violence we claim to oppose.

    And perhaps dhairya requires humility

    There is another uncomfortable companion to patience.

    Humility.

    Because sometimes the reason we cannot wait is not urgency.

    It is certainty.

    I know I am right.

    I know what happened.

    I know why you did it.

    I know what must happen next.

    Age has made me less certain about certainty.

    I have been right many times.

    I have also been absolutely certain—and wrong.

    So these days I am trying to learn three sentences:

    I may be wrong.

    I may not know the whole story.

    I do not have to answer today.

    That last sentence would have been almost impossible for my younger self.

    Even now, I do not always manage it.

    I still become impatient.

    I still get angry.

    I still occasionally respond and then think, Deepali, you could have waited.

    So no, this is not a GyaniNani announcing that she has finally attained wisdom.

    Far from it.

    It is a GyaniNani confessing that wisdom seems to arrive in instalments—often after we have already paid rather heavily for the lesson.

    But I am learning.

    To pause.

    To wait.

    To allow the first wave of anger to pass.

    To ask whether I need to win this argument today.

    To remember that another person may be carrying a story I cannot see.

    And perhaps most importantly, to understand that waiting is not always weakness.

    Sometimes waiting is the moment in which we recover our freedom to choose.

    Without that pause, anger chooses for us.

    Fear chooses for us.

    Ego chooses for us.

    With it, another possibility appears.

    Perhaps this is what dhairya means to me now.

    Not sitting quietly while life happens.

    Not tolerating what should never be tolerated.

    Not becoming passive.

    But developing the strength to stay inside an uncomfortable moment without immediately trying to escape it, defeat it or retaliate against it.

    I am still learning that strength.

    Slowly.

    As Kabir would probably have expected.

    And perhaps that is all right.

    The gardener can continue watering.

    The season will come when it comes.

    One question from GyaniNani

    Has there ever been a moment in your life when waiting changed the ending of the story?

    I would genuinely like to hear it.

    — GyaniNani Reflects

  • Why The Prophet?

    11 Conversations on parenting, love and letting go

    Inspired by The Prophet by Kahlil Jibran

    A personal Journey

    From a carefree, naive wanderer

    To a lifelong seeker of questions.

    Not because life became easier, but one small book quietly changed the way I looked at the world.

    Walk with us..

    The first conversation begins this friday…

    Welcome to The Prophet Dialogues

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 8

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART VIII

    When Fear Begins to Shrink Our Lives

    “The purpose of fear is to protect life—not to replace it.”

    Fear has a curious habit.

    It begins by asking us to be careful.

    Slowly, almost invisibly, it begins asking us to stop living.

    A young woman avoids evening classes.

    An elderly couple stops travelling.

    Parents no longer allow children to play outside.

    A commuter changes jobs to avoid public transport.

    Each decision appears reasonable in isolation.

    Together, they slowly reduce the size of life.

    TD introduced another important idea here—maladaptive fear. 17

    Healthy fear helps us adapt.

    It makes us alert.

    It encourages preparation.

    Maladaptive fear does something different.

    It convinces us that the safest life is the smallest life.

    Ironically, this is often strengthened by relentless exposure to dramatic news.

    Every notification.

    Every breaking alert.

    Every forwarded video.

    Our minds begin to mistake repetition for increasing danger. 18

    Yet the world is rarely as simple as our news feeds.

    Acts of extraordinary violence deserve attention.

    But they should not become the only stories we consume.

    Because while violence deserves visibility, kindness deserves memory too.

    Every day, people rescue strangers after accidents.

    Neighbours donate blood.

    Passengers intervene to protect women.

    Teachers notice silent suffering.

    Friends stay back after everyone else has left.

    These stories rarely become breaking news.

    Yet they are equally true.

    If we only remember violence, we begin believing that violence is all there is.

    It is not.

    Humanity has always contained both cruelty and compassion.

    Our emotional health depends partly on remembering both.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If fear becomes smaller when we act, what does action actually look like for ordinary people?

    Notes:

    16.  The concept originates with Halbwachs (1950/1992): memory is not only individual but socially framed — communities preserve, transmit and reinterpret the past together.

    17.  On how avoidance sustains fear: Foa and Kozak (1986) show that fear structures persist precisely when avoidance prevents corrective emotional processing — the avoided train can never teach the mind that it is, in fact, usually safe.

    18.  Gerbner and Gross (1976) documented the “mean world syndrome” — heavy consumers of violent media overestimate real-world danger; Thompson et al. (2019) trace a modern cycle in which distress drives further media consumption, which deepens distress.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 7

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART VII

    Why Old Wounds Never Really Leave

    “Communities remember far longer than newspapers do.”

    There are moments in history that become reference points.

    Ask people where they were during a major earthquake, a terrorist attack or a national tragedy, and many can answer almost instantly.

    Not because they were present.

    But because the event became part of their collective memory. 16

    After the recent train murder, I heard several people say the same thing.

    “It reminded me of 26/11.”

    The comparison was not about numbers.

    It was about emotion.

    When I asked TD why old tragedies return so easily, he explained the idea of collective trauma. 15

    Unlike personal trauma, collective trauma belongs to an entire community. It becomes part of the stories people tell, the fears they inherit and the way future events are interpreted.

    A new incident does not arrive alone.

    It awakens older memories.

    This is true not only for acts of terrorism.

    Communities affected by riots, displacement, recurring floods or long histories of violence often carry invisible emotional maps. A loud sound, a familiar location or even a news headline can reopen emotions that had never completely healed.

    Perhaps this is why healing requires more than time.

    Time passes.

    Memory remains.

    The challenge before society is not to erase painful memories. That is neither possible nor desirable.

    The challenge is to prevent painful memories from becoming permanent prisons.

    Collective memory can become a source of wisdom.

    Or it can become a source of perpetual fear.

    The difference lies in how societies remember.

    Do we remember only the horror?

    Or do we also remember the courage of ordinary people who helped one another?

    History offers both.

    What we choose to pass on matters.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    When does healthy caution quietly become a life governed by fear?

    Notes:

    15.  Erikson (1976), studying the Buffalo Creek flood, first described trauma that damages the tissue of community itself; Hirschberger (2018) reviews how collective trauma becomes part of a group’s identity and meaning-making across generations.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 6

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART VI

    “That Could Have Been Me”

    “Fear is not only about danger. It is about nearness.”

    A few days after the train murder, I found myself listening to conversations in different places. At a café. In a waiting room. During a taxi ride. People were discussing the same incident, but their reactions were strikingly different.

    One young woman who travelled daily by local train admitted that she had barely slept the night after watching the video.

    An elderly gentleman who mostly travelled by car said, “Terrible incident… but these things happen.”

    Neither response was wrong.

    They were simply different.

    When I mentioned this to TD, he smiled.

    “The mind asks only one question before it measures risk,” he said.

    “Could that have been me?”

    Psychologists call this risk perception. Interestingly, our perception of risk is rarely based on statistical probability. It is shaped by familiarity, proximity and imagination. 13

    A commuter who boards the same train every day does not see a random incident. She sees herself standing in that compartment.

    A parent watching news of violence against children imagines their own son or daughter.

    A young bride hearing of another dowry death quietly wonders about her own future.

    Fear becomes personal long before danger becomes probable.

    This is why two people watching the same news bulletin often walk away with entirely different emotions.

    The event is the same.

    The imagination is different.

    Years ago, while interacting with women in rural communities, I noticed something similar. Women routinely described walking long distances before sunrise or after sunset because they had no choice. When I asked whether they were afraid, many replied, “Yes. But we still have to go.”

    Their fear had not disappeared.

    Life had simply left them with fewer alternatives.

    Risk perception is therefore never only psychological. 14

    It is also social.

    Economic circumstances.

    Gender.

    Age.

    Disability.

    Occupation.

    All shape how close danger feels.

    Perhaps this is why public policy must listen not only to crime statistics but also to people’s lived experiences of safety.

    Because people do not live according to probability.

    They live according to perception.

    And perception shapes behaviour.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If fear grows through imagination, can memory make that fear last long after the event has passed?

    Notes:

    13.  The classic account is Slovic (1987): lay risk perception tracks dread, familiarity and controllability rather than probability. Loewenstein et al. (2001) formalise this as “risk as feelings” — emotional reactions to risk routinely diverge from cognitive assessments and often drive behaviour.

    14.  Kasperson et al. (1988) call this the social amplification of risk: social position, communication channels and institutional response amplify or attenuate how dangerous an event feels to different groups.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Epilogue

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    Epilogue

    As I finished writing these reflections, I realised that this series was never really about one train, one crime or one headline.

    It was about us.

    About how we respond when violence enters our lives—not always directly, but through the stories we hear, the images we carry and the memories we inherit.

    The questions in these pages do not belong to psychologists alone.

    They belong to commuters.

    Parents.

    Teachers.

    Police officers.

    Journalists.

    Policy-makers.

    Neighbours.

    And to every one of us who has ever looked at a disturbing headline and wondered,

    “What is happening to us?”

    Perhaps the better question is,

    “What are we going to do next?”

    Because, in the end, TD’s final words remain the simplest and perhaps the wisest:

    “Keep living your life. What you are going to do matters more.”

    References

    Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.

    Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180.

    Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28.

    Darley, J. M., & Latáné, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383.

    Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.

    Erikson, K. T. (1976). Everything in its path: Destruction of community in the Buffalo Creek flood. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Fischer, P., Krueger, J. I., Greitemeyer, T., Vogrincic, C., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D., Heene, M., Wicher, M., & Kainbacher, M. (2011). The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 517–537.

    Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J. (1986). Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin, 99(1), 20–35.

    Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172–199.

    Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Ed. & Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1950)

    Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective trauma and the social construction of meaning. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1441.

    Holman, E. A., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2014). Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(1), 93–98.

    International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) & ICF. (2021). National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21: India. Mumbai: IIPS.

    Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press.

    Kasperson, R. E., Renn, O., Slovic, P., Brown, H. S., Emel, J., Goble, R., Kasperson, J. X., & Ratick, S. (1988). The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework. Risk Analysis, 8(2), 177–187.

    Latáné, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.

    Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267–286.

    Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238.

    McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187.

    National Crime Records Bureau. (2026). Crime in India 2024. New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

    Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108(3), 483–522.

    Philpot, R., Liebst, L. S., Levine, M., Bernasco, W., & Lindegaard, M. R. (2020). Would I be helped? Cross-national CCTV footage shows that intervention is the norm in public conflicts. American Psychologist, 75(1), 66–75.

    Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236(4799), 280–285.

    Slovic, P. (2007). “If I look at the mass I will never act”: Psychic numbing and genocide. Judgment and Decision Making, 2(2), 79–95.

    Small, D. A., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). Helping a victim or helping the victim: Altruism and identifiability. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26(1), 5–16.

    Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249–275.

    Thompson, R. R., Jones, N. M., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2019). Media exposure to mass violence events can fuel a cycle of distress. Science Advances, 5(4), eaav3502.

    Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232.

    World Health Organization. (2002). World report on violence and health. Geneva: WHO.

    World Health Organization. (2009). Violence prevention: The evidence — Changing cultural and social norms that support violence. Geneva: WHO.

  • Beyond the Breaking News- Part 11

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART XI

    Keep Living Your Life

    “The final word should never belong to fear.”

    As our conversation drew to a close, I asked TD one last question.

    “After everything we have discussed—the violence, the fear, the uncertainty—what would you like people to carry with them?”

    He did not answer immediately.

    Then he said something beautifully simple.

    “Keep living your life.”

    The sentence stayed with me.

    Not because it dismissed fear.

    But because it placed fear in its rightful place.

    Fear has a purpose.

    It warns us.

    It prepares us.

    Sometimes it protects us.

    But it was never meant to become the author of our lives.

    Violence seeks more than victims.

    It seeks to alter the way the rest of us live.

    It asks us to withdraw.

    To distrust.

    To isolate ourselves.

    To become suspicious of one another.

    When that happens, violence succeeds far beyond the original act.

    Perhaps resilience is not the absence of fear.

    Perhaps resilience is quietly refusing to surrender our humanity because of it. 23

    This does not mean becoming careless.

    It does not mean ignoring danger.

    It means refusing to allow danger to define every decision we make.

    As I look back on my years in the development sector, I realise that the people who have inspired me most were not fearless.

    The widow who learnt a new livelihood after unimaginable loss.

    The survivor who chose to testify.

    The social worker who continued visiting difficult communities.

    The police officer who listened with compassion.

    The teacher who believed one child could still change.

    None of them were untouched by fear.

    They simply chose not to let fear make all their decisions.

    Perhaps that is what agency finally looks like.

    Not extraordinary courage.

    Quiet courage.

    The courage to continue caring.

    To continue trusting carefully.

    To continue building communities.

    To continue believing that kindness is worthwhile.

    To continue living.

    Because the opposite of violence is not only justice.

    It is also connection.

    The opposite of fear is not bravado.

    It is agency.

    And perhaps the opposite of despair is not certainty.

    It is hope expressed through action.

    The headlines will change tomorrow.

    Another story will replace today’s.

    But long after the breaking news fades, the deeper question remains.

    What kind of society are we becoming?

    And equally important,

    What kind of society are we choosing to build?

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    What if our greatest contribution is not that we lived in safe times…

    …but that we helped create a safer, kinder and more compassionate society for those who come after us?

    Perhaps that is where every meaningful conversation on violence should finally arrive.

    Not at fear.

    But at responsibility.

    Not at despair.

    But at agency.

    And certainly not at the breaking news.

    But beyond it.

    Notes:

    22. WHO (2009) reviews the evidence that changing cultural and social norms — including the everyday speech, jokes and silences that signal acceptability — is a core violence-prevention strategy in its own right.

    23.  Resilience research supports this quiet framing: Bonanno (2004) shows resilience is common rather than exceptional, and Masten (2001) famously calls it “ordinary magic” — arising from everyday human systems of relationship, meaning and agency rather than rare heroism.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 10

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART X

    Kindness Is Not Softness. It Is Prevention.

    “Violence rarely begins with a weapon. More often, it begins with everyday indifference.”

    When people speak about preventing violence, the conversation usually turns towards stricter laws, policing, surveillance or harsher punishments.

    These conversations are important.

    But they often begin too late.

    By the time the law intervenes, someone has already been hurt.

    TD offered another perspective that stayed with me.

    “Kindness,” he said, “is prevention.” 21

    At first, I wondered whether the idea was too simple.

    Then I thought about the people I have met over the years.

    A teacher humiliating a child in front of the class.

    Parents constantly comparing siblings.

    A husband controlling every decision his wife makes.

    Friends laughing at sexist jokes.

    Neighbours choosing silence when they hear repeated screams next door.

    None of these moments make the evening news.

    Yet they quietly shape the emotional climate in which violence either grows or is challenged.

    Violence is rarely born overnight.

    It rehearses itself.

    In language.

    In ridicule.

    In entitlement.

    In humiliation.

    In the belief that some people deserve less dignity than others.

    Perhaps this is why TD insisted that we pay attention to our ordinary conversations.

    Every joke that normalises dowry.

    Every casual remark that blames survivors.

    Every statement that dismisses emotional pain.

    Every act of public humiliation.

    These may appear insignificant.

    They are not.

    Children are always listening.

    Young people are always observing.

    Communities are always learning what is considered acceptable. 22

    If cruelty can be learnt, compassion can also be learnt.

    If disrespect spreads through imitation, so can kindness.

    I often think of development work in the same way.

    Communities do not change only because policies change.

    They change because everyday behaviour changes.

    One respectful conversation.

    One teacher who listens.

    One police officer who responds with dignity.

    One neighbour who chooses to intervene.

    These actions may never become headlines.

    Yet they prevent stories that otherwise might have.

    Perhaps kindness has been misunderstood.

    It is not a weakness.

    It is one of society’s earliest warning systems.

    It notices suffering before statistics do.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If kindness is prevention, what ultimately gives us the courage to keep choosing it in a world where violence still exists?

    That was the final question I asked TD.

    Notes:

    21.  Public health reaches the same conclusion: the WHO’s World Report on Violence and Health (2002) locates the roots of violence in an ecology of relationships, communities and norms — prevention therefore begins long before law enforcement. On learned aggression, see Bandura (1977).

    22.  WHO (2009) reviews the evidence that changing cultural and social norms — including the everyday speech, jokes and silences that signal acceptability — is a core violence-prevention strategy in its own right.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 9

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART IX

    Agency: The Antidote to Fear

    “Fear tells us what we cannot control. Agency reminds us what we still can.”

    After several conversations on fear, I found myself asking TD a question that many of us quietly ask ourselves after every disturbing news report.

    “What can one ordinary person possibly do?”

    It is an honest question.

    We cannot eliminate violence.

    We cannot predict every danger.

    We cannot control the choices other people make.

    So where does that leave us?

    TD’s answer shifted the conversation in an important way.

    “Psychology uses a simple but powerful word—agency.” 19

    Agency is our ability to recognise that even when circumstances are beyond our control, our response is not.

    Fear narrows our world.

    Agency begins to expand it again.

    It is the difference between saying,

    “The world has become unsafe.”

    And asking,

    “What can I do to become safer?”

    The difference may appear small.

    Psychologically, it is enormous.

    Agency restores something that violence often steals.

    Choice.

    I have seen this repeatedly while working with women rebuilding their lives after violence.

    The turning point rarely arrives through one dramatic event.

    It begins quietly.

    A woman decides to attend a support group.

    Another applies for a job.

    Someone learns self-defence.

    Someone else files a complaint after years of silence.

    Each decision appears ordinary.

    Yet together they represent something extraordinary.

    They mark the return of agency.

    The same principle applies beyond individual lives.

    Communities become stronger when people know one another.

    When neighbours exchange phone numbers.

    When commuters intervene instead of merely recording.

    When schools teach children not only mathematics and science but also empathy, emotional regulation and responsible citizenship.

    Preparedness is not paranoia.

    It is confidence.

    The purpose of preparedness is not to convince ourselves that danger is everywhere.

    It is to reassure ourselves that if danger appears, we are not entirely helpless.

    Perhaps that is why agency is so deeply connected with hope.

    Hope is not wishful thinking.

    Hope is believing that our actions still matter. 20

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If agency helps us respond after violence, what helps prevent violence from taking root in the first place?

    Perhaps the answer lies much closer to home than we imagine.

    Notes:

    19.  Bandura (1997, 2006) places agency and self-efficacy at the centre of psychological functioning: the belief that one’s actions can influence outcomes is among the strongest protections against helplessness.

    20.  This is close to Snyder’s (2002) hope theory, in which hope is not optimism but the combination of goals, pathways and the sense of one’s own capacity to act.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 5

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART V

    Fear Is Not the Enemy

    “Before we learn how to overcome fear, we must first stop being ashamed of it.”

    One of the most reassuring moments in my conversation with TD came when I asked him whether people were overreacting.

    His answer surprised me.

    “No,” he said.

    “Fear is survival equipment.” 11

    I have carried that sentence with me ever since.

    We often speak about fear as though it were a weakness.

    Parents tell children not to be afraid.

    Leaders urge people to be fearless.

    Films celebrate those who appear untouched by danger.

    But psychology tells a different story.

    Fear is ancient.

    Long before human beings learnt to build cities or write constitutions, fear kept them alive.

    It warned them of predators.

    It prevented unnecessary risks.

    It prepared the body to respond quickly to danger.

    Without fear, our species would probably not have survived.

    The problem, therefore, is not fear.

    The problem is what happens after fear arrives.

    Some people deny it.

    Some become overwhelmed by it.

    Some quietly organise their lives around avoiding it.

    TD explained something that I found both comforting and practical.

    “The healthiest response,” he said, “is to begin by naming it.”

    “I am afraid.”

    Not because fear deserves control.

    But because unnamed fear often controls us.

    Psychologists have long observed that emotions become easier to regulate once they are acknowledged. 12

    The simple act of recognising fear reduces some of its power.

    Perhaps this explains why conversations matter.

    When people speak honestly about fear, they often discover they are not alone.

    The commuter who hesitates before boarding a train.

    The young woman returning home after work.

    The elderly man living by himself.

    The parents waiting for their child to come home.

    Their fears are different.

    Their humanity is the same.

    The goal is not to become fearless.

    The goal is to prevent fear from becoming the architect of our lives.

    Fear should inform our decisions.

    It should never imprison them.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If fear is natural, why do some people recover from frightening experiences while others remain trapped by them?

    Perhaps the answer lies in another psychological truth.

    We do not respond only to danger.

    We respond to how close that danger feels to us.

    Notes:

    11.  On fear as evolved protection, see Öhman and Mineka (2001) on the brain’s dedicated “fear module,” shaped by evolutionary threats and designed for rapid, automatic response.

    12.  This is affect labelling: Lieberman et al. (2007) showed that simply putting feelings into words dampens amygdala reactivity — neural evidence that naming an emotion begins to regulate it.