Being Non-Violent

I always thought that I'd be someone who had everything under control; everything from school life to social life, but upon growing up, I realized that I didn't have a much control over as much as I'd hoped.

When I was told by my doctor that I have anxiety, it wasn't a surprise. Everything was piling up, it was mental breakdown after mental breakdown, getting nervous at any little noise in the classroom and just feeling off the whole day.

I wasn't shocked in that doctors office.

Since then, things have changed. I feel as though my anxiety is under a lot better control. Switching schools did raise my anxiety, but I now have friends and I know that people are there for me, so it's alright now.

Things might be feeling better, but I also have bad days.

I have days where I'm really on edge, I have days where I just hate myself.

I rethink every little thing that I did and I hate myself for doing it.

Since going to the doctors to be diagnosed, I've signed up for a yoga class to help with the anxiety.

At the begin of the class today, the instructor told us about her other work experiences and a few other things that I'd like to share with you all.

When we hear the words "non-violent" or "stopping the violence", the first thing many people picture is someone who's beating another person, but they stop. We picture someone physically hurting another individual, but they stop.

Then, our brain reminds us that there's not only physical violence, but also mental violence. There, we see someone playing mind games with someone, telling them that they're never good enough and insulting them, but then they suddenly stop.

Most people only recognize physical and mental violence when it's performed on someone else, but what about ourselves?

Physically and emotionally harming ourselves is like physically or emotionally harming someone else.

We think awful things to ourselves about how we aren't ever good enough, or we can't do something, but how is that any different from saying it to someone else?

We don't realize it, but we're violent to ourselves, some constantly and others rarely, but we're still being violent.

I understand how hard it is to change a frame of mind once you're stuck in your previous one, but we do have to change the way we think about ourselves.

We're being violent to ourselves and slowly we're destroying ourselves from the inside out with the little remarks such as "I knew you couldn't do it," or "Are you serious? I can't believe you did that, you're such an idiot."

You might believe that you can only be violent both physically and mentally towards someone else, but I hope that I've persuaded you all into seeing that that's false.

Being negative to yourself is just as violent as you being negative towards someone else.

Working together to stop violence is an important thing and it must be done.

One of the first ways to do so is to stop being violent towards yourself.


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