Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the Earth, but its arch is lost in Heaven. However, a single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. On 23 June 2016, at about 6pm, a gunman was shot and killed several people before he was shot dead by police in Viernhei, Germany, after he attempted to take several people hostage in a cinema. At least three people were wounded, two seriously hurt. People are being told to stay out of public places because there were shootings in at least two places.  Coping with the daily threats of mass violence and everyday life takes a toll. Many adults who survive terrible experiences are caught in the same trap. Pushing away intense feelings can be highly adaptive in the short run. It may help you preserve your feelings and can be highly adaptive in the short run. It may allow you to protect your dignity and independence; it may assistance you in maintaining focus on critical tasks like saving a comrade, taking care of your kids, or rebuilding your house. The problems come later. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

After seeing a friend blown up, a soldier may return to civilian life and try to put the experience out of his mind. A protective part of him knows how to be competent at his job and how to get along with colleagues. However, he may habitually erupt in rage at his significant other or become numb and frozen when the pleasure of surrendering to their touch makes him feel he is losing control. He probably will not be aware that his mind automatically associates passive surrender with the paralysis he felt when he friend was killed. So another protective part steps in to create a diversion: He gets angry and, having no idea what set him off, he thinks he is mad about something his spouse did. Of course, if he keeps going off, he will become more and more isolated. Nonetheless, he may never realize that a traumatized part is trigger by passivity and that another part, an angry manager, is stepping in to protect that vulnerable part. Helping these parts to give up their extreme beliefs is how therapy can save people’s lives. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

For many children it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship with their caregivers by expressing anger or by running away. As a result, abused children are likely to grow up believing that they are fundamentally unlovable; that was the only way their young mind could explain why they were treated so badly. They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: They forget the abuse, they suppress their rage or despair; they numb their physical sensations. If you were abused or lived a life in terror, as a child, you are likely to have a childlike part living inside you that is frozen in time, still holding fast to this kind of self-loathing and denial.  A central task for recovery from trauma is to learn to live with the memories of the past without being overwhelmed by them in the present. However, most survivors, including those who are functioning well—even brilliantly—in some aspects of their lives, face another, even greater challenge: reconfiguring a brain or mind system that was constructed to cope with the worst. Just as we are required to revisit traumatic memories in order to integrate them, we are required to go back to part of ourselves that developed the defensive habits that helped us to survive.  #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

So we can and should ask, what is the choice? Do we let go of our untruths and allow ourselves to feel again? Do we take the time to allow for ourselves to move through our old patterns that kept us imprisoned within our limited thinking? We can reconnect with nature and expect what it communicates to us in its universal truths every moment. Next time you are at the store or in town, slow down and take a look at the people around you. How many of them look happy with their lives? Are they smiling and can you see the joy bubbling up out of them? Do they seem to be feeling alive? Is there a light in their eyes? Or does it appear that their spirit is leaving their body. This is called Sampacu, loss of the life force You can see it in the eyes of the people in a village just before disaster strikes. The number of causalities in war boggles the imagination—many millions. How do we digest that? How can we possibly conceive of that in more than just an intellectual way? #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

Just one person close to us dying can overwhelm us, bringing us to our knees for quite a while—and if that person dies a violent death, as though war, we might be even more overwhelmed. If more than one person close to us dies thus, we might find ourselves at a very dark edge, lost in the deepest pits of grief. And yet, if many, many more thus die, but are not people we personally know, it still disturbs us because we think what is my loved one had been out there? We also feel some kind of kinship or alliance with others in this World. Perhaps there is no time in which the ingenuity of man is more active than in those moments when he has a sensitive consciousness of being wrong, and consequently, a feverish desire to vindicate his works or acts to himself, as well as to other. The youthful heart is ready to believe that what it wishes will happen. Man does not speak by words alone. A mute glance of reproach has pierced the heart a tirade would have left untouched; and even an inarticulate may utter volumes. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5