Safety. Fear. Power.
- Kateryna Derkach
- Jun 16, 2024
- 5 min read
People often believe that we harm each other because we want more money or power, or because of greed, human nature, childhood trauma, the law of competition, or other reasons.
However, we physically hurt each other mainly because we feel unsafe.
We don't use violence against others when we feel unloved. When we feel unloved, we become sad, isolated, and prone to addiction—not warriors.
We also don't usually physically hurt someone when we are overpowered or truly abused. When someone exerts power over us, we typically become quiet, calm down, and hide. We take time to reflect on our actions and humbly learn to access our own inner power to avoid being overpowered in the future. We become self-aware and self-conscious, not egotistical.
If we reach the point of using actual violence, getting a gun, and threatening someone’s life, it’s because we feel mainly unsafe and very scared.
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The problem is that society holds many judgments about emotions. Each emotion is associated with a need that has not been appropriately fulfilled.
When our needs for love are not satisfied, we become sad. When our needs for power are threatened, we become angry. When our needs for safety are not fulfilled, we feel scared.
Feeling sad, lonely, and becoming an addict is seen as somewhat acceptable. In the larger scheme of things, we even romanticize and glorify these feelings among ourselves.
Sometimes we want to feel sad and nostalgic. We cry, eat ice cream, get drunk or high, and that’s okay. Because with sadness, we can more easily manipulate others. In today's world, it’s perfectly acceptable to be sad.
Sometimes, it’s the opposite. The sadness of others makes us deeply uncomfortable, so we start judging them. We can’t understand the depth of the lack of love they feel, so we shame them for being too emotional and weak. Or, we leave them in their misery because we cannot dare to feel it with them.
Anger is viewed differently. When someone feels overpowered or abused and uses their anger to express their truth and deep feelings, we instantly shame them and label them as inappropriate and dangerous.
We are so scared of our own inner power that when someone expresses authentic anger, we can only judge and criticize them. We try to make them more reasonable and insist that anger will not be tolerated.
If you have zero tolerance for your own anger, you likely have no access to your inner power. You can be easily abused and manipulated if you don't know how to communicate with your anger and understand its message.
When you don't allow others to express their anger in an appropriate and non-judgmental way, you are being foolish. When someone needs to express authentic anger outwardly, they are showing you the dysfunctions and inconsistencies in the current power dynamics around you.
If someone is angry in a group, it indicates that the power dynamics are incoherent or nonsensical. Anger is a very valuable and powerful messenger.
If we ignore anger and fail to understand the dysfunctional power dynamics it reveals, anger might turn into sadness or eventually transform into deep fear.
When we tell our children that anger is unacceptable and unkind, we are essentially telling them they will be abused and manipulated in this world with no power to change it. All they can do is become sad and depressed or scared to death and go on to abuse others.
Then, we wonder why they are so depressed in primary school or why they bring guns to high school.
We think that by not allowing them to feel and express their anger, they will become better and more peaceful citizens. But in reality, it’s quite the opposite. Repressed and misunderstood anger is the most dangerous emotion or one of the most powerful ones if we know how to truly listen.
Most sexual abuse, mental health issues, and social polarization and violence result from repressed and numbed anger on a societal level.
Emotions are not good or bad.
Emotions are amazing because they communicate with us. They tell us what is wrong in our shared field of collective reality. Every single emotion is necessary and should be properly understood and managed within us.
Each emotion is a tool. If you don't know what that tool does, what it tells you, and why you need it, it doesn’t mean it lacks value and should be shamed and rejected.
It just means you have not yet learned the real value, meaning, and mastery of your emotions.
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Fear is genuinely scary.
Fear is the most uncomfortable of all emotions. It is the deepest and most unconscious. It is also the most dangerous, intense, and potent for us and for others who feel it with us. We wage wars because of fear, not because of power or love.
With sadness, you willingly give your power away and don’t care. With anger, you still feel your power and can walk away whenever you want. Plus, anger gives you a lot of energy to do things. If you are smart, you can use your anger to manifest your deepest dreams. Anger can transform, motivate, and realign your vision with your true desires.
But with fear, things are more complex.
When you feel fear, you are already powerless and can't do anything about it. But now you care! You want your power back, and you will do anything to survive and save yourself.
Fear grants you access to your inner survival instincts. If you are not wise enough to know what to do with this access, you can literally go crazy and do very harmful things you will regret for the rest of your life.
When you access your survival instincts, you tap into the collective unconscious. You start feeling hate, resentment, grief, pain, and everything else hidden and repressed in our collective soul and mind.
When you feel real fear, you can access the power and suffering of your ancestors. You can also start feeling the pain of the entire world in your own nervous system.
If you feel the pain of the entire world and the suffering of its timeless history in your own body without knowing what to do with it, you will quickly become the biggest danger to yourself and others around you.
This is why you become foolish and regress in your mental capacities. You also become violent and start accessing a new type of power. Now you don’t care about being overpowered by others. You don’t seek or need your anger anymore because your deep fears give you the power of the collective unconscious.
With power coming from fear, you can accomplish and destroy even more than you could with the energy of anger.
You do most things unconsciously, thinking you are protecting your own safety and survival. But in reality, you are just feeling the pain and processing the collective fear we all share due to our ignorance and stupidity.
When fear is our collective norm, we can be mass-manipulated more easily than dogs or plants. When you feel fear, I can make you believe whatever I want. When you feel real fear, you will submit and obey.
You will willingly change your own belief system just to avoid feeling fear. You will invest in all sorts of protections, safety, and security technologies, and even all kinds of social and economic systems, just to avoid feeling fear.
You were smart enough to overcome your sadness and realize that the only real thing in this world is love. You were also obedient enough to let go of your deep anger and remain silent about your true feelings and thoughts.
But when it comes to dealing with your deepest fears and desires, you will be as scared and as unconsciously violent as we all are when faced with the unknown potential for human cruelty or miracles.
