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" Committing violence is a choice we make that is rooted in our values, beliefs, expectations, and experiences, and constrained by our contexts. When people are given the opportunity to consider and transform those values, beliefs, expectations and experiences, even within the persistent constraints of harmful or oppressive contexts, they can make different choices. "
― , Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair
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" Trauma symptoms themselves can become drivers of cycles of violence. Hyper-vigilance exxagerates survivors' sense of threat-so that a minimal threat can legitimately feel like a substantial and potentially even life-threatening one. How endangered one feels depends in part on the baseline of danger that exists. So for survivors who are hurt in the context of relative safety, their exaggerated sense of danger may result in simple self-protective actions like crossing the street when they get a bad feeling about someone approaching, holding their keys as they approach their apartment, or carrying pepper spray in their bag. For people who live where there is a more widespread, regular threat of violence, where day in and day out, they are making decisions that will affect whether or not they get home safe and alive, perceiving threats as more immediate than they are may mean that the self-protective actions people choose are graver. Not all survivors cope in this way, but many do. "
― , Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair
