Kindness is not weakness — it’s prevention

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Kindness is not weakness — it’s prevention

Katie Miller. File photo

My high school English teacher might have had a love-hate relationship with the phrase “hurt people hurt people,” challenged by its poetic symmetry yet grammatical ambiguity. My hesitation in putting it on a bumper sticker is that it could easily be mistaken for an imperative. It isn’t. A less succinct — but clearer — version would read: People who are hurting often hurt others.

This thought comes to mind every time I sit in the afternoon car line at a local elementary school and notice a bumper sticker that reads, “Shoot your local pedophile.” While I understand the anger and fear that can motivate such feelings, violence cannot be solved with more violence. Complex problems rarely yield to simple solutions, and cycles of harm cannot be broken by perpetuating them.

April is Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. At first glance, focusing on those who commit violence may seem counterintuitive during a time meant to center survivors. Supporting survivors is essential and must remain a priority.

But if our goal is truly to reduce — and ultimately eliminate — the suffering caused by violence, we must also examine the conditions that lead people to harm others and commit to practicing daily, garden-variety compassion.

Researchers have long described what is known as the “cycle of violence,” in which early exposure to abuse, neglect, or household trauma increases the likelihood of harmful behavior later in life. A landmark longitudinal study found that children who experienced abuse or neglect were about 30% more likely to be arrested for violent crimes as adults than those who were not maltreated. Importantly, this does not mean that survivors inevitably become perpetrators — most do not — but it demonstrates how unaddressed trauma can create risk factors that make cycles of violence more likely to continue if meaningful intervention is absent.

Emerging research in epigenetics further illustrates how deeply trauma can affect individuals. Chronic stress in childhood can alter the body’s stress-response systems through biological processes that affect how certain genes are expressed. Studies suggest that about 60% of adults report at least one significant childhood trauma. In other words, trauma can shape not only behavior, but also the ways our bodies respond to threat and stress. Taken together, this research paints a complicated picture. Violence is not simply the result of individual moral failure, nor is it predetermined by childhood trauma. Instead, it emerges from a complex interaction of social conditions, personal experiences, and biological responses to stress. Breaking cycles of harm, therefore, requires more than a reaction to violence. If we understand the origins of violence, we can begin to counteract it at the community and individual levels.

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Programs that work with individuals who perpetrate violence are an important part of preventing future harm and improving community safety, and it does not mean abandoning accountability. In fact, accountability is often a crucial part of the healing process. Acknowledging harm, taking responsibility, and engaging in meaningful change can reduce the likelihood that violence will be repeated. Of course, prioritizing the safety of survivors is paramount, but we can center survivors and still acknowledge that prevention requires addressing the conditions that produce violence in the first place. These programs operate at the organizational level and better position communities to interrupt cycles of violence. At the individual level, however, there is something available to each of us that is deceptively simple, yet powerful: kindness.

Kindness is often dismissed as soft or naïve, but in reality, it can be a profoundly disruptive force against cycles of harm. At the individual level, small acts of empathy and compassion can help counter the isolation, shame, and unresolved pain that often sit beneath harmful behavior. At the community level, cultures that value kindness create environments where violence is less likely to take root. Kindness does not excuse harmful behavior, nor does it replace justice. Instead, it helps create the conditions where healing and change become possible.

Violence thrives in cycles. If our only response is anger and punishment, those cycles will continue indefinitely. But if we invest in prevention, healing, and accountability — and if we choose compassion over cruelty in our daily interactions — we begin to build communities where cycles of violence can finally be broken. Sometimes the most powerful medicine available to us is also the most accessible: a commitment to seeing one another’s humanity and choosing kindness by default. In this way, I believe that hurt people can become healed people. That’s the bumper sticker and world that I want to see.

(Katie Miller is a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.)

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