Compassion Prison Project
Unaddressed childhood trauma changes how we respond to the world and when triggered, we make choices that sometimes have devastating consequences including domestic violence, addiction, murder and prison.
When the world is viewed through the lens of the victim, the perpetrator is shunned and de-humanized. We de-humanize those we fear, those we don’t understand, those we reject, the stranger, and those who are foreign or different.
We de-humanize those we fight or kill in war or conflict, we de-humanize terrorists, we de-humanize prison inmates, and we de-humanize gang members.
Healing begins when we widen our narrow perspective on life developed in childhood to gain the big picture that holds both the energy of the victim and perpetrator.
The vast majority of victims shun the perpetrator out of fear and grief. The guilt, shame, regret, anger, fear, and grief are energetically carried within the cellular memory of the body. It may impact the cellular expression of the genes. It may pass transgenerationally down through each family system to the descendants.
“If people have harmed us, that part is usually a protector whose need to cause injury comes from desperate attempts to not feel destroyed by the pain and fear they are carrying. Generally, they are not conscious of this process, but it likely mirrors what has been passed down through the generations in the family.” ― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships