Violation - The Unseen Violence

Author’s Preface

Violation is a three-part reflection on the invisible ways harm, endurance, and humanity show up in our systems, our work, and ourselves.

It explores how subtle violations — the ones we can’t see or name — shape the way we relate, lead, and heal.

This first piece begins where all truth-telling does: with noticing.

Violation: Part I — The Unseen Violence

“Sometimes what hurts most is what we can’t name.”

The Beginning

When I first made the decision to create Voices for Respect, I felt both excitement and uncertainty. Excitement for what could be built — a place for truth-telling, healing, and courage. And uncertainty, because I knew that speaking about what can’t easily be seen or measured would not be simple.

As someone who has always felt deeply — attuned to the emotions and energy that sit quietly beneath the surface — the idea of psychological safety has long held my attention. What could be more essential than protecting our inner voice — that space where our thoughts, feelings, and sense of self-worth quietly reside?

It’s in that unspoken space that the story of respect really begins.

The Will of the Mind

As children, many of us drift into daydream. It’s a way of making sense of the world — a space where imagination softens what reality can’t yet explain.

For me, those daydreams weren’t just escapes; they were explorations. Like many children of European families in the 60s, I lived in an environment where I was seen but not heard. And it wasn’t enough for me — so I did a lot of thinking. I observed, imagined, and built inner worlds that made more sense than the one I was growing up in.

One of the memories that sits deeper than that — where imagination and reality seemed to meet — was realised while watching an episode of the Australian childhood classic Skippy. In it, a First Nations elder lies on a rock in the heat, having decided that it was time to enter the world beyond. Those around him try desperately to save him, but the will of his mind is stronger than their efforts.

I remember feeling confused — and if I’m really honest, afraid.

How could someone choose to let go of life when others were trying so hard to hold him here?

But what I felt, more than anything, was a kind of understanding — not of his decision, but of the gap between what we feel and what others see. I was trying to understand why I so often felt misunderstood.

That scene has clearly left a mark in my travels. It started to bring some clarity for me about our inner worlds, power, and feelings of isolation. I now reflect upon it and ask: what happens when that inner truth collides with a world that refuses to hear it?

The Violence We Don’t See

Because that’s what violation often is — a collision.

Not of fists or words, but of realities.

Over the years, I’ve come to recognise another kind of unseen force — one that quietly shapes lives, workplaces, and relationships. It’s not physical. It’s not dramatic. And yet it leaves a mark all the same.

It’s the feeling of being diminished — the moments that each build doubt in your own reality because others refuse to acknowledge or see it.

We rarely call these moments violence — the word feels too strong. But they are, in truth, a kind of violation: a slow erosion of safety, respect, and trust.

“It’s the harm we rationalise, excuse, or simply stop noticing.”

None of this makes us bad people.

Most of us have been on both sides of the equation — silenced at times, silent at others. We do what we can within systems that reward endurance more than honesty.

But every time we turn away from discomfort, every time we justify behaviour that harms another, something small within us shifts. We learn that silence is safer than truth.

The Intelligent Animal

We humans like to think of ourselves as evolved — thoughtful, rational, capable of reason. And in many ways, we are.

Those who are conscious — and perhaps conscientious — recognise when the old instincts surface: the urge to control, to retreat, to protect. They steady themselves and refocus on humanity, on care.

But it isn’t easy.

Under pressure, stress has a way of shrinking perspective. It pulls us back toward the familiar safety of defence — of guarding, withholding, self-preserving. The same instincts that once kept us alive can, in the modern world, quietly divide us.

You can feel it in organisations, families, and governments — that invisible pull between our higher ideals and our survival wiring. Between what we know and what we allow.

We’re still learning, as a species, how to live in alignment with both truth and care.

“Respect isn’t the absence of conflict — it’s the presence of care.”

Closing Reflection

Perhaps that’s where this conversation truly begins — in the quiet noticing of what lies beneath our words, our systems, and our silences.

The unseen forces that shape how we show up for one another, and what we choose to see — or not see — in the people around us.

In the next part of this series, I’ll explore how these unseen tensions play out inside the very structures we call “work” — how performance becomes endurance, and how cultures built on control translate the language of care into systems of standardisation.

Until then, may we each take a moment to listen — not to the noise around us, but to the quiet truths within us.