“OK, so what’s the ‘other’ kind?”
The ‘Other Kind’ of violence is the covert Threat of It. The underlying threat that violence can happen at any moment is as dangerous to health as physical violence, if not more so. Nobody has to throw out an actual threat for violence to live hidden in the background. An active, everywhere, all the time, humming threat. A place that holds threats is scary all the time.
These threats develop into ‘just the way things are’ for the people who live with them—invisible and unpredictable, especially for children. Children can’t point to a threat. For sure they can point out a fight, hear a scream, or feel a slap. Adults in these environments maintain silence, unwilling to be aware, or so accustomed to the underlying threat of violence they don’t recognize its true danger.
Life may stay quiet for a while—if people can figure out the rules. If everyone is careful, an explosion of violence might just be avoided for a while.
Unfortunately, the ‘rules of the game’ are mostly unspoken and invisible. Everybody knows something’s going to happen but no one knows when. After all, it’s only natural someone will eventually bump into the ‘overload switch.’
And BOOM!
The invisible ‘threat’ of violence explodes into tangible reality.