Summary: Every time there is another mass shooting, another child killed by a stray bullet, another family shattered in seconds, the same question rises like smoke: why does this keep happening in the United States? Here is a perspective that can lead us out of so much darkness, despair, and fear.
Dear Dr. Sylvia,
Why is it that other nations also face conflict, mental health struggles, anger, division, loneliness, and fear, yet nowhere does violence seem so woven into daily life as it does here? I am saddened that my company has spent enormous sums on security systems and is now considering hiring armed guards to patrol our office 24/7. Why?
The obvious answer is safety. But beneath that answer lives something deeper: fear, suspicion, and anxiety. A sense that danger could appear anywhere, at any time. What makes this even more painful is that our business serves longevity companies and organizations devoted to helping people live healthy lives to age 100 and beyond.
But what good is longevity if people live in constant vigilance?
What good is a longer life if every day we wonder, “Is school safe for our children?” How secure is the train, plane, or bus? Or more recently, a hotel ballroom? How do we know if a place of worship offers community or chaos? And I often wonder when an ordinary day will become a tragedy. How did “America the Beautiful” become “America the Hypervigilant” so quickly?
Dr. Sylvia, what wisdom can you offer to help us move beyond this state of chronic fear and begin healing the divide within our nation? How do we, as you teach, replace triggers with glimmers, suspicion with trust, and despair with possibility?
Signed,
Hopeful
The Real Addiction We Are Grappling With Now
Dear Hopeful,
Your question brings to mind one of our Leadership in Action retreats in the high desert of New Mexico.
We had taken a group of executives and emerging leaders away from their phones, titles, and daily pressures for a week of reflection and renewal. One evening, we sat in a circle around a quiet fire under a sky full of stars, speaking honestly about work, purpose, and what it means to live a fulfilled life.
Then we heard it. “Pop. Pop-Pop.”
At first, we hoped it was a car backfiring in the distance. But the sound continued, sharp and unmistakable. Gunshots. After cautiously checking the area, we discovered six teenagers, five boys and one girl, using a parent’s gun for target practice. We asked them to stop. Then, instead of scolding or shaming them, we invited them to join our fire circle and simply share their stories.
One young man looked puzzled and said with complete innocence, “That sounds cool, but I don’t know what it means to share stories.” That sentence has stayed with me for years.
He knew how to handle a gun. Yet, he did not know how to handle feelings.
He knew how to aim at targets. However, he did not know how to aim toward connection.
So we talked long into the night. And something remarkable happened.
The stories deepened. Not just about work, but about life. Three leaders in our own group revealed painful stories of gun violence. One man’s father had been killed during a robbery at the family bakery when he was a child. A woman shared that her husband, who has a locked cabinet filled with guns, threatened to kill her if she ever left him. Another spoke through tears about accidentally shooting his best friend as a boy while playing cops and robbers with what he believed was an unloaded gun.
The teenagers listened in stunned silence. That night, two circles became one. Pain met pain. Fear met truth. Strangers met humanity.
And that is when I understood something essential: America does not simply have a gun problem. It has normalized violence as a response to pain.
Gun Violence and The Uncomfortable Truth
We are not only dealing with weapons. We are dealing with triggers: emotional triggers, cultural triggers, political triggers, and generational triggers that erupt into violence because too many people were never taught another way.
When grief has no language, it often becomes rage. Think about the fact that when fear has no outlet, it often becomes aggression. Consider that when shame has no healing, it often becomes harm.
Until we address the inner triggers, the outer tragedies will continue. But that night also showed me something hopeful: when people feel safe enough to tell the truth, glimmers appear. And glimmers can change what bullets never will.
The Real Addiction Is Not the Gun
The issue isn’t the weapon. It’s what exists inside the person holding it: emotional wounds, cultural pressures, political rage, and unprocessed history. When people have never been taught another way to respond, violence fills the gap. Change the inner landscape, and the outer one follows. The gun is merely the instrument. In fact, the addiction is deeper.
We are addicted to a list that includes:
- Instant power when feeling powerless
- Rage as entertainment
- Division as identity
- Fear as fuel
- Revenge as justice
- Dominance as strength
- Emotional suppression until explosion
That is why every new law, while important, often feels incomplete. Because legislation can regulate weapons, but it cannot regulate wounded nervous systems.
What Happens Under Pressure
When people feel overwhelmed, threatened, humiliated, invisible, or ashamed, they often revert to early survival responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn. America, right now, is stuck in Fight Mode.
Think about the amount of road rage, online cruelty, political hatred, domestic violence, workplace bullying and random shootings. Same pattern, different stage. When stress rises and emotional maturity is low, aggression becomes the language.
Gun Violence Begins Long Before the Trigger Is Pulled
Violence often starts years earlier. Here is the list:
- Childhood trauma ignored
- Isolation normalized
- Conflict skills never taught
- Anger praised in boys and hidden in girls
- Community ties weakened
- Mental health stigmatized
- Media rewarding outrage
- Leaders modeling hostility
Then one day, society says, “How did this happen?” It happened slowly.
From Triggers to Glimmers
A trigger, is an old memory, something that activates fear, rage, shame, or helplessness.
A glimmer, a moment of awareness, something that activates safety, hope, compassion, and possibility.
We need far more glimmers in America.
Glimmers are not soft. They are strategic.
Examples: A teacher noticing the isolated student and getting them help, or a father apologizing instead of exploding. Perhaps, luckily, a leader calming conflict instead of inflaming it. Young men learning emotional vocabulary instead of using fists. A neighbor checking in. Learning how systems thinking guides our lives. Veterans finding healing instead of silence (this is part of the “Veterans Unstoppable” program I helped create along with Retired Sergeant Major Mark Baylis).
What we are crying out for (without realizing it) is communities gathering across differences. Tiny moments that create new pathways. This is how cultures change.
Is Change Even Possible?
Yes. But not instantly, and not if we keep pretending the issue is only political. This is also relational, emotional, neurological, and spiritual.
We need:
- Emotional Education in Schools
Teach children how to regulate anger, disappointment, rejection, and fear.
- Stronger Human Connection
Loneliness is gasoline. Belonging is water.
- Leaders Who De-escalate
America does not need more performers. It needs grown-ups.
- Early Intervention
Notice pain before it becomes danger.
- A New Definition of Strength
Strength is not intimidation. Strength is self-mastery.
Can gun violence disappear completely?
Probably not. Human beings have always carried shadow and light. But can it dramatically decrease? Absolutely. When enough people choose glimmers over triggers, healing over hatred, and courage over cruelty, the culture shifts.
This will not occur overnight. But it can happen with steady dedication.
America does not need more noise. It needs nervous system healing.
What we need are people who know how to pause before reacting. In my work, I believe it starts with families that teach respect without fear.
Please think about my hypothesis that what we learned in our original organization, the family, is what we bring with us to school and then into the present workplace. In fact, these early lessons shape all relationships.
We also need leaders who stop profiting from division. And when the upset shows itself, and we rage or shut down, we need to pause and ask ourselves, “When I feel triggered, do I spread pain, or create a glimmer?”
That is where real change begins.
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
PS: Sign up here to get a FREE copy of my new book, “GLIMMERS at WORK: The New Leadership Operating System for Head, Heart, & Gut.”
