Understanding cruel people.

[koalaburger]

I have been watching the series Patrick Melrose about a man who was raped by his father. I think about the cruelty of my father and try to fathom how a man could be so vicious to his son. I need to do this so I can put the abusive voice in my head back to that dead bastard. I think under the right circumstances he could have been a serial killer. He was at Anzio during the second world war and when drunk one night he said it was fun shooting Germans. I imagine doing what he did to me to my nephews and it is so far from possible it baffles me. My therapist says it was so bad he must have had a mental illness. That kind of helps. I don't know if it helps but I need to understand for some reason.

 

[Lionheart]

I wish you much luck @koalaburger

I am a survivor of sexual child abuse. I went through the same thing with wanting to know how a person could be so cruel. My therapist said that abuse doesn't make sense and that I would not be able to make sense of it because it was senseless. That helped me to let go of the question, Still, I can't say what will help you, only that I hope you find some peace and comfort.

Lionheart

 

[Vero]

My therapist says it was so bad he must have had a mental illness. That kind of helps. I don't know if it helps but I need to understand for some reason.

That's also what I'm telling myself to try to explain some of the bad treatment I received from family members. It wasn't cruel, but definitely abusive. It kind of stops being about me and more about their own brokenness.

 

[Mee]

I also feel the need to understand. And I think that it is insufficient to say mental illness doesn’t make sense. We know our ptsd has an origin story for example. I have been reading a lot about some types of mental illness also increasingly thought to have a trauma element. I think that’s credible. I also think there is a societal failing.

My problem has actually been that I find empathetic approach too easy. It’s a survival technique many of us develop. At first i didn’t think I did too much at all but then i realised I had been instinctively reading people and rooms and ‘understanding why’ for ever to my own detriment on a micro scale. In a yoga practice once I mentioned after a terrorism attack feeling a difficulty in empathy or softness, and my teacher and I took a meditation of the mindset of a young person being radicalised. I now can empathise; but the problem is it reinforced my lack of boundary for protective anger, which I am getting back now.

On a personal scale I think perhaps those of us who are inclined to want to understand maybe have to wonder if it’s healthy? On a macro scale I think we can only progress if more and more people try harder and harder to understand those they fear and hate most because if we know what is ‘going wrong’ we can address it if it’s crime or meet compromise and educate if it’s bigotry.

I wish you luck and peace with this.

 

[Friday]

Is there a time when cruelty is justified? Yes.
Is there a time when cruelty isn’t justified? Yes.

That’s what I needed to understand. My own answers to that question, and how I define justice. Everything else was incidental.

 

[TruthSeeker]

I have been watching the series Patrick Melrose about a man who was raped by his father. I think about the cruelty of my father and try to fathom how a man could be so vicious to his son. I need to do this so I can put the abusive voice in my head back to that dead bastard. I think under the right circumstances he could have been a serial killer. He was at Anzio during the second world war and when drunk one night he said it was fun shooting Germans. I imagine doing what he did to me to my nephews and it is so far from possible it baffles me. My therapist says it was so bad he must have had a mental illness. That kind of helps. I don't know if it helps but I need to understand for some reason.

My brother is a sociopath....he can not feel....he cannot walk in someone elses shoes.....it's kinda like an almost walking dead, when you can't feel another's pain. Both X's were narcisists, and my father an alcoholic.....very self involved. It is cruel, when what appears to make one happy, is abusing others and then rehashing it over and over. Think about that....that's all you have to focus on is doing harm to another....cause it gives you some sense of purpose in life.......that is so sad. Again, no conception of being able to feel what another person feels.....how empty not to feel those feelings except whole shitloads of anger and revengefulness. While it is always a choice to harm, we grow up in family roles, and that combined with the life of hard knocks, crushes abuser's souls and they are as hopeless as the person whose abused. I kinda see abusers as the walking dead. I pity them.....they are so very sick.....and I really believe, alone in their crazy world.

 

[candor]

I also feel the need to understand and to empathize. I used mental illness as an explanation to make sense of my father’s bad behaviours. It was a game changer for me. I mean seeing him as damaged, helped me to get over the resentment. I dropped him out of my life when I was 40 and I didn’t start to forgive until I was 60. He had a serious terminal disease that eventually killed him. I have studied neuroscience for years at the university. I have more curiosity than fear around the cruel people I know. I have come to accept that we all perceive cruelty slightly different. I am often confronted by people who challenge my insistence on empathy....especially if they like me have been abused.

I have days when I myself am very conflicted about it. However, there are cruel people in my life that I keep. Only one of them is cruel to me. Borderline rage/Cptsd/narcissist on his worse days. He says he goes to therapy and I see him take his medication but he can’t get it under control. It can feel like you are interacting with the devil or a completely different personality however its just one of his many fragmented parts. Whatever triggers that part to come out is my guess as well as his. It was way worse during our honeymoon period and now 4 years after, the fact that we call our relationship a friendship and limit the amount of intimate interaction has helped. We both disengage immediately but he gets to throw some mud pies as I call them. I have adapted to the isolation and the push pull. He gets angry at me for not fighting back. I have revised my thinking to realizing that he is mostly trying to trick me into responding with cruelty so that he can get into victim role. I see his behaviour as a form of self harm. I have kept my cool now for two years. As he always, withdraws for weeks after an episode, I guess our only fears are that of abandonment and for his part there is a lot of shame. The boundary is set and he respects it. The improvement is pretty amazing.

I dropped a very close friend of 30 years because he treats me bad. He grew up in a gang like environment in Chicago. To him screaming at the top of his lungs is normal. He didn’t register that I was away and mad at him. I told him that I had bad boundaries and that I needed to tell him how his behaviour affected me. I told him I knew he came from a family of abusers, Much to my surprise Bob seemed totally unaware of his behaviours and was quick to deny them. I told him that I was grateful to him for calmly listening and whether he agreed or not was irrelevant to what I got to do when he acts that way. I also told him that he should talk to his family that would probably confirm what I was saying. He said he will and that he gets frequent blackouts and forgets what has happened.

The abused become abusers and they don’t always know it. I am dealing with these behaviours at work and everyone I know says I will get fired if I stir the pot. Where I am at it is legal to tape conversations so I am prepared to get fired. Only my lawyer gets to hear the abuse but its really toxic. A law suit is something I really want to avoid. Lots of my collegues are disabled and they really suffer from the treatment. We have no rights and no voice. I have decided to take it to management and pay the consequences. I am glad that even I have limits as to how much cruelty I will put up with. But we have to be careful cause my triggers can make someone’s treatment of me bigger than life. Re listening to tapes have been a source of good reality checking.

 

[koalaburger]

Thank you all for responding. Thanks Candor. I go around in circles on the hate/compassion thing. I know my demons and have been very verbally cruel in my life and still can be. I have never been violent or sexually inappropriate but I know I have hurt people. I guess it is a matter of degrees and I wonder if I had kids when I was drinking if I would have been brutal. I know my parents backgrounds and they both were in poverty with 4 kids to a bed. Alcoholism and poverty are not a good mix. I guess I will have to put up with the angry/empathy swings and process them.

 

[candor]

Do you dissociate when you are being verbally cruel? Are there times when the memory gets foggy or is it crystal clear? Are you doing it to provoke a fight ( self harm) or is it usually a protective mechanism? Does the cruelty need a reason or special specific circumstances like romantic relationships? I too really need to understand this topic. In my experience, anything we take to numb the emotion makes it far worse in the long run. From what you have told, it sounds more like a learned reaction and those are very treatable. Not all Ts have the required expertise so you might need to educate yourself on the subject. You are very brave to bring it up. There must be a better approach than shame and isolation.

 

[koalaburger]

It is so automatic it is scary. It is out of my mouth before I think. I have insulted people I like. I think it is a form of disassociation. I think I am so sociophobic I push people away. I also think there is an angry kid inside with so much repressed rage I am smearing my shit over the world. I am a mess of motivations from deep deep trauma. I am more comfortable in my own company now. My sister is awake to her trauma so I have a valuable ally.

 

[candor]

What you wrote makes a lot of sense to me. Sociophobia is BTW a natural response to what seems to also happen to you naturally and involuntarily. The involuntary part is important that you acknowledge. You are not trying to hurt people or enjoying it. Have you tried anything that has helped? Have there been long periods where the symptoms got quiet and can you figure out what changed then? Breathing exercises for grounding can give some relief. Having an ally in your sister is indeed a great source of insight.

 

[blackemerald1]

Alcoholism and poverty are not a good mix.

^Alcoholism and anything are not a good mix. :cautious:

Do you drink alcohol? Do you get angry when you drink? Do you drink because you are angry?