The Truth About Abusive People
Before I start getting in to the article, I just want to let any and all victims of abuse know that you’re not alone in your struggles, and I’m incredibly sorry for all that you have to go through. Please know that abuse is never your fault, and know that you are loved.
I do however want to shed some light on the truth about people who are abusive, as I feel like a lot of times, it’s not talked often enough about and for good reason: people generally think that abusers are genuinely terrible people and don’t deserve to be talked about.
I like to believe that nobody is inheritently bad, and any person who is bad, learned to be the way that they are from someone. By no means is this a justification of a shitty persons’ actions, this is just my thoughts on shitty people.
We always talk about victims of abuse, but we never talk about the abusers because for the most part, we don’t want to believe in them because of the lack of trust that we have in them due to their malicious behaviours.
But what if I told you that abusers have often been abused? That they themselves were victims who never learned that therapy was worthwhile? They’re the villians who never sought redemption because they believed that they didn’t deserve saving.
We have this mindset as a society that bad people will never change and that they deserve every bit of karma that comes their way for all the hurt that they’ve put on to their victims.
How does that make you any better than the person who abused you, by wishing them harm for all the harm that they’ve put on you?
I know a lot of people will think that I’m an abuser sympathizer for this article, but I honestly don’t care. Good people will never wish harm on anyone, not even those who have done the harming. After everything that they put you through, how can you sit by and wish for them to go through what you went through, when you know that it was hell?
Abusive people have already gone through hell, and they’ve never healed from it.
People who abuse, abuse for a number of different reasons.
1: They learned it
Whether it was from an abusive family member, friend, or influences from the media, abusers believe these behaviours to be normal.
2: They have a disorder
While it’s no excuse, many abusers have some sort of personality disorder. It’s not something that will ever go away, but it is something that can be treated and managed with intense amounts of therapy.
3: They were abused.
Someone somewhere in their past hurt them, traumatized them, then led them to believe that the only way that they can cope was by to continue the cycle.
4: They were neglected in childhood.
Childhood neglect has a very strong psychological affect on a young childs’ mind since it is underdeveloped. I myself have personally gone through childhood neglect on an emotional capacity; neither of my parents were there for me when I needed them. As an adult, any time someone disregards my emotional needs, I get triggered and become a very angry person.
A lot of abusers have inner child wounds that were never resolved.
5: They never learned boundaries.
Boundaries are a learned concept that our parents are supposed to teach us from the moment that we are able to walk and talk. However, unfortunatly, a lot of parents weren’t exactly parents, so they never taught their child the concept of ‘no’.
Now, you’re probably asking how I know all this, aside from the obvious research on psychology pages.
Well, because I’ve been there. I’ve been both the abuser and the victim of abuse.
The truth is, not everybody had great childhoods, and I certainly was one of them. My father was incredibly sick when I was born, so he wasn’t there for me and neither was my mother, so I was left in the care of my oldest sister. However, it’s just not the same.
Ever abusers story is different, but one thing we all share in common is neglectful, abusive childhoods in which we learned how to be who we are from our parents or other close relatives or friends. My father, after he overcame his illness, wasn’t exactly the nicest to me when I was in my pre-teens and teens. I was first introduced to pornography at the age of thirteen when I accidentally came across it on the internet, and instead of sitting me down and talking to me about the dangers of it in a kind and loving manner, I got yelled at, berated, and humiliated by my father.
My father would continue to yell, berate and humiliate me any time I did something wrong, once to the point where he told me to shut up around people. From my mother, I was never told that it was okay to feel what I was feeling, and was instead told to ‘suck it up’ and ‘deal with it’. That’s not how it works, mom…
The behaviours of my parents are how I learned to be abusive. I became emotionally neglectful to those around me, was avoidant of my problems any time someone asked me how I was doing, and I would spite anyone who tried to show me compassion. Appropriately, this led to people walking away from me, even though at the time, I thought I was the one walking away.
I was the toxic one.
I was the abusive one.
After I married at the age of twenty, my problems never went away. I would berate my husband (something I learned from my father), I would invalidate his emotions (something I learned from my mother), and I made his life a living hell (again, something I learned from my mother).
Even after our daughter was born, I kept struggling with my abusive nature and it just sent me down a darkened path where all I did was spiral and spiral until I could no longer take it anymore. In order to cope, I started drinking, I emotionally cheated, and I constantly gaslighted my husband.
Of course, at the time, I believed that it was in reverse and that he was abusing me; I had no self-awareness over how I was the abuser. A lot of abusers don’t have self-awareness, otherwise they wouldn’t be abusive in the first place. Often times, it takes very special circumstances to snap us out of our dark place to get us to see that we are the problem, and not our victims.
So, how did I, as an abuser, come to self-awarness over the fact that I was the problem?
Honestly, self-reflecting. That was by far the most challenging time of my life because it meant sitting down and being alone with my thoughts, which was something I always avoided (something I also learned from my mother due to her own avoidant problems.)
I had to force myself to listen to my husband, and I had to force myself to think over and over again about what was wrong with me and why I was going down the path that I was going down. I had no self-identity, was constantly avoiding my problems after I created them, and over-all…
I was just miserable.
And that’s the truth about abusive people.
Deep down, we’re miserable, and we take our misery out on others because for the most part, we don’t see any other option, especially since nobody ever taught us that there were better ways.
We don’t get support because we’re the bad guys.
People don’t believe in us because they think that we’ll never change.
A lot of abusers stay stuck in that mindset, and quite honestly, it’s a very dangerous mindset.
If you want people to stop being abusive, you’ve got to start believing in them and throw out that garbage saying of ‘you’ll never change’. Because people can change! It doesn’t matter how terrible they have been, people can change, you just need to believe that they can!
Is it a lot to ask?
Yes.
Is it hard to do?
Of course!
But I will always say that the hardest thing you will ever do is what will make you the strongest.
Abusive people don’t have to stay abusive forever. We can change. It just requires a lot of faith, compassion, understanding and patience from those around us.
We have inner child wounds that need healing, and deep down, we are all frightened, lost and lonely children who yearn for all the things that we needed from our parents but never recieved. We go about it the wrong way, and deep down, we know this, but some of us are too stuck in our ways because we believe that nobody will ever believe in us.
Personally, for myself, I’ve had to go on my own journey to unwravel all of my childhood traumas and abusive natures on my own because I don’t want to hurt anyone along the way. My husband supports me on my journey, but I know that he can’t hold my hand and help me get through it, especially since I’ve hurt him so much. We have built up a surface level of trust, but it may never reach the level that we used to have.
And that’s okay.
It’s a hard and lonely road that we must travel after hurting so many people, but as long as there is some sort of support, even if from a safe distance, that’s all that matters to us.
Knowing that people can believe in us to change for the better is comforting, even if sometimes we act tough and reject the idea. It’s a hard concept for us to wrap our brains around, but the more compassion is shown, the more we come to realize that ‘hey, maybe someone cares about me after all, and I don’t have to force it out of them’.
Trust me, it may take a while, but eventually, it will click.
For a lot of abusers, that change won’t come right away. It takes time, little by little. It takes one single seed to grow a plant, but it takes time, patience, and effort to help it grow.
Let people repent.
Let people grow.
Believe that people can change and improve.
The world will be a little better for it.
