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…while reinforcing their power over the victim by making the victim swallow unfairness. (And humiliating the victim, making the victim participate in their own humiliation, can bond the rest of the family together.)

Extracting value from a victim when they become adults still keeps the victim there at the bottom of the hierarchy…especially since those abusers are making demands as if they are above the victim, even though they no longer have outright power over them.

Even as an adult, the victim has low status in the family, and that status is reinforced through emotional abuse and bullying that activates the victim’s conditioning from childhood. They attempt to coerce or force the victim into acting as if they have no power, acting low status, and this maintains the existing hierarchy and power structure even as the victim technically has power as an adult.

A lot of people have a hard time recognizing their own non-optimal, abusive, or problematic behaviors…particularly if they themselves were a victim of abuse.

While there are sociopathic abusers – calculating, scheming, Machiavellian – the vast majority of abusers I have seen actually believe themselves to be victims of abuse (and often were)…while victims of abuse are very commonly paranoid that they are the abusers in a relationship dynamic.

This is a problem that occurs because we don’t fully recognize how people perceive themselves and their intentions.

Abuse literature describes calculating monsters who are intending to hurt victims (intentional abusers), while many abusers are instead reacting to their own priorities/wants/needs/emptiness at the expense of the victim (unintentional abusers).

Because of the long-term impacts of the trauma of abuse, many abusers have also been victims of abuse.

Their low distress tolerance, their childhood maladaptive coping mechanisms, their personality disorders leave them compromised, particularly in parenting.

So abusers show up in abuse support communities with their narrative of how they have been victimized and abused.

And the truth is messy. Sometimes they are both victim and abuser. But because of how black-and-white the thinking on abusers is, we are missing something vitally important.

Something that is the very reason for Abuse, Interrupted, which is stopping the cycle of abuse.

And that includes taking an honest look at ourselves, addressing any problematic behaviors and beliefs, and working toward health and healthy relationships.

Because abusers often believe their own stories.

They may even have state-specific beliefs that depend on which emotion-state they are in. Their beliefs change depending on how they feel, but the beliefs can be consistent with that feeling.

So what happens when this person shows up in an abuse support community?

Certain communities tend to be very insular and reinforce problematic beliefs and thinking structures. Problematic ‘victim’ communities include estranged parents, red pill, incel, ‘gamers’, etc. (u/Issendai has done incredible work parsing out the problematic belief structures in estranged parents communities.) They all strongly see themselves as victims, while powering over others.

But victim-abusers do show up in general abuse support communities.

Or relay their narrative of being abused to intimates and others in their lives. All while believing – wholeheartedly – that they are being abused and victimized. Telling a story of how they have been wronged.

This is different than lying.

People believe that abusers ‘know the truth’ and then intentionally misrepresent the truth, lie, and manipulate. And some abusers do. But many abusers, particularly victim-abusers, have actually manipulated themselves first. (And sometimes you get Trump, and it’s both.)

Spotting an unreliable narrator is different than spotting someone who is lying.

With a liar, you might identify inconsistencies in their statements. You can get outside information to corroborate their assertions. You pay attention to whether they lie to others.

With an unreliable narrator, however, you are looking for patterns of cognitive distortion.

Because the person they are primarily lying to is themselves, they have to fit the facts to a pre-existing narrative. They are supporting a worldview core to their identity. Someone who does this is not going to apply their thinking consistently to similar situations.

They will have different rules for themselves than others.

And they won’t even see it. Their hypocrisy doesn’t exist to them. Usually it has something to do with virtue-based ethics, e.g. “I am a good person, therefore anything bad that I do doesn’t make me a bad person.” or “I am a victim, therefore I am not an abuser and nothing I do is abusive.” If this person does something wrong, it’s a mistake, they’re human, they have been misunderstood, everyone makes mistakes, etc.

That’s if they’re even able to acknowledge they have done something wrong.

The most effective tool, however, is to take someone’s perspective as-is.

Even in their own accounting, an unreliable narrator’s actions simply do not make sense. Additionally, they can outright showcase negative characteristics that they attribute to others.

They will often also have an inconsistent worldview since abusers or people who engage in mis-thinking mix up cause and effect.

Someone’s own language can tell you the story.

…or their lack of empathy for a person they should reasonably have empathy for. (How disconnected they are from this other person, their experience, and even their emotions; someone they should care for and care about.)

Without any additional information, is how they are acting or thinking a reasonable and healthy response?

The answer is “no”.

You can determine, through the author’s own narrative, this person is an unreliable narrator.

An unreliable narrator can legitimately been abused. They can be a person who is still looking for healing and is struggling in their life. They may not be intentionally trying to misrepresent the situation.

But that doesn’t mean an unreliable narrator can see it clearly.

There is a clear link between someone’s narrative being reasonable and being reliable.

As u/ greenlizardhands has identified, so often victims of abuse apply information in the wrong direction. They learn that ‘love is patient, love is kind’, and then worry about whether they are patient or kind enough with someone – an abuser – who is being anything BUT patient or kind.

If, instead, they applied the ‘rule’ to the abuser, they could potentially see that the abuser does not love them. Because it’s not a rule, it’s a rubric – it’s a way to determine whether something is, not a prescription for how it should be. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive.

For the victim who is often so used to attempting to be Ultimate Goodness^TM, it’s good to look inward regarding how the relationship makes them feel and who they are becoming versus whether they are being enough, doing enough, good enough. To consider if the relationship is building them up or breaking them down.

And to think about who they are becoming with their days – in their mind, their heart, and way of being.

And the answer in every abuse dynamic is that you eventually become worse. Because a victim simply can never actually meet the abuser’s ‘needs’. The abuser’s ‘need’ is to have someone to abuse. Because it establishes in reality the fantasy the abuser wishes was real, because it reinforces an abuser’s identity to themselves, because the dynamic itself is not a means but an end.

See also:

One reason why abusers pick good people as their victims <—– laundering ‘evil’

@alexandra.lou.lou, Instagram comment about her toxic mother

“Nightmares and hypervigilance make for light, frequently interrupted sleep – and dark, quiet rooms are blank screens for intrusive trauma symptoms.” – Glenn Patrick Doyle

And some abusers will wake a sleeping victim with abuse/assault/hitting/screaming. It is incredibly disorienting and terrifying to be awoken that way…so you learn to sleep ‘light’, but you’re not getting restorative sleep either. Which makes decision-making so much harder with respect to yourself, your life, the abuser. There’s a reason that’s a form of torture/breaking down the ego or psyche.

(Notes related to my video of the same name.)

• disorganized narrative structure – their account jumps between different claims without clear connections, making it difficult to follow the actual sequence of events.

• disrupted cause-effect reasoning – there’s a disconnect between described actions and outcomes, with leaps in logic that aren’t explained.

• shifting narrative – the story (and their claims) evolve.
  .
• inconsistent narrative – While they provide a narrative or explanations, the actual issue remains unclear, with shifting descriptions of what happened;

• escalating claims – the severity or scope of allegations increases over time, often in response to pushback or questions. What begins as a simple complaint evolves into accusations of coordinated abuse, criminal activity, or far-reaching conspiracies. This pattern serves to raise the stakes and pressure others to respond.

• lack of specificity – despite multiple opportunities to clearly explain what happened, the details remain vague and confusing, making it difficult to understand the actual incident.

• vague allegations – making declarative claims that require a determination, but provide no specific details that would make this claim verifiable.

• accusatory language – they make serious allegations without basis, and often projecting what they themselves are doing.

• threatening language – includes language that appears to be designed to intimidate rather than seek help (e.g. “they’ll see”)

• persecution framework – they position themselves at the center of a coordinated campaign involving multiple parties all working against them, and it doesn’t make sense for those parties to work together.

• certainty about others’ intentions (e.g. hostile attribution bias) – they attribute specific malicious motives to others without evidence.

• conspiratorial thinking – a belief that they have access to information or power that others don’t.

• reality distortion – their retelling of events differs significantly from what can be documented, suggesting potential difficulty perceiving interactions with others accurately.

• implied threats – the message has an ominous tone of warning/threatening everyone they perceive to be involved in the conspiracy.

• inappropriate demands – they attempt to dictate how you should respond – a form of directorial control – as well as reality.

• misattribution of authority – they may believe you have power/position that you do not have.

• forum shopping – they may appear to be asking many different people for ‘help’ while continuing to characterize themselves as a victim who can’t get help. The reason they ‘can’t get help’ is because they are being filtered out of being able to be helped by those organizations.

• pronoun dropping – the inconsistent use of first-person pronouns can be a linguistic marker of who they see as acting or being acted upon.

One thing I’ve unintentionally been exploring is the mechanisms by which people actually change.

For example, when I discovered that communication is not the foundation of a relationship but that having a shared sense of reality is. You literally cannot communicate well-enough with someone when your respective Venn diagrams of reality don’t overlap enough.

But the idea was always that if you could communicate with someone, that you would be able to explain what’s happening in a way that they could change their behavior.

It is also important to engage in relationships with a high level of compatibility, so that what you are asking from people is not compromising who they are at a fundamental level.

A mistake a lot of toxic and emotionally immature people make is believing they can create unconditional love from an unconditional relationship –

…they substitute loyalty for love – and therefore do not vet for compatibility when they are dating. Because the point isn’t compatibility but in ‘choosing to stay no matter what’…that is what they believe love is. In order to feel loved, they need to feel ‘safe’, but they don’t feel safe unless the relationship is PERMANENT and then they demand unconditional acceptance for their toxic behaviors as ‘unconditional love’.

So many emotionally immature people are not doing this intentionally.

A mature relationship is one in which the (very compatible partners who share core values) is one in which each partner accepts the other’s influence.

And it is safe to accept their influence – it isn’t done in a dominating way, there isn’t shame around it: nothing operates off a power paradigm but a mutuality paradigm. It is truly relationship and connection. This kind of relationship is one in which the partners have empathy and care for each other and would never want to force their partner to capitulate, and where bending to meet them isn’t a sign of being ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. There’s no shame in the growing together.

But when I read the quote above, I realized that the core of being able to change is that you understand cause and effect.

One of the biggest issues you see in disordered systems, abuse included, is that “effect” is dissociated from “cause”. Often an abuser engages in abuse to prevent from experiencing the consequences of their actions. Consequences like a victim leaving.

And so many victims of abuse try to explain and communicate with an abuser, hoping that if they explain enough and clearly, that the abuser will stop the abusive behavior.

But the only thing that has the possibility of stopping the abusive behavior is consequences for their actions.

And I’m only just realizing that a reason for this is that the abuser (or toxic or problematic person) may not understand cause and effect. At least, not until they are forced to experience the results of their actions. Even then they may not be able to cause and effect.

We usually talk about it from the perspective of ‘taking responsibility’.

But underlying even that is the idea that actions have a reaction, that effects have causes, and that you can recognize that your action caused an outcome.

Sometimes the only way a person learns this basic lesson from the universe is when they consistently have a negative outcome as a result of their behaviors.

Others only learn it when they are in a relationship where they can process their shame responses first before being faced with their ‘sins’.

Interestingly, this idea is a fundamental concept behind Christianity:

God extends you grace, you have been ‘saved’, so it is therefore ’emotionally safe’ to look at yourself, especially since you are reassured that everyone has sinned. And even then, many Christians go on to shame others while expecting people to extend them grace and mercy, because their project their shame on someone ‘safe’ like the current society outcasts.

The Raised By Narcissists subreddit handles the shame by using the concept of ‘fleas’: “you lay down with dogs, and you get fleas”.

Basically that your toxic and abusive behaviors are not your fault, they are the fault of your parents or partner, because being with them impressed those toxic and abusive behaviors on you. So you can look at yourself without shame, or less shame, because your actions are not your ‘fault’.

Therapists encourage change by empathizing with someone and being emotionally attuned to them.

By feeling unconditionally accepted no matter what they say or feel or think, by not feeling judged, they are able not to feel shame when looking at themselves and their actions. That is the point when they can begin to accept cause-and-effect.

Having a safe, loving parent is where we safely learn cause and effect.

So instead of being a tool of shame, it was a tool of teaching and love and support.

Pay attention to whether you or the person you are dealing with is able to link cause and effect.
Pay attention to whether they are shame-oriented.

This will let you know if you are dealing with someone who can (1) accept reality, (2) accept influence, and (3) is growth-oriented.