Hurt People
Mental health professionals have long promulgated the notion that it’s hurt people who hurt people. That is, folks carrying the pain of their own unhealed past trauma unwittingly repeat harmful relationship patterns. This is a widely-held perspective, born of good intent. But it also represents a troublingly sweeping generalization. And over-generalizations generally tend to be pretty bad science. They can also represent dangerously biased and potentially harmful viewpoints to hold when you’re trying to actually help people. That’s true whether you’re trying to help the person on the receiving end of hurtful behavior or the perpetrator!
The Problem with the Perspective
Do people with unhealed emotional wounds unwittingly repeat harmful patterns? Absolutely! But there are many, many other reasons people hurt people. And helping professionals who fail to adequately consider these other possibilities can easily do their clients more harm than good. Any sound theory has to take into cosideration ALL the relevant data. And there’s ample evidence that there are many deeply wounded souls who wouldn’t even dream of inflicting the pain that they endured on others. Any potentially helpful perspective on human nature and human behavior simply must take that sobering reality into account. Folks harboring the view that only wounded people injure others operate in blatant disregard of this all-important data.
People Hurt People for Many Reasons
In my training workshops over the years I was careful to make some crucial points. True, some hurt people unwittingly do harm to others. But guess what? Spoiled, entitled, bratty, people coming out of the best of circumstances hurt people, too! And they do so quite intentionally, as opposed to unconsciously or unwittingly. Moreover, their actions stem not so much from their inner wounds but rather from their lack of caring and their underdeveloped or absent conscience. Recognizing this is crucial. If a helping professional doesn’t operate under a sound perspective, no one is likely to get better. The professional might even unwittingly cause additional trauma! (See, for example: How Therapy Induced Trauma Happens.)
Where the Focus Needs to Lie
Spending time and energy trying to figure out what wounds might underlie a problem behavior can often be a pointless, fruitless enterprise. And generally, a person’s wounds aren’t a problem in themselves, anyway. Rather, problems most often stem from people’s behavior, and it’s the behaviors of concern themselves that deserve the major focus, at least at first. Once behaviors are under control, one can afford the luxury of examining the possible roots. (I address these matters in depth in both In Sheep’s Clothing and Character Disturbance.)
I’ll have more to say on this topic in some upcoming posts.
“Spoiled, entitled, bratty, people coming out of the best of circumstances hurt people, too!” I heard of a concept that spoiling, enabling, coddling, permitting, rescuing is a form of parental abuse that retards emotional development of a child.
At this point, after being through the horrifying wringer of an intimate psychopathic relationship, I believe that some people are born with sadistic and cruel traits. The feeling that there is something off is there from the beginning, from the very first seconds they set their eyes on you, but because you don’t operate the same way they do, you start doubting yourself, blaming yourself that you “misunderstood,” you judged them “too harshly” and so on. The cognitive dissonance is there from the beginning, on a skin hair standing up level, yet I allowed myself to ignore this most important sign. Let it be a lesson to others. Pay attention to the small things, an intense way they look at you with those cold alien robotic eyes, an “insignificant” chuckle that sends chills down your spine, they are not in love with you, they are sizing up their lunch. You are nothing to them. The crucial skill to teach children early on is to discern between the warm-blooded and cold-blooded. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
It’s amazing to me how far some folks will go (especially clinicians married to traditional viewpoints) to stretch a metaphor or conceptual perpective. It’s a pretty wild stretch in my opinion to see the overly endulged as somehow as victims of the “trauma” of inadequate parenting. And besides, I’ve seen plenty of cases where the parenting was just fine and still the youngsters came out character-deficient. We’re learning all the time how certain traits we once thought were strictly nurtured are conferred biologically. That’s not to say everyting is genetic. But it is to say that we have to re-think our traditional notions. Perhaps the biggest reason for folks being traumatized by the therapy experience itself is the tendency to spend too much time on supposed underpinnings of behavior and not enough time challenging the behavior itself. And you’re right. Traditional psychology largely taught folks not to trust their gut. But if you’re gut tells you something’s not right, you do well to listen – even you’re getting that feeling with your counselor!!
I appreciate this reply. It’s something I’ve been concerned about. My daughter wasn’t spoiled, but I believe with her personality, in hindsight, I would have done better to focus less on her and more on me.
“It’s a pretty wild stretch in my opinion to see the overly endulged as somehow as victims of the “trauma” of inadequate parenting. And besides, I’ve seen plenty of cases where the parenting was just fine and still the youngsters came out character-deficient. We’re learning all the time how certain traits we once thought were strictly nurtured are conferred biologically.
Agreed!!!
My siblings who were treated the best behave just as nefariously as the ones who weren’t!! I have 6 other siblings 3 brothers 2 treated like kings, 3 sisters, 2 treated like queens. All 6 have little to no empathy, use people relentlessly, treat me like the bad one even though their grown behavior would make them criminals if they were prosecuted.
So hurt people, hurt people is quite the myth. This would include my parents. Both were first born, treated like gold dad lived with parents until he was 28!!! However, he loved to kick us kids out constantly threatening us with the 18 yr old rule of you’re gonna pay rent!!! He never had to.
He abused me terribly because I was pregnant as a 15 yr old. Had my son at 16. I found out he fathered a child at 19 yrs old and his 15 yr old girlfriend gave up my half sister who we never knew about until after he died. Hypocrite to be sure. She’s the spitting image of him and was a swimmer like him in high school!!! If he knew that and saw her picture he would be horrified us showing him her!
Dr. Simon,
I also want to say regarding this subject. My relative who assaulted me when I was a teen claims when I told him he was violating Gods Word defrauding my dads wife of her home along with my dad, forcing her and her kids out because my dads health was in decline, that I was now acting as the accuser of the brethren.
Meanwhile he never took responsibility for the crime he committed against me. He accused me of “pretending to forgive , but lying that I had”.
Meanwhile, as he was married the first time, claiming to be born again, he accused me of wanting the crime to happen!! They divorced not long after.
Got his girlfriend pregnant, both claiming to be born again, and proceeded to tell her the same exact story accusing me of being perverted.
They too divorced.
Isn’t it interesting that he sees himself as the somehow hurt party???
Isn’t it interesting he isn’t the accuser of the brethren?
Isn’t it interesting he NEVER had to forgive me as I was the perverted one?
Yes, narcissistic people HURT people and they try to hurt them over and over again.
None of my siblings have defended me in all this, they know what he did.
I have gone no contact with all of them for about 10 yrs now.
Thank you so much for your reply, dr. Simon, and thank you for cautioning us about the therapists, the field is rife with dubious types and some of them, frankly, don’t know what they are talking about. It’s quite sad.
I find this is true because in my opinion spoiled people are the worst kind of people. Most of the mean people I know are spoiled rich brats and I dislike the fact that they think they that they are better than other people.They are the worst kind of people.that is all i have to say thank you for listening.
Dr. Simon,
Thank you for your very insightful and well timed post. It is certainly very helpful in the current circumstances that I’m struggling to cope with.
It is always disturbing to me to see psychologists take phrases like this out of context twisting them to minimize and dismiss the traumas bad behaviors cause to others.
I understood this phrase to help those who were hurt by another’s behavior, to not internalize someone else’s harmful behavior, to reduce the power of the hurtful behavior by indicating that hurt people, hurt people. To minimize the person hurting you, reducing them to just a hurt person lashing out, to not take what they are saying to heart. Basically, a modernization and more sophisticated version of the sticks and stones saying.
I do believe there is basic truth to this saying regardless of how an individual was hurt whether by the nature of faulty brain wiring/development or by how an individual was nurtured and not as a way to feel sorry for an individual so intent on damaging others (I call it the do unto others as others have done unto me versus the golden rule.)
What is not acceptable is to use this phrase to excuse harmful behavior or to give sympathy or an excuse to the person doing the harming. Bad behavior is bad behavior and is always unacceptable regardless of someone’s circumstances.
Why psychology persists in comforting and excusing is a puzzle to me. Maybe it’s because of the mean dog phenomenon I saw when I working with aggressive dog behavior. I saw the same bizarre behavior by people over and over again. People dismissed the nice dog, the kind, easy going, excellently behaved dog and found some sort of ego boost by interacting with the mean dog when it either didn’t bite them or aggress upon them. I heard over and over again how the mean dog liked them, accepted them like it was an accomplishment of sorts or self validation. So I coined the phrase the Mean Dog Phenomenon. When dealing with the MDP, in which there is a bigger payoff when the mean dog liked them versus the nice dog who liked or was polite to everyone, I had to recognize I couldn’t recondition behaviors in the dog that were rewarded and encouraged by the humans.
Anyway, thanks again for the post and for ‘listening’ it’s helped me to recover from the spiral I’ve been struggling against in dealing with another hostile, aggressive, dysfunctional, bad charactered person again.
Thank you! Your comments are likely to be helpful to many. And, you’re welcome!!
Hei.
Kiitos postauksestasi dr. Simon. Tämä on niin hyödyllistä ja valaisevaa informaatiota. Sekä myös voimaannuttavaa. Minulla on äiti joka oli muita sisaruksiani kohtaan aivan ok vanhempi lukuunottamatta emotionaalista kylmyyttä. Minua hän sen sijaan vihasi koko sydämensä pohjasta koska olin ns. Väärän miehen lapsi. Hän kohdisti minuun julmaa henkistä ja fyysistä väkivaltaa koko sen ajan kun asuin lapsuudenkodissani. Totesin hänessä usein olevan jotain hyvin pahaa, sadististisia piirteitä. Myös isäpuoleni sai kokea tämän ja sairastui ms tautiin ja kuoli siihen. Tämä ns äitini osasi valita kohteensa huolella ja hän osasi sen tehdä niin piilotetusti etteivät ulkopuoliset huomanneet mitään. Olen katkaissut häneen välit kokonaan reilu vuosi sitten. Hän ei koskaan ole pyytänyt anteeks vaan raivostui silmittömästi jos nostin hänen tekonsa esiin. Nykyisin hän esittää täydellistä ihmistä hengellisessä yhteisössä ja tekee siellä näkyvästi “paljon hyvää”. Ja kaikki ovat syvästi vaikuttuneita hänen antaumuksellisuudestaan. Huvittavaa. Ne ihmiset jotka tietävät miten hän minua kohteli, kommentoivat asiaa näin: ” voivoi hänen täytyy olla hyvin traumatisoitunut, voivoi miten traumatisoitunut hänen täytyykään olla. Mitähän hänelle on oikein tehty? Häntä on varmaan käytetty hyväksi” . Mutta mistään sellaisesta ei tiedetä mitään. Huvittavaa on sekin että kukaan ei kommentoi hänen tekojaan sanomalla esim. Että kauheeta mitä hän onkaan tehnyt. Sen sijaan hänen sisarensa ovat kertoneet että hän oli ilkeä jo pienenä, karkaileva ja elämyshakuinen. Kiitän sydämestäni siitä arvokkaasta työstä jolla autat seuraajiasi. Hope you manage to translate this from finish language to english. T. Piuli.
Thank you!! I was able to translate! I appreciate your kind words!
Dear dr. Simon. .
I hope you could translate it with Google. My intension was first to write in finish and then translate into english but I did not succeed. Next time I take time to write in english as best as I can. I hope I didnt cause trouble for you.it was a very good article as always. Thank you for providing us content to grow into individuals with better characters even at older age..
Hello, T.Piuli,
Yes, I agree with you all the way. I talk to people and describe the horrific things they have done to you, in my case, I have two broken bones by him, and a phone full of photographs of the bruises you only see on tv in those police murder series, and yet people would reply, he must be so traumatized. And yes, on being mean even as a child, I brought that up with a former therapist, and this therapist replied that it’s normal for children to be sadistic to animals, that it’s a part of growing up and exploring the world. I am working so hard every single day to untwist my mind and grasp onto the good, kind, normal things that still exist in this world. Yesterday I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my skin, I felt so happy and free in that moment despite the irrefutable evidence that evil exists alongside good.
Just to add, while it’s not that uncommon for children to do some pretty thoughtless things with animals, sadistic behavior toward animals and unnecessary cruelty is a HUGE RED FLAG for psychopathic traits. Moreover, children carrying such traits might very well behave like an abusive parent with that trait, but it’s primarily the trait itself, not what’s experienced, that mostly influences the hurtful behavior.
Dr. Simon
This is so intresting to become to know that such sadistic traits are really built in the persons traits system from the veginning and then they just act it out. And after doing such things they blame it on something Else.
Mimi dear..
I feel for you deeply that you have had to experience such horrible things. But here we get help, support and deep insight, the right kind of insight.
All,
Dr> Simon wrote an excellent article in August of 2012 which I believe goes hand in hand with this article. https://www.drgeorgesimon.com/they-know-what-theyre-doing/.
From my experience they do know what they are doing they just don’t care. Charlie’s example of the dogs is a great example, just reverse the dog with a human and the answer is there.
Mimi, I really feel for what you are going through, be kind to yourself and take very good care.