*** This is a difficult post and it is meant for your older parts. Please note — it could be triggering to many within your system. Please check this article with your internal leaders before letting your littles or sensitive ones read any further. Thanks, Kathy. ***
Recently, I witnessed a fight between some wild animals that was particularly upsetting to see. There is no need to go into great detail about the actual situation. I can speak about it in sweeping statements and you will get more than enough picture of the situation from there.
The long and the short of it was that a rather large group of critters (yes, they were birds) were picking on one particular bird to the point that it appeared that it could be a fatal situation for the one very unfortunate bird. Talk about outnumbered! It was just really really not ok to hear or see. It was particularly disturbing and very upsetting.
At first I wondered about what to do – somewhat fearing for my own safety if I got involved – but I really was not comfortable not interrupting the attack in some way, somehow. I hesitated for a brief while, knowing that Mother Nature and wild animals do what they do and wondering if maybe I should just respect that. But I could hear it and I could see it, and I just couldn’t not do anything. It was just too upsetting to not act somehow.
So I darted across the street, running in the direction of the mob of birds. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, I just knew I had to do something.
Lucky for me, my running at them was more than enough to disturb the birds and interrupt their horrible attack. All the birds, including the one being picked on, flew away and left the area in a big hurry.
Thank goodness.
I mean really, thank goodness.
I was so relieved that the ordeal was at least over for that moment. I knew the group of birds could attack the injured bird again, another time, and in another place, but I was so very thankful that it had at least been stopped at that time. I could at least hope that I had stopped it completely.
There was no way of me knowing how injured the victim bird was since he flew off and away when everyone else did. I can only hope that I interfered quickly enough that he didn’t get very badly hurt.
I’ve been watching for an injured bird, but I haven’t seen one. I don’t know if that is good news or not. And I don’t know what injured birds do when they are hurt, so I don’t know if I would see one or not. I don’t know whether to be relieved, or whether to worry more. I just don’t have the answers to this situation.
But boy, oh boy, was this an emotional situation for me. I found the whole experience to be incredibly upsetting. I was tearful. I was afraid. I was worried. I was brave. I had all kinds of emotions going on throughout the whole day.
And again, the parallels of this situation to the lives of dissociative trauma survivors are many and layered.
First of all, I think that nearly every DID survivor that I have spoken to has told me of horrific situations where they were the one targeted victim being attacked by a group of perpetrators. Even if there was only one main perpetrator, there were other people around, watching and / or supporting the perpetrator and not helping the person being hurt.
This is just soooooo not ok.
It is just so wrong for groups of anyone to gang up against one person, purposefully hurting them, doing terrible things to them.
It can be just as wrong for anyone to witness such crimes and to not step in and help the person(s) being hurt. Granted, this is very much a gray area since there are a number of complicated factors involved when it comes to interrupting and stopping violence. At this point, my comments are directed specifically towards those who really could have the ability to stop or interfere with the abuse, and simply choose not to.
I can’t even come up with enough words to describe how wrong these things are.
I couldn’t tolerate watching a bird being injured. How on earth do perpetrators tolerate watching a person getting hurt, especially a little person?
I just don’t understand that.
Not one tiny bit do I understand that.
*** Please note – in these comments, I am not referring to the situations where someone is forced to perpetrate when they don’t want to. There is a kind of victimization / abuse where dominant perpetrator abusers force others in a less powerful position to do abusive acts to others. I call this situation victimization by perpetration. Most DID survivors have experienced this situation too, and please know, that my comments today are not in reference to those very difficult and equally horrible situations. ***
I am talking about the abuser types that are truly sadistic and hurtful, completely by choice. I’m referring to situations where the perpetrator does not have to hurt anyone, but they simply want to and choose to because they like it and enjoy it.
THAT is what I don’t understand.
What does it take in someone to be truly sadistic? How does this happen? How can those abusive violent people live with themselves? Where is their compassion? Why do they have no compassion or kindness?
I know there are intellectual answers to those questions, but my thoughts are based on more of an emotional and spiritual level.
I just don’t get it.
Do you?
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2023 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
We can ask a billion times
Why
What makes a person do this
How
What drives such violence
There are never any real answers
None
There isn’t excuses
Never
There ARE people who step in
Making the world a better place
Some never knowing what impact they have
Some do
The question you ask is valid
But we can never truly imagine
The mindset of perpetrators
Or the reasons why
Does love exist without hate
Does hate exist without love
Does life exist without death
Does death exist without life
Hoe does one know what love is
Without being hated
How does hate know what love is
Without being loved
Peace… without torment
Dark without light
Can they truly exist without the other?????
How would we know…..???????
I’m not sure I have true multiples, but I do have very pronounced sides and one side of me is sexually excited by the CONCEPT of sadistic abuse, and has been since early childhood (about age four). I even wonder whether this is something more usually grown out of than grown into and – whether by nature or by nurture – this one side of me has just failed to mature on that vector. Not that I think I’m at all unusual in this – a lot of people have dark fantasies or a huge swathe of the entertainment industry would not exist. There is, however, I believe, quite a heavily marked line in most people between desire and action – e.g. most people do not make passes at everyone they ever meet and fancy – and I’m pretty confident by now (in my thirties) that, barring brain injury, I am never going to abuse anyone. So the question for me is not so much what makes perpetrators want to abuse (interesting but not directly crucial), but what fails to stop them acting out their desires. To break it down further: in spur-of-the-moment perpetrators, what are the dynamics of their lack of impulse control? and in the plotters and planners, what are the dynamics of their PERSISTENT reification of others (thinking of other people as objects for long enough to put a plan together and act on it)? Or on the flip side, what is it in the rest of us that does stop us?
For me, I think dissociation is actually part of the answer: if my dark side seems to be gaining any sense of agency whatsoever, I switch at once to a better side. Also, I have never sought to destroy my dark side, which I feel would just push it underground. Instead, I keep it in plain view to myself, fenced off from agency but allowed existence and respect. In this way my dark side is not only monitored but exists under relatively little tension, which I think is important, because I suspect that one of the things that obliterates the line between desire and action in many perpetrators is, paradoxically, anxiety over their darker impulses: they get so tense about their dark side and so down on it that it rebels and takes over just to relieve the tension. Anxiety would also be the line-obliterating factor in a more straight forward projection model, where, through ‘magical thinking’, a perpetrator is ‘projecting’ their own fears of suffering onto the victim as if the victim can suffer in place of the perpetrator. I do indeed wonder whether the root problem of all perpetrators, even apparently ‘cold’, ‘sociopathic’ ones, is dysfunctional handling of anxiety.
Have you read Dr. Bruce Perry’s ‘The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog’? His book is entirely about how early choldhood maltreatment/abuse/neglect can alter our basic humanity.
What of Alice Miller have you read? ‘For Your Own Good’ and ‘Thou Shall Not Be Aware’ also deals with this topic.
I found this post while searching for books on sadistic abuse. My ex is a sexual sadist rapist. That perpetrators are spawned from severe abuse no longer surprises me.
Pilgrim safe hugs if u want them. I know your posts too and see no evil in them. But we too have a little who believes she’s evil. We’re all learning that we’re not evil- not her either, or you- and that it wasn’t our fault. It’s never ever the fault of the abused. Ever. We send u lots of light to your feeling-dark places.
Probably its because i am evil.
And i have no heart.
And i am dead inside.
Thats fucking why.
Oh but Pilgrim,
I already know that you have a heart. I’ve read plenty of your comments on here, and your heart comes thru’ loud and clear lots of times. So nope, not evil either.
Spend some big chunks of time with and/or doing things that create life – grow some plants, play with puppies, go on nature walks, give hugs to kids, let a butterfly sit on your hand, etc, .
I know there are parts of you that are full of life and have a great big wonderful heart. Have a nice chat with them — you may learn something about life if you listen to your other insiders. 🙂
Kathy
“I know there are intellectual answers to those questions, but my thoughts are based on more of an emotional and spiritual level.” As are the people who are involved in RA. If they truly believe that they are harming a weaker person (specifically a child) with good reason, then it`s acceptable to them. Y`know `doing the wrong things for the right reasons`.Like, there are strongly held religious beliefs that many people find just wrong, but to a not so small group of people, their religious beliefs mean that it is not just acceptable, but essential that they inflict all sorts of abuses on children, and sometimes will use other creatures to do so.From the little I`ve worked out….it`s a combination of highly intelligent adults who are probably psychopathic, but also are somewhat enigmatic (they need to be to attract other members, and to make everyone believe they are `good`, therefore not stereotypical abusers.There is also the issue of testing themselves by hiking up the levels of `punishment` they perpetrate.
Which leaves me and others who have got away left to flounder in a world they don`t recognise or understand the workings of.
I don’t know. I really don’t know. Some of our internal persecutors are sadistic, but I know that it’s because of what was done to them/us, that that’s the way they feel “in control,” so to speak, if you are hurting someone else, then maybe you can avoid being hurt…so in that context, I can understand…but I don’t understand why so many people have hurt us in our life and how so many people have seen what was going on and turned a blind eye, I don’t get how anyone could do that.
As someone whose grandmother and 5-year old aunt were murdered by the Nazis, I often wonder about the topic. Very many sadistic, heartless Nazis — some who’s whip prisoners to death — went on to become (by accounts of thos who lived with them), loving spouses and parents.
It is simply mind-boggling. And scary!!!
Kathy – my email is down so I couldn’t send this thru there, but I don’t see anything about flashbacks or how to deal with them – or nightmares, etc. when you can – if you get the unction to function, would you add that to your “articles to write” list?
Thanks
Ohevet — beautiful name. I wish you love.
Could it be a power thing? They get a sick exhilaration from completely lording over another person with no restraint and holding them there under their thumb for as long as they darn well please while both parties believe one has ultimate power, one is powerless.
Can some people just be born bad? I think some of us were born that way.
Me thinks too. Me likes this discussion.
“What does it take in someone to be truly sadistic? How does this happen? How can those abusive violent people live with themselves? Where is their compassion? Why do they have no compassion or kindness?”
According to my mom, she was born that way, her parents were in-love, kind, and gentle. Growing up, she liked the power she felt, and the control of others. She bragged about how no one could stop her, she was the youngest kid in her school in have a gang, and striked terror in the older kids. She loved her dangerous reputation, and says she’s compassionate, she just gets bored, and finds it incredibly funny when people get hurt, especially if they are “good people.” She finds the irony really funny. She views kindness as not hurting you when she could, or reviving you afterwards(she didn’t have to, she could have just left you there).
Like you said”they simply want to and choose to because they like it and enjoy it.”
I found out from my sister that it’s not about making others feel better, it’s about destroying other people to make herself feel better. She says she deserves it(whatever it may be at the time) because our childhood was so bad, so she has every right to take, or destroy. No one had compassion for us, so she doesn’t have compassion for others. They don’t deserve it, since they have it easy, we went through alot and now she’s making up for our childhood(or lack thereof).
help me
The difference between an animal abuser and a Human one is that humans change depending on who’s looking. If noone’s looking or if noone’s looking who’s going to do anything then there’s no rules anything goes. That seems to be the only conscience. Otherwise its just the same as animals. I think that humans feel that they own their victims and that means they can do what they like because it’s theirs. Human’s also think that they can make their victims feel or think what they want them to feel or think and then that changes the abuse into something else in the minds of abusers.
Where I get lost sometimes is knowing these folks can have, do have, moments of kindness -outside of that kind of a ‘license to harm’ pack context. It isn’t that compassion isn’t in them, the more bystander types anyway. They can and do exhibit the full range of human emotions so yeah, WTH? Don’t get that, for sure.
There are some moments, decisions, in life -crossroads, if you like- which decide who you are, who you’re gonna be or at least I think so. ‘Cause you can’t undo that decision, even if there are relatively sound reasons/rationalisations in your head for your actions, non-actions, whatever it’s all violence. It’s a choice which for whatever reason (not entirely sure I wanna know the answer to that one, for all that I’d like to understand) means they ship their hearts to Vegas and lose the lot.
Can you come back from that the same, even if you go on to behave humanely, justly, in other situations? Don’t have much of a right to judge of course but something inside, some instinct, teaches some to TRY, to REACH and others merely to ACT. Maybe it’s just the difference between an intensely naive, immature emotional existence and bothering to wake up. ‘Most men live lives of quiet desperation’ and all that…
Hey CK –
Such a good point. It would be so much easier if the perps were pure evil and nasty with no shred of goodness in them – and granted, a few of the real psychopaths of the world do fit into that category. But all too many people fit more accurately into the category that you are referring too – someone with the capacity for kindness and normal human emotions, and yet, for whatever reason, they specifically choose to block out or enjoy the pain of others, and / or act in abusive, violent ways. Apathy or overlooking the struggles of those being harmed just cannot be ok.
It seems that the more often someone chooses to act violently, or chooses to refuse to help a victim of violence, there is the risk of more and more hardening to happen. And the harder the heart, the easier it is to overlook others…
Somehow, I think its probably not nearly as simple as that.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your comment. Much appreciated.
Kathy
Me thinks life sux today. Healing is hard work. But we know a lot of better days & we have been happy before … it just sux sometimes. Emo is hard for us. So much Emo.
why do it be rong
if you bad you got to get punnisht
you got to get tot a lesin
that be how it works 🙁
“I am talking about the abuser types that are truly sadistic and hurtful, completely by choice. I’m referring to situations where the perpetrator does not have to hurt anyone, but they simply want to and choose to because they like it and enjoy it.”
…but what if the bird was bad – had done something bad nd had gotten out of ‘pecking’ order? doesn’t it have to be punicshed? ‘completely by choice’ is different that punishing tehir kid or the bird? punishing has different levels too tho….
is it sadistic for an internal to attack another in the systme just cus they want to? or is it more punishment for a wrong thought or something was said to someone that uncovers things or that the bird has to be taught how things are in the pack?
we’re sorry you saw something disturbing. it is unsettling. glad you were able to interrupbts it. kiya sais she would have taken a broom aloneg 🙂
us
I have zero tolerance for those types Rockstar! They are even worse in some cases than the perps because that “watcher” or that witness gives the victim a glimmer of hope and then the hope is snatched away making things even worse for the little ones who thought maybe, just maybe they would be saved. Those people are just as responsible for the abuse as the perps.
In Ayn Rand’s novel, _Atlas Shrugged_, in the character arc of one of the villains, James Taggart, Rand identifies torture as the only pleasure of the philosophical nihilist, the person who himself does not want to live. She gets deep inside Taggart’s psyche to show, in the most explicit philosophical way possible, why he is the way he is, why he feels and acts and see the world the way he does.
If a person does not want to live, then to continue to live is a kind of torture (which he feels compelled to endure). He only feels that existence makes sense in moments when he bringing pain to another. It is an affirmation of his metaphysics, his basic sense of life, his spiritual vision.
You express a similar conflict to Dagny Taggart, the book’s heroine, who struggles with the unexamined assumption that everyone wants to live.
It is my favorite book. I hope you like it, too.
Sincerely,
Andrew Durham
http://andrewdurham.com
Maybe because they know nobody cares about the person theyre hurting so it just doesnt matter what happens. Especially when its inside kids. Nobody cares. So so what? They can be as mean as they want. They know no one gives a shit.
Nope! Don’t get it … Don’t get it at all! It takes my song away.
I learned something from my inside bullies. When they were mad … hurt … They became a bully too (when there was nothing else left to do). Then they picked on others both inside & outside. I don’t know if animals feel that way cause they got hurt or not. I don’t know what makes a perp a perp either. When my inside bullies were offered love, acceptance & forgiveness … I found a lil person that was hurt the very most. Just trying to survive. I can’t have compassion for perps tho – maybe they got hurt too but they had a choice to heal. Cause you can search even if it takes you searching the world over & you can find someone that will understand you, love you & let you heal. So – no mercy there.
I’m glad you did your part. That tells me you live with compassion & forgiveness. Mostly the world is full of hard hearted people that would have passed by the situation without much thought. Thank You for running across the street & stopping the violence around you. You have a boundary – ‘no hurt’. I don’t think perps have any boundaries. I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. I can have a boundary – No Perps around me ever again! Only when I stay safe can my heart sing again.
Good but hard story Broady. Hope others write too.