Inside the heart and mind of the perpetrator of abuse

I’m patently aware that there are those who read the title of an article like this and think, “Gee, this guy is always so condemning... we all sin!”  When we take a low view of the consequences of sin, however, we minimise the tremendous harm that occurs when that sin is abuse.  And that harm compounds considerably when there’s continual denial on the part of the perpetrator and they’re not held to account.

Sure, we all sin, and it’s only okay that we do when we’re committed to owning it, confessing it, repenting of it — including, to the one we’ve sinned against.

But in this article my desire is to get inside the perpetrator’s head and heart.

When someone intentionally creates harm it involves turning away from themself; that, or it’s evidence of a seared conscience that signals a brutal sense of entitlement.

To continue looking away, refusing to face the horrendous reality that the victim of the abuse must live with — the trauma — also requires an apparent level of entitlement.

The entitlement not only to exploit the person, use and abuse them, but entitlement to add to that exploitation the exploitation of ‘good natured’ people who are unaware of their enabling of the abuser, through minimisation of the harm done or their ‘balancing’ of events to make things more palatable.

“Nobody’s perfect,” they might be heard to say.  “Everyone makes mistakes, I bet you do!”

Nobody’s disputing the fact that we ALL do wrong and harm.

The key difference is the heart and mind of a person who doesn’t have an entitlement complex to exploit others at will is influenced by their empathy.  Their empathy ensures they own what they did wrong, the confess it, they repent of it, and they consider the person they harmed and what they think and feel.

The other point that MUST be made is the kind of initial offence that an abuser is inclined to do is on another level to that which we would ordinarily call sin.  Again, empathy in a person will ensure they DO NOT engage in exploitative behaviours in the first place.

Massive is the difference between two kinds of sin; the normal garden-variety of sin we all engage in, by act or omission, and the next-level sin that most people are not really capable of.

So it’s a sin in itself for someone to minimise abuse and bring it down to the level of, “all sin is sin.”  Consequential reality is the test.  There are sins that are easily redeemed, just as there are sins that create huge harm and possibly cannot be redeemed.

In terms of doing trauma to people, the least we should expect is that we make the perpetrator accountable for their actions.

For the perpetrator, their heart and mind run significantly differently than most people can imagine.  The trouble is we think that abusers think like people with a conscience.  They just don’t.  People with a conscience cannot really comprehend people without a conscience.

The narcissist’s entitlement will have them coveting people and horrendous acts with absolutely no guilt whatsoever.  Their ‘right’ is exploitative by nature.  They do not care because they have no empathy.  Their best effort is a feigned empathy.  They cannot and will not understand.  This is evidence of narcissism — there is no compunction, whatsoever.  There is no capacity for empathic insight.

To engage in ongoing abuse, a person must continually dissociate and deny the harm they do, or they don’t even face the fact it’s wrong, which is just another form of denial.

The heart of someone who perpetrates abuse is bent on evil and their mind is completely self-focused.  They cannot be reached.  Their only hope is exposure, to face their actions.

Image by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash