Psychological Violence: All The Characteristics
A glance, a word or a simple insinuation is enough to start a process of destruction. Those who are the perpetrators of psychological violence act so daily that it seems normal to them.
The victims do not speak and suffer in silence. Through a process of moral harassment or psychological mistreatment, one individual can tear another to pieces.
Just as predatory animals exist in nature that capture and annihilate other animals to feed themselves, even among humans, it is possible to observe a similar phenomenon, known as psychological violence, which involves the perpetrators and their victims.
Moral harassment or psychological violence is a phenomenon that can occur in any context, between a couple, in the workplace, in the family or among a group of friends.
What are the characteristics of the perpetrator of psychological violence?
The perpetrator of psychological violence can belong to any age group, social class, culture and gender. Apparently they are normal subjects, almost never leaders. They are usually stingy, self-centered, and narcissistic.
Their goal is the moral, personal, psychological and sociological annihilation of the victims; a situation that, at times, could even lead the weakest subjects to take their own life.
These are individuals who feel profoundly inferior even if they do not give this impression, as they are arrogant and grandiloquent. They are a repository of remorse and anger in disguise. They usually have a strong ideology.
They feel the need to be admired, desired, have an inordinate eagerness for success and power. They present a disconnect with their emotions, thus despising their victims.
As children, often, they are the ones who first throw the stone and then hide their hand, those who provoke the fights, but who do not take part in it. They aspire to protagonism.
During adolescence, they are cold and aloof, with little social success, surrounded by one or two friends, who manipulate. In adulthood, they stand out because they are arrogant, they pose as absolute connoisseurs of truth, reason and justice.
At first glance they seem calm, sociable and discreet subjects, but behind this mask, there is a heap of much more complicated and twisted intentions and unconscious mechanisms.
Who are the victims?
Victims are usually kind, honest, generous, optimistic people with great spiritual strength. These are people with characteristics that the perpetrators of psychological abuse crave and envy. They turn into scapegoats for all evils.
The perpetrator of psychological violence seeks these people to absorb their energy and vitality. Simply put, they want to absorb or destroy what they envy.
Victims are sometimes viewed suspiciously by others. This occurs because psychological violence occurs in such a way that the victim may appear to be the culprit, as people believe or think that they are aware and consenting to the aggression they suffer.
We often hear that if a person is the victim of psychological abuse, it is due to his weakness or shortcomings. In reality, it is the opposite: it is chosen precisely because it has something more than the others , something more that the aggressor wants to possess.
The “chosen ones” may seem naive and gullible people, since they do not understand that the other is a destroyer; they try to find logical justifications for his behavior.
They then begin to justify their attacker. They understand or forgive because they love or admire, they even feel they have to help him, because they are the only ones who understand him. They feel they have a mission to accomplish.
As the abuser clings to his steadfastness, the victims try to adapt, trying to understand why they consciously or unconsciously desire their persecutor and never ceasing to wonder what they are guilty of.
