Most people are good enough, in most circumstances, most of the time. Unfortunately, not all people are good. There are some people are quick to take advantage of a situation for their own gain, and some of these have little to no regard for the consequences to other people in fulfilling their wants and needs. Some people are concerning. Some people are abusive. This page and those pages indexed here, are about those who are Abusive and how to figure out who they are.

Most People are Good, some aren’t

Most people are good, most of the time, in most circumstances. All good people have times when they aren’t so good, but that doesn’t make them bad people.

On average, random people you meet in most places are going to be safe. You run into people all the time at the shops, on streets, in public parks, and they are mostly being good civilised people. Civilisation runs on a few accepted Social Contracts. A Social Contract is an explicit or implicit agreement about how we are going behave as a society. Explicit agreements are often made into laws, while implicit agreements are generally cultural norms we grow up learning and defaulting to.

Try to imagine a country that thinks that any one of these agreements is the opposite and consider if that country is considered to be a good country to live in, or a country to avoid.

While most people are good, many people will make a selfish and or unfair choice if they think they are unobserved. The theory behind this is complex, and many tests demonstrating ‘why‘ are poor, leading to mostly speculative explanations. Often, if a person cannot perceive how their action will impact another, will take the short cut action – that is putting less due diligence into their unobserved choice. Fatigue, poor personal resources (Spoons) and or anti-privilege will exacerbate how often someone will take these shortcuts. We hypothesis that being observed increases the Social Contract Stress, increasing the priority of socially acceptable choices.

Myth of Objective Good

Since we are philosophising, what actually is good?

Some people will cite philosophies such as stoicism, pragmatism, religious definitions and so on, as the basis of their defining ‘good’.

While an object can have the property of ‘mass’ (weight), ‘volume’ (size), temperature, charge etc, there is no property of ‘good’. While a volcano may spew lava over a village, and we can say that wasn’t good for humans (ask Pompei), when the volcano spews lava over an uninhabited island, we don’t attribute the outcome as bad. A natural disaster is a a misnomer. What we mean by ‘natural disaster’ is a human disaster – when a non-human event is bad for humans. Although the death of a person hunting a tiger is tragic, we don’t think the tiger is bad or malicious for killing the hunter.

‘Good‘ and ‘bad‘ are pivoted around people.

Good & Bad are Social Constructs

We evolved against a very dangerous world. While we were evolving from our common ancestors, bonobos and chimps, we didn’t have civilisation. We happen to be made of meat, which many predators think is a source of food. Predators would certainly consider us a viable meal while were vulnerable, such as asleep. If you are on your own, there is no good time to go to sleep since we had not invented lockable rooms yet.

If you are awake for 36 hours, your reflexes effectively become as poor as a person who is intoxicated enough to legally not be allowed to drive in most Western countries. That makes your chances of finding food and evading predators poor. That isn’t a good survival strategy.

We evolved a strange mechanisms to solve this, borrowed from our primate cousin – a group. If I watch you while you sleep, and you watch me while I sleep, then we can both be refreshed without risk. Should a predator come, two of us have a much greater chance of fending it off, or running away, than just one of us. Additionally, two of us hunting allows for much greater hunting potential than one of us on our own. If I get hurt in the hunt, you can watch over me while I heal, perhaps ensuring I have enough food and water. Our chances of survival have dramatically improved because we aren’t alone.

However, if I can’t trust that you will keep a proper watch while I sleep, perhaps you’ll wander off or fall asleep yourself, then I might as well be on my own. If I can’t trust you to keep watch while I sleep, I certainly can’t trust you to help me hunt, nor to look after me while I heal if I am injurred.

While 2 people is better than 1, 5 is better than 2. With 5 people, most people only lose a little sleep for everyone to get enough and not lose too much of the day. With only 1 or 2 people, the tiger hunts us, however, with 5 people we can hunt the tiger with a good chance of success. The bigger the group, the more we can all have a set of skills that compliment each other – I can get really good at this, you can get really good at that, instead of both of us only being so so at both. So while 5 is good, 20 is better – the bigger the group, the safer we all become.

However, the bigger the group, the more likely we are going to have fights and arguments about how we should do things, and the greater the chance of someone in the group being bad – bad at protecting the vulnerable, bad at sharing, bad at helping out in chores.

Humans evolved culture to mimic genetics. We pass on what we know and how we do things through words, memory and training, just like our DNA passes on what we look like. A part of our culture is the Social Contracts that we have already covered. If you take another look at the examples, they are all things that allow our small band of humans to cooperate. Cooperation increases our chances of survival and our ability to prosper as a group, and onwards to a species.

A bad person is someone who fails at the cooperative tasks that help us to survive – not because they have a physical limitation, like an injury, but because they just won’t do what everyone else is doing in a way that we can rely on. They are unreliable in a world where that can kill someone, they are unhelpful in a world where we are only just managing to survive against animals far more dangerous than humans (on a 1 to 1 basis).

That sounds like an excellent way to objective define ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Solved, right?

Unfortunately, no. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. If you are in a group, and you think of yourself as spiders, and you think the group I am in are flies, then what you define as ‘good‘ may be what I define as ‘bad‘. What if your ‘spider’ group exists within a larger group, where the non-spiders are called ‘flies’? Often when we struggle to understand the motivations of people in key places making decisions for many, what we fail to see is that they are making ‘good‘ decisions for their group, because they don’t see the rest of our group as part of their group – we are food to be exploited.

This is how many humans look at non-human animals. They aren’t human, so it is fine to farm and eat them. It’s fine for Spiders to exploit Flies.

Deliberate cooperative communities do better than random groups of people without a common positive goal.

We need to be aware that some selfish choosing and some genuine mistakes or misjudgements are reasonable in good people.

Unfortunately, not everyone is good. Some people will try to gain the most for the least and either be insensitive to the harm it does to others, not care about the harm they know they are doing, or delight in the harm they do.

To Er is Human

We have established that cooperative is ‘good’, because it improved the survival chances of the group. We have established that how we do things in the group is passed on by culture.

Culture is learned.

No one is born perfect. We are born as near blank slates as possible, that is without culture, language or the knowledge of what is considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We don’t know how to appropriately toilet ourselves, cook food, ride a bike or make complex financial decisions. None of this is, per se, inherent in us.

We learn these things. We learn them by first not knowing, then trying and getting it wrong, then slowly getting it right.

We need to allow for people to be ignorant – without knowledge, or with sub-optimal strategies.

We are not gods. We have finite resources, finite knowledge, and finite options that are tied to the Laws of Physics. It is not possible to never make a mistake, nor is it possible to ‘do anything that you put your mind to’ – some things are not possible.

Communication is Key

We help people learn by talking to them about what went wrong and what right might look like. Their solution doesn’t need to be your way – so long as it is good enough.

Let us take a moment to define what we are talking about here. Humans interact in many ways. We can simplify the interaction as a chosen action (behaviour) to create an intended outcome, which results in an outcome which is both objective and subjective. So far, so good. It gets harder now.

The choice of an action is determined from a list of known to the person available options, where the selected choice is based on the calculated best outcome from the person’s perspective. That perspective is both what the person knows at the time, has the resources and skills to do, and the perceived best outcome from the perspective of the person themself, who may have the same or a different definition of ‘best’ to you.

While some mistakes are obvious to the person who did them, some are hard to see, or hard to recognise as a problem. While I might think it is easy to tell that the thing you did had a bad outcome, you may not see it from your perspective, or from the information that you have been given.

Talking to someone about the problem is vital. They may not know there is a problem, or they may not know how the problem occurred. With an open, rational discussion, the two of you (and optionally others) can work out what went wrong and do something about it.

A good person is willing to hear that a problem exists, and will help you to figure out what went wrong. If they recognise that they need to make some changes, they will learn and grow to do so, and it is fair if it turns out you need to be the one to makes some changes, then you will also learn and grow. No one is available or in a good headspace all of the time, so sometimes we do need to come back and try again.

Abusive people resist exploring the facts about what went wrong, and do not use common ‘reason’ to explore what to do to make a different outcome. We will cover that more in Abusers Avoid Being Told.

Good People Grow, Abusers Don’t

Good people learn from mistakes and ignorance to avoid repeated poor outcomes.

Upon someone learning that their actions led to bad outcomes, we need to allow them to trial new strategies and build skills. Often the best way that we find out that we are not good enough in something is to make a mistake and see directly from the consequences, or other people’s reaction / statements, that what we have done needs improving.

Abusers Don’t do Better.

Grey’s Law shows us it doesn’t matter which of these is true.

Because the Abuser cannot learn from the history of their actions, or cannot admit to responsibility for their actions, they cannot change.

That is why Abusers Don’t do Better.

Am I the Baddie?

Many of my clients have come to therapy wondering if they are the Abuser.

We can all make mistakes, we can all have accidents that lead to harm. So long as you are acknowledging the truth of what you have done, and then making changes to not repeat those mistakes, then you are not bad, you’ve just made mistakes.

Almost all humans have made bad decisions, even people whom we would think are good. Sometimes, we are selfish, unkind and knowingly hurt someone. There can be good reasons to do so, and there can be bad reasons to do so.

Sometimes we mistake considering the chance of an outcome as choosing to do harm. There is always a risk of things going wrong, and it is smart to consider what might go wrong, so that you can plan for that possibility, and to consider how likely it is to go wrong, so you can decide if the risk is worthwhile. Intent matters, so long as you learn.

If your reasons for deciding to a bad thing aren’t covered by the above reasons and consideration, then yes, you did a bad thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean you are a bad person though. If you learned from that and are attempting to change because of that experience, then you do not fit the criteria for being a bad person – only for doing a bad thing.

Abusive people don’t learn.

Understanding Abusive People

You Can’t Understand Abusive People

I know, this all comes under the category ‘Understanding Abusive People‘, and then the first section says “you can’t“.

I have many clients who are super focused on trying to understand why Abusive People do the things that they do.

If you are a good person (someone who tries to learn from when they hurt others and not repeat the mistake), then you cannot comprehend why someone is an Abuser.

Theory of Mind

Let me explain the Theory of Mind. The Theory of Mind is a philosophical concept that points out that you don’t know what it is like to have sonar like a bat or dolphin. Bat’s don’t know what dolphin sonar is like anymore than dolphins know what bat sonar is like. They are fundamentally totally different beings. Only bats can understand what it is like for bats to have sonar, only dolphins can know what it is like for dolphins to have sonar, etc. We can then get a bit pedantic about how each species of bat will be different, although a bit relatable, and within a single species of bat, no bat truly understands the next same species bats experience of sonar. The closer you get, though, the more relatable it is, and the closer you can get to understanding.

Fair and reasonable people can’t know what it is like to be Abusive. Fair and reasonable people do not delight in hurting others, aren’t indifferent to the suffering of others, and cannot help but learn to be better.

The closest we can get is when we are so exhausted that we don’t have the energy to chose, or care about, an option that leads to the least harm. In these times we may be so filled with compensatory adrenaline, fuelling anger and frustration, that we just don’t care anymore about trying not to do bad things. In these moments, we can get a glimpse of why Abusers do what they do.

Abusers Lie

Abusers will try to justify their behaviours when you corner them. When you examine their justifications, there is no sense, reason, or consistency to their excuses. Abusers are just saying whatever they can to get out of trouble in the moment, whether that is deflect, denial or create a false narrative.

Any good lie has a kernel of truth to hang the falsehoods off, otherwise the lie falls apart too soon. However, the lie will not meet the evidence or sound logic well, because it is a lie.

Harmful Types

Abusive

Fundamentally, the Abusive Person harms others and doesn’t make changes to stop the pattern of harm.

It is possible that the reason an Abusive Person cannot change to stop the pattern of harm is neurological such as an ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) or ID (Intellectual Disability).

Other neurological conditions, such as Autism and ADHD do not explain someone being Abusive, except that their medication may be wrong or they are in a situation where they have been overwhelmed. The diagnostic criteria for these conditions does not include ‘harmful’ and ‘socially bad’. Autistic people may have poor social skills, but upon learning that a behaviour is not acceptable and having a reasonable one to switch to, they will adjust. If the person with Autism and or ADHD doesn’t adjust on caring correction (assuming the medication is right), then they may have a comorbid conditions such as NPD.

Degenerative neurological conditions can damage the parts of the brain that manage behaviours, much like ABIs (Acquired Brain Injury) can.

Person Who is Toxic

Sometimes people are not compatible. Something about you and the other person are fundamentally incompatible, so you don’t mix well together. You may find that being around them is just very hard and difficult, leading to levels of ‘soft harm’ to you, and perhaps to them.

Fundamentally, the big difference between an Abusive and Toxic is how harmful they are, and whether other people are in danger.

Beware, that due to the common Abusive behaviour of “divide and conquer”, where they try to cut you off from perceiving the harms they do to others, it can be hard to see how others may be in danger.

The best way to tell the difference is that the abusive person does not make genuine changes to decrease harm (learns and grows), versus a person who may be toxic, who will make differences but is likely misunderstanding what needs to change so makes the wrong ones.

Narcissism

Narcissism is a form of selfishness and self-centredness to the point where it causes harm. We can all be selfish at times, or represent ourselves as greater than we truly are (For example, job interviews and the first few dates). There are 5 stage in my scale covered in the full Narcissism and NPD page, but we’ll review the last 3 stages since we are talking about Harmful People here.

A person can have a few Narcissistic Traits and not quite fit into either Narcissisms or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This person frequently is self interested, but isn’t predominantly so – that is, often selfish, but not harmful.

This is not the “Narcissism” that psychologists often refer to as concerning. This person just defaults to selfish and self serving rather than the more communal and conscientious.

Narcissism has at least a core persona trait of self interest that is frequently damaging to others. The Narcissistic person either cannot change their harmful behaviours, or doesn’t see why they should, so won’t (which is effectively the same thing, but feels different).

The Narcissistic person does not meet the criteria for NPD, and while they are not as harmful as someone who does qualify for NPD, they certainly are not harmless. This person is more callous in their disregard for the incidental harm they do to others than you will find in people who exhibit Narcissistic Traits, but neither does it seem to be their goal to harm or hold power over others.

NPD is a diagnosis given to people who meet the specific diagnostic criteria within the DSM 5 TR for NPD. The ICD 11 does not list NPD, but does have a listing for DPD (Dissocial Personality Disorder). The ICD diagnostic criteria for DPD are quite a bit different to NPD.

NPD is an order of magnitude greater / worse than Narcissism. While you may suspect that someone you know is NPD or perhaps that you are, there is a marked distinction between indifference to how others may be affected by self interested versus enjoying the feeling of how others are negatively affected by the self serving actions.

Most of the Narcissism and NPD page is devoted to giving you an insight into NPD.

Indifferent to Harm

Some people are harmful because of their indifference to harm. Often this is a background trait of the other forms of Harmful People such as Narcissism, in that someone who actually cares about the harms they do, and the harms of others, will make changes to avoid those harms.

However, sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on why a person is harmful until you figure out that they just don’t care.

The lack of care can be due to physical fatigue, emotional fatigue, care fatigue, the person being harmed is beyond the scope of their consideration, and or low empathy for other humans.

Generally when people who are indifferent due to fatigue have their life situation better managed, their indifference decreases and they begin to make changes. Generally when a person with low empathy is told that their action is harmful, so long as the ‘fix’ isn’t onerous (costly or hard), they’ll make adjustments.

That is, people who don’t fit any other category, but seem to still be indifferent, are generally not inherently abusive.

Bullies

Bullying is more than just having a joke, teasing someone or being occasionally mean. Bullying isn’t a general disagreement, or someone not getting you. Bullying isn’t someone who has had a rough time just passing it on.

• Bullying is repetitive.
• Bullying is about power.
• The Bully wants to feel good by proving, at least to their own satisfaction, that they have power over you by dominating you in some way.

We can all be over the top and unfair at times. A phase of this is not uncommon in many children or teens. By adulthood, this should no longer be true as we grew up. Those who didn’t are potentially abusive (see Testing for Toxic).

Bullying can happen at school, the work place, or any location where it is awkward to get away.

Bullies can range in harmfulness from minor to significant. Bullies often grow up and stop, but they can also be an early indicator Cyclic Violence, NPD or other conditions.

See Bullying, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly for more.

Survival Mode : Momentarily harmful

Survival Mode is complex. Humans have a survival mechanism that can be activated when are in a high stress situation, to speed up our responses and help us survive the problem before us. Survival Mode doesn’t care about ‘good‘, ‘comfortable‘ and ‘optimal‘. It cares about you being alive later to fix those things.

Survival Mode can be triggered by being ill, fatigued but pushing through, or unbalanced neurochemistry.

When the situation settles down, we come back to our normal selves and then often try to repair the damage that has been done.

A key way to tell the difference between Abusers and people who were in Survival Mode is what the person does when they have calmed down. Any harmful action that wasn’t propped up by a faulty assumption is quickly addressed – apologies and recompense as needed.

People who were in Survival Mode may struggle to recognise that the assumptions they made when their cognition was impaired were wrong, but with sufficient evidence and patience, they do recognise their errors. Once those faulty assumptions are pushed back, the harms are then generally spontaneously addressed.

People who have cyclic or frequent times in Survival Mode need to figure out why and do something about it. Cyclic may be PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder if you have active ovaries) or Bipolar. People who have frequent times in Survival Mode are likely struggling with fatigue, triggering Stress Mountain.

People who refuse to figure out why they are frequently in Survival Mode and address it are likely Abusive – with the caveat that often GPs and psychologists don’t well spot: PMDD, Autism, ADHD, NPD or fibromyalgia.

Abusers Prefer Cyclic Violence (DV)

Cyclic Violence is the repeated violence that occurs within a relationship. That relationship can be an intimate partner relationship, workplace relationship, social circle friendship or family relationship. Intimate partner cyclic violence is called Domestic Violence, family cyclic violence is called Family Violence, workplace and social circle cyclic violence is Bullying.

We have an extensive section on Cyclic & Domestic Violence for more details.

Forms of Harm

Harm doesn’t have to be just physical.

We cover what each of these means on DV Primer.

Pursuit Phase

If you met a person who did the harmful behaviour on the street and didn’t know them, then you’d back off and have nothing to do with them.

Cyclic Violence is about ensuring that you are there to have the harmful behaviour be directed at you again. If they haven’t literally imprisoned you, then they need to convince you that you either can’t leave, or that you should stay. We won’t cover why they do this here.

Convincing you to stay is what the Pursuit Phase is about.

We cover what each of these means on DV Primer.

Combo Deal – “I’m the bad guy”

The Perpetrator may also use the phrase “I’m the bad guy” or some variant of it, often using strong emotive affect and tone to show anger, fear or disgust. This combines the Hollow Words and Crocodile Tears – the Victim thinks that the Perpetrator finally gets it, or is worried about how badly the Perpetrator is blaming themself for their actions that they seek to comfort and forgive the Perpetrator.

Next time you hear this variant, ask them “what did you do that makes you the bad guy, why was it bad and what will you actually do to make a change?”

They can almost never answer this with any demonstration of comprehension into their bad actions – because they can’t admit what they have done.

Escaping Abuse

• Seeing through the con,
• Anxiety Disorders are the strongest reason people stay in abuse.

The main cause of the Cyclic Violence is that you are not leaving. As covered in the section above, they either convince you that you can’t leave, or they convince you to stay.

You can always leave, but sometimes you just need to be strategic about it.

We have a detailed section on Escaping Abuse.

Most people who are in a Domestic Violence relationship have an underlying Anxiety Disorder, which the violent relationship accidentally mitigates by giving you a false reason to be anxious. The Anxiety Disorder keeps telling you that something is wrong, even when it isn’t. When you can’t justify to your mind that it is because something is wrong with your relationship, then you slow down seeking the source of the problem – it is either the partner, or they have convinced you that it is you. Unfortunately, the Anxiety Disorder leads you to freaking out when you get away, because you no longer have the Abuser and Cyclic Violence to misattribute it to.

The untreated Anxiety Disorder is the main reason why Victims go back to the Abuser.

Abusers Can’t Reform

On the one hand, as a therapist, I would like to think that all people can change and grow. I certainly work with my clients to do this, often with excellent success.

Here is the thing, though. The clients who come to see me for therapy, come to figure out how to make their lives better, even if that means change. They already want to, or are willing to, change.

Mandated clients, by court or partner/workplace pressure, often don’t want to change. They just want to get through this problem with the least change to themselves as possible. Fundamentally, that is the problem.

People who resist change can be forced into it when nothing else works and they can’t see a way out of it. It is very unlikely for Abusers to get to this point and not be rescued by one of their victims. The Abuser who hits the point of desperation that they may gain insight into them being the cause of their problems, and that they need to change to fix this (very low odds), then have to get the right help (therapy & generally medication) before they get saved by someone.

Let us say that this has happened to your Abuser. If they cut ties to their previous victims, they can form new positive relationships with new people and may actually lead excellent lives.

When a ‘reformed’ Abuser meets up with an ex-victim, they will rapidly return to their old patterns and start hurting them again.

Effectively, even if the Abuser does manage to reform (highly unlikely), you can’t have anything to do with them if you were a victim of theirs.

For a more detailed explanation about this, see Perpetrator Reformation.

Abusive People Know

Abusers Avoid Being Told

Consider a problematic behaviour recently done by someone whom you suspect may be Red Zone, perhaps someone has been giving you hints or warning you about them.

Imagine a good friend did what the problematic person just did. Imagine you talk to them to explain why you think that behaviour and outcome was problematic. Your good friend shouldn’t take very long to understand that a problem exists and work with you to identify how things went wrong, and if it was them, make some changes.

Red Zone people seem to be highly resistant to this kind of conversation. It shouldn’t be that hard to explain to someone why it was wrong. When it is that hard, that is a Red Flag.

It is fair that perhaps you are the one who is mistaken. A conversation with a reasonable, rational person will quickly identify the errors you made in your assumption – so long as you remain calm and continue to communicate with a mind open to possible differences in working terminology – and things will return to relative normal. When dealing with a Red Zone person, this seems to come up a lot, that you were allegedly wrong very often about their behaviour, or the cause of the unwanted outcome. That is another Red Flag.

Even if Ignorant…

What if an Abuser was ignorant of what they were doing?

Usually you’d expect them to have an acquired brain injury (accident, stroke, dementia etc), or a significant intellectual impairment for this to be valid.

However, let us assume that isn’t the case.

Perhaps they don’t understand why they should make changes, or they lack the insight to connect their behaviour to the bad outcome, even after you have reasonably informed them (we described ‘reasonable‘ in Abusers Avoid Being Told, that is, most people would get it). They should still be able to trust you when you have told them it is harmful and so long as the suggestion of how they can reduce harm is not onerous, a reasonable and good person should make some changes.

For example, My friend may not understand why I have changed my name, they may not understand that my birth name feels awful to me, since they quite like it, but surely my friend can respect my request to call me by my chosen name. If this person does not respect my request – which isn’t onerous (difficult or costly), then I should wonder if they actually are a friend of mine.

Put another way, what you would do if someone told you a thing you did was bad but you didn’t understand why? Upon discovering that you just can’t get it, you would ask what you should do differently to avoid the bad outcome, or if they suggested a change, even if you didn’t really get it, you’d try to do it that way so long as it didn’t seem hard or expensive to do, right? Red Zone people don’t do this.

A person may be so self absorbed in something that they don’t really notice the harm that they do. While it may be tempting to forgive them for this, when the harm is pointed out to them, while they may claim they didn’t notice, they can’t claim to ignorance going forwards. Green Zone people, once alerted, make changes. If they do not make changes to avoid the repeating the same actions, then the result in them continuing to harm. That’s the prediction we must make for them.

Managing Abusive People

The best method for dealing with Abusive people is to get away from them. With distance you are safe. Unfortunately, that isn’t always possible. When that isn’t possible, there are some things you can do to mitigate the harm. Sometimes, despite the above information, we find it a bit hard to figure out who is good, when to be careful, and who is harmful.

Our Managing Abusive People page covers many methods and tactics to mitigate harm when you must interact with Abusive People.