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 People

Most people are good enough, in most circumstances, most of the time.

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:

• Murder is wrong (physical violence is wrong),
• Children should be protected (protect the vulnerable),
• You do not take what belongs to someone else (stealing is wrong),
• Try to be fair in your treatment of all people (do to others what you want done to you),
• And many more.

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 rather a country to avoid.

Even so, many people will make a selfish choice if they cannot see a way that their choice will cause any real harm to someone else, what they perceive as a harmless cheat to the social contract. This does not make them a bad person or abusive. They are just human, and this is what humans do – we take advantage of opportunities that do not directly harm the above mentioned social contracts. There are situations where it is not possible to make a good choice and people are left with the uncomfortable situation of making the least bad choice.

People also make mistakes out of ignorance. A person may not know that you have an allergy to a particular food, or they have genuinely forgot that this is the case. That doesn’t mean they intentionally meant to poison or harm you – they made a human error.

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

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 “right” or “wrong”. 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, or trialling new ways of doing things. Often the best way that we find out that we are not good enough in something is to make a mistake and see from the consequences or other people’s reaction / statements that what we have done needs improving.

A person who makes mistakes and learns to do better is not toxic or abusive.

Grey’s Law

It can be hard to truly know if a person is unable to perceive the harm they do, are willfully ignorant of the harm they do, or enjoy their harm they do, unless they tell you that they are aware and don’t care or enjoy it.

Honestly, though, it doesn’t really matter. We have entered Grey’s Law.

Grey’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”, [Gooden, Philip (2015). Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule: Life’s Hidden Laws, Rules and Theories. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-47291503-0.]

This law riffs off Clarke’s third law – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

In this case, Grey’s Law tells us that if the person is incompetent to the point of not being able to see the harm they do and so they keep doing it, the difference between that and someone who does harm knowing and not caring about the cost to you – aka malicious intent – is irrelevant. They are hurting you and they will do so again.

The only real difference is how you deal with them so that they stop being able to hurt you.

Abusive versus Person who is Toxic

Socrates, a philosopher around 350 BCE, stated that a person who knows right (the right thing) cannot help but do the right thing, and if someone does not do right (the wrong thing), it is because they did not know how to do the right thing.

This can be simplified to “People who knows better, cannot help but do better”. This is true for some people, and very not true for some others.

“Good people who know better cannot help but do better, concerning people won’t do better even if you help them know what is better – that’s how we tell who is who.”

Joshua Davidson

Some actions are societally recognised as wrong, and we do not have to give the benefit of doubt that the person was ignorant about it. When someone crosses that line, it is highly recommended to be very wary about them. If it was a long time ago that they crossed that line, then hopefully they have done some excellent soul searching and made some real changes in their life, or got whatever was going wrong that led them to such an action managed.

For everyone else, we certainly want to give people some benefit of the doubt on some issues, and so inform them that what they did caused, or will cause, problems so that they can know better and do better. Once that benefit of the doubt has been offered, and you have had a conversation with them to make sure that they understand reasonably quickly and concisely that it was wrong and what better looks like, then you watch what they do. Good people will make changes and do better – they can’t help themselves. Those who do not do better are flagging by their lack of growth that there is something very concerning about them – probably abusive.

People who don’t learn mostly come in three major types (where they can be a mix of 1 or more of these).

• Cognitively impaired – unable to comprehend the problem:
  • Cognitive impairment can be generally impaired, and this is fairly obvious
  • Cognitive impairment can also be specific, where the person may be quite able in many areas, but specifically inable in this.
• Lack of insight:
  • General: The toxic person can’t understand why certain behaviour isn’t good, why it creates problems, and why this is their responsibility.
  • Specific: The toxic person may be able to note the bad behaviour of others and how that negatively impacts people, but can’t connect their own same bad behaviour to ill consequences to other people.
• Lack of care:
  • Indifference: In being selfish, this person is indifferent to collateral damage, thus sees no reason to change [Narcissism].
  • Harm is the point: While this person is selfish, they enjoy and delight in the pain they cause [NPD].
  • See Narcissism and NPD for more.

Harmful Behaviour, It doesn’t matter why

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.

This is how it should be.

This is how rational adults resolve problems.

If you haven’t experienced this in real life – perhaps you are surrounded by abusive people.

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.

Abusive People Index – Explainer of Pages

Bad Guy, Mistaken or the Fall Guy

Bad Guy, Mistaken or the Fall Guy

• How to tell if you are the bad guy, if you made a mistake, or if you are being painted as the fall guy (sacrificial goat).

Bullying, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

• Bullying, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
  • 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 abusive.
  • If you are being attacked by a bully, then here is the useful method of how to deal with bullies. Also see “Grey Stoning” below.

DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender

• DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
  • The abusive person will often use the tactic DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
  • Recognising this pattern will help you recognise abusive people – but be aware that good people can also accidentally do use this mechanism too.
  • In this article, we will look at how this mechanism works, and how to tell the difference between an abusive person and a good person that is Survival Mode.

Narcissism and NPD

• Narcissism and NPD
  • On the Narcissistic Spectrum are five categories from “not at all” to “fully NPD. We discuss all 5 categories.
  • We also look at what might be going on inside the mind of NPD, and why it is an order of magnitude worse than just “narcissistic”.

Grey Stoning

• Grey Stoning
  • Grey Stoning recognises the drive of abusive people to garnish your emotions and shows how to interact with them in a way so that you “don’t feed the troll“, starving them of the emotions they are trying to trigger in you. See also “Bullying” above.

Schrödinger’s Douchebag

• Schrödinger’s Douchebag
  • A person who decides after the reaction to their statement whether “it was just a joke” or “I’m serious”. Repeat offending is a red flag of a potential Abusive person.

Testing for Toxic

• Testing for Toxic
  • Is the person you are interacting with toxic or abusive? How can you tell? Here are some methods to test for that so we can feel more confident that they either are safe so you can relax, or toxic and so you should take some precautionary actions.