But they never acted that way toward me!
How we enable abusers with our need to make sense of the world and how we can stop doing it.
Whether its child abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, or another type of abuse, if your response to hearing a story about a person who has used harm against another has been “I just can’t believe it. They have never acted that way toward me,” you’ve enabled an abuser and minimized a survivor’s experience. Was that your intent? Probably not. So why is this so often the number-one response when people find out friends or family are different people behind closed doors?
As humans, we have a deep need to make sense of the world. We aren’t good with ambiguity. This explains why people who we once thought were level-headed have turned a corner toward conspiracy theories about “plandemics” to try to make sense of the ever changing nature of the Novel Coronovirus. Conspiracy theories, no matter how out- there, give people a way to make sense of how the world turned upside-down overnight. This is no different when applied to perpetrators of abuse. When family members and those who share social circles with people who harm find out that they harm, the only way to make sense of this is to revert to their own experiences. They never hurt me, therefore they must have never hurt anyone, therefore…
