The younger one is when unattended hurt begins, the more wary they become of a potential recurrence. The wariness that becomes defensiveness becomes common sense to the wounded person—even logical and defensible. But just because it is understandable does not make the consequences to others justifiable. The defense that protects can eventually become the defense that damages our ability to engage in life fully with full-hearted participation. Full- hearted participation, meaning a person is fully engaged physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is a good definition of courage.
The defenses that protect us can eventually become the diminishment of our courage. The defense of our hearts requires that we wear armor around our hearts or put our hearts in a hard-shelled box of protection. If the will power of protection continues too long, we become protected, ironically, against receiving and trusting the love we actually need.
And tragically, our lack of vulnerability can hurt the very people we wish to love. In other words, hurt people hurt people.
To stop hurting others because of our defensiveness, we must push through our protection against hurt to love again, and to stop the damage that will power can cause. Awareness of our defensiveness and admission of our defensiveness can be the first movements of returning to full life again.
They practice the philosophy of false acceptance that precludes the tough grief work that comes with caring. The nice can be novel. Sadism and psychopathy are associated with other traits, such as narcissism and Machiavellianism. There is a moderate to large hereditary component to these traits. So some people may just be born this way. Alternatively, high D-factor parents could pass these traits onto their children by behaving abusively towards them. Similarly, seeing others behave in high D-factor ways may teach us to act this way.
We all have a role to play in reducing cruelty. Yet it is often said that dehumanising people is what allows us to be cruel.
Potential victims are labelled as dogs, lice or cockroaches, allegedly making it easier for others to hurt them. There is something to this. Research shows that if someone breaks a social norm, our brains treat their faces as less human. This makes it easier for us to punish people who violate norms of behaviour. It is also a dangerous delusion. The psychologist Paul Bloom argues our worst cruelties may rest on not dehumanising people. The Nazis dehumanised and murdered millions of people during the Holocaust at concentration camps Credit: Reuters.
For example, the Nazi Party dehumanised Jewish people by calling them vermin and lice. Yet the Nazis also humiliated, tortured and murdered Jews precisely because they saw them as humans who would be degraded and suffer from such treatment. Sometimes people will even harm the helpful.
Imagine you are playing an economic game in which you and other players have the chance to invest in a group fund. The more money is paid into it, the more it pays out. And the fund will pay out money to all players, whether they have invested or not. At the end of the game, you can pay to punish other players for how much they chose to invest.
To do so, you give up some of your earnings and money is taken away from the player of your choice. In short, you can be spiteful. Some players chose to punish others who invested little or nothing in the group fund. Yet some will pay to punish players who invested more in the group fund than they did. Such acts seem to make no sense. Generous players give you a greater pay-out — why would you dissuade them? It can be found around the world. In hunter-gatherer societies, successful hunters are criticised for catching a big animal even though their catch means everyone gets more meat.
Hillary Clinton may have suffered do-gooder derogation as a result of her rights-based US Presidential Election campaign. Do-gooder derogation exists because of our counter-dominant tendencies. A less generous player in the economic game above may feel that a more generous player will be seen by others as a preferable collaborator.
We look to recreate in our intimate relationships the feelings we knew so well in childhood, as these were taught to us by our primary caregivers and later on probably often repeated by romantic partners too. Perhaps you learned from an early age that close relationships are intertwined with pain and hurt , so you have developed a sensitive inner radar to whenever things get too close; this can be an indication of danger to which you respond in the way it used to happen when you were little.
How did you observe love to be expressed when you were little? Was hurting the other something you remember seeing, and in which ways? If you are curious about your Attachment Style, you can take this test here! Asserting Independence. Intimacy is definitely scary. It means emotionally approaching another individual too closely, even merging with them in a way.
It can happen that you may unwillingly hurt the other when the emotional distance between you seems a bit too close for your liking. This is an unconscious way to assert your own space and independence by pushing the other person away. It can be very hurtful to the other to feel pushed away, and there are healthier and more straightforward ways to assert your independence and express that you feel you need more space, without hurting your partner.
If you do this:. It is important to learn to communicate your thoughts and feelings about the Other, the relationship and intimacy in general more effectively, before any serious damage is done. Boundary Testing. This is another reason why we may be acting towards our partner in hurtful ways, that can be both conscious and unconscious:. We aim to test the boundaries and see how far we can go before they draw the line. Children employ such boundary-testing behaviour to their caregivers, but it not something we ever really give up throughout our whole lives.
Our behaviour is shaped not only by our own thoughts and feelings, but by the boundaries others set to us. Often the person who pushes the boundaries of their partner desperately yearns for some clear and firm boundaries. Boundaries increase our sense of safety , bring structure and also show us that the other person cares enough about the relationship in order to be able to express their limits, since this ultimately promotes its quality , too. If you realize you actually push the boundaries of the other:.
Have you considered what it is that you would like to accomplish? Are there other ways for you to express your need for interaction and boundary setting, without hurting the other? Idealization and High Expectations. The closer we get to someone emotionally, the more roles we attribute to them in our mind, the higher expectations we have of them, and the more they ultimately mean to us.
In a way, we idealize them- we think quite highly of them, thus any small sign that may not be in accordance with this idealized image we have of them, may be perceived more sensitively and hurt us. If you are at the receiving end of hurt because of regarding the other too highly, remember to practice not taking things too personally!
Over millennia, humanity has domesticated itself. This has made it difficult for many of us to harm others. Many who harm, torture or kill will be haunted by the experience. Yet psychopathy is a powerful predictor of someone inflicting unprovoked violence.
We need to know if we encounter a psychopath. Unfortunately, psychopaths know we know this. They fight back by working hard on their clothing and grooming to try and make a good first impression. Thankfully, most people have no psychopathic traits. Only 0. But not all psychopaths are dangerous. Anti-social psychopaths may seek thrills from drugs or dangerous activities. However, prosocial psychopaths seek their thrills in the fearless pursuit of novel ideas.
As innovations shape our societies , prosocial psychopaths can change the world for all of us. Yet this still can be for both good and for ill. No one really knows why some people are sadistic. Some speculate sadism is an adaptation that helped us slaughter animals when hunting.
Others propose it helped people gain power. Consistent with this, neuroscience suggests sadism could be a survival tactic triggered by times becoming tough. When certain foods become scarce, our levels of the neurotransmitter, serotonin, fall. This fall makes us more willing to harm others because harming becomes more pleasurable. Psychopathy may also be an adaptation. Some studies have linked higher levels of psychopathy to greater fertility. Yet others have found the opposite. The reason for this may be that psychopaths have a reproductive advantage specifically in harsh environments.
Indeed, psychopathy can thrive in unstable, competitive worlds. Their impulsivity and lack of fear help them take risks and grab short-term gains. In the film Wall Street, the psychopathic Gordon Gekko makes millions. Yet although psychopathy may be an advantage in the corporate world , it only offers men a slim leadership edge. The mathematician Eric Weinstein argues, more generally, that disagreeable people drive innovation.
Yet, if your environment supports creative thinking, disagreeableness is less strongly linked to creativity. The nice can be novel.
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