What type of abuser can break their victim enough to land her in an ambulance without even touching her? The psychological abuser. 

They walk like us, they talk like us, and they may even have pristine reputations in their communities. However, nothing can prepare a victim for the way her life will change once a psychological abuser “picks” her.

A psychological abuser’s goal is to utilize mental tantalization to break a victim’s psyche down over time, make her appear crazy, and isolate her from mutual connections without leaving a trail of evidence. After you’re discarded from a relationship with one of these personalities, the abuser will spit seething venom at you, disempowering you and removing your humanity and self-worth. They don’t care who you were before, during, or after your relationship with them, as they utilize hot and cold behavior to make you question your reality. You’re not a human being; you’re a commodity to be exploited in their game of life. To these personalities, everything is your fault. No matter how many nice things you do for them, nothing is good enough. No matter who you are, what you say, or what you do, your existence enrages them. If you look them in the eyes, there’s nothing there — almost as if they have no conscience. Even being given the “death glare” or “sociopathic stare” by one of these people is enough to transfer that intense hatred of you into yourself and make your body shake. Their sadism lurks behind a facade of innocence.

Who is the Psychological Abuser? 

Psychological abusers are emotional toddlers in adult bodies. The abuse doesn’t have to happen in a romantic or familial relationship, as is most commonly discussed. Abuse can occur in any type of relationship or environment—schools, workplaces, churches, or any communities where humans gather. Abusers have plenty of experience — they typically have multiple victims. While psychological abuse can be so crafty that the victim might even question if she is really a victim, they know exactly what they do to you, and they enjoy it. But the words “abuser” and “bully” are the last words they would use to describe themselves. They don’t think they are doing anything wrong.

While it isn’t possible for victims to diagnose these types of people, just be aware that they have serious pathological issues consisting of narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic tendencies. I don’t typically subscribe to using the word “normal” to describe human behavior because of the history of the word being used to ostracize people who do not conform to groupthink. However, I’m fine with using the word “normal” to describe healthy people in relation to these abusive personalities. Psychological abusers live in an entirely different reality than normal people do.

Who Do Abusers Target? 

Abusers target people who have something they do not or cannot have themselves. Since nothing is ever good enough for them, they envy those who are content with themselves. They typically target empaths — people who have an innate joy and genuine gratitude for life, see every human being as worthy of love and tend to see the good in others. Their animosity toward empaths comes from a place of not being able to fathom how another person can have that much joy regardless of life circumstances. 

Abusers can work alone or in groups. Typically, they eventually rope “flying monkeys” into their games — minions who either overtly or covertly help the abuser perpetrate the abuse. Often, these flying monkeys do not even know the victim personally. Since the abuse is so insidious, even these flying monkeys might not understand the full extent of the torment inflicted on the victim. If these supporting actors could see the full extent of the abuse, they may stop being pawns in the abuser’s destructive game. Unfortunately, most of these flying monkeys don’t want to understand the harm they’re complicit in, but they want to be part of the group and win the abuser’s praise, and they get their own power trip satisfied in the process.

For reference, The term “flying monkey” comes from The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West puts them under her spell.

The Average Person Does Not Understand Psychological Abuse

Psychological abuse can be an amorphous force, very difficult for an outsider to detect. Abusers often charm other people close to their victims, so these people have no reason to believe that the abuser is doing anything wrong to them. Outsiders may even ask, “What did they even do to you?”

It’s sneaky. As the victim, I couldn’t even fully put it into words myself. This is precisely why abusers utilize psychological abuse as their weapon of choice. They are crafty enough to know that if they did it in any other way, they would “get caught” by outsiders. The victim may be told that she’s “overthinking it” or that it’s “just how she’s perceiving it.” The power dynamics, manipulation, hot and cold behavior, gaslighting, and mind games form a Stockholm Syndrome-style trauma bond, which makes the victim believe: “Maybe they’ll eventually give me closure.” The victim may come across as “unable to move on” from the relationship when, in reality, she is wrestling with that trauma bond as she tries to fathom what is being done to her after the discard and seek a resolution to the tension. 

The mind games taunt the victim with a false hope for closure and an ending to the sick games, but that closure never comes. If victims question what’s going on, perpetrators use tactics like gaslighting and denial to pretend like nothing is happening and boomerang the blame back onto the true victim, further making her question her own reality. They may even try to convince others, and even themselves, that they are the victims. Don’t be fooled. They are not victims.

Abusers want their victims to spend their time wondering what they did wrong, but the only thing they did “wrong” was threaten their inflated ego by simply existing in their vicinity. Their tactics come from a need to control their environment and manipulate the people around them so that their world is centered around the one and only thing that matters: themselves. 

Some Mental Health Professionals Misunderstand Psychological Abuse

During my years in the mental health system, I tried bringing up some of these situations to the clinicians I saw, believing that they would be able to help me understand the painful symptoms I was experiencing in my body as a result. What I learned, though, was that many medical professionals don’t understand this type of abuse and will even go as far as to blame and retraumatize the victim further. 

After these gut-wrenching experiences with professionals I opened my heart to, I took active steps to seek out experts trained to handle victims of psychological abuse. The professional I started working with was so helpful, and she was open about being a survivor herself. 

Having felt victimized by other mental health professionals when I first met with her, I still wasn’t sure if what I had endured was abuse or if I was truly a victim. I had a list of all the things I had experienced as a result of what I had been through, many of which the medical system had previously written off as “all in my head,” giving me outlandish diagnoses. I also “confessed” all my reactions to the abuse along the lines of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reactions. Some of those trauma responses were made out of dissociation. I felt so guilty for these reactions, and I felt like this professional needed to know how “awful” I was for making my abusers uncomfortable with my attempts to reconcile the tension. In my case, I was not a victim of just one psychological abuser. I was a victim of more than one perpetrator, and they banded together to target me, feeding off each other. 

After going through my laundry list of symptoms and reactions with this professional, I put my notebook down and looked up at her with eyes full of tears. I waited for her to tell me that I was a horrible person and that I had done everything wrong. I waited for her to laugh at me. I waited for her to tell me I was crazy. I waited for her to tell me that perhaps I was the abuser myself. And I waited for her to kick me out of her office since I was probably too much to deal with. 

She paused for a while and looked me in the eyes, saying, “You did nothing wrong. And it’s not just in your head. Everything you’ve shared tells me that you were targeted by psychological abusers.” 

Getting that validation was incredible for me. As a survivor herself and an expert researcher on the subject, nothing phased her—she had heard it all. She reassured me that everything I was experiencing was perfectly normal. I felt so seen, validated, and heard for the first time in so long. It often takes someone who has survived the same thing to truly understand where a victim is coming from, and I finally received that validation from someone who understood. As I looked into the eyes of another survivor who had been in my exact shoes, even though she was a trained professional much older, both of our eyes teared up, and we shared a humbling moment of our hearts touching one another. My work with her was transformative in understanding the reality of what I had been through and overcoming my self-guilt. 

Many Do Not Understand It, But Psychological Abuse is Insidious

Psychological abuse is real, and it is insidious. There are times when flashbacks and emotions still come up for me, but I implement grounding and nervous system regulation tools to remind myself that I am safe.

Survivors, while you may feel incredibly isolated in healing from this despicable form of hidden abuse, know that there is a community of C-PTSD survivors who have been or are in your shoes. We are all healing together. From one survivor to another, you are so strong, and I believe that you can overcome it.  

Photo by Lil Artsy on Pexels

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

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Natalie Rose

My name is Natalie, and I am a survivor of about 13 years of absolute psychological torture from Complex PTSD symptoms that manifested as crippling anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive symptoms (in the form of religious and moral scrupulously), extreme dissociative symptoms, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, and narcolepsy. For the longest time, I thought I was inherently “messed up” and broken beyond repair. I spent about a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it, managing all this while attending school and holding full-time jobs. I thought the way I felt in my body was “normal” because I had no sense of what the other side was.

♡ What is Complex PTSD? ♡

Complex PTSD symptoms come from severe, prolonged, and numerous incidents of trauma, typically of a relational nature. Symptoms can come from any type of trauma, though, and the trauma doesn’t necessarily have to stem from childhood — adults can develop CPTSD as well. Humans are social creatures, so the things that happen to us really can affect our nervous system, and the body reacts accordingly. The types of trauma that cause CPTSD can affect the brain long term and shrink the size of the hippocampus, causing many of the symptoms of CPTSD. I decided to go public with my story to be a voice for the voiceless. I believe everyone has the power to tell their story if they wish, and it is up to them if, when, and how they choose to do so. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I kept quiet about mine. There are too many survivors being told CPTSD is a lifelong sentence, and they are not being given the tools they need to overcome their symptoms.

♡ My Story ♡

In general, I endured multiple types of traumas throughout my formative years, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty, some of which caused me to have to switch environments. Due to what I was going through, my body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I felt guilty for simply existing. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things for others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping, so I couldn’t fathom what was going on. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did.

The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in — religion and the medical system itself — caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident.

As an empath, I absorbed the negative emotions of others as if they were my own, and I did not know how to release them from my body. In my solo healing process, I had to quite literally disappear from everyone and everything to protect my vulnerability and allow myself to process what I had been through during my formative years using my own mind and body without the persuasion or invasion of others.

♡ My Struggles to Find Answers ♡

What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to “manage my symptoms” for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain, even if others did not believe in me. I still do have tough days and moments, but I have gotten to a place where I am consistently living a quality of life that provides peace and comfort in my mind and body since I have given myself the tools to overcome my tough moments when they return.

Many CPTSD survivors receive numerous diagnoses before ever hearing anything about complex trauma, and some are overmedicated to try and “fix” their symptoms, usually to no avail and with further side effects. I was told I would need to “manage my symptoms” and be on medication for the rest of my life. It was all lies. Today, I am on zero medications (including sleep medications) and am completely divorced from the disease management system.

♡ Finding My Own Healing ♡

I am excited to share many tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome my complex trauma symptoms like extreme dissociation, excruciatingly painful flashbacks, severe sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, worthlessness, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I have so many exciting tips to share related to grounding, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and more to offer survivors other ways they can learn to regulate their nervous systems on their own without spending any money. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations.

I am on a journey of rediscovering who I am at my core after letting so many other people infiltrate my mind for far too long. The five most important things to me in my life (in order of importance!) are: my health, my happiness, my family, my friends, and my creativity. My parents, my sisters, and my friends are my absolute rock and biggest cheerleaders. They were cheering me on all those years, fully believing that I was capable of overcoming my excruciating pain, even when I did not believe so myself. While I was repeatedly able to forgive others and extend the olive branch, I was never able to forgive myself. My loved ones kept telling me that there is nothing I need to feel humiliated about and that I should be able to see what everyone else sees in me. I have finally given that kindness to myself and have started to see what other people saw in me all along. I am so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable.

I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I know that I still chose to keep a smile on my face and be kind in the face of it all. In reality, it’s because I didn’t want another person to go through even one ounce of the suffering I was in. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. My story is not a story of defeat but a story of victory.

♡ Embracing My Life of Freedom ♡

I have enjoyed embracing the free spirit I always was and adopting a simpler life to focus on the things that are meaningful to me. I am still healing every day. I believe our healing is a lifelong process. I made the decision to escape my version of the rat race (big city life) and move to my happy place. I am catching up on many hours of much-needed rest and spending lots of time outdoors. I am reconnecting with the people I lost while I was in isolation. I invited the passion that saved my life growing up—dance—back into my life. I am passionate about fighting for other survivors in any way I can.

I hope that by sharing my story, I can convince other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did not become a voice for the voiceless and share how I overcame it. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story.

“My story isn’t sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment. Of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ~ Hermann Hesse