Recently I’ve seen a spate of clients who can’t for the life of them comprehend why other people aren’t as nice as they are. “How can people be so nasty and mean?” or “I don’t understand what anyone gets out of hurting others,” they ask me. And I wonder why they can’t grasp that people have reasons for becoming and being hurtful. 

Several years ago, when this subject came up with clients, I blogged about why someone’s personal history makes it hard to confront someone’s unkindness which often contributes to their noxious behavior worsening. I guess I still haven’t hit upon the right answer, because here I am blogging on the subject again.

Several theories come to mind. One is that many clients with such naïveté about others’ abusiveness had abusive parents themselves. If not outright abusive, their parents were seriously self-involved, parent-centered, aloof or unempathic. Perhaps being mistreated as adults triggers unpleasant memories of being on the receiving end of parental dismissal or unkindness which makes them recoil from these feelings. But, if they can’t accept the truth of having suffered mistreatment, how will clients ever take in when others do them harm now—and, more to the point, not allow it.

Another possibility is that clients have vowed to be nothing like their abusive parents and sworn never to be unkind to others. Even when they recognize someone also has been abused in childhood, they can’t understand how the person hasn’t turned themselves around to become nicer, as they have. They assume that people are mean and hurtful because they made a conscious decision to be that way, not that they’ve evolved to become so as an adaptation to their childhood and a world they still see as frightening and unsafe. 

A third possibility is a kind of willful blindness and naïveté some clients have. While you want to scream out in session for them to watch out for the train barreling straight at them, you can see they’re in total disbelief about it. Freezing is the response they had in childhood and still have. Their brain goes offline and they simply can’t fathom something bad is about to happen to them. Instead, they lie to themselves and believe the train is going to slam on its brakes and they’ll be fine.

It's an interesting question for each client who doesn’t understand how people could harm others emotionally to answer. I’m going to start asking clients why they think they’ve been wearing blinders and see what they come up with. When I have some answers, I’ll be certain to blog about it.

Best,

Karen