Battling the Bully Pulpit

Recognizing the American collective trauma response to abuse is the first step towards recovery

Godzilla, King of the Monsters, 1956 Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

Hello, Friend,

We made it. Phew. Two more weeks, two more days, or who the hell knows?

Whee!

I hope you’re giving yourself a moment to exhale and regroup. My way of coping is writing and making art. Today I’m digging into the psychology of what is happening. I’m not a psychologist, but I am a survivor of abuse. The experiences I’ve endured have driven me to try to understand the pathology behind abusive behavior and the psychology of trauma. The past 10 years have driven me to seek the meaning behind the patterns of what has unfolded here in America. There are parallels and today I want to explore them further.

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Psychologists have compared our national experience to a collective trauma response to abuse. We have a malignant narcissist running our country and he has surrounded himself with similar toxic personalities. Bullies like to hang out with other bullies because they understand and empower each other. It feels some days like we’re living in a super hero movie, only the super hero is MIA and the villains have taken over. The constant chaos, the threats, the lies, the hyper violence, the shattering of norms, the insults, the cruelty, the relentless need for attention, approval, accolades, and adoration…all of it is text book abusive behavior.

When abuse is happening to a group of people: a family, a workforce, a community, a friend group, or in our case, an entire country, people experiencing the abuse have a variety of responses.

There are four basic human trauma responses:

Fight-Confronting, defending

Flight-Running away, hiding

Freeze-Avoidance, inaction

Fawn-Appeasement, enabling

It has been my experience that most people are not willing to fight. You may have deduced by this Substack that I am a fighter. I can’t say that is the easier pathway. I can say I have never regretted standing up to a bully regardless of the consequences. Fighting feels like the riskier response, but I would argue that flight, freeze, and fawn bring far more devasting results. How many abusers have continued to thrive because the people around them refused to fight back, pretended not to see what was happening, enabled their behavior through inaction, or coddled the bully to protect themselves?

Look at the moment we find ourselves living in and ask yourself how it is possible?

I believe it is the direct result of a series of flight, freeze, and fawn trauma responses to an escalating abuser and those who have enabled or even participated in his abuse. Every institution that folded, every elected official that has played along to get along, every individual who knows the truth and has refused to speak out, every co-conspirator, profiteer, hanger on, fixer, fellow abuser, and every American citizen who openly supports this regime or refuses to take a stand against it. All of these people are complicit.

Did you know that doing nothing when a crime is being perpetrated is a crime?

It is the crime of omission.

Even if you think you’re protecting yourself by doing nothing, you’re a responsible party to the crime.

Bullies are not strong. They are weak. They are insecure. They hurt other people as a form of pre-emptive self-protection and a desire to feel powerful. They puff themselves up to look big because they are small. They are loud, rude, cruel, angry, hateful. They lack empathy, compassion, and the capacity for self-awareness. They are shameless liars. They can be extremely charming, but this is a ruse. The charm swiftly fades once they feel they aren’t getting the relentless attention they crave. They do not feel worthy of love. They do not have the capacity for love. They distrust people who love them. They resent people who are loved by others. When people stand up to them, especially when people stand together, they fall apart.

When the bullies schtick fails to elicit the attention they need they escalate their behavior. This is what is currently happening here in America. We’ve become so immune to abnormal behavior that it has to continue to increase to maintain our collective attention.

There is another trauma response that isn’t listed above. This is the trauma bond. Bullies are almost always trauma survivors themselves, which is how abusive cycles become generational in families. When a bully takes control, a certain segment of the population feels empowered to bully. They are mirroring the behavior of the abuser. Sometimes this becomes collective behavior that veers into a sort of group psychosis or hive mind. This is how cults are formed, this is how unspeakable atrocities unfold. Some people become addicted to the abuse cycle and the powerful feelings it elicits. They bond to the abuser thereby perpetuating the abuse. This is the trauma response pathway to becoming an abuser. Add to this dynamic the twisted psy-ops of our Tech Bro managed social media and you end up with a significant number of people who have lost touch with reality and are being manipulated by regular exposure to targeted propaganda into a state of perpetual outrage, fear, and (sometimes) violence.

We are experiencing a national trauma response to over a decade of rampant, unchecked, and enabled abusive behavior by our current commander in chief. This toxic behavior went on for decades in his private life prior to our collective experience.

Americans who allow this abuse to continue and do nothing to stop it are participating in the abuse. It isn’t enough to ‘not vote for it’, we have to be willing to stand up and fight for an end to this national (and international) nightmare in numbers too large and powerful to defeat. We need to mount a non-violent collective fight response. The people of Minneapolis did it, the rest of us have to do it on a larger scale.

Yes, it’s exhausting. Yes, it’s isolating. Yes, it’s frustrating.

Yes, it’s worth it.

We are the super heroes we’re waiting for. The time is now. Things are not going to get better. We won’t stay safe by hiding, ignoring reality, or toxic positivity/enabling the behavior by minimizing its seriousness.

Bullies escalate.

The first step is naming the problem. Once we understand what is happening, we can begin the collective journey towards ending this national nightmare and finding recovery and healing.

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