Creating a Blame Free Home (and why abusers and narcissistic people prefer a blame-filled home and the effect of that on victims)

A lot of blaming in a family can create hurt feelings, rushes to judgment, sometimes or often getting it wrong, siblings ratting on each other in anticipation of a punishment from a parent, siblings pretend-blaming just to get the upper hand with a parent (to get the parent to think of them as "the angel" and their sibling as "the devil"). What is worst, a lot of blaming can very often turn into "This is my son who is always good", and "This is my daughter who is always bad" (called splitting and "black and white thinking" in psychology terms).

Most families don't get to the point of splitting because they see value in all of their members. But blaming and trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong is not fool-proof by any means. Most people cannot even decipher lying. So, it doesn't make much sense to play the blame-game in a family (especially one with competing siblings, or siblings who do not get along) unless there is a fool-proof way of knowing who did what and when, and why, and there isn't.

Not only that, but the household can "sound" like a lot of blaming:

"Who left the cap off the toothpaste again?"
"Who left their cup on the table?"
"Who forgot to turn off the light in the bathroom?"
"Who left their toy truck on the stairs?"
"Who put matches on the coffee table?"
... and so on ...

The problem, also, with a lot of blaming in the home is that it can easily turn into shaming. "You did it! And therefor you are bad!"

I can tell you that teachers (of which I am one) are not allowed to shame children (it is school policy) because of the damage it can do to a child. By not shaming, and by not looking at children in "good and bad terms", you give each child the same consideration. Each child will get the best of you. Each child is considered on their own terms and not on how they stack against other children.

A child's self esteem is good for the nation and it is good for the child. "Children are the future" and the best way to provide the child, the family, the community and the nation with citizens with skills, intelligence, kindness, respect and a community spirit is to help children be all that they can be. If children are constantly blamed and shamed they cannot be all they can be because shaming will take over their internal dialogue. It is a good way to destroy your child (and a lot of children who only hear negative things about themselves do commit suicide, or if they think there is a softer place to land, run away).

While some things can interrupt a lot of a parent's blaming and shaming, such as the juxtaposition of another parent (or a teacher, or a grandparent, or an aunt or uncle, or anyone) who thinks the child is wonderful, the two opposing forces can create confusion in the child, at least for awhile. There is nothing like two grown-ups battling it out with one of them insisting the child is terrible while the other one is insisting the child is wonderful, and all of the reasons why and why not. When small children hear these fights, they tend to sit down, cry and plug their ears.

It would be like being in sports and one referee insisting you should be out of the game altogether because of your skills and lack of ability to think of other team mates, and the other saying you won the game fair and square with a tremendous amount of mastery, team work and competence.

A child is likely to go with the person who adores him and sees him as "a winner", but also who he respects in terms of morals, modeling and integrity. It is often why a child can succeed in an abusive home, even wildly succeed. Someone believes in the child, and no matter how much shaming and/or bullying goes on, somehow the child plugs away at his studies regardless.

Teachers, I believe, should be the people to reverse shame as much as they can for all students. And if teachers can do it, then parents can do it too.

Since shaming isn't allowed, blaming makes very little sense unless there are no other alternatives at hand.

In my own life, students who were disinterested in school, who had low self esteem, who were either highly allergic or somewhat allergic to authority, I tried to focus on what they were good at, and even put what they were good at as examples in the front of the classroom.

Rebelliousness, and a distaste for authority, can, and often means, that something went wrong with a grown-up (actions against the child). They might not have been taught; they were being hurt instead. What could have gone wrong with an authoritarian? Sometimes it is shaming.

Children know when adults are fair and unfair, when they are just and unjust, when they are being used and not used, when they are being erroneously blamed just so the parent can rage. Children also know that siblings see it all and act accordingly. These children also know how upstanding their own parent is (and even when there is a rampant amount of hypocrisy).

When you get a lot of unfairness, "using" a child, disrespecting a child, rejection of a child's abilities, erroneous blaming, then you often get a rebellious child (and believe it or not, rebelliousness is a healthy expression; it is when they shut down, become very depressed and give up that it isn't healthy).

So being an art teacher, I tried to bring out the rebelliousness in terms of the art they created. Very often rebellious students create art where the school is a prison, or the lunchroom is run by the Gestapo, or the school sports field is full of bullies trampling on one another (and once in awhile they focus on the home too), all of it run by awful authoritarians. They are trying to get attention that their situation feels bad, that there are chinks in the armor in terms of the school being an upstanding institution.

That is what rebelliousness is about after all: discussing the weaknesses, the need for improvements, the need for rights and justice, the hypocrisies, the drawbacks to authoritarianism (which, let us face it, there are many). Very often rebels see situations before anyone else and they can become "the canaries in the coal mine."

Scapegoats of families, scapegoats in schools (being mob-bullied and authority figures either ignoring it or making it the victim's problem to deal with), scapegoats of the workplace - all scapegoats can be triggered (trauma or PTSD triggers) by authoritarianism because authoritarianism is seen as something that will hurt them rather than help them. If authoritarianism has hurt them a lot, they will avoid anything like it in their future. That doesn't leave a lot of jobs open to them when they graduate from school.

In order to help students who are allergic to authoritarianism is to actually root for them, even to show them respect.  And certainly not blame or shame them (they probably had enough of all of that already). We are all capable of valuing some types of rebellion, surely. The rebellion of school being a prison is not something to ignore because of the numbers of students who see it that way (more than you would think). Human beings are not all going to become "yes-men", and that is a good thing. Rebelliousness is not a disability. There are usually very, very good reasons for it, something happening along the line in childhood that made them disrespect authority (why adults should always be working on their own integrity when there are children about).

So the challenge, for a teacher or other adult in the child's life, is to direct rebellion in constructive ways rather than destructive ways.

I did demand that some of my rebel students who were "upsetting others" stay after school (and yes, that is authoritarian, but my motives weren't to be authoritarian, but to work with their rebelliousness in a positive way). Most of them tried to weasel out of being kept after school too, which is predictable, and something to expect.

But what I tried to focus on was, first, the art itself, and second, on what they might want to do after graduating in terms of work.

Often they wanted to work for themselves, which is also expected of rebels.

The arts, whether it is a hobby or a full time job, is a great place to be a rebel. Rebels are particularly creative; they know how to express their causes; the arts tend to be a non-authoritarian environment.

So they expect to come in after school to be blamed and shamed and told their art is no good, but instead leave with some ideas for outlets for their rebellion, including the art they want to do.

I can tell you that life is a lot easier working with rebellion than against it. If you respect them and what they are trying to say, they will respect you as a teacher too. And they will know you are on their side and rooting for them.

That can be translated to parenting too.

Rebels often make the biggest impact on society: Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Spartacus, Nelson Mandela, William Wallace, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and so on ... These people became much more well known and respected than the people who tried to keep them down. Again, we can't all be "yes men" and "that's a good thing".

But, you might say, if it wasn't for all of the blaming and shaming, we wouldn't have rebels to begin with, and we wouldn't have progressed, as a species, and as a nation, in our treatment of each other. The Americans who came here in the beginning were scapegoats and rebels, for the most part, and they wrote a constitution that addressed a lot of the injustices they were facing in other countries. "Cruel and unusual punishment" was one of them. We all benefit from that being addressed in our Constitution today: there are no more torture chambers, and there are mostly good attempts at fair trials too (erroneous blaming is thrown out, blaming on speculation is not considered, confessions while being tortured are not acceptable ... although "the system" always needs fine tuning: the "Black Lives Matter", The Child Victims Act," the Supreme Court decision that presidents are not above the law, and the "Me Too" movements in recent times show the flaws).

To keep a family from falling apart from disrespect, over-rebelliousness, speculative justice, and all of the "who done it" nonsense that families can devolve into, the idea of a blame-free home is to focus on the issues rather than on making it personal.

The idea of a blame-free home in which to raise children, first came from the work place, in particular, how to deal with slip-ups, costly mistakes, situations that put other members at risk, etc.

In the medical community, the blame-free environment was adapted first to deal with medical mistakes. The way it was used was that the people in charge began looking at what was wrong with the teaching, methods and protocol, rather than being punitive towards a medical worker, most of whom were trying as hard as they could not to make a mistake.

The problem is that when the mistakes of an individual are pointed out too much, it becomes personal ("Something is wrong with that worker!"). They found that medical workers were trying to hide their mistakes instead.

And they found that even if a worker left, the next one was often making the same mistake.

Personalizing mistakes can create a lot of anxiety in a worker, and activates the amygdala (fear, flight, fight, avoid), rather than highlighting all of the issues around which mistakes happen. When a worker is going around afraid of making a mistake, they often make more mistakes.

This phenomenon is illustrated pretty well in Keeping Up Appearances (a comedy show about a self-involved grandiose narcissist called Hyacinth), where Elizabeth is invited by Hyacinth for a cup of coffee. Elizabeth is often a nervous wreck when she visits Hyacinth. And Hyacinth doesn't make it easy on her. Because Elizabeth's anxiety levels are so high, her hands begin to shake, and the coffee cup shakes, and she spills coffee on Hyacinth's floor or table every time. But, each time Elizabeth goes to Hyacinth's she thinks it will be different, that she can be in control of her own nerves, put up boundaries against Hyacinth's narcissistic entitlements, that that it will be the first time she doesn't spill coffee. But it never works out that way.

This is how you can make more mistakes when mistakes are blown up to huge proportions by others in the work place too.

This is also how scapegoating can begin to happen in a work environment, and how one scapegoat can replace another in terms of "who to blame" when the original scapegoat leaves. Toxic work environments always need a scapegoat.

When other medical workers were interviewed about someone else's mistake, they mostly said they might have made the same mistake in the same situation, thus the need to look at the problem in its entirety, rather than using the convenient blame-game, which turns out to solve problems a lot less efficiently.

"Blame the process, not the people" became the motto. In an environment where processes are looked at more than people, workers will admit to mistakes much more readily too because they look at the work environment as a learning environment open to better measures, rather than a punitive one.

Since then the medical establishment has fine-tuned some of this so that it isn't totally 100 percent blame-free any more, but mistakes have weighed far more on the blame-free side of issues with workers than on the blame-filled side. Minimizing blame also keeps workers co-operative. Any time you introduce blaming (especially with shaming), you will set up an environment that has vulnerabilities, fierce competitiveness, scapegoating and workplace bullying, the latter being the most egregious. But you can see the natural progression of how it can be a series of mistakes, turning into scapegoating, then turning into workplace bullying.

Good parents are usually open to a lot of different perspectives, experiments, different ways of doing things, different ways of seeing things, and even go to therapy, or send squabbling siblings to therapy together. They are not attached to blaming as a "correct style" that is some right of passage sent down to them by their parents, and must be passed down the next generations, or a tradition made in stone (and possibly producing generational toxicity, like passing a poison from one generation to the next).

Authoritarian families have an Achilles heel in the way that they often become abusive, and split down the middle in terms of their children's loyalties. Authoritarian work places also have the same Achilles heel.

Anyway, creating a mostly-blame-free home (and a more peaceful one) can be done if your children haven't gotten to the point where they are dangerous towards one another. If they are dangerous, and the sibling rivalry is out of control, the family should be in counseling together.

If you are at a point of trying out a blame-free home, here are some tips: 

This mother figured out a way to work towards a blame-free home by doing this instead of trying to pin-point an at-fault child (from the article, How To Stop Sounding Like An Owl & Create A Blame Free Home by Tina Louise Balodi for "Kids in the House"):

... I would see a pencil on the floor and instead of saying “Who left this sharp pencil here on the floor,” I’d say, “Safety Violation.” Immediately, they looked around to see what I was referring to and picked up the pencil and put it away.” That was it, worked like a charm. It also made it not personal. I didn’t have to decide who did it and why. It is possible to achieve the same outcome that we desire by describing and observing an action or behavior rather than placing blame on who did it ...

There are a lot of good points in that article. Here is another one:

They will learn to clean up by seeing you do it. “You can say, it’s time for dinner and I see all the awesome artwork tools still here and papers all over. Can you come tell me if you are finished creating so we can set the table? Can you help me decide what is trash, recycling, or you still need for your project?” It is completely possible to speak to our loved ones without one ounce of attack or criticism.

As a teacher, tasks like handing out art supplies took up learning time. So, I had the tasks be a community activity: 

"Who is going to help me hand out the scissors?"

"Who is going to help hand out the glue bottles?" 

... and so on ... 

A lot of them raise their hands wildly. Some of them never raise their hands. In that case, I asked in a compassionate way:
"You seem so quiet back there. Would you like the chance to come forward and pass out all the art we were working on yesterday?"

Co-operation becomes the goal to work towards at all times in a classroom situation. And most of them become inspired by what other students are doing.

I found it was also useful not to put kids in any kind of hierarchy; i.e. "most talented", "best at drawing" etc. While I liked putting up the best work, it didn't always fulfill goals at motivating others. If I could put up a "good work" instead of "the best work" done by a student who was deemed by classmates "not to be the best at art" and focus on what was "going right", it tended to motivate not only the student, but other classes that came in.

"'So and so' did that drawing? Wow, I've somehow got to do better!" I could hear the competitiveness, but I also very much liked to shake up the leaders' constant grip at the top too (usually they strive to be at the top of every class, not just art class, and while they got the grades they deserved, they were not always featured on the board).

If you want siblings to get along, they should be looked at as a team, as equals, as real people with real feelings, and not as competitors, or puppets. Competition will tear their relationship apart, and also tear the family apart. It may seem counter-intuitive, but that is what we see in terms of the parental expectations and promotion of competition between children, that it can lead to more fights, more destructive behavior towards each other, not less.

Your children are not "really yours" anyway. They aren't your workers, or your pleasers, or your future parents, or your nodding heads in-agreement-with-everything-you-do-or-say, or your chances to make your dreams come true. They aren't even there to prop up your self esteem. If you had good parents, you will know this already. You will also be fully adult in that you will not even think to look to your kids to boost your self esteem. They aren't capable of it anyway, because they are too busy growing up and figuring out how they will survive, and thinking about their place in the world. 

If I can get 25 - 30 kids to co-operate, a home should be able to get 2 - 10 of their kids to co-operate too.

The first part of getting kids to co-operate and enjoy the togetherness and friendship that it brings is to stop the blaming and shaming.

When problems arise, think of other creative ways of dealing with the problem other than attacking.  After a lot of trials, it should come naturally to you, and I would bet you see better results.

WHY DO NARCISSISTS (AND ABUSERS IN GENERAL)

PREFER A BLAME-FILLED HOME

Normal families aren't going to be able to relate to this, but this is what happens when blaming is off the charts, and when the parents don't know how to control situations other than to abuse their children.

In many ways, abusive families do the opposite of what healthy loving families do.

On the agenda of most narcissists (and abusers in general) is controlling you, your actions, your words, your appearance, and sometimes even your thought processes and emotions. They cannot control you all that well unless they are blaming you. 

In fact, the more blamed you are (especially mixed with invalidation and perspecticide), the more abused you are ... that would be my bet. Invalidation, perspecticide, blaming and shaming go together like peas and carrots in abusive relationships. 

Blaming is huge, and part of everyday life in a home with a narcissist or sociopath in it (the kinds of people most likely to abuse their kids). 

Not only that, but your mistakes are blown up to gargantuan proportions. However, their standards for perfection for you are different than they are for themselves. Hypocrisy is the great fault-line when it comes to abuse, and how you can tell, from the very beginning, if you are in an abusive home or not. The more hypocrisy the "authorities" display, typically the more disordered they are, the more abusive they are, or will become.

And if that wasn't enough, most narcissists and sociopaths are into erroneous blaming and punishing too.

But, wait. That isn't enough for them either. All of the blaming is done to get to a place of shaming, and trying to get you to feel ashamed so that they can convince you that you are too flawed to treat well, or to love, or to deserve (deserve respect, deserve a peaceful home, deserve consideration, deserve to be heard, and so on). The shaming gets pretty severe for most of them since abuse escalates.

The reason for all of the shaming is to try to convince you that you are so flawed that they need to dominate you and tell you what to do all of the time. If they can convince you that something is seriously wrong with you (crazy or stupid), then they can starve you of love and use these tactics:

* You aren't as good as (someone else: sibling, cousin, friend, lover, new boyfriend, etc), called triangulation. They love triangulation so much that they are at it most of their waking hours: pitting people against each other, making you go through someone else to talk to them, using some other person as the fall guy for when they slip up or their image is being scrutinized in public (they typically try to draw others in to do battle against you and to shame you further). If you are new to the subject of narcissism, if you see this tactic being used, this would be a good time to create distance and to keep your whereabouts, dreams, ambitions, etc to yourself.

* Enmeshment: Everything you do in your life and the people you associate with has to go through them. (I have yet to do a post on enmeshment, but when I do, I'll put the link in).

* Smear campaigns: People are constantly told that you are crazy at the very least. They want others to have doubts about you so that they can have more control and influence over you and them, and the perceptions of all of you. You are basically not allowed to have the same closeness and status that they have with those same people. Smear campaigns damage the relationship between parent and child, but they don't care. Narcissists and sociopaths have very little capacity to care how anything effects their child.

* Isolate you: So you won't have anyone else to go to. They will be the only person in your life (who they deem truly cares about you). It is their way of gaining complete dominance and control of you, or so they believe. However, they never feel they have enough control and dominance which is why most narcissists become abusive. They think that abuse will get you in line with everything they want. But in order to to get you isolated enough for them, they will be trying to play with reality. For instance, you didn't really hear them say that (you must be imagining things again, you must be imagining that they have ill intentions towards you even ... you aren't really being bullied, "you're just too sensitive") which is where gaslighting comes in:

* Gaslighting: Typical phrases of gaslighting are:
- "You're crazy!"
- "Oh, there you go again!" - when you are upset by something they did.
- "It's not that big a deal" or "You're making a mountain out of a molehill" when they have done something to hurt you (translation: hurting you is no big deal to them)
- "You know what you did wrong! You mean to tell me that you just don't get it!"
- "You're too sensitive."
- "It's too bad your mind, is, well ..."
In fact you are deemed to be so crazy and unhinged that when they are hurting you, isolating you, talking trash about you, and are so claustraphobic and in too much of your life and space with their enmeshment (to convince that you can't tell that they are actually helping you instead of hurting you): that is the real agenda behind gaslighting you.
Since they need to take over telling you what you are really experiencing, feeling and thinking so that they can gain even more control over you, they are going to be indulging in as much invalidation and perspecticide as they can muster. Which brings us to the ultimate gaslighting kind of treatment:

* Perspecticide and invalidation: of your experiences, thoughts, feelings, health and well being is necessary for them so that their agendas always come first. They deem you to be so crazy, in fact,  that they need to tell you that what you are feeling is NOT what you are actually feeling. In fact, the arguments about your feelings, thoughts and perspectives will be escalating in intensity and in number of arguments. They will insist that what you are feeling is what they say you are feeling. It gives them control over your feelings, thoughts and experiences, and puts them in charge of telling you everything you are going through on all levels. But still, this is not enough domination and control for most of them. They are still way too insecure that you might believe someone else's words and agendas over their own, and God forbid, have self esteem. Your self esteem is not something that most narcissists and sociopaths can deal with. They are still way too panic-ed and insecure for any hint of that. They want you super, super vulnerable, super destroyed, super hurt, impressionable, gullible, down on your luck, down on your knees begging them to stop hurting you, grieving and traumatized enough to be desperate (so that they can take advantage of your desperation and use it for domination again).
   In order to produce this constantly desperate human who will do anything, anything for them just to get some little breadcrumb (aptly called "breadcrumbing" by domestic violence counselors) to relieve you from their pain.
   In fact, at some point if you are not following their commands, even if they are incredibly self destructive to you, they will be:

* Punishing you: Punishing you can take many forms. The common ones are:
- the silent treatment (purposely ignoring you, pretending you don't exist, sometimes waiting for you to be desperate enough so they can dominate you again)
- not allowing you to do x, y, and z
- more smear campaigns (usually as damaging as they can make them while still trying to make them seem believable)
- physical blows
- false imprisonment
- financial abuse (the sudden withdrawal of money or help)
- refusal to help you when you need to be helped (medical, disability, contact number for a person in your common family, etc)
- more shaming (trying to bring shame upon you through other people, other people's judgments, trying to convince you that you are isolated and that no one likes you or loves you, calling up your boss or spouse to try to get them to hate you too, and so on)
- enlisting co-bullies (called flying monkeys in psychology circles) to help them do their dirty work on getting you down and under their domination again
   The premise behind punishing you is that if they hurt you, you will behave in the manner that they want you to behave. It's rather simplistic: if you whip a horse, will it behave? If you hit a dog, will it behave? If you hit a human, will the human behave? After all, let's not forget that Mr. or Mrs. Narcissist or Sociopath has deemed you to be so flawed, even when you are a full adult when "punishing" should be over and done with in terms of lessons, they can't. Remember they have invalidated you, so you can (and often are) seen as less than human.
   In fact they hope that they are so good at all of these maneuvers that they can be Dr.Jekyll to everyone but you (you get Mr. Hyde instead). And because they seem so gracious and kind to everyone else, often going overboard, people who know them think you must be one ungrateful b$tch or b#stard. The end result is that you will be living in a nightmare:

* Splitting (psychology term meaning two-sided, it is all or nothing, black and white thinking, my way or the highway, etc), which includes Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde behavior among so many other things. All of the splitting and the temper tantrums, punishing behaviors and tactics, constantly maneuvering to call all of the shots (except them being afraid they aren't calling the shots enough in your life) adds up to walking on eggshells day and night:

* Expecting you to walk on eggshells: fearful of when the next blow-up will be and what will trigger them to become abusive. Typically the way they want you to walk on eggshells is to be:
- fearful
- anxious of when the next episode will be
- fawning to make them less volatile, angry and "off their nut"
- there is no stability in your world: your job is to regulate their temper, their angry outbursts, their desires to punish you for your seeming recalcitrance to their commands, to be compliant, and to sometimes keep them from smashing up your property and your body
- they don't want you to have a peaceful, non-volatile, non-argumentative, non-abusive, non-roller-coaster life, or a blame-free shame-free environment because they feel they can't control you enough if you have that. So they try to isolate you and damn you to a world where you are always complying with them, agreeing with them, regulating them, being willing to be damaged and punished by them, defending yourself and then agreeing with them in arguments when you are accused by them, feeling trapped by them, and so on.

Such an awful cocktail for their victims, isn't it?

But the reason why they do it is all for the end-game of complete domination and control of you. They are way too insecure to live without the constant time-soaking blood-soaking agenda of power and domination over others.

For most of us, that is a turn-off and we will head for the hills (children can't, so they develop unhealthy coping strategies instead). But with the exception of grandiose narcissists, their narcissism is not so easy for most of us to spot. We can be in a relationship with them, and it will creep up on us and then attack when we are most vulnerable.

Covert narcissists, in particular, use a combination of victim-hood (pretending to be a victim to draw people in to help them, though some have some real victim-hood in their past, but typically not even close to what they are espousing, and often claiming to be the victim of people who they have abused, including their own children ... and we wonder why some children do not respect their parents), getting information from you without revealing much about themselves, mirroring (i.e. espousing the same interests and dreams that you have), and a lot of triangulating to socially isolate you.

I will be talking about different kinds of narcissists in another post. But, suffice it to say that all of them are dangerous, whether emotionally, psychologically or physically, and all of them continually practice dominating you to get you into a more and more compromised, subservient  and vulnerable position. And the way they start this process is to blame you for a little of this and a little of that while complaining to others about you behind your back.

If you make explanations for the way you do things, and your way of thinking, they will start in the beginning by lecturing, sometimes with scoffing and some haughtiness, then they will eventually graduate to trying to take over the conversation or moderate it. The next step in the graduation process is getting angry with you (with or without the lecturing), until they feel comfortable with you enough that they will rage at you and become verbally abusive. They will also typically tell you that you are making them rage, however, realize that they do not rage like that in public, so they are very capable of politeness in all kinds of situations when it suits them.

It all adds up to an incredibly unstable life for victims.

HOW VICTIMS REACT
TO CONSTANT BLAMING
(note: this focuses on abusive families,
but may be helpful to see the extremes of it in terms of how children cope)

If you are a victim of child abuse and an adult now, some domestic violence therapists will suggest that you get over the legacy of your child abuse and the symptoms it brought you by adapting a blame-free home with your mate and/or new family.

The reasoning behind it is that if you grew up with blaming (which you probably did if you were from an abusive home), it can cause a lot of anxiety to be re-living all of the who-done-its and being jumpy over mistakes, whether there will be gaslighting, whether there will be all of the tactics I talked about in the second portion.

Just hearing blaming can set off the alarm bells in your head.

The typical way that victims react to a lot of blaming is to fawn, fight, take flight, freeze or avoid. 

In the beginning, the perpetrator of all of the blaming (usually turned to erroneous blaming over time) usually calls the shots in terms of which of these four will be acceptable to him or her. 

Victims are likely to fawn at first, especially if they are vulnerable in some way. Vulnerable might mean people who are young and innocent, disabled, grew up with child abuse, grew up with poverty, etc. They will be willing to fix what ever is wrong just to bring stability back into their relationship and back into their lives with the perpetrator.

Most fawning with abusers is very unhealthy for the target because in most cases the target is sacrificing their mental and physical health to do so. A family member (or family members) aren't meant to be cowering, being pressured, being a target of rage and abuse, putting the narcissist's feelings and opinions, desires, etc, first at all times.

Fawning can keep you safe from abuse, but that is the only good that it does.

Most targets know that the abuser expects his target to fawn, but most abusers wouldn't be caught dead fawning (at least to their victims). So all of this is very much role-driven and hypocrisy-driven by the narcissist (and while roles are common and a must for them, their targets, for the most part, want to get out of role, even when they are fawning).

But not all abusers want fawning targets.

Some of the reasons they might not want one include:

* they want to use you as a scapegoat instead
* they look at family members as business partners, which most of the do (you are either in their  business, even if it is a business of "breadcrumbing" rewards - it is usually an "all or nothing" situation too, in which you are all in or all out, totally accept their terms or you're outside completely, and so on)
* they find your style of fawning sickening, or not believable
* they only want one or two fawners and you're not good at it
* they only want fawners they can count on 24/7, who will consistently "do as they are told"
* you're too (talented, smart, beautiful, successful, happy, etc) to be a good reliable fawner. Let's face it, fawners who are insecure, not driven, not ambitious, not successful, easily brainwashed, child-like, who can easily be put in second place by the narcissist and be dominated, who go along to get along, are the best bet for the narcissist in terms of a fawner (or so most of them think ... I get to why not over the long term).

Anyway narcissists and sociopaths think that people from happy families, or a trauma survivor, or someone seriously down on their luck, or an empath, or anyone they deem to be vulnerable and sensitive, will make the best fawners, including their own children, but there are so many reasons why they won't be, and I cover why briefly in the post.

The best fawners are criminals, other narcissists, and other sociopaths. Not kidding. They know how to fawn like a pro, without being personally or emotionally effected by false narratives, constant lying, splitting, gaslighting, excuses, Machiavellian thought processes, and other immoral behaviors. They keep their eyes on the prize and everything else is just an annoyance which they cover up with false smiles and a lot of flattery.

The problem with a person who is insecure, not ambitious, not successful, easily brainwashed, a wet dishrag, etc, is that they are disabled in some way. There is a reason they are not passionate about something in their lives, and why they are not acting as full adults, or want to act as full adults. While they fawn, they are also usually too sensitive and vulnerable for the narcissist's or sociopath's disciplinary actions, punishments, retaliations, vindictiveness, and their slave-master mentality. Dishrags serve until they either become disabled by the demands put upon them (remember: they are not ambitious), or they are scapegoated, or they get so handicapped and paralyzed by trauma that they cannot function as the narcissist's robot any more. They aren't particularly equipped to deal with a lot of blaming either, and either cower or self-destruct.  

The perpetrator will either accept the fawning from an individual or they won't (as a honeymoon period in the cycle of abuse). This means he sometimes accepts it for a period and then doesn't ... and then does again, then doesn't. The more drastic these cycles are, the more trauma you will experience.

If he doesn't accept the fawning for a period of time, usually it is for one or more of these kinds of reasons (what they say to you or how they treat you):

* the apology isn't good enough

* the overture isn't good enough

* the overture isn't up to snuff because you have been told that you owe him much, much more

* unless you "behave yourself" (mostly "behave yourself" is left open to interpretation - and notice how narcissists and sociopaths talk to their spouse as if they are a child who needs to learn lessons -  at any rate, most of us know that "behave yourself" means "you must be under my control; I must dominate you"). The consequence for not letting the perpetrator dominate you is that you will be punished

* it is time for you to get punished good and hard (you have been let off too many times)

* you aren't good enough (he can do better than you: he tries to make you out to be a sacrifice and a "project" instead of an equal human being, and can point to someone else as being better than you are)

* the silent treatment

* treating you with ice cold disregard or invalidation

* if you are a child of the narcissist, or a spouse who is financially dependent on the narcissist, or a child who is being paid for sex (for rich pedophiles who leave victims a tip), this is when they use "the ungrateful phrase"; i.e. they have decided that you are ungrateful for what you have received from them and therefore deserve to be punished for it (i.e. to be in pain for not complying with the fuzzy terms of your perpetrator).

The problem with the punishments and all of the tactics (lecturing you, blaming, shaming, triangulation, gaslighting, splitting, expecting you to walk on eggshells, invalidation, smear campaigns about you, isolating you from support, attacking when you are most vulnerable and then playing the victim to avoid accountability) is that this becomes synonymous with authoritarianism in the eyes of the victim. In other words, the victim will always remember that authoritarianism hurts.

The punishments plus all the tactics create a lot of trauma in their victims.

If you get your leg caught in an animal trap in tall grass, not only will other animal traps cause anxiety, but so will tall grass. If it happens a lot, people start to begin to avoid all tall grass.

It is not much different when it comes to authoritarianism. People who have been hurt by authoritarianism again and again will avoid it. Depending on the trauma, anything authoritarian-sounding can create panic.

Some survivors say they cannot tolerate anyone commanding, pushing, forcing or persuading them. They can't take lecturing. They can't take attacks of any kind. This can be true for soldiers as much as child abuse victims because commands are what caused the hurt, and then the trauma.

As far as child abuse is concerned, gaslighting becomes totally intolerable. So does splitting. So does someone trying to isolate them. All of the tactics, and flash-backs about the tactics, in fact, become traumatic. A lot of PTSD reactions also happen on a physical level: stomach, heart, head, muscles, sleep, nightmares, so it isn't like a little anxiety that goes away in a couple of hours. It is an onslaught of feeling really, really ill and disabled. It can be so bad that some survivors go so far as to say that a single minute around their parent triggers them so much that they don't want to see their parent again.

So all of the ambitions to hurt the child in order to get the child to comply, does the opposite from what the parent wants. The child becomes too "disabled" to comply.

If the child is hostage to the parent, then dealing with it all becomes unhealthy: trying not to feel because feelings make you miserable (and sometimes becomes part of the personality called Alexithymia), getting addicted to substances (because the mind filled with anxiety and feeling hurt is a terrible place to live in), trying to self-destruct in some way to have the pain and anxiety end, or conversely becoming more aggressive to ward off authoritarianism - these are not uncommon.

The most severe manifestations of PTSD can cause the inability to talk or respond, which is actually contrary to what an authoritarian dictator wants.

This is why abusers (including abusive parents) often have to move on to another source of narcissistic supply. They know their target is becoming disabled, and they are not really getting what they want anyway, so they look around for another sycophant (sometimes another one of their children who they feel they can mold more easily). Or a friend (especially one who will buy their "victim stories" and "how much they love their children ... or spouse").

FURTHER READING

* Walking the Punitive / Blame-Free Tightrope - by Becky Miller, MHA, CPHQ, FACHE, Executive Director, Missouri Center for Patient Safety, and Revee Booth, BJ, Communications Specialist, Primaris
The article discusses the Just Culture Model.
excerpt:
   Before 1990, health care was a highly punitive field. When mistakes were made, they were the fault of the individual. Fear of retribution caused mistakes to go unreported, and the opportunity to expand our knowledge about errors was lost ... 

* Sustaining A No Blame Environment - staff at Michigan Tech

excerpt:

Over and over we revisit the phrase of “Blame the process, not the people,” and how this concept plays such a big role in Continuous Improvement ...
   ... Put the spotlight on the process, not the people– The very first thing to do is to stray away from blame by asking the reason why a person did something a certain way. Stop searching for who did what wrong. Instead, invest time and energy dissecting a process and seeing in what ways it allows for ambiguity and mistakes. You must turn away from the idea that someone did something wrong, but rather look at that the process as wrong and that there’s an opportunity to correct it ...
   ... Respect a (person)’s capabilities– In order to have a blame-free environment, you must have respect the person, this includes respecting a persons capabilities. If an outcome is not desired or expected, searching for someone who is “guilty” is not respecting them in their role, nor is it respecting their capabilities to perform in their job. It is jumping to conclusions that they are inefficient or not “up to snuff.” When you look to the process first when there’s an issue, you are letting others know that it is not them and that you trust their capabilities ...

* Creating A Blame-Free and Gossip-Free Work Environment - from The University of New Hampshire

excerpt:

Imagine a workplace without the constant stressors of blame and gossip. The concept is easy to understand, and hard to make a reality. But once accomplished, the workplace is safe and productivity and motivation increase. Employees feel comfortable to bring up concerns and become increasingly proactive addressing issues. It doesn't matter who is to blame. What does matter is that what's not working gets fixed. When the environment is not punitive, employees are much more willing to own up to mistakes and take responsibility when something goes wrong.

* The following article is about improving the work environment through minimized blame. A blaming environment creates cover-ups, inauthentic behavior, anxiousness about "not being perfect" (an emotion that can create more mistakes rather than less of them), and even scapegoating. The premise here is to solve problems rather than to assign blame. Leaders have to take charge of this environment:
Why Blame Stalls Improvement & 5 Ways Leaders Can Create a Blame-Free Environment - by Tracy O'Rourke

excerpt:

Model the Way
   This can be tough for some leaders, but the message will go a long way! If leaders share some of their own mistakes and show that exposing mistakes can lead to innovation and process improvement, then leaders are modeling the way. If leaders share that they are taking calculated risks and ask others to share how they are doing the same, this can encourage others. If leaders promise they will no longer search for the guilty and they follow through, employees will begin to believe that things will be different! These can be great examples of leaders modeling the way which paves the way for employees to follow.
   Reducing blame in an organization can seem monumental, but with a focused effort from the leadership team and willingness to change behaviors and actions, it can be done!

* How to Create a No-Blame Work Environment - staff at AMN Health Care Services

excerpt:

   Nurses are patient advocates. As such, we need to create a culture of safety in which cooperative teamwork, staff empowerment and the development of a "no-blame" work environment provides a framework for safe practice.
   Eleven years ago, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report entitled: To Err is Human: Building A Safer Health System. This report fundamentally changed the way in which the healthcare profession assigns blame when medical errors occur. Essentially, this report concluded that medical errors are mostly caused by faulty systems rather than individuals. This shifts the blame from the individual to the environment and has led to many improvements in methods and technologies over the years ...

Toxic Families: Ignoring These Things Will Cost You - by David McDermott
excerpt:
   When a victim does begin to realize that things are not right, it's usual that they go looking for information to try and understand what is going on. They may consider their abuser to be a controlling mother, a bullying brother, a strict father, an abusive uncle or an emotionally unavailable parent. These terms may be accurate but they may not give the full picture.
   Several studies have found a very high incidence of personality disorders among abusers. In one study of court ordered therapy for spousal abuse, upwards of 80% of abusers were found to have a personality disorder. In other words, they were psychopaths or narcissists. If your toxic family member is a psychopath or a narcissist, this is very different from someone who is a bit controlling. It changes everything ...
   ...The toxic elements of toxic families are very often psychopaths and narcissists and dealing with these types requires a different set of rules. If you try and manage the situation using the normal, polite rules of society, you will lose. It's that simple, because they most certainly are not using these rules.

   He goes on to say something which always should be remembered:

   - They have one set of rules for themselves and a different set for everyone else. These rules are apt to change without notice.
   Part of the problem for children growing up in abusive families is that they grow up with a sense that feeling hurt inside every day and being abused is normal:If someone is 25 when they are recruited into a cult they have 25 years of experience before the cult. When they leave, they have those 25 years of normality to use as a reference. This makes it easy to compare and contrast both periods of time. People born into toxic families do not have a 'before' with which they can compare the years of abuse. They often have to learn that many of the behaviors that they are so used to are actually abusive and unacceptable.

How To Stop Sounding Like An Owl & Create A Blame Free Home - by Tina Louise Balodi for "Kids in the House"
(I talked about this article in the post)

There’s Always Someone to Blame: Wisdom from Brene Brown - by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. for Psych Central

Curbing the Blame Game and Getting Rid of Excuses - by psychologist Henry Cloud for "Focus on the Family"

note: should only be used when the siblings are fairly civil, and you want to minimize conflict between them, not when sibling abuse is present

Are You a Target of Blame for a Narcissist? (Here are 7 tips for getting out of their crosshairs) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

11 Ways Narcissists Use Shame to Control - by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC for Psych Central

Why Does Your Narcissistic Partner Always Blame You? (Learn why your narcissistic mate blames you unfairly and how to handle it) - by Elinor Greenberg Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Note: this article comes with some ideas on how to avoid "the blame game". However, it only works if your narcissist has no sadistic or vindictive impulses and punishes. "The blame game" with "punishments" is hopeless.

excerpt:

... when anything is amiss, they quickly blame someone else. If you are their lover or mate, you are the one that is likely to be blamed—no matter how farfetched this seems ...

... Because narcissists’ inner guiding voice is so critical and harsh, narcissists try to avoid all responsibility for anything that goes wrong. In order to avoid self-hatred, they project the blame onto someone else. If they do not successfully shift the blame, then they may find themselves drowning in a pit of self-loathing and shame ...

How Narcissists Blame and Accuse Others for Their Own Shortcomings - by Darius Cikanavicius for Psych Central

How Narcissists Play the Victim and Twist the Story - by Darius Cikanavicius for Psych Central

Five Ways a Narcissist Comes Unglued - by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC for Psych Central

Sibling Abuse - from the University of Michigan (Michigan Medicine)

Sibling Maltreatment: The Forgotten Abuse - by Mark S. Kiselica and Mandy Morrill‐Richards for "Journal of Counseling and Development"

(see citing literature for articles)

Sibling Bullying and Abuse: The Hidden Epidemic (Often labeled rivalry and ignored, sibling bullying and abuse cause real trauma) - by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT for Psychology Today

Sibling Sadists Versus Schoolyard Bullies (Equal at last!) - by Jeanne Safer Ph.D. for Psychology Today

When Siblings Disagree About Whether They Had a Toxic Parent (Who's right about Mom and Dad? A closer look at family dysfunction) - by Peg Streep for Psychology Today

You Started It! 10 Mommy No-Nos that Fuel Sibling Rivalry - a CBS News article (click the arrows on right to be taken to the other nine). The headings are these, but the explanations are in the article (note: these "dos and don'ts" only work for non-abusive sibling relationships; if there is sibling abuse and you are teaching them to work it out on their own, the abuse will escalate):
1. Mistake: Comparing Your Kids
2. Mistake: Asking Who Started It
3. Neglecting One-on-One Time
4. Mistake: Worrying About Fairness
5. Mistake: Encouraging Tattling
6. Mistake: Not Noticing When They Are Getting Along
7. Mistake: Praising One in Front of the Other
8. Mistake: Always Blaming the Older Child
9. Mistake: Being too Quick to Intervene
10. Mistake: Expecting Harmony

Why are abusers, narcissists and sociopaths rejecting, violent and offended by facial expressions, glances and your tone of voice

As with most of my blog posts, I cite sources and other reading material below. The first part of this reading section is devoted to research articles by professionals. I have also included articles here and in the false narratives post as to why facial expressions are not a reliable indicator as to what someone else is feeling and thinking.

I am surprised this topic isn't brought up more often because I see wave after wave of battered women who were beaten up badly for just glancing at someone of the opposite sex, most of these glances only lasting a second. It is an incredible phenomenon, something most of the population does not have to experience, or to worry about, to be concerned about, to get a complex about, or to work around, so why is an innocent glance so objectionable to men who beat up women?

Then there are parent figures who reject or terrorize children (including grown children) for a look  on their face, whether it is a smirk, a purse of the lips, a grimace, a look of horror, a look of happiness, a look of sadness, rolling eyes ... again it can be anything. Someone very close to me was rejected by her mother for life for a look on her face (no kidding!), and this, and battered women who I have seen and met, were the reasons I decided to cover this topic. It is a common topic in domestic violence. I decided to do some research and think about why this is so huge in the minds of perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse and what it does to the recipients of abuse.

Any domestic violence counselor will tell you that they see this again and again, and that it is common among abusers, particularly people with psychopathic, dark triad and dark tetrad traits - extremely indicative of personality disorders. So this practice is pretty exclusive to them. In other words, it is very uncommon for the rest of us. The one notable exception is that people who are inebriated (high on alcohol and some drugs) can look at facial expressions as being hostile too when they are not. Also alcoholism can co-occur with narcissism and psychopathy. For the intents of this post, I am keeping the topic on personality disorders (mainly Cluster B) and address alcoholism and an impaired ability to judge the intentions of others in another post.

People with personality disorders associated with psychopathy, dark triad and dark tetrad tend to see quite a bit more hostility in a wide range of facial expressions than the rest of us. Professional articles (research) about this are cited below.

On top of it all, facial expressions that they view as hostile, especially in close personal relationships,  often arouse them to be violent and/or vindictive, retaliatory and punishing. If they have Machiavellian traits which a high percentage do, they also become obsessed with punishing; in other words it occupies their thoughts to the point where it interferes with other matters in their lives. And to make matters worse for their victims, perpetrators often spend a great deal of time at planning out new punishments, including punishments where they think they won't be detected, where they think they can dodge law enforcement, where they think they can successfully switch culpability on to their victims (why it is important NOT to meet them in private).

I will be covering typical ways they plan out punishments in another post.

In my own personal life, I have also been the target of being punished over a facial expression (it happened in my fifties, and I found out quickly after this occurrence that age is not a factor when it comes to being victimized). In fact, when people ask me why I haven't seen so-and-so, I say "I am being punished for a look on my face" (and ... I have proof of this if they don't quite believe me, and also witnesses for the day that it allegedly occurred: no unusual, hostile, bored, disapproving facial expressions that would cause so much unmitigated rage and sadism; i.e. off-the-charts emotional dysregulation ... in fact, we were all well under the impression that we were having a pleasant respectful conversation, not a hostile one in the least).

People who have looked at his e-mails to me are either horrified that someone would actually do that, say that and think that, or they laugh at the absurdity of being punished over a facial expression.

Gasping in shock or saying "That's so jacked up!" is the most common response. However, some people who actually know him aren't terribly surprised. He has had a reputation for being a brute and tyrant.

In the beginning, most people who go through punishments over facial expressions want to talk to the person to iron out the problem. I was no exception.

Why? Because it is confusing most of all. You want to know what the facial expression is to them, why they think a punishment is reasonable, what they think they will gain from the punishment, trying to clear up misunderstandings ...

The counselors I talked to were dead set against it. "Don't do it! People who do this are dangerous and twisted! This isn't about you, or a misunderstanding. It is about sadism and an anger management problem in them, period." And it was explained to me that I would not find a real explanation anyway. "Talking to a person who acts like this is an invitation to damage you, never to clear things up and be reasonable. It doesn't matter how educated they are. We see this from the working poor to the highly educated, wealthy and successful."

Typically if you do show up at their house or apartment they usually put you through a lengthy blaming-shaming session, where they will talk about how much they did for you, how ungrateful you are, how much you owe them, how 100 percent bad you are, and even try to talk you into accepting bullying as the payment. All of this blaming and shaming is most often accompanied by lack of respect for boundaries. In other words, they don't usually talk to you ten feet away in a calm respectful intelligent empathetic manner. They are in your face, intimidating you, threatening you, shouting at you, spitting on you, interrupting you. It is not uncommon for them to be insulting you, pushing or shoving you, throwing you around, twisting a limb, choking you or mock choking, hitting you, using false imprisonment on you (very often "I will not let you go unless" ...), and if they aren't getting what they want out of you, either escalating the violence in some way, or calling police over trumped up charges. In fact, people who punish over facial expressions or a tone in someone's voice usually have all kinds of plans made well in advance of your coming so that they can get out of trouble with ease, try to switch the victimhood (which I discussed above: it is their motivation for calling the police). In other words they will try to flip the abuse on to you (in other words, call you the abuser, typically referred to as blame shifting).

I felt incredibly lucky to have dodged a bullet once I heard domestic violence survivors and child abuse survivors tell what they had gone through by trying to talk it out with their abusers. One of them landed in the hospital, another one was driven off the road at a high rate of speed, another stole her car keys, shoes and coat while she was visiting (false imprisonment), a child abuse survivor had a T.V. thrown at him and his toys destroyed.

Some therapists tell clients "Never ask why" because of all of these reasons and then some, but some domestic violence therapists tell their clients they can ask "why" through e-mail, text or a recorded phone call to get more feedback and information.

The most common answers that "typical impulsive abusers" give as to why there is a punishment for facial expressions and a tone of voice are these answers:

gaslighting answers:
"You KNOW why!"
"You can't figure this out? Come on now!"
"You need to think about what you have done!"
"I don't need to answer that. You have a pretty good idea."
"Because you're ungrateful. You know what you did!"
"You never were good at figuring out what you do that is terrible. You need to think more! You mean to tell me that you are innocent all of the time? I don't buy it!"
"Take some time to think about it. I don't want to hear from you until you can behave."
"You brought this upon yourself. You are in the doghouse now."
And variations on this theme.

If you tell them that you are not a mind-reader, they typically join the gaslighting answer with verbal abuse:

"What's the matter with you? Are you stupid?! It's so obvious!"
"Are you crazy? Just think about it and come back to me with an answer! It better be soon or it will be too late!"
"Because you're a bitch! If you can't figure it out then something is seriously wrong with you!"
"I know you! You're a sick piece of sh$t! I can't stand you! If you can't figure it out, I want nothing more to do with you! Do you hear? Nothing!! Get your sniveling little child out of here too!"
"You owe me! Since you can't pay me then I'm going to punish you! Sounds right to me! If you can't do what I say, you are going to get it good! You always were a piece of crap!"
"You meant to glance at him because you are crazy enough to try to make me feel jealous. You were trying to signal that you want him. Therefore you need to be punished for that thought." (besides gaslighting and insulting, there is also perspecticide in this statement, another common tactic among abusers).
And variations on this theme.

The reason why these answers are important is because gaslighting and verbal abuse confirms the personality disorder even more (abusers are known to use gaslighting, verbal abuse and deriding your character for their explanations to you about why they acted the way they acted, their reasoning through the issue between you, their thoughts, and their feelings where as people without Cluster B personality disorders rarely, if ever, use gaslighting phrases and verbal abuses to work out an issue like this).

These phrases aren't about talking to you and offering you a reasonable thought-out explanation, they are about talking at you. They are both outright, and subtle, forms of attack (i.e. abuse). They are also instances of infantilizing you (very common: treating you like a child who needs to learn lessons from them and punished for not learning lessons to their standards of perfection), lecturing and reprimanding (also common among abusers and not appropriate to close personal relationships) and invalidation.

It is one reason you won't find a fulfilling answer, so if you can't get one through e-mail or text, it does not make much sense to talk to them in person.

You can also ask them what the punishments will be in e-mail and text forms. Some of them actually tell you. Most won't and will be giving you the same kind of gaslighting answers.

However, the most dangerous abusers are not as impulsive as the ones I have talked about so far (that's where the Machiavellian abusers come in: the dark triad and dark tetrad). These personalities may sweet talk you into a meeting to talk things over. They may say they have presents, even apologize, or send you a cake, money or flowers, and then once you have "softened up" and enter their door, or are driven to a remote spot, beat you up. Or wait to enact some sort of dark revenge fantasy. And by the way, dark revenge fantasies can come about no matter what you do or say, even if it is non-provoking and innocent, even if you are quietly going about your business and not talking to them, because again, they erroneously blame, and even make things up out of thin air to blame you about.

The general advice is not to trust ANYONE who wants to hurt you. If they are hurting you or threatening to hurt you over erroneous blaming incidences like a facial expression or tone of voice, it is even worse. Be aware that it is the mark of psychopaths, sociopaths, people with dark triad or dark tetrad personalities, and tendencies in that direction. Most are quite dangerous. Talk to a domestic violence counselor on how to handle people who behave in this way and have their sights on you.

HOW DID ABUSERS GET LIKE THIS?

WHY DO FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND VOCAL TONES
SET THEM OFF?

All of these quick facial expressions seem to loom incredibly large in the minds of abusers, are so impressionable as to be stuck in their memory, obsessively churned over and over in the mind, and yet, I have seen over and over, that most of us who are recipients don't consider a single facial expression that could set us off. If we ruminate about our own facial expressions, we don't understand what could have set them off either. While there are conditions which show drastically different facial expressions from what you are feeling, most of us don't have those conditions. It baffles.

Unless your memory can stick to a common bird zipping across the sky in a second and to be enraged about it, it seems just as far out of the realm of normal experience to be obsessed and so deeply enraged by someone's split second facial movements that you want to do great bodily damage, or to reject them without a backward glance or a bit of conversation on the matter.

Targets of abuse who have been raised by a child abuser tend to over-think what they might have done wrong that set their abuser off.

In contrast, targets with a very supportive non-abusive family will know that something is wrong with the enraged other person. They may do a little bit of self reflection, but probably not much. They will most likely want to get out now.

Child abuse victims will be doing a great deal of self reflection (not necessarily the golden child in abusive families, but other siblings, yes). While the parent abusers are obsessively churning over the "provoking" facial expression, their child abuse victims tend also to be obsessively churning over their part of the conversation too, the facial expression that might have "caused" the rage, or at the very least "the mountain that was made out of the molehill". They will be playing over the conversation in these ways:

"What if I had said _____________, would that have enraged him as much?"
"How do I placate (the abuser), and explain what is really happening?" - and then when they realize they can't placate, "Why is this happening?" and never being able to figure it out (i.e. it's not meant to be figured out purposely, by the abuser).
"What could have I done to cause this much rage?"
"Why can't I please him? I work so hard at it with no results."
"What's the matter with me? Am I having facial expressions that I don't mean to have?"
"Did I glance the wrong way?"
"Am I really as stupid as he says I am? Maybe. I just don't know what set him off. And how do I become smarter about this?"
"What's the next step? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do or think about this. I feel frozen with indecision. Should I ask someone else what they think about all of this?"
"Does this mean our relationship is over?"
"Why is he trying to hurt me like this? Have I really done something wrong?"
"Why am I such a burden? Should I just stay quiet and not say anything if I am sick or need something?"
"Should I just die? Would that make (my mommy or daddy) more happy?"

This is the inversion of what the perpetrator is doing. Often child abuse survivors spend most of their time and ruminations finding fault inside themselves to make the relationship with the abuser better and whole again, and abusers spend most of their time finding fault outside themselves, with their children.

The good news is that child abuse victims, and particularly family scapegoats, will have a much easier time healing and moving beyond finding fault inside themselves, whereas abusers tend to stay "fixed" and only find fault outside themselves (for life). Abusers also only like relationships where the other person is finding fault within themselves, so the high majority will give up on people who find any of the fault in them. It means abusers never grow out of what they are doing. When survivors finally become enlightened through therapy, and really understand where their internal dialog came from, they are too much of a liability to the abuser and the abuser's ego, especially if the survivor gets good therapy.

In order to be a healthy person, you have to be both self reflective (i.e. know what caused a reaction in the other person) and at the same time know the agenda of other people. Enlightenment and maturity require both. My own view is that if you really want to do well in life you should study personality disorders to avoid the kind of thinking and confusion that leads to too much self reflection and not enough reflection of how others are behaving.

If you are a child abuse survivor, it would be good to read up on PTSD too to understand why you react the way that you do, why you are drawn to certain people, and the thoughts, feelings, "mental tapes", ruminations, sleeping patterns, anxiety (hypervigilence), situations, careers, styles of dress, why you keep house a certain way, and so on. The more self awareness you have, the more that you can transcend feeling wounded by the child abuse, the better a parent you will be, and the better antennae you will have for healthy people (i.e. people you do want and don't want around your children, your spouse, your friends and yourself).

In general, healthy people do not want to erroneously blame; they won't be trying to trash your self esteem; they won't send blaming shaming flying monkeys your way to hurt you; they won't be comparing you negatively to others, they won't be punishing (abusive) towards you; they won't be giving you the silent treatment if they feel they can't dominate you (i.e. put themselves in the dominant "up position" and you the receiver of the domination in the "down position"). They won't be beating you up for facial expressions. Be with the healthy people.

As to why abusers act like this?

It has to do with how they were molded as children by the parent. In family systems theory, an abusive-style golden child is molded to be competitive, aggressive, to sweet talk to get what he wants, to be an authority figure, and often groomed to feel he can do no wrong and that he is entitled to receive "more". A scapegoat is molded to think about why he or she is being abused and listening  to a parent telling them how they deserved it, why they are flawed and unwanted, to walk on eggshells and to be super-sensitive to everyone else's feelings while denying their own, and often groomed to feel they can do no right (given double bind situations and dilemmas), and punished  by receiving "less".

Please note that not all golden children are molded to be bullies. Some are just molded to be sycophants (put the parent first place in their lives). But over half are the bully-style goldens.

Some psychologists say that narcissism is inherited, that it has something to do with genes. But I tend to pay most attention to psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula's findings in that "narcissists and sociopaths are made, and psychopaths are born". That is because they have done the best extensive studies on it at the lab where she works: the University of Southern California. Dr. Judy Rosenberg is also a proponent of the same kinds of models and findings, and also resides in Southern California where the extensive tests have been done.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula has also made the claim that a lot of narcissism and sociopathy is a "bully golden child issue"; i.e. that the golden child is often molded to be a mini-me version of the narcissistic or sociopathic parent, or to be an agent of the parent (someone who will uphold the parent's agendas).

With so much molding and grooming to make a golden child feel good and rewarded about being a bully, and unempathetic to the plight of his or her siblings, to be "better than your siblings", this has a lot to do with how they end up being abusers. The scapegoats on the other hand are groomed to "think about what you have done", and it may very well have included facial expressions, tones of voice and other erroneous blaming incidents that the golden child sees throughout childhood.

One reason why abusers think it is reasonable to hurt others over facial expressions and a tone of voice or a glance is probably because they saw it happen in their childhood home. It was normalized. The administration of the punishments were most likely promoted and accepted. Not having empathy was also promoted and accepted. Most likely no one ever really listened to the person who was being blamed over a facial expression or tone of voice.

When children are brought up to be a competitive aggressive bully who can do no wrong, they will most likely become a permanent unchanging bully who feels he is always right.

The major reason why they can't and don't want to change can be about the parent's suppression of empathy in all of the children except the scapegoat. They survived the abusive early atmosphere by siding with the parent and being unempathetic. If they had been empathetic for a sibling who was receiving a great deal of abuse, they surmise they would have been severely punished for it.

When you have a bully golden child as a mate, you have a person who was molded in this way, to look at himself as a person who can never do wrong, to not to feel empathy over someone's suffering or injustice (to feel disgust over abused disenfranchised members of society instead, although they do "fake it" sometimes to not appear suspect), to erroneously blame when there aren't better blaming opportunities to latch onto, to be an administrator of punishments, to be entitled to receive extraordinary "me first" rewards, praise and treatment.

The only thing that would change that mold from childhood is if they dared to have empathy and to give you some empathy. Try talking an abuser into empathy. It doesn't happen. If anything, they become enraged instead. Or they say that "Empathy is for weaklings" or "I don't care about empathy" or they will be gaslighting you and playing a game of one-ups-manship: "I am more empathetic than you are!"

Without empathy, you won't be treated right. You won't have a healthy relationship. If anything you will experience more and more invalidation from your abuser and more pain.

Some other reasons why they are doing this:

1. They feel deeply wounded when you don't do exactly what they want (narcissistic injury). Part of this is entitlement run amok: i.e. they feel they deserve something and you don't deserve the same thing. If you are honest about your abuser, they would never tolerate you punishing them over a facial expression. So it is hypocrisy run amok too.
   Most abusers look at their victims as little children (called infantilizing). Part of infantilizing means they will be lecturing, telling you what to do, what to say, reprimanding you, being patronizing, being dictatorial, being dominating, insisting you tell them where you are and what you are doing at all times, insisting that you break confidential information that others have told you. "Infantilizing" mainly means treating you like a child. If someone did this to them, would they have tolerance for this? So, again, we run into a situation of hypocrisy.
   Do they change their behavior? Not very likely. They get addicted to power and control. Once they feel they cannot dominate you in this way, they often leave you to find someone who they can dominate and infantilize more than they could you.

2. Invalidating and perspecticide: In a lot of ways this is about infantilizing too. They want you to assume that you don't know your feelings and thoughts, only they do. And if you tell them that they are not getting your feelings and thoughts right, they will call you a liar. In other words, they try to brainweash you into thinking that only they can tell what you feel and think, and that you don't. A lot of narcissists and sociopaths like to think of themselves as mind readers, but they are often much further "off the mark" than the rest of the population. See my post on false narratives.

3. How much authority and pain will you withstand from them?: I would describe this as a cruel game. They usually insert more emotional pain as time goes on in your relationship and increase the erroneous blaming too in order to see how much they can get away with hurting you with this tactic (and therefor putting up with them). Usually if they are at the stage where they are terrorizing you over facial expressions and vocal tones, the erroneous blaming is at its ultimate. It means, to them, that they can blame you for anything and everything, even completely made up things, that they no longer have to look for a good excuse to punish you, that a facial expression will do, a vocal tone will do, looking over at something or someone will do, and that you will tolerate it (if you stay with them or still want them). It also signals to them that you can be brainwashed and bullied into thinking something is wrong with you, even your facial expressions and vocal tones. If you have gotten to this stage, you have heard more "what's-wrong-with-you stuff" than you can even count: hundreds of times? thousands of times? tens of thousands of times? hundreds of thousands of times? So the facial expressions and vocal tones stage is like reaching the mountain of domination for them: they have achieved the ultimate in arrogance: the right to tell you what you feel, think, experience, and what every move, bodily function and bodily twitch means about you (most of it will be used as a weapon). To them this is something they take with dead seriousness. For you, I hope you are laughing, and see how incredibly silly and posturing this is (it is like they want to play the role of king, but too arrogant to know that there are no clothes on them).

4. They generally make assumptions about others, even about facial expressions, because they are too self involved to do anything else.
   They are also incredibly unable to self reflect. Most of us mull through personal issues this way: "I said this, which caused them to react that way, which caused me to react this way, which caused them to react that way - jeez, we need to fix this! Obviously we are triggering each other, and taking a lot of baggage into this issue." - that is how most of us think, but it is not how they think. They think this way instead: "They caused me to react this way, and it is up to them to fix it." - that's narcissism. And it is also the big difference between normalcy and narcissism.
   Because they are unable to self reflect, most of what they have to say is projection: what is going on inside of them (not you). If they think your facial expression means that you want to hurt them, it probably means they want to hurt you (big warning sign that they probably will hurt you). If they think your tone of voice is disrespectful, it is probably because they are disrespectful (and most of us know it: they insult people like crazy). If they think you glanced at a man because you want to cheat on them and make love to the guy you glanced at, it is probably because he is cheating, and looks at women as sex objects (and we know that many narcissists are pathological cheaters). In fact projection is so reliable, you can tell the motivations of your abuser, the thoughts of your abuser, what actions your abuser may take against you by what he says about you.
   Because so much of their judgments about you are projection, you also know that they are intimidated by your strengths, and perhaps your normalcy too. The reason why they have to appear stronger and domineering than you is because they don't feel strong inside (it actually is blustering, kind of how a house cat puffs up its fur when feeling threatened). It becomes a competition for who is going to be the dominant heavy-weight in the relationship. If they were actually secure, they would not need to dominate. They would not need to tell you that everything is your fault and nothing is their fault. They wouldn't need to put you down to feel better. They wouldn't need to tell you that you are crazy (let's face it: narcissism, abuse, gaslighting, perspecticide and expecting perfection in deeds in looks is pretty darn crazy, and crazy making ... and yet very few of us tell them they are crazy because we have empathy and don't want to hurt their self esteem).
   Probably the most crazy-making thing they do is to assume that you look at them as the ultimate authority figure on what and who you are, that they are mind readers, what fleeting moments of looks mean about you, and they never question the validity of making improper and absurd judgments about any of this. They can even hate you and kill you over crazy judgments. I would say that's a lot more insane than anything we do.

Which is to say that once they are at the stage of punishing you over facial expressions, glances and vocal intonations, they are dangerous. You're in trouble. Time to call a domestic violence center. I have met so many battered women over this issue that I have lost count.

As for survivors living through this: getting a complex about your facial expressions, not wanting to hurt an abusive person over a glance, kids crying because "my face does things I don't want it to do because I'm always being hit for what's on my face!" is common to the brainwashing experience. We are constantly groomed to see these experiences as "something being wrong" with how we are communicating. Punishing you over facial expressions and vocal tones is a practice among incarcerated abusers as much as high functioning non-incarcerated "trickster", successful educated abusers. Abuse is abuse, and we even see abuse in presidents, and presidents are more powerful than your abuser, so don't assume that they are so powerful that you can't call the police or domestic violence centers for help.

IT IS VERY COMMON THAT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE THERAPISTS

SPEND A LOT OF INITIAL TREATMENT ON THE SUBJECT:

In the very beginning of treatment, most therapists spend an inordinate amount of time trying to deal with the facial expression issue:

"You don't deserve to be hit because you glanced across the room!"
"No, there is nothing wrong with your facial expressions!"
"No, that's THEIR interpretation of what you are feeling!"
"If someone made a grimace at you on the street, would you punch him in the gut? There are many reasons why we don't punch someone over a grimace, and there are many reasons why a lot of people don't do it on the street! Because they could be arrested! Punching you in the secrecy of a home is as illegal as doing it on a street. It is harder to arrest people who do it in a home and that's why abusers choose home to do it. It's called isolation and a lot of abusers practice isolation on their victims. They are also cowards and liars. In order to be an effective coward and a liar, they have to do their abuse  without eyes on the situation. Anyway, always think of this as being as arrest-able as punching you in the gut on a busy street with people looking on. Do you understand what I am saying? This is not normal behavior on your abuser's part. Looking at someone does not make his actions redeemable. This has nothing to do with you. Not at all. Don't be brainwashed!"
"Glances and facial expressions can have many interpretations, plus they are all fleeting. Don't get talked into deserving to be punished over them!"
"No, that's called gaslighting! I'm a therapist and I don't think you are crazy! I'm the one doling out the diagnoses! There is absolutely nothing crazy about you at all!"
"Again, everyone in the room, listen up! Abusers love to call you crazy! Many love to punish you over facial expressions and glances!"
"Did you deserve to be hit because your husband decided that how you looked at him was offensive? If a three year old child looked at you with that expression, would you hit that child? No, of course you wouldn't! So, why should you get hit for that same expression?"
"Did you plan on an expression just to hurt your mother? No, it was a fleeting expression, something that changes from moment to moment. That does not deserve your mother's abandonment of you!"

This is not much different than the Turpins trying to convince their children that if they get water from the faucet past their wrists, they deserve to be chained up, lying in their own excrement and beaten.

Did those children still get startled if water splashed past their wrists even when they were away from their parents and into foster homes? Probably yes. Because they were groomed so consistently that water past their wrists was a punishable offense.

Do victims of domestic violence get hung up on what is sweeping across their face? Yes, absolutely. It takes time to get past the brainwashing about facial expressions, vocal tones and the violence.

But if you want to survive and to be happy, you must allow domestic violence workers to help you shed the grooming and the brainwashing. Spending your time with other survivors is important too, as you will realize it is possible to get through the experiences.

As long as you and your therapist are questioning the validity of someone punishing you over facial expressions, glances and vocal tones, you are on the right track. If you have a therapist who hasn't addressed this issue, and it is a big issue in your relationship with your abuser, I would find another therapist. In fact any kind of erroneous blaming is too big an issue for a therapist to ignore.

There is never an excuse for punishing you over facial expressions, glances and vocal tones. In fact, if you are an adult (over age 18 years old), there are no reasons for punishments, period. Always look at punishments in close personal relationships as abuse. If you are under age 18, and this is a pattern (i.e. not a one-time occurrence), you can call Child Protective Services (even without your parent's permission).

(edit on 7/7/2020):

After I published this post, Richard Grannon put up a video that I think best explains the dynamic of what goes on in domestic violence counseling to get a co-dependent thinking about breaking free of their abuser: to stop fawning, to stop being brainwashed that just a glance deserves a beating (or other kinds of abuse), and ultimately to stop victimization. 

My comment to him was the following:

"This is a much more elaborated version that is taught in domestic violence counseling (especially women who are beaten for just glancing at someone of the opposite sex ... 'Sleeping with the Enemy' movie portrays this dynamic). Beaten women have to be talked out of 'the glance' being their fault (and yet they know it is not their fault, but again, they feel they have to please the narcissist). I am going to suggest this video on my own blog as I think this is a better way to teach it in domestic violence counseling rather than going over and over the brainwashing ("No, you don't deserve to be hit! Hitting is not a reasonable response to glancing at anything!"). This breaks it down and I think would have a greater impact at educating women in terms of 'toxic attachment' to a narcissist. Great video."

I'm not crazy about his title however. A better phrase might be "Understanding Yourself and the Narcissist in the Co-dependency Game":

"Codependent as mirror image of narcissist"

by Richard Grannon

further reading:

Erroneous Blaming - my own post

Invalidation and Perspecticide - my own post

Mommie Dearest Movie Review - my own post (Mommie Dearest as portrayed by her adoptive daughter punished her child over facial expressions, a tone of voice and a glance)

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements - by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ralph Adolphs, Stacy Marsella, Aleix M. Martinez, Seth D. Pollak for Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Perceiving the evil eye: Investigating hostile interpretation of ambiguous facial emotional expression in violent and non-violent offenders - by Niki C. Kuin, Erik D. M. Masthoff, Marcus R. Munafò and Ian S. Penton-Voak (project funded by a number of universities)

Why our facial expressions don’t reflect our feelings - by Talya Rachel Meyers for the BBC

excerpt:

For centuries, we’ve believed that facial expressions mirror our innermost emotions. But recent research has found that may be far from the truth.

Physical Aggression and Facial Expression Identification - by Alisdair James Gordon Taylor and Maria Jose for the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom.

In your face: the biased judgement of fear-anger expressions in violent offenders - by
Martin Wegrzyn, Sina Westphal & Johanna Kissler
excerpt:
... For example, inmates diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy have been found to show deficits in emotion expression recognition ...

Factors of Emotion Recognition in Faces: Three Perspectives - by Jeremy Fox for John Hopkins University

Psychopathy and Identification of Facial Expressions of Emotion - by Mark E. Hastings, Ph.D., June P. Tangney, Ph.D., and Jeff Stuewig, Ph.D.

This article talks about the impaired recognition of sociopaths and psychopaths when it comes to facial expressions (i.e. the ability to tell whether someone else is happy or sad)

Cynical Hostility and the Accuracy of Decoding Facial Expressions of Emotions - by Kevin T. Larkin, Ronald R. Martin and Susan E. McClain for Journal of Behavioral Medicine

Generalized hostile interpretation bias regarding facial expressions: Characteristic of pathological aggressive behavior - by Smeijers D, Rinck M, Bulten E, van den Heuvel T, Verkes RJ for:

* Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

* Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

* Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

* Pompestichting, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Psychopathic traits in adolescents and recognition of emotion in facial expressions - by Silvio José Lemos Vasconcellos, Roberta Salvador-Silva, Viviane Gauer and Gabriel José Chittó Gauer
for Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, Brasil and Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil

Facial affect processing in incarcerated violent males: A systematic review - by
HarrietChapmana, Steven M.Gillespie and Ian J. Mitchell for Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 38, January–February 2018, Pages 123-138

Looking For Trouble (And Seeing It) - Association for Psychological Science

Do People See Emotions in Your Face That Aren't There? (Studies of "resting bitch face," and why women see it more than men). - by Gwendolyn Seidman Ph.D. for Psychology Today

When a smile becomes a fist: the perception of facial and bodily expressions of emotion in violent offenders - by M. E. Kret & B. de Gelder for Experimental Brain Research (Springer Link)

Facial expressions don't tell the whole story of emotion (Researchers warn of drawing too-quick conclusions about people's feelings) - Ohio State University 

Social-emotional agnosia - a Wikipedia article

Why faces don’t always tell the truth about feelings (Although AI companies market software for recognizing emotions in faces, psychologists debate whether expressions can be read so easily) - by Douglas Heaven for Nature

Alexithymia, but not autism spectrum disorder, may be related to the production of emotional facial expressions - by Dominic A. Trevisan, Marleis Bowering and Elina Birmingham for Molecular Autism

The Punishing Personality Type - by Eric R. Maisel, Ph.D., for Psychology Today
This article is about how abusers get obsessed with punishing, and why they think they have never punished you enough.

Child Abuse, Punishment or Discipline: What is the Difference - by Jody J. Pawel for The Parent's Toolshop
Note: this is only for children under 16 - 18 years old, depending on state. Punishing an adult is always abuse.

When People Say You Always Looks Angry/Upset/Worried/etc - by Chris Macleod, MSW for Succeed Socially

Lack of Facial Expressions: Symptoms & Signs - by Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, for MedicineNet

Research says ‘emotion detection’ AI can’t do what it claims - by Taylor Telford, The Washington Post for New Hampshire Union Leader

When a Sociopath Is Hell Bent on Destroying You (If you've been abused by a sociopath, here are 16 focus points for recovery) - by Carrie Barron M.D.

My facial expressions convey feelings which I am not thinking. How can I change this? - Quora forum

Are You the Target of a Sociopath? Part I of 2 (Anti-social personalities want to dominate people. Don’t let it be you.) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

Part 2: How to Spot a Sociopath in 3 Steps (It helps to know some of the warning signs of sociopaths.) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

6 Tips to Avoid Becoming Someone’s Target of Blame (People with high-conflict personalities are always looking for someone to blame.) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

Narcissists, Sociopaths: Similarities, Differences, Dangers (Both of these personalities present a false self, so we must be aware) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

Keep the Conflict Small: 4 Tips to Avoid High Conflict (In families, dating, work and even in politics, don’t get emotionally hooked.) - by Bill Eddy LCSW, JD for Psychology Today

The Psychology of Revenge (and Vengeful People) ... (When it comes to watching your back, hone in on narcissism and anger.) - by Peg Streep for Psychology Today

Revenge and the people who seek it (New research offers insight into the dish best served cold.) - by Michael Price for American Psychological Association

Understanding and Ameliorating Revenge Fantasies in Psychotherapy - by Mardi J. Horowitz, M.D.

The Benefits, Costs, and Paradox of Revenge - Karina Schumann and Michael Ross for the University of Waterloo

Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence - by Alex Berenson for Hillside College