4 Ways To Unmask An Abusive Person

Abuse isn’t always obvious, sometimes it comes under the garb of controlling love, emotional manipulation, and unpleasant words. Look for attitudinal signs that indicate unusual behaviour in a person.

The biggest challenge is to spot an abusive person. Often abusive side to a person emerges in circumstantial situations and is hard to detect during regular conversations.

According to Amy Bear, a psychotherapist, abusers have a charming personality. They can convince people around them with their strong, positive value system and create an aura of false belief. This is a trap for most victims who fall prey to their charisma and are thus confused at the time of mistreatment.

Abusers are not loners but in fact blend in the crowd with their friends and relatives. It’s difficult to identify them amidst their kins, but it is important to look for the following signs to avoid being victimised by them.

Four kinds of masked behavior an abuser shows

1. Lookout for an abuser in disguise of a regular person

Do not forget that an abusive person could be any regular person around you. They don’t reveal any asocial behavior in their everyday life in an obvious manner. So the question is how does one detect an abusive person amongst regular people? According to Steven Stonsy, people who blame external circumstances/people for their own failures are also often abusive in their behavior. They are those who justify their conduct by blaming the victim in return.

2. Abusers have selective victims

It’s a difficult situation for the victims to validate their truth about their abusers. Often people associated with the abuser deny any history of offensive behavior. This is because abusers are two-faced people who unmask themselves only to selective victims. Abusers reveal their violent attitude to the people in their inner circle only, preferably their partner or a family member.

3. Abusers have sporadic outbursts of good and bad behaviour

Most abusers use hot and cold way of handling relationships. They alternate between excessive abuse and affection often making the victim guilty for their retaliation. There are two ways in which they trap their victims into state of logical numbness. One, by gradually building up small acts of abuse into larger ones till they have complete control over the victim. Or, two, by confusing the victim with abusive love.

4. Abusers have chain relationships

No abuser can survive without being in control of another person. They seek gullible people and manipulate them into a relationship to execute power over them. In case their victim manages to escape continuous mistreatment, they are replaced by another recipient. Abusers are very possessive of their victims and more often than not, let their victims get away from them. They charm them back into the relationship. If that fails, they wear the disguise a little longer to lure someone else instead.

It is next to impossible to detect an abuser who could be anyone acquainted with you. But if you remember the above signs and  can sense uncanny attitude in anyone, you could save many potential victims.