I have been observing lately what has been brewing here in Norway and outside of it. From the scandal of the Norwegian Royal family (mother and kids targeted all together for different reasons) linked to the Epstein files, to the Trump paranoid way of leading a country to shocking events like the death of an entire family (parents, 2 kids with severe autism and pets) because the struggle became overwhelming. And maybe you would like to stop for a minute and think what all this have in common. What you do not see behind all the highly mediated facades of these events?

I wish to bring here the trauma-informed view and approach. And when I say trauma-informed I do not mean I read from books and I preach about some fashionable concepts as many people acclaiming to be trauma-informed do. For me trauma-informed means hundreds of hours of therapy for myself and with clients, many interactions and spoken or written contents (even books I published myself as author) to motivate people to start or continue doing the work.

Because what all these events I speak about have in common is what in trauma terminology is called survival strategy and victim-abuser dynamics. When a human being decides to take its own life or others life or abuse others (in many different forms, from physical abuse, sexual abuse to bullying, manipulation and gas-lighting to cite just few) it is because that human lost its own connection with a deeply seated sense of Identity and belonging to Life itself. When the Self is split in so many fragments and the life becomes burdensome or loses its sense, humans tend to go into extreme survival strategies, and death (as suicide or crime) is one of them.

What makes a human become an abuser?

And what makes a human become a victim also?

At the root of every developmental distortion into a role as a coping mechanism lies a fundamental need of a human being that has not been met. And usually this need starts in early childhood, even before birth. And many times we lose that memory when we have been feeling neglected, lost, not seen, not loved, not cared for, burdened by others expectations or abandoned to a fate that often is not ours but becomes our way to move on. But the body keeps the score and stores the memory, it becomes an implicit memory that can resurface in many unexpected moments and ways.

A traumatic event as those exposed above create a split in our psyche and a disconnection from the body. We fly away, we fight back, we freeze, we fawn, we submit or attach to someone or to an illusion. These are core basic strategies that allow a traumatized psyche and body to survive.

Every abuser was first a victim of someone or of a circumstance involving more than one person. Over time, the abuses become so frequent that the person needs to find its own way to cope with this repetition. And either becomes a victim, playing the Poor me, why this happens all the time, it is not about me, I am such a good person! role or becomes an abuser, the one that can show its own power and will over others through abusive behaviors. The abuser is the one that cannot stop anymore finding excuses to its own flows and negative patterns and uses others to achieve that satisfaction to be in command and able to submit others to its own will. More abuses others, more the urge to abuse and show its power increase. And often it happens that this kind of people get into relevant position of power and influence and apply their unsatisfied needs as a mechanism of control and corruption of others.

In this dynamic of abuser and victim there is always a poor notion of boundaries for both players and an excessive demand to feed on each other’s survival strategy to keep the dynamic alive. It becomes a psychological, emotional and energetic entanglement to the point that the victims often would excuse the perpetuator behavior based on their own need to play the role of victim, protecting them from an ugly and difficult truth.

My question for you now is: can you recognize for yourself those moments when you played the victim in your life and those moments when you got into the abuser seat?

How do you feel about understanding that you can be both victim and abuser at a certain point in your life?

Would this understanding make you more aware of what exactly lies behind what you hear or read about the people involved in Epstein files case or those who decide to take life of other people for their own reason?

I am not going to comment further but I hope this post of mine brings you food for thought. Nobody is safe from trauma in the times we live. But each of us has individual responsibility to deal with its own trauma and get out of its own survival strategy for a healthy life, for recovering a healthy Identity and notion of Self and for building healthy Boundaries.