Hidden Aggression: 3 Types of Violence You Didn’t Even Suspect

Aggression is felt by people as a threat if it crosses psychological barriers and invades internal borders too much. A person must defend his privacy and remove the aggressor with the means at hand.

Aggression can be manifested by physical attacks, insults, threats aimed at the opponent. It can be aimed at the environment, such as breaking dishes or doors. But there is also hidden aggression.

Hidden aggression is a daily act on someone, but as subtly as possible, because not all people can show aggression openly. They may be afraid of a certain response or that they will be convicted of aggressive actions or they may simply consider open aggression indecent.

Encouraging violence

Many people complain about their loved ones. They say that they live in a family with their parents - wonderful people, but for some reason, they feel somehow uncomfortable, they don't want to see them, to talk to them.

Sam Vaknin, an Israeli writer, called this type of aggression "violence" shrouded or hidden. In this case, the aggressors apply hidden methods of invading foreign borders. Victims often do not understand what is happening. Sometimes, for some unknown reason, they feel dissatisfied with these wonderful people who are with them.

Such aggression is based on various minor acts of establishing control over the victim, creating addiction, insecurity, feelings of helplessness, lack of hope for life, isolation.

In the long run, such an atmosphere undermines self-esteem. At the same time, the victim's identity acquires paranoid or schizoid, neurotic features, all the more paving the way for the aggressors' attacks.

Vaknin identifies the following types of hidden violence:

1. Gaslighting - the story of this name is related to the old detective story, in which the husband decided to poison his wife. His wife assumed something was wrong.

She saw that the gas lamps in their house were burning with an uneven light (visual impairment was a sign of poisoning), and the victim drew her husband's attention to this fact. In the case of this type of aggression, the attacker convinces the victim that her feelings and suspicions are caused by another factor - fatigue, hard work, lack of understanding, lack of competence, and even hidden mental disorder and weakness.

What the victim feels, what causes dissatisfaction, is immediately explained by the aggressor - "you just think so", "you think so because you are depressed, but everything is fine", "you are too suspicious of the usual comments", " the family did not give you the right experience and you do not know how it is normal ".

Soon, the victim begins to believe that something is wrong with her and only the aggressor understands what is happening.

2. Holding (withdrawal) - these include certain tactics of the aggressor that do not allow the victim to somehow express his thoughts and emotions.

These are actions such as "boycott" (refusal to communicate), devaluation of emotions (only idiots laugh at such jokes, only psychologists are upset by such things), devaluation of hopes and plans (how can you dream such a thing), accomplishments (any fool can do that), jokes that block communication (changing the subject, distracting yourself with strangers during a conversation, postponing the conversation for later), pursuing, criticizing.

As a result of these measures, the victim begins to limit himself to expressing his opinion, emotions, desires, and plans, as nonsense, a trivial matter. She is forced not to express them. Victims have a feeling of displeasure at the manifestations of their lives because these manifestations provoke a negative reaction from others. He has to justify his feelings and actions, to apologize.

3. Blanking means neglecting the value of another person, refusing to help them, not sharing responsibilities, lack of support.

For example, the husband refuses to allocate money for the needs of the other or the welfare of the family, he does not provide money for raising the child. The husband refuses any help for his wife and children, arguing that it is the women's responsibility.

The parents refuse to take into account the interests of an adult child, to independently rearrange the furniture in his room, to make repairs, to throw away the things they consider useless.

These patterns of aggression can be combined as well as interspersed. For example, coffee in bed in the morning, when the victim is still asleep and does not intend to wake up. The victim shows signs of dissatisfaction and receives 2 more painkillers.

All these situations can cause a crossing over the psychological barriers of the victim. Especially if the victim thinks he is not that good or that valuable, that is, he has low self-esteem.

These types of aggression are much more common than, for example, obvious aggression. Because the victim is not always able to implement the defense mechanisms, and sometimes because he does not understand what is happening, the consequences are rather feelings of sadness and nostalgia.

Often, such actions are not committed with harmful intentions, but because of the need to strengthen their borders. Sometimes, due to their limitations, the aggressors do not understand that they have already invaded foreign territory. Pay attention to what is going on in your relationship.