Why People May be Attacking You and Causing Pain
Why other people do what they do
You could be in a situation right now that makes little-to-no sense in your mind yet there is an explanation that could provide clarity, even if it isn’t desirable to learn.
Yael Schonbrun, a practicing clinical psychologist and faculty at Brown University, wrote about it at Relational Riffs, her smart Substack newsletter:
“We view our (poor) actions as being reasonable given the context and because, bad as we might have behaved, (we feel that) other people are worse. And let’s face it, when we feel cut, a retaliatory cut seems totally justified.”
If you’re the target, knowing this hurts. What you read above could be why you are being unjustly, immorally the subject of an offensive.
The aggressors behavior is very normal because, “We will always feel like the pain we experience is greater than the pain we inflict,” Schonbrun wrote.
That wiring means that it is “almost inevitable that we view our own actions as justified retaliation, an effort to even the score or let the other side know we aren’t going to take the harm they’ve inflicted lying down.”
Meaning
If you’ve been targeted and “hit” and this may very well have been the reason. People felt, right or wrong, that you have harmed them and they decided that you needed to be punished to learn from the errors of your ways.
Maybe you did harm them intentionally. The reality though is that only perception needs to be present needs in their minds. It could be that they feel you were a threat or cost them something to which they feel entitled.
Now, in their thinking, you must pay the price.
Your personality, morals and character will decide what you do next. Maybe you do the right moral thing or you give into anger and fire back on them with hurt.
“The trouble is, every time we retaliate, we give the other side ammunition to justify their retaliation even more strongly,” Schonbrun warned.
Pause and think about that for a long moment because this is a significant danger. Are you ready for more damage to be inflicted on you for negatively responding to the initial attack you endured and the harm sustained?
“But they can’t get away with it,” you may object. Question: Are you ready to possibly invite more of it into your life?
To prevent that, it might require not trying to repay a wrong with a wrong. This, of course, doesn’t mean that you have to let what they did go or let them continue aggressing. It means be wise in considering the real possibilities of risks, your tolerance for them, if you can take it and how you will respond.
Can and will you solve the battle or war they declared in the most intelligent manner or go hard at them and hope they or other forces don’t come back at you harder, because they might not just come at you on a solo mission. It could be a coordinated attack for which you are not expecting or prepared.
How They Can Do It So Easily
Most people don’t seek to punish you, even if it feels like it. Some are obsessed with it.
“Self-justification allows us to protect ourselves and continue to see ourselves as ‘good’ even when we do things that would otherwise threaten our sense of self,” Schonbrun wrote.
“Researchers call the drive to reduce the difference between our moral code and our actions cognitive dissonance.”
Yes, you read that correctly: people can still see themselves as good even when they are behaving in illegal and immoral ways. They accomplish this charade through the aforementioned “self justification.”
So when you ask, “How can they act this way? Don’t they know it’s wrong and not to do it?” they know what they are doing is wrong, at least on some levels.
They manage it emotionally and psychologically because they’ve created a self-justification with what we would consider distortions and mental gymnastics to make what they are doing seem reasonable, understandable and justice in their brains.
Please Keep This in Mind Though
People self justify their bad behavior but they will not tolerate you doing the same.
“Though we easily justify our own actions, we struggle to extend that courtesy to others, Schonbrun detailed.
It’s known as fundamental attribution error, which is where people look at their own bad behavior as being normal in the context of what they experienced: “When we feel hurt, we tend to view our responses as being self-protective and justified,” Schonbrun wrote.
Yet, when they look at other people’s undesirable behavior they determine it as unacceptable character flaws that should have been controlled and not occurred.
This is not as uncommon as you might assume. To the contrary, it’s a regular happening and in a heated conflict, it occurs with high frequency.
Schonbrun made one final, important point when people engage in this “sorry, not sorry” attack on you.
“When we hate people or groups, we tend to believe they are fundamentally evil and lacking in humanity, and that those fundamental characteristics are unchangeable,” which can make dehumanization easier and more likely to be administered, she explained.
“Hatred, of course, is powerful foodstuff for self-justification.”
In brief, if it has been determined by someone that you are, to them, or others, an a rotten person (or enemy) guilty (factual or not) of egregious wrongdoing, you may be seen as not worthy of being treated humanely and very deserving of dehumanization.
The Reputation Intelligence newsletter (on Substack and LinkedIn) is produced by Michael Toebe, the specialist at Reputation Intelligence, a decision-analysis and communications practice that serves individuals and organizations with proactive and responsive actions to build, protect, improve or rebuild credibility and trust.
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