Dark Triad, trauma, DID, and self defense, recovery
Funnily enough I had a conceptual view of evil before, but a blind spot to real life malevolence in certain people. That has led to being around questionable or outright dangerous persons for honestly too long..
The Dark Triad:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triadCharacterized by narcissism (grandiosity, egotism), psychopathy (unable to empathize, cruel, impulsive) and machivaellianism (cold calculation, manipulation, exploitation).
Growing up with such people and forced into close personal ties with them, such as them being your parent, is probably a source of much early life trauma and consequent coping styles and mental, physical problems and disorders. Certainly had this with my own mom.
Later in life we can find ourselves in similar personal relationships, drawn to or blind to them because of the (unconscious) sense of familiarity.
One of the ways to cope with being a victim of emotional, mental, financial or physical abuse, when this comes from someone we are supposed to look up to and depend on, is to normalize their behavior, and possibly blame ourselves for the abuse or any pain and loss resulting from it all. Sadly people who fit the Dark Triad traits will often also normalize and justify their behavior, and more than willing to put all the blame on the victim. This can lead to self-destructive and self-punitive, self-controlling (in a tyrannical sense) tendencies in the victim.
One common effect already discussed on this website is dissociation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology) ), which in extreme form can result in Dissociative Identity Disorder:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorderOther possible resulting disorders are (Complex) PTSD and borderline like traits, even psychosis.
So what can we do in self defense and prevention?
The one thing that often provides an (eventual) bedrock is objectivity, facing the facts about your reality. This can be tough if we have been conditioned and trained into having an overly favoring or fearful view of the abuser, and a devaluing, denigrating view of ourselves, or other delusions and confusion surrounding the problematic relationship(s). Ideally you have some kind of support system at hand, that aids in a honest and objective assessment of the facts. But in the end you need to do the work of correcting your views yourself, a step at a time.
This requires a framework of good and evil behaviors, thoughts, beliefs and intents. You need to be able to fairly categorize instances of those, without giving in to excuses you, the abuser or surrounding social structures have set up to justify and normalize the abuse and exploitation. Keeping a notebook and writing down instances of unacceptable, boundary violating behavior, can be a useful tool to accumulate evidence for yourself and others.
