How the Abused become Abusers
Why do people who are abused become abusers?
Normally, if you see someone suffer, your mirror neurons — a special type of brain cell located in the prefrontal cortex that becomes active both when an individual performs an action and when they observe someone else performing the same action — light up and you feel the suffering as if it was your own. That is called compassion (compassion literally means to suffer together, though mirror neurons work whether an action is good, bad, or neutral). The idea that you can not only watch someone suffer, but be the one to inflict that suffering, without suffering yourself would seem to run contrary to our biology.
A reptile, such a snake or a crocodile, does not have a prefrontal cortex or mirror neurons, and would not even register the suffering of another being, whether it’s the same species or not. The unique ability to “feel” what another being is feeling is reserved only for animals with more developed brains — specifically, those animals with a prefrontal cortex, or Sage Brain.
Even though we’ve climbed past reptiles on the evolutionary ladder, we humans still inherited a part of the brain from our ancestors which is the most effective tool at handling life-or-death survival: the Snake Brain. The Snake Brain works by recognizing patterns for two scenarios: first, to detect danger; and second, to detect a chance for sustenance like food or a safe place to rest. This needs to happen very quickly, or you can end up killed, or the chance to sustain your life could disappear. In addition to recognizing patterns, the Snake Brain also gives you the inner push to run away or fight the danger or to run after the prey or whatever increases your well-being.
Humans still have — and use — our Snake Brains all the time. We jump out of the way of an oncoming bus reflexively to avert danger. In the same way, we enter a bakery and buy something when we smell it from afar whether we’re hungry or not, or buy something because it is on “sale” whether we need it or not. The Snake Brain recognizes danger as well as it recognizes opportunity: both are done without thinking much about it. The Snake Brain sees and recognizes familiar patterns. Some patterns are deeply ingrained, like being alarmed when seeing a predator, but most of them have to be learned or imprinted.
One unfortunate pattern that can be imprinted is the pattern of abusive behavior. When someone is being abused, that person does not only experience his or her own suffering; they are imprinted with how the abuser behaves and how these behaviors serve the abuser’s well-being. Afterall, the better you understand the abuser, the higher chance to outmaneuver the abuser and survive. In that context, the victim also sees how much the abuser gains from perpetrating the abuse. Thus, the victim’s Snake Brain gets imprinted with the message: perpetrating abuse supports your survival. In the victim’s Snake Brain, hurting, dominating, or overpowering someone becomes an item on the list of life-sustaining behaviors, so if the opportunity presents itself, the victim jumps on it.
There is no thinking about it, no consciousness in the Snake Brain. The mirror neurons are miles away in the comparatively slow Sage Brain. And since the behavior is based on pattern recognition, circumstances do not get any consideration, because that is the characteristic of pattern recognition, and its strength: very quick and automatic. To the Snake Brain, taking time to consider the situation could lead to missing the opportunity.
This is the reason why a perpetrator of abuse can have a big mouth about how much they love and care for someone (emotions that arise in the Sage Brain), at the same time that they perpetrate abuse (driven by their Snake Brain) on the same person: in their mind, both are true and valid.
