No. Not all hurt people hurt others to cope. This generalized, oversimplified quick wisdom may be good for TikTok compassion, but it may potentially not only justify abusers’ behaviors but also invalidate victims. Trauma and issues of abusers don’t excuse them from accountability.
And this thought occurred to me, somehow, after popular content online remains concerning.
Empathy Doesn’t Mean Forgiveness
Empathy can help us understand how someone became harmful, but that understanding alone doesn’t resolve anything. A person may carry pain, fear, neglect, or trauma and still be fully responsible for the damage they cause. Not every traumatized soul chooses to hurt others; quite the opposite. Many of us developed a kind of hyper-compassion, so harming others is the last thing we would ever do—under any circumstances. Because we understand not only pain, but the depth of it, and how hard it is to heal.
Everyone experiences some degree of trauma.
It can shape behavior, but it never justifies abuse. Many people live with trauma and do not become controlling, cruel, or violent. What turns pain into abuse is not the pain itself, but the choice to use power, intimidation, manipulation, or repeated boundary violations against another person. Regardless of the unconscious nature of some of the mechanisms, decision-making is a deliberate cognitive process that requires full consciousness.
I can speak from the victims’ standpoint: the most destructive harm of trauma is not only victim-shaming, but also the pressure to “understand” the person who hurt them. That is re-traumatizing. That pressure can sound compassionate, but it can also silence accountability. Empathy should help us see complexity and nuances, not erase consequences. We can recognize that someone is wounded without asking the person they harmed to carry the burden of that wound.
Do Not Judge
Another overlooked point: empathy and resentment are not contradictory. We can understand the mechanism and still want revenge. I personally never agree with suppressing anger. You can’t ask someone who has never even felt safe enough to process their feelings to manage them instead. And in that context, unfortunately, emotional management usually equates to “suppression” —just a matter of word choice that makes the speaker look better.
“Oh, I’m sorry you need to experience that. But,” they brushed it off as if it was the victim’s fault to begin with. “You know, hurt people hurt. They may just as much struggle as you deep down.”
Many people don’t realize that a seemingly simple comment can trigger victims, yet if we snapped, they suddenly have “evidence” to re-evaluate who the abuser is. Especially when they know someone has chosen sublimation as a way to cope, our triggered response becomes their proof that “we are the problem.”
It is the same for revenge. Many people like to frame revenge as something unworthy, even foolish. But I have a question: Commentors who are taking the moral and wisdom high ground, have you ever been hurt so deeply that you felt your power was completely stripped away? Can you imagine your own mother wishing you would die so she could get a divorce and marry the person she’s having an affair with? Have you ever been with someone who uses your trauma to measure how much they can take advantage of you?
Or are you simply projecting your own fear?
Trauma is highly subjective; don’t compare experiences. If someone feels they need revenge, validate that feeling. For anyone who habitually judge than thinks (they probably would not read this, though): If you have never experienced anything or lack empathy and self-awareness, not your place to preach. You’re just using an “easy target” proxy to cope. If anything, the fact that some people latch onto someone else’s trauma just to gain exposure tells me their opinions don’t matter.
Final Note
Today’s final note is short, but very necessarily short:
Abuse is abuse. No reason for abuse is an excuse.
*What is Daily Insight? An ongoing series of quick, bite-sized brain snacks. Every week, there are three research-based factual reports and three research-informed reflective notes.
