The Women Psych: Stockholm Syndrome

In this post, I’m gonna talk about love. But not love in galau-ish sense. This is more into the psychology of women. There will be two parts. Part 1 will talk about how women can be stuck in abusive relationship. Part 2 will talk about how the bastards can get the girls :P. Go read!

---

Have you observed, or even experienced it by yourself, an abusive relationship? In which the woman suffered a lot of verbal, psychological, and even physical abuses? Yet despite after a lot of advices, still couldn’t let go her boyfriend. She even forgave him, and blamed friends and families, saying that they couldn’t understand her feelings? You might wonder how could this possibly happen. But yes, this is possible to happen. This is called Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome is a paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which the victim shows affection and emotional attachment to the abuser. The name Stockholm syndrome comes from a robbery that took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1979, in which the robbers took bank workers as hostages for 5 days long. After released, they had attachments to the robbers and even defended their actions.

How can Stockholm syndrome shape a form of attachment? Firstly, the existence of threat and abuse. Verbal, mental, psychological, and physical abuses will degrade the victim’s confidence, creating a sense of helplessness. Threat will prevent the victim to report the abuser or get away from the relationship, even more if the abuser tells the victim that he “can’t live without her” and will commit suicide if the victim leaves.

Secondly, isolation and alienation. Be it physical, mental, or emotional. The abuser becomes so possessive and obsessive then creates a barrier for the victim to socialize. For instance, the abuser demands all the victim’s social networking passwords (Facebook, Twitter, Y!M, etc) or obsessive checking to the victim’s cell phone message inbox, or prohibition to contact someone, be it a male coworker, or male boss, or even male friend. This isolation will further dissociate the victim from her surrounding, and will worsen the sense of helplessness.

Thirdly, a form of compassion or love that is sometimes shown by the abuser. Because the victim is getting used from the pain and abuses, she becomes so “addicted” in waiting when the good thing will come. When this “good thing” is given by the abuser, this becomes something that’s so precious for the victim, creating false sense of hope that the abuser will change into someone better.

These all accumulate into helplessness and shame that will make the victim reluctant to tell to others, especially when her social life is so isolated by the abuser. The victim will then close herself from others and reject those who are trying to help her. She will feel that no one understands her feelings. This will be fatal, because the victim will gradually accept that “this is her fate”, and that the abuser is the only one that understands her. This will create an emotional addiction and she will think that this is “love.”

How to get out from such Stockholm syndrome? Well, for the victim, it requires a lot of effort. Usually the victim will realize that this is a destructive relationship after it’s too late, after the abuser almost kills her life or that the torture is so severe that it slap her back into the reality. As a friend, if you know this, it’s better to report to the police (because it constitutes a domestic violence), parents, and also psychiatrist (because this will leave the victim with deep emotional scar, even make the victim become too paranoid to start a new relationship)

But prevention is always better, right? Here is some guidance to know whether your current boyfriend will be a potential abuser:

1. Blamer: the one who blames his negative feelings or bad luck to someone/something else. Some of them are just good in seducing and making you feels good by comparing you to other person (“my stupid bitchy ex girlfriend”). You will come to think that what he needs is love from a good woman that you’ll provide. But beware; when you get closer to him, you’ll be the one that is blamed by him most of the time.

2. Entitlement: the one who always thinks that he is special and deserves special consideration/treatment. This type of person is highly egoistical and easily offended if he doesn’t get what he wants or what people should do to him. He will love to point out that he is smart and no one should disagree with him. He will have a very high self-esteem, a predatory self-esteem, and he will feel good if he succeeds in belittling others. The one who always thinks that life is unfair. This type of person is locked to his own sense of perspective, that he will neglect the rights and perspective of others, including his girlfriend.

3. Whiner: this type of person will focus on small mistake and exaggerate it. Be it the food in restaurant that tastes bad or that male friend who innocently ask you about how is your life currently. He will always complain about this and bring these little mistakes up every time you have a quarrel.

4. Sarcasm: that is directed to you, his girlfriend! Hostile sarcasm often means to devalue the girlfriend, to shake her confidence, and to get temporary ego gain to make his position in relationship higher than you.

5. Deceitful: the one who loves to lie, unintentionally or intentionally.

6. Controlling: if he starts defining boundaries over with whom you should go, urging you to block some of your male friends in Facebook, etc. That is.

If you feel that your boyfriend fulfills some, if not most or all the criteria, then be careful, maybe, at some point in the future you might fall into this Stockholm syndrome.