Whistleblowers are people who set aside their own personal safety, needs, special interests, and prospective gains to set right moral injustices. Revealing deep, dark secrets of places like the military and corporate establishments, many are accused of being traitors to their professional organizations. But what of those human beings who risk social, emotional, and even physical punishment for the sake of revealing Narcissistic Abuse within a nuclear family or crime family organization?
Not only are most typically NOT believed (except in the most extreme and provable of cases), they are socially ostracized for seeking help coping with abuse and punished for striving to set the historical record straight for the purpose of spiritual, psychological, and emotional RIGHTNESS.
Wikipedia defines a Whistleblower as the following:
A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public. The information of alleged wrongdoing can be classified in many ways: violation of company policy/rules, law, regulation, or threat to public interest/national security, as well as fraud, and corruption. Those who become whistleblowers can choose to bring information or allegations to surface either internally or externally. Internally, a whistleblower can bring his/her accusations to the attention of other people within the accused organization. Externally, a whistleblower can bring allegations to light by contacting a third party outside of an accused organization. Whistleblowers can reach out to the media, government, law enforcement, or those who are concerned but also face stiff reprisal and retaliation from those who are accused or alleged of wrongdoing.
When a whistleblower is working for a professional group and discovers a “cover-up”, they may feel compelled to remain silent due to contractual obligations. Not wishing to place themselves in legal harm’s way (risking being sued or fired by an employer), overlooking and enabling is the common tactic taken by most narcissistic (simply in this context meaning self-promoting) witnesses.
But children who suffer abuse in family homes are bound by no such signature, nor are people marrying into families who either witness or suffer domestic abuse. Many survivors of extreme situational abuse by Covert Narcissists and Dark Triad personality types spend a lifetime trying to hide the shameful deeds and to (in order to avoid further punishment) PROTECT THEIR ABUSERS.
Sometimes abuse victims choose to protect a predator because they feel somehow responsible for bringing on the abuse themselves. Such is the case, for instance, of a child who has been repeatedly raped or molested by a family member or step-family member but is told by their non-offending bio-parent that they “brought the abuse on themselves”.
Parents, friends, and extended family who shame victims are the number one supporters of domestic violence and child abuse. A child told that because they were too trusting, too friendly, too “pretty”, or “too flirtatious” as a toddler is guilty of nothing more than having been hypersexualized by the adults during their infancy, toddler years, and throughout pre-teen childhood.
A child who comes forward alleging abuse should absolutely be believed and given access to both a new “safe” living environment and counseling. If the accused offended can never be prosecuted for having committed a crime, it’s hellish enough on an intelligent victim — especially on a young person still psychologically, physically, and emotionally reeling from the unlearnable notion that their body and person has in fact been violated.
If a person gets mugged on the street and is able to file a police report with the help of strangers or companions as witnesses, they tend to psychologically and emotionally recover quickly with the help of support groups and therapists.
But what child abuser or sexual molester is sure to bring along an audience when and if they elect to self-indulge their own twisted emotional needs to use or dominate a child in such a way that is clearly child abuse in the legal or moral sense of the act’s social character?
How many toddlers do YOU know who are even aware of what the word sex means — let alone has the social wiles to understand that smiling and laughing could be perceived by an adult as sexually provocative behavior?
Having heard more than one mother of a daughter or son who has been abused claim that their child was always interested in sex and acted in flirtatious ways to “seduce” their rapist or child molester as if it somehow caused, provoked, or justified abuse truly makes a healthy person’s skin crawl.
Toxic adults projecting their notions of what is and what is not acceptable behavior in the privacy of a home may have a right to decide their own lifestyle habits, but once children become part of the nuclear family equation, social service agencies should be granted more latitude with regard to handling children trapped in toxic family situations.
If a sensitive child is forced to grow up in a home with narcissistic, sociopathic, or cruel and abusive personality types, the odds are they will spend a lifetime feeling hurt, used, abused, and unable to fully express themselves functionally as humans.
Emotionally sensitive children exposed to Cluster B personality types growing up suffer tremendous social, physical, and psychological abuse at the hands of bullying parents, toxic siblings, and dysfunctional grandparents. The more family members display personality traits of Narcopaths, for instance (Narcissistic Sociopaths), or Malignant Narcissists, the more likely a sensitive child capable of feeling the emotion empathy is likely to be targeted for social abuse and outcast for even the slighted suggestion of whistleblowing to seek wise counsel and healing guidance.
Families most often guilty of punishing whistleblower children include but are not limited to having committed and subsequently covered up the following domestic abuse by habit:
- families with problem drinkers or run by alcoholics
- families with a parent or member who has a drug addiction problem
- crime families (including drug sellers or heavy users)
- families who cover for a pedophile
- families who cover for a parent or marriage partner with a sex addiction or who is a serial cheater
- families who hide the abuse of step-siblings or a step-parent
- families who enable rageaholics
- families who enable Cluster B personality types
- families where one parent or person with access to family finances has a history of making bad business decisions or has a gambling habit
- families of people with TBI who don’t want that person’s disability publicly outed
Coming forward as a family whistleblower to expose abuse can truly be traumatizing to an abuse victim who is not believed or subsequently socially supported. Flying Monkeys — the people who enable abusers — showing support for the accused while invalidating and “failing to post” to show support for the trauma victim create an entirely new form of typically unexpected trauma for the person coming forward.
Striving to seek understanding, validation of experience, and typically seeking some sort of apology oriented resolution, victims of domestic violence or child abuse face an uphill battle. The more morally insane their primary abuser and ethically vacuous their Flying Monkey supporters, the more likely an abuse victim is to be targeted for complete social and emotional destruction.
In many cases, an abuse victim not believed or validated will develop a life-threatening stress-related illness like cancer, high blood pressure, heart rate anomalies, severe migraine or headache problems common to stroke victims, and worse. If they get sick and die, the toxic family tends to celebrate their death with a “good riddance” attitude, relieved that no stories of an abuser’s secret deeds will ever be further exposed.
But a truly toxic family will actually TELL a whistleblower abuse victim that they hope they die or will encourage that person to commit suicide. The more abusive the personality type and Machiavellian their nature, the more likely they are to do things like picking their scapegoat or preferred abuse target’s lowest days in life and strive to kick them as hard as they metaphorically can psychologically when and if they suspect the person is vulnerable or down.
For instance —
- An abuser sending hate mail letters to a cancer patient in recovery, going over in detail all the reasons they claim that person is less than human, a waste of physical space, and nothing more than an “annoying” failure.
- A parent or adult child telling a person battling a late-stage terminal illness to stop taking their life saving or life-prolonging medical treatments anymore… so the family can finally cash in on and use that person’s life insurance.
- Leaving profanity-laden, violent, or threatening voicemails or sending shaming texts to an abuse victim seeking mental health care treatment or medical care for trauma-inspired anxiety disorders.
- Friends and family members of the accused going out of their way to socially support the “feelings” of the abuser while conspicuously ignoring or outright excluding the abuse victim or victims from their “social circle”.
All are common experiences for people who expose family drama in public or therapy settings — to be told they are “over-sensitive”, called “crazy”, informed that they have “wild imaginations”, etcetera.
But the most common insulting accusation and invalidation?
Being called crazy or accused of bringing up topics related to abuse or domestic violence incidents because victims are “angry”, trying to attention seek, or are simply trying to “embarrass” their abuser(s).
[Insert incredulous eye roll here, pointing a righteous blaming finger of moral outrage at any person who would be STUPID and just plain mean enough to ever utter such a toxic, shaming, invalidating, and truly socially and psychologically undermining, victim-shaming kinds of gaslighting statements.]
Anyone who knows ANYTHING about psychology or what happens to whistleblowers who come forward to reveal unpleasant, difficult, or harsh truths about an unethical organization or dysfunctional family unit knows that a victim risks incredible amounts of personal shame as well as abject humiliation to ever have endured abuse, let alone to have the strength of character to come forward and ask for help with abuse-related issues. Knowing that most abusive thinkers will figure out some twisted, messed up, and truly socially harmful way to justify both their own actions (overlooking abuse) as well as to defend the Abuser(s) leaves abuse victims typically without a friend left in the world who knows a single person in their family unit.
This can be a blessing and a curse, to be “exiled” from a toxic family and anyone who knows them. Seeking trauma care for psychic injuries is neither weak by nature or immoral.
Victims who suffer extreme social persecution for coming forward about toxic family issues might suffer feelings of hopelessness, betrayal, and abandonment by their family and FORMER friends, but truly… cutting their losses and RUNNING (even if they stay in the same town) is the recommendation for Cluster B abuse survivors.
Think of it this way…
When one gets involved with a Narcissist, Sociopath, Psychopath, person with BPD, a Histrionic person, a Narcopath… whatever… the best advice is to learn how to go “Gray Rock” while simultaneously striving to go low to no contact.
When one gets involved with an egocentric person who pathologically lies without conscience, is willing to do whatever it takes to self-promote, and comes at life from a primarily non-empathic and socially competitive place, one can predictably expect the relationship to go according to the following Narcissistic Abuse pattern.
At the start of a relationship, the Cluster B person will Lovebomb. They will strive to get to know their target’s personality motivators as well as their weak spots, gaining daily insight from the target about how to please, hurt, or make that same person feel insecure. How do they know? They ask, watch, provoke to gauge response, and they file back in their brain any information they determine could help them socially or psychologically manipulate or blackmail the person later.
During the love bombing stage, the Cluster B predator is all vocal praise for a target. Feeling loved, like they are seen, and that they can trust the Cluster B con artist is the predator’s number one goal. Some achieve the mile mark in a matter of days, while others run the long con for years while manipulating and striving to brainwash a target.
Once the target’s trust is earned, then the Cluster B person — either alone or with the help of other weaker natured Flying Monkey predators — can begin the process of messing with the head and emotions of a target. Family holiday dinners quickly reveal who is the predator and who is prey among a “close-knit” family unit.
The devaluation process — as it is known in romantic partnerships — rivals what happens as idolized infants become unruly toddlers. By the time a child reaches middle school age in a toxic family, any praise they remember receiving from doting parents and “loving” grandparents tends to have subsided into being forced to listen to insult humor and deriding remarks.
If you are a cool enough cat to blow the whistle on a toxic family, be ready for a storm of social and emotional abuse. All people with Cluster B lie, love to actively manufacture chaos, and smear campaign compulsively while striving to self-protect (but more typically to self-promote).
The cycle of narcissistic abuse for romance patterns after the family. First comes the love bombing, then the “bought and sold” enmeshment stages, immediately followed by the great devalue gaslighting ritual, and always ending up in one of two places…
Either with an Abuser hoovering (striving to regain emotional and psychological control of a former narcissistic supply source that balked) or with the preferred scapegoat target to be placed actively, conspicuously, and specifically TO humiliate a victim of abuse into what is known in pop-psychology social circle’s as the narcissistic person’s “discard pile”. It is in the discard pile, abuse victims tend to feel the most abused but also have the opportunity to go comprehensively NO CONTACT with a toxic family unit or toxic peer group with the most ease.
Does it hurt to be snubbed by people who abused you — as if you not only deserved the abuse but are not even considered worth caring enough about to apologize to and stop abusing? Sure. But worrying about needing a validation from an abuser that you were abused is not a rational desire. In fact, it’s rooted in some pretty dark places of the human mind and heart related to abandonment issues and true social identity (as in familial bond) topics.
In an effort to avoid being abandoned by their family or love interests, children of toxic parents tend to do strange things. Some will intentionally shut up and start actively trying to emulate their abuser, while others will passively or aggressively act out, causing themselves physical or social and psychiatric harm in some way.
Fear of being abandoned for telling the truth is a perpetual source of anxiety for abuse victims who think they have no way to live without their family, their love interest, or the public loving and social support of people who mostly spend the better part of their lifetime trying to get to approve of them in some way.
Children who are emotionally sensitive tend to either recoil in horror or to take on the personality traits of rage-a-holism shown to them by older or angry role models. Expect boys who fail to seek help for family issues to become cold, emotionally withdrawn, and more readily prone to engaging in criminal acts of violence or vandalism.
Young girls exposed to toxic family values are likely to end up either becoming mean girls (who are fiercely socially competitive) or for them to have issues related to sexual identity (as objectified women). Both sects are prone to getting involved with drugs, alcohol, to have self-esteem issues related to appearance or weight, and are likely to have toxic peer groups.
Probably the saddest part of life for abuse victims who never come forward to seek help or who are socially estranged from their entire friend and family support network after coming forward to seek help with abuse, neglect, or domestic violence issues is they all unilaterally tend to be drawn to romantic partners whose personality types echo those of their primary and most oftentimes secondary abusers. For that reason alone, anyone an abuse victim trusts enough to confide in should show incredible care when talking to a whistleblower.
If an abuse victim’s feelings and memories are simply validated as experiences that happened to them, are looked at reflectively (meaning looked back upon with an interested in gaining some helpful form of clarity or insight, and they are allowed to heal through the stages of grief with social dignity, there is a major chance that they will meet with personal success overcoming toxic shame and abuse-related harms.
When they are persecuted for talking, made to fear for their life or social identity, are “thrown to the wolves” (noting that the more dangerous wolves are actually their abusers at home)… all can cause a lifetime of psychological, physical, and emotional healing setbacks.
Obviously, in an ideal world where a toxic personality type WINS, a victim of abuse is never allowed to tell anyone the abuser’s secrets. What’s more, the victim — in the eyes of an abusive person who fantasizes about being all lauded, pervasively feared, and all-powerful, the best case scenario FOR THE ABUSER is if and when a victim commits suicide or dies a long, drawn-out, painful and lonely death after getting some dreadful stress-related disease like cancer as a direct result of being pervasively left in a state of anxiety and without social justice.
But that’s simply NOT alright in any way, shape, or form for an abuse victim to have to suffer through or even intellectually fear as an outcome. No abuse victim should feel toxic shame for having been abused, for seeking treatment for mental health after having been abused, or to be made to feel that if they come forward to talk about the very real or perceived life experiences that formed their personal identity they risk losing both reputation and support of people who they previously thought of as their closest friends and family.
Saying it’s not right doesn’t help change the behavior of toxic family or false friends, but it does — at least in a small way — validate EVERY victim’s experience when and if social injustices have happened when and if they were brave and pro-active about their own psychological and spiritual well-being to come forward about their experiences. Domestic abuse and related domestic violence victims should never be seen as antagonists blowing whistles.
What any abuse SURVIVOR needs to know is that simple because the abuse happened to them does not permanently pigeonhole them into the shame-based category of misogynist, “scaredy-cat”, or unable-to-defend-themselves victim.
