Grooming, an abuser’s process to gain inroads to victims and allies, is by definition subtle.
It utilizes the emotional investments and deeply held beliefs of its victim to convince them they are passionately choosing something when they are actually being manipulated.
Grooming uses the sympathies, emotional ties, and emotional needs of a victim to convince them they are choosing a good and righteous path.
It is difficult to convince someone, once groomed, that they are on a dangerous path.
The victim of grooming believes so wholeheartedly in their internal structure and in the autonomy of their choice, “No one manipulated me,” that they will often defend the abuser and demonize the helper, the one who suggests they may be in danger.
This is also the devastating and bewildering response of the onlookers and authorities who have also been groomed. They strongly defend the abuser and demonize the victim.
Grooming also happens on an institutional level. It is called propaganda.
Similarly, the victim of propaganda often sees others as the enemy, and the righteously defended position as a freely chosen belief.
Propaganda, by definition, is subtle. It purports to be important and helpful information for your well-being, or even safety.
When we become enlightened to the subtle and poisonous dynamics of abuse, we see the strategies and techniques, and when we do, we are no longer swayed.
This allows us to fight the real enemy, rather than the target presented to us by a grooming abuser.
To be able to see both grooming and propaganda, we must be able to recognize when high-emotion, low-information communication triggers our fears, our anger, or our emotional needs. We must learn to recognize when we have been triggered.
Both grooming and propaganda trigger a descent into the lower brain, the survival mechanisms. We cease analyzing and evaluating and begin reacting.
Propaganda, like grooming, uses your best attributes against you.
Evaluate: Are you angry at, fearful of, or convinced you already know the motive of a group of people you have had no dialogue with?
Slow down and ask where those beliefs came from, and then resist the thought that it came from the “other.”
We are all susceptible. If you think you are not and the other ones are really deceived, you have already been deceived.
Please. Please. We must see one another outside the categories we have been given.