The United States is experiencing Stockholm Syndrome
The United States is experiencing Stockholm Syndrome
written by a kidnapping survivor
Being in an abusive relationship comes with a lot of questions from those who look on with disdain and judgement. A lack of understanding creates fear and a sense of instability, and that fear becomes harsh criticism. Chief among these judgements is a constant question asked by victim blamers and sympathizers alike, “Why did you stay?”. The answer to this question is a million miles long and nuanced. But at the top of the list is often the unspoken. “I believed I wanted to be there. I believed I was happy. I believed I was in love.” What people are reticent to admit but most often is true after years of gaslighting and psychological warfare is the deeper truth, “I was brainwashed.”
Stockholm syndrome is considered a phenomenon where a victim develops an emotional bond with their abuser. In short, those who have been kidnapped or placed in captivity believe they want to be there. It makes sense if you think about it. If you look up and recognize that you are somewhere with someone against your will, you will inevitably be so overrun with panic that you can’t function. When there is no physical escape, we often escape mentally, using dissociation or fantasizing to imagine we are safe. The ultimate form of this fantasizing is forcing yourself to believe that you love the person who is doing this to you. That you are choosing to stay, that you believe you are being protected, and that your captor only keeps you locked up because he loves you so much, and you stay, not for fear of what will happen if you fight back, but because you love him in return.
This type of Stockholm Syndrome often happens to teenagers and young adults who are groomed and held in long term abusive situations. This was my experience from ages 16-19, which is how I know it intimately, and how I have been able to break free from the foundational Christian family and structural patterns in our society that held me there.
Years later when people said to me, “you could have left at any time,” I had to admit that I stayed in part out of terror of what would happen if I tried to leave, but in equal part because I believed that’s where I wanted to be. And if anyone had noticed that I was is in trouble I would have shouted back, masking my agony with aggression, “But I love him!”
There is very little difference in someone who has been brainwashed by an abuser and someone who has been brainwashed by the collective culture of a society, a cult, or a church. The patriarchal structures of our society, many of them masked as Christian values, have so many people believing In a Caste system. This places people on a hierarchy based on their gender, their race, sexual orientation, and beliefs. The villains in power at this very moment call this freedom. But any rational person can see that just saying something doesn’t make it true, and this isn’t freedom, or equality. It’s certainly not love.
It is captivity. It doesn’t offer the possibility that two people who live different lives can be equally happy and free. In its current structure, our society robs people of their freedom to choose their own lives. It robs them of the freedom to choose their lovers, their religions, their families, their safety. And many, generation after generation, relinquish this freedom willingly. People look on, feeling too terrified and helpless to intervene. Or worse, so many Americans have become abusers themselves that they relish in the freedom to be openly hateful.
Every day, we lose something new, more and more suffering happens, and I have to wonder, not in a scornful way, but in a genuine way for the people who put us in this situation, “Is this really what you wanted?”.
And as the rational adults cry to the delusional thinking of those trapped in the curse of this mad man, we plea to them “Break up with him. This is unhealthy. He is hurting you.” They shout back, filled with aggression and despair “but, I love him.”