In psychology, instrumental aggression is defined as goal-directed aggression used not to vent feelings, but to gain power, punish, or control others.

This is different from reactive aggression, which is impulsive and emotional (like yelling during an argument). Instrumental aggression is:

• Planned or strategic
• Cold, calculated, and disproportionate
• Used to silence, isolate, or punish
• Often masked as justified anger or “righteous” fury

People who exhibit instrumental aggression often lash out not because they lost control, but because they want to gain it. It’s a form of manipulation. They punish others severely to make sure they’re feared, obeyed, or never challenged again.

🚨 Examples of Instrumental Aggression in Relationships:

• Someone goes no-contact with a friend or family member after a mild disagreement — not to protect themselves, but to send a message: “Don’t cross me.”
• They badmouth or smear people after conflict, rewriting history to make themselves the victim and the other person the villain.
• They turn mutual friends or family against each other to divide and conquer, cutting the person off from support.
• They sabotage relationships intentionally — yours, theirs, or others’ — because a perceived loyalty breach has “earned” revenge.

This behavior is not about emotional dysregulation alone. It’s part of a control strategy, even if the person isn’t consciously aware they’re doing it.

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🧱 Emotional Absolutism: The Dangerous Thinking Trap

This kind of aggression is often fueled by something deeper and more toxic: emotional absolutism.

Emotional absolutism is the rigid, black-and-white belief that:

• “If you love me, you’ll agree with me.”
• “If you disagree with me, you’re attacking me.”
• “If you hurt me (even unintentionally), I am justified in destroying you.”
• “People are either for me or against me — there is no in-between.”

This is a cognitive distortion that often stems from:

• Narcissistic or borderline traits
• Unresolved trauma and shame
• Entitlement or grandiosity
• Lack of emotional nuance or empathy

In relationships, this manifests as:

• Punishing normal human disagreements
• Erasing people from their lives for minor slights
• Demanding total allegiance or emotional obedience
• Being unable to tolerate another person having independent thoughts, feelings, or needs

They’re not trying to “get over it” or repair things — they’re trying to win. And in doing so, they often engage in the next level of harm:

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💥 Annihilation of Others as a Means of Control

What you described — cutting off friends, attacking or removing family members, even disowning their own loved ones — is a psychological pattern called social annihilation or relational destruction. It goes beyond “I’m angry at you” and enters the realm of:

“If you do not comply with me, I will erase you from my world and make others erase you too.”

This can include:

• Character assassination
• Erasing shared history (“You never really meant anything to me”)
• Turning mutual allies against the person
• Actively blocking reconciliation or healing
• Retaliating even after the relationship ends

In extreme cases, this is related to malignant narcissism and sadistic tendencies, where the person not only wants to win — they want you to suffer for not submitting.

This behavior isn’t just cruel. It’s dehumanizing. It strips others of their dignity, their truth, and their right to be seen as complex human beings.

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🧠 The Brain’s Response to Being Annihilated

For the person on the receiving end — in this case, you — this kind of psychological and social annihilation causes profound trauma:

• The limbic system (especially the amygdala) is hyperactivated by repeated threats of abandonment, rejection, and conflict.
• The ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which processes emotional meaning and relationships, becomes overwhelmed by confusion and betrayal.
• The result is complex grief, anxiety, dissociation, and sometimes even symptoms of C-PTSD — especially when you were isolated, scapegoated, or blamed over long periods.

This isn’t just painful. It’s neurologically and emotionally destabilizing, especially if the abuser repeatedly shattered your trust while pretending to love you.

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🩷 You’re Not Imagining It: The Pattern Is Real

You are not being dramatic, sensitive, or vengeful by recalling how your ex isolated and erased others. You are naming a highly dangerous, psychologically documented behavior pattern.

Your nervous system picked up on the danger even before your conscious mind could name it. That’s what trauma does — it whispers: this isn’t right even when your mind is too exhausted to argue.

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🌱 Reclaiming Your Voice After Being Annihilated

To begin reclaiming yourself after this kind of emotional destruction:

1. Name the pattern – As you’re doing now. This takes back your narrative.
2. Validate the grief – You didn’t just lose people. You lost the freedom to choose them.
3. Rebuild safe connection – With those who remember the real you. This counters the isolation.
4. Stay grounded in reality – Journal your truths. Their version of events doesn’t define you.
5. Practice fierce self-compassion – This wasn’t your failure. It was a slow burn of coercion that would wear anyone down.

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🕯 Final Word

When someone cuts others out of your life to dominate your world, what they are really afraid of is this:

That someone might remind you of who you really are.

And now that you’re remembering — piece by piece, breath by breath — they no longer have that power.