Here’s why, in plain but accurate terms:
🧠 Why Cruelty Becomes Addictive
Cruelty isn’t usually about “enjoying pain” at the start.
It begins as a way to regulate the nervous system.
- Control reduces anxiety
- Dominance creates relief
- Another person’s reaction brings calm or focus
That relief triggers dopamine (the brain’s learning/reward chemical).
The brain learns:
“This behaviour works.”
That’s the beginning of addiction.
📈 Why It Escalates Over the Years
Just like any addictive behaviour:
- Tolerance develops
- The same level of cruelty no longer produces relief or stimulation
- Intensity increases
- Harsher words, more control, deeper humiliation, longer episodes
- Frequency increases
- Cruelty becomes the default response, not a last resort
- Empathy weakens
- Empathy interferes with reward, so the brain suppresses it
Over time:
What once regulated distress becomes necessary just to feel normal.
That’s escalation.
⚠️ Why It Doesn’t Self-Correct
Cruelty rarely decreases on its own because:
- it is reinforced, not punished
- it often “works” socially, financially, or relationally
- insight alone doesn’t rewire reward circuits
Without:
- loss of access
- real consequences
- enforced boundaries
…the brain has no reason to change.
🧩 One Crucial Distinction
This explains behaviour —
it does not excuse it.
Plenty of people experience insecurity, shame, or dysregulation and do not become cruel.
Cruelty becomes entrenched when:
- it is repeated
- it is rewarded
- it is unchallenged
🔑 The Core Truth
Yes:
- cruelty can function like an addiction
- it often escalates in severity and frequency
- it narrows emotional capacity over time
- it damages the person using it as well as those subjected to it
And this is exactly why boundaries and silence work:
they remove the reward.
