Brainwashing and Intelligence

Brainwashing and intelligence have nothing to do with one another (Brainwashing – Learn How It’s Done So You Can Undo It). Unintelligent people can brainwash intelligent ones as easily as an intelligent abuser can brainwash a less intelligent person. The effects of verbal abuse or the effects of any type of abuse on your thinking is summed up in one word: BRAINWASHING.

Brainwashing Doesn’t Require Intelligence

Don’t for one second believe that your abuser was too uneducated or stupid to brainwash you. Brainwashing and intelligence have nothing to do with each other. The ability to brainwash someone has nothing to do with education levels either, although it can be formally taught. Brainwashing has other names, too: persuasion, negotiation tactics, grooming, and any other practice that manipulates an adversary’s or victim’s thoughts.

Abusers learn to brainwash a person either subconsciously or consciously. The ability to brainwash someone depends on upbringing and/or desire–not IQ. There are several ways one person learns to brainwash another.

• Some abusers suffered abuse in their past and they learned how to do it naturally from their upbringing (watching mom or dad).
• Some abusers are narcissists, have antisocial personality disorder, or sociopathic personalities, and learned how to control and manipulate others very young on their own.
• Others learned how to brainwash enemies in military schools, even business schools, and transferred their know-how into relationship skills.
• Some abusers simply read about it on the Internet and decided to give it a try.

So, in short, any person can brainwash another person.

Brainwashing Intelligent People

It’s important to note that the brainwashing victim is not some sort of idiot for succumbing to brainwashing. Again, brainwashing and intelligence are not related. We use the relatively new term of brainwashing to describe a practice that is as old as the hills. Humankind has always known how to hurt and how to heal. Abusers target victims, in part, for the victim’s natural inclination toward healing humankind.

Empathy Exploited

In short, your strength of empathy gives the abuser opportunity to wiggle into your mind. In any case, the abusive person uses your nature against you. Have you ever thought something similar to the following statements? I’ll bet you have.

• “If I can make him understand me, we will get along better,” or
• “Perhaps something terrible happened to her that makes her lash out like that,” or
• “He’s so vulnerable at times that I cannot believe he really means those nasty things he says to me.”

Empathetic people naturally believe the abuser doesn’t want to hurt them. It’s a natural mistake of assumption: the empathetic person uses empathy to soothe others, not hurt them, and therefore assumes their partner behaves the same. Your empathy gives an abusive person enough wiggle room to lead you down the dark path of brainwashing–whether the abuser consciously knows what they are doing or not doesn’t really matter. The outcome is the same: you get hurt.

Featured image by Diogo Nunes