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Key points
- Collusion aids and abets more obvious forms of abuse because it allows an abuser to remain unchecked.
- Collusion not only perpetuates bad behavior, but it can make the target of abuse less clear and confident of their own experience.
Sometimes, it’s easy to spot the abuse that can contribute to relational trauma cases: The father who takes off his leather belt and beats his child, or the mom who makes her perfectly healthy 12-year-old get on the scale daily and go on a restrictive diet until she loses weight. These examples are fairly visible and fairly obvious scenarios (at least to most of us) where we can point a finger and say, “Yes, there is abusive behavior.”
What’s often less visible and less acknowledged is the role collusion can play in these scenarios, how it also counts as abuse, and what the particular and detrimental impacts can be. Collusion is derived from the Latin word for "play together," and generally refers to conspiring, or acting in unison toward some secret purpose.
Dysfunctional family systems might collude to keep equilibrium, to keep the peace, or to maintain homeostasis, often by explicitly or implicitly allowing or perpetuating bad behavior from one or more abusive figures. It isn’t necessarily conscious and the intent isn’t necessarily to wound. Family members often do this without deliberate awareness because, at some level, it’s what they’ve been trained and taught to know to do, and/or the stakes feel too high to make other choices, even if they’re aware of those other choices. In the form of permission, excusing, perpetuating, rewarding, or anything else that lets an abuser keep getting away with the abuse, collusion is abuse. Full stop. But be it conscious or unconscious, through action or inaction, collusion is damaging because it allows the “more obvious” abuse to continue. The abuser remains unchecked and unchallenged by a dysfunctional family system, church, social system, or political party.
There’s another way that collusion can be particularly damaging to an individual or people at the receiving end of the abuse: It can make them feel gaslit. Gaslighting doesn’t just happen when an abuser denies your reality; it happens when others surrounding the abuser don’t challenge them, or when they excuse them, therefore participating in denying the target's reality.
Collusion can not only perpetuate bad behavior, but it can make the target of the abuse less firm and convicted in their own experience. It’s hard to stay grounded and rooted in your reality when everyone around you seems to think that you’re the hysterical one.
So why talk about this? What talk about collusion as a form of abuse?
Because, hopefully, when we know better, we do better, and we can see the ways in which, perhaps, we unintentionally collude with abuse either at the micro or macro level.
We can get curious about what the impact of dismissing our siblings’ protests might mean to them, or what we’re actually doing when we cast a vote for an abuser.
We talk about this not only to point fingers but also to take a look at ourselves.
But also, importantly, we talk about collusion as a form of abuse so that if you come from a dysfunctional family, church, or community in which you've witnessed or experienced collusion with an abuser, you can feel less “crazy" and confused, and more grounded and reassured.
Our healing is sped and fed by seeing things more clearly, and when we feel more grounded in our reality and our truth. I hope this post can shed some light on why you might feel so upset with certain members of your family or community, even if they weren’t the direct abuser. I hope that now you can see the dynamics of your past a little more clearly.
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