To humiliate someone is to make them feel ashamed or stupid, to make them feel like they have lost, and are undeserving of, the respect of other people. Humiliation is a common tactic abusers employ to subjugate a child. It is accomplished by debasing a child’s status, through breaking their spirit and pushing down their ego to the point of abject submission.

Humiliation is always connected with a power imbalance. In short, an abuser is communicating that “I am stronger than you/I have authority over you/I will overpower you. Therefore, you will submit to me/my wishes/my demands.”

The result of humiliation is dis-empowerment. And, as with any experience of dis-empowerment, the consequences ongoing traumatic humiliation are far reaching.

Michael J. Fox said, “One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.” For an adult, there may be a choice to not surrender, or to surrender only in part. An adult can decide to fight it out, or to maintain a spirit of rebellion when there is no possibility of physically fighting back. In other words, an adult can choose not to surrender (in spirit) or to physically fight back, rather than to silently accept defeat and fully accept the role of being a victim. An adult may, perhaps, blame him or herself. They may feel guilty and deserving of the humiliation, but they have adult tools to fight back with or to work with those feelings.

Now imagine the gross confusion and bewilderment that arises when humiliation is heaped upon a child. Imagine, as a child, being forced to participate in the obscene act of being sexually violated, being physically beaten, or being otherwise abused, and to accept that humiliation in a spirit of submission. Escape through dissociation is likely the only logical or even possible outcome.

For a young child being abused by an adult or older child, surrender is not a choice but is rather an inescapable outcome. For very young children, survival through submission is the only option. When early childhood abuse and humiliation is a repetitive experience, dissociation becomes the default response – regardless of age.

Keep in mind that humiliation is not the sole goal of the abuser. Crushing the spirit of the victim is part and parcel of establishing the power dynamic that permits the abuse of that child in the future when and as the abuser may wish while limiting the possibility of genuine push-back from, or exposure by, the child. Humiliation enables this by the piecemeal or violent erasure of personal boundaries by the abuser, normalizing the humiliating conduct and eroding further a child’s sense of having any place in the world.

Many of the difficulties people encounter in daily life can be traced to experiences of humiliation; in adults, in children and in society. The impact of humiliation seems to include a baseline, different for each individual, beyond which a person will be unable to pull back from its clutches. When a person’s spirit is crushed in this way, unremitting depression sets in. The choiceless acceptance of humiliation is often followed by powerless rage.

Consider the intensity of that choicelessness coupled with powerless rage. In so doing, one might get a sense, a glimmer, of the importance of angry alters. They keep open both the chance of survival and the healing potential of the system. The trapping of rage in those angry alters keeps the system alert to identifying potential dangers, albeit often hyper-alert with its attendant difficult consequences. At the same time, trapping that rage in the angry alters allows dissociated submission that enables survival while experiencing abuse.

Humiliation is often a non-physical assault. Some people may think that because it is not necessarily physical, it therefore is not so big a deal. However, looking forward, it can have the extraordinarily destructive result of setting up an abused child for ongoing future assaults both psychological and physical.