I have multiple memories of my former abuser smiling with glee at my misery from his hand, and they come up whenever I'm sitting still and quietly

I really don't understand what causes some people to get faces like they are children opening Christmas presents when what they're actually doing is being toxic and vicious and making everyone around them miserable. What I also don't understand is how so many people around them don't see what creeps they really are and keep enabling them.

There was a boss at my old job (not my boss, a different department) that was like this. She would get this cartoon villain grin while she was giving out unreasonable orders to people, like making people work through their (unpaid) lunch break and making them do things that aren't a part of their job description and denying them time off requests. I remember one specific incident, she denied time off to a woman who's daughter was getting married SIX WEEKS from that day, and that manager didn't even have the schedule in front of her when she rejected the request. She looked so cheerful when the mother was getting upset and tearful and kept saying condescending things like trying to get the mom to cry. Like she was getting off on being abusive to employees who are powerless to fight back because they are afraid of losing their jobs. (That mom ended up quitting a few days later. Like she was really upset by what went down. In the lunch room she was bawling like "Why does she keep smiling!" I think out of this whole thing, that creepy facial expression was what fucked her up the most.)

I remember mentioning this to my manager (how she seems to get off on hurting her employees) and he just brushed it off. UNTIL IT HAPPENED TO HIM. She somehow squeezed him into a position where all she had to do was twist some words and he would find himself in a situation where it would look like he'd used some funds for a personal purpose (embezzling) and he would get all the blame for it even though she was the one who'd actually done it (more like they did it together but on paper it looked like he did it by himself,) and she just had that gleeful look and he was so creeped out by it. He told me the story later in a 'you were right' kind of way. Like he was really traumatized by that orgasmic look in her eyes. We were both asking each other like "How does a person get like that?? What the hell is that??"

I still don't understand it. I'm so sorry that you've met someone like this too. I hope people like this just only meet each other from now on and just leave the rest of us alone!

/r/CPTSD Thread