04/11/2025
🧠 The 5-Minute Therapist: How Dehumanization Works (and Why We Fall for It)
I want you to think back in history. Think back to times when something horrible has ever happened to a group of people. I can guarentee that before it happened, stories and narratives come up about them. And that story isn’t about who they are, but tries to tell us about who they aren’t.
This, is how we turn people, into problems.
The process is called dehumanization — and it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.
It starts small:
A headline that calls refugees a “flood.”
A politician describing benefit claimants as “scroungers.”
A social media post implying that certain groups are “dangerous,” “dirty,” or “not like us.”
Each one chips away at empathy. Bit by bit, people stop seeing human beings, and they start seeing categories and something less than then. And once a group is no longer seen as human, almost anything can be justified.
History has shown this again and again.
The N***s called Jewish people “rats.”
Rwandan radio called Tutsis “cockroaches.”
People getting labelled as "thugs" for attending a football game.
Modern leaders call desperate families “illegals.”
My favourite will always be "chav". Growing up with a mum who tried her hardest by herself, having to get my free dinner ticket, and seeing first hand how differently you were treated or spoken about.
Its easy to fall into it, when we label someone else, it gives us a sense of belonging. It helps us to feel part of something bigger, something powerful.
And dehumanization always serves power, it distracts from real problems (like the real parasites in banking and financial institutions for instance, big pharma, or these lists of s*x offenders on an island that were supposed to be getting made public 🤔). It unites people through fear.
The antidote? Re-humanization.
Listen to people’s stories.
See their faces, and learn about them, their histories, their struggles.
Remember that suffering feels the same in every language, and you might find you ain't too different after all
💬 Reflect on this...
When was the last time a headline made you feel anger or disgust toward a group of people?
Ask yourself — whose story am I being told, and who benefits from me believing it?
