← Decoded | Unlock The Secrets of Human Behavior, Emotion and Motivation
Decoded | Unlock The Secrets of Human Behavior, Emotion and Motivation
DARVO, Gaslighting, and the Collapse of Discernment
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What scares me more is that those people actually have the biggest accounts, and they have the biggest accounts for a very specific reason. They are pretty much solely emotionally hooking you. They're not actually helping you see clearly at all. They're getting you to double down on your perceived victimhood. Anything that reduces self examination and getting to break down the facts and see where your perspective could have been distorted is ultimately not. In pursuit of true healing, your brain is wired for deception. But here's the truth. Patterns can be broken, the code can be rewritten. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? There's something happening in the mental health space right now that is quietly becoming incredibly dangerous. We've entered this new era where psychological language is, is everywhere. And now everyone knows terms like narcissist, gaslighting, trauma response, love bombing, and the theme of today's episode, the acronym darvo. On the surface, I know this feels like progress. People are becoming more aware. People are now taking the time to learn language and they're trying through a very distorted, confusing lens to identify their unhealthy dynamics. The problem is that awareness without precision doesn't actually create clarity at all. It creates more confusion. And this distortion now is just paired with a better vocabulary that just sounds more intelligent. But one of the biggest examples of how this is being used online in a way that's incorrect is darvo. If you really stop and look at how some of these frameworks are presented in viral content and mental health memes, you start realizing something very uncomfortable quickly. Both people in the conflict can usually look at the exact same post and say, oh my God, it's them that should concern you. If both sides of the conflict, we don't have any way of knowing who's objectively right, who's objectively wrong. If both sides can look at the same meme and be like, see, told ya, we have a major problem. And to be honest with you, that is my whole problem with mental health at large. If both sides can use the same framework to validate themselves, then the framework does not actually function as a tool for truth. It's functioning as a tool for confirmation bias, bias. And anyone that has spent any time on social media that has strong spidey senses like I do and pattern recognition, you can see that that's actually one of the ways that you hook somebody emotionally. No one cares anymore if their content is actually helping people. In truth, they just care if it's gonna make somebody get that emotional hook and want to engage with the content, share the content. And that's what I want to talk about today. Because there is a massive difference between someone manipulating reality to avoid taking accountability and someone trying to advocate for objective truth and accurate representation. And if you can't tell the difference between those two things, you're going to misread people constantly, you're going to mislabel relationships, you're going to reinforce victim positioning, and worst of all, you may accidentally destroy relationships with people who are genuinely trying to get on the same page with you. So I want to break this down carefully here. We don't do emotional upheaval. We don't do ideology. We try to break down the structures and the mechanisms so that you can make an educated decision for yourself. Let's start with the biggest issue I see with viral mental health content. One of the biggest issues with Internet psychology is that it prioritizes relatability over accuracy. And relatability, as you can imagine, is very dangerous when you are talking about human behavior. In fact, the entire idea of an emotional hook or a psychological hook when it comes to marketing is exactly this. If something can feel emotionally true without being objectively true, you've hooked the person and you've gotten them sucked into a loop of confirmation bias. But they're now not being given the tools or the ability to parse through that information to understand if it is just their emotions lying to them or it's their disordered experience, or if it is in fact objective truth. Most viral mental health content removes anything that you would actually need to determine accurately. These are all the things that they tell you to skip, right? You just hit the hook, you get right to the meat and you make it shareable. So what you end up leaving out is context, pattern, history, behavioral consistency, intent versus outcome, which is by the way, a massive one. Willingness to self correct. You don't get to see any of that when you're looking at a 10 slide carousel or a viral reel that's nine seconds long. So instead, what gets rewarded? Emotional resonance. The post that makes people feel seen is what wins, even if it lacks precision across the board. These posts start to spread because they're emotionally validating. They're broad enough for mass identification. They create an instant aha response and it reinforces whatever that person's perspective was. That is how you are hooking somebody. The hidden problem is that both sides can identify with increases certainty without simultaneously increasing accuracy. It often encourages external blame and it reduces self examination. Some of the top performing psychology, personal development Mental health memes or reels or even just social media influencer accounts. They are strictly to get you to be like, yeah, I mean there's this one account that I've been watching just because I, you guys, sometimes I watch things because it's almost like the urge to watch a slow moving train wreck where you see somebody get out of an abusive marriage and then they're suddenly magically a coach in how to get out of an abusive marriage. When they're freshly out of an abusive marriage and they're just filming themselves all day talking about their abuse stories. And they probably took like one small course to become certified in whatever the hell made up thing that they're doing. That scares me, you guys. And what scares me more is that those people actually have the biggest accounts and they have the biggest accounts for a very specific reason. They are pretty much solely emotionally hooking you. They're not actually helping you see clearly at all. They're getting you to double down on, on your perceived victimhood. Even if maybe 50% actually are truly experiencing what the person's calling out and then the others are projecting, splitting, deflecting, et cetera. Anything that reduces self examination and getting to break down the facts and see where your perspective could have been distorted is ultimately not in pursuit of true healing. So the key here is if both people in a conflict could use the same meme to justify their side. It's probably not precise enough to be helpful in any way. Humans often seek validation before they seek the truth, and we know this from a brain pattern perspective. Many brain pattern types actually do. Their brain pattern does anything it can to circumvent or hide them from the truth. Because being faced with the truth may cause a psychological mechanism like splitting, deflection, blame shifting, et cetera. This is particularly true with cluster B disorders, which we know from previous episodes are on the right side of the brain pattern spectrum. There's also when emotional agreement starts to feel like evidence, when somebody's speaking right to your emotions and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could write a bunch of content that speaks right to my emotional wounds where I'd be like, oh, I feel so sad seen. I'm not alone. When really the content I need, going back to the episode from a few weeks ago on what makes something medicine, I don't need to feel seen. I need somebody to be like, hey, right now self deception is making you feel self pity. You feel like you're stuck, you're, you're so burnt out. Somebody needs to hold up a Mirror and be like, hi, you're taking on too much. You're not taking enough days off. You keep saying yes to people. So while you're over here having a pity party about how burnt out you are, somebody actually needs to give you a spiritual slap in the face and be like, busy, like, fix your schedule. What's wrong with you? So that's an example of I could resonate with all this content about burnout and self care and pampering because that's what I really need, when the reality is what I actually need is somebody to show me all the ways that I am deceiving myself into setting traps in my own life. Do you guys see the difference there? Social media pretty much always rewards emotional certainty and that emotional certainty is almost always coming through some type of confirmation bias and nuance and context do not do well on social media. In fact, if you've ever had somebody coach you in social media content or reels. And for what it's worth, I think largely this is why I have this push pull relationship with social media. Things aren't simple in life. So why should I deceive people into thinking they are simple just because that is more consumable in a social media setting? I just can't do it, you guys. It hurts my stomach, it hurts my spirit. If something's not simple, I would be doing you a disservice to lie to you and to distill it down and make it seem more simple than it is. A lot of these things are actually very complicated. And if you have watched previous episodes, our patterns of self deception can absolutely deceive some of us into thinking something is true that is not matching with the objective record. And that is why I really want to spend today's episode talking about Darvo. Darvo is something that we see all the time talked about on Instagram, or at least in the part of Instagram that I'm a part of. This is an acronym that stands for Deny, attack, reverse victim, offender. That's the acronym. And what I want us to understand today is how to discern the line between true Darvo versus truth advocacy. Because I could see arguments for somebody deciding that there is no difference, really. And this goes back to the same idea that two people in a conflict could go to the same thing, be like, yeah, tell them. And it's like, well, how could you both be resonating with this? Both of you can't be operating in truth. And I think for this reason, it's why in break method, we often see couples Come in where often it's the wife. And I'm not trying to pick on the wife, but often the wife is convinced that her husband is a narcissist and they get partway into the program and then they call me crying. They're like, oh my God, I'm, I'm the narcissist. I can see it now. This is not uncommon. It's actually quite common. What's the mechanism there? Well, if somebody's childhood repetitive environment caused them to become someone who seeks co regulation, someone who is naturally more self centered, this doesn't mean that you have to be an inherently selfish person. But your, your brain, body and nervous system are more concerned with what you need to feel safe. Which by the way, that is self centeredness. If everything that you do is about you trying to feel safe in your environment, that's the definition of self centered. Somebody who's not self centered. If we go to the opposite side of the spectrum, you're constantly worried about everybody and you're trying to serve other people so that everybody can stay calm even. And often at the expense of your own personal safety or well being, your self preservation instinct is actually disconnected. That was a lesson that you felt you had to learn as a child to survive. So what often ends up happening is we have, in this sort of coupling scenario, we often have one self contained side of the partner which is not always the husband, it often can be the wife. And then we have this co regulating, stability seeking partner. And it's very common for the partner that is naturally seeking co regulation in their self centeredness to be more upset by either not being chosen or not feeling like a priority or not, or assigning intention to somebody else's actions that is not that person's intention. I see this all the time. I was in Miami filming a podcast yesterday and this was a large part of the conversation. And I'm glad that that conversation is now segueing into the conversation we're having today because frankly, this is really common where somebody feels so emotional and so hurt that their desire to voice their hurt or to speak up for injustices that they perceive it blinds them in assumption to not even being able to hear what their partner has to say. And anything, any truth that their partner does try to share, that partner, often that is emotionally dysregulated, will say things like, well, I know what you really meant. It's like, well, at what point are we as human beings going to do better to try to take people at their actual word? If someone's Going out of their way to communicate to you what's actually going on in their head. Who are you to I guess at that point assume that they're, they're lying to you. In a relationship container like that, where is that going to get you? And I'm not saying that some people aren't deceitful and manipulative and lie. Of course these things are all true. That's what makes this so complicated. And by the way, that's what makes brain pattern mapping so much more important. Because we can see what somebody can't see in themselves. When you can teach somebody to see what they currently have blind spots in, then they can start to correct back to objective reality. And that is why some people, when they correct back to objective reality, show up on the call and they're like, oh my God, it's me, it's not them. I can see it now. So getting back to this Darvo thing, there is absolutely a very real manipulative pattern that exists that I think was the original intent of trying to describe Darvo. I'm certainly not suggesting that it doesn't exist. I'm just suggesting that in today's society, the way we do it on social media, often the people who are actually doing it themselves are wholly convinced that the other person is doing it, while the other person is actually just trying to get on the same page and seek truth. The problem is that people have become so surface level with behavioral analysis that they now identify the sequence without understanding any of the mechanisms underneath it. The uncomfortable truth is that someone genuinely trying to correct distortion can appear behaviorally similar to someone who is engaging in Darvo. Which means this sequence or this acronym is pretty empty. Your brain isn't broken, it's running. An old code break method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic based rewiring. In 20 weeks or less, head to BreakMethod.com and see what your brain is really up to. You have to understand intention, you have to understand pattern history. You have to have an openness to correction or at least a willingness to try to understand both sides and behavioral consistency over time. When I have navigated interactions with people like this who are clearly engaging in Darvo as I am trying to get them to share what I perceive to be their often very warped, very emotionally driven perspective, I'm trying to get them to share what they're what thinking and feeling and seeing so that we can put it into this sort of neutral, in between space. So think about it like a whiteboard. Like, I would love to know what's going on in your head. Why don't you go ahead and put that on the whiteboard? Because once it's out there and we can look at it, then I can sit there and say, okay, well, do you remember when we were in this situation? Do you remember what I was going through at this time when XYZ happened? Oh, well, this and this and something. Okay, so do you think you can understand how I might have shown up this way given the broader context of what was actually going on on that day? And that while you feel it was intentional, can you see from my side that it was not intentional? That person, because they've been warped into thinking via Instagram memes that now that means Darvo, they're going to. It's almost like a. It's like a mental health uno where you reverse it back to the person when the reality is somebody like me. In this case, I'm trying to understand what they're seeing so that I can help bridge our two realities together so that I can help and I can help myself not keep stepping in the same trap, because I don't. It's never my intention to upset people. I want to understand what I might be doing, albeit accidentally, so that I can stop doing it. But often when you're dealing with a person like this, anytime you try to seek information or try to co reconcile reality so that you can figure out if that wasn't my intention, how do I prevent this in the future? Which for me is really the only thing I care about. How do I. If this is currently causing conflict, what would I have to do differently to prevent landing here again? And a person who is more likely to truly experience the proper experience of Darvo, they're going to see somebody like me as doing the acronym itself. So hopefully that is making sense. When we're talking about the mechanism of Darvo, the first thing is denial to avoid accountability. This is important. If you watched my whole series on Cult Mechanics and Power Projection and the Collapse of Personal Responsibility, which is probably one of my favorite episodes I've ever done, and even gaslighting this idea that it's somehow dangerous for me to even talk to you about how I feel because someone's gotten you convinced that if I talk about it, they're going to manipulate me out of it. If. If it is that easy for you to be manipulated out of your perspective, it's probably not built on a stable foundation, first of all. But I think what often happens, and I'll use this example, often the person that's emotionally dysregulated is pointing a finger and placing blame on somebody else, but they're also ascribing to that blame some sort of intent or motive. In other words, this hurt when you did this, it hurt me. And I'm assuming why you did it. Right? I'm filling in subtext and motive when someone is and in break method. This is one of the things that we look at, how quickly somebody assumes ill intent and whether their brain is going to skew toward negative self deception or positive self deception. There are certain brain patterns that are very quick to assume negative intent. I'm the opposite. I'm much more quick to assume maybe it was an accident, maybe there's something else going on. So I naturally will give people more leeway and things like that until they've done it multiple times. And then I'm like, okay, I think we all know what's going on here. But my instinct is to give more leeway in the beginning. Oftentimes what happens when somebody that actually is experiencing real Darvo is actually now projecting onto the other person that their desire to try to co reconcile reality is now fitting into this Darvo mechanism. When someone's saying that wasn't my intention, they're going deny. You're trying to avoid accountability. No, you can't tell me what my intention was if that wasn't my intention. Right? You can, you can say, I'll give this example. I got feedback from somebody once that this person was very upset with me and I, I asked them why they're so upset with me. They're like, well, sometimes when you're in the office, it's just really clear that you're in a bad mood. And even though you stay by yourself in your office upstairs, like we can all feel you downstairs. I was like, okay, fair. Someone else on my staff heard that and started busting out laughing. And I'm like, okay, fair. What would you have preferred I do? Would you prefer that I come downstairs and take my bad mood out on you? Because I am self aware enough to know that if I've been traveling and I'm burnt out and I have nothing left to give, I just put myself in timeout, I'll keep myself upstairs. Because guess what? As the owner of a company, especially the way our company is run, I don't have the ability. I can't call in sick to work. Who am I Going to call in sick to. I have nobody to make an excuse to. I just have to buck up and go to work anyways. Example. I got home at 4 o' clock in the morning last night. I had three puke bags on the plane for four hours after a 12 hour travel day. Just trying my absolute hardest not to throw up all over the plane. Every time the flight attendant walked by, she like, do you need more bags? And I'm still here, we're still doing the thing. But I digress. The point here is this person was so upset that she could feel my energy that I was upset when the re. And that was really, it was truly one of, one of like three things that she gave me for why she thought I was a false leader. And when I said to her, what would you prefer I have done? Would you want me to like come down to your desk and take my bad mood out on you? And she's like, no. I'm like, okay, so what, what are my options there? And I was like, can I, I'll be honest with you. Was there ever one time that you saw me like that and decided to come to me and be like, do you need a hug? Can I get you a chai? Can I like go get you? Do you need something? Because I was obviously in pain, I was obviously exhausted. But if a person is operating in this sort of warped perspective, everything's about themselves. They go back to the self centered perspective. It's, it's, it. You are doing this to me. Is a human being not able to have a bad day when they're like, I'm an a hole today. So I'm just gonna go put myself in timeout. Like if anyone needs me, I'm gonna be up there because I have to work today. But you know, just, I'm not fun to be around. So I'm not going to foist myself upon you today. When someone's operating in that sort of self centeredness and you're the attention that you gives them that I feel like I'm talking like oh, from home. If anyone's ever seen that movie, he's an alien that doesn't know how to speak proper English. Which is kind of how I feel today for that type of person. Attention or validation is what they seek through CO regulation to stabilize their own sense of self. So ultimately what she didn't like is that I didn't give anybody any attention that day and whatever they saw of me was me not living my best life. So that was one example. And I'M giving you these examples because these are perfect examples of exactly the mechanisms that we're trying to break down today because we actually had this conversation. The other one was that on one meeting was a staff meeting on Zoom. We have a lot of people all over the place. On one staff meeting it was something like, you told me to go F myself. And I was like, really? Cuz I have a photographic memory. And I remember as soon as she said it, I remember exactly what happened. And I very quickly asked her a question. I'm like, did I tell you to go F yourself? Or was I actually unaware of who actually did the thing that I asked not to be done? And I said out loud, who the F did this? When I so clearly asked for it to be done the other way? I didn't know it was that particular person, but that is very different than you told me to go F myself. One is who the F did this? The other one is you. The F did this. They're very different. This is what context and nuance matters. And because context and nuance matters, I'm going to give you a little bit of the previous plot. Again, great example. A week prior, on a staff meeting, there was something that I wanted done in a very specific way and I articulated to the team, here's the way it has to be done, here's why X, Y, Z is likely going to happen if we do this any other way. And I don't have the time and capacity to clean up that mess. So I need everyone on board that this is the way it has to be done. Everyone. Good. That was your chance to push back and say actually anything. It was very clear. No one was unclear. The next week, when I find out that all of the things that I had asked to be done that way were done the exact precise opposite way that I asked them to be done in what I perceived to be a clearly rebellious way. Because I made it very clear why. And ultimately, I'm the boss of my company. If I were just bossing everybody around like that all day long, I'd be an A hole. But when you are the boss of your company, that is your job, right? It's my job to see problem problems coming down the pipeline before they happen. And hopefully through my experience and repetition, I'm able to prevent problems before they happen. So of course, when I took so much of my time to specifically outline why I didn't want it done that way, when I find out that it was quite literally done the exact way I asked for it not to be done, wouldn't you go, who the f did this? Like, like what? And honestly, if you know me, I was probably laughing and smiling like that, which probably frankly made it all the. All that much worse. So here's, here's the twist, right? That person, obviously, they. They knew what they had done. You know, looking back on the history of this particular person, I think they did this a lot. And maybe they're in deep self deception and, and they justified it to themselves, and I'm sure that they were. But in this example where she's like. And you told me to myself in a. In a team meeting, when I'm trying to actually help her get down to the actual facts and lay out the facts, the facts are. I did not actually say that. But for somebody like her and all these Instagram memes, she's going to be like, darvo, you're just. You're trying to deny. I'm not trying to deny. I for sure said, who left did this? For sure. But that was not the same thing. So I do think specificity and details matter. And what matters more than anything is not letting your feelings distort reality. And unfortunately for many brain pattern types, it just happens. Your feelings do distort reality. This is why you can mishear or misremember conversations that took place. I have had many conversations with my husband where he will say something back to me and I'm like, babe, you know I love you. That is an interpretation of what I just said, but that is not actually what I just said. Do you remember what my actual words were? And this is a technique, by the way. Anyone growing up with a mentally ill parent, and you've, I'm sure, heard this on other episodes, in particular the gaslighting episode, you either buy into the delusion and then you often end up repeating that sort of delusional framework, or you become an arbiter for the truth. I. I went the other way, became the arbiter for the truth. And I realized, okay, the only way to keep my sanity is to catalog objective reality as close as humanly possible at all times without emotion. Right? Just the facts, not the emotions. Not assuming why people did things, but what did they do? What was the act example with me? The. The act of me coming into the office, not saying hi to anybody and just going right up to my office and not coming down all day. That was the physical action. All of the other things were overlaid on top of that. From an emotional state, from a wounded state, from a insecure state, from wanting Something from me that I didn't give them, so a state of letdown. But the actual physical actions were me walking in the door and literally just going upstairs and like, quietly working by myself all day in solitude. Those are the actual actions. But if the other person's version of that is to be taken seriously, which, you know, I think this kind of in some way is largely a commentary about where we are in society right now. I feel like we've bifurcated into two groups. Feelings are everything, and your feelings are automatically valid and you should just be authentically you. And then all of the rest of us who are like, actually, the. The human condition is one of brokenness and darkness, and we need to do what we can to free ourselves from self deception and do some digging about our real intent and motive and try our darndest to renew our mind so that we are not a walking, talking mental health meme. The. The choice is ultimately yours. But if you are somebody who lets your personal feelings and your hurts and your emotions twist and distort information like physical actions or words, life is gonna be really challenging for you, and you surely will feel like the victim forever. But that won't mean it's objectively true. I. The technique that I shared with you where my husband, I've heard say something back to me that I know I didn't say where. I'll say, okay, can you try to do what you can? Try to remember my actual words and tell me back my actual words so then I'll say it. And then immediately it's like, as soon as he has to hear that because he was actually listening, he'll say that and he'll be like, but. And I'm like, is that not like, do we. Is there a but? Or is the but coming from your emotions? Because I'm. I'm responsible for my communication, what I actually say to you. And as a human being that has empathy and sympathy and wants to be a good person, I do my best to try to remember what I say and speak with intention. So when somebody shares something back to you, that's not what you said, and it's just coming through their emotional lens, I think it's totally appropriate to try to get them to reorient themselves back to your actual words so that you can have a conversation based on objective reality, not emotions. The second mechanism here is attack to destabilize. This can come in a bunch of different ways, but this honestly could be something like me saying, right, this is the. The person that's twisting this sort of Darvo thing, me saying, is it possible that I didn't give you enough attention that day or that week and you wanted something from me that I didn't give you and I wasn't capable of giving you that week? Is that possible? A person that is going to easily take offense or go on the defense, that's going to feel like an attack, even if I say it exactly like that. And this is what's really important for us to remember, is that these words like attack, victim, safety, unfortunately, you guys, these have all become wildly subjective. We have really tampered with the English language, in particular in the spaces of psychology and mental health. So somebody could feel attacked by something that is legitimately not an attack. Example, me laughing a little bit and being like, what? Like, who the f did this? If that feels like an attack, that, by the way, is probably shame, because you know what you did. And instead of being like, it was me, I did this. I was rebellious. I went exactly against what you said, you know, to do. And I'm sorry, that would have been. And I would have been like, cool, thanks for taking ownership. Let's move on. I don't like to dwell on things, but in that moment, that person obviously feels shame or embarrassment. Even though I didn't even know who it was. They felt like they were in the spotlight because they know they knew exactly what they did. But that person is going to feel attacked by the truth. And I think, you know, we're only part way through this episode, but that's the key here, is that a person who is stuck in their victim centric lens will feel attacked by the truth, even if it is the truth. Victim reversal to escape responsibility. Here's how this one could have gone. And I'm certainly not suggesting that this person even feels that way. I'm just using this as a hypothetical because we're already, we're already in this scenario together. So let's say, hypothetically, victim reversal to escape responsibility. If I were like, hey, who did, like, who the f did this? Who, like, anybody gonna fess up? Victim reversal to escape responsibility would be something like, well, you weren't clear with the instructions. I, I, you went way too fast. I had no idea what you said. Where instead of it being like, I, I made a mistake, it's now flipping it back on you because something in your request to me was unclear. That's, that's real victim reversal to escape responsibility. But the key here is if a person is operating in this sort of victim lens or consciousness, they can feel victimized by anything, even if it's fabricated or all in their head or just based on their feelings. Then comes the resistant to evidence. And this one's actually. It makes me giggle because a person that we're trying to. We're kind of using this amalgamation of stories to kind of unfold this type of person. Going back to the evidence of me walking into the building. The evidence was that I just literally quietly walked into the building. I wasn't like, stomping my feet. I wasn't like, hey, are you guys down there? F you, by the way. Like, I. None of that. I literally quietly walked in, went upstairs. Do I usually come downstairs and chit chat with everybody and say hi? Yeah. So was there contrast there? Absolutely. You could tell that for whatever reason, I was not coming downstairs to the bullpen of staff and like chatting it up. So I can see the contrast. But the evidence itself is that I kind of just went and separated myself from everybody. I didn't actually say anything mean. I wasn't being mean. I was just literally putting myself in time out. But if we go back to this one, what did she say to me? But we could all feel you from downstairs. We knew you were in a bad mood. It's, it's, it's hard to, you know, work when we know you're in a bad mood. You're being resistant to evidence at that point. There's. What else is there to talk about? The evidence is that I didn't take anything out on you. I wasn't rude, I wasn't mean. I didn't say anything mean. You didn't get the attention that you're used to getting. That's the actual evidence there. And then they escalate when they're confronted. If you confront somebody with evidence like, like, hey, I'm sorry if I. Me staying up in my office for the whole day and not coming down felt like I ditched or abandoned you guys. I just was having a really bad day and I wanted to keep myself away from you so that I didn't take anything out on you because you guys don't deserve that. If I'm. If I'm not in a good headspace, like, why would I. Why would I subject you to that? A person like that will escalate. And I. This happened with this particular person. You're just trying to manipulate me. I'm like, like I'm literally just trying to tell you what actually happened. And this is where I jumped in and was like. And by the way, did you ever Consider maybe seeing if I was okay instead of making it all about yourself. If you really thought that I was in this bad way, why didn't anyone come to check on me? And the truth is, in a lot of these scenarios that I've gone through with different people, it's always. It is always about them. And quite often, and this is true even for people who are mean to you on the street. I've had people be horrific to me. I'm the person that will have that person mean to me. And I'll go to them and I'll say, hey, are you having a bad day? Is there something that I can do for you? Most people that are being a holes are probably having a bad day. And you might actually help them snap out of their bad day by seeing that and helping be of service instead of being offended. You guys, if there's one takeaway that I can give you to help you in life, just lead a better overall life. Stop being offended. The spirit of offense is one of the most debilitating experiences in this life. Because life isn't fair. People are confusing. People are poor communicators, People are late. People are disorganized. All these. Right? If we're going to take offense to all of those things, good luck. What a crappy way to lead life. Try to assume something positive instead until you've been confronted multiple times with a negative, in which case, obviously, right, go with the evidence. So that's the Darvo mechanism itself. And I'm hoping that at this point you can see where it gets really confusing, because both sides, the person that's kind of operating in delusion could easily see somebody's real attempts to correct the record and try to get on the same page as somebody, as Darvo itself. But you can see where Darvo has more of this emotional spin on it. And that's usually the key here, is that Darvo is often driven by emotion. It's driven by evasiveness, wanting to avoid shame. They can't. Their brain will not let them confront reality and take personal responsibility. Then we've got what truth advocacy should look like. And again, I'll have you kind of map these two. So you kind of MAP Truth Advocacy vs Darvo. Typically, the first one is to try to correct inaccuracies. Example would be with my husband. Can you try your hardest to tell me what I actually said rather than your interpretation of it? What were my actual words? That can be a great example. Another great example of trying to correct inaccuracies would be okay. I just. So that I can see if, if you remember this event the same way that I did, what, what do you remember about that day? Can you. I want to try to see it from your perspective. Even something like that, you guys can be seen as an attack from a person that they're, they maybe are in self deception and they don't realize that they're now becoming escalated or agitated because as they're talking it out, they're going to start to see that their narrative is falling apart. Which ultimately, by the way, you guys, that's. That's what the goal of truth advocacy is, right? Is you're trying to help them see what may be currently hidden from them. Not so that you can attack them or make it worse, but so that you guys can de escalate and come back together so you have to correct inaccuracies. And unfortunately, can you see where denial to avoid accountability for a person who's very deep in their emotions can see the correction of inaccuracies as denial. Step 2 Clarification of context. Giving them the example of like, hey, I knew I was in a bad mood and I'd been traveling for days and I didn't want to take that out on you. That's important context. That's not like I was mad at you guys, so I intentionally avoided you all day. Which sounds honestly more like what this person had assumed, which wouldn't have honestly made any sense to anybody else that was in the room at that time. But, but that's where context matters. What, what is, what am I missing here? What's happening on the internal side that I might be incorrectly assuming about attempts to restore alignment? This is an interesting one because often when you're trying to figure out where are you? Where am I? How are we going to co reconcile these two? And, and what are our goals so that we can deescalate this and navigate our way out of it? A lot of times what you'll see is people in this sort of mental health meme. Real space is they'll be like, oh, that's just manipulation. So now suddenly trying to restore alignment and have common goals to heal something is now seen as manipulation. That's sad. An openness to evidence versus a resistance to evidence. So openness to evidence would be like, what do you think happened? I really want to hear your side of what happened. Let the person fully play it out and then be like, is it okay if I share with you what was going on in my head at the time? They don't want to know That a willingness to own partial responsibility is very important. And this is typically something that can't happen based on over emotionality or in the spirit of offense. So in this vein of what we've been unfolding, me acknowledging that, yeah, you're, you're not wrong. I was in a foul mood. I knew I was in a bad mood. That's why I, I removed myself from you. That would be willingness to take partial responsibility, not being like, I wasn't in a bad mood. What are you talking about? And quite often that sort of deflection often ends up happening. And this is typically a good sign that somebody is trying to advocate for truth rather than Darvo, is that they're not trying to delude you into thinking that all of the details are just categorically false. Right. Typically, the conversation that we're unfolding here in the. The kind of opposition between Darvo and advocating for truth is one person's trying to, to look at all of the facts and try to figure out where there may be misinterpretations or assumptions that can just be corrected. And then the other person is very much operating from that spirit of offense, in emotion, feeling like they were hurt or wronged without being open to new information that might prove that it wasn't intentional or was an accident. So let's start here. Correcting a misrepresentation is not the same thing as avoiding accountability. And this is a nuance piece that you're not going to get from Instagram. Precision gets mislabeled often as defensiveness. Emotional people may interpret correction as invalidation. Not every pushback is actually manipulation. And defending factual accuracy is not a form of abuse. And let me tell you, in today's world, in mental health psychology and on Instagram, defending factual accuracy has actually become abuse. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever noticed how you can know something is unhealthy and still do it anyways? You know you shouldn't react that way in an argument. You know that habit isn't good for you. You know that that thought pattern is rational. And yet somehow your brain runs the same loop again. This is where a lot of personal development goes wrong. Awareness alone doesn't change the brain. Brain repeated behavioral input does. Your brain changes through neuroplasticity, through the pathways you strengthen with action, not just awareness. And that is exactly why I created Renew your mind. This program sits at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioral rewiring, and biblical teaching around the command to renew your mind. Inside this program, I walk through what's Actually happening in the brain. When patterns form, why your prefrontal cortex shuts down under emotional pressure and how specific behaviors activate areas like the anterior midcingulate cortex, which is responsible for resilience, discipline, and the ability to push through discomfort. But the most important thing we talk about is pattern opposition, because if you want a new life, you can't keep feeding the same neural pathways that created the old one. Scripture says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. But most people were never taught how to actually do that. Renew your mind gives you the framework to begin interrupting destructive patterns, Strengthen your ability to regulate emotion and build the emotional resilience that is required to become a new creation. If you've ever felt like your reactions, habits, or emotional patterns are running your life instead of the other way around, this program was built for you. Renew your mind can be accessed at stan store busygold. Language is actually being weaponized and is now being used as a form of. Of abuse. You know, back in. Back in my day, we used to say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Is that what that was? Yeah. So, I mean, can you ultimately be hurt emotionally by words? Yeah, but words are not the same thing as being physically attacked with a stick. And ultimately, at the place we are right now, we're being distorted into thinking that actually words are actually also abusive and harm. And more than that, not just your actual words, but the way someone interprets your words could now also be abuse. If somebody feels like something was abusive, then it is, even if it objectively was not. Let's take a look at feeling attacked versus being attacked. This is incredibly important because feeling attacked is not actually proof that an attack occurred. It's proof that your nervous system detected a threat. And you could detect a threat where they're objectively is done. Or you could detect not detect a threat where there absolutely is one. If you want to go back to the episode that I did on Somatic Therapy, I gave an example of this, which I'll kind of quickly highlight right now. I used to roam around the streets of New York City by myself in the middle of the night, and my nervous system didn't detect a threat. I was super relaxed. I love talking to homeless people and drug addicts on the street about God, I was super relaxed. Would somebody else's nervous system perceive threat there? Absolutely. But if you take me to an elevator while you who are not afraid of elevators won't perceive a threat, I'm going to be sweating buckets. I'm not going to be able to breathe, my heart rate is going to be through the roof. So what's technically true? Well, what's technically true is that the nervous system is going to base its threat response on early childhood rules. And these will not be based on objective reality. And this distinction all by itself could save you from years of unnecessary conflict because some people have extremely low thresholds for perceived threat. Correction can feel like criticism, disagreement can feel like rejection, and clarification can feel like invalidation. Which is why I encourage parents, if you're listening, don't go easy on your kids. Help them learn how to accurately self assess us. If you know that they didn't try as hard as they could and they're sitting there like, my teacher's so mean. You know, they're just in their little victim narrative. It's your job to pull them out of the victim narrative and be like, you know, what is your teacher mean? Or did you not study as hard as you could? I feel like I only saw you study for that test one time last week. How many times did you study? Well, I studied one. Once is usually enough. Well, if I may, if you got an 82, once wasn't enough. Right. These are the questions that I think parents in our newer generation have not been asking of their kids. And it's better to learn how to be emotionally resilient and learn how to be challenged as a child. Because if you don't learn that as a child, that becomes very messy when you're a teenager or an adult and then you go through all the things I just described where correction can feel like criticism, clarification can feel like invalidation. So even just somebody attempting to get on the same page and co reconcile reality with you could feel like an attack, even if it's objectively not. And once somebody emotionally categorizes a conversation as an attack, everything that follows gets filtered through that lens. Here's some objective markers of attack and I think these are interesting because what I have seen unfold is that often the person that is crying victim is the one actually doing the things on this list. So objective markers of attack include, include character targeting, right? So trying to assassinate their character, typically in a very organized public way. Humiliation, domination, global statements that don't allow for it's. It's effectively a linguistic version of the psychological mechanism of splitting. So there can't be good with the bad. They're either all good or all bad. Right. So you're kind of making these global statements that are not actually representative of the truth. You're bulking things together and you're putting them in umbrella terms. Refusal to self correct, not take any ownership of what your role was in it. It's all on the other person. All blame shifting, projection, deflection and escalation where you're willing to continue to push, push, push. Because once you're emotionally dysregulated and unfortunately the way our world is, you start to get more attention for escalating. Then you just escalate more because ultimately attention was what you wanted in the first place. Objective markers of truth alignment. Number one, specificity. And believe me, the people that are operating in this sort of emotional delusion, they don't like specificity. And in fact, when you attempt to be specific about time, place, language, etc, what often happens is other people will jump on the bandwagon. They're just trying to manipulate you. How? What, how, at what point are we able to lead life as a human race if attempts to be specific and get on the same page are seen as manipulation or abuse? Like what are, what are honest question, what are we going to do there another objective marker of truth alignment. Be clarifying. Right? What did, what did you mean when you say that when XYZ happened? What, what meaning were you attaching to that in your mind at that time? What did you think that I meant? Right? Those are all examples of clarification, which is the opposite of priming or telling somebody what they did. Well, you did this because is the opposite of clarification. Asking genuine clarifying questions is one of the most helpful things that you can do in your communication style instead of prime. Well, did you do this because. Or we all know you did this because we were asking question, but you're not really asking question. Ask a generally genuine clarifying question. If even if I know what I think you meant, I'm gonna ask what did you mean when you said that? What was going through your head when you decided to say that to me? That's a genuine clarifying question. I'm not priming them. I'm not saying did you think this when you said that to me? Because technically that's still a question. But that's not a clarifying question, that's a leading question or priming question. Evidence, right? Talk about facts. Not, not our feelings, our interpretations, our assumptions, but the actual facts themselves. Openness, right? How willing are you to understand or try to see the other person's side? Having the other person express what their experience was? If you are firmly rooted in the truth, that doesn't feel dangerous I don't feel unsafe by having somebody share their perspective. I want to understand what their perspective was so that I can figure out where the misalignment's coming from. But the reverse is not true. If somebody's in that more delusional state, they will not be open because their brain is actively trying to avoid going into and through cognitive dissidence. And they might not know that consciously, but they realize if they allow themselves to be open, eventually they're going to run into information that disproves their delusion. And that's when these psychological mechanisms go up. Collaborative problem solving example. Like, like, obviously you're really hurt right now. What kind of conversation would we need to have for you to feel more clear about how this could happen the next time? What are. What are our common goals? What. What are the signals that I could give you? Let's go back to my example. What are the signals that I could give you to let you know that I'm having a bad day and it has nothing to do with you? Well, busy. I'm glad you asked. Maybe next time just come down and be like. Take two seconds to be like, hey, guys, I'm burnt out from traveling. I don't have anything to give today, but I hope you guys have a great day. Day. And I would have been like, you know what? That's a great idea. I will remember. Do that next time. Simple as that. That didn't happen, you guys. So somebody that actually wants to collaborate, they're going to put it back on you. How would you have done this differently? And in the conversation that I've referenced a couple times in this episode, I did say that when they bring a problem, I'm like, I would honestly love to know how you think I could have handled that differently. Do you have any ideas? Do you have any suggestions? And oftentimes I'd be like, no, I don't know. And I'm like, great. Well, I don't. I don't either. So, you know, where. Where do we go from here? Because I think at some point a lot of people are doing their best. And if you take things personally and you make them about you, instead of being like, this is all they have to give today, and it has nothing to do with me. You know, life gets a lot easier when you don't make things about you for no reason. Pro tip Factual correction. This one's an interesting one because, again, of course, this is going to feel either, like, deflection or avoidance or potentially even abuse. An example of Factual correction would be me saying to my husband, honey, I know that was what your interpretation was, but can you try to say back to me what my actual words were so that we can focus on my actual words? Words. That's a factual correction. It might not feel good in the moment. It still might feel like an attack if you're emotionally dysregulated, but ultimately that is a factual correction. I bring this up because this is something, if you've ever watched the show, what is it called, like couples therapy or something. And I have a. I, we're gonna go here shortly. But I see stuff like this all the time in that show. And when you see the therapist not see through this absolute garbage, I wanna like go through the screen and be like, everybody, this is not how you're ever gonna solve these problems. It's one of the most frustrating shows that I've ever. I mean, I've never even watched the show, just clips, but it's the most frustrating clips of a show I've ever watched in my life. So one of the things that I wanna drop here real quick before we keep moving, is that if somebody has a tendency to get stuck in victim centric thinking, they naturally are going to have a lower threshold than the average person for the perception of attack. So they will feel attacked when there was no attack. They will feel attacked when somebody else is like, I don't think that was really about you. I know. I shared an example of this in the generational trauma episode where there was somebody who had been primed and rightfully so. I get it. She was a black woman in the South. She had been primed to see white people as inherently racist and she interpreted the servers bad attitude as racism. Even though in a broader context where you could see. And I was watching this person be rude to other people of other skin colors as well. This person was just rude. That person. Their threshold for being able to tolerate bad moods or emotional dysregulation in white people is significantly lowered because they've been primed to see that through a specific lens. Emotionally reactive people often also misread neutrality as attack or something to take personally. This goes back to this person's chief complaint, that I dare just hang out by myself in my office during the day so as to not take my bad mood on anybody. That was, that was my version of neutrality and trying to prevent myself from spilling out my own baggage onto other people. But for somebody who is attention seeking and wanting validation, that's that neutrality is misread at as something else that it is not. Which is why ultimately, in that example, I said, well, what is something? What's a signal? I could have given you that that wasn't what was going on. Which is why I made this suggestion, like just coming out, being like, hey guys, I'm exhausted, I'm in a bad mood. This is nothing to do with you. Deuces assumptions also for people like this, feel like proof. And that is why I believe self deception is the keystone of understanding how to break people free of mental illness. People cannot tell when they're operating an assumption. They feel like something is a fact. They feel like something is objective when it's in fact not. And the more you're operating in assumption, the more you're also operating in emotional certainty, which is not based on accurate information. So I was explaining this, these little snippets from the show Couples Therapy, and there's a scene that demonstrates this absolutely perfectly. The husband is trying to be extremely precise with his wording. He says something, the therapist paraphrases it back to him, but then adds interpretation and tension that he never explicitly stated. And he calmly says, that's actually not what I said. And instead of adjusting the interpretation, she responds with something like, do you notice how defensive you become? And I found this moment incredibly fascinating because what some people see as defensiveness, others recognize as an attempt to maintain accuracy. And guys, this guy was a total a hole. I'm not saying that he wasn't an a hole, but fundamentally the actual gaslighting that was taking place via the therapist herself was un freaking believable. I, like I said, I could not watch these clips without like sweating like these poor people, because they're literally being gaslit, gaslit by their therapist. And that's one of the reasons I do what I do. Because unfortunately, the entire mental health paradigm that we're operating in right now is built on a lie. And if we don't bring data and pattern recognition into the therapy container itself, people will just seek to confirm their own distorted perspective and they won't actually ever get better. Somebody who operates in precision oriented communication, they value exact wording. And often they do so because as a child they had a parent that weaponized this, right? So I am one person. I value exact wording. If I say something, I said it a specific way because there was intention behind it. I don't say anything by accident. Somebody who also seeks that precision oriented communication, they're going to seek consistency and they will desire to correct distortion quickly. They won't want to let Something snowball and then, then go back. Like, let's go back to this thing that you said. There's going to be this desire to correct it in real time and there's going to be a focus on accuracy. What I've seen also in social media lately is that there's this budding of kind of this, everyone has autism, everyone's neurodivergent. And really, of course, that's not true. But this precision oriented communication is certainly aligned with some of the neurodivergent conversations that I've seen unfolding on Instagram. And it is also a byproduct, ultimately, of growing up with a parent who dealt with significant mental instability, somebody who is struggling with interpretation oriented communication. They are prioritizing emotional meaning. So instead of words, their emotional interpretation of the words is actually how they're formulating their reality. They're going to infer intent. They're not going to ask you a clarifying question because they're going to assume for whatever reason that their version is correct. And you're going to lie to them if you answer. And they fill in gaps with assumptions and they track their feelings over wording. Which is why for someone that deals with this in a relationship context, it can be a helpful tactic to say, can you share my words back to me? Because then they have to reorient back to how their brain has added on additional meaning that you never said. So in this breakdown, one person is tracking objective wording, the other person is tracking perceived meaning. Interpretation drift is when someone's interpretation causes whatever the argument is to drift so far that now the other person feels like we're no longer having an honest conversation anymore. This could also be projecting onto neutral statements where if somebody's just trying to say, well, example would be like, well, can we just focus on the facts? Are you saying that I'm not. I'm not telling the truth? Okay, what's another way I could say this? What if we just focus on your interpret, your interpretation versus my interpretation, so that we can figure out where we're out of alignment. Are you saying that my interpretation's a lie? That's what you're going to keep butting into? There's also an inverse hierarchy of interpretation. And I know we talked about this on the lecture communication without the fight or the podcast episode communication without the fight, where I talk about that inverse hierarchy of how we assign meaning to language. This is really important because unfortunately, we take people's actual words, most of us, and we put them in absolute last position. And there's eight different spots that we go down here. So we actually go to assumptions first, our past history, how we're feeling internally, body language, subtext, what we think their intent is, our assumptions. And at the very bottom, which should be at the top, we're thinking about their actual words. So another way to say this is most people actually hear what they think someone meant instead of of what was actually said. And this is why so often, and I know this is certainly true in my life, I wish that there was a God replay button, because there's so many times that someone's like, you said this. And I'm like, I know I didn't, but what are we gonna do? How are we gonna go back one day? Hopefully we'll get to see it all very clearly. But until there's a God replay, you guys, I can only give you these tools so that you can try as hard as you might to stand in the truth and stand in the truth with emotional regulation, right? Not stand in the truth and be abrasive in it, but stand in the truth with openness and conviction and empathy. That's where we actually really can move the needle. And by the way, even if you do all those things, if you're dealing with somebody who does truly Darvo, who is in one of those cluster B disorders, you could be sweet as pie. It wouldn't matter. They're going to see what they want to see. Unfortunately, we talked a little bit at the beginning of the episode about confirmation bias. I want to also talk about emotional filtering. Emotional filtering is the word that is used for how somebody's filtering what they're hearing or perceiving based on their emotional state. Which is why it's so important, I think, for people to understand what their emotional state is. When we look at brain pattern mapping, we track nine different markers. Three of the middle in that hierarchy are how your emotional response transforms early stage, transitional, and late stage. And if you can learn, wow, I am prone to anger quickly. What are some of the things that set this off? What are some of the additional meanings that I ascribe to this that might not actually be objectively happening? Guess what? You can save yourself a whole lot of drama by literally just knowing that. So I think it would behoove you to crack the code on that for yourself so that you stop yourself from being deceived and potentially being the cause in a fight that maybe never needed to happen. When somebody experiences some of the psychological mechanisms like splitting, projection, deflection, blame shifting, etc, it's typically because their emotional state is overwhelming their ability to reconcile objective reality. And almost always there's some. Some part of themselves that they're not ready to face, so it's easier to project outwards. And when somebody is emotionally categorizing in a conversation in this way, they're very likely to perceive attack and validation, rejection over and over and over again. And when this is happening, you lose the ability for nuance entirely. Everything will become, I'm right, you're wrong, I'm good, you're bad, I'm the victim, you're the manipulator, you're the abuser, I'm the victim. And this is the state, state of splitting where you. You can't hold multiple things true simultaneously. On the episode that I did on Power projection and the collapse of personal responsibility, I told the story about this horrible boss that I had. Literally horrible boss. I'm still super grateful for her because she taught me so much about what makes me phenomenal at my job. Now I, in many ways, owe a lot of it. The two women that were probably the harshest to me in the work capacity were probably the two women that I. I owe the most of my career to, honestly. So shout out to Sarai's grandmother, Mayumi, who was brutal to me in the beginning until I won her over, and my boss, who I won't say her last name. Her first name was Natalie. But in. In the thick of the worst moments, I was able to hold multiple things true at the same time. I knew that this job was a gift and a blessing. I knew that it was also really hard and that my boss. Boss had no respect for my personal time or boundaries. I knew that doing this was going to set me on a path that could help me with a lot of other things in my career. And I also knew that in order to do this job, I had to kind of toughen myself up and take a lot of really harsh, verbally abusive criticism in pursuit of getting the job done. And I also had to be okay with getting blamed for things that I wasn't doing and not try to fight about it, but just literally just like, move through it like, she's gonna figure it out eventually. There is not a fight worth having when you're able to do all those things simultaneously. That is the antithesis of splitting. Right? That is the opposite of black and white thinking. You're understanding that sometimes the good comes with the bad. It's a bit of a poop sandwich. You know, it's a lot easier to Navigate life understanding how to hold the nuance in a poop sandwich than splitting, which causes you to be unable to tolerate any sort of nuance. You get fixated on total certainty. Either I'm right and you're wrong. You escalate. You get really rigid in your narrative. And if anyone asks you even questions about your narrative, you will start to point fingers at them. You're wrong. You're in deception. This has happened multiple times. So once someone decides that you are the threat, everything that you do will become evidence. If this is something that you have experienced in your life. And as I'm explaining this, you're like, oh my God, I realize I actually might be the one that's Darvo ing and I'm projecting this onto somebody else. Or maybe you're listening to this and you have been the, the. The actual victim of Darvo, which is funny because you're probably the one that's getting blamed by the other person. If this is a repeated pattern that you found in your life, you have to remind yourself that many people are operating in such a deep, deeply entrenched self deception pattern, they cannot see their way out of it. They really would pass a lie detector test and would believe what they are seeing and experiencing. And we have to be able to find empathy for those people in that pain. Even when they're attacking you, even when it's completely unfair and unjust. That is part of the human condition. We have to remember that some people are just trying to feel validated. They are, are struggling with everything in their body to maintain an identity. And there's a part of them that is very much avoiding the truth because if they were to accept any of these pieces of truth, their entire false narrative would collapse at the seams. And this is arguably why certain people with cluster B disorders stay stuck there. I know with break method, we've had a lot of success helping people with those cluster B disorders navigate their way out of it. Some eventually getting off medication, etc. It's not, not easy. None of this is easy. I was on a podcast that they didn't end up airing because at the end she was like, so can you just tell like our, our listeners like things simple, like what is the simplest way to fix this? And I was like, I'm not gonna lie to your listeners and say that this is simple because there's nothing about it that's simple. There's. There's no one size fits all simple trick that I can give you that poof. Makes it all go away. It's far too complex than that. And I would be doing your listeners a disservice by saying that they're was. I don't think she liked me after that. But listen, truth is truth, baby. And that's what, that's what I'm here for. Even if the other person doesn't like it. If your goal in relationship communication is clarity and alignment while their goal is emotional confirmation, you are probably deeply entrenched in one of these cycles and there's no amount of over explaining yourself or trying to be precise with your words that's going to actually get you out of of it. It's never going to actually bring clarity. So what you can do is you can stop trying to force alignment sometimes. I've had to say, I totally understand where you're coming from. I, I disagree with virtually everything that you just said, but I also respect that that's where you're coming from right now. So maybe we shouldn't be friends. That's stopping trying to force alignment. I had a, somebody who was a friend who was really mad at me for not writing a thank you card for a present she got river for his like birth. And I said to her very openly and candidly, I was like, listen, it wasn't just you. I didn't write anybody a thank you card because I'm just not a thank you card person. But I am so grateful. And now that I know which stuffy that is like he loves it, it's great. Thank you so much. And she's just like, I just feel like that's the cop out. And, and for me with the cap, I know my capacity, what I have to give in my life with how many things I'm doing and my kids and trying to be a good wife. Writing thank you notes is not high on my priority list. I've never done it. I don't want to ever do it. It's not my thing. If you gave a present because you wanted a thank you note, that might be something you need to examine. If I was doing something to get something in return, maybe I just shouldn't do it. So sometimes we have to stop forcing alignment. And if that person wants to take offense to that, I get that. I'm certain that in some capacities this happened with that particular person. Person. But sometimes the truth does hurt. Sometimes the truth is maybe we're not aligned with each other and that's okay. But if somebody is in need of you or they want something from you, you being okay with separating is actually going to feel Just as bad, that will feel like an attack in and of itself. It's also important to identify a recurring distortion. So coming up with a way to describe, like, hey, it seems like, like we tend to get in the same fight over and over again. Here's what I, from my perspective, I see is happening. I don't know that having this conversation for the 20th time is going to get us anywhere new. Would you agree? Right. Totally legitimate communication technique. Assess compatibility. Honestly, are we. Am I ever going to be what you need? I am not the friend that a lot of people need. I'm not the friend that's going to call you multiple times a week. I'm not the friend that, like, texts all the time. I don't have a lot of time to talk. But my friends that are my ride or dies, that have been with me forever, we cannot talk for like a year, and then we can talk for six hours, or we cannot talk for two years, then they'll come visit me for four days and it will be like no time passed. That's. That. That is the type of person I'm able to be with the lifestyle that I have. And if somebody needs me to do something that I'm incapable of, it's. It's more honest for me to say, I love you, but I'm not capable of being what you need. I don't have the capacity. And very often we don't have those conversations. And going back to this experience, often, even if you're honestly establishing that you are not compatible, sometimes the other person feels attacked anyways. And at that point, what are you gonna do? Try to establish your boundaries calmly. If they're escalating, it can be challenging for you to not match their escalation with escalation. So the best thing you can do is firmly root out, out down into the objective record and try to communicate your boundaries calmly. Even if you have to say the same boundary multiple times, and then eventually, by the way, because it's a boundary, you actually have to follow through, you can't just say it and then keep saying it over and over again. If you say, if we talk about this, if you bring this up again, unfortunately, I'm gonna have to leave this conversation and they bring it up. You can't just say the boundary again. You have to say, respectfully, I told you that if you brought this up again, I was gonna leave the conversation. So now I'm going to go. Here's what I'm willing to do in the future. Why don't we take A beat and I'll come back tomorrow. Right? Totally respectful boundary. Even if the other person's still escalating, which they probably will be, stop defending yourself endlessly. At a certain point in this dynamic that we've been unfolding today, that person is not able to see anything outside of what they're currently seeing. They're. They're in full blown emotional override and they can't get their way out of it. So sometimes the best thing to do is to say, hey, I can see that this isn't being productive and, and ultimately I don't think we're going to get anywhere and you're entitled to your own opinion, but I think it's best that we stop this conversation. Again, totally legitimate and watch response to clarity. When clarity comes up. If somebody is operating in this dynamic, this sort of like Darvo gaslighting, manipulative dynamic, every time you feel like you've come into clarity, they're going to feel like they were attacked every time. Time. One of the biggest mistakes that we make culturally right now is assuming that emotional certainty is the same as truth. They're not equals. And if you can't learn how to separate what someone actually said from what you interpreted, this is just going to keep happening. You're going to keep misreading people, you will keep feeling justified. Escalating conflict. You will reinforce disordered narratives and you will label truth seeking behaviors potentially as manipulative. And not every disagreement is gaslighting, not every correction is Darvo, and certainly not every boundary is abuse. Sometimes someone is just simply trying to bring the conversation back to observable reality. And if that feels threatening, the question might not actually be why are they attacking me? The question might be why does this clarity feel like an attack on my nervous system and my friends? That is where the actual work begins and that is the work that we do in break method do Check that out. If you are curious to know where you fall on the brain pattern Spectrum, go to PredictiveMind IO and we are going to continue unfolding this series. We are doing another episode on the Roots of Jealousy, which I think very much ties into this Darvo experience. And we're also going into attachment styles. So I'll see you guys next week.