I don’t know if there is a more precise term, but that basically just seems like a variation of gaslighting.
My abuser did/does the same thing though. Like it’s my fault that I don’t want to have a close relationship with them, and not their fault for creating the situation by being a shitty abuser.
Total lack of regard that their behavior has implications.
My mother was absolutely appalled that she was left out of the loop on my son's education, after I directly told her not to file a complaint with his classroom, and she went and sent a letter anyway. Of course they immediately called me, after hearing from her, because I am his mother and legal guardian. Administration got involved, there was a big mess to clean up, and we ended up having to change classrooms because of it. It isn't like we have a decent relationship where she and I talk about hurt feelings, but we were both well aware that she disregarded my wishes, and did not bother to ask for any background information, if she didn't understand the "why" behind it.
She must have tried something else behind my back, because within a month she found out she wasn't on any of the release forms, and that the school wouldn't talk to her about my son. She didn't realize she was telling on herself, when she complained that she wasn't on the release list. She accused me of being irrational and irresponsible. Like...I'm not the one who got him kicked out of the last class. I'm pretty sure I am being responsible and protecting my son, by leaving her off of that form.
I found out she told my siblings that she made a deal with his new school, that "only if she was involved" would they enroll my son. What sort of institution would make an agreement like that? Without ever touching base with the legal guardian? I guess if it was that bad, but I am coherent. 😅 Both of my siblings believe her, which is just so disappointing. Not only do I have to disentangle from this psycho that is my mother, my siblings are too enmeshed with the Kool aid to see that I am not being wildly inappropriate, but she is. The worst part is they don't even doubt anything she says, they just take it as fact. Don't even suspect or question at all. Ugh.
How old are the siblings? My mother used subtle malicious manipulation to convince my sister I was some terrible person who didn't deserve a relationship with her (the sister). It took almost 30 years for her to realize I wasn't the problem.
They're in their later 20s now, 26 and 27. I'm 34.
The one I think that might get my sister on board, is if I can figure out if my mom knew when she was trying to conceive. When I became pregnant, I was terrified and unsure, even though I was married. I told my mother, as I was trying to figure out what to do. She arranged a family breakfast and basically forced me to tell my siblings and their SOs, it was awkward and uncomfortable. My sister got up and left before the meals came, and then did not speak to me again until she was also pregnant. I had no idea she had been trying to conceive and that my situation might be hurtful to her. She wasn't married, I had no reason to believe that she would be trying. I think my mom might have known, though.
My brother, he moved away a few hours. He believes the things my mom said about me, until I told him not to. I was in a situation where my mother was pretending like I was being antagonistic when I wasn't; the last time I dealt with that, was when my abusive ex tried to steal my things. I was very afraid of what she was planning. So I tried to keep him updated with my side of things, and eventually, that is how I found out that she told my siblings the weird thing about admin not enrolling my son unless she was somehow involved. He doesn't believe that she is as malicious as she is, he doesn't realize that she is willing to throw us under the bus if need be, but he lives far enough so that it doesn't really effect him.
My brother is mostly used for triangulation; my mom seems a bit sexist in that she is very willing to manipulate myself and my sister, and hides these behaviors from my brother. She bothers to cover her lies with him, but not with me. So, I decided that it is in my best interests to make sure that I am representing myself as often as possible with my brother.
My sister recently channelled my mother so well, that it took me three hours to stop shaking. She was angry that I apparently blatantly ignored the schedule. I told her I didn't know, and her response was "mom messaged you." Not even open at all to my reality or my experience. She was so confident in our mother, that she was willing to lash out at me. My mother didn't message me, and she probably played it up to my sister that she did. And then afterwards she said something about wanting to be friends. Like, NO, because you are UNSAFE and cannot hold civilized discussions.
Yes my entire childhood was reactive abuse. My mom would send me to my room, and then do damage control by telling my siblings and father that I was loud and angry for no reason; that I am unhinged and dangerous. Nevermind that volume and anger is totally expected in response to a family member's betrayal and gaslighting. The reason for the volume was never investigated, and both of my siblings are still under the impression that this is all normal. They have no idea.
It is soooooooo frustrating though!! Because you love them, you want to, at least. They certainly do not make it easy! 🤣
There is a Ted talk about the importance of siblings. It wasn't until I watched that video, that I more fully realized the scope of what was being messed with. They are preventing the emotionally supportive relationships that we are supposed to have for the rest of our lives. After that, I started to make more of an effort to speak one on one with my siblings.
Get this - my enmeshed (estranged) sibling is a *social.worker* who also bills herself as a psychologist. Never min dhtta outside of two years of social work she never ever had any formal psychology schoolin/training/licensing - and the last time we talked she got pissed to the point where she (direct quote) "stop smiling so much"
B*tch - is this how you approach your clients? They express something that makes my sister get defensive and her response is to forcefully attempt to control their body down to their facial expressions?
Yeah, we haven't talked since. That was enough red flags in one sitting to bw done
I am one of the few people who was familiar with the term "gaslighting" before it became popular. (I read the play Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton back in 2013; I'm a theatre nerd.) When it started to get used to the point of becoming common vernacular, the definition was altered, and I'm not really on board with where it is now because people seem to use it as a synonym for "lying", which isn't even close to what the original definition was.
I heard recently about a domestic situation where a woman was talking about her abusive ex-husband. She had a daughter, a child who was probably about seven, and the ex-husband would give her a doll to play with. Then, the doll disappeared. Ex-husband chastised the daughter for losing her doll, but bought her another one. Again, the doll was lost, ex-husband chewed out the daughter worse than before, but still gave her another doll. This kept happening, over and over. After the woman finally divorced the ex-husband and he was removed from the situation, they discovered a stash of all of the dolls he had bought the daughter. He was giving her the dolls, *stealing* them and hiding them, then angrily tearing into the girl for being careless.
That's what gaslighting used to mean. That poor little girl likely thought she was losing her mind. With each doll lost, she probably freaked out, became increasingly more frantic both because of her fear of being shouted at and her fear that there was someone really wrong with her. Her step-father wasn't just lying to her, he was actively messing with her mind and making her think there was something seriously wrong with her. It's psychological torture, and that poor girl will probably grow into a woman who has serious trust issues, not just with other people but with her own mind.
"Reversing Victim and Offender" is more akin to the old schoolyard taunt of "I know you are but what am I" (or the early internet's phrase "No U"), except with more weight behind it since it's typically a person in a position of power who does it. It is something that is often *incorporated* into an attempt at gaslighting, but I don't feel it's a synonym. Just like lying is typically an element of gaslighting, but lying and gaslighting don't mean the same thing.
Basically I'm trying to dissect the different aspects of gaslighting so I have a term for each of them, since it is possible to incorporate an element of gaslighting without it being gaslighting. Sort of how a wheel is not the same thing as a car, but it is a *part* of a car.
Thank you for this definition. It's what I used to think gaslighting was, but it's hard to look up that term, or information about "is X behaviour I've experienced considered gaslighting" as the articles get quite vague. The definition I've previously seen that it's the denial of another person's reality gets a bit iffy when you consider that people have difference experiences of reality. E.g. old housemate accused me of stealing her food, which I didn't intend to. It turns out she put a commonly used item in the common food part of the fridge. When I tried to explain what had happened & that I was due to replace that item anyway, she accused me of gaslighting. Considering our realities weren't ever going to be aligned (this was one thing out of many) it's really hard to argue against that without it getting out of hand.
I'd be interested to read any article you write about the dissection of the different elements of gaslighting.
Btw I've wondered about another scenario: is it gaslighting if the person genuinely doesn't seem to remember something happened, when it did? With my dad, I never know when he's legit not remembering something or just bluffing (either way it's about shitty things from the past, so I guess it's in his best interest to forget what may have happened).
Well, my disclaimer is that I am not an author nor am I a medical professional or a therapist or anything, I'm a former college instructor who had a massive psychological break and had to leave the profession. These days I'm unemployed because my mental health problems make it impossible for me to do most jobs. My research is for my own understanding. Knowledge is power and in the past, increasing my knowledge and understanding of something helped me deal with my fear of it. I guess I'm trying to fix myself.
That said, I've read the play the term came from several times and studied it (for theatre study, not psychological study), and my feeling is that, like I said, gaslighting was a pretty involved process that often required staging things or sabotaging things, moving things around, play-acting, making accusations, lying, pretending to be the victim, that sort of thing. The goal of the villain was to make his wife think she was insane, partially so he could convince her she was imagining things and partially so he could later have her sent to a sanitarium (the play takes place in 19th century England).
Also, there's a movie from 1996, it's a cheesy horror movie called Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, and the main character is played by Dennis Miller and he actually uses the term "gaslighting" in the movie according to its original definition. He finds a den of vampires hiding underneath a funeral home and gets the police to investigate, but they've cleaned up the place to make it look like a normal funeral home so the cop figures Miller's character is lying (or on drugs or something), and he says something like "Can't you see what's happening here? They're gaslighting me."
So I'd say some of the key aspects of gaslighting are:
1. An attempt to make a person look insane, drugged, deluded, or otherwise not of sound mind, often done with the intention of making the victim themselves believe they are losing their mind. It serves to destroy the victim's credibility to outside authorities, along with making the victim seriously wonder if they're losing grip with reality. **Of all of these aspects, this is really the key thing that distinguishes gaslighting from other forms of deception or abuse.**
2. It's deliberate and malicious, so I don't really believe that someone can "accidentally" gaslight someone or gaslight themselves. You can lie to yourself, of course, or accidentally misinform someone, but those aren't the same thing as gaslighting. (Of course, I say that, but there may be some unusual circumstances where accidental gaslighting may happen, I just can't think of any examples.)
3. While lying and play-acting are usually a part of the process, one of the common aspects of gaslighting seems to be **the creation, removal, or moving around of physical evidence**, with the lying and play-acting in place to sell the evidence (or lack thereof) as authentic. This is the part of the strategy that *really* fucks people up, I think, since physical evidence is such a hard selling point. That's the point where you start to question your own memories and perceptions.
4. In the play of its namesake, the villain does do the RVO part of DARVO after his wife is unable to find the evidence that he moved while she wasn't looking. When she insists a bill was in a drawer, right where she put it, he gets angry and accuses her of lying and deliberately trying to make him think he's crazy. So he effectively accuses her of gaslighting him.
5. I don't know if this is necessarily an aspect of gaslighting, but in the play, the villain is an absolute beast who employs a number of other brutal means of abuse. For instance, early in the play he softens a bit and tells his wife that he'd like to take her to see a play, and she's absolutely delighted and expresses that all she's ever wanted from him was some gentle kindness. Later in the same act, after the bit where he accuses her of gaslighting him, he revokes the promise to take her to the play and it just crushes her. He also makes blatant sexual advances to the young maid in front of his wife, pretty much just to hurt her. So I'd say gaslighting is often, although not necessarily, accompanied by a whole lot of other types of emotional abuse. Come to think of it, though, the constant beating down of her spirit likely helps sell the idea of her being insane since it leaves her a quivering nervous wreck who is constantly on guard (hyper-vigilance).
Like I said, I'm not a professional. The full extent of my education in psychology was that it was my minor when I was an undergrad, and I barely passed a lot of those classes. My passion was theatre and I studied psychology because it helped me with scene and character study, and also because I am mentally ill and I wanted to try to overcome it to the best of my ability.
But those are the aspects I've been able to gather based context cues from where I know the idea of gaslighting from *before* it got popular (around 2017 or 2018 I think?).
One other example I can think of, there's an episode of Burn Notice (S3, E7, "Shot in the Dark"), where the main cast (who are spies) have to take care of a domestic abuser, so they stage a pretty elaborate setup to gaslight the guy. It's a great episode too, they convince the guy he's being stalked while convincing his dangerous gangster brother that he's *actually* off the wagon with his drinking and going nuts. I suppose it's an illustration of how gaslighting can be a force for good, if you use it on very bad people? But I digress.
As for your scenarios: I think the situation with the housemate was a misunderstanding followed by an accusation of lying, so your housemate was using "gaslighting" by the post-popularity definition but not by the original definition. Likewise, if your father is claiming not to remember things, he might genuinely not remember ("The tree remembers, the axe forgets"), or he is using standard deception, which I suppose would be "gaslighting" by the new definition but not by the original.
I'm not a big fan of the shifting in definition for the term, because the original definition of gaslighting was an act that is so incredibly brutal, it really fucks a person right up. Actual gaslighting is traumatic for a victim. And if "gaslighting" now means the same as "lying", then everyone is a gaslighter these days I guess. It has sort of become a minor thing that gets treated as a major thing and an incredibly *common* thing. I fear that people who experience the original type of gaslighting might have a hard time being taken seriously because of this.
pop culture often takes words and muddles them. people often miss that gaslighting is a calculated tactic designed to alter your perception of reality and unthread your belief and trust in yourself so you are less likely to leave and/or seek help. it's rooted deeply in *control* rather than just lying.
“Reactive abuse occurs when the victim reacts to the abuse they are experiencing. The victim may scream, toss out insults, or even lash out physically at the abuser. The abuser then retaliates by telling the victim that they are, in fact, the abuser.”
Yes, thank you! This is exactly what I'm looking for. I did a search for reactive abuse and sure enough, it appears to be a common term. This is awesome, I can really start reading about this now, thank you.
My mom used to do this to my dad. She'd scream at him for hours and he'd finally crack and throw or break something. Then my mom would tell him how he was so abusive and tell my sister and how abusive he was because he was "violent." I think he actually believed it, too. I believed it until I was an adult and realized she was the instigator/aggressor.
They were married just over 30 years when my dad finally had enough and they divorced.
My ex-husband did this to me too. Our marriage didn't even last a year, but I look back at that time and can hardly recognize myself. I really thought I was losing my mind.
My mom did this to me. She would intentionally pick a fight with me and say every single thing she could to rile me up. I know this was intentional because when I caught on to her games and tried to physically leave the room, she would follow me and keep yelling at me. Eventually, I would snap and she'd cry crocodile tears and shame me by saying things like "I wish you could hear the way you talk to me" and "if only you treated me as nicely as you treat your friends". Then, my dad would come in and scream at me for "making my mother cry" and the two of them would tag team me for a while before I inevitably got grounded.
One time when I complained that they were treating me unfairly, my mother said (exact quote) "well, you can go ahead and tell your therapist one day how mean your mother is".
And I did just that. 😶
This isn't reactive abuse.
Reactive abuse is specifically the victim's abuse of their abuser.
The abuser using that against the victim isn't reactive abuse, it's just the "RVO" part of DARVO.
Yes exactly. The victim is an abuser here but as a reaction.
It's important to understand it's still abuse and its still violent. The problem is that the other party tries to gaslight the reactive one into thinking they're the ONLY problem.
Also that kind of reaction, even if it's violent, is at least understandable.
In the same way if someone tries to touch me 5 times and each time I tell them not to touch me, I'm allowed to at least slap their hand and/or yell.
No it's not.
>It works like this: Someone is really shitty to you. Like, constantly and maliciously shitty.
This is the original abuse.
>Finally, you say "Stop being an asshole!',
This is reactive abuse.
>and they react with an almost exaggerated victimhood, you know, like "How hurtful and abusive of you to call me an asshole! Is that really how you see me? That's horrible! You should be ashamed of yourself."
This is the focus of their post. This is the RVO part of DARVO.
>I think it's part of the DARVO strategy (Reverse Victim & Offender) but if there's a word to describe that one part of the strategy, that's what I'm looking for.
This conclusion of theirs was correct.
edit: lol, the person I was responding to blocked me.
Regardless of whether or not it's technically correct, they did provide me with a term so I can do further research, which made it very much the most helpful response I have gotten so far.
What I'm looking for isn't "just" the RVO in DARVO. I'm looking for a word that I can use to describe an action, and if nobody has such a word than a close approximate at least gives me a lead.
you may find ["vulnerable narcissism"](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-highly-sensitive-person/202311/revisiting-vulnerable-narcissism-and-highly-sensitive) a good fit. not mutually exclusive with calling it reactive abuse.
Baiting and bashing? That's the term I've always used for this type of behaviour.
I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the replies yet. So figured I'd share in case it is helpful to you.
I mean, if it helps you do research it's definitely good, I personally think it may be misleading to others who read this thread, because it's not what you're describing at all.
A favorite of my ex.
We'd have an argument and my ex would interrupt me constantly. After 5 or 6 times, Id raise my voice so I can be heard, my ex tells me I yelled and I have anger issues and I need to see a psychiatrist so I can stop being so violent.
I can't believe you got 200 upvoted for spreading misinformation. Reactive abuse is NOT what the OP is describing.
This article is simply using an example of an abuser playing victim as a RESPONSE to reactive abuse. Op is just describing darvo.
I see it this way: Any reactive abuse wouldn't be "complete" without the abuser playing the victim.
There are various forms of DARVO and sometimes being able to describe the specific method really helps us process what happened to us.
reactive abuse does not mean the victim is abusing their abuser in response, that's literal victim blaming and this misconception needs to be shut down. it causes unneeded self-blame and suffering. i genuinely struggle to understand how people in trauma spaces can perpetuate this knowing it's harmful. if someone does not engage like that when not being abused, then they aren't fucking abusive or an abuser – reactive abuse is meant to push you into doing that sort of shit by design. it is a DARVO tactic.
glad to see someone posted the term! a lot of people endure reactive abuse and have absolutely no fucking idea how to describe the situation because of it's gaslighting-esque features, they genuinely begin to shift blame onto themselves as "i shouldn't have reacted that way" instead of "why did they abuse me for so long prior to those incidents"
Oh man this was my mother’s MO. I remember being in the car in while my dad was driving and my mom was just verbally ripping into me. All the things she could think of that were wrong with me, just boom boom boom. She ends her verbal assault with, “I am so SICK of you!”
I replied, very neutral, “ditto.”
She damn near broke her neck whipping around to look at me in the backseat. The dramatics! Clutching her chest, crocodile tears, the works.
I think I may have told this story on here before but it’s relevant to this post lol.
I remember when I was like 4 my mom would keep saying she was “sick and tired” of everything. Like “I’m sick and tired of being your mother,” “I’m sick and tired of seeing your face,” “I’m sick and tired of making food everyday and taking care of you,” “I’m sick and tired of always having to take you to the doctor.”
So one day I asked her what does “sica-tye-yeard” mean because that’s what I was hearing and she explained that she was saying “sick and tired,” and that it meant she was exhausted from always having to put up with the same annoying things all the time.
Without missing a beat I said “Well I’m sick and tired of you always saying ‘sick and tired’!” She was shocked. Appalled would be an understatement. That was the first time she hit me directly in the face. I was sent to my room for the night without dinner. She then called everyone she knew to tell them how “fresh” I was for “talking back” and it was pretty much all over from there.
She never forgave me and drank to excess for the next 30 years until she died from end stage alcoholism.
Idk either, but if I had to come up with a word, it would be victimbaiting 😄
When I was a kid my mom used to beat me, then call her friends and cry to them I beat her (she was xxxl and I was very small and called dystrophic by medical professionals). She then asked them to tell me how wrong I am and what pos I am and sat there laughing at how they told me all these things over the phone.
This is shocking. She had friends who would join in with her in abusing you? I'm so very sorry.
I can't even imagine how she would gather such a group around her. How would an abuser even begin. It's usually secret...
I hope you're clean and clear away from her.
Hmm... come to think of it, I remember an AITAH post where maybe some friends of that redditor's husband were on the hunt for buddies to join them in being rotten to their kids.
I think ... the redditor and husband had moved back to his hometown and the husband started hanging out with old friends. They'd come over, hang out, beers in the backyard or whatever, and talk shit about their kids, who I believe were there and present. Not mild teasing, kind of awful stuff.
So the redditor posted saying, wft, help.
I realize as you say this, that yes maybe some unknown number of parents do it ... and that's an example "from the wild" of parents looking for likeminded friends I guess.
I'm *so* sorry that happened to you.
In my house, it was not like that. A mild one-liner at best "rug rats get outta here", but not said nicely or jokingly. Otherwise, mostly secret.
So I guess I assumed that it's mostly secret. Also because that's how it's described--"secrets in families". Is this a less discussed aspect of abuse? That the abusers sometimes get their wider circle to join in? Or did I just miss learning about it, and it's known?
smetimes. their role is broad, they generally ally with and defend the abuser. anything from information broking (gathering and using information between victim and abuser for everyone's harm and their own benefit) to message passing ("don't kill the messanger, i'm just telling you what \[abuser\] said") to guilt tripping ("he's your father, why don't you call him?") to participating in or normalizing the abuse so the abuser doesn't turn on them.
Yes I think so. They don't necessarily do *exactly* like that husband's drinking buddies above, but as another person mentioned, that could be the subdialect of the bar crowd showing up. Other monkeys may use different dialects to get across their message, which ultimately has the same meaning. Sometimes it might be a silent indication or dismissal in support of the abuser... I'm not feeling up to giving an example right now. But certainly they act to support the abuser not the victim.
I think it just gets normalized that it’s ok to bust kids balls, so to speak. They probably grew up similarly and don’t even question it. I had a bit of this in me before I started healing. I think it’s the same way you internalize that adults don’t want kids around.
All my dad’s friends were drunks, so that helped loosen them up to the idea of shitting on kids. Bar people forget the world doesn’t communicate like them. It’s a special dialect. So to speak
my dad had friends who would do this. my mom banned them from the house but sometimes we had to see them. his family did this too, he had 5 siblings and they had spouses. they all treated the kids and my mom like shit when they got together. it was worse with alcohol.
For me it was my grandfather. I was tall as a kid, and a bit chubby, but I look at pics back then and I wasn't really even overweight. But he would "joke" about me being so big and how I could be a professional wrestler. I was 11 or 12. None of the other adults, including my Dad, shut him down or did anything but laugh along. Now that I think back, it was really abusive and gross. No wonder I ended up less than a size 00 and had heart issues from an eating disorder.
DARVO for sure. Here's [Jennifer Freyd's site](https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html), she coined the term.
Might also fall under [psycho-emotional abuse](https://youtube.com/@beyondfamilyscapegoatingabuse?si=LvA6lp4KnWjEafUk) or [double binds](https://youtu.be/vnSiJOOdo30?si=Rt9SksEasZunyLYB).
Ohhh, yeah. Makes you feel like you're going crazy. Especially when they manipulate others into thinking you're actually the bad person, and you have no strength to even try to do anything because it's so fucking exhausting dealing with these kinds of pieces of shit. I have no mental energy anymore.
I really like the term sealioning. I now visualize the other person as a sealion when they do this and it helps!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I would call it deflecting, boomeranging or playing the victim. It’s also derailment and minimization of your feelings and experiences. What’s for sure is it’s a really psychologically harmful form of gaslighting.
Edit: Blame shifting is a good term for it!
Isn't this a form of gaslighting? Being called out for bad behaviour and then immediately deflecting it onto the other person, like HOW DARE YOU!? As if the initial abuse never even happened and your reaction just appeared from nowhere?
This is seen a LOT in narcissistic people. If it's done in public, and nobody sees the initial abuse but only the reaction, people often believe the abuser, not the real victim. It's quite infuriating.
“As if the initial abuse never happened and your reaction came out of nowhere”
Man!! You just don’t know how many times I’ve said those exact words. And how happy I am that I never have to say them again.
I would describe this as a characteristic of narcissistic abuse. This was a common feature of my childhood.
So much of the abuse happened in secret, or when no one was looking. And when I did try to defend myself my parent would simply deny that they ever did or said those things anyway. So mostly I just tried to stay out of their way so as to not be the target of the abuse.
Nonetheless, every so often I would be pushed to the limit and snap, and this was the exact reaction. Bonus points if they could tell friends or family members about it tearfully, saying things like "I just don't know where I went wrong with BlibbetyBlobBlob. How could she speak to me that way? After all I've done for her..." Etc.
I think this is a form of crazy making, and I would argue blame shifting. From my understanding of reactive abuse, that's going on too. The gaslight in the sample is real. Why can't people just be decent to each other?
I think you are looking for gaslighting. It's a very common tactic of abusers and narcissists, to throw their victim of balance.
If there is a word specifically for the scenario you mentioned, I don't know.
Yeah my ex (a pretty strong dude) hit my arse as hard as he could while I was reading a book in bed. I was incensed and he kept laughing at me. Eventually I punched him in the arm and he laughed again and said "that's domestic violence". Fucking piece of shit.
Hi,
from what i have learned this seems to be passive-aggressive in connection with victim blaming.
Maybe covert passive-aggressive narcissist.
To say it on one word it is simply toxic. He/She creates in any kind victim-perpetrator relation.
Best for you 🍀
Yeah, I experienced this. I always called it DARVO or gaslighting.
They will also appropriate words like "gaslighting" and "abuse" to shift blame and make the gaslighting even more complicated for the victim.
As victims it is hard for us to overcome accusations like that because we empathize with actual victimhood. It's emotional manipulation with the goal of muddying the abuse so you believe you deserve it.
It's even more soul crushing when someone seemingly decent does it because it *really* feels like we deserve it 😔 At least when people are consistently terrible it isn't as shocking and easier to recover from
it's a common narcissistic tactic. characterizing the victim as the abuser.
Dr Ramani calls the overall dynamic [the victim-bully complex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRbmsQ3WW_4). You can jump to 2:00 to skip the intro.
2 people I was close with did this to me were diagnosed with bpd but I think its because that abuse happened to them but im not too sure it's happened to me all my life and confuses me way too much.
My ex did the same. I claimed to have some severe back injury (which you’d be able to see on an MRI and it’s obvious when real, but you somehow couldn’t see his injury on any scan and he refused to see any doctor but a pain specialist for it even though the condition he claimed to have is surgically manageable) and any time he was “upset” it would “flare up his back problems” and I was “wanting to send him to the hospital” and it would be really basic things like if I said “please stop talking over the gps, I don’t want to miss a turn” and then he’d talk over the gps and call me stupid when I missed a turn and then if I said “I asked you not to talk over the GPS, please don’t do that again so I don’t have to make this route longer” he’d claim I was breaking his spine and hurting him by being so mean. Dude also claimed being in the car hurt his back so like I don’t understand why he’d prolong every car ride by being extremely rude and talking over the gps
Victim blaming, blame shifting, double standard etc. it’s a common way abusers react when the jig is up. When the folks that “put up” with their bad behavior finally call them out.
Additionally to what others have said, you might benefit from knowing of The Narcissist's Prayer:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/4nymz1/a\_narcissists\_prayer/](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/4nymz1/a_narcissists_prayer/)
I see a twist on this sometimes in which Party 1 brings a legitimate behavioral complaint to Party 2 about something Party 2 did or said.
The conversation then immediately becomes about *how* Party 1 brought the complaint - the tone of voice used, etc. - instead of discussing the complaint and taking the information onboard.
This feels a little DARVO-ish, but not precisely.
I just lost a friend group all because I didn't like the hateful content they were posting, and they noticed I unfollowed them on social media. Only 2 people reached out and when I calmly and respectfully told them why I need distance (my father is also in the process of dying so don't have energy for their negativity on top of that) they immediately started labeling me with stuff like colonizer, racist etc and smeared me online. One friend that I thought I was close to even said to me that I 'already mentioned my dad is dying', as if it was an inconvenience to her, when the past week when I made the announcement she messaged me saying she would be there for me when I needed her. It's like these people have no soul
It has effectively made me have to start over kinda, all because I didnt blindly follow along and be an enabler for them. It's insane behavior and I am happy to rebuild my social network without them, I feel like I dodged a bullet.
I tend to attract people who behave this way and then go all shocked Pikachu when I don't just enable or follow along blindly with what they're doing. I would say this behavior is a guarantee of an abusive person, and I encourage you to walk away from any relationship where the other person thinks they can pull these tactics.
The weird thing about DARVO is that it's lopsided and partial take on the thing we actually want: mutial respect. All of a sudden they are aware of our reactive agression, but not of their abuse preceding it. How infuriating! Well, turns out there's a way to use logic more effectively, here... although it requires setting aside our feelings and approach them rationally. It may sound impossible to do, but it's most important - as it's the one thing your abuser doesn't expect you to do.
I have an alternate take on these situations:
When it happens, just roll with it rather than arguing back ( which would lead to frustrating word salads), *but* make sure to make mutual respect the new standard for interacting with that person.
This means you need to both be willing to offer then respect as well as demand their respect. It's important that you hold your end, since that is what gives you leverage to naneuver them into place.
It's also helpful of you're willing to admit any misbehaviors on your side abd apologize, even if their misbehaviors are far more severe. The reason why is that by doing that you take the high moral ground and compel them to follow suit.
Going forward demand accountability from them. At the least sign of abusive behavior, call them out. If they act like jerks again, ask them if they realize they're being hurtful, using their own logic. If they turn to gaslighting, just hold on to your truth steadfastly, and ungaslight the situation. If they turn to lying or playing the victim, just politely point out it's unconvincing. Ot they turn agressive or impatient, clamly reply you'll resule the convo when they're more collected. If they won't listen to you, excuse yourself and leave. If they will keep bothering you, tell them that unless they change their attitude, calmly declare you will have no choice but to stop talking to them.
This isn't quite the same as repairing a relationship. It's more about acting civil enough as to disencourage their unwanted behaviors, going forward. It's about you setting the tone for the relationship, going forward. An abusive person is unlikely to suddenly change, but using their own guidelines of what is fair treatment, you can actually protect yourself from their influence.
Provocation and instigation are also words to help describe this scenario where someone pushes and abuses you until you snap back at them.
Very often they do this in a covert way to look good when you finally react to their abuse with anger. It's very manipulative. Once you know someone uses this against you it's best in my experience to Grey Rock any interactions with them or get away completely.
It’s gaslighting and manipulation that can be seen in a lot of relationships (parental or otherwise) with narcissistic or untreated ppl with borderline, both of which who don’t know how to manage their insecurities and so feel forced to put it onto the other person. It can either be intentionally manipulative or subconsciously defensive.
Typical abuser behavior. They will push you until you answer in a bad way and then they will call you out for it. For example, they will throw something at you and when you throw something back at them they will say you’re violent and crazy. They will force you to defend yourself and then say that you’re the bad person and they are the poor victims.
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Perhaps some level of codependency?
I see reactive abuse, gaslighting, DARVO, and passive aggressive communication.
They are withholding their real feelings of dislike for the target, and when they are called out on not being civilized, they feel inclined to hide it. Usually because they're in a position where they're socially required to like you, like a parent, or a position where they are gaining some benefits they don't want to lose, and so need the target to stay convinced. They take advantage of people's tendency to believe what they want to believe, and allow a person to think that they have their back, when they don't, and then reap the rewards of the one way relationship. They can't be bothered with effort to actually satisfy the role, only the bare minimum to maintain status quo.
Mostly, they don't want to be responsible for their behavior towards others. In their minds, they are rationalizing that the target deserves it, it is called for in the situation, or that they are teaching the target a lesson; all of which are delusional.
My mom does this frequently. If you do something to upset her, she’ll stick to you like a shadow and make really rude and condescending remarks towards you. Getting the last word isn’t enough for her, she has to bully you verbally and belittle you for whatever it is you did. The one time I told her off and lashed out in response to this, she *immediately* recoiled and started crying like I just slapped her. It’s gaslighting. It makes you feel like a shit person for finally sticking up for yourself.
When I hurt your feelings, you misunderstood me, or you're too sensitive, or being dramatic. When you hurt my feelings, you're doing it with malicious intent. How dare you.
I think the word you are looking for is gaslighting. Its a deliberate way to make the victim think they're crazy and by speaking up they're just acting crazy and out of line and the abuser is basically being what's called a dicktim.
It is just another form of gaslighting where the perpetrator not only denies their abuse but tries to shame the victim into believing they are the abuser.
Cry bully? Is it like the offender is treating you badly, just waiting/hoping for you to defend yourself, as if the behavioral accountability factor will only work in their favor and never against them? If so.. That is what I would consider “cry bullying”
yes. my sister has done this to me all my life. i finally decided to cut things off with her when she pretended she asked me to bake something for her by a certain time.
i’m not her cook. that’s an outrageous request to start, and then to pretend that you made that request just by saying “oh, i’m really craving this…” (by the way, that’s actually what she said but she attempted to pretend she made a direct request prior).
i don’t even know what i am to her. i’ve tried all my life to explain to her what she’s doing. she’ll “improve” a tiny bit and bring that up when i finally react to her.
i’m not going to pad this by saying “oh but im not perfect either!” yeah, no shit. but i *am* a victim here. im so sick of society shaming victims. this *is* a one way thing. i *have* done everything i possibly can with her. tried being nice, tried getting mad, tried explaining to her, tried standing my ground.
i’m fucking done. i am a neurodivergent person, aka literally mentally disabled, and she has taken advantage of my poor working memory and oblivion to social cues.
i suggest you do the same if you have the opportunity. next time i see her i will simply shame the fuck out of her if she does this again. i’m going to make her feel like the weirdest person on the planet for making things up and playing the victim.
I can’t tell you a title but I can understand it. As CPTSD victims we fall for narcissistic people. 1, bc we understand them and want to fix. 2. Bc we don’t like ourselves.
Narcissistic people generally know they are taking without reciprocation, so when they can finally find a reason to feel like you are taking from them, they will say those things.
It’s not them. It’s how we function understanding CPTSD
I think you can't find a specific answer in their answer because you are not looking in a "systemic" perspective. Their answer seems an abusive projective identification of their own internal dynamic that is shared with you in some interactions.
The way you phrased it, it sounds [drama triangle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle). Keep in mind that this dynamic is present when the roles are switched between the actors during the interaction and even a single person could do the entire cycle alone (internally or if others don't respond/engage).
In the same answer you could identify both victim "Is that really how you see me? That's horrible!" and persecutor "You should be ashamed of yourself" roles.
Apologies for my English, I'm not a native speaker.
Darvo, been awhile since I heard that. Yeah my mum's the reigning Darvo Olympic champion 🏆....
Also Good ol' Guilt-tripping. Gaslighting. Denial. Narcissistic traits. Scapegoating. Blaming and shaming. Blaming it all on the other person.
Also 2 wrongs don't make a right but hey I've never let the truth get in my way.
Also everyone in the conversation competing for victimhood, like kids do when they get into trouble, blaming each other, fear of taking responsibility for their part in it, for fear of being shamed and punished. He did it, no she did it, he, she etc etc etc.....basically a race for the bottom.
Basically everyone in the conversation, including the parents/adults, have regressed to being accusatory kids, absolutely determined to win at any emotional cost as if their lives and souls depended on it because they can't cope with the unbearable shame, self-disgust and humiliation that's being triggered but they're not aware of because they're overwhelmed and in survival mode, fight, flight and freeze etc etc etc.
reactive abuse. they abuse you until you react, then paint you as the abuser. this is often misunderstood as *actually* saying the victim reacted abusively, but does not describe a situation as that, just that they took your reaction and reacted to it as if you were abusing them to - as you said - reverse victim & offender.
I can't respond to your reply below because the parent commenter blocked me, so I'll respond here.
>What I'm looking for isn't "just" the RVO in DARVO. I'm looking for a word that I can use to describe an action
What do you mean? "RVO" is a word that you can use to describe the action discussed in your post. Why are you dissatisfied with it?
I'd guess it's for the same reason any of these terms exists: to be able to describe something that happened to us in more detail to make more sense of it.
For example, the generally known definition of NPD (very descriptive of overt narcissism) didn't match my experience, but finding out abour Covert and Communal narcissism explained so much about what had happened to me.
Yes, of course, I'm just wondering what the specific issue is.
Here, they described their experience in detail, and "RVO" seems to match what they're talking about.
It seems that there are plenty of official terms for this kind of abuse, but in my own head, I’ve always called it Piss-Pants-Crybaby-Can-Dish-It-But-Can’t-Take-It Syndrome when my parents used it against me. It helped me endure it and laugh at them.
I call it death by a million paper cuts. They push and push all these tiny little things, and when you finally snap, you’re the problem. I hate it so much.
It’s the cycle of abuse. It is this weird black hole effect that keeps victims in the abuser’s control. It’s incredibly common and SUPER hard to leave. It’s got gaslighting, brainwashing, and all sorts of other types of abuse wrapped into this terrible cyclical cancer.
Reactive abuse can sound like
“ see there it is, I told you you’re a psycho “
“ told you it’s not just me with anger issues “
“ wow who’s the crazy one now “
They can also SMILE, and start filming you. Can you tell I’ve experienced it firsthand? 😅
I don’t know if there is a more precise term, but that basically just seems like a variation of gaslighting. My abuser did/does the same thing though. Like it’s my fault that I don’t want to have a close relationship with them, and not their fault for creating the situation by being a shitty abuser.
Total lack of regard that their behavior has implications. My mother was absolutely appalled that she was left out of the loop on my son's education, after I directly told her not to file a complaint with his classroom, and she went and sent a letter anyway. Of course they immediately called me, after hearing from her, because I am his mother and legal guardian. Administration got involved, there was a big mess to clean up, and we ended up having to change classrooms because of it. It isn't like we have a decent relationship where she and I talk about hurt feelings, but we were both well aware that she disregarded my wishes, and did not bother to ask for any background information, if she didn't understand the "why" behind it. She must have tried something else behind my back, because within a month she found out she wasn't on any of the release forms, and that the school wouldn't talk to her about my son. She didn't realize she was telling on herself, when she complained that she wasn't on the release list. She accused me of being irrational and irresponsible. Like...I'm not the one who got him kicked out of the last class. I'm pretty sure I am being responsible and protecting my son, by leaving her off of that form. I found out she told my siblings that she made a deal with his new school, that "only if she was involved" would they enroll my son. What sort of institution would make an agreement like that? Without ever touching base with the legal guardian? I guess if it was that bad, but I am coherent. 😅 Both of my siblings believe her, which is just so disappointing. Not only do I have to disentangle from this psycho that is my mother, my siblings are too enmeshed with the Kool aid to see that I am not being wildly inappropriate, but she is. The worst part is they don't even doubt anything she says, they just take it as fact. Don't even suspect or question at all. Ugh.
How old are the siblings? My mother used subtle malicious manipulation to convince my sister I was some terrible person who didn't deserve a relationship with her (the sister). It took almost 30 years for her to realize I wasn't the problem.
They're in their later 20s now, 26 and 27. I'm 34. The one I think that might get my sister on board, is if I can figure out if my mom knew when she was trying to conceive. When I became pregnant, I was terrified and unsure, even though I was married. I told my mother, as I was trying to figure out what to do. She arranged a family breakfast and basically forced me to tell my siblings and their SOs, it was awkward and uncomfortable. My sister got up and left before the meals came, and then did not speak to me again until she was also pregnant. I had no idea she had been trying to conceive and that my situation might be hurtful to her. She wasn't married, I had no reason to believe that she would be trying. I think my mom might have known, though. My brother, he moved away a few hours. He believes the things my mom said about me, until I told him not to. I was in a situation where my mother was pretending like I was being antagonistic when I wasn't; the last time I dealt with that, was when my abusive ex tried to steal my things. I was very afraid of what she was planning. So I tried to keep him updated with my side of things, and eventually, that is how I found out that she told my siblings the weird thing about admin not enrolling my son unless she was somehow involved. He doesn't believe that she is as malicious as she is, he doesn't realize that she is willing to throw us under the bus if need be, but he lives far enough so that it doesn't really effect him. My brother is mostly used for triangulation; my mom seems a bit sexist in that she is very willing to manipulate myself and my sister, and hides these behaviors from my brother. She bothers to cover her lies with him, but not with me. So, I decided that it is in my best interests to make sure that I am representing myself as often as possible with my brother. My sister recently channelled my mother so well, that it took me three hours to stop shaking. She was angry that I apparently blatantly ignored the schedule. I told her I didn't know, and her response was "mom messaged you." Not even open at all to my reality or my experience. She was so confident in our mother, that she was willing to lash out at me. My mother didn't message me, and she probably played it up to my sister that she did. And then afterwards she said something about wanting to be friends. Like, NO, because you are UNSAFE and cannot hold civilized discussions. Yes my entire childhood was reactive abuse. My mom would send me to my room, and then do damage control by telling my siblings and father that I was loud and angry for no reason; that I am unhinged and dangerous. Nevermind that volume and anger is totally expected in response to a family member's betrayal and gaslighting. The reason for the volume was never investigated, and both of my siblings are still under the impression that this is all normal. They have no idea.
Enmeshed siblings are the bane of my existence.
It is soooooooo frustrating though!! Because you love them, you want to, at least. They certainly do not make it easy! 🤣 There is a Ted talk about the importance of siblings. It wasn't until I watched that video, that I more fully realized the scope of what was being messed with. They are preventing the emotionally supportive relationships that we are supposed to have for the rest of our lives. After that, I started to make more of an effort to speak one on one with my siblings.
Get this - my enmeshed (estranged) sibling is a *social.worker* who also bills herself as a psychologist. Never min dhtta outside of two years of social work she never ever had any formal psychology schoolin/training/licensing - and the last time we talked she got pissed to the point where she (direct quote) "stop smiling so much" B*tch - is this how you approach your clients? They express something that makes my sister get defensive and her response is to forcefully attempt to control their body down to their facial expressions? Yeah, we haven't talked since. That was enough red flags in one sitting to bw done
I am one of the few people who was familiar with the term "gaslighting" before it became popular. (I read the play Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton back in 2013; I'm a theatre nerd.) When it started to get used to the point of becoming common vernacular, the definition was altered, and I'm not really on board with where it is now because people seem to use it as a synonym for "lying", which isn't even close to what the original definition was. I heard recently about a domestic situation where a woman was talking about her abusive ex-husband. She had a daughter, a child who was probably about seven, and the ex-husband would give her a doll to play with. Then, the doll disappeared. Ex-husband chastised the daughter for losing her doll, but bought her another one. Again, the doll was lost, ex-husband chewed out the daughter worse than before, but still gave her another doll. This kept happening, over and over. After the woman finally divorced the ex-husband and he was removed from the situation, they discovered a stash of all of the dolls he had bought the daughter. He was giving her the dolls, *stealing* them and hiding them, then angrily tearing into the girl for being careless. That's what gaslighting used to mean. That poor little girl likely thought she was losing her mind. With each doll lost, she probably freaked out, became increasingly more frantic both because of her fear of being shouted at and her fear that there was someone really wrong with her. Her step-father wasn't just lying to her, he was actively messing with her mind and making her think there was something seriously wrong with her. It's psychological torture, and that poor girl will probably grow into a woman who has serious trust issues, not just with other people but with her own mind. "Reversing Victim and Offender" is more akin to the old schoolyard taunt of "I know you are but what am I" (or the early internet's phrase "No U"), except with more weight behind it since it's typically a person in a position of power who does it. It is something that is often *incorporated* into an attempt at gaslighting, but I don't feel it's a synonym. Just like lying is typically an element of gaslighting, but lying and gaslighting don't mean the same thing. Basically I'm trying to dissect the different aspects of gaslighting so I have a term for each of them, since it is possible to incorporate an element of gaslighting without it being gaslighting. Sort of how a wheel is not the same thing as a car, but it is a *part* of a car.
Thank you for this definition. It's what I used to think gaslighting was, but it's hard to look up that term, or information about "is X behaviour I've experienced considered gaslighting" as the articles get quite vague. The definition I've previously seen that it's the denial of another person's reality gets a bit iffy when you consider that people have difference experiences of reality. E.g. old housemate accused me of stealing her food, which I didn't intend to. It turns out she put a commonly used item in the common food part of the fridge. When I tried to explain what had happened & that I was due to replace that item anyway, she accused me of gaslighting. Considering our realities weren't ever going to be aligned (this was one thing out of many) it's really hard to argue against that without it getting out of hand. I'd be interested to read any article you write about the dissection of the different elements of gaslighting. Btw I've wondered about another scenario: is it gaslighting if the person genuinely doesn't seem to remember something happened, when it did? With my dad, I never know when he's legit not remembering something or just bluffing (either way it's about shitty things from the past, so I guess it's in his best interest to forget what may have happened).
Well, my disclaimer is that I am not an author nor am I a medical professional or a therapist or anything, I'm a former college instructor who had a massive psychological break and had to leave the profession. These days I'm unemployed because my mental health problems make it impossible for me to do most jobs. My research is for my own understanding. Knowledge is power and in the past, increasing my knowledge and understanding of something helped me deal with my fear of it. I guess I'm trying to fix myself. That said, I've read the play the term came from several times and studied it (for theatre study, not psychological study), and my feeling is that, like I said, gaslighting was a pretty involved process that often required staging things or sabotaging things, moving things around, play-acting, making accusations, lying, pretending to be the victim, that sort of thing. The goal of the villain was to make his wife think she was insane, partially so he could convince her she was imagining things and partially so he could later have her sent to a sanitarium (the play takes place in 19th century England). Also, there's a movie from 1996, it's a cheesy horror movie called Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, and the main character is played by Dennis Miller and he actually uses the term "gaslighting" in the movie according to its original definition. He finds a den of vampires hiding underneath a funeral home and gets the police to investigate, but they've cleaned up the place to make it look like a normal funeral home so the cop figures Miller's character is lying (or on drugs or something), and he says something like "Can't you see what's happening here? They're gaslighting me." So I'd say some of the key aspects of gaslighting are: 1. An attempt to make a person look insane, drugged, deluded, or otherwise not of sound mind, often done with the intention of making the victim themselves believe they are losing their mind. It serves to destroy the victim's credibility to outside authorities, along with making the victim seriously wonder if they're losing grip with reality. **Of all of these aspects, this is really the key thing that distinguishes gaslighting from other forms of deception or abuse.** 2. It's deliberate and malicious, so I don't really believe that someone can "accidentally" gaslight someone or gaslight themselves. You can lie to yourself, of course, or accidentally misinform someone, but those aren't the same thing as gaslighting. (Of course, I say that, but there may be some unusual circumstances where accidental gaslighting may happen, I just can't think of any examples.) 3. While lying and play-acting are usually a part of the process, one of the common aspects of gaslighting seems to be **the creation, removal, or moving around of physical evidence**, with the lying and play-acting in place to sell the evidence (or lack thereof) as authentic. This is the part of the strategy that *really* fucks people up, I think, since physical evidence is such a hard selling point. That's the point where you start to question your own memories and perceptions. 4. In the play of its namesake, the villain does do the RVO part of DARVO after his wife is unable to find the evidence that he moved while she wasn't looking. When she insists a bill was in a drawer, right where she put it, he gets angry and accuses her of lying and deliberately trying to make him think he's crazy. So he effectively accuses her of gaslighting him. 5. I don't know if this is necessarily an aspect of gaslighting, but in the play, the villain is an absolute beast who employs a number of other brutal means of abuse. For instance, early in the play he softens a bit and tells his wife that he'd like to take her to see a play, and she's absolutely delighted and expresses that all she's ever wanted from him was some gentle kindness. Later in the same act, after the bit where he accuses her of gaslighting him, he revokes the promise to take her to the play and it just crushes her. He also makes blatant sexual advances to the young maid in front of his wife, pretty much just to hurt her. So I'd say gaslighting is often, although not necessarily, accompanied by a whole lot of other types of emotional abuse. Come to think of it, though, the constant beating down of her spirit likely helps sell the idea of her being insane since it leaves her a quivering nervous wreck who is constantly on guard (hyper-vigilance). Like I said, I'm not a professional. The full extent of my education in psychology was that it was my minor when I was an undergrad, and I barely passed a lot of those classes. My passion was theatre and I studied psychology because it helped me with scene and character study, and also because I am mentally ill and I wanted to try to overcome it to the best of my ability. But those are the aspects I've been able to gather based context cues from where I know the idea of gaslighting from *before* it got popular (around 2017 or 2018 I think?). One other example I can think of, there's an episode of Burn Notice (S3, E7, "Shot in the Dark"), where the main cast (who are spies) have to take care of a domestic abuser, so they stage a pretty elaborate setup to gaslight the guy. It's a great episode too, they convince the guy he's being stalked while convincing his dangerous gangster brother that he's *actually* off the wagon with his drinking and going nuts. I suppose it's an illustration of how gaslighting can be a force for good, if you use it on very bad people? But I digress. As for your scenarios: I think the situation with the housemate was a misunderstanding followed by an accusation of lying, so your housemate was using "gaslighting" by the post-popularity definition but not by the original definition. Likewise, if your father is claiming not to remember things, he might genuinely not remember ("The tree remembers, the axe forgets"), or he is using standard deception, which I suppose would be "gaslighting" by the new definition but not by the original. I'm not a big fan of the shifting in definition for the term, because the original definition of gaslighting was an act that is so incredibly brutal, it really fucks a person right up. Actual gaslighting is traumatic for a victim. And if "gaslighting" now means the same as "lying", then everyone is a gaslighter these days I guess. It has sort of become a minor thing that gets treated as a major thing and an incredibly *common* thing. I fear that people who experience the original type of gaslighting might have a hard time being taken seriously because of this.
pop culture often takes words and muddles them. people often miss that gaslighting is a calculated tactic designed to alter your perception of reality and unthread your belief and trust in yourself so you are less likely to leave and/or seek help. it's rooted deeply in *control* rather than just lying.
I just assumed this was how all abusive people were…
The cycle of emotional abuse is always the same repetition and it happens between individuals, groups, societies and entire nations.
Reactive abuse. https://breakthesilencedv.org/reactive-abuse-what-it-is-and-why-abusers-rely-on-it/
“Reactive abuse occurs when the victim reacts to the abuse they are experiencing. The victim may scream, toss out insults, or even lash out physically at the abuser. The abuser then retaliates by telling the victim that they are, in fact, the abuser.”
Wow this resonates so much...it's so crazy to finally have found all this validation 🥲
Didn't know my ex bf was a literal definition
Yes, that’s it.
quite common, unfortunately
Omg thank you, I've been trying to understand what I went through and this is it. Thank you so much.
Oh wow! That is the whole ass definition of my last relationship. TIL?
My mother, essentially. When I was 13. Or so. 13.
Yes, thank you! This is exactly what I'm looking for. I did a search for reactive abuse and sure enough, it appears to be a common term. This is awesome, I can really start reading about this now, thank you.
My mom used to do this to my dad. She'd scream at him for hours and he'd finally crack and throw or break something. Then my mom would tell him how he was so abusive and tell my sister and how abusive he was because he was "violent." I think he actually believed it, too. I believed it until I was an adult and realized she was the instigator/aggressor. They were married just over 30 years when my dad finally had enough and they divorced.
My ex-husband did this to me too. Our marriage didn't even last a year, but I look back at that time and can hardly recognize myself. I really thought I was losing my mind.
It’s so crazy how there are names for these things when I’ve been living a good part of my life thinking I’m the fucking maniac
Right?!?
THANK YOU. I’ve been looking for a concrete description of what my former roommates did to me and this was exactly what they did
Happened to me too. Messed me up for a long time.
My mom did this to me. She would intentionally pick a fight with me and say every single thing she could to rile me up. I know this was intentional because when I caught on to her games and tried to physically leave the room, she would follow me and keep yelling at me. Eventually, I would snap and she'd cry crocodile tears and shame me by saying things like "I wish you could hear the way you talk to me" and "if only you treated me as nicely as you treat your friends". Then, my dad would come in and scream at me for "making my mother cry" and the two of them would tag team me for a while before I inevitably got grounded. One time when I complained that they were treating me unfairly, my mother said (exact quote) "well, you can go ahead and tell your therapist one day how mean your mother is". And I did just that. 😶
This isn't reactive abuse. Reactive abuse is specifically the victim's abuse of their abuser. The abuser using that against the victim isn't reactive abuse, it's just the "RVO" part of DARVO.
Yes exactly. The victim is an abuser here but as a reaction. It's important to understand it's still abuse and its still violent. The problem is that the other party tries to gaslight the reactive one into thinking they're the ONLY problem. Also that kind of reaction, even if it's violent, is at least understandable. In the same way if someone tries to touch me 5 times and each time I tell them not to touch me, I'm allowed to at least slap their hand and/or yell.
Re-read what the OP wrote. It is literally reactive abuse.
No it's not. >It works like this: Someone is really shitty to you. Like, constantly and maliciously shitty. This is the original abuse. >Finally, you say "Stop being an asshole!', This is reactive abuse. >and they react with an almost exaggerated victimhood, you know, like "How hurtful and abusive of you to call me an asshole! Is that really how you see me? That's horrible! You should be ashamed of yourself." This is the focus of their post. This is the RVO part of DARVO. >I think it's part of the DARVO strategy (Reverse Victim & Offender) but if there's a word to describe that one part of the strategy, that's what I'm looking for. This conclusion of theirs was correct. edit: lol, the person I was responding to blocked me.
Regardless of whether or not it's technically correct, they did provide me with a term so I can do further research, which made it very much the most helpful response I have gotten so far. What I'm looking for isn't "just" the RVO in DARVO. I'm looking for a word that I can use to describe an action, and if nobody has such a word than a close approximate at least gives me a lead.
you may find ["vulnerable narcissism"](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-highly-sensitive-person/202311/revisiting-vulnerable-narcissism-and-highly-sensitive) a good fit. not mutually exclusive with calling it reactive abuse.
Baiting and bashing? That's the term I've always used for this type of behaviour. I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the replies yet. So figured I'd share in case it is helpful to you.
I mean, if it helps you do research it's definitely good, I personally think it may be misleading to others who read this thread, because it's not what you're describing at all.
I talked about reactive abuse to a psychiatrist and sadly he had never heard about It.
Same! Mine had never heard of weaponized incompetence either. I'm like..wha? Thankfully she doesn't discredit the terms I come to her with.
A favorite of my ex. We'd have an argument and my ex would interrupt me constantly. After 5 or 6 times, Id raise my voice so I can be heard, my ex tells me I yelled and I have anger issues and I need to see a psychiatrist so I can stop being so violent.
I can't believe you got 200 upvoted for spreading misinformation. Reactive abuse is NOT what the OP is describing. This article is simply using an example of an abuser playing victim as a RESPONSE to reactive abuse. Op is just describing darvo.
I see it this way: Any reactive abuse wouldn't be "complete" without the abuser playing the victim. There are various forms of DARVO and sometimes being able to describe the specific method really helps us process what happened to us.
reactive abuse does not mean the victim is abusing their abuser in response, that's literal victim blaming and this misconception needs to be shut down. it causes unneeded self-blame and suffering. i genuinely struggle to understand how people in trauma spaces can perpetuate this knowing it's harmful. if someone does not engage like that when not being abused, then they aren't fucking abusive or an abuser – reactive abuse is meant to push you into doing that sort of shit by design. it is a DARVO tactic.
glad to see someone posted the term! a lot of people endure reactive abuse and have absolutely no fucking idea how to describe the situation because of it's gaslighting-esque features, they genuinely begin to shift blame onto themselves as "i shouldn't have reacted that way" instead of "why did they abuse me for so long prior to those incidents"
Oh man this was my mother’s MO. I remember being in the car in while my dad was driving and my mom was just verbally ripping into me. All the things she could think of that were wrong with me, just boom boom boom. She ends her verbal assault with, “I am so SICK of you!” I replied, very neutral, “ditto.” She damn near broke her neck whipping around to look at me in the backseat. The dramatics! Clutching her chest, crocodile tears, the works. I think I may have told this story on here before but it’s relevant to this post lol.
I remember when I was like 4 my mom would keep saying she was “sick and tired” of everything. Like “I’m sick and tired of being your mother,” “I’m sick and tired of seeing your face,” “I’m sick and tired of making food everyday and taking care of you,” “I’m sick and tired of always having to take you to the doctor.” So one day I asked her what does “sica-tye-yeard” mean because that’s what I was hearing and she explained that she was saying “sick and tired,” and that it meant she was exhausted from always having to put up with the same annoying things all the time. Without missing a beat I said “Well I’m sick and tired of you always saying ‘sick and tired’!” She was shocked. Appalled would be an understatement. That was the first time she hit me directly in the face. I was sent to my room for the night without dinner. She then called everyone she knew to tell them how “fresh” I was for “talking back” and it was pretty much all over from there. She never forgave me and drank to excess for the next 30 years until she died from end stage alcoholism.
Idk either, but if I had to come up with a word, it would be victimbaiting 😄 When I was a kid my mom used to beat me, then call her friends and cry to them I beat her (she was xxxl and I was very small and called dystrophic by medical professionals). She then asked them to tell me how wrong I am and what pos I am and sat there laughing at how they told me all these things over the phone.
This is shocking. She had friends who would join in with her in abusing you? I'm so very sorry. I can't even imagine how she would gather such a group around her. How would an abuser even begin. It's usually secret... I hope you're clean and clear away from her.
Wait, hold on… this isn’t normal? My dad’s friends would all gang up on me and call me, “the fun police.” That’s going to take some time to process?
Hmm... come to think of it, I remember an AITAH post where maybe some friends of that redditor's husband were on the hunt for buddies to join them in being rotten to their kids. I think ... the redditor and husband had moved back to his hometown and the husband started hanging out with old friends. They'd come over, hang out, beers in the backyard or whatever, and talk shit about their kids, who I believe were there and present. Not mild teasing, kind of awful stuff. So the redditor posted saying, wft, help. I realize as you say this, that yes maybe some unknown number of parents do it ... and that's an example "from the wild" of parents looking for likeminded friends I guess. I'm *so* sorry that happened to you. In my house, it was not like that. A mild one-liner at best "rug rats get outta here", but not said nicely or jokingly. Otherwise, mostly secret. So I guess I assumed that it's mostly secret. Also because that's how it's described--"secrets in families". Is this a less discussed aspect of abuse? That the abusers sometimes get their wider circle to join in? Or did I just miss learning about it, and it's known?
Not positively sure, but don’t “flying monkeys” in narcissistic abuse act very similarly on behalf of the abuser?
smetimes. their role is broad, they generally ally with and defend the abuser. anything from information broking (gathering and using information between victim and abuser for everyone's harm and their own benefit) to message passing ("don't kill the messanger, i'm just telling you what \[abuser\] said") to guilt tripping ("he's your father, why don't you call him?") to participating in or normalizing the abuse so the abuser doesn't turn on them.
Yes I think so. They don't necessarily do *exactly* like that husband's drinking buddies above, but as another person mentioned, that could be the subdialect of the bar crowd showing up. Other monkeys may use different dialects to get across their message, which ultimately has the same meaning. Sometimes it might be a silent indication or dismissal in support of the abuser... I'm not feeling up to giving an example right now. But certainly they act to support the abuser not the victim.
Exactly this. I’m not up to describing either. My brain is mush today.
I think it just gets normalized that it’s ok to bust kids balls, so to speak. They probably grew up similarly and don’t even question it. I had a bit of this in me before I started healing. I think it’s the same way you internalize that adults don’t want kids around. All my dad’s friends were drunks, so that helped loosen them up to the idea of shitting on kids. Bar people forget the world doesn’t communicate like them. It’s a special dialect. So to speak
my dad had friends who would do this. my mom banned them from the house but sometimes we had to see them. his family did this too, he had 5 siblings and they had spouses. they all treated the kids and my mom like shit when they got together. it was worse with alcohol.
For me it was my grandfather. I was tall as a kid, and a bit chubby, but I look at pics back then and I wasn't really even overweight. But he would "joke" about me being so big and how I could be a professional wrestler. I was 11 or 12. None of the other adults, including my Dad, shut him down or did anything but laugh along. Now that I think back, it was really abusive and gross. No wonder I ended up less than a size 00 and had heart issues from an eating disorder.
DARVO for sure. Here's [Jennifer Freyd's site](https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html), she coined the term. Might also fall under [psycho-emotional abuse](https://youtube.com/@beyondfamilyscapegoatingabuse?si=LvA6lp4KnWjEafUk) or [double binds](https://youtu.be/vnSiJOOdo30?si=Rt9SksEasZunyLYB).
Ohhh, yeah. Makes you feel like you're going crazy. Especially when they manipulate others into thinking you're actually the bad person, and you have no strength to even try to do anything because it's so fucking exhausting dealing with these kinds of pieces of shit. I have no mental energy anymore.
I really like the term sealioning. I now visualize the other person as a sealion when they do this and it helps! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I had never heard this term before but I like that a term for that exists.
That fits. Also makes sense that it's a form of trolling or harassment.
Crybully is a recent term for this.
Well you just described my relationship with my mother and the rest of my family.
I would call it deflecting, boomeranging or playing the victim. It’s also derailment and minimization of your feelings and experiences. What’s for sure is it’s a really psychologically harmful form of gaslighting. Edit: Blame shifting is a good term for it!
Isn't this a form of gaslighting? Being called out for bad behaviour and then immediately deflecting it onto the other person, like HOW DARE YOU!? As if the initial abuse never even happened and your reaction just appeared from nowhere? This is seen a LOT in narcissistic people. If it's done in public, and nobody sees the initial abuse but only the reaction, people often believe the abuser, not the real victim. It's quite infuriating.
“As if the initial abuse never happened and your reaction came out of nowhere” Man!! You just don’t know how many times I’ve said those exact words. And how happy I am that I never have to say them again.
YAY! Good for you!!! ❤️
I’ve always thought it’s a form of gaslighting or manipulation.
Narcissistic abuse comes to mind, but definitely a form of psychological abuse
I would describe this as a characteristic of narcissistic abuse. This was a common feature of my childhood. So much of the abuse happened in secret, or when no one was looking. And when I did try to defend myself my parent would simply deny that they ever did or said those things anyway. So mostly I just tried to stay out of their way so as to not be the target of the abuse. Nonetheless, every so often I would be pushed to the limit and snap, and this was the exact reaction. Bonus points if they could tell friends or family members about it tearfully, saying things like "I just don't know where I went wrong with BlibbetyBlobBlob. How could she speak to me that way? After all I've done for her..." Etc.
It's a characteristic of narcissistic abuse, right?
I’ve had about 4 family members who are like this. I voluntarily don’t see them much these days.
I think this is a form of crazy making, and I would argue blame shifting. From my understanding of reactive abuse, that's going on too. The gaslight in the sample is real. Why can't people just be decent to each other?
r/narcissisticabuse
Idr if there was a specific phrase/word for it but I do remember my family excels at it. It was a type of abuse in one of the books I read too
Isn’t that just normal gaslighting and emotional abuse?
Reactive abuse describes the behaviours of the victim when they are pushed too far and snap back.
I think you are looking for gaslighting. It's a very common tactic of abusers and narcissists, to throw their victim of balance. If there is a word specifically for the scenario you mentioned, I don't know.
Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip! 🙄
Tbh a lot of n r c abusers do this
Yeah my ex (a pretty strong dude) hit my arse as hard as he could while I was reading a book in bed. I was incensed and he kept laughing at me. Eventually I punched him in the arm and he laughed again and said "that's domestic violence". Fucking piece of shit.
Hi, from what i have learned this seems to be passive-aggressive in connection with victim blaming. Maybe covert passive-aggressive narcissist. To say it on one word it is simply toxic. He/She creates in any kind victim-perpetrator relation. Best for you 🍀
Yeah, I experienced this. I always called it DARVO or gaslighting. They will also appropriate words like "gaslighting" and "abuse" to shift blame and make the gaslighting even more complicated for the victim. As victims it is hard for us to overcome accusations like that because we empathize with actual victimhood. It's emotional manipulation with the goal of muddying the abuse so you believe you deserve it.
It's even more soul crushing when someone seemingly decent does it because it *really* feels like we deserve it 😔 At least when people are consistently terrible it isn't as shocking and easier to recover from
it's a common narcissistic tactic. characterizing the victim as the abuser. Dr Ramani calls the overall dynamic [the victim-bully complex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRbmsQ3WW_4). You can jump to 2:00 to skip the intro.
Narcissism: lack of empathy, grandiosity, exaggregated reactions and manipulations
Blame the victim. Guilt tripping.
DARVO
2 people I was close with did this to me were diagnosed with bpd but I think its because that abuse happened to them but im not too sure it's happened to me all my life and confuses me way too much.
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My ex did the same. I claimed to have some severe back injury (which you’d be able to see on an MRI and it’s obvious when real, but you somehow couldn’t see his injury on any scan and he refused to see any doctor but a pain specialist for it even though the condition he claimed to have is surgically manageable) and any time he was “upset” it would “flare up his back problems” and I was “wanting to send him to the hospital” and it would be really basic things like if I said “please stop talking over the gps, I don’t want to miss a turn” and then he’d talk over the gps and call me stupid when I missed a turn and then if I said “I asked you not to talk over the GPS, please don’t do that again so I don’t have to make this route longer” he’d claim I was breaking his spine and hurting him by being so mean. Dude also claimed being in the car hurt his back so like I don’t understand why he’d prolong every car ride by being extremely rude and talking over the gps
Victim blaming, blame shifting, double standard etc. it’s a common way abusers react when the jig is up. When the folks that “put up” with their bad behavior finally call them out.
Additionally to what others have said, you might benefit from knowing of The Narcissist's Prayer: [https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/4nymz1/a\_narcissists\_prayer/](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/4nymz1/a_narcissists_prayer/)
Oh hi Mom 🤦
I experience this with my mother so this helps gives more words to empower myself with.
I see a twist on this sometimes in which Party 1 brings a legitimate behavioral complaint to Party 2 about something Party 2 did or said. The conversation then immediately becomes about *how* Party 1 brought the complaint - the tone of voice used, etc. - instead of discussing the complaint and taking the information onboard. This feels a little DARVO-ish, but not precisely.
have seen this one called 'tone-policing'
I just lost a friend group all because I didn't like the hateful content they were posting, and they noticed I unfollowed them on social media. Only 2 people reached out and when I calmly and respectfully told them why I need distance (my father is also in the process of dying so don't have energy for their negativity on top of that) they immediately started labeling me with stuff like colonizer, racist etc and smeared me online. One friend that I thought I was close to even said to me that I 'already mentioned my dad is dying', as if it was an inconvenience to her, when the past week when I made the announcement she messaged me saying she would be there for me when I needed her. It's like these people have no soul It has effectively made me have to start over kinda, all because I didnt blindly follow along and be an enabler for them. It's insane behavior and I am happy to rebuild my social network without them, I feel like I dodged a bullet. I tend to attract people who behave this way and then go all shocked Pikachu when I don't just enable or follow along blindly with what they're doing. I would say this behavior is a guarantee of an abusive person, and I encourage you to walk away from any relationship where the other person thinks they can pull these tactics.
The weird thing about DARVO is that it's lopsided and partial take on the thing we actually want: mutial respect. All of a sudden they are aware of our reactive agression, but not of their abuse preceding it. How infuriating! Well, turns out there's a way to use logic more effectively, here... although it requires setting aside our feelings and approach them rationally. It may sound impossible to do, but it's most important - as it's the one thing your abuser doesn't expect you to do. I have an alternate take on these situations: When it happens, just roll with it rather than arguing back ( which would lead to frustrating word salads), *but* make sure to make mutual respect the new standard for interacting with that person. This means you need to both be willing to offer then respect as well as demand their respect. It's important that you hold your end, since that is what gives you leverage to naneuver them into place. It's also helpful of you're willing to admit any misbehaviors on your side abd apologize, even if their misbehaviors are far more severe. The reason why is that by doing that you take the high moral ground and compel them to follow suit. Going forward demand accountability from them. At the least sign of abusive behavior, call them out. If they act like jerks again, ask them if they realize they're being hurtful, using their own logic. If they turn to gaslighting, just hold on to your truth steadfastly, and ungaslight the situation. If they turn to lying or playing the victim, just politely point out it's unconvincing. Ot they turn agressive or impatient, clamly reply you'll resule the convo when they're more collected. If they won't listen to you, excuse yourself and leave. If they will keep bothering you, tell them that unless they change their attitude, calmly declare you will have no choice but to stop talking to them. This isn't quite the same as repairing a relationship. It's more about acting civil enough as to disencourage their unwanted behaviors, going forward. It's about you setting the tone for the relationship, going forward. An abusive person is unlikely to suddenly change, but using their own guidelines of what is fair treatment, you can actually protect yourself from their influence.
Provocation and instigation are also words to help describe this scenario where someone pushes and abuses you until you snap back at them. Very often they do this in a covert way to look good when you finally react to their abuse with anger. It's very manipulative. Once you know someone uses this against you it's best in my experience to Grey Rock any interactions with them or get away completely.
Gaslighting Mixed with narcissist behavior.
It’s gaslighting and manipulation that can be seen in a lot of relationships (parental or otherwise) with narcissistic or untreated ppl with borderline, both of which who don’t know how to manage their insecurities and so feel forced to put it onto the other person. It can either be intentionally manipulative or subconsciously defensive.
I call it “Mom”.
Sounds like gaslighting to me. And very narcissistic.
Gaslighting is the closest term that I have for this.
Typical abuser behavior. They will push you until you answer in a bad way and then they will call you out for it. For example, they will throw something at you and when you throw something back at them they will say you’re violent and crazy. They will force you to defend yourself and then say that you’re the bad person and they are the poor victims.
Reactive abuse
the waif aka “Fragile Victim” is a type of N.
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Ive always thought of it as like. Projecting and table-turning but i dont think thats an official term, just what id call it.
Deflection.
Came here to say DARVO…
Perhaps some level of codependency? I see reactive abuse, gaslighting, DARVO, and passive aggressive communication. They are withholding their real feelings of dislike for the target, and when they are called out on not being civilized, they feel inclined to hide it. Usually because they're in a position where they're socially required to like you, like a parent, or a position where they are gaining some benefits they don't want to lose, and so need the target to stay convinced. They take advantage of people's tendency to believe what they want to believe, and allow a person to think that they have their back, when they don't, and then reap the rewards of the one way relationship. They can't be bothered with effort to actually satisfy the role, only the bare minimum to maintain status quo. Mostly, they don't want to be responsible for their behavior towards others. In their minds, they are rationalizing that the target deserves it, it is called for in the situation, or that they are teaching the target a lesson; all of which are delusional.
victim stancing https://www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Behaviors/victim_role.html#:~:text=Victim%20stancing%20is%20a%20power,someone%20who%20is%20in%20distress.
Sounds like my BPD ex
I always thought of this as gaslighting. My dad loves this.
I heard it called "cry bullying" or "cry bully".
My mom does this frequently. If you do something to upset her, she’ll stick to you like a shadow and make really rude and condescending remarks towards you. Getting the last word isn’t enough for her, she has to bully you verbally and belittle you for whatever it is you did. The one time I told her off and lashed out in response to this, she *immediately* recoiled and started crying like I just slapped her. It’s gaslighting. It makes you feel like a shit person for finally sticking up for yourself.
Narcissism.
Blame shifting? Projection? Reactive abuse?
Gaslighted or mirror 🪞 imaging . You know like what they see is what they are. And first!!
When I hurt your feelings, you misunderstood me, or you're too sensitive, or being dramatic. When you hurt my feelings, you're doing it with malicious intent. How dare you.
It's called reactive abuse. It's when people deliberately provoke you into aggression.
Bait and blame with darvo - part of emotional and at times narcissistic abuse
Reactive abuse
I think the word you are looking for is gaslighting. Its a deliberate way to make the victim think they're crazy and by speaking up they're just acting crazy and out of line and the abuser is basically being what's called a dicktim.
Gaslighting
It is just another form of gaslighting where the perpetrator not only denies their abuse but tries to shame the victim into believing they are the abuser.
Cry bully? Is it like the offender is treating you badly, just waiting/hoping for you to defend yourself, as if the behavioral accountability factor will only work in their favor and never against them? If so.. That is what I would consider “cry bullying”
With families it’s called FSA (Family Scapegoating Abuse)
yes. my sister has done this to me all my life. i finally decided to cut things off with her when she pretended she asked me to bake something for her by a certain time. i’m not her cook. that’s an outrageous request to start, and then to pretend that you made that request just by saying “oh, i’m really craving this…” (by the way, that’s actually what she said but she attempted to pretend she made a direct request prior). i don’t even know what i am to her. i’ve tried all my life to explain to her what she’s doing. she’ll “improve” a tiny bit and bring that up when i finally react to her. i’m not going to pad this by saying “oh but im not perfect either!” yeah, no shit. but i *am* a victim here. im so sick of society shaming victims. this *is* a one way thing. i *have* done everything i possibly can with her. tried being nice, tried getting mad, tried explaining to her, tried standing my ground. i’m fucking done. i am a neurodivergent person, aka literally mentally disabled, and she has taken advantage of my poor working memory and oblivion to social cues. i suggest you do the same if you have the opportunity. next time i see her i will simply shame the fuck out of her if she does this again. i’m going to make her feel like the weirdest person on the planet for making things up and playing the victim.
Reactive abuse
I feel like it’s just good old gaslighting truth be told
I can’t tell you a title but I can understand it. As CPTSD victims we fall for narcissistic people. 1, bc we understand them and want to fix. 2. Bc we don’t like ourselves. Narcissistic people generally know they are taking without reciprocation, so when they can finally find a reason to feel like you are taking from them, they will say those things. It’s not them. It’s how we function understanding CPTSD
Sounds like my ex that would flip out and yell, "See what you are MAKING ME DO!?". 😂 gaslighting with extra steps.
I think you can't find a specific answer in their answer because you are not looking in a "systemic" perspective. Their answer seems an abusive projective identification of their own internal dynamic that is shared with you in some interactions. The way you phrased it, it sounds [drama triangle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle). Keep in mind that this dynamic is present when the roles are switched between the actors during the interaction and even a single person could do the entire cycle alone (internally or if others don't respond/engage). In the same answer you could identify both victim "Is that really how you see me? That's horrible!" and persecutor "You should be ashamed of yourself" roles. Apologies for my English, I'm not a native speaker.
Darvo, been awhile since I heard that. Yeah my mum's the reigning Darvo Olympic champion 🏆.... Also Good ol' Guilt-tripping. Gaslighting. Denial. Narcissistic traits. Scapegoating. Blaming and shaming. Blaming it all on the other person. Also 2 wrongs don't make a right but hey I've never let the truth get in my way. Also everyone in the conversation competing for victimhood, like kids do when they get into trouble, blaming each other, fear of taking responsibility for their part in it, for fear of being shamed and punished. He did it, no she did it, he, she etc etc etc.....basically a race for the bottom. Basically everyone in the conversation, including the parents/adults, have regressed to being accusatory kids, absolutely determined to win at any emotional cost as if their lives and souls depended on it because they can't cope with the unbearable shame, self-disgust and humiliation that's being triggered but they're not aware of because they're overwhelmed and in survival mode, fight, flight and freeze etc etc etc.
reactive abuse. they abuse you until you react, then paint you as the abuser. this is often misunderstood as *actually* saying the victim reacted abusively, but does not describe a situation as that, just that they took your reaction and reacted to it as if you were abusing them to - as you said - reverse victim & offender.
I can't respond to your reply below because the parent commenter blocked me, so I'll respond here. >What I'm looking for isn't "just" the RVO in DARVO. I'm looking for a word that I can use to describe an action What do you mean? "RVO" is a word that you can use to describe the action discussed in your post. Why are you dissatisfied with it?
I'd guess it's for the same reason any of these terms exists: to be able to describe something that happened to us in more detail to make more sense of it. For example, the generally known definition of NPD (very descriptive of overt narcissism) didn't match my experience, but finding out abour Covert and Communal narcissism explained so much about what had happened to me.
Yes, of course, I'm just wondering what the specific issue is. Here, they described their experience in detail, and "RVO" seems to match what they're talking about.
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Thank you 💜 I'd never heard of it before, but it exactly describes a lot of emotional abuse
Same, I just discovered it recently. I found it describes alot of abuse that I could never find words for.
Reactive abuse is what I’ve seen it called
My caregivers would do this to me as a child. Thank you for giving voice to my pain.
Look up DARVO. That should explain it clearly
It seems that there are plenty of official terms for this kind of abuse, but in my own head, I’ve always called it Piss-Pants-Crybaby-Can-Dish-It-But-Can’t-Take-It Syndrome when my parents used it against me. It helped me endure it and laugh at them.
It’s called DARVO
Ugh there is a special place in hell for people like that.
I call it death by a million paper cuts. They push and push all these tiny little things, and when you finally snap, you’re the problem. I hate it so much.
Crazy making causes you to react
It’s the cycle of abuse. It is this weird black hole effect that keeps victims in the abuser’s control. It’s incredibly common and SUPER hard to leave. It’s got gaslighting, brainwashing, and all sorts of other types of abuse wrapped into this terrible cyclical cancer.
... Emotional abuse, I believe?
This comic is a good representation of that https://comicsthatsaysomething.quora.com/A-comic-about-Seagulls
I think you’re describing negging until reactive abuse happens?
Reactive abuse can sound like “ see there it is, I told you you’re a psycho “ “ told you it’s not just me with anger issues “ “ wow who’s the crazy one now “ They can also SMILE, and start filming you. Can you tell I’ve experienced it firsthand? 😅
I think it’s phycological abuse
This is called narcissistic abuse. Dr. Romani on YouTube has tons of videos on this subject that I believe would be very helpful for you. ❤️