DARVO: how many people feeling guilt and shame protect themselves (including polluters/depleters)
I forget what led me to learn the acronym DARVO (see below for definition and more), but it sounded like how people respond to sustainability talk. I read a few articles and watched a few videos on it (also below).
They mostly talk about it as something narcissists do, though Wikipedia says “perpetrators of wrongdoing” do it, so not surprising that I see it in polluters.
Identifying the pattern and seeing that it comes from perpetrators of wrongdoing may help handle when people attack, deny, and blame the messenger for their behavior they feel guilty and shameful about.
Wikipedia’s description:
DARVO (an acronym for “deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender”) is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Some researchers indicate that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
As the acronym suggests, the common steps involved are:
- The abuser Denies the abuse ever took place
- When confronted with evidence, the abuser then Attacks the person that was/is being abused (and/or the person’s family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
- The abuser claims that they were/are actually the victim in the situation, thus Reversing the positions of Victim and Offender. It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming.
I’ll include some videos that came up with DARVO on narcissism since they seem to overlap. Holy cow are there a lot of videos with millions of views on narcissism.
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