Why You Ended Up Apologising for Things They Did (DARVO Explained)

Comments · 37

• KA

  @kamarco4839 · 1 month ago (edited)

  30 years of this with my husband. Same pattern, same result. He took it a step further, though. He didn’t stop at “you’re too sensitive.” Or “Why do you always act like a crazy person? I never said that!” He would even go on to attack people I love, randomly, to make sure I really shut up: “And your mother just acts like the queen when she comes here” “Your brother really pisses me off, who does he think he is doing blah blah” For the first several years, I couldn’t believe that someone who loved me could treat me like that. Then eventually I stopped bringing anything up. Then finally stopped talking to him at all. Now we live apart and I am ready to take the final step of filing for divorce. Thank you for validating my experience—whenever I tried to explain the pattern to friends, they couldn’t understand what I was talking about.

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• AZ

  @Aztec-dragon99 · 1 month ago

  Walking away from a conversation that didn’t have to spiral, but did, and then left being totally confused as to why everything blew up <br><br>+ now you’re apologizing to them or taking care of them when either you needed to be taken care of or the topic was actually something neutral

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• US

  @user07164hql · 1 month ago

  Every single member of my family has done this to me. When I told my parents I was hurt that they wanted a straight male officiant (rather than my best female friend who happened to be lesbian) at my wedding (that they didn’t pay for… I was also 30 years old) — my dad informed me I broke my mothers heart. My siblings and in laws piled on. This was one example of MANY DARVO experiences I had. I ended up writing an APOLOGY email for “reacting emotionally” — my dad replied “Thanks” — that about sums it up. I barely speak to them a decade later. Thank you for talking about the entitlement schema. I’m the youngest child raised in a highly controlling religion. It all makes sense.

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• JU

  @julia.rhiannon · 1 month ago

  Another aspect that I find painful and disorientating is that the perception of a &apos;victim and offender&apos; isn&apos;t really reversed it&apos;s manufactured by the person who&apos;s being defensive. When you raise an issue with the goal of sharing perspectives and resolving the discord there is no victim and offender. Any apology simply expresses regret and the opportunity to change behavior in the future, not an acknowledgement of &apos;being an offender&apos;. &nbsp;When someone interprets it that way, bringing shame and blame into an interaction that was meant to be loving, it&apos;s really harmful to the relationship.

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• HA

  @Hansa-f5j · 1 month ago

  You just described my toxic parent. Toxic father.

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• MC

  @mckohtz · 2 months ago

  I say &quot;I was hurt.&quot; My husband says &quot;That is not what I meant&quot; or &quot;It is a joke&quot;. I say &nbsp;&quot;Are you denying my hurt feelings?&quot; I don&apos;t apologize but my husband still dismisses my feelings.

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• SA

  @saschafarnell7717 · 1 month ago

  Easily the best video I’ve ever seen on DARVO. Your channel needs 10M subs 🎉 Thank you! 🧠

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• AF

  @Afswegan · 12 days ago (edited)

  Thank you eternally for this video. This has helped me with an issue with a THERAPIST refusing taking accountability and using this tactic with me. Knowing about DARVO has been the key to freeing myself from taking in blame and allowing people make mistakes on my expense.

• SI

  @simongoldstein3272 · 2 weeks ago

  Your messages are so on point for me that it&apos;s painful to hear them. They trigger physical disgust and grief for my years of suffering, self doubt, denial and addictive patterns that made the whole farce sustainable. I&apos;ve spent 3 years of hard work just to get to this point where I can process it mentally, emotionally and physically, so your videos are a timely blessing and an invaluable tool for me in my recovery from long held patterns ❤❤❤

• OU

  @oufe9683 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Thank you ❤<br><br>What comlicates this is that each one of those steps separately could potentially be part of a reasonable healthy conversation.. &nbsp;like its fair enough to say &quot;thats not what I said&quot; if it isnt what you said, or if someone got the wrong end of the stick.. &nbsp;but when that gets said to deny what actually just happened in front of your face, thats so so bad, and it is malicious<br><br>And this is how abuse works.. because it takes a semi reasonable normal sounding exchange, but every bit of it is twisted or blamed back onto you<br><br>Its exactly the shared reality thing, thats so difficult<br><br>Wanting desperately to connect, not shutting down &nbsp;or shutting down either way its not going to work, and that feels so painful... &nbsp;why so many of us automatically become self development experts looking for a way to make the exchanges work, doubting ourselves and wondering how we can do better<br><br>And yeah, it is on purpose the defence against accountability itself... And it would have activated regardless of how you did whatever you did <br><br>The mistake was never yours to find<br><br>Its so normal to feel so lonely in these relationships<br><br>And it can take so long to recognise it<br><br>Thank you so so much for making this video and putting this work out in the world for everyone to learn it and be free

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• DO

  @dottyp137 · 1 month ago

  I get an eruption of anger and then the victim. Talking about the behaviour is completely off the table. It’s the same pattern, the same words, the same script no matter what has happened. <br><br>I’m trying to explain calmly but every time I try to speak I’m talked over, usually with DARVO, I keep trying, same, eventually in an attempt to get my sentence out I raise my voice, and then it’s all about how I raised my voice. But the problem…… that cannot be talked about.

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• BL

  @blayzeon · 1 month ago

  You say that the response would be the same regardless of how the challenge arrived but that’s not true. People stay in these toxic relationships because there’s more hope than that. <br><br>I grew up isolated with two parents like this. <br><br>They both avoided accountability and they both were hypocritical masters of DARVO. <br><br>I got tons of concessions from them. They’ve been vulnerable around me. They’ve genuinely apologized for hurting me. They’ve changed in countless ways. <br><br>And i still went no contact. <br><br>Because that is the core issue. You touched on it in the previous video i watched about the entitlement schema. These two things are related. <br><br>The offender can be accountable if it does not threaten their worldview. You CAN phrase things to turn things in your favor. You CAN address issues without triggering DARVO and you CAN defuse DARVO. <br><br>The issue is they don’t want to change the core behavior. They will remember that you want fairness and they can deliver that… when you’re going out of your way to make them happy or some other unfair condition, but it’s a muscle for them and they will slack the moment you do. <br><br>Because the underlying issue is a lack of respect and an over abundance of arrogance.

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