Hey y'all. I'm seeing a disturbing trend

as a psychiatrist, which is that therapy

speak is starting to become weaponized.

So, here's an example of a DM that um we

just kind of found on the internet that

was tweeted out. And let's take a look

at this message. I need to talk to you.

I've removed you from this Sunday's

collab and from the server as a whole.

Some of my friends have found you to be

extremely obnoxious, hyper, and

all-around too loud during our calls. I

think you need to sit back and evaluate

how you act in this community. Being

loud and obnoxious is just

attention-seeking. You can argue, but

nobody in their right mind acts like

this. You need to realize nobody likes

you for this. Nobody wants to support

someone who tries. I honestly don't

think you were meant for this. I would

step back and think about this. Until

you get your together, I

unfortunately will be cutting ties with

you just to keep myself safe. I hope you

heal and stop trying to be someone you

aren't. So, this is happening more and

more. People will receive a DM. You'll

get a text message where someone lays

out all of these claims, blames you in

some way, plays the victim, and uses

therapy speak. Oh yeah, the problem here

is that you need to heal. I'm cutting

you off. You can argue, but nobody in

their right mind acts like this, right?

They use all of these phrases to

basically weaponize therapy speak to

exclude someone from their social group.

They place all of the responsibility on

you. And it turns out that this kind of

behavior is actually potentially tied to

things like psychopathy, narcissism,

mchaveliism, what we call the dark

triad. So what's scary is really how

common this is. One study found that 24

to 34% of people pretended to be hurt in

some way to get something that they

wanted. Another study found that about

80% of people have seen this happen. So

this is happening increasingly commonly.

So the other really scary thing about

this is how textbook this is. So here's

a paper from 2017 on something called

Darvo, which is deny, attack, and

reverse victim and an offender. Darvo is

a framework that basically people who

have been manipulative have used for

arguably hundreds if not thousands of

years. So this is when they sort of play

the victim. So if you try to criticize

them in some way, the first thing that

they'll do is they'll deny that this

ever happened. The second thing that

they'll do is attack you, right? So

they'll blame you for trying to hold

them accountable. And the third thing

that they'll do is reverse the victim

and offender. So instead of like taking

accountability for what they did wrong,

they will somehow become the victim and

blame you for creating the situation. So

we're going to take a look at a

questionnaire that literally goes over

Darvo items. We're going to show it on

the screen. Y'all can pause to read if

you want. But here's the really

fascinating thing. If you look at this

study, which has Darvo question items

from 2017,

we can map on these questionnaire items

to this DM. So now what we're going to

do is show these things side by side and

let's see, right? So let's see how many

of the Darvo questionnaire items

actually show up in this this tweet.

Some of my f friends found you to be

extremely obnoxious, hyper, and

all-around too loud during calls. So,

this is something that people will do.

They will not have a personal problem

with you. They'll say, "Oh, yeah, all of

these other people found you to be

obnoxious." Okay? Being loud and

obnoxious is attention-seeking. You can

argue, but no one in their right mind

acts like this. You need to realize that

nobody likes you for this. Nobody wants

to support you, right? This is nobody.

Everybody and nobody like nobody wants

to support you. Everyone thinks you're

bad. It's not just me. I don't have a

problem with you. It's everybody. Until

you get your together, I

unfortunately will be cutting ties with

you just to keep myself safe. Once

again, I have been hurt. I am the victim

here. I hope you heal and stop trying to

be someone that you aren't. You need to

fix this problem. So, this is crazy.

This is like in one set of DMs, which is

I don't know, maybe like a dozen

sentences, we see several textbook cases

of Darvo. So, what's going on here? This

comes down to something called virtuous

victimhood. So many years ago, there

were lots and lots of problems like

prior to the Me Too movement where there

was like, you know, generations of women

that had been sexually assaulted by men

in power and we did not believe them.

Here's a great example of uh Courtney

Love talking about this back in 2005.

>> Hi, Central.

>> Do you have any advice for a young girl

moving to Hollywood?

>> Um, I'll get live

invites you to a private party in the

Four Seasons.

So after this me too movement broke

around 2017, we started to believe

victims. This is generally speaking a

good thing, right? So what people have

been complaining about like Weinstein

and Epstein for many many many years and

like no one believed them and then we

started saying okay let's believe

victims but then we run into a slight

problem once we start believing victims.

There are some people in our society who

have dark triad traits. These are people

who are psychopathic. So they don't care

about the feelings of others. They're

narcissistic. They're very s

self-centered and they're mchavelian,

which means that they will use whatever

means necessary to to advance their own

interests. And so, here's what's really

interesting. After the MeToo movement,

being a victim was a way to advance your

cause. Now, there are absolutely cases

where this is very justified, right?

Like being a victim is an appropriate

way to get resources from the society

around you. If I've if I get hit by a

car, people are kind to me. They're more

compassionate with for me. I may start a

GoFundMe and raise some money, right?

So, it makes sense that we take care of

victims as a society, especially in the

West where we're like taking care of

people is like generally a good thing.

Hey y'all, if you're interested in

applying some of the principles that we

share to actually create change in your

life, check out Dr. K's guide to mental

health. And so we start by understanding

what literally is meditation. How does

experience shape us as human beings? How

do we strengthen the mind itself as an

organ? And so by understanding our mind,

we understand a very very simple tool, a

crucial tool that we have to learn how

to use if we want to build the life that

we want to. So check out the link in the

bio and start your journey today. Being

a victim is an effective way to do

something called asymmetric resource

extraction. It's where I'm a victim and

I don't have to give you anything, but I

can receive something. And these

resources can be both material and

non-material. So, it can be stuff like

money from the GoFundMe. And it can be

stuff like kindness and compassion and

psychological resources. So, we live in

a society where we're believing victims

more. That's generally speaking a good

thing. And when we're a victim, people

take care of us, right? So then we have

a problem though because there are some

people in our society who will

camouflage themselves as victims. This

happens all throughout nature. Take a

look at this clip from David

Atenboroough.

>> Another mantis is shaped and colored

like a flower

and gets a reward for the resemblance.

So if there are resources to be

extracted, some people will take

advantage of this system. And this is

where there's a really fascinating study

that looked at the correlation between

dark triad traits. These are things like

narcissism, psychopathy, and

mchavelliism

with something called virtuous

victimhood signaling. Okay, so this

study basically found that first of all,

victims get stuff, which we've already

talked about. There's an asymmetric

resource extraction. Then they also

discovered something really interesting

which is that generally speaking human

beings even if someone is a victim

people have like mixed feelings about

that. Okay. So like on the one hand we

want to support victims and so I will

take care of you if you're sick if I'm

well like that makes me feel good but we

generally speaking have a tolerance or a

limit to that right we don't want to

take care of someone who is chronically

ill and is sort of chronically crying

wolf and like we don't want to be like

overly invested with them for extended

periods of time. So people who fit dark

triad traits engage in another piece of

this victimhood signaling which is

virtuous victimhood signaling. So this

is where our society has a really

interesting perspective on virtue on

being moral on being a good person.

First thing to understand is this is

independent from being a victim. We have

good people and we have people that we

pity right the victims. Interesting

thing is when you combine these two

traits being virtuous and being a victim

it increases the signal that you

receive. And the reason I'm going into

this is because if y'all are living in

today's world, you will encounter these

people. These people are anywhere

between 24 to 34% of people admitted

doing it, right? Who are consciously

aware of it. There's another group, I'd

say about another 25 to 35% that do it

quite regularly but are not consciously

aware of it. So like a lot of people are

doing this and it's important for you to

understand what this pattern looks like,

right? How to tell whether someone is

sort of like doing this to you or not

doing it to you. And this is where

virtuosity comes in. So not only are

they playing the victim, but they will

virtue signal outside of that. So they

will pretend to be virtuous. So virtue

signaling is defined as the conspicuous

expression of moral values done

primarily with the intent of enhancing

one's standing within a social group.

Okay. Portraying oneself as a moral

person can provide supporting evidence

for the credibility and legitimacy of

one's victim signal. So this is what

these people will do. They will virtue

signal. They will pretend to be good.

And this lends credence and legitimacy

to when they claim to be the victim. And

this is why it's so hard to fight

against them, right? If I say, "Hey, you

need to, you know, hey, can you please

pay me back?" When I hold you

accountable for something bad that you

did, if you virtue signal along with

crying the victim, other people are more

likely to take that victimhood signal

seriously. And these are the techniques

that these people use. Turns out that

when we study people who do this, we do

find a really interesting association.

People who are psychopaths will pretend

to be the victim, but they won't virtue

signal. So, if you're just pray straight

psychopathic or sociopathic, you lack

the empathy to be virtuous, right? You

don't pretend to be virtuous, but you're

all for playing the victim. What's

really interesting is being

narcissistic. These people will virtue

signal a lot, but they won't play the

victim. Now, why is that? Because if I'm

the victim, that means I'm weak. That

means I got taken advant advantage of.

And if I'm narcissistic, I'm not someone

who gets taken advantage of. Here's the

really interesting thing. Only

sociopathy means that we virtue signal.

Only narcissist means that we virtue

signal. But if we have the dark triad

personality, if we are both narcissistic

and psychopathic and are mchavelian,

then we will do both. So how do we spot

this? Look for people who are both

virtue signaling and victim signaling.

Look for the language, right? So you you

yall can use that Darvo questionnaire.

When someone uses this language with

you, that means that you're in the realm

of someone who is probably weaponizing

therapy speak. And then we get to the

biggest problem, which is what do I do?

And this is what's so hard about this is

like if you try to defend yourself,

often times you will get outgunned. And

people are really confused. They're

like, I don't understand how this person

gets away with playing the victim. Like

I'm the person who said, "Hey, this

person borrowed money from me and they

didn't give it back." Like I'm actually

the person who is wronged here and

somehow this person is turning it around

on me and people are believing them and

not believing me. And that's because

they are combining they're using the

synergy build of virtue signaling with

victimhood, which allows the people

around you or makes the people around

you more likely to believe their victim

signal than your victim signal. Make

sense? All right. So if this is

happening to you, simple question is Dr.

K, what do I do? Step number one is

notice it, right? And even this is a

little bit difficult because how do you

know if someone is pretending to be the

victim or claiming to be the victim and

said you did all of this stuff wrong?

How do you know if they're gaslighting

you, which is commonly something that

they will do, or whether they're right?

Right? So are you out of line or are

they g gaslighting you? Which one is it?

And that's why we showed you the Darvo

questions. Literally what I would

recommend you all do is look at those

questions and look at the way that they

speak to you. How many of those things

do they engage in? Second thing, once

you figured out that you are indeed

being gaslit, you've got a slight

problem because this is usually

happening in a social situation and if

someone is doing this to you, this is

the way that they work, right? This is

like the way they've been trained. This

is happening maybe subconsciously, maybe

it's happening consciously. So often

times you can sort of get into this

competitive virtue signaling victimhood

kind of thing like no I'm the victim no

I'm the victim. I mean if you're good at

that you can try to beat them at their

own game but chances are they've been

doing it longer than you have. Chances

are they do it quite a bit so they will

outgun you there. And so this is where

the unfortunately like the best answer

as a psychiatrist is to not engage with

them. Now a lot of y'all may have

problems with this because you'll say

but Dr. K, I have no choice. They're at

my work. They're in my family. They're

in my friend group. Are you saying I

should abandon the friend group? That's

not what I said. Don't engage with them

in a meaningful way as best as you can.

Now, sometimes you have to. Sometimes

you can't avoid it. There's a certain

amount of like social surfing that as

you get better, you can sort of step

away from them. You can still interact

with them, still be civil with them, but

certainly don't try to hold them

accountable for anything. Stop loaning

the money. Try to pull back from them.

And here's the reason why. if they are

really good at this, they are not just

doing it with you. And in social

circles, we oftentimes try to engage

with someone who's like a good punching

bag for RBS, which means that as they

burn the bridge with you, you're pulling

back from them. And then if they're

really in the wrong and if they are

personalitywise psychopathic

narcissistic mchavelian if they're doing

this a lot they will then start to do it

with other people in your fra friend

friend group. As long as you are

presenting yourself as a target they

will target you. But as you start to

step back in any normal friend group or

any normal family there is some kind of

conflict right that happens between

human beings. Always happens. But as

long as you are the focus of that

conflict, you're not giving them the

opportunity to burn bridges with the

people around you. And that is

absolutely something that they will do,

which is why we move to this third thing

that you should do, which is engage with

people one-on-one who are in your social

network. And this is what you should do.

You can do a couple of things. One is

you can ask them, "Hey, I just had this

thing happen with this person. We had

this conflict. Um, you know, I thought

they owed me money. like they do owe me

money, but when I asked them for money,

they started to say all this stuff. Am I

crazy? So, ask somebody else for their

opinion. Really good opportunity for a

temperature check. If you want to go

hard, I wouldn't recommend doing this

out of the gate, but you can forward

them text messages. You can even forward

them the Darvo paper and be like, "Hey,

I know this is kind of insane, but I,

you know, I I recently learned about

this concept. Do you think I'm crazy

here for thinking that these two things

are lining up?" Don't ask them to take

sides. you know, you have to be careful

about them then forwarding that crap to

the person who is attacking you in the

first place and they're going to even

play the the victim even more. So, you

have to be careful about these

particulars. The key thing though is

that you want to form a one-on-one

relationship as as well as you can. And

the reason for that is as the person who

is narcissistic, Mchavelian, etc.,

gaslighting everybody around them and

always playing the victim. They will

burn additional bridges. And when they

burn additional bridges, you can reach

out to that person or even preemptively

say, "Hey, look, this happened to me. I

don't know who's in the right. I don't

know who's in the wrong. I feel like

this person is out of line. I feel like

I'm in the right. If they do this to

you, I'm here for you. And that's

ultimately the best thing that you can

do. And over time, what'll happen is

they'll burn the bridges and you are

there to reform those relationships. So

be on the lookout for weaponized therapy

speak because it's happening a lot. And

so by understanding our mind, we

understand a very very simple tool, a

crucial tool that we have to learn how

to use if we want to build the life that

we want to.