DARVO
Summary: Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.
Fear of exposure: if someone is trying to deny accountability, the blame shift has a method to deflect. Some isn’t hiding ‘nothing’ they are hiding something, the reaction can offer insight, pay attention to the professional victim card played.
DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." (blame-shift to avoid guilt and shame.)
Psychology Today - The Risk Factors for Continuing the Cycle of Abuse
GEE - 8 types of people who never deserve a second chance, according to psychology
Teenagers can find advice at Psych2go (numerous subjects to help spot something that might appear as camouflaged)
LL - Gaslighting: Examining the Warning Signs
FOS - Complaints That Involve Economic And Domestic Abuse
VeryWellMind - What to Do If You or a Loved One Lack Empathy
VeryWellMind - Why Do People Blame the Victim?
Psychology Today - How to Handle a Manipulator When They Don’t Get Their Way
Psychopathy Is - What are Personality Disorders?
Psychopathy Is - Psychopathy Signs (age groups)
Psychology Today 52 Ways to Identify a Covert Narcissist
What happens if you present a mirror reflection in conversation or writing to a person who continues to covertly or overly emotionally abuse and manipulate others and avoids accountability with avoidance and charm? The evidence will surface through actions and statements to deny or pressure to not have a reality which the disruptor is accountable. 'Fit The Narrative' may require others conforming to the needs of a Cluster B personality disorder hiding in plain sight. Note all actions, details and patterned behaviour. Without the correct education, many are playing catch up.
As well as Narcissism (hidden fragility, all about me), Machiavellianism (manipulative), and Psychopathy (anti-social, detached), emotional intelligence is a scale that offers a lack of self-awareness. A person lacking in self-awareness will attack their victim's truth due to lacking the ability to be accountable, process guilt (internal) and shame (external). D.A.R.O. will be the method 'to not see' who is in the wrong when the controlling agenda stops working.
Barton Family Lawyers - Your Legal Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist – Narcissistic Abuse Explained
Choosing Therapy - What Is a Narcissistic Family Structure? 10 Signs & How to Deal
TNC - Narcissistic Families – Hidden In Plain Sight
“Image is everything, no boundaries, control issues, secret keeping, hide fraud and abuse.”
GEE - People with low emotional intelligence
BFL - Your Legal Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist – Narcissistic Abuse Explained
CH - Flying Monkeys. Unravelling the Origins of a Term in the Context of Domestic Abuse
The Role of Flying Monkeys in Domestic Abuse
Flying monkeys in the context of domestic abuse play various roles, all of which serve to reinforce the abuser’s control and manipulation:
Spread Disinformation: They may spread lies and rumours about the victim, often echoing the narcissist’s narrative to discredit and isolate the victim further.
Harassment and Intimidation: Flying monkeys can also engage in direct harassment, sending messages or making calls on behalf of the abuser, serving to intimidate and control the victim.
Spying and Reporting Back: In some cases, they act as the eyes and ears of the abuser, reporting back on the victim’s activities and state of mind.
Enabling Denial: Their actions can provide the abuser with plausible deniability, as the abuser can claim they are not directly responsible for the actions of others.
True or False: A smear and flying monkey have three purposes.
Answer: 1. Hide something shocking; the shame is too much to bear. 2. Step back and use others to induce guilt, wanting hands clean. 3. Expose undiagnosed personality disorders and triggers from people who fear exposure but end up exposing themselves.
References:
VeryWellMind - How to Recognize a Covert Narcissist
The Conversation - Narcissism: why it’s less obvious in women than in men
Choose Therapy - DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender
VeryWellMind - How Narcissists Use DARVO to Avoid Accountability
Medical News Today - What to know about DARVO
Sentient - How to Handle the DARVO Method
Domestic Shelter - Explaining DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender
PsychCentral - All About Machiavellianism
VeryWellMind - Machiavellian Personality Traits
HackSpirit - 10 things a narcissist will do when they realise you won’t back down to them
VeryWellMind - What Is a Psychopath?
VeryWellMind - How Sociopaths Are Different from Psychopaths
VeryWellMind - How to Spot a Narcissistic Sociopath
VeryWellMind - Cluster B Personality Disorders
VeryWellMind - God Complex: What It Means and Why People Have Them
VeryWellMind - What Is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?
VeryWellMind - What Is Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD)?
Further Links (updated over time)
Medical News Today - What is DARVO
VeryWellMind - How Narcissists Use DARVO to Avoid Accountability
Forbes - A Psychologist Explains How You Can Deflect A ‘DARVO’ Manipulator
Psychopathy Is – What are Personality Disorders?
Psychopathy Is – Psychopathy Signs (age groups)
APA Psyc Net - Borderline personality disorder as a female phenotypic expression of psychopathy?
Direct and Indirect forms of abuse, how to spot the history when matters change tactics.
Test Question - Smear, what is it and why does it happen in childhood, families, schools, places of work, going undetected? What is its design, why does it happen, and why is it a secondary sign of something more harmful? It is important to realise when playing catch up to matters of concern. Smear can occur as a tool used after the direct damage/gaslighting/various forms of emotional or physical abuse have been employed over time with mixed aggression, so the question behaviour continues undetected with training or education to spot the signs. Using in-direct methods linked to control issues to extend guilt or shame onto someone with emotional abuse/pressure can be an indicator of deceptive high-functioning behaviour appearing in the secondary evidence in the abuse timeline.
True or False: The full definition is a narcissistic smear. The internal mechanism operates externally, showing a lack of empathy for others, an internally damaged feedback loop, control issues, avoiding processing and accountability, blame shifts to damage truth and facts to continue to mask and gaslight through others when the target/victim chose not to accept a personality disorder (unusually undiagnosed) or continue deception or self-deception. A hurt person hurts other people to avoid a lie/action, or behaviour. Guilt and shame are put on to others as the child in the adult cannot process reality with balance or the perception of others, which is different to the carefully crafted false self-construct inside a facade built over time from childhood experiences of abuse or no accountability or both. Fantasy and abuse behind closed doors, sometimes in public. The giveaway is simple: Using others and others unable to go beyond face value. Exposure on numerous accounts, all included, extends and becomes an abuser while the core negative disruptor tries to stay clean, further secondary evidence linking to the coverup primary evidence. More than one narcissistic person will expose themselves, and more than one unbiased personality disorder will expose themselves. Not every adult has an adult mind due to childhood development. A Professional victim can be present as a tool.
Test question response - If marked wrong even after presenting key markers, review the Smear or Flying Monkeys web pages, then seek advice locally or call 101 or 999 or 911 (US). The confusion you might be experiencing has a design not to see who is causing harm over time to your mental health over time. Gaslighting has a design and has an agenda to go undetected, a game to one person with mixed behaviour, very harmful to another. The unfortunate experience is linked to an undiagnosed disorder is trying to influence others to ‘fit a narrative’ with detachment and control issues (assuming they own someone else’s perception at any cost), which can harm an uneducated person with Truth Bias (we grow up assuming with a positive comparison) for years while they repair from someone’s agenda, if the emotional abuser is persistent. They will go on to harm networks, another giveaway that something is damaging in a masked internal thinking system/equation. Indirect emotional abuse is equally as harmful as direct abuse; in many ways, it is the extension of the direct abuse to really cause damage with detachment and maintain control of a lie/action or a facade they the disruptor assumes is acceptable in their eyes. Their perception may have been formed a long time ago from bad role modelling.
