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  • afearlesstomorrow
    • Aug 30
    • 5 min read

When your perpetrator plays the victim...

If you have ever been abused, there is a good chance that, at some point, your abuser has tried to spin things to make themselves the victim.

  • Maybe they have done so to justify the abuse in the moment
    • For example: “Yes I hit you, but I’ve had the worst day imaginable and then you did [anything] which you know triggers me to my past trauma and makes me so angry, but you did it anyway and it’s like you don’t even care about me.”
  • Maybe they have done so to justify a pattern of behavior  
    • For example: “I stalk you because you won’t tell me anything and I have a right to know and it’s so hurtful when you don’t tell me anything and everything I want to know.”
  • Maybe they may do so to completely abdicate all responsibility –
    • For example: a partner has been consistently violating your boundaries and treating you horribly but when you confront them, they make justifications for their behavior like those above. When you don’t accept those justifications and continue to push back, they say something like “I can’t believe you would treat me like this. All I’ve ever done is care about you and love you and try to be the best partner I can be and then you turn around and say this to me. I am so hurt, and I just cannot talk to you anymore right now or maybe ever.”
  • Or, on a much larger scale, the abuser may construct an entire narrative that they are the victim, consistently painting you as the villain or the abuser so that no one will believe you if or when you do speak out.
    • For example: an abuser who talks to their friends about all the times you’ve “yelled at them” neglecting to mention their actions that led to you “yelling at them,” or when they have physically attacked you and you have tried to defend yourself, the abuser may then go around telling people that you “shoved them” or “hit them” for no reason. Or an abuser who hurts you badly, then calls the police or files for a restraining order claiming to be the victim of abuse before you can do it, effectively ensuring that any report you make will simply look like retaliation.
 
There are obviously many other ways that abusers can paint themselves as victims. But “playing the victim,” as I call it, is scarily common and is always infuriating, confusing, invalidating and hurtful. Actually, it’s so common that there is a term that professionals use to describe this dynamic: DARVO, which describes the ways in which perpetrators will play the victim: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.[1] When perpetrators deny the abuse, they are effectively making themselves the “victim” of “malicious lies spread about them” by the actual victim. The “attack” part of this term refers to when perpetrators attack their victim’s credibility in some way, for example by calling them crazy, thus once again turning themselves into merely a “victim of a crazy person” i.e. the real victim. Finally, they will reverse the roles in the eyes of onlookers, making themselves the victim and the true victim look like the perpetrator. Usually, perpetrators employ all of these tactics when playing the victim.[2]
 
I thought about writing about why perpetrators may do this, or how they get away with it but then I realized who cares? It doesn’t matter why a perpetrator turns themselves into a victim, how they do it, how they get away with it, or really anything else about the perpetrators. There is no reason or justification that would make this type of behavior ok so why should any of us care why they do it? That is not what matters here. What matters is the impact is has on the actual victim.
 
In essence, when perpetrators play the victim, they gaslight the real victim into believing they did something wrong or were the perpetrator in some way. This results in heightened self-blame amongst real victims, as the confusion caused by the gaslighting leads them to blame themselves for the abuse they suffered.[3] This heightened self-blame then often leads to the victims feeling overly responsible for the relationship and the abuse and they end up trying harder to do the right thing, be better, care more, love harder etc.[4] The gaslighting, self-blame and confusion can have disastrous effects on the true victims, destroying their self-esteem, causing depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems, and completely isolating them from anyone who can support or help them.[5]
 
Furthermore, the gaslighting and twisting of the truth can cause such confusion that it can actually leave the victims questioning their own memories.[6] As I am sure you can imagine, doubting their own memories can have disastrous effects on the victim, including but not limited to: believing they are unstable, bad, wrong or unlovable; having trouble making decisions because they doubt their perceptions of the world; being less likely to voice their thoughts, opinions, feelings and emotions because they do not trust themselves to know how they are feeling or what they are thinking; becoming co-dependent on the abuser; developing a host of mental health conditions including PTSD; struggling to trust others or be vulnerable; engaging in people pleasing behaviors.[7]
 
It is even more painful and damaging when an abuser plays the victim with the victims friends, family, church, work etc. This is a common tactic used by abusers, to seek out the people in their victims lives and get in with their version of the story first, ensuring that by the time the actual victim speaks out, everyone already thinks they are the perpetrator.[8] Unfortunately, this happens all too often. People tend to believe the first person who speaks about being the victim,[9] but unfortunately true victims struggle to speak out, meaning that usually the perpetrator speaks first and thus is believed over the actual victim.[10] But, as I’m sure you could imagine, when a victims family, friends, coworkers etc., believe the perpetrator is the victim and thus that their loved one is the perpetrator, it can lead to increased shame, isolation, damaged relationships, decreased ability to trust and a lack of help and support for the victim. [Please note here that just because someone speaks out first about the abuse, doesn’t mean that they are definitely the perpetrator. While this is a pattern worth noting, it is not descriptive of every victim and perpetrator.]
 
If you have ever had someone who has hurt you play the victim, then you likely know how confusing and painful it can be. You might be scared to talk about what has happened out of fear that others will agree with your perpetrator and see them as the victim and not you. You may have tried to speak out in the past, only to find that your perpetrator has gotten in first and now you are traumatized again by the victim blaming and disbelief you have received from those you trusted. You may struggle with knowing that this person that has hurt you so badly is out there in the world somewhere convincing all of these people that they are the victim. You may still be in the dynamic, confused, isolated and struggling to know which way is up. Whatever you have gone through or are still going through, and however you may be feeling, I can help. I understand how damaging it can be when someone who has hurt you portrays themselves as the victim, and how painful it can be when others fall for their act and believe them. A perpetrator who plays the victim can leave a trail of destruction in the path of the actual victim that they are left to clean up for years to come. But you do not have to do it alone. I am here, I can help, and I will believe you.

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