The Point All Along
There’s a vicious loop that can happen when someone is repeatedly labeled by a group of people.
Call someone “high conflict” often enough, and eventually every time they defend themselves becomes evidence of the label.
Say they’re “playing the victim,” and when they finally say, This is hurting me, nobody has to listen. Their pain has already been discredited.
Say they “push good people away,” and suddenly they aren’t allowed to decide that someone is no longer good for them. Walking away becomes another character flaw instead of a boundary.
Say they’re “unstable” or “overwhelmed,” and then continue piling on pressure. When they eventually become overwhelmed, point to their reaction and say, See? We told you.
That is the trap.
And when multiple people participate, whether through unwanted contact, monitoring, anonymous accounts, gossip, repeated provocation, or spreading the same narrative, the effect compounds. The person in the middle can become exhausted trying to defend herself against a story that seems to explain away every possible response.
What gets me now is that people knew I was overwhelmed.
It wasn’t hidden. I said it. Other people acknowledged it.
But instead of that being a reason to back off, my overwhelm became something else to talk about.
And that’s the part I understand differently now.
There’s a name for this kind of no-win situation: a double bind.
The trap isn’t simply that someone has been given a negative label. The label becomes unfalsifiable because opposite behaviors are interpreted as proof of the same thing.
Defend yourself, and you’re high conflict.
Stay quiet, and the accusations stand.
Say you’re hurting, and you’re playing the victim.
Say nothing, and nobody has to acknowledge the hurt.
Stay, and you’re tolerating behavior you don’t want.
Leave, and you push good people away.
Become overwhelmed, and your overwhelm becomes proof that something is wrong with you.
Set a boundary, and the boundary becomes another accusation against your character.
Once you create a narrative in which someone’s pain is proof that something is wrong with them, you no longer have to examine what might be happening to them.
Every reaction becomes evidence.
Every boundary becomes hostility.
Every attempt to explain becomes “playing the victim.”
Every decision to walk away becomes “pushing people away.”
And the labeled person is left inside a loop where there is supposedly no acceptable response.
Maybe that’s why the sentence keeps coming back to me:
That was the point all along.
Recent research suggests that double bind communication may be a feature of personality disorder,[5] specifically borderline personality disorder.[6][7]
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