You finally bring up the thing that's been bothering you for weeks. Maybe it's the comment your partner made about you in front of his friends, or the way your mom told the whole family something you said in confidence. You stay calm and pick your words carefully. Twenty minutes later, you're the one saying sorry, and you can't quite trace how you got there.
What happened has a name. DARVO is a manipulation pattern where someone you confront about a hurtful behavior denies it, attacks you, and then casts themselves as the person who's been wronged. If you looked up the DARVO meaning after an argument that left your head spinning, this post is for you. We'll walk through what DARVO looks like, why it so often ends with you apologizing, and how to respond when it happens.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
What Does DARVO Stand For?
DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Psychologist Jennifer Freyd coined the term in 1997 to describe a pattern that shows up when someone is held accountable for hurting you. They respond with three predictable moves, and by the end, the conversation is about what you did wrong.
The three moves are:
They deny the behavior
Attack the credibility or character of the person raising it
Then present themselves as the one being harmed
Freyd first used the term to describe how people who've committed abuse respond when confronted. Since then, researchers have found it in a wider range of conflicts, including romantic betrayals and mistreatment by friends or family.
Deny
The first move is denial. The goal is to make the original event wobble, so you end up debating whether it happened at all, and the conversation about how it affected you never gets started.
Denial can sound like:
"That never happened."
"I was kidding."
"You're remembering it wrong."
"It wasn't a big deal."
Attack
Next comes the attack, which goes after you personally. It puts the spotlight on your character, and now you're the one explaining yourself.
The attack can sound like:
"You're too sensitive."
"You're always looking for a fight."
"You're being dramatic."
"You need help."
Reverse Victim and Offender
The last move flips the roles, and suddenly they're the hurt one. By the end, the person who raised the problem has been recast as the one causing it.
The reversal can sound like:
"I can't believe you'd accuse me of that."
"After everything I do for you."
"You should be apologizing to me."
These three steps often arrive together and fast, sometimes in a single sentence. That speed is a big part of why DARVO feels so disorienting while it's happening.
DARVO Examples in Relationships, Families, and Friendships
DARVO can show up anywhere one person has more power in the relationship or more practice controlling the story. Here's what it can sound like in a few common settings.
With a Partner
You tell your partner it hurt when they went through your texts while you were in the shower. They say they only glanced at your phone because it kept buzzing. Then they add that the fact you're this worked up makes them wonder what you're hiding. By the end, they're hurt that you'd treat them like a criminal, and you're promising it won't come up again.
With a Parent
You ask your mom not to comment on your weight at family dinners. She says she was only asking if you'd been eating well. Then she reminds you how dramatic you've always been, and her voice cracks as she says she can't do anything right in your eyes. You spend the drive home feeling guilty for bringing it up.
If this is a regular pattern with a parent, our post on how to deal with a narcissistic parent and set boundaries that hold walks through what to say and what to do when a limit gets ignored.
With a Friend or Coworker
You mention to a friend that she shared something you told her privately. She says you never told her it was a secret and calls you paranoid. A day later, she's telling the group chat that being friends with someone who keeps score is exhausting, and other friends start checking in on her.
Signs You're on the Receiving End of DARVO
DARVO can be hard to see from the inside, especially with someone you love. When you're in it, each conversation feels like its own separate misunderstanding.
A few signs worth paying attention to:
You go into conversations with a clear concern and come out unsure whether it was valid.
Bringing up anything about their behavior leads to a list of everything you've done wrong.
They describe themselves as the one being attacked whenever you raise a problem.
You've started rehearsing how to phrase things so they won't get upset.
Your apology is usually what ends the argument.
Friends or family have heard their side and now ask you to let it go.
Some defensiveness in a hard conversation is normal, for you and for them. These signs matter most when they show up again and again, and a steady pattern of them is worth taking seriously and talking through with someone you trust.
Why Do I Say Sorry So Much When I'm the One Who Got Hurt?
You end up apologizing because DARVO changes the subject from what they did to what you did. Once you're defending your tone, your memory, or your motives, apologizing feels like the fastest way to end the conflict and get the relationship back to safe. You may also have learned early that keeping the peace was your job.
Research links DARVO to self-blame. In a survey of 138 undergraduates who had confronted someone over a wrongdoing, Harsey, Zurbriggen, and Freyd found that nearly 72% experienced DARVO during the confrontation. The more DARVO participants heard, the more they blamed themselves for the very thing they'd raised.
In our experience, when someone you love is upset with you, it can feel like a threat to the whole relationship. Saying "I'm sorry" is the quickest way to make that feeling stop, because it ends the attack and gets you back to calm, even when calm means taking the blame.
At Anchor Therapy, we often hear clients describe the same strange after-feeling. They walk away from the argument relieved it's over, then lie awake trying to figure out what they apologized for. In our view, that apology is the clearest sign of DARVO in a relationship. If you regularly start a conversation about something that hurt you and end it apologizing for something else, take that pattern seriously, however reasonable each conversation seemed at the time.
Why Friends and Family Start Taking Their Side
DARVO also works on the people around you. In one experiment, Harsey and Freyd had 316 university students read about an incident of intimate partner violence. Students who read a perpetrator response that used DARVO saw the victim as more responsible, more abusive, and less believable, compared with students who read a response without it. They also rated the perpetrator as less abusive and less responsible.
That may help explain why DARVO can leave you feeling so alone. Friends and relatives hear a calm, wounded version of events from the other person, and your hurt starts to look like an overreaction. When those people start carrying that version back to you, they're acting as what's often called flying monkeys. Our post on flying monkeys and why people get used by a narcissist explains.
The same paper offered some hope. In a second experiment, participants who were taught about DARVO rated the perpetrator as less believable and the victim as more believable and less abusive. That study looked at outside observers. Clients often tell us that having a name for the pattern helps them, too.
Is DARVO a Narcissist Tactic?
Yes, DARVO is common in relationships with narcissistic partners and parents, since protecting their self-image matters so much to them. It also shows up with people who don't have narcissistic traits, especially when they feel cornered. For your day-to-day life, watch how someone handles being held accountable.
In relationships with someone who has strong narcissistic traits, DARVO tends to show up every time you name a problem, big or small, because admitting fault feels unbearable to them. You might notice that even tiny requests, like asking them to text when they're running late, set off the full deny, attack, and reverse sequence. That consistency tells you how safe it feels to raise a concern with this person.
How Gaslighting Fits Into the Pattern
Gaslighting makes you doubt your own memory or perception, and it can happen about anything. DARVO is a specific three-step response to being confronted, where someone denies, attacks, and flips the roles. The two often overlap, since the denial step in DARVO frequently uses gaslighting lines like "that never happened."
You can think of gaslighting as one of the tools DARVO uses. If someone regularly leaves you questioning whether you're remembering things right, our post with 3 steps to survive gaslighting can help you sort out what's happening.
How Do You Respond to DARVO?
Respond to DARVO by naming the shift to yourself, bringing the conversation back to the original issue once, and stepping away if it keeps flipping. Hold onto your own version of what happened, even if the other person never agrees with it.
A few things that tend to help in the moment:
Notice the turn. When the conversation moves from what they did to what's wrong with you, tell yourself, "This is the attack part."
Return to your original point one time, plainly: "I hear that you're upset. I'd still like to talk about what happened Saturday."
Hold off on apologizing for things you didn't do, even if the silence feels awkward.
Write down what happened soon after, so you can come back to something steady if your memory gets questioned later.
End the conversation if it keeps circling. Saying "I'm going to take a break, and we can pick this up later" is enough.
If the person is someone you can't avoid, like a co-parent, a boss, or a relative you still see on holidays, keeping your replies short and low-emotion makes you a less rewarding target. Our post on the gray rock method for handling a narcissist walks through how to do that without feeling like you're disappearing.
In our clinical experience, what helps most is rehearsing the redirect before the conversation happens. Clients we work with in Hoboken often practice one or two calm lines in session, so when the attack comes, they aren't building a response from scratch while their heart is pounding. Having the words ready makes it much easier to skip the reflexive "I'm sorry."
If DARVO is part of a relationship where you feel afraid, are being threatened, or have been physically hurt, your safety comes first. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233.
What Years of This Can Do to You
Over months or years, DARVO can wear down your trust in your own judgment, until you start pre-apologizing or skipping hard conversations altogether.
A 2026 study by Durland, Harsey, and Freyd surveyed 319 adults from the general population and 261 college students about a time they'd confronted someone. Participants who faced more DARVO reported more trauma symptoms, even after the researchers accounted for past trauma. The study measured an association, and that link showed up in both groups.
The same study found somewhat more DARVO in confrontations about emotional and psychological mistreatment than in confrontations about being excluded or ignored by a friend or family member. If you've felt jumpy, foggy, or quick to blame yourself since this relationship began, that reaction makes sense given what you've been through.
How Therapy Can Help With DARVO
Therapy gives you a place to lay out what happened without anyone rewriting it in real time.
Your therapist can help you:
Spot the DARVO pattern as it happens
Separate real accountability from guilt that was handed to you
Rebuild trust in your own read on things
Through relationship counseling, our therapists can help you work through manipulative and narcissistic dynamics with a partner, parent, or friend.
If you're also wondering whether you sometimes slip into defensiveness yourself, that's a good question to bring to therapy too. Owning a mistake without turning it into a counterattack is a skill, and it's one you can learn. You can meet our team to find a therapist with experience in manipulation and narcissistic abuse.
You Can Stop Apologizing for Being Hurt
DARVO works by turning your concern into an accusation against you, which is why so many of these conversations end with you saying sorry. Once you can name the deny, attack, and reverse steps, they lose some of their pull, and your hurt gets to stay on the table.
If this pattern keeps showing up in your relationships, Anchor Therapy can help. We offer therapy in-person in Hoboken, NJ, and virtually in New Jersey, New York, and Florida. Fill out the intake form below, and our intake coordinator will get back to you to match you with a therapist who fits what you're looking for.
Victoria Scala, LAC
is the Psychotherapist, Community Engagement Director, Office Manager, and Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey.
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR HELP FROM A PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR TO ASSIST YOU IN MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE, CONTACT US
WORKING WITH US IS EASY
Fill out the contact form below.
Our intake coordinator will get back to you with more information on how we can help and to schedule an appointment. We will set you up with an experienced licensed therapist who specializes in what you're seeking help with and who understands your needs.
You’ll rest easy tonight knowing you made the first step to improve your life.
Having trouble with this form? Email us directly at info@anchortherapy.org with the information in the form.
You hit every deadline this week. You made it to Saturday’s soccer game, answered the late emails, and nobody at work would guess how many nights end with a bottle of wine you meant to stop halfway through. From the outside, life looks fine. So when the thought “Do I drink too much?” shows up, it’s easy to push it aside because you’re handling everything.
If you’ve typed “what is a high functioning alcoholic” into a search bar at 1 a.m., that question deserves a clear answer. A high functioning alcoholic is someone who meets the criteria for alcohol use disorder while still keeping up with work, family, and daily life. That’s why the drinking can stay hidden from the people around you, and often from yourself. Below, we’ll walk through the signs, why this pattern is so easy to miss, what tends to happen over time, and how therapy helps you or someone you love.