I had a call this week with a new contact that reached out from the other side of the world after reading my posts on solving workplace bullying (Day 0, Week 1 Review ). She shared a shocking careers worth of examples of bullying including introducing me to something I had not yet come across – DARVO.
DARVO is a defence pattern where someone accused of harm/bullying flips reality: they deny what happened, attack the person speaking up, and then reverse the roles so they appear to be the victim and the true target is framed as the problem. In bullying-heavy cultures, DARVO doesn’t just show up in individuals per se; but whole institutions can run a version of it when they close ranks to protect reputation and sacrifice the target.
What DARVO Is
DARVO was described by psychologist Jennifer Freyd as a common reaction when perpetrators are held to account. The sequence usually looks like this:
Deny
- Flat rejection that anything abusive, unfair, or bullying occurred.
- Often accompanied by gaslighting: “You’re overreacting,” “That’s not what happened,” or “Everyone else is fine with this.”
Attack
- Shift the spotlight onto the target’s credibility, stability, motives or competence: “She’s difficult / emotional / not a team player.”
- Past “issues” are dredged up or invented to make the reporter look unreliable or even like the real bully.
Reverse Victim and Offender
- The actual aggressor (or organisation) presents themselves as the wronged party, and the true target is reframed as the offender.
- The story becomes, “I’m being unfairly accused / witch‑hunted / undermined,” which confuses observers and often wins sympathy for the perpetrator.
Experiments show that when observers are exposed to a DARVO-style response, they are more likely to doubt the victim and blame them more, which makes this pattern particularly dangerous in workplaces where leaders control the narrative.
From a bullying-psychology lens, DARVO sits on top of two things we’ve been exploring:
- Moral disengagement (“I’m justified, they deserved this”).
- Dominance preservation in hierarchies (protecting status at all costs, even by rewriting reality).
In other words, DARVO is the story the bully and the system tell to keep power intact and the discomfort of accepting their triggering or contributory behaviour as harmful.
How DARVO Shows Up
Let’s bring this into the lived experience based on what was shared with me recently by one lady who was self described as: high‑performing, technically fluent, repeatedly bullied, and pushed into “job hopping” because organisations refused to deal with bullies.
1. The redundancy and the boss who turned
In this example she starts with a strong, trusting relationship with her boss. Then redundancies loom; suddenly there are fewer seats at the table, and threat circuitry activates in the hierarchy. This is the perfect breeding ground for DARVO.
What to expect if micro-aggression or bullying behaviour is acknowledged and dealt with appropriately:
- “This process has been mishandled; I can see how unfair this may have felt.”
- Shared problem‑solving, transparent criteria, and some responsibility taken by leadership.
What DARVO might look like instead in this scenario:
Deny
“No one is being bullied here, this is just a tough business decision, it’s not personal.”
“You’re reading too much into things; everyone is under pressure.”
Complaints from her about sudden coldness, exclusion from meetings, or being sidelined are reframed as “misunderstandings” or “her perception.”
Attack
Her reactions to genuine fear and uncertainty are labelled “negative attitude,” “resistance,” or “emotional instability.”
Informal conversations: “She used to be good, but lately she’s become difficult / paranoid / disruptive.”
Her previous loyalty becomes a weapon: “After everything I’ve done for you, how dare you accuse me of bullying?”
Reverse Victim and Offender
The boss moves into victim position: “This is so hard for me. I’m the one under enormous strain making heartbreaking decisions; she’s making this all about herself.”
If she raises a formal concern, the narrative in the room (she is not in) becomes, “We’re being unfairly accused; this is an attack on management integrity, it’s not personal, we need to restructure, we can’t all be retained.”
The impact on the nervous system can be profound: her reality is not just dismissed, it’s inverted. Instead of “I’m being mistreated during a redundancy process,” the system teaches her, “You are the problem for noticing the mistreatment.” This is classic reality-reversal associated with betrayal trauma and DARVO.
Before we move on, I want to pick up here on the word ‘noticing’. Some people don’t notice. Those that do notice are described as ‘sensitive’ and the word when used like this for the observer probably means ‘trouble maker’ or ‘unhinged’. However, sensitivity really means using senses to notice, and could mean those that bully just don’t notice, or operate in organisations that are hypo-sensitive (don’t notice). As we have described with hyper-sensitive people in previous posts (Day 2 Solving Workplace Bullying) and those that do not notice hypo-sensitive people it seems logical that institutions tilt towards the latter when it comes to bullying either intentionally or otherwise. This leads me to think that there may be a link or correlation or relationship between bully’s ability to operate unnoticed and the organisational hyposensitivity – they don’t notice. If we could help organisations become more comfortable with moving towards the other side of the curve (more sensitive) we may have a chance of solving workplace bullying.
2. The technically weaker boss who asks you to “dumb down” or labels you as “intimidating”
Here we have a different trigger: status threat. She knows her stuff; her boss doesn’t, and feels exposed. In animal terms, a lower‑competence alpha is confronted with a more capable subordinate; one common strategy is to attack, exclude or suppress to preserve rank.
On the surface, the request sounds mild: “Can you dumb down your language?” or in my case “you are very intimidating, can you be less tall” Underneath, DARVO can be quietly loading.
Deny
The manager denies his/her own intimidation: “It’s not that I don’t understand; it’s that other stakeholders won’t”, they may also dismiss the legitimacy of the terminology: “All this ‘cloud computing / live data / dynamic dashboards’ jargon is confusing people; it’s not appropriate here, can you simplify it please?”
Or in my case, “I don’t find you intimidating, but others do, because of how tall you are, can you be less tall?” the statement being almost impossible to refute or correct.
Attack
Her professional fluency is reframed as arrogance or poor communication:
“She’s too theoretical, not commercial enough.”
Or about me:
“He intimidates colleagues; he talks down to people.”
Feedback conversations focus not on competence gap or insecurity but on the alleged interpersonal faults: “You’re not relatable,” “You’re alienating the team,” “You’re making others feel small.”
Reverse Victim and Offender
Then, the perpetrator positions themselves (and sometimes “the team”) as victims:
“We’re the ones being made to feel small; s/he’s the one creating a hostile environment with her language (or his body language).”
If the victim notices the pattern and pushes back (“These are the correct technical terms”) or in my case (I can’t change how tall I am), this is spun as insubordination or lack of humility, being aggressive to feedback: now s/he is framed as the aggressor, and the perpetrator becomes the beleaguered manager dealing with a “difficult” direct report who is resistant to change and inflexible to feedback.
Again, DARVO distorts cause and effect: the original issue is fragility, insecurity, or skill gap; the story becomes the victims alleged elitism and lack of “fit.” Over time, it’s easy for the victim to start asking, “Am I the problem here?” simply because they are the one being pathologised.
3. The cover‑up culture
Freyd calls this institutional DARVO: the pattern enacted not just by a person but by the system. Many organisations tolerate bullying if the bully delivers results or protects short‑term goals. DARVO is how they psychologically justify that tolerance by switching the roles and explaining away the behaviour.
How organisational or institutional DARVO can play out in tech environments:
Deny (institutional)
“We take bullying very seriously; however, our investigation found no evidence.”
Policies and posters proclaim zero tolerance while reporting channels quietly minimise or reframe complaints as “personality clashes” or “miscommunications.”
Attack (institutional)
Targets are recast as troublemakers: “overly sensitive,” “not resilient enough for fast‑paced tech,” “not a culture fit.”, “not one of us”.
Whisper campaigns: “She’s had issues in previous roles too,” which subtly brands her as the common denominator, especially when her CV shows multiple exits triggered by potential bullying.
Reverse Victim and Offender (institutional)
The organisation, or specific leaders, present themselves as victims of false allegations:
“We’re being unfairly painted as a toxic culture.”
“These claims are damaging to our reputation and to hard‑working managers.”
HR and leadership step into a protective crouch for the bully (“we must support our managers”), while the target is encouraged to “move on for everyone’s sake,” reinforcing the pattern of job hopping.
At scale, this creates exactly the revolving‑door pattern our week‑one research surfaced: high‑performing targets leave; bullies and fragile leaders stay, protected; the story told internally is that “some people just can’t handle the culture.” The reality is that the culture has become an enabling environment for DARVO.
Why DARVO Hurts So Much (and Why It’s Not Her Fault)
DARVO doesn’t just deny harm; it rewrites identity. Instead of “I’ve been harmed,” the target is taught “I am harmful.” That’s why it lands so deeply on nervous systems and self‑concept. Observers exposed to DARVO are more likely to believe the perpetrator, which compounds isolation and shame.
For someone like the lady in my example – competent, expert, in a male‑dominated, high‑status field—DARVO is especially corrosive because it attacks precisely what has always been her strength: her knowledge, clarity, and high standards. Over time, cycling through multiple organisations that all run versions of the same pattern, it makes brutal sense that job hopping became both a survival strategy and a source of self‑doubt: “If this keeps happening, maybe I’m the common problem.”
From our EQ lens (Day 5 Solving Workplace Bullying: Can EQ Be the Cure), naming DARVO is an act of psychological boundary‑setting. It doesn’t magically fix the system, but it restores a vital piece of reality:
- There was harm.
- Her perception of that harm was not an overreaction.
- The story that she was “the problem” was part of a scripted defence, not an objective truth.
In the wider arc of our series (week 1), DARVO is one of the clearest examples of how primitive dominance drives, moral disengagement, and institutional self‑protection combine to keep bullying invisible—until people like her, and like you, start naming the pattern out loud.
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