Read on Twitter
This, as it happens, is also how fraud scams work. Everyone thinks they’re too smart for it and what fraudsters know, & abusers know on some level too, is that it’s not about smarts. It’s about using the ways you’ve learned to get along with & relate to other people against you. https://twitter.com/marawilson/status/1340838284289744897
It’s actually all part of normal human bonding to trust other people, take them at their word, presume best intent, try to empathize, try to avoid unnecessary conflict, try to be fair, etc. It’s normal to believe what people are telling you.
And it’s normal for your brain to be disoriented for some time when what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing/experiencing don’t line up. Especially if that mismatch is happening amid any sort of fraught or tense conditions.
Your brain tries to fill in the gaps of that mismatch bc that’s what brains do. That plus our inclination to avoid unnecessary conflict and maintain good relations equals rationalizations that make sense to you when you’re in it, kind of, but don’t make sense to anyone outside.
This is why abusers and fraudsters both try to isolate you from others when trying to manipulate you—bc those other people don’t have that relational context (even just a conversation can be a relationship) and will see that the gaps your brain filled in weren’t filled right.
No one is too smart for this. We can learn to pay attention and honor when things don’t feel right (this is hard for folks whose experiences and perceptions are routinely dismissed and minimized—which happen to be the same people who are often targeted for both abuse and fraud).
But no one is too smart for this. It really is about using your normal human relational tendencies against you. And we aren’t wired to expect that. It would be very difficult to have normal human relationships at all if we were.
