Rerelease | When Abusers Play the Victim to Make You Feel Guilty

Narcissist Apocalypse: Patterns of Abuse

Abuse Survivor Network

Relationships, Society & Culture, Education, Self-improvement, True Crime

4.7 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this rerelease episode of Narcissist Apocalypse, Brandon discusses how victim-playing abusers use guilt, empathy, and blame-shifting to make survivors feel responsible for the abuse they are experiencing. The episode looks at how an abuser may present themselves as wounded, abandoned, misunderstood, or mistreated in order to gain sympathy early in the relationship. But as the relationship continues, that same victim story can become a way to control the survivor, avoid accountability, win arguments, and make the survivor feel guilty for having boundaries. Brandon breaks down how this pattern can show up through jealousy, isolation, silent treatment, guilt trips, defensive abuse, smear campaigns, DARVO, and post-separation abuse. At the center of it all is a painful reversal: the person causing harm keeps finding ways to make themselves the victim of the person they are harming.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	On this episode of Narcissist Apocalypse Q&A, everyone.
0:31.7	I am Brandon Chadwick, and today we are going to be talking about victim playing and guilt. But before we get to
0:41.1	this episode, if you want to be a guest on our Survivor Story episodes, please do go to our website
0:46.5	at Narcissistapocalypse.com. Top of the page, there's a button that says guest form. When you
0:51.4	click on that button, it takes you to our guest form page.
0:58.2	There, you can read all of our instructions and either send us an email at Narcissistapocalypse at gmail.com or fill out our guest form and press the submit button. And please do send it
1:03.3	in the format that we ask for. So today we are going to be discussing victim playing and guilt. So when it comes to victim playing,
1:16.5	the top five reasons someone plays the victim is number one is to control you. Two is to get your
1:24.3	empathy based guilt and we'll get into that very soon. Three is to avoid taking
1:31.2	responsibility. Four is to win arguments. And five is to get attention. So I want to define the word
1:41.3	guilt first. And then also we're going to discuss empathy a little as well,
1:45.7	and then we're going to kind of combine them. So guilt is a self-conscious emotion involving
1:52.2	reflection on oneself, and people may feel guilt or feel guilty for a variety of reasons,
1:59.4	including acts that they think they have committed that are wrong
2:03.6	or they might have think they have committed that are wrong because someone can place that
2:08.1	inside your head. There could be a failure to do something that they think they should have
2:13.8	done and also that can be brought back to someone implanting that in your head as
2:18.5	well, and then thoughts that they think are morally wrong as well.
2:25.7	So when one person causes harm to an other person, guilt is a natural emotional response.
2:34.0	And a guilt trip is best defined as the intentional. is a natural emotional response.
2:41.9	And a guilt trip is best defined as the intentional manipulation of another person's emotions to induce these feelings of guilt.
2:45.3	And that's when someone is either purposely or unintentionally tries to make someone feel guilty, remorseful, or bad about
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Abuse Survivor Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Abuse Survivor Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.