“You do that!” he barked.

I jumped, and nearly dropped the book I was reading out loud to him on the floor of the car. “What do you mean?”

“What it just said in the book there, externalizing. That’s what you do whenever you talk to other people about our marriage. You see? The book says externalizing hurts a relationship. You shouldn’t be doing it!”

I was still in the “try to reason with him” stage of my marriage. It was why I was reading this book out loud to him, at his insistence, on a long drive. So, I paged back to the definition of externalization in the book and tried to explain to him that it refers to locating both the cause of our frustrations and the solution to our problems outside ourselves, typically in our partner.

I might as well have been talking to the steering wheel.

Looking back, I can now see the supreme irony. Not only did he ignore what externalizing actually means, and he was doing it himself, he was also using it to isolate me by telling me I shouldn’t talk to other people.

What’s more, as I encountered other abuse victims and heard their stories, I realized that there’s nothing unusual about what he did. In fact, it’s a fundamental tool that abusers brandish to control their victims.

Fast forward to today, and this tactic has gotten a major upgrade. Abusers aren’t just misusing isolated terms anymore. They’re appropriating entire therapeutic vocabularies, including terms like boundaries, trigger, narcissist, gaslighting, coercive control, trauma responses, even calling you emotionally unstable. And they’re using these terms the same way my ex used externalizing: backwards, twisted, as weapons to avoid accountability and maintain control.

It’s basically DARVO 2.0. And it’s an incredibly insidious form of it because it makes the abuser sound reasonable, especially to people who are unfamiliar with abuse dynamics. It confuses the victim and makes them question themselves.

Some victims doubt themselves at first when they’re confronted by this level of manipulation, especially if their abusers are skilled at deploying it. But it’s the opposite of actual therapeutic growth. Someone who’s actually working on themselves takes responsibility for their own actions. They don’t use the language of therapy to make demands. You’ll also see consistent (as opposed to temporary) changes in their behavior, not just their language.

Therapy-speak and custody jargon place a veneer of legitimacy over the abuser’s bullying behavior. Namecalling is obviously an emotional attack and can easily be dismissed as rage and bitterness (by the victim and everyone else). But if someone calls you “coercively controlling” or says you’re “not coparenting”, or you’re “gaslighting”, it sounds like they’re making an objective clinical assessment.

It’s basically a form of accusation-laundering.

You can respond to a direct accusation by saying “that’s not true” and disprove it easily. But with weaponized jargon, you have to first find out what the word actually means, explain that, and demonstrate that it doesn’t apply, which puts you on the defensive several times over.

Now, there’s one bright point here. Actually, a couple. First of all, with your common-or-garden abuser, you can guarantee that any accusation is actually an admission. So, it can give you a clue about what they’re up to, and what specific actions on their part to document for court.

Secondly, I always tell my clients: Courts don’t like it when you use terms like narcissist, gaslighting, or even abuser. You have to be specific and show, not tell. Courts are persuaded by patterns, not isolated incidents.

While they’re dropping psychological and court jargon left, right, and center—without a shred of actual evidence—you can show the court the actual pattern of your ex’s

Never, ever forget that abusers often win in court because they manage to bait their victims and weaponize their victims’ responses while they look calm and collected themselves. Log everything in a dedicated app or journal, with the date, screenshot, and impact on the kid(s). Patterns emerge fast, and it’s your shield against baiting.

But your best evidence is often your calm, consistent behavior over time, and this is where a divorce coach can be invaluable.

If you find yourself at the receiving end, don’t argue the jargon. Instead of debating about the definition, you can just redirect to facts, responding with something like “I’m not going to argue labels. Here’s what happened on [date]. Remember when you do this that your goal is not to persuade your abuser. It’s to bring the narrative back to what actually happened in case you have to present these messages as evidence for court. So write your response like a neutral judge is going to read it.

Check out the judgment linked in the resources section below. It’s several pages long but makes for an eye-popping read. And make some popcorn first because that's the perfect accompaniment to this judge’s smackdown of a father’s attempt to smear his ex in front of the court with weaponized therapy-speak and court jargon.

If you’re confused or find yourself defaulting to fear mode whenever your ex makes accusations against you, you’re welcome to talk to me about this or any other challenge you’re facing in a free, 30-minute consultation with me. Whether or not you decide to hire me as a coach (and I don’t do hard sells because they feel so icky to me), you’ll leave our session with more clarity and a bunch of freebies that I’ve created to help you.

Want to know more about what I do?

This great article from Samara at Shadows of Control shows how abusers co-opt therapy to up their abuse game, drawing on an incident last year involving actor Jonah Hill.

This blogpost from Judge Anthony Bompiani, who also offers a free masterclass in building your courtroom strategy, describes how abusers deploy DARVO tactics and what you can do to counter them in court.

And then, if you're in the mood for a judge’s slapdown of weaponized jargon and therapy-speak served with a heaping side of karma, this Quebec Superior Court judgment delivers the goods and then some. Don’t forget the popcorn. And feel free to email me back with your favorite part of the judgment. Mine was the hilarious Halloween costume debacle.