The Weaponization of Perceptions, Part II
When Truth is Hidden in the Fog
In the first post of this series, I described how abusive individuals or systems distort reality through tactics that amplify or exaggerate. Like a maze of warped mirrors, these strategies stretch faults, shrink strengths, and reduce people to caricatures.
It is a disorienting experience to be handed a label that someone else has crafted and then slowly cut down to fit it. Over time, you may begin to lose sight of the fuller, truer self you once recognized. The longer the distortion remains in place, the harder it becomes for you and those around you to remember that the warped image was never the real one.
But distortion isn’t the only way perception is weaponized. Sometimes, the danger comes not from what is magnified but from what is concealed. Instead of mirrors that twist the image, it’s more like fog creeping in. The outlines of reality become blurred, details are hidden, and the truth is harder to find.
These quieter tactics are just as powerful. They work not by adding noise, but by muting the sound of truth. The harm is downplayed and the harmed are sidelined. The narrative is rewritten. And over time, what is concealed can be just as damaging as what is distorted.
Scholars have identified four of these defensive strategies. I’ve reframed them in clearer language and included examples drawn from both interpersonal and institutional settings to make them easier to recognize:
1. Burying: Erasing Unwelcome Ties
Burying is a tactic of concealment. Instead of confronting uncomfortable truths, a person or system quietly hides the connections that would reveal harm or hypocrisy. It is the strategic disappearance of relationships, decisions, affiliations, or patterns that would complicate the official story. Where distortion stretches or exaggerates, burying works by omission. It removes information from view until a partial truth begins to feel like the whole truth. And when something is buried long enough, people begin to forget it was ever there.
Individuals often use burying to minimize their role in a harmful situation. A leader accused of misconduct might suddenly claim, “I barely knew them,” despite years of interactions. Someone who crossed a boundary may retell the incident in a way that omits certain details, shortens timelines, and reframes memories so the story appears cleaner and less troubling. If an abusive person can erase the parts that point to harm, the harm becomes harder to name.
Systems do this too, often with even greater effect because institutions possess structure, authority, and institutional memory. A church might quietly scrub its website, removing photos, sermons, and references to a leader once central to its identity. A school might issue a statement saying, “We handled this years ago,” while omitting the fact that the same concerns surfaced repeatedly. Documents disappear. Records are edited. Policies or timelines are rewritten. A person is “retired,” “transitioned,” or “moving on to other opportunities,” rather than held accountable. What was once visible becomes hidden, and what was once common knowledge dissolves into silence.
For survivors and whistleblowers, burying can be one of the most destabilizing experiences. It can feel as though your story is being erased, or that you’re the only person left who remembers what actually happened. While others move on, you may feel trapped in a version of history that no longer officially exists. The fog creeps in, thickens, and others walk through it as though nothing is amiss.
Burying works because most people won’t question what they aren’t shown. Silence often masquerades as innocence. And the absence of evidence can be misinterpreted as evidence of absence. When a system controls the narrative, those harmed can begin doubting their own memories, especially when the people around them accept the partial story without hesitation. Over time, the concealed truth can become as damaging as any distortion, leaving survivors isolated in what they know but can no longer easily prove.
2. Blurring: Muddying the Truth
If burying works by removing information, blurring works by clouding it. Instead of erasing the past, blurring smudges the edges until nothing is clear enough to hold onto. It’s the tactic of introducing selective details, half-clarifications, vague statements, and carefully placed ambiguity to weaken the force of what is true without the abuser having to put themselves in the indefensible position of telling an outright lie.
Individuals often blur the truth when burying isn’t possible. A person might admit something happened but portray it as “not that serious.” They acknowledge a boundary was crossed but insist it was “misinterpreted.” Each statement contains just enough truth to sound plausible but not enough truth to bring accountability. The aim is not to deny reality outright, but to dilute it until the impact is lost.
Blurring also happens through over-explanation. Someone who caused harm may launch into long, winding monologues about their intentions or state of mind, hoping that a flood of context will drown the clarity of the original issue. “I didn’t mean it that way” becomes a shield against responsibility. Intent becomes the focus, while impact fades from view.
Systems use blurring in more organized ways. An institution might release a statement saying it “takes allegations seriously” while offering no specifics about what is being investigated. A board might acknowledge “mistakes were made” without identifying who made them or what the consequences will be. A church might announce that “policies have been updated” without explaining why those policies were needed in the first place. Much can be said, yet nothing revealed.
Blurring can also occur when institutions blend unrelated issues together. A complaint about harm gets reframed as a “miscommunication.” Patterns of abuse get described as “conflict between personalities.” The language becomes soft, padded, and more comfortable for those in the wrong.
For survivors and whistleblowers, blurring can feel like psychological quicksand. Just when you think you’ve finally described what happened in a way others can understand, the narrative gets fogged by explanations, qualifiers, or counter-stories that make everything feel uncertain again. You can find yourself wondering: Am I remembering this correctly? Did I make too much of it? Why does everyone else seem unsure when I am not?
The experience is maddening because the truth hasn’t been erased. It is there in the space and its presence might give you confidence that right actions will follow, but then it’s obscured by just enough haze that others can’t see it clearly. Blurring gets its power from confusing and complicating. And when clarity is lost, urgency and action can begin to fade as people retreat to a more comfortable neutrality. If the story feels complicated, people feel less confident taking a stand.
3. Softening the Harm: Reframing Wrongdoing to Protect the Powerful
Where burying hides and blurring clouds, softening the harm works by shrinking. It takes behavior that is genuinely damaging and reframes it as something acceptable, minor, or even admirable. Instead of denying the truth outright, this tactic dulls its edges. The sharpness of what happened remains, but it’s padded with enough excuses, reinterpretations, and warm language that it no longer feels urgent or severe.
Individuals use softening the harm when they fear the full truth will cost them something, such as their reputation, position, or following. An institution or community can defend a leader they revere by softening the harm of their actions.
For example, a pastor’s intimidation becomes “passionate leadership.” A leader’s demeaning comments are dismissed as “just being blunt.” A pattern of manipulation is reframed as “protecting the mission.” A board might describe repeated reports of emotional abuse as “isolated incidents.” Sexual misconduct becomes “a lapse in judgment.” Retaliation is explained away as “miscommunication under pressure.” Staff resignations due to harm get reinterpreted as “normal turnover.” Rage-filled sermons become “righteous anger.” A leader’s boundary-crossing is reframed as “overfriendliness.” A pattern of coercion is described as “trying to maintain doctrinal purity.”
In these reframings, the harm is not confronted but rebranded. Cruelty gets repackaged as strength and high control gets renamed as care. Over time, these behaviors can become normalized.
The subtle message communicated is that what happened was not that bad, and certainly not bad enough to change how you view the person responsible. Softening works because it makes wrongdoing easier for people to tolerate. If harm can be recast as normal, understandable, or even virtuous, no one has to face the discomfort of holding someone they admire accountable. No one has to disrupt the system that benefits them. By shrinking the impact, the system avoids the responsibility to act.
For survivors and whistleblowers, softening the harm can feel like being slowly erased in real time. You describe what you experienced, but the response is one that bears little resemblance to the pain you lived. It can leave you questioning whether the wound was as deep as you remember or whether your pain is somehow an overreaction.
4. Diminishing the Messenger: Shrinking Those Who Speak Up
If softening the harm protects abusive power, diminishing the messenger targets those who are perceived as threats to that power, especially those who raise concerns. Instead of confronting what is being said, an abusive person or system attacks the one who says it. The goal is to make the messenger seem small enough that their message no longer matters.
Survivors are labeled “bitter” or “attention-seeking.”
Whistleblowers are accused of being “divisive” or “out to get someone.”
Staff who voice concerns become “disgruntled employees.”
These descriptions are crafted to make the speaker appear unstable, vengeful, overly emotional, or lacking credibility.
Rather than wrestling with what was said, they recast the person as irrational or disloyal. A survivor’s courage is reframed as chaos. Their persistence becomes obsession. Their integrity gets rewritten as rebellion. The more their strengths pose a threat (like experience, competence, and respect within the community) the more aggressively those strengths are reinterpreted as liabilities. Someone once admired begins to be perceived as “off the deep end” even when nothing about them has changed except their willingness to speak the truth.
Systems deploy diminishing the messenger in more organized and persuasive ways. Leaders may say, “They’re not who you think they are,” or quietly circulate anecdotes meant to sow doubt. Boards may describe a whistleblower as “confused” or “misinformed,” implying their concerns arise from misunderstanding rather than reality. Entire communities can be nudged toward distrust through subtle cues: a comment in a meeting, a tone of dismissal, a vague warning to “take what they say with a grain of salt.”
Once that seed of suspicion is planted, it grows quickly. People who once respected the messenger begin looking at them through a distorted lens, interpreting normal grief, anger, or frustration as instability. A sign that this tactic of diminishing the messenger is at work is when the smallest perceived infraction gets used as means to undermine credibility, such as a tonal shift in communication being labeled as aggression, or the setting of a healthy boundary getting labeled as hostility. Once their character is diminished, their testimony can be safely ignored.
For survivors and whistleblowers, this tactic can feel like a second wound. Not only is the harm minimized but their very self is called into question. You speak up about the truth, only to find the truth about you rewritten in return. It can leave you wondering whether you’re becoming who they say you are, even when every internal signal tells you you’re not.
Diminishing the messenger works because it relieves others of the burden of listening. If the speaker is unreliable, then the system is safe. If the critic is unstable, then the community can stay comfortable. By shrinking the messenger, those in power shrink the need for accountability.
And when the messenger becomes small enough in the eyes of others, the message they carry disappears with them.
The Weight of Fog
Each of these tactics operates like fog. The effect is the same as those warped mirrors in Part I: the truth becomes harder to see. Not because the shape of reality has changed, but because something has been placed between you and it.
This fog can be disorienting. You may begin to question your own memory, second-guess the harm you lived through, or feel erased in the very community where you once belonged. The more others accept the softened stories or the rewritten timelines, the more invisible you can become.
For bystanders, the fog dulls conviction. Even when something feels wrong, the softened narratives and blurred explanations can make it harder to act with clarity or courage. And for communities, the fog can settle so deeply that what was once obvious becomes debatable. Harm becomes “complex.” Injustice becomes “a misunderstanding.” People learn to navigate by half-light.
Breaking Through
In Part I, we saw how distortion creates caricatures. Images are stretched, shrunk, and twisted until people no longer resemble themselves. In this second part, we’ve seen how concealment obscures what is true until it can’t be trusted or traced.
Both distortion and concealment work together to weaponize perception. Both cultivate division, hatred, and violence. Both protect abuse.
Breaking through the fog begins with awareness, which is itself a form of resistance when remaining unaware is the safest course. When we can recognize the fog as fog, we stop assuming that the confusion is our fault.
Fog dissipates with daylight. Using awareness by naming these tactics for what they are is one way to shine that light. Every time we refuse to accept a softened version of harm, every time we question a blurred explanation, every time we listen to the person the system is trying to diminish, the fog thins.
Clarity is not a small thing. It brings the potential for the beginning of healing, justice, and change. With clarity comes the ability to name what’s wrong, the compassion to see people as they truly are, and the conviction to choose truth over comfort.
Survivors deserve to be seen without their experiences being buried.
Whistleblowers deserve to be heard without their courage being reinterpreted as rebellion. Communities deserve the truth of their own history, not the curated version that protects the powerful.
The mirrors may be many, but they are not unbreakable.
The fog may be thick, but it is not impenetrable. Every act of truth-telling, every naming, every listening, every refusal to participate in distortion or concealment, pulls more light into the room. And with enough light, even the deepest fog might begin to lift.
The cruelty of this feels overwhelming at times.
Thank you for exposing and giving language to it.
This is so helpful. I saw every single one of these play out after reporting ACSA