Hi, I'm Paula Zahn, announcing the launch of On the Case, the podcast.
Experience the most dramatic true crime investigations in a whole new way.
Hear from loved ones on a relentless quest for justice and interviews with the detectives who piece together the mystery.
On the Case with Paula Zahn, the podcast.
Premiering Wednesday, October 1st.
Download it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hello, welcome to, or welcome back to, trying to care.
This week's been a little hectic, not gonna lie.
I was kind of scared i wasn't gonna be able to record this week's episode because we just cut down a bunch of trees around the house, and by we i mean a bunch of guys who are qualified to cut down trees.
I didn't personally go outside and start cutting down trees, but we had people working outside all week and it's just been so loud.
But they're finally done.
They just left, probably like 15 minutes ago, and I was like okay, grab my mic.
Let's get to it.
Let's get this thing done.
I can sit in peace and in quiet and record this episode.
Today's episode is actually something that I've been dying to talk about on here.
I think I made a TikTok about this a while back and I got a lot of good feedback on it.
It seemed like a lot of people resonated with the message.
So here I am to expand on that message.
Today I want to talk about how frustrating it can be to have someone who's done you dirty be rallied around and validated for their bad behavior.
It can sometimes make you feel like you're going insane because this person has clearly mistreated you, but it seems like, regardless of their behavior, everyone loves them.
No matter what you do or no matter how right you are, they still come out on top and have people backing them.
We're going to talk about trying to understand other people's perspectives, the cycle of victimhood, normalizing toxicity and the isolation that can come from breaking out of a toxic echo chamber.
So if any of that sounds like something you're into or you want to hear more about it, then stick around and let's get into today's episode.
It is actually one of the most annoying things to see someone who has done you wrong or has done someone you love wrong face zero consequences and not only not face any consequences but be praised and supported for that mistreatment.
An example I can give of this is one that I feel as though a lot of you probably can relate to, and that is having a fallout with a friend or with a friend group.
Let's say that a friend of yours goes behind your back and is talking really poorly about you and you're just at your wits end.
You can't tolerate the disrespect anymore so you decide to end the friendship.
Although you are valid for making that decision, because this person wasn't being a good friend to you, you might be looked at as the villain by those people's friends or, in the case of a friend group, the people that are closer to that person in that friend group.
Even though they did you wrong.
They hurt your feelings, they went behind your back, they betrayed your trust.
You are looked at as the bad friend.
You speaking up and not tolerating the bad behavior is punished more than the actual bad behavior.
So now you're exiled and looked at as the problem because of your reaction to the behavior.
The reaction becomes more of an issue than what caused the reaction.
As someone who has gone through this and as someone who tries really hard to see the best in people and tries to give them the benefit of doubt, I have tried to understand why someone would support someone else's wrongdoings.
Last year, when I had gone through a friendship breakup, this person publicly shamed me and tried to run a smear campaign on me.
And I had to witness people who I thought were friends of mine, or at least were friends of mine through social media.
Build stronger connections with that person after the public harassment.
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But when I saw their support increased for them while simultaneously decreased for me, it was clear where they stood and it sucked, but i still tried to rationalize it.
I tried to see it from their point of view, But I couldn't.
I couldn't understand how someone could view that behavior and still support it.
You try to see it from their perspective.
You try to understand how someone can just look past someone's bad behavior, how they treat people, how they speak to people, them as a person overall, how they can see that and just ignore it.
Or sometimes not even ignore it, but encourage it.
And there's times that you really can't.
And I've definitely learned that the hard way, not even in that situation, but there's many times, especially now in America, with politics and human rights and all that fun stuff, where I just can't understand it.
I try really hard to, but I can't understand it.
I can't wrap my head around how people can justify bad behavior and mistreatment and just cruelty.
But I've learned that unfortunately you can't reason with unreasonable, no matter how much it makes sense in your head, no matter how right you are.
Some people will still choose to disagree with you.
People often put facts and logic aside and they lead with emotion and they cling to a person or a thing they resonate with the most.
So regardless of how right or wrong you are, they'll never see it the way that you see it.
You can put up your best argument, you can present all the facts, present all the receipts, But if someone doesn't want to understand you or they don't want to see it for what it is, they won't.
There's been many times where I've been done dirty and all the facts prove it to be true.
I could have presented every receipt and shown how right I was.
And in fact, I have done that in some cases.
But even with doing that, I've seen people still choose to rally around that person or rally around those people who have hurt me, completely ignoring what was done to me.
And I remember this one specific time where I was ruminating over what happened and I was driving myself crazy thinking how can't this person see what they did wrong?
How can't they see how badly they hurt me?
And then I looked to those people who were rallying around them and it hit me.
Of course, they're never going to see what they did was wrong, because everyone in their circle is telling them that they're right.
Not only do they have people who are okay with how they treated me, but they also have people who are encouraging how they treated me.
Misery loves company.
It is much easier for someone to be friends with someone else who isn't going to push them to be better or hold them accountable when they do something wrong.
It's much more comfortable to be around a bunch of yes men who don't care who you hurt, As long as it's not them.
People who refuse to take responsibility for their actions find comfort in being around others who do the same.
It is a cycle of victimhood.
Let's say that I backstabbed my best friend.
I went behind their back and spread a nasty rumor about them.
Clearly not a nice thing to do.
Pretty problematic.
Pretty shitty to do to your friend.
Most people can agree.
That is wrong to do.
But I don't want to face the fact that what I did was wrong.
Because admitting that I'm being a bad friend and a bad person overall threatens my ego.
It makes me feel bad about myself.
So what is something or someone that can make me feel better and validate what I did?
Someone who also avoids accountability.
It makes more sense for me to go to a friend who's going to baby me and say, oh well, you did it because you had to.
You had a good reason.
Your intentions were good.
You're valid for how you feel.
And I would have done the same thing.
Rather than a friend who keeps it real with me and is honest, even when it hurts, and says hey, you're better than that.
You stooped really low and what you did was wrong and you should owe them to it and apologize.
People who refuse to grow find comfort in people who do the same.
The lack of growth and the lack of desire to grow makes them feel better about being mediocre and it makes them feel better about their inability to take responsibility.
Some people thrive in groups where there is no accountability, because they get to continue doing whatever they want without facing any criticism or being forced to look at themselves.
So they get to avoid guilt and they get to avoid shame for acting the way they do.
Sticking around people who tell them what they want to hear and let them be the victim when they're not one helps them avoid accountability, and it also validates not wanting to take accountability.
Seeing other people act in toxic ways makes them feel better about themselves.
I mean, if everyone is gossiping, if everyone's being negative, if everyone's being mean and toxic, it becomes normalized.
In their defense, they're like, if everyone's doing it, it must be okay for me too.
Instead of getting pushback or hearing a difference in opinion, these people feel validated and supported in their toxicity.
I think it's also important to remember how much friends and family and partners play a role in feeding into someone's bad behavior.
They might not encourage it, but they can enable it.
When someone overall is just not a good person.
They're usually known for treating people poorly and making bad decisions and not being kind and kind of just being destructive.
And the people around them have seen that and they've accepted that as who they are.
They're not going to try to change them.
When bad behavior becomes just how they are, no one's going to challenge it, because that's what they expect.
They laugh it off when they make mean comments or unfunny backhanded jokes.
They make excuses for why they said that or why they did that.
Or they stay silent and try not to feed into that person's bad behavior.
But if you're not changing it, you're choosing it.
And you're compliant in how that person behaves.
I think about this boy I grew up going to school with who was known for being mean and judgmental.
The best way I could describe him is he fed off tormenting and embarrassing people.
Like he terrorized people.
But he also always had people by his side.
He had the same friends all throughout school.
And everyone knew the kind of person he was.
You even say his name now and people all think the same thing, because a lot of people had the same experience with him or witnessed someone who had the same experience with him.
But because everyone knew, the kind of person he was.
That's just what everyone expected.
No one expected him to be kind or caring or just a normal, decent person.
And because no one expected it, no one pushed for it.
And the behavior continued.
I don't think it ever stopped.
I went through something similar in a friend group, where I was mistreated but it seemed like regardless of how badly I was treated, it didn't matter, because it was me.
But if I were to treat that person or those people the way they treated me, I would be a bad person.
And although it sucked at the time and I felt insane at the time, I now do find peace in it because the way some of those people treated me was normalized because of who they were as people.
It was expected.
Whereas it would have been out of character for me to treat them that way.
It would have been more surprising and more of a shock if I did it, even though we would have been doing the same thing.
The consequence or lack of consequence would have differed because we're different people with different morals and values, and people have different expectations for us.
So, although it sucked, I now know that I would rather be held accountable for my actions if I did that than people just letting me be a bad person, because that's who I am.
I don't want to be validated if what's being validated is being a shitty person.
I would rather be alone than have so many friends, be so popular, be so liked, but by people who don't care that I'm a bad person.
Hi, I'm Paula Zahn, announcing the launch of On The Case, the podcast.
Experience the most dramatic true crime investigations in a whole new way.
Hear from loved ones on a relentless quest for justice and interviews with the detectives who pieced together the mystery.
On the Case with Paula Zahn, the podcast, premiering Wednesday, October 1st.
Download it wherever you listen to podcasts.
When you're in that type of friend group or you're surrounded by yes men, it becomes an echo chamber.
There's no pushback whatsoever.
Anything you say, anything you do is being validated.
There's no difference in opinions.
There's no difference in beliefs.
All behavior is being encouraged.
So, even if you're way off on whatever it is that you're saying or doing, even if you're harming other people, even if you're making poor decisions, Everything that you're saying and doing and thinking is being reinforced because there's no one there to debate you or influence you differently.
Often, when you break out of an echo chamber and you try to voice a difference of opinion or you try to give a different perspective, You become exiled.
You become the villain.
You may have done the right thing morally.
You might have had the best of intentions.
Hey, you might have been the only one using your brain and being considerate of other people.
But you will be pushed out and made to be a bad person if you don't agree with the majority.
It doesn't matter if the majority's agreement is ignorant or harmful.
It doesn't matter how disgusting their views are.
If you are the only one disagreeing, you become the disgusting one.
That's why when people huddle around the person that did you wrong, you feel insane.
Because you're like...
How could they support that behavior?
How could they agree with what they did to me?
People love being comfortable more than they love justice.
So unfortunately, no matter how good of a person you are, miserable people will still ride for other miserable people because it makes them feel better about themselves.
I was the worst version of myself when I had the most friends.
Anytime.
I was part of a big friend group, whether it was when I was young and in middle school or high school or my freshman year of college, trying to make friends in a new state, or later in college in a big friend group, I found myself engaging in toxic behavior because I saw other people doing it and it made me feel validated.
But it also pushes you to act that way because you want to fit in and you want to be accepted.
But when you act out and you don't go with the majority or you have a difference in opinion, you get pushed out and you end up alone, even if you were trying to do what's right.
There's this idea that people with no friends, or people that don't have many friends, are the problem because they can't keep friends.
But I don't think that's always true.
I think a lot of these people are free thinkers and they're not just going to go along with what their friends think.
I think a lot of these people have strong beliefs and values that can't be ignored to please their friends.
And I think these people have boundaries and they don't just let people walk all over them or treat them shitty just because that's how their friend usually is.
It's definitely hard to be labeled as that person.
It's hard to be looked at as the problem or the troublemaker.
And it's difficult to navigate losing a friend or losing a relationship.
But it's even harder losing yourself just to make people like you.
And I now know that I would rather be hated for who I am like, who I am actually, than be liked for what I'm not.
And I'm not someone who lets people talk to me crooked.
I'm not someone who will allow myself to be your punching bag because you don't like yourself.
I'm not someone who is okay with injustice.
I might have been at some point in my life.
I mean, I am a recovering people pleaser.
But that's why growth is important.
I don't want to be surrounded by people who expect me not to grow, who expect me to just stay the same.
If those are the people saying that I'm a bad person or I'm a bad friend or whatever.
It is that people say that's okay.
That's good with me because yeah, maybe someone who expects their friend to be okay with their bad behavior is going to think I'm a bad friend because I won't allow it.
A lot of the time, people who take advantage of you start to dislike you when you stop letting them take advantage of you.
So yeah, I'm pretty okay with that.
I guess what I want to leave you with is just reminding you that Misery loves company and more than likely, the reason why that person who hurt you so badly is unable to see what they did to you.
The reason why they can't see that they hurt you or see what they did was wrong is because they're surrounded by people who encourage it.
Be thankful that you have values and you have standards and you want people in your life to hold you accountable when you actually do something wrong.
Be thankful that growth is inevitable for you.
That you're constantly trying to be better.
Sometimes being better is letting go of people who want you to be worse.
But that's everything I have for today's episode.
I hope you liked it.
If you did make sure to rate it on Spotify, Apple wherever you're listening.
Share it with a friend who needs to hear it, and share it with me on instagram.
I love to see your stories.
Share it with me on tiktok, my instagram, my tiktok linked in the show notes.
The group chat is linked in the show notes.
I think right now the app that i use is only available in the us, which i didn't.
I didn't know, i'm sorry.
So if you're not from the us and you want a group chat, let me know which app i should use.
If i should just do on facebook, just give me some recommendations.
But yeah, that's everything for today's episode.
Hope you loved it and i will talk to you next monday.
Love you.
