Protecting Yourself From Logical Fallacies (Or The Mother Hen Review)

Maybe I should have named my blog “The Mother Hen Review,” because I’m spending a lot of time sharing things people who are vulnerable or have weak boundaries need to know to stay safe in a world that can be cruel. Or, maybe I should say I feel they need to know, because knowing these things would have made my healing journey easier if I would have known them sooner.

Last week I talked about scapegoating. I realized one tool people use to scapegoat is logical fallacies. I realized that when I recently faced some logical fallacies. For those who are not familiar with the term, an excellent resource for learning about them is the website “Your Logical Fallacy Is” at https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. In a nutshell, a logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning that is often used by people who want to trick you into believing what they need you to believe to support their agenda. Be especially aware of them when listening to politicians, biased news reports, sales people, people with untreated personality disorders or addiction, or anyone with an agenda they need to draw you to.

As an example, I had a romantic relationship in my youth with a man who was diagnosed as having two Cluster B issues (borderline personality disorder and narcissistic behavior disorder) as well as alcoholism when we went into counseling together. This man was older than me, and he had a decades long history of alcoholism before I met him. After the initial charming that reeled me in started to wear off and I began to see signs, I mentioned how much he drank. Every time I did, he screamed at me, “I wouldn’t drink so much if you weren’t always bitching at me about it. It’s your fault.” This is a ‘Tu Quoque Logical Fallacy’ – you turn the discussion back on the accuser to avoid facing the truth of the accusation. The website I gave you in the last paragraph gives definitions for all of the logical fallacy types, so I recommend you take a look at it to better understand all of the ones I mention in this blog post as well as the ones I don’t mention.

As a warning, a person who will use one logical fallacy is likely to use another. This same man told our counselor that he was only there to help me. He presented himself as my saving angel and hero and the only person in my life who was healthy enough to play that role. This would be the ‘No True Scotsman Logical Fallacy’ – appealing to his own purity as a way to argue that the counselor was wrong when she pointed out what he needed to work on. By the end of the first month, he is the one who had the diagnoses. Since he refused to recognize his own need, the counselor asked him not to return and continued to work with me to help me overcome being a doormat. That is where my healing journey began.

My healing journey began there, but I accepted healing wherever I could find it. I was raised in a religious environment that believed anything not specifically mentioned in the bible was not valid or worth knowing; therefore, there were a lot of things I didn’t know. I married a man who came from a well-educated family. He started teaching me things he saw I needed to keep me safer from predatory personalities. He witnessed them grab onto my demeanor every time we entered a new environment. Logical fallacies was one of the things he taught me.

I watched a person try to use a logical fallacy to discredit someone in a religious environment this week. That is what made me realize I needed to write this blog post. In the midst of a debate the eventual victim of the logical fallacy kept trying to keep civil, the religious person said, “I once saw a rainbow on your timeline on Facebook. We all know rainbows mean you are gay. Is it right for a gay person to be involved in a religious discussion?” I believe this was an ‘Ad Hominem Logical Fallacy’ – attacking the person’s character or personal traits (or in this case perceived character or personal traits – having a picture of a rainbow on your timeline doesn’t necessarily mean you are gay) to discredit their argument and give your argument more credit.

Since I’m aware of logical fallacies, I tried to redirect the discussion. I reminded the person who used the logical fallacy that it is our responsibility as Christians to use wisdom and discernment to make sure we understand before we make accusations. This seemed appropriate since she was basing her entire argument on how she perceived Christianity. She responded that she would rather have this discussion with Lucifer himself than talk to a fake Christian like me who believed we should treat even sinful gay people with kindness.” I guess it is not surprising that the person would use a second ‘Ad Hominem Logical Fallacy’ to try to discredit me as well. She obviously had an agenda, and she was going to say anything she needed to say to hold onto it.

Unfortunately, logical fallacies are so prevalent in our society, and maybe in all humankind, that even those who have strong boundaries need to be aware of them. I see dozens of them every day on social media. However, people with weak boundaries or who are from/in dysfunctional environments need to be even more aware of them. As I said in last week’s post, people become scapegoats when they begin to get healthy in dysfunctional environments. Logical fallacies are often used to pull people away from a constructive discussion and lead them to a discussion that supports the agenda of the person using logical fallacies. Therefore, they are likely to be used more often in dysfunctional environments when people do not want those environments to become functional. If you are a scapegoat, it is likely logical fallacies have been used to put you in that position.

As I prepared to write this blog post, I remembered something that happened many years ago when I was still deeply enmeshed in dysfunctional environments. I was friends, due to weak boundaries more than liking or being compatible, with a woman who was very aggressive and controlling. Several times her husband, who I was also friends with and actually respected, confessed to me that she had his balls in her purse and the only way to escape was to take his own life. I thought he was joking – until he took his life fifteen years later. During that friendship, I was helping a woman try to regain custody of the children who had been given to her husband. Due to this, I received a subpoena to appear at their court hearing. The controlling friend desired to make me look bad, so she spread a rumor that the police had come to arrest me. Common sense should have told everyone that the police would have taken me instead of leaving a subpoena with me if that were true. If anyone still believes it, they are welcome to check public records, which will prove I’ve never had any trouble with the law in my life. As if the rumors weren’t bad enough, she confronted me personally. When I told her why the police had been there, she said her mother-in-law said the police came to arrest me and I was calling her mother-in-law a liar if I denied it. This one could have been a ‘Special Pleading Logical Fallacy’ – moving the goalpost to win the argument. When she couldn’t make me look as bad as she wanted me to look with her words alone, she pulled in a third party to strengthen her argument. It could have also been a ‘Loaded Question Logical Fallacy’ – asking a question that has a presumption built in to make you look guilty. I was young and hadn’t started my journey of healing from being a doormat, so she easily took me off guard. I couldn’t say this older woman I loved was a liar, because I knew she would tell the woman I said that and harm our relationship. As I quietly tried to think of how to answer her, she said, “See, I told you.” Three days later when I’d overcome the shock of someone being able to lie that blatantly to my face, I realized I should have said, “No, I’m not saying she’s a liar. I’m saying you are.”

I share this story to say we always have the right to set a boundary, even if it may be considered socially rude. Setting that boundary is no more rude than what the person who forces you to set it is doing – even if your boundary is as blunt as saying, “You are the liar,” like I should have done in that situation.

I learned we must be careful not to repeat patterns when we are healing or think we are healed. This is especially true if we are going through something that makes us weaker than normal. Recently, I was a long-term caregiver. Exhaustion from caregiving caused me to repeat patterns. As one example, I had to pull back from helping someone, other than the person I was an assigned caregiver for, as much as I had been helping them due to my own declining health and exhaustion. I let them know the ways I could still help them when I set that boundary. Instead of accepting what I could still offer, this person used the ‘Appeal To Emotion Logical Fallacy’ – manipulating an emotional response to keep people from looking at the facts -- to make me look like a horrible person who wasn’t willing to help her anymore. Those rumors kept me from getting support during my own illness and continue to block that support in the environment where it happened. In that environment, everything I’ve said since has been attacked. As one example, I was told I was trying to get people to feel sorry for me for sharing information about illnesses my medical massage clients were experiencing. On the other hand, the person who spread those rumors complains incessantly about her own issues and receives no judgment. How I repeated a pattern was putting myself close to an environment where that happens again and initially defending myself when the behaviors from that environment reared their familiar head.

The good news is that even when we repeat patterns, the healing work we have done usually allow us to get back on track instead of staying there. I quickly moved that environment back to my outer circle and quit defending myself in an environment where defending one’s self has never worked. Every person in that environment is being talked badly about when they are not around and always have been, so how arrogant is it of me to think that defending myself will change that deeply-rooted pattern. I recognized this much faster than I would have in earlier stages of my healing. Even better, there was a time when I didn’t know anything other than that and thought it would be my entire life. Therefore, even when we repeat patterns, we are still better off than we were before. Never give up!