Conflict management in the age of TikTok psychology

Everyone thinks they know how to assess and diagnose the behavior of others, and that spells trouble

Have you ever witnessed a boxing match where you suspect that the matchup isn’t equitable? You suspect that one boxer may be punching above their weight class? It makes you wonder if the scales were tipped some how at weigh-in because it’s clear that one of the boxers simply shouldn’t be in the same ring as the other.

When I was in my late twenties, I adopted the best dog. He was an Australian Blue Heeler mix with Australian Shepherd. He was friendly, yet protective. Not only was he beautiful, he was smart. He was cream with wheaten markings, like someone just plopped his light brown head on his creamy furry body with a big fluffy white tail. You should also know that Cisco, my dog, was also wise. Whenever we went on walks, Cisco was well behaved, but when he saw a man that might come toward me or a dog his size or larger coming our way or even walking with its owner across the street, that is when he’d stand his tallest, sniff around the other dog (or man), and maybe even growl a bit under his breath. It’s like game peeped game, as the young folks might say. The other big dog might growl back. In some cases, the other dog might even bark, but teeth were never bared unless it lunged at him or me, and we’d be on our way.

It always fascinated me to see tiny dogs react to Cisco. It never failed. Not only did these little dogs, toy-sized some of them, attempt to bark, bare teeth and even try to bite Cisco, just the sight of him to these “yippy dogs,” as I would call them, translated into a pure threat, and they just had to fight. Cisco on the other hand, never turned to acknowledge the little rowdy dogs. Their owners pulling and tugging at their leashes and apologizing to me profusely. Cisco would barely acknowledge them, but when he did, he simply nudged them away—never in an effort to return the attack. Most times, you could tell he was nudging them along for their own safety.

For those of us in the helping industries, have you ever been Cisco in the wild? Away from your practice and in social scenarios where someone decides to pick a fight, and like Cisco, you had to hold it in, and nudge them away for their own safety? Recently, I’ve had that experience. You’re simply walking along in life and someone takes something you say the wrong way and they launch an attack. Then you, holding everything within and being as guarded as possible, having already assessed them, and for those of you with licenses, probably even diagnosed them—you say as little as possible, kindly, so that you do not hurt the person who attacked.

It’s one thing to be attacked, it’s quite another to have words that are typically used in psychological circles being hurled out of context and out of meaning. We live in a world where everyone is a “narcissist” and everyone else must be gaslighting or some other term because we just don’t like what they did or said to us—or in some cases, they just have the nerve to be in your space and exist. They are terms and concepts that some person on TikTok or IG Reels decided to share online immediately after leaving their therapist’s couch. In some cases, regular people have also heard licensed and credentialed professionals use the terms correctly online, and they spawn arm-chair pop psychologists all over the Interwebs.

Within these “discussions,” I will call them loosely, I see some common misunderstandings about some of the most popular terms and concepts. Today, I will share the actual meaning of these words and phrases, backed by my well-earned credentials in positive psychology and neuroscience to demystify their meanings, and possibly save you some grief whether you are the “yippy dog” or just someone who finds themselves loosely using these terms and not aware of how you might be assassinating someone’s character or just making them want to unleash a very real and biting assessment on the spot because you didn’t really know you were mishandling a figurative lethal weapon. My first piece of guidance is to simply put the weapon down, stop name calling or categorizing people’s behaviors and simply address your actions and their feelings; but since we are wading in a deep pool of misinformation, let’s try to right at least a few ships.

Gaslighting

This is one that is thrown around more than a football in a stadium on a Monday night in the fall; and while it seems like a simple enough term to understand, I find that the people who typically spew it out first are they themselves the gaslighters.

First the definition from Healthline:

“Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse and manipulation. It involves someone making you question your beliefs, behaviors, and perception of reality. It can impact your sense of self.”

The article goes on to say that Dr. Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, helped popularize the term “gaslighting” with her 2007 book, “The Gaslight Effect.” The term itself comes from a 1938 play that later became a movie called “Gaslight.” The story is about a husband who “isolates and manipulates” his wife with the goal of institutionalizing her.

Now that we know what it is. Can we all agree to be more careful with the term?

Now, let’s try a little experiment, shall we? Set a boundary. Pick anyone, and simply tell them no to something they want, then see how they react. You don’t have to be mean about it. You can even say please and thank you. You can be direct, as I tend to be…blunt and unapologetic about it, especially with people who continue to take advantage of you or cross the line. Now, watch them blow a gasket. Those who lack boundaries or feel attacked by the boundary setting often begin to take on victimhood. Then watch what happens. Healed people will acknowledge the boundary, accept it and move on. The unhealed will certainly chide you for hurting them or engage in a dramatic wall slide. See how this works? Then the campaign follows to spin the facts nearly immediately. The subject of the conversation will no longer be about the boundary. It will be about how they were hurt by it and by you.

If they have their way in this spintastic dialogue, they will be looking for an apology from you the one who was actually the original victim that had the courage to speak up. They might even find themselves explaining to you how they didn’t like “how” you said something. This is always like watching a toddler with a loaded gun for me as a strategic communications leader for more than 25 years and someone informed in applied neuroscience and positive psychology. Recently, I had to do my share of ducking like Cisco because I use my experience and training for good and not evil.

This plays out over and again in history, where we see groups of people undermined and marginalized and one day they say they won’t take it anymore. The criticism from the perpetrator or those who side with them will more often than not launch into a narrative on how poorly the group behaved whether true or not, ignoring the message. The marginalized group will no doubt be painted as something negative, as in the case of protestors who have had enough or rioters who have taken entirely too much over time. The question really is—is the tone or the way it was addressed the crime, or or was the crime the actual crime?

This, my friends, is gaslighting. Because if you turn the true victim into the criminal, you can justify putting them away or worse, like the man in the movie seeking to institutionalize his wife.

Feelings

Let’s talk feelings and intentions. Your feelings are indeed valid, most of us saw Inside Out 2. Look, all of us in the helping industries were raving about this movie because we’d never seen a kids’ movie take on a topic like emotions and get it so right. It aligned with science. But many everyday people see movies like this, give a church shout when Joy tells Anxiety to let Reiley go, and then decide they understand how emotions work. After all, they have them.

Here is where most people get feelings/emotions wrong. Many believe that others can “make them” feel a certain way, and that can’t be further from the facts. Actually, one of the most compelling research-backed points on this topic comes from Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT), rooted in the work of psychiatrist Dr. Aaron T. Beck and psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis (founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy or REBT).

Key Insight:

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.” — Epictetus (often quoted by Ellis)

Ellis built on this Stoic philosophy and emphasized in REBT that it is not the event itself that causes emotional disturbance, but rather our beliefs about the event. This idea was scientifically expanded upon in CBT, which has since become one of the most evidence-based psychotherapeutic models in modern psychology.

Translation for the everyday leader:
Your thoughts about what someone said or did are what fuel your emotions—not the person or event itself. You are the interpreter of your own reality, and therefore, the creator of your emotional experience. Remember how Joy would store Reily’s experiences as memories in Inside Out2? Those memories informed Reily’s worldview and therefore drove what emotions she felt in reaction to another’s actions.

Neuroscience now backs this up too.
According to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, distinguished professor of psychology and author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017):

“Your brain constructs your emotional experiences, in the moment, based on past experiences and predictions—not simply in reaction to the external world.”

I watched this in real time the other day with someone. They brought every experience they’d ever had to a conversation with someone whose experiences were much different. In fact, because their responses to the attack was calm and methodical (she was in the helping industry, she was called feeling-less) and the accusing began. The person who felt attacked started telling the other person what their intentions and feelings were, which is not only 99.9% out of 100% wrong, but more often unfair to the other person.

So here are two cheat codes for you to help you avoid this conflict trap:

1.) Your feelings are yours. They are valid, but you also own them solely. No one else can make you feel anything. They are only responsible for their actions, and it is very possible that an action had nothing to do with how you feel. Ask yourself what has happened in your past to cause you to assume you know what the other person is feeling or thinking. Unpack it, and leave the other person alone. Bonus points for telling the unhealed person that their feelings are valid. It disarms them nearly immediately.

2.) You cannot tell someone else how they feel. Why? It’s because you don’t know until they tell you how they feel or felt when they acted. Try to believe them, especially if they haven’t given you reason to doubt them based on past interactions. If you think they are lying from the start and can’t see any other alternative for their actions, it’s a clue to again examine what you are bringing to the exchange from the past that colors the experience.

Emotional intelligence is a major buzzword in leadership, but the reality is that until people really grasp emotional literacy—meaning knowing their own feelings and where they come from and the ability to spot those feelings in others accurately, self awareness, empathy and emotional regulation are very much out of reach.

Intentions

“But I didn’t mean to." I know you’ve heard this from your child and your spouse, your coworker or maybe even your boss. But does it hold water? The fact is, they probably didn’t intend to hurt you or any ill will, barring that they are, in fact, simply a jerk.

Emotional regulation research suggests that defensiveness (like saying "I didn’t mean to") is often an automatic reaction rooted in threat detection—your brain is protecting your self-image. But true regulation—and leadership—requires executive function: pause, reflection, and ownership.

Intentions never healed a wound or reversed an action. What do I mean? I use this analogy often, and I know my family is tired of hearing me saying it, but it bears repeating:

If a Mack Truck hits you because the driver didn’t see you, and you’re now a paraplegic; does his saying he didn’t intend to hurt you take away the pain or the paralysis?

I’ll let you answer that.

Here’s another: If I stepped on your toe on accident and it hurt, does saying how it was an accident make the pain go away? This is why when someone tells you that you have hurt them or crossed a boundary, the correct answer is never, “I didn’t mean to” full stop. Sharing your intentions is indeed helpful in letting someone know that you meant no malice, but immediately following with “I’m sorry my actions hurt you,” or “I’m sorry I stepped on your toe,” does the real heavy lifting when it comes to mending and mitigating conflict.

Getting back to our gaslighting boundary breaker, this is why people who are clued in to this type of manipulation, turning the perpetrator into the victim in the midst of a discussion, will hesitate to apologize, and you may hear them say that they are “sorry you feel that way,” acknowledging and validating your feelings. They hesitate and in many cases will not apologize for their actions because, in this case, setting a boundary is not bad behavior.

Here are some of the many reasons why “I didn’t mean to,” or “I meant no harm,” or “I had no ill intent,” can indeed be in itself the bad behavior.

Oh, yes—let’s unpack that. Because while “I didn’t mean to” sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, science (and solid leadership practice) says otherwise.

Impact > Intent

Dr. Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston and renowned expert in shame and vulnerability, offers this hard truth:

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. Intentions don’t absolve us of the impact of our behavior.”

Brown emphasizes that empathy and accountability are at the heart of courageous leadership. When someone leads with “I didn’t mean to,” without acknowledging the impact, it often becomes a deflection tactic, not an act of repair. This reinforces distrust, not connection.

The Justification Effect

Psychological research on moral disengagement (Bandura, 1990s) shows that people often justify harmful behavior to preserve a positive self-image. “I didn’t mean to” is one such rationalization. The problem? It reduces personal accountability and normalizes harmful behavior.

"People do not ordinarily engage in harmful conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their actions." — Dr. Albert Bandura

This distancing from responsibility allows the harmful behavior to repeat—especially in leadership or organizational cultures that tolerate it.

Apologies and Repair Require Ownership

According to research by Dr. Harriet Lerner, a psychologist and author of Why Won’t You Apologize?, the most healing apologies are the ones that leave out the phrase “I didn’t mean to.”

“Good intentions don’t undo bad impact.”

Saying “I didn’t mean to” centers the offender’s comfort, not the injured party’s experience. This creates emotional disconnection, not repair.

Good intentions may explain your behavior—but they don’t excuse it. And science shows that excusing yourself that way erodes trust, stalls accountability, and damages relationships. The growth mindset here? Own it, repair it, and then do better.

So what do you do?

So if you find yourself in the ring with another weight class as someone in the helping industry, and you’re attacked by one of these well-intentioned, mis-informed, arm-chair TikTok wellness, spintastic verbal vomit gurus firing words at you like a machine gun, what do you do?

Take a clue from my dog Cisco. Know who you are, walk tall, brush them off as best you can without hurting them more… because what I’ve described is the actions of the deeply wounded.

Have some empathy, but then find a way to release the anger it causes inside.

Go write that Substack. It’s great material.

And it’s therapeutic.

P.S. To the yippy dogs out there, before you call someone a narcissist, be sure they’ve been diagnosed. Otherwise, it’s just slander, and it probably won’t improve the conflict in either case.

📚 Sources:

• Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy.

• Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders.

• Feldman Barrett, L. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press.

• Brown, B. (2018). Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Random House.\

• Bandura, A. (1999). Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209.

• Lerner, H. (2017). Why Won’t You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts. Touchstone.