Top tip for abusive texts

[Birdatthewindow]

I have learned from a friend a top tip. Here it is.

If you have someone in your life that regularly sends you toxic messages then AI is your friend. So think narcissist, manipulator, critical mother, stalky ex, etc.

It’s super power hungry so use it wisely as it uses lots of carbon - but this is what she does;

She copies the message into ChatGPT without reading it and requests one or more of these;

• summarise but change the wording so it isn’t accusatory, blaming, critical or whatever their MO is. Use brief bullet points. Take out the emotion.
• ask if there are any specific, actionable requests?
• ask if there are any specific answerable questions.
• ask it to describe the tone of the message in three words (if it says friendly, straightforward and kind you know you can go back and read the original, if it says antagonistic, blaming and manipulating you know you were right to filter).
• ask if there is any risk to you.

Then tell it you need a non emotional response that won’t invite more antagonism. You don’t even really need the summary.

She doesn’t even read the messages any more. Says it saves loads of time and doesn’t leave her ruminating. Takes away the mental load.

AI may one day be our overlords but for now…

This is not helpful ime. Just respond! Or ignore!

Easier just to block.

How do you copy a message into ChatGPT and write a prompt and read its replies without seeing the original message?

Also that sounds like a lot of work.

If I had someone in my life who was sending me toxic messages, I'd block them and remove them from my life. Who could be bothered with all that ChatGPT palaver!

Block

If it works for her, that’s great.

It’s all very well for posters to just bark out “block” but if someone is sending long hateful texts with potentially needed info mixed in, this is an intelligent thing to do.

This is bonkers

If it's somebody you need to respond to e.g. coparenting then answer the question

Otherwise, just ignore them or block them.

apart from the use of resources, why waste your own energy?

Christ, I couldn't be arsed with all that farting around.

I'd either block or give as good as I got.

Life is too short to be filtering out anything that might annoy, upset or offend me.

No, the intelligent thing to do would be to warn them if they don't pack in the shitty stuff, they're getting blocked.

No-one has the right to send abusive texts to anyone, whether you ask a robot to filter it or not.

This

It’s for when reading the words causes you psychological harm.

Sometimes you can’t.

What if it’s the father of your children or an elderly parent who you might need to call an ambulance for. People are having to live with toxic people in their lives that they can’t step away from.

It also saves me time. She no longer needs support with processing the nastiness or unpicking whether she’s been gaslit. So we use the time for more fun conversations.

The ideal next step is that the toxic person gets ChatGPT to rewrite their messages to take out the manipulation and bile. But of course they won’t.

This is excellent advice, great she’s found a strategy that helps keep her psychologically safe.

You can’t block some people. Honestly people are living with this crap. Then having to use loads of energy to process the nasty words and try not to ruminate. This looks like far less energy than that. Much better use of AI than ‘tell me a joke’ I reckon.

if abusive report to the police like anything abusive

But sometimes that would escalate things further and sometimes you can’t block.

Block, or if you can’t, either give them the thumbs up 👍 or say, ‘let me know how that goes 👍’.

You can’t report an ex husband for criticising your parenting for example.

But then you have their toxic words in your head and your brain can’t help but process them and your body can’t help but feel something.

if texts are abusive you can report to the police or seek legal advice from official channels, it is not an episode of Eastenders

So if she gives as good as she gets, she gets more and worse back. He weaponises it to make her look abusive but cherry picking what she says and reporting it to friends. She can’t block he is her kids dad. This way she doesn’t have to ‘fart around’ processing what he’s written, working out whether or not he’s right and the kids would be better off with him.

Honestly, if you have to have a toxic, gaslighting, antagonistic person in your DMs this cuts out the huge mental load. And steps them of their power to draw you in.

If you don’t have anyone in your life that this might be helpful to deal with then count yourself lucky.

Trust me the police wouldn’t be interested. It doesn’t reach legal thresholds. It’s psychological warfare dressed up as ‘I’m just hurt’ or ‘I’m just worried about the kids’. If you don’t get it then it means you’ve not had someone like this in your life which is great.

Type of message;

I can’t believe you haven’t put the washing out. For years I have done the bulk of the work while you sit in your fat arse and drink beer. You are a waste of space.

The kids need new shoes, Sally’s have a hole in them. But I know you won’t bother getting her some. You left Billy in those trainers that were too tight for months.

It hurts me to see how you neglect our kids. My friends say I should report you to Social Services. Even your own mum agrees.

I’ll pick them up at 5 and this time please be ready. Some of us have lives.

So, none of the above is true. But there are two bits of needed information. Before discovering this way of using ChatGpT my friend would be doing a whole heap of mental work - feeling guilty, worried may be he could report her to Social Services, feeling upset at the thought that her mum and him might be talking about her and judging her. Sleepless nights. The pit of the stomach feeling. Then as she processed it she’d come out the other side realising she was being gaslit. These relationships make it hard to know your truth. Leave you second guessing yourself.

This way, she’s cutting out even getting those words into her brain in the first place. But also not missing crucial information.

I have seen the difference in her.

I think it’s one of those ‘if you know, you know’ things and only people that have this in their life will get the usefulness. So if one more person being gaslit on a regular basis reads this and frees themselves from this toxic crap then I’m happy.