Harmless Joke? No, It Was Sadism & Why Your Body Spotted the Truth First

That flash of something is wrong you couldn't quite explain? Your body caught it before your mind could argue you down.

In this Viewers' Stories episode, Dr. Kerry McAvoy reacts to a so-called "prank" a husband pulled on his wife — secretly serving her breast milk in their guests' coffee, then bringing her breakfast in bed: toast smeared with their newborn's poop in place of peanut butter. The wife wondered if she was overreacting. Too sensitive. Unable to take a joke.

This is everyday sadism — cruelty dressed up as humor — and it runs on the same engine as narcissistic abuse and gaslighting: make you doubt what you felt, and you'll never confront what they did. That's the trap. Everyday sadism doesn't hide in the shadows. Your own decency blinds you, because you can't imagine someone who claims to love you could be this callous. So instead of confronting the person who hurt you, you turn on yourself — convinced you must have gotten it wrong. That self-doubt isn't a side effect. It's the point.

In this episode: 

• What everyday sadism and sadistic behavior actually look like
• Why your body registers danger before your mind can rationalize it away
• The exact mechanics of how cruelty disguised as humor enables gaslighting and coercive control in narcissistic abuse
• Why survivors are conditioned to question their own reactions and not their abuser's

For more on everyday sadism, be sure to check out Dr. Kerry’s interview with Joe Navarro.

Resources

• The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources
• First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course
• Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., an author and educator, helps listeners decode toxic dynamics, recognize manipulation, and rebuild self-trust.

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This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice, nor does listening create a doctor-patient or therapist-client relationship. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911 or contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 (US/Canada).

Transcript

Harmless Joke? No, It Was Sadism & Why Your Body Spotted the Truth First

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: [00:00:00] Sadism doesn't actually hide in the shadows. It's hiding in plain sight in the blind spot of your imagination because you're a person of decency and this wouldn't occur to you. You just don't have a file folder inside your head that's labeled cruelty 

SMOSH PIT: Last night I was hinting about breakfast in bed, so this morning he brought me coffee, toast, and some chocolates.

What I assumed was peanut butter on my toast was in fact our baby's poop. 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: She spat it out. Before she knew what it was that she ate, her body knew that it was wrong and rejected it. That's reflex. Her body flinched before her mind caught up There is a particular type of abuse that I really wanna talk about tonight.

It's when you walk into the room and that person that you're in that room with, your loved one, they look through you. Or you say something that matters to you, and then there's three days of silence afterwards. It's not a fight. There're [00:01:00] not slammed doors. There's just absolutely nothing. Or you get dressed up and you wait for your partner to notice, and they don't, and somehow you know the not noticing was the point.

Here's the thing about all of those moments. There's no bruises. There's nothing you can photograph. There is nothing you can hold up to another person and say, "See? Look what they did to me." And it's not because there's a flaw in your receipts or evidence. It's because this is by design. I'm gonna play a story for you in a moment.

It comes from a YouTube channel originally posted by a woman who wrote a story online on Reddit, and the hosts react to it in real time. I want you to watch specifically while it plays how long it takes for everyone in the room to call it what it really is, and I want you to watch your experience too, what you feel inside your body and what your mind is trying to catch up to because that's the point, the gap between what your [00:02:00] body's experiencing and what your mind wants to believe.

If you've been with me this week, then you know that I sat down with Joe Navarro on Monday and we outlined everyday sadism, covert sadism. And then on Tuesday in the live, I broke down how to spot it. And today I wanna get into how this cruelty affects your ability to believe yourself and to help you find a way back.

So by the end, I wanna hand you something for you to be able to take that's gonna be helpful in your healing. So I wanna give you a sense of what's gonna happen, and then we're gonna watch it together. We tend to think that we miss cruelty because it's subtle, because maybe it's clever or hidden or because we weren't paying attention.

But I'm gonna give you a different possible explanation, one that I think is the accurate one. You don't miss sadism because it's hidden. You miss it because its capacity to be like that isn't in [00:03:00] you. Here's what I mean Most of us when we read another person, we quietly run their behavior against our own list of reasons of why we would do it if it was ourselves.

We do this all day long. We do it for most people. You watch other people and then you put yourself in that position and then imagine what you would do and why you would do that if this was you. So the reason we don't spot sadism is because it's not in us to do it. Because we're not naturally cruel, we're normally generous or human, then we tend to lend the other person the kinder explanation.

We'll say to ourselves, "Oh, that person's tired," or, "They're clumsy," or, or maybe it was just a joke, or maybe they didn't even think it through. Sadism doesn't actually hide in the shadows. It's hiding in plain sight in the blind spot of your imagination because you're a person of decency and this wouldn't occur to you.

You just don't have a file folder inside your head that's [00:04:00] labeled cruelty. To you, this is just something you wouldn't do, so you tend to try to find another possible reaction as a way to explain it. So I want you to keep that idea in the back of your mind, and now let's watch this clip. 

SMOSH PIT: Between sleepless nights and all the hormones, I find myself a- absolutely raging at him for these pranks.

He tells me I'm being too serious, I'm no fun, and I am, and I quote, "A chronic over-reactor." 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: Okay, listen to what's already been established. Her partner is calling her a chronic over-reactor, and I want you to hear that not as an insult, but hear it like a tool. Because what that label does is it pre-loads a verdict.

So whatever he does next, he's already geared us to think the problem is her reaction, not his behavior. It's her hormones, it's her sensitivity. She's not a person who's fun. And notice she's also doing it to herself. She [00:05:00] says in this clip, "I don't feel like myself." That's someone who has a kind-hearted mind, and she's reaching for the reasons that live inside of her because that's the real reason why she would do something like this.

She would do it because she's sensitive and kind, so she naturally looks for those types of reasons in herself to explain why he's doing it. So let's see what happens next. 

SMOSH PIT: That is...

Sorry, that just came out. 

Three pranks in particular have angered me to the point of tears, raging out, and now I am contemplating divorce.

Prank one was making coffees for our guests with my breast milk.

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: I know this really lands hard. You can feel in the room how outrageous this prank was, and I wanna point it out because that's what happens with our blind spot. That's what happens to us in real time. Decent people grabbing at the joke frame because there is no other frame to understand [00:06:00] what actually happened, and we can see it with the guests in this room.

They are massively reacting in shock because this is not something that lives inside of them. 

SMOSH PIT: Oh my 

God. That takes one. 

I love What? I love, I love looking around the room. Marcus is on the far other s- corner at the, at a table, and I look up and he's just like this. He just... 

Ian just enters from off. He's like, "Whoa, you can do that?"

Ian's like, "Not the asshole. Whoa." 

Whoa. Dude, that's a 

gift. I have- Uh, incredible- 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: You can see everyone here is completely astonished. This is so shocking, so out of character that the whole room is horrified by what's happening here. 

SMOSH PIT: Okay, hold on. "Prank one was making coffees for our guests with my breast milk.

I am having trouble pumping, so I don't have much stored away. I was so angry and embarrassed." I'm sorry, we... Okay, we need to... I, I hope she covers more of that- ... 'cause that's, uh- 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: And also notice this prank wasn't just to her. [00:07:00] It was to other people, too, non-consenting people. He did this to a whole group of people, not just one individual.

You know, I really understand this in a way, what it felt like, where you're just q- trying to question what actually happened. Many nights ago when I was in that toxic relationship, one night we were out to do something special. I'd gotten dressed up. He'd gotten dressed up. I complimented him, and then I stood in the middle of the room and waiting for him to say something to me, and there was silence.

And I thought to myself, "This feels really deliberate." But you know what I did the rest of the night? I wondered, was it deliberate or was I making it up? And should I let it go or should I let it hurt? Because the thing that happens in these moments is that your body experiences something, and then you talk yourself out of it because the kinder story, the story of why you would do it, is an easier one to live inside of.

So I understand how this woman is completely confused about the intentionality of her partner feeding breast milk to [00:08:00] their guests and to her and then thinking it's funny. 

SMOSH PIT: Several people were, were not consenting to that prank. Uh, "Prank two was pretending to have cut his fingers off in the garden. He dragged it out for ages and splattered fake blood around.

Not just a quick little joke." 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: So I want you to take a look at the prank two one a little bit more closely because this is easy just to kinda catalog his behavior and say, "Yeah, this is just what this guy does. He really likes to take it and take it a step too far." But I want you to notice that he dragged it out.

He staged blood. He built it. That takes effort. He took a lot of planning. That takes a lot of patience. Do you remember in the interview with Joe Navarro on Monday how he talked about watching the energy a predator expends, the work they'll put into what they're doing? I wanna flip this around and hand it to you from a survivor's side.

The effort it took this guy to engineer that moment is the proof your gut is reading the room [00:09:00]correctly the whole time. No one invests that kind of work into an accident. You don't drag out a misur- understanding. You don't stage a slip of a tongue. This is something that's, is intentional, that has been set up and then executed with deliberateness.

It's on purpose, and the evidence is the effort. So when you start to feel yourself cataloging a person's behavior, I want you to notice that all of this takes time, and the timing tells you what their intentionality is. "

SMOSH PIT: And lastly, prank three, which happened today and I feel is my final straw. Last night I was hinting about breakfast in bed, so this morning he brought me coffee, toast, and some chocolates.

What I assumed was peanut butter on my toast was in fact our baby's poop." And as I have severe sinus issues, I didn't realize and took a small bite, and I spat it out straight away. He laughed hyster- 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: Okay, this is the big moment, and [00:10:00] this is something almost no one noticed. She spat it out. Before she knew what it was that she ate, her body knew that it was wrong and rejected it.

That's reflex. Her body flinched before her mind caught up and said, "Whoa, this is not peanut butter." And I want you to hear this as clearly as I can possibly say it. She wasn't blind. Her eyes worked. Her body worked. What lagged was the word she needed for the motive that she didn't have. She kept handing him an alibi that her body kept throwing back as wrong.

I think about the letter that I got a while back from somebody whose friend had been naming what was happening to her for years before she could say it to herself, and that's the pattern. Your body clocks it, the people around you who love you clock it, but the part of you that lags behind because you're too kind is to supply the ugly word.

You aren't blind. It's just that [00:11:00] sadism doesn't exist in your imagination, so you keep trying to reach for a kinder story that feels possible because this just isn't inside of you ... 

SMOSH PIT: hysterically, and I told him to get out. He later messaged me and said all his work mates thought it was hilarious, which is just embarrassing on top of it all.

I am just so angry, hurt, and sad, but also I don't feel like myself yet after having my baby, so I don't know. Am I overreacting? 

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: Oof. He included a audience. He invited his coworkers into this. That's what makes these stories so absolutely frightening. It's because this person is the person she supposedly lives with, who she thinks loves her, and then there are, he's the funny guy at work and everybody around him is laughing.

And that split's not accidental. A public mask gets built. So if she ever gets to the place where she opens her mouth and says, "Hey, this is happening to me. It's really cruel," she's the one that sounds like she's unstable. [00:12:00] She's the one that can't take a joke. He's the easygoing one, the funny one, and she's the problem.

I get letters from people who tell me stories that almost no one believes, and I want you to hear where that fear comes from because it's not your bad luck and it's not your imagination. It's that same deniability you've been watching this whole episode. They are building an audience, a story that makes you look not credible.

So you end up starting to doubt yourself because everybody around you has another version of it that makes you look like you're the weirdo or the crazy one or the bad guy. Now, I wanna also point out at the end she asks this critical question, "Am I overreacting?" And I'm not gonna answer that, not because I don't have an answer, but because it's the wrong question.

In fact, answering it is what keeps her trapped in this question. When we s- ask people, "Am I overreacting?" we're handing our verdict to strangers. It lets other people [00:13:00] decide what you felt inside matters or doesn't, and every single stranger can argue over that point forever because the incident said out loud doesn't sound that bad.

Well, he made coffee and he slipped some breast milk, or I got dressed and my partner didn't compliment me on it. It makes me sound crazy for having a reaction. But here's what the real question is that we should be asking ourselves: what did my body decide before I talked myself out of it? That's the part of you that's been carrying around the shame that nobody is seeing it.

I wanna be really careful what I say right now because dismissing these moments wasn't stupidity. It wasn't you being weak. It was you being a kind-hearted person who extended that other person the benefit of the doubt, that you quietly have been teaching yourself not to trust yourself, and that's not a character flaw.

That's how they wound us. They [00:14:00] deliberately confuse us. So if you've been in a relationship that has trained you to doubt yourself, then the repair isn't what you think it is. It's not getting better at detecting people. That's what we talked about on Tuesday's Live. And yes, it has its place, but this is something different.

Here's what I want you to leave with. You're never going to see it better because your eyes are fine. Getting better at spotting stuff is not the fix. The fix is not letting your mind outrank your gut or not letting your kindheartedness outrank your suspicion. When something inside of you says, "I think this was done on purpose", I want you to stop looking for validation from those around you.

I want you to stop questioning yourself. I want you to notice the flinch that you had when you had that moment because that's the real evidence. In this case with this woman, it was spitting it out. That's the verdict. Your kindness is supplying an alibi, but your body is supplying [00:15:00] the truth. So recovery is leaning into believing the body first, believing yourself the first time, not the 10th time.

Stop arguing yourself out of the thing that you suspect that it really is. So I know you're gonna have moments there are no bruises and that there are just these deadly silences or the terribly hurtful back jabs or the intentional overlooks and slips. I know these are things that maybe to the outsider don't look all that bad, but you weren't blind.

You were kind, and it was cruel. What happened to you was something that hurt, and it damaged something deep inside of you. And the path to heal is realizing that this was what it was, is to believe yourself the first time. So if you've been doubting whether or not you're experiencing everyday narcissism, be sure to go back to Monday's episode with the interview with Joe Navarro, a former FBI profiler, to see what it is.

And then [00:16:00] make sure to check out Tuesday's Live to figure out how to spot it. But tonight I want you to be inside of it, to live inside of it. So start to listen to what it feels like when this moment happens. If it stings, it was intended to sting, and that is your gut warning you that that was a dangerous moment that was done out of ruthlessness and cruelty It's 2:00 AM again, and you're replaying that whole conversation over, and you're wondering to yourself, "Was it really that bad, or maybe I'm just being dramatic?"

So you start to draft that I'm sorry text again because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable. And you know this loop because you've been there before, but I want you to know that you're not alone. I'm Dr. Kerry McAvoy. I'm a retired psychologist, and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back [00:17:00] in.

Here's the truth: recovery isn't about getting more information. It's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered.

Inside it, you'll get five-minute lessons when your brain can't handle a deep dive, check-ins that meet you exactly where you are, whether you're feeling strong, shattered, or numb, boundary scripts that help you say no without overexplaining, grounding tools that work fast when you're activated, and progress tracking so you can see proof you're healing even on days when it feels like you're not.

There's no appointments, no waiting, no judgment, just practical support right when you need it. Reclaim You, real help in real time right in your pocket, and it's a coaching support, not therapy or emergency care. Learn more at studio.com/drkerry. [00:18:00] So start your healing today and reclaim you.