What to Do When Someone Spreads Lies About You

A magic phrase that discredits the person talking behind your back

Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.
7 min readAug 13, 2024
two women gossiping behind a third woman’s back
Photo from Pixabay

Don’t you hate it when other people make incorrect assumptions about you, and spread that misinformation about you all over town (or all over the Internet)?

Even people you think are your close friends can be capable of this kind of sabotage — as I learned firsthand not that long ago.

Recently I learned a magic phrase which casts these gossipers in the light they deserve to be seen. As a bonus, it is a phrase you can use to check yourself — whether YOU are operating on assumptions about the people you care about.

My voice was taken away

For about 20 years I had a friend we’ll call Rocky. Rocky tended to get preachy with me about my issues as a way of avoiding his own.

At the beginning of the year, I certainly had issues. I had fallen behind on my rent and bills to the point that I became homeless.

That had never happened to me before. I was afraid to go to my city’s homeless shelter because I thought it was dangerous — I’m tempted to phrase that another way, but I’d be getting ahead of myself. I’d stay awake 4–5 nights in a row wandering the streets because I had nowhere else to go.

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Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.
Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.

Written by Paul Ryburn, M.Sc.

I write about writing, ideas, creativity, homelessness, intuition, spirituality, life lessons. Ex-college teacher Twitter: @paulryburn