The help apparatus of The Extraction Pattern, in full and free to read. If you need help now, it is at the foot of this page.
In an emergency, call 999. If you cannot speak, the numbers and the instructions for a silent call are in the last section.
Before anything else. Most difficult people are not extractors. Most exhausting relationships are not extraction. This is a guide to a pattern, not a test for sorting the people you know.
This is for the reader who is living through it now. The case for all of it is in the book, above all in Chapter 21, where the practice is argued in full. What follows is the short version, the part to keep to hand.
One rule sits above the rest. Everything here is for containing a pattern, not punishing a person. Recognition without hatred, always. Used wrongly, the tools become the thing they were built to oppose.
Recognition usually arrives on an ordinary morning. Something clicks, and years of your life rearrange. The first days bring shock, then grief, then anger, and the discipline in that window is to wait. Rage is what the pattern is calibrated to exploit, so write the emails and do not send them, plan the confrontations and schedule none, and let the first seventy-two hours pass before any decision you cannot take back. It eases. The fuller, updated guide to those first days is kept with the drills.
Three questions, three minutes, first thing, before the day starts pulling at you. Who extracted yesterday, not who annoyed you, who extracted. What patterns were visible, and which phase. What did my body detect that my mind dismissed. This is not journalling for emotional processing. It is intelligence gathering. Start tomorrow.
If someone came to mind whilst reading the chapters you have just finished, someone whose presence exhausts you, whose conversations leave you drained, whose behaviour you have been explaining away for years, you do not need to do anything dramatic.
One thing is enough. Stop explaining away.
The next time they do the thing they do, notice it. Do not react. Do not confront. Just notice. Write it down later. Date, what was said or done, who else was there. Your own reaction belongs in the note too, but keep it separate from the facts, because the facts are the part that anyone else will ever read.
That is enough for now. Recognition before action. Pattern before response.
Notice. Discern. Gather. Hold. The whole practice is these four, run at whatever scale you are standing in, the kitchen or the country. The fuller version, with the five types and the cycle, is Chapter 21.
Notice. Attention held across time, because the pattern works one incident at a time and falls apart once the incidents are laid side by side. Keep the morning check. Keep a pattern journal. Date, what was said or done, who else was there and what you did next. Write it the same day, in your own words, and keep your feelings out of it, because a record of what happened will be read and a record of how you felt will not. One entry is a data point. Fifty are evidence that defeats gaslighting. Anchor reality by writing up the meeting that matters the same day, on your own device and never on the employer's system, so that when they say it never happened you have the record and they do not have a copy of you making it. Online, before you share anything, ask where it came from, whether it is verifiable and what it wants you to do.
Discern. Naming the pattern for what it is, which is the hardest of the four because extraction is built to feel like something else. The five types in Chapter 3 are your recognition key: Cold, Grand, Hidden, Chameleon, Chaotic. They are aids, not diagnoses, and your extractor may move between them, so watch the method, not the mask. The extraction cycle runs in five steps, and usually in order: assessment, investment, extraction, maintenance, discard or reset. Knowing the phase tells you what to do next: at assessment, trust the reconnaissance feeling instead of dismissing it as paranoia; at investment, check whether the intensity matches how long you have known them; at extraction, name it to yourself first and then to someone you trust; at maintenance, read any improvement as recalibration, not change; at reset, treat the promise as the mechanism, not the solution. And the test for misuse is grief versus triumph. Real recognition is slow, turns inward and seeks distance. Weaponisation is instant, never turns inward and seeks control. One meeting tells you nothing. The cycle tells you everything.
Gather. Breaking the isolation the pattern depends on. Check your coalition daily: who validates my reality today, with people you trust. Make your record independent of your own account, the email, the file, the documentation that survives the rewrite. And remember that one visible refusal makes the next one thinkable.
Hold. Matching the response to the threat, no smaller and no larger. The graduated response runs grey rock first, flat and unrewarding, nothing to extract; low contact next, with written and concrete boundaries; no contact last, when the pattern threatens serious harm. And know the thing the evidence is clearest about: the most dangerous moment is the leaving. Do not do it alone. Plan it with people who know how, and the numbers are at the back. In the moment there are five moves: Direct, name it and bring the evidence; Distract, break the momentum; Delegate, bring others in; Document, ask for it in writing; Delay, refuse to be rushed. The line never moves: recognition without hatred, containment without cruelty, boundaries without vengeance. The response targets the behaviour, never the person's worth.
The drills will change as we learn more. The latest version is kept online at trueregard.com.
And if you need help now, do not wait for the end of the book. There are numbers at the back, just before the notes. Turn to them.
This book has taken a long time to say what is happening. If it is happening to you, you do not need the rest of it.
Before anything else. If you think somebody may be monitoring your phone or your computer, use a device they cannot reach. Deleting your browsing history may not be enough. Browsers keep records, and monitoring software is quieter than that. The safest place to look something up is a machine the other person has never touched: at a library, at a friend's house, or on a public computer. Not a work machine, unless the person you are worried about has nothing to do with your work. The employer owns it, and it is logged.
If you want to keep a number, a number is easier to hide than a page. Write it down somewhere ordinary, with no name next to it, and put it somewhere you already keep things nobody looks at.
In an emergency, call 999. If you are in danger, try to speak to the operator even if you can only whisper. You may be asked to cough or to tap the keys to answer questions.
From a mobile. If you cannot speak or answer, press 55 when prompted and your call will be transferred to the police. If you do not press 55, the call will be ended. Pressing 55 does not tell the police where you are, and it does not on its own send officers to you.
From a landline. Stay on the line. The 55 system is not used on landlines. If you cannot speak and the operator can hear only background noise, they will put you through to the police. Calling 999 from a landline automatically gives the police information about your location. If you have to put the handset down, the line may stay connected for forty-five seconds, so you can pick it up again.
National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge. 0808 2000 247. Free, twenty-four hours, every day. There is also a live chat if you cannot speak. nationaldahelpline.org.uk
If you are not sure it counts, the line is still for you. Most calls start with somebody who is not sure. Nobody has to have been hit.
Men's Advice Line, run by Respect, for men experiencing abuse. 0808 801 0327. Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm. mensadviceline.org.uk
Galop, for LGBT+ people experiencing abuse. 0800 999 5428. galop.org.uk
Karma Nirvana, for so-called honour-based abuse and forced marriage. 0800 5999 247. Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. karmanirvana.org.uk
Rights of Women, free legal advice for women in England and Wales. Family law line, 020 7251 6577. rightsofwomen.org.uk
Support Through Court, for anyone facing the family or civil courts without a lawyer. 0300 081 0006. They cannot give legal advice. They can sit with you. supportthroughcourt.org
Safe Spaces. Walk into a participating pharmacy, bank or building society and ask to use their Safe Space. You will be shown to a private room. uksaysnomore.org/safespaces
Samaritans, if you are struggling to keep going. 116 123. Free, twenty-four hours, every day. samaritans.org
Shout, if you would rather text than talk. Text SHOUT to 85258. Twenty-four hours.
NSPCC, if you are worried about a child. 0808 800 5000. Childline, for anyone under nineteen. 0800 1111.
If it is the evening or the weekend. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline, the Samaritans and Shout answer at any hour, every day, and so does 999. Several of the others keep office hours, and their hours are given above. If you ring one of those and get a recording, it is the hour and it is not you. Ring one of the ones that answer.
About the bill. Calls to 999, to any number beginning 0800 or 0808 and to 116 123 do not appear on an itemised phone bill. Phone companies are required by Ofcom to keep them off it. That covers the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, the Men's Advice Line, Respect, the NSPCC and the Samaritans. The Support Through Court and Acas numbers begin 0300 and the Rights of Women lines begin 020, and those are charged at a normal rate and can appear on a bill. If that is a risk for you, use one of the free numbers first and they will tell you what to do next.
But the call will still show in the phone's own list of recent calls. Clear it.
And one number that belongs in this book more than any of the others.
Respect Phoneline, for people who are worried about their own behaviour towards someone they love. 0808 802 4040. Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm. respectphoneline.org.uk
This book argues that most extraction is done by people who could stop. The wiring is rare and it does not move. The behaviour is common, and it does. If you have read this and recognised yourself rather than somebody else, that is the number. You do not have to know what you are before you ring it, and you do not have to have a word for it. If you are awake at three in the morning and you are not sure, that is the call. It is harder to make than any of the others on this page and it is the one that ends the thing at the source.
Women's Aid. 1800 341 900. Free, twenty-four hours. womensaid.ie
Samaritans. 116 123.
National Domestic Violence Hotline. 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988.
findahelpline.com lists verified crisis and domestic abuse helplines in more than a hundred and seventy-five countries.
Most of this page is written for the home. A great deal of what this book describes happens in an office, and the help is different.
Write it down the same day. What was said or done, who else was there, what you did next. Do not do it on the work system. The work account is theirs, sending company material to a personal address is logged, and in many places it is itself a disciplinary matter, so the act that was meant to protect you hands them something instead. Write it up at home, on your own device, the same day. Keep your feelings out of it. A record of what happened will be read. A record of how you felt will not.
Find out what kind of meeting you are being called to, and ask in writing. It is a fair question and the answer will tell you a great deal.
In the United Kingdom, you have a statutory right to be accompanied at a formal disciplinary or grievance hearing, by a trade union representative or by a work colleague. You do not have that right at an investigation or fact-finding meeting, which is why the name of the meeting matters. Acas gives free and confidential advice on 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday, and its guidance is at acas.org.uk. If you are in a union, ring the union before you ring anybody else. Many employment solicitors will give you half an hour for nothing, and half an hour is usually enough to know whether you have something.
In the United States, if you are represented by a union you may ask for a representative at an interview you reasonably believe could lead to discipline. If you are not in a union, in most private workplaces you have no such right. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission takes complaints of discrimination and harassment on 1-800-669-4000, and your state labor agency may cover more than the federal law does.
Elsewhere, the shape of the answer is usually the same even when the law is not. Find out whether your country gives you a right to be accompanied and at which kind of meeting, because that single question changes what you should do next. If there is a union, it will know. If there is a labour inspectorate or an ombudsman, it is free. And in most places a first consultation with an employment lawyer costs nothing.
Wherever you are, the record is the thing. It is the one part of this that nobody can take from you, and it is the part that is worth the most later.
These details were correct when this book went to press. Services change, and some of them will have changed by the time you read this. If a number does not answer, call 999 in an emergency, or the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247, and they will find you the right door.
You do not have to hand anything over to find out. You are allowed to ring and ask, before you tell them a single thing about yourself, what a call does and does not set in motion. Ask it as your first question. They are used to it, and it is a reasonable thing to want to know before you speak.
And nobody on any of these lines will tell you to leave tonight. That is not what they are for. They are for working out what is safe, and in what order, with somebody who has done it before.
The Register of Bets, the field guide and the current version of the practice are kept at trueregard.com.
The MRAT Toolkit carries the twenty downloadable guides. The books carry the argument these drills come from.