Assuming bad faith is a bad faith action.

By assuming bad faith in the other you are being bad-faith in the first place.

Once one party assumes bad faith it is a spiral^[aou] that cannot be pulled up from without significant, heart wrenching, vulnerable facilitated discussions… or everything exploding.

Bad faith actions are toxic; they start a toxic spiral, a bad faith cascade where both parties take actions to respond to the other's bad faith, which are interpreted as even worse bad faith by the others.

So don't take the first step and start the bad faith cascade.

One way this can start is someone playing back what the other person said but willfully creating a caricatured, unreasonable straw man that presumes bad faith motives, and presenting it as objectively true.