Close your eyes for just a moment. Closed? Good.

Imagine that you are sitting in a candlelit television studio. You are surrounded by two dozen or so competitor-sisters who have also stumbled on the obstacle-strewn path to ForeverLove. The air is heavy with disappointment, acrid with bitterness. An almost inaudible murmur hums through the background, but if you concentrate deeply enough, you can hear it coalescing into words: Kill him.

Chris Harrison is nearby. He winks at you while doing something surprisingly erotic with a toothpick. There is an empty seat next to him.

A seat that will soon be filled by you. And then by Your Bachelor.

You are about to Tell All.

And we are going to teach you how to do it.

1. Use Your Voice

The great thing about the Women Tell All is that it’s a temporarily democratic enterprise, of the scorned, by the jilted, for the broken. The usual himbocracy puppet regime that has concentrated all the power in the hands of one rose-hoarding figurehead and his shadowy, Cheneyesque wingman has been suspended in the name of heightened televised drama. The end tables have been turned, and it’s your moment to stomp all over the flowers that have been scattered onto the floor if you so desire. And you desire. Oh, how you desire!

And so you must speak up, even if no one — your Bachelor, your host, the national prime-time audience — remembers who you are. No matter your week of dismissal, your voice will be heard. They cannot take that away from you, except in the editing room, or by selectively cutting off your microphone, or by deploying the rarely used, but readily available, Firehose of We Get It, Enough Already. But this is the time for little-seen mineral coordinators and focus-pulling free spirits alike to air their grievances, to vent their frustrations, to mourn their dreams.

Share without fear. It takes them a couple of minutes to get the firehose untangled.

2. Expose His Hypocrisy

Indeed, the entire Bachelor process is one geared toward the wish fulfillment of a single man at the center of a 27-woman harem tasked with the goal of slowly destroying one another for the glorification of his ego, but the dude can at least act like he’s not situationally changing the rules of the bloodsport. By now you and your fellow contestants have had time to compare notes and review film, and can pick apart his inconsistencies. Did he ever tell you he has a “no kissing” rule, and then immediately leave you to gobble down someone else’s tonsils just moments later? Put it out there. Did he “take it slow” with you out of a professed desire not to embarrass the ostensibly unsupervised child watching the show back at home, but “have sex in the ocean” when the first opportunity for wave-buffeted fornication presented itself? Tell the world. A conspiracy of silence helps no one, except maybe one of the two women he will probably not be engaged to after the Final Rose has been distributed.

3. Downplay the Importance of His Looks

Hit him where it hurts. The lone criterion of his selection for the incredible honor of being the Bachelor was how he looks without a shirt on (but he LOOKS INCREDIBLE WITHOUT A SHIRT ON, RIGHT?), but you can make his abs involuntarily quiver with sadness by pointing out how a good husband should probably have other positive qualities.

Try this one: “He’s hot, but looks can fade.”

Or: “There was chemistry, but … no cerebral connection.”

Or even: “I wish I were dumber.”

Or if you want it to really sting: “His eyes are kind of beady, aren’t they? Little weird teddy-bear button eyes, but like a mangy teddy bear you find at a garage sale that no one wants anymore.”

All will work. All will turn strength into weakness and beauty into dead-eyed nightmare fuel, because those teddy bears are usually haunted.

4. Pop the Bubble

Your Bachelor experience has been a meticulously controlled Dating Environment, and you have spent weeks protected underneath its impenetrable bubble. But by the time you Tell All, the fundamentally unpredictable outside world has encroached, and may provide you ammunition with which to attack.

So that terrible “out of context” thing he said that has turned public opinion against him? Bring it up! Make him explain. He may dodge the question, or request to tell you what he meant in private, because he knows that publicists or handlers cannot save him inside the Tell All Thunderdome, where the only weapon allowed inside is your intellect and the occasional broken wine bottle overlooked by harried producers.

Let him know he’s fighting on your turf now. Maybe he doesn’t even see that shard of glass with the Ravenswood label on it in your hand.

5. Close Your Eyes and Play Dead

Normally everything that occurs during the Fantasy Suite is a sworn secret, because it’s the only time a Bachelor and his final three wife-candidates have to truly get to know one another without the libido-stifling intrusion of a camera crew. But circumstances may dictate that one of the Fantasy Suite parties (you) waives his or her (her) right to privacy to let everyone know exactly how disappointing that experience was.

Was the entire night such a disaster that you “closed your eyes and played dead” rather than engage in yet another frustrating, dead-ending conversation with a partner utterly uninterested in learning about you? Did you consider pulling a fire alarm, or even secreting yourself out of the room on the bottom of a room-service cart, just to end your spectacularly failed journey as quickly as possible?

Tell All. Open your eyes and live again.

6. Reaffirm Your Trust in the Process

You’ve been disappointed. You may have even been hurt. You stepped to the edge of the cliff but did not jump, because a tiny little voice in your head whispered “ees OK,” and you knew that no, it was not OK, that voice is super fucking annoying.

But one bad Bachelor can’t dissuade you from finding your Great Love.

On television.

In a format very similar to the one that just failed you so profoundly.

With Chris Harrison at your side.

And finally standing in judgment of a bunch of dudes who look good with their shirts off and ALSO will have to engage in an actual conversation at some point if they want to see the Fantasy Suite.

Chris Harrison’s already taking care of the details. He’s already got a fresh toothpick handy.

Here you go again.