Category: Toxic People

This category covers things that relate toxic people; those individuals who trigger negative feelings in the emotional system of other people in order to control them and get what they want. It will include topics like narcissism, gas-lighting, criticism, dishonesty, emotional projection, manipulation, transactional analysis, personal boundaries, and ego states or roles. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that some people regard others a means to their ends, so knowing as much as you can about these people will go a long way to help immunize yourself from their destruction and predatory behavior.

My LandMark Forum Part 2

I’m an analytical manipulator with an empathetic kind heart. It’s good to know this because my jobs all make sense now. Goodness, my entire life makes sense from the seemingly random series of relationships to the self loathing and escapist behavior. When someone tries to sell me something or tries to manipulated me, I feel it in my stomach. I finally realized this fact this weekend. I’ve been hating myself because I am the very thing I hate. Except for one critical thing, I’m now incapable of lying to serve my own selfish ends so now that I see that I can make people think and feel things, I don’t make myself sick anymore.

The sharing session were me turning to my partner and saying “tell me about you” and when the leader said switch I’d say “no, we’ve got great flow here, we need to keep going, it feels like you are onto something”. A few of the people I talked to had never had anyone tell them the actual truth before in a way that made them see it, realize that they had created it and that there was a very simple course of action to a better life.

Over the last few weeks I’ve come to realize that am the architect and engineer of everything in my own life so nothing is in it or out of it by chance. You can imagine the sense liberation and power this information has made me feel – accepting that when I am just being, my manipulation is going to be honest and empathetic. I don’t feel any shame for this anymore, and it’s part of why I haven’t ever really felt like most other people. I’m not like most people. I’m out for humanity not for myself. I can’t lie to people. And I can get them to think and feel things.

The biggest impact on my life has been that I DESPISE manipulative people, so I’ve spend a lot of time hating myself. It’s silly really because I’m not the type person who takes from others. I see or hear someone say they want something and I set out fixing it. The only people it ends up hurting are the ones who were lying about what they want and they hurt because they feel I’ve run a game on them. And they should hurt because they haven’t been feeling bad about running the game on other people. They’re not necessarily assholes, they’re just may not be self-aware enough to realize they want to bitch and I can’t help but try and fix them. That isn’t evil, it’s actually kind of nothing.

I’m A Performance Coach – It Isn’t Personal, It’s About Your Potential

Shamelessly I will push people towards what they say they want. Sadly some will walk away from me because they don’t want what they say they want. This is not my fault, my problem or my issue. Being authentic is our own responsibility so if you tell me you want something and I push you towards it, don’t try to blame me for your discomfort. It isn’t about manipulation unless you really didn’t mean what you said. Just be honest with yourself, you might already have achieved all of the potential you want.

Change is not easy, it requires effort, introspection and likely a lot of tears. You are sweeping your past away in order to see and accept your decisions and then to forgive yourself for them. You wouldn’t need someone like me in your life is you were doing this on your own.

My performance coach team obliterates my understanding of the world constantly because I have forgotten what it means to act with accountability to myself. That is their role. They aren’t my friend when they are my coach, they are there to guide me towards a truth that I have been fighting the acceptance of. They aren’t my parent either, my folks did their job and became friends with me so they didn’t have battle my childishness anymore.

What I see is different from what a lot of people see. When I observe people, listen or experience them, it is from a place of perfection, THEIR perfection. Each of us is perfect already, we were born perfect, even if we are not like others, we are perfect at birth. I know this because I am a human being and compassionate people see the potential of others. They do not see themselves in others, they do not see their own past in others and they do not see the mistakes of life in them. We see perfect thoughts, actions, patterns and an existence that is good and pure.

The role of a performance coach is to help the person see the fog of unworkability that is layered over the beauty and order that exists already. We help them peel away each shell of action / behavior / thought, leaving only that which already exists within them. Once the stuff that doesn’t work is gone, the individual is left stripped naked, perfect, uninhibited and free.

Some in our field work hard to change people, I work hard to keep them the same. Each of us have the answer to all of our questions, they are just waiting for us to be able to hear them. The noise of life, the mind, implied obligations and antiquate ways of being sit as rot on human potential. A performance coach, therapist, or good bar tender understands that some of the most effective medicine comes from mold and will help their clients / patrons use it to cleanse their life.

Like a world class athlete who has had every less than ideal movement trained out of them, each of us has the same potential for perfection. We achieve this by stopping all of the things that aren’t working effectively. When we’re out of things that don’t work, the universe is yours.

Again, no one has to accept this fact and are free to see only the things that aren’t working for them as all that they are.

“You Have Never Even….”

There are somethings that I don’t like listening to but really love not reacting to. Like people screaming and blaming me for stuff they did to themselves.

The other day I was chatting with an old friend about the future. It was an interesting conversation because I thought they know me fairly well. The conversation drifted towards children and the prospects of me ending up with someone who has children already – in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t so far from a possibility given that I’m fairly old and that a lot of the women who are close to my age already have children.

They made a really odd comment that initially stung until I realized it didn’t actually mean anything to me. “You have never even baby sat or changed a diaper.” Not entirely true, I changed a diaper when I was 6 and I baby sat a few times as a teenage to make some money for chocolate bars and new grips for my BMX bike. I didn’t say this, there seemed to be some satisfaction in the words so I wasn’t going to rod them of it. The point seemed to have more to do with the big difference between us and I didn’t feel like mentioning that it was only because they’ve done something more times that I had. There didn’t seem to be anything to gain from reminding them that I can ride a bike better simply because I have done it more. Intelligent people know skills are acquired through practice. Intelligent people who *forget* this point are saying something else entirely.

I have never been married and I don’t have children so I didn’t get to practice changing diapers or baby sitting. With every girl friend I have ever had, we talked about having kids one day and I ultimately decided that I didn’t want to have any. Marrying the right person was more important to me than procreating. Kids grow old and move out and before they do, they are children for a long time. A home without my real partner didn’t really stack-up in my view.

Every task that I know how to do, I learned how to do it. That means driving, cutting bread, reading, playing, washing my clothes, creative writing, playing guitar, showering, etc…. Every task that I presently do not know how to do I can learn how to do. I wanted to become a cycling instructor, no one told me that I had never done it, they told me that I could learn. I wasn’t a personal trainer and no one told me that I had never done it, they encouraged me to study and make it my craft and I was able to do it. I was, in my time, a very effective and successful trainer and I got there fairly quickly. This occurred because I wanted to be very good at it and I put the time in to figure-out the best way to make it happen.

In fact, their comment was very helpful because it sounded like something I would say to myself as a justification for not putting in the hard work to learn how to do something.

I just heard their words, considered them, realized that it was the same dismissive tone that I have attacked myself with for a very long time – you’ve never done blank before so why would you think you could do it? The comment made me very happy actually. They were right, I haven’t done the same things they have done. There are many paths through life and ours were just two. But to be maligned for not doing something that wasn’t right for me, my girl friend or any potential offspring is not anything that I need to be a part of. It’s hardly a bad thing to not marry someone I wasn’t completely compatible with. In fact, most of my old girl friends are married, some have started families and the others are partnered-up with people they really care about.

Imagine if, as a group fitness instructor I asked the question at the start of class “is this anyone’s first class?” and when someone replies yes, I say “well you shouldn’t even try because you have never done it before”. Three things happen, 1) I get fired or written-up, 2) I would need at accept that my comment was attempting to say something else to them or imply something about me and 3) people will very quickly see me as a toxic influence who has no interest in creating order in others.

I considered what I heard and just assume it was a throw away comment and made the decision to not receive it as fact. Gifts and insults are like that, if you don’t receive them, they still below to the other person.

“I Can’t Make Your Feel Anything”

I was chatting with Leigh, an old girlfriend from university a few weeks ago at my fathers service, and the topic moved towards what did we learn from each other that carried with us? I try to mine smart people for gems of information and wasn’t expecting her to say anything other than “I was young once and didn’t mind wasting time having fun” but she floored me with something that I had forgotten I had said.

I had done something that she found really frustrating – I have no idea what it was and it probably doesn’t matter much. She said “you are making me feel so angry” to which I replied “I can’t make you feel anything.”

What struck me as profound about her mentioning this is that Leigh has three degrees, works as a educational psychologist and she said that she has given this piece of information out to a number of people though out the years. She never mentioned that it was to any of her clients so I’ll assume that it was just her friends and people in a non-therapeutic setting. I, however, have and will say this to my coaching clients and basically anyone who needs to see themselves as the source of their own emotional state of mind vs. holding other people responsible for their pain.

As I turn the corner and close off my Childhood I see and feel the truth of this statement made 17 years ago. My grudges are my creation. If I’m annoyed that someone didn’t live-up to an expectation that I created and pushed onto them, that’s my choice. I could have created smaller expectations or none at all. Even if I mentioned the expectation to them and they agreed to abide by it, my disappointment in their decision to look after themselves first is my choice. They can’t make me feel anything.

It is my love, my hate, my compassion, my sense of abandonment, my everything. Adults understand and live by this. They establish boundaries and let others in WISE to the fact that with them inside, the potential to hurt grows. But we own our emotions and our emotional responses to our subjective interpretation of reality. I have too much love to go to waste, BUT I realize, understand and accept that I risk emotional pain by reaching out and partnering with another human being. My responsibility is to look after myself and my interests; to direct this love to me first and then to others. Until I have children, I am responsible for just me. My family, girlfriends, friends, co-workers and peers need to look after themselves and their children / interests.

The only power others have over us is the power we give them. And even then, we choose our thoughts which in turn shape our state of mind and emotional reactions. It’s fine to give love away, but if you cannot handle not getting it back, you aren’t giving out love. You are sharing something dark and sinister.

It was a timely refresher from an old and dear friend. Thanks Leigh!

Reasons To Not Be Afraid

I’ve got a lot, but I am. I have been for years.

Sure, I can continue to wrack my brain, analyzing the hell out of my memories and ripping apart my actions looking for meaning, but that hasn’t gotten me any closer to the truth, happiness or to a level of satisfaction with who I am, my place in the universe and even a reason to keep going. It can’t, I’ve been lying to myself for a long time. I didn’t really realize it. When I was small I told myself a lie, a story, and I went with it. Then life became it, and finally I did too.

That isn’t good enough for me anymore. There is more to this world than these distractions I’ve been seeking and compulsively indulging.

My therapist suggested that I make 2 lists, one of the why’s and one of the what if I stop. I thought it would be tough, and it was kind of, I crumbled and cried and the self-loathing seemed to grow exponentially. But I had a lot to write and the ease at which it flowed out of me help me see that I have been ready for a sometime, but just afraid to step off the cliff and drop to my death. I liked the old me, but he was selfish, scared and offered only conditional everything. Those who knew me saw that things weren’t right, those who knew me really well would leave. My family and close friends were the only constants, and of the friends, only those who engaged me like an Adult, without judgement remain. And that was key unlocking the gate and convincing me to take the leap. I AM an Adult and it is okay to forgive myself for my past actions. Further self-judgment here is pointless.

The why’s of my compulsive behavior:

  • Predictable outcome – good or bad, I knew what would happen and there is some sense of security in that
  • It created a false me / them dynamic that helped me feel like I was different
  • It closed me off from other people, which helped me feel like I didn’t belong
  • It is wildly isolating, alienating and paradoxically not the person I presented myself to be
  • Being isolated allowed me to indulge my thoughts without outside perspective to balance them
  • It helped me feel different and deviant so not as good as anyone else
  • Doing it helped me feel a sense of shame that I could wear and feel inferior to others
  • It altered my emotional state temporarily so there was some escape for the emptiness / insecurity that I felt
  • It was childish and was a calling for some sort of love that I didn’t think I was getting
  • It was proof that I wasn’t okay and therefore not worthy of the things that others may enjoy
  • It helped me get a very nice body that I thought would compensate for my lack of confidence
  • It was easier to keep doing what I was doing vs. put the effort in to change

The what if I stop my compulsive behavior:

  • I will save money
  • My teeth, skin, and body will look better
  • I will feel my baseline, whatever that is, and be able to get the help I need to adjust that
  • I will improve my spiritual health as I become reconnected with the universe and the people on the planet
  • I will save a lot of time
  • I will feel my emotions clearly and in a timely fashion allowing me to properly engage and parse them for the information they are revealing
  • I will be free of the anxiety and guild associated with indulging compulsive thoughts
  • I will be able to recover from my fathers death more effectively
  • I will be acting with self-love and treating my body, mind and spirit with compassion
  • I will be acting more like my mentors
  • I will not be harming myself
  • I will have removed the monkey from my back and will have stopped doing something I am ashamed of
  • I will have gain the knowledge of just what these compulsive behaviors have been doing to me
  • I will be acting responsibly, I will be acting like an Adult
  • I will no longer be acting in a hypocritical way and this will restore my integrity
  • I will be thinking more clearly, my body will be functioning more clearly and I will be reducing a number of very serious health risks
  • I will be in a position for find a partner who complements my life but does not give it purpose
  • I will have a better idea of my actual worth and be able to take more effective actions to help me achieve my goals
  • My public self will match my private self and any dissonance between the two will be eliminated
  • I will not need to be living and managing two separate and incomparable lives

I looked at the lists when I was feeling absolutely crap over the last few weeks, picked an item and mediated on it. It didn’t take long for my chest to puff-up and for the fighter in me to come up to scratch. My actions are my choice so stopping is as easy as just not doing it anymore.

However, there is something going on inside my brain that this exercise was supposed to bring to light and my therapist was happy that it came out. I’m not necessarily afraid, but I am anxious.

Transactional Analysis – Part 1 – Laymans Introduction

Sean gave me another critical piece of the puzzle. I asked him if he has been pacing the information so as to not blow my mind up and he claimed no that it just hadn’t come-up. Transactional analysis is an object-oriented way to document interpersonal interactions. Each interaction is a transaction and the currency of TA are strokes. Depending upon the depth of the transaction, a stroke can have little worth “hi” or a lot of worth “I noticed that you pasted your exam, it’s great that all your hard work is paying off.” Hi is simply an acknowledgement of mutual existence. The lack of this type of stroke will be noticed MORE than it being there. The comment about passing the exam is more complicated and validating to the ego. Acknowledgement of mutual existence is there, the recognition that they exist to the other person when they aren’t in front of them (noticing that they past the exam), the recognition of historic labor efforts, and the social recognition that passing an exam is a payoff.

Ego states and Social states

An ego state is the psychological state from which ones’ comment comes. Child, Parent, Adult. The social state is the apparent state from which a comment comes. For example, it being important that we are on time is socially adult but if we direct a comment towards someone who is always late it is from a Parent psychological or ego state. These states are indicated with a capital letter.

We learn these states from our parents and other caregivers and while we may never be aware that they are there, they are, and while we may never be aware that we jump around from one to the other, we do. They are biologically hardwired through years of experience and validation and for these reasons certain behavioral tendencies are really sticky and may never go away. Your Child is going to be your Child for most of your life. Your Parent is going to be your Parent for most of your life.

The Parent automates the day-to-day stuff that makes life manageable – shopping, cooking, cleaning, going to work, looking after loved ones – because it is both controlling and nurturing. The Child allows for play because it has been cultivated with a sense of freedom. Creativity is the realm of the Child and this represents an essential piece of a human beings spirit. The Child can become overly adapted however with the wrong proportions of control and nurture:

If Parent nurturing Then Child free.

If Parent controlling Then Child adapted.

The Adult ego state is reflective and purposeful. It exists in harmony with the universe as it calls upon past experience for information and solutions but transacts with the others in a deliberate way. It has well-established boundaries and accepts that each person has the right and responsibility to manage their own life and affairs. Adults engage in coaching with enlightenment or independence as the goal.

The goal of TA therapy is to coach the client to transacted with social and psychological states being aligned as Adult. They are aware of and use when appropriate their Child and Parent states but these are tools to use vs. compulsions to serve.

Why would Sean tell me about this? Because I needed to hear it as I was lacking a visual framework from which to logically represent what I have been feeling and living through.

My last post of 2011 was about how I had to accept that I didn’t know what my motivations were in most situations and why I act the way I do. I needed to give-up my belief that I know myself in order to finally observe how I act. This is still the case, but it’s getting easier. What is remarkable about it, is that once it was understood to me it became very easy to see things happen and feel the shift in my psychological state.

For example, I was recently compared to someone I didn’t like very much. There was a moment when I thought about what I had heard and what I wanted to say and then realized I didn’t really know what the comment meant. I replied with “yes, there are similarities between me and him.” It wasn’t the Child reply that initially popped into my head. Their reply was “well, actually, this is the one similarity” which was true. He and I both have a tendency to try and solve the problems of the people we care about; not necessarily a character flaw but it can be a Parent action. MOST people have this problem. The key thing with the interaction was that I didn’t let myself slip into an automatic Child-like reply of “yes, but…” The comment was accurate because the other person made it. The inverse comment would have been equally true – that he and I aren’t very similar. That’s the thing with conversations with people, almost everything is right under some circumstances so, well, what’s the point in arguing?

I know what I need to do, I know what I want to do and I haven’t been showing a lot of control over things. When I work and play, it’s purposeful and passionate. When I am a Parent, it’s about very few things in my own life and I do have a tendency to try and look out for the people I like. When I’m an Adult I’m okay and everyone else is okay.

Negative Love Syndrome – It Can Stop Here

A few weeks ago Sharyl sent me an article. It was a .pdf of The Negative Love Syndrome by Bob Hoffman. It is fascinating and I’ve read it a few times a week since I got it. It isn’t very long and it is another layer of explanation along the lines of how people observe, learn and practice things as a child that become their unconscious adult behaviors.

With Negative Love Syndrome (NLS), just like compassionate love, children normalize the early experiences of “love” they observe from their parents / caregivers interactions with them and each other. No matter WHAT happens, it will be regarded as normal and set the baseline for all love behavior moving forward; these early experiences shape the child’s future actions so they will work unconsciously and often against their own interests to ensure the baseline experience is restored. But with NLS, the children normalize seeking loving behaviors that do not add quality of live or are simply negative.

For example, when mommy withdraws and doesn’t tell dad what is bugging her, daddy yells and then she does. The boys learn that adult females are cold and conditionally open (when they get yelled at), the girls learn to bottle things it up until her partner gets verbally abusive. Provided the boy yells, both eventually get what they want so they remain in “love.” This is in contrast to compassionate love were the women may not talk openly, but her husband accepts that she will talk when ready and will not pressure her. Children viewing this will internalize appropriate boundaries, and both the need for and respect of another person’s privacy. While the boy will not learn how to make conditionally females open, he also doesn’t learn to attack an object. He learns that women are people, with feelings and that they will talk when they need to. The lesson a girl learns from watching her mother set-up and honor the boundaries can on serve to make her more empowered.

If left unresolved NLS will manifest itself as a series of games between the adult and their future partners although little if any of this is conscious. Seemingly healthy relationships will begin to suffer as the adult works to create the relationship of their parents; which is the reason why they suffer from NLS. If their partner doesn’t realize that this is happening and remains committed to having a healthy relationship, they begin to alter their actions and play the game as well. This is why NLS relationships create unusual experiences for those who normally engage others with compassionate love.

It makes perfect sense when you reflect on it. You need and want your parents to love and approve of you so you try to do what they did. Doing something different than what they did will be tough because it goes against most of what you learned; it will feel and likely be perceived as rebellion. The assumption people make when they choose to get into a relationship is to work towards the bond that their parents had. One does not necessarily realize that this is what they are doing because they engage most parts of their life without the impact of NLS such that they may pick suitable candidates for girl or boy friends, ones who offer compassionate love, but once their own feelings of love begin to develop the negative love tendencies start to come out and degrade things quickly.

The confusing thing is that often what they are receiving is EXACTLY what they need and know they want but since it doesn’t feel like negative love it is rejected. The consequence of compassionate love being rejected tends to be a withdrawal from the rejecter – a negative love trait. So by rejecting the thing they want and need in their life, they are able to experience the thing that makes them feel normal and shittie.

People are going to be nuanced when how they manufacture a negative love environment so the games that get played can be very complex, engrossing and red herrings in terms of what is actually happening. Think about it, you are engaging someone with a very fast brain, that has automated and normalized something to the point of it falling outside of their consciousness so they are not even aware of what they are actually doing, let alone why they may be doing it. They KNOW something isn’t right, but resist all coaching in an effort to win the game.

The prognosis is good but only if the person is willing to change, so the outcome for most is poor. I have known a couple of people who have been able to find their way out of the darkness and would be confident that if someone is willing to work at it, they can get better. It takes time and a keen awareness of how you are thinking. But first it takes the person to realize that there is something wrong and a willingness to press pause, let things settle and see how the landscape looks.

Being Honest About Time

Seeing life slip away can be beautiful. It has a big impact on the willingness for honesty and there’s a dramatic shift towards being authentic. Why pretend anymore? There’s a big difference between having 6 and believing you have 500 and knowing you have 6. When you know you have 6 you’ll enjoy them fully and you’ll not let anyone take any from you.

And I suppose that we all think we have 500 so we float along enjoying some, sharing others, and allowing some to be stolen from us.

Cancer is greedy. It takes more than it’s fair share of the 500. It takes more than what we let others steal. But it gives something in return those who steal do not, it illuminates the end of the timeline. The flash of the terminal diagnosis shines brightly on what you have left so following the path to the end is very easy. You clear your schedule of the stuff that steals any of the time that remains.

You call in your troops and they shield you from the nonsense. The family pick to block obnoxious one on ones, musical chairs to maintain the wall of one between the cancer and the cancer, it’s a play book being written with each visit from someone who never mattered to us and always seemed to cost us energy.

It’s a sad sort of dream team simply because it is needed.

I’ve been left wondering after a well played game why I’m in this situation and what other things have I been letting into my life that share the same root cause.

I really want to be liked by other people. At least I used to want this. I’m not sure it’s worth the cost anymore; not to assume it ever was. I’ve normalized this habit though. I’m more aware of the interactions with people that leave me feeling unsettled than I am about the ones that leave me feeling nothing. In the last 3 years I’ve started to tread away from these types of interactions in favor of ones that leave me feeling good but I still have a tough time telling people to get away from me or just ending “friendships” that never worked.

The new awareness that death comes sooner and that time becomes more valuable as you near the end is forcing the issue about the pointlessness of wanting to be liked by other people. Almost everyone I know now will not be there when I die. The people I am choosing to generate mental friction about are not even aware of it and none of them will be there in the end. Wanting to be liked isn’t working for me anymore so I’m giving up on that habit. It hasn’t been authentic for a long time.

Narcissism – A Social Need For The Unenlightened

I wondered for a long time why so many seemingly normal and highly functional people constantly find themselves at the source of all of the bad things that happen in their world yet take responsibility for few of their own actions. It was disturbing until Des told me that believing you’re are a piece of unlovable crap is a sure fire way to ensure that you seek out the social situations to validate your lack of value. Initially it struck me as odd until I saw Donald Trump talking on TV and it hit me that there is a man who doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of him. He’s not narcissistic, he’s confidence because he knows he has a lot of value and this prevents him from needing other people’s approval. He’ll settle for their money and he’s just right for that.

If you are able to consider the inverse – that you are unlovable – you’ll see how seeking out this type of validation is a much bigger a social motivator than KNOWING you are the best. People who know what they bring to the table do not seek out proof of this from others because knowing it is all that is needed. I had an old girlfriend who would talk about things she knew nothing about but when it came time to debate about the things she knew, there was no debate. No need, I didn’t know what I was talking about. She’d correct me and then move on if I continued to disagree. What’s funny is that she would debate endlessly when she was full of crap.

This is one of my favorite topics as I age because I am uncovering more and more people who don’t understand that their motivation to see themselves as the center of the world and the cause of everything is a symptom of a sense of unlove-ability and that it is paying service to something that happened when they were growing-up. More often that not, their narcissism is a result of an incomplete developmental stage and an inaccurate pairing of cause and effect – for example, very attractive people tend to become narcissistic as they age because they were never recognized for their efforts (the things they can control) and tend to receive favor simply for being good looking. Their pathological behavioral patterns will tend to pop out any time they begin to feel overwhelmed by someone they view as better than them (a meaningless distinction) or anytime they feel the withdrawal of approval. They will often say the oddest things that you cannot reconcile in your head because they are not based on fact. To them though, they are based on fact; they are based on the interpretation of the evidence which just happens to see them as unlovable.

We tolerate this from children, movie stars and anyone we want something from because we can’t actually care that much about people who view themselves as unlovable because they tend to act in unlovable ways and alienate those who bring them kindness – they are dishonest, they create drama where it didn’t need to be, they involve others in their and other peoples business, they denigrate others in an attempt to make themselves feel or look better, they tell you who you can and cannot be friends with and they will throw you under the bus as soon as they realize that you are not treating them as unlovable as they act. Narcissism is obvious once you’ve seen it and the people it afflicts are toxic to those unfortunate to have to continue to engage them.

The prognosis is poor for these types of people because they are incapable of seeing their actions has shaping their world – I’ve yet to meet one who later said “I was creating all of my bad luck because I was acting unlovable.” Sadly for them and the people they impact, you tend to hear “look what you made me do” or “that isn’t fair” when you treat them the same way they treat you.

Chances are they are too heavily invested in keeping their delusion going to actually look at the root cause of their actions.

Toxic People – Let Them Hear Themselves – Possible Solution

The premise of the post Toxic People – Controlling Communication = Control was that toxic / controlling people are able to keep the upper hand because they are able to control the communication behaviors of their victim. By preventing the victim from getting external opinions, the abuser is able to maintain their high level of influence. This is very effective for maintaining control of the tone and to heavily shape the thoughts of the victim. However, it only works IF the abuser is able to prevent new information from entering or their abusive behavior leaving the confines of the relationship. Once an external opinion is thrust into the mix, their influence is diminished and the victim begins to regain power, control and perspective.

However, in many cases you can stop the verbal abuse very quickly letting the abuser hear what they are saying by recording their words and playing them back for them.

A recent example of this left me laughing out loud at just how quickly the abuse stopped. A female friend has been making some very positive situational changes in her life to which her soon-to-be-ex is opposed. He has a tendency to lose control when he’s talking and end’s up shouting, making false accusations and generally acting like a delusional person.

She just got sick of listening to his insentient crap and began to record the conversations. It has been going on for some time and he didn’t notice that she was doing it until this week. When he asked her what she was doing and found out that she has recording his abusive rant, he got angry and played the victim card “I can’t believe you would do that to me” to which she replied “I just want you to stop being mean to me in front of our children”. Then it hit him, she had been doing this for some time and he hadn’t noticed, he says “how long have you been doing this?” Her reply “long enough,” he’s been acting inappropriately for a very long time and she got a number of his abusive rants on record. He knows that his voice, his abuse is on tape so the rest of the world is now aware of the situation and of who he really is. What was once his word against her’s is simply now just his words on tape. And his words are actually kind of sad when you embrace the fact that this is a grown man acting younger than their 6 year old.

He’s stopped talking to her because he’s well aware that the world knows who he really is and that he is unable to control himself when he talks to her because abuse is such a big part of who he is. What was once a nicely controlled situation is now being controlled by the facts – he will act abusively towards her in front of their children because that is who he is choosing to be. I think this was a great solution for her because it stopped the abuse immediately once he realized everyone knew who he real was.