Step 2: Walk Before You Run

Abusive childhood used to give one a carte blanche to wallow, but no more. Nowadays, we're expected to get over it, pick up the pieces and make something of ourselves. I cannot say that I'm disappointed by the shift of focus, but I do find it interesting that the ones most noisily insisting on us "growing up", "getting a grip", and "moving on" are usually the ones who'd done us the most harm. Being a bully nowadays is swell. You can dish out the abuse whenever you feel like it, and still the consensus will be that it's your victim who's a poor sport for not forgiving and apologising instantly the moment you say it was their fault for provoking you in the first place. (I'm not comparing bullying to rape, but there are worrying analogies. Sometimes, I did feel like I was being told my psyche was wearing inappropriate clothes, so it was boorish of me to cry emotional rape.)

What makes one person's feelings less important than another's? It seems like the answer is: how you play the game and which role you take (or accept when given).

When I decided to stop being a victim, I did not resolve to seek revenge. I did not decide to switch sides. I simply wanted to step out of the game. For some, this was my biggest offence yet.

I'm not going to apologize for choosing to take care of my emotional health first. I will not be made to feel guilty for not being "a good sport" when the game is mud-flinging and I'm the target. Most of all, I will not "move on" until I have a guarantee the abuse won't happen again. It is my right to forgive but not forget. Which means not pretending all's okay between me and you if you continue to refuse to treat me with respect we all deserve as fellow human beings. To use Eric Berne's succinct terminology, I do not want to live the life of a Sulk. If you want to keep being a Jerk, it's up to you. But only a Sulk would want a Jerk in their life, so don't be surprised if I no longer want to spend any time with you.

Yes, I'm done with Games People Play. This is what I've learned: my favorite games are Look How Hard I've Tried, Harried, and Wooden Leg. My husband entertains himself with Now I've Got You, You Son Of A Bitch, Courtroom, and I'm Only Trying To Help You. Together, we make a great team.

The conversation that followed this realisation was one of the hardest my husband and I ever had. I love him, but I cannot free myself from my games if he's not on the same page. Try telling somebody he's a Jerk! (Hint: explaining it's a model-derived name for a certain set of behaviors might ease the blow. Telling them you mean Jerk with a capital J is not the way.)

Plan for this week:

• keep eating well
• keep monitoring willpower depletion
• keep practicing spotting games
• if somebody tries to engage as a Child or Parent (with an ulterior motive), respond as an Adult; if they persist, disengage; do not give in to the emotional fallout
• organize your day

The latter sounds vague, but it's my placeholder for a number of very specific activities that need to be done daily, and which I love using to play Harried. I'm not going to give up all games immediately and entirely - I've played them all my life, the moves come naturally, and unlearning them will take a while and a lot of effort. Ditching it all wholesale would be setting myself up for failure (Look How Hard I've Tried!), so instead I'll tackle one small aspect at a time. First, I need to find a way to be more efficient and enjoy the chores instead of leaving everything to the last minute and then running around haggard and resentful. (Isn't playing Harried fun?!)

Next up on the reading list: I'm OK, You're OK.

photo by Francesco Rachello

Step 1: Baby Steps

The catalyst for all this was a spat I had with somebody with whom I cannot sever all ties. My choice was to once more submit and, with the tail between my legs, apologize for something of which I wasn't guilty, or to live in a tense impasse for the foreseeable future, not a day passing without the feeling of nauseating agony. Seriously, who needs an ulcer?

For the first time in my life, I decided to talk things through with my dad. (He and my mother got divorced when I was 5, and I didn't really got to meet him until I was 18, at which point we had no father-daughter history, and hence no parent-child dynamic. Hence, no tried-and-tested ways of talking about personal challenges, especially ones that might put me in unfavourable light. It was all uncharted territory.) He gave me thumbs up, but suggested I read a few books that might help me figure out the root cause of conflict in my life. It was sound advice, and I took it.

First up on my reading list, Games People Play.

Considering how often in my life I've found myself wondering "why does it always happen to me?!", there was hardly a better book with which to start. It happens because I don't know any better, and get sucked into toxic games. If I throw in what I've just learned reading Talent Is Overrated and Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?, I have to admit there was no way out of this for me without some serious, structured help. I was doomed to be a patsy, even more so when I followed the usual advice for dealing with difficult people, such as:

• limiting contact with "trigger" individuals
• not taking it personally
• sticking to the facts
• thanking for but ignoring unwelcome advice
• using "I" rather than "you"
• agreeing with a kernel of truth in an onslaught (to show you're listening and are willing to compromise)
• offering your best guess as to how the other person is feeling
• putting yourself in their shoes

The list goes on and on. It's all decent, short-term advice, but it won't make those difficult people stop reappearing in your life like mushrooms after the rain whenever you're at your most vulnerable. And if, like me, you encounter truly difficult people only once every two or three years, you'll never have enough practice to deal with those people confidently and effectively. And even if you do get the hang of those basic rules, using them might still backfire in the long term, as it did for me - the more closely I followed the common-knowledge advice with regard to distance and filtering, the more likely it was that my bully would call me cold, calculating, and aloof; the more diligently I worked on my empathy, the more likely it was that it would be used against me. (If I said, for example, that I might have been a little curt at some point because I was really tired, it would come back to me as a wholesale accusation of having no common courtesy, ever.)

The problem with good communication advice is that it assumes rationality, and that we're dealing with people who don't actually (even if subconsciously) desire conflict. The problem for people like myself, brought up to feel guilty for absolutely everything, is that we are magnets for people who enjoy playing blame games, who thrive on hoarding unwarranted apologies, and are only (fleetingly) satisfied when they make others feel worthless. Very often, they don't even realise what they're doing. It's just a question of emotional yin and yang, of idiosyncratic communication patterns and perception filters that make the bully truly believe they've been slighted. More worryingly, both parties rarely realise that the game's even afoot. After the unpleasant payoff, still somehow managing to feel morally superior, we just curl up in a ball and meekly ask, "Why does it always happen to me?"

The last straw for me was the birth of my (now 15 month old) son. While I could have taken quite a lot of unpleasantness before, becoming his defender and the first role-model did something to my ability to grin and bear it. It took me more than a year to find myself where I am today, at the beginning of an uncertain journey towards better self-awareness and self-actualisation, but here I am. Finally unwilling to let others take advantage, because I'd rather my son had a mother who had respect for herself than one known for her sweet temper and a knack for diplomacy. I do mean to be considerate and polite, but not to the exclusion of my own and my child's needs.

Here's the paragraph that made me stop in my tracks, and revaluate my own upbringing:

"While conscientious parents devote a great deal of attention to teaching their children procedures, rituals and pastimes appropriate to their stations in life, and with equal care select schools, colleges and churches where their teachings will be reinforced, they tend to overlook the question of games, which form the basic structure for the emotional dynamics of each family, and which the children learn through significant experiences in everyday living from their earliest months."

If it's true I've been playing the part of the victim so far, it's quite likely my son will implicitly learn and use those toxic patterns in his life. It is not something I wish for him.

I had to come up with a plan. A robust one, grounded in the principles of deliberate practice.

Since I'm still quite early on in the book, and since being a stay-at-home mom doesn't leave me that much time for reading (and I'm a slow reader at that), I've decided to spend this week focusing on basics:

• eating right (if low blood sugar levels are associated with ego depletion and loss of willpower, then it stands to reason I'm not going to achieve much running on empty)
• monitoring my own decision-making (using the premise of one of the willpower studies, regularly checking on any desires I have, and figuring out how often I choose to suppress them, and how detrimental that suppression may be to my ability to comfortably remain in the Adult ego state - if there's a lot of that going on, next step would be to design routines that avoid as much as possible of that depletion) 
• ego-state spotting (before I can take action, I need to understand with what I'm dealing - the main mental exercise for this week will be focusing on what people say and how they say it, and learning to figure out whether they're communicating as an Adult, Parent, or Child)
• unless it risks seriously disrupting a game, speaking from an Adult ego state

That's the plan. Game on.

photo by potamos.photography