Summary: how people can control you in conversation and life if you aren’t aware of their game.
I was chatting recently with @john_clay_r4 about the damage negativity does, and have suddenly remembered a secretly-negative person I met a few times a while back. He (I’ll call him Horace) was a fascinating example of how easily other people can control the version of you that is allowed out, if you aren’t aware of their game.
Something about Horace had bothered me, but I couldn’t pin it down. All I knew was that I always felt diminished after I’d talked to him, even though he was always terribly polite and pleasant. I wanted to know how he was doing it. We were due to meet up again, and this time I determined to pay attention to exactly what was going on: what was said, what the body language was, and how I felt at each point.
So, Horace arrived, and asked me what I was up to, smiling interestedly. The moment I started describing my current ambitions and successes, though, he actually shifted his whole body away, no longer facing me keenly but in a pose of no-interest. I was slightly stunned at his rudeness, then remembered how he’d done just this on a previous occasion without me realising its significance – and noticed again how effectively it shut me up. I wondered if he did it deliberately, as in some strange control-game.
Getting no response to my chat, I cast around for new topics. I’m a wonderful hostess. The only ones that caught Horace’s attention, though, were my fears and recent failures. Now he was all attention, fully facing me, asking me questions, in best coaching-mode. He was fixing me.
I hadn’t realised I needed fixing, you realise. In my mind I’m someone full of plans who encounters obstacles and overcomes them, in the usual way. In his hands, though, I was a broken person, full of inadequacy, hopeless without his help. I could feel my whole body and mind shrink.
As I was in meta-mode, I wasn’t too bothered about that, and simply noted it. I was too interested in how this apparently caring person was so quickly able to turn me into a cripple, simply by ignoring my successes and listening only to failure.
I got rid of him quickly, and made sure I never saw him again. I just wasn’t interested enough to challenge him on it. But…I pay close attention to what people say and do, now – and challenge them on it – because I know what version of me I want out there, and it isn’t Broken.
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The Horaces of this world, male and female, are parasites. They look for other people’s supposed weaknesses and difficulties to reinforce their own sense of superiority. They’re not happy people. If the only way you can gain any form of satisfaction is by exploiting other people’s trust and confidence, you’re not just broken; you’re seriously defective. Poor things.
Quite so! I’ve had many a business chat with people who spend the entire time looking for holes (looking for chances to sell to me?), rather than being interested in my goals. Unrewarding!