Top Three

[Marta]

I was thinking about what triggers me, where my buttons are. Here are the top three I came up with:

Say you and I are friends.

1. I say to you, smilingly, please don’t do this because…x,y,and z. I say to you again, a reminder, hey, do you remember we talked about this, the reason it doesn’t work for me is because…I say to you the third time, Please just don’t do it. I don’t like it. May be I repeated this for fourth or fifth time. BUT if you do it for the sixth time, it makes me so mad, just so blo**y mad, that I WILL explode, hell WILL break loose, even if it is a matter as small as borrowing my pen without my permission. You will remain my friend, but you will learn not to mess with me.

2. We are having a conversation. You give me reasons that don’t make sense. I am your best friend but you don’t invite me to your party. You know that I hate blue but you give me a blue scarf on my birthday. Or may you come to my house on my birthday, having forgotten all about it, to take me shopping for a friend’s birthday gift. (My ex N best friend actually did this!) You are smiling, smooth, and confident as you give me reasonable answers as to why this had to be, why it was not a big deal, why I should just forget about it. This happens over and over again and over again. You confuse me. I sense game playing. I may confront you, once, twice, to give you the benefit of doubt. Third time, I will just leave the room, and make no room for you in my life.

3. You put me down. Once. And there you go out of my life.

These triggers obviously have to do with my N family background, with being seen and heard. For me, a friendship must be safe above all (no game playing, no dishonest answers, no minimizing and discounting), there must be mutual respect (no putdowns), and you must listen to me when I say no (if you don't, you will be taught to .

Other than that, I can be an accomodating friend and put up with things which may be untolerable to many, such as occasional confrontations and anger outbursts, directness, disagreement, temporary neediness from friends, etc.

I am wondering to what extent we, survivors of N abuse, are similar in this respect. What are your top three triggers/buttons?

[Chicken]

hey Marta!

Good topic!

I tried to think of three, but can only come up with one, but the effect of this trigger is equal to three!...


and that is BLAME and failing to see two sides of an argument...

x Selkie x

[bunny]

Guilt-tripping

Martyrdom

Sulking


bunny

[Sela]

1.  For me...my hackles go up when someone begins a sentence containing negative statments beginning with the word:  "You....".

For example:  Defining statements such as:

"You are...."  etc. or assumptive "You think..." or blaming "You make me....."

2.  I"m learning to pay more attention to when people seem not to hear me (which has always sent electrical signals to my brain but I must have ignored them or shelved them or who knows....projected them even ).

For instance:  I make a statement, especially about my feelings ,which is ignored and the topic is changed.

I'm getting better at calling that...."hey!  I just said blank.  Now I feel ignored."

(Prior to lately I might have just thought...oh well...the person doesn't want to acknowledge/talk about it.  So my need to be heard went below their need not to hear.  Now I think my needs are as important, usually, as theirs).
 
3.  Name calling.  Anyone who name calls me or others may get a blast of my anger or more likely, a polite correction (at first).  Name calling is abusive and useless in productive communication, imo.  I name call here on this board....I'll write to someone....."that jerk/dope/creep..."etc but I see it as different.  I'm not name calling someone to their face, directly insulting anyone, with intention to hurt them.  Instead, it is an attempt to let the other person know that I feel for the way they've been poorly treated by someone who has acted badly/or who does not appreciate their effort/goodness/generosity etc.  I'm guilty of being verbally abusive of the abusive to the "victim".  If I met that abuser face to face, I might say that I don't like their behaviour, that they have acted badly but I wouldn't call them a name.

Ouch!  Second guessing myself.  Maybe I shouldn't even name call abusives as I am possibly promoting the act of name calling, which I find so offensive.

Sela

[Stormchild]

1. People who turn everything into a contest when almost nothing ever really needs to be.

2. People who bully others and brag about it, and call it 'assertiveness' or 'tough love' or 'strong management'.

3. People who apply their insights to everyone but themselves. [Which goes along with 1. and 2. in most cases where you see it happening.]

I think these are terribly dangerous because Ns do them but they can also teach them to non-Ns by example - and wouldn't you know, they all relate in some way to avoiding shame... even imaginary shame. Now that I think of it.

[I do think some Ns are capable of a degree of insight and are correspondingly good at dissembling to look non-N. Certainly everyone here has wondered how on earth the Ns we deal with manage to fool so many other people! With that kind of N, you might 'sense' that something doesn't quite feel right but you only see full-blown N-ness when you are dealing with a crisis or major stressor. Then it comes out. Someone - Miss Piggy? Daylily? was lamenting how many people seem to turn into Ns under pressure although it wasn't stated exactly that way. I wonder if that might be 'cloaked Ns' just pushed beyond their ability to continue faking it.]

Cheerful, ain't I? Sorry.....

[mudpuppy]

1. Lying

2. Lying

3. Lying

mudpup

[Stormchild]

Note to Sela: I understand your reluctance to label abusive people as abusive... for myself I believe that until we know what we are dealing with and can call it by name we are powerless to really understand it, come to grips with it, protect ourselves.

Measles, mumps, allergies, menopause, osteopenia, alcoholism, dry alcoholism, borderline personality disorder, depression, jealousy, envy, meanness, co-dependency, bullying, unhealthy competitiveness, prejudice, sex discrimination, narcissism, physical abuse, verbal abuse, sociopathy. Gotta know what they are and be able to recognize them in order to know how to deal with them.

From that standpoint abuse can become a term on a list. The terms that are emotionally charged for us will be the ones that we have been most harmed by... but every time we face them and name them and stand up against them in our minds and hearts, we become a little stronger and they become a little weaker...

then we can spend more time with another list:

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control......!

hugs,

[Portia]

Marta, brilliant topic and very, very useful for us together here! Fascinating, seeing who blows at what and maybe seeing why some of us do what we do here….this is why I do what I do….do I have to stick to 3?

1. Being ignored.
This can be as simple as my saying something in a meeting of 20 people and it not being acknowledged that I opened my mouth (of course this has happened, it happens everywhere): or it can be someone apparently deciding not to hear half of what I say, particularly the parts of what I say which include things I want from them. They take what they want, or respond to what fulfils their needs, and ignore anything else. Okay, this is pretty normal the first time it happens…but when it happens for the sixth time….then I get annoyed. My annoyance is my problem. I’m banging my head against a brick wall again and I don’t know why I do it. Yes I do, trying to get through to my mother. Or father. Or step-father. Oh yes, being ignored can include being treated as though I’m stupid, I suppose you could call this –

2. Being patronised / put down / treated as inferior
Hope I’m getting better at recognising when this happens. I wonder if I do it to others? I wonder if we all act out our buttons on others?
This to me can be like a pat on the head, or strong advice coming from a seemingly superior position, which isn’t actually superior in knowledge or experience. Or it can be someone putting me down for thinking too much, or being “so clever” as though that’s a !!*??! crime. Or it can be as simple as telling me I ought to be grateful that anyone would want to employ me. Okay, I just got it that my Dad is guilty for my existence. Ya. Interesting.

3. Blamers and responsibility-phobes
People who want my sympathy and help when they clearly, logically, are not taking responsibility for their own heads but are actively looking for something external to blame and blame. People who don’t want a solution but who are determined to hold on to their problems; I guess other people’s fear of their own heads and their stubbornness in defending the status quo. This is people who say “My father would feel us up and beat the hell out of us once a week and it never did me any harm” or conversely, “I am the way I am because my father …etc…and I have no intention of ever changing my mind that the entire universe owes me.” I could probably call this Fundamentalist Thinking. Oh I just did. I guess I don’t get on with brick walls of any type.

Fascinating replies here!

Marta, are yours: not respecting my boundaries (my wishes and my property); you ignore my needs and treat me as though I don’t have needs of my own; more disrespect. It boils down to denying your existence it seems? I blow at those things. The child – the object.

Bunny: yours don’t have a big effect on me, which is interesting to me. Martyrdom I don’t like, but it doesn’t ‘set me off’, and the other two, I can ignore as just plain silly. This really is enlightening stuff.

Sela:

...."hey!  I just said blank.  Now I feel ignored."

Maybe we can swap examples? Maybe I’ve ignored you? Maybe you’ve ignored me? Maybe we can have a thread where we practice ignoring what we think is important in what the other person said – and in doing so we get to find out if we’re hearing what the other intends us to hear?? Tricky stuff. I’m willing if you are! 'A thread to ignore..." haha!

Storm:

People who apply their insights to everyone but themselves

This must apply to many in the mind-field, i.e. therapists etc. Because it seems to me that we can all see others’ faults, problems etc much more clearly than our own. That’s why we lament what others do, when the disaster in front of them seems so obvious. I honestly think everyone does this. On the other hand, projecting our crap onto someone else isn’t the same thing. Does it come down to whether our insights about others are intentionally helpful or harmful? If a therapist is blind to their own suffering but somehow manages to help a patient, isn’t that okay? I’m sad for the therapist there.

Mud: I don’t like lying either but I kinda find it interesting too….especially when it’s done badly, I can’t help wondering what mental processes the liar is going through to come up with the nonsense they spout. Lying so often harms the liar. I don’t do lying, never saw the point (except to my parents hahaha!). Okay, when I did lie it was cover my tracks and avoid problems. It wasn’t to harm others. The biggest lies for me are about deliberately not recognising the truth, or even hiding it. “It didn’t happen” “You don’t feel like that” etc. Pure lies to promote a person’s business or social status, or to hide a murder, or to harm an innocent person are just beyond me. Psychopathy imo.

Storm again: about naming things and standing up against them. Why stand up against them? Narcissists will not change, no point in standing up against them. Ditto measles and mumps. They just are. I am what I am. Is that wrong of them? What is healthy competitiveness? (I’m not sure I can define that, unless it means responding on a message board about the way I see things. Is that unhealthy or healthy stating of my views? Is it competitive?) Envy is a human emotion. I feel envious sometimes. Nothing wrong with that. It’s how I think and act about it that matters. In other words, I don’t believe life is about labelling and coming to some fixed view about anything: instead for me it’s about deeper and deeper understanding of the things that are important to us.

But then I’m into words and language and how we use it and lose it. Language is an important shaper of how we feel and think, and it’s so, so easy for us to not hear what was intended, but instead hear what we want to hear….etc.. For example, I see “self-control” and I wouldn’t put it on the good list. Self-control to me can mean repression, suppression and even covert aggression. “For goodness sake control yourself child!” “Have you no self-control?” “I have self-control because even though I want to be incredibly thunderously rageful towards my parents, I won’t, because I’m a good girl.” Self-control can be good, it can mean taking responsibility for what is actually your responsibility (i.e. your own life). But so often the idea of self-control is about fear, denial of fear, conforming to the social/family rules and not daring to speak our own truth. In general, I’m against self-control. Self-awareness, I like, it obviates the need for self-control because it removes those compulsions we need to control in the first place. I think. Did that make any sense?

I really like this thread Marta!

[Portia]

PS. I forgot to say, abuse of children, in any shape or form, that’s my biggest button, but it seems too obvious to say, because I assume, quite wrongly, that everyone feels the same. That’s not true, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

Thank goodness we can talk about it

[spyralle]

Injustice.

Manipulation

Bullying

Projection of negative stuff

Sorry I know it's four but I couldn't decide between them

Spyralle

[Portia]

I’ve been thinking about naming and labelling. Marta, can I have a little space just to muse away and see if anyone wants to join in? Thank you. The thing is, we name/label something to describe it, so that we can recognise it next time and share that with others. “Let’s catch a brontosaurus for dinner.”  Labelling this way is helpful both to us and to society. We get to eat.

But when does labelling become about making moral judgements? Labels describe, but then can go on to say ‘bad’ or ‘good’, harmful or helpful. “Let’s catch that nasty brontosaurus for dinner” (because he killed one of our tribe, who was trying to kill him). Is there a right or wrong there?

What is good to you, may be bad for me. I love peanuts, they kill some people. So it gets particular to the individual. Murder is generally harmful, so in our groups we agree: murder is bad. But that’s not all we do. We then add lots of exceptions (except it’s okay to murder our enemies, and those of our group who we deem to act badly). So I guess nothing is black or white; it’s all grey - if we’re talking about words and labels alone. One murderer is on death-row, another is a decorated soldier. So we can’t say absolutely murder is wrong. Or can we? Can we say all murder is wrong and when we kill in war or our own group, we’re doing wrong things but we do them anyway? We’re just being hypocritical? Is that okay? I don’t know.

But back specifically to name-calling. If someone describes me as: Woman, Female, British I’d say yeah okay, I guess. But if they call me Whore, Stupid or Evil I’d probably ask them what their problem was. Direct name-calling to the ‘victim’ is provocative bullying and usually done by people in groups. Name-calling about someone, without that someone’s knowledge, can be empathy because it’s being used in a descriptive, not bullying, way. But how to distinguish name-calling from direct telling the truth as we see it? The label ‘abuser’ is descriptive – someone who has abused or abuses others. Of course the abuser is usually also the abused, by someone else. Both victim and perpetrator. Not black and white but grey all the way through I think.


Spyralle I almost missed your post. Yeah! Injustice! A Judge telling a woman who has been raped that she ‘asked for it’ because of her clothing (Judge hates women and sees them as intrinsically guilty for eliciting men’s sexual feelings by just existing?). A child being told “if you weren’t such a bad child, we would have been better parents” (what the heck happened to the child in the parent who said that?).

[miss piggy]

Great thread!

It made me think about when I've broken up with friends.  When I thought I had my top three, you all had great answers and I'd say Oh yeah!!!

1. This is my A #1 turnoff: Double standards of any kind.
IE I listen to your pain, but you don't listen to mine. 
    I do you favors, but you don't do any for me.
    You get to, I don't.

2. Lying
by omission
by commission
by insinuation

3. Not taking responsibility for decisions that are yours to own and usually LYING (see #2) to say how someone screwed you over (to absolve yourself of responsibility by taking the victim stance.)

Any of these will cause me to pull WAY back.  Anger, varying levels of intelligence, varying levels of income, etc. do not scare me away.

Also, as far as the labels of dysfunction, etc., they help me to set expectations of myself for the other person.  If this means be careful, don't trust, or whatever, I can choose if I want to interact or not and take responsibility for that decision.  I do NOT think it is a FREE PASS to afflicted people to get away with hurting others.  Limits must be set and enforced.  One can be compassionate while delivering consequences. 

MP

[Plucky]

Hey Marta,
Hot topic.  Thanks for giving us a place to distill our worst angries.  Here are mine:

1.  Lack of integrity, such as lying.  To me, lying is intentionally creating a false impression.    This can also include cheating, taking undeserved credit, manipulating, etc.
2.  Lack of respect for me.  The worst thing for me is not being listened to, or not being believed, as in being called a liar or just not being paid attention when I am expressing something important.
3.  Use of force to hurt or crush someone weaker.  Abuse of a child could fall under this.  Verbal abuse of adults does.   When I see bullying, it makes my skin crawl.

Guess it's clear where all these must have come from!
Plucky

[amethyst]

Hey Marta,
Hot topic.  Thanks for giving us a place to distill our worst angries.  Here are mine:

1.  Lack of integrity, such as lying.  To me, lying is intentionally creating a false impression.    This can also include cheating, taking undeserved credit, manipulating, etc.
2.  Lack of respect for me.  The worst thing for me is not being listened to, or not being believed, as in being called a liar or just not being paid attention when I am expressing something important.
3.  Use of force to hurt or crush someone weaker.  Abuse of a child could fall under this.  Verbal abuse of adults does.   When I see bullying, it makes my skin crawl.

Guess it's clear where all these must have come from!
Plucky

Hi Plucky, I was just getting ready to post, but you beat me to it. Those are my three triggers.

[d'smom]

ooooo this is interesting...... as i was thinking it made me wonder... how my buttons have changed over time..... and also to wonder, what are the origins of 'buttons'.  im sure we all dislike things we or ones we care about have been personally harmed by. that would make sense.   very interesting.

i probably sound bitter but, i guess i am right now. c'es la vie.


denial....... i cant stand it............. i know we all live in certain amounts of denial for safety.... so i try to respect it in my peers.... but god, i confess, i hate it......i guess this is partly from seeing my mother and her massive denial that let us be victimised.  she was also a big martyr. EWWWWW!!!!!  but i dislike it anywhere becuase it allows people to be hurt and its a form of lying. lying to yourself is even more distasteful than lying to others in a way.  

hypocrisy....... i dont think thats too excusable anywhere........ my family of origin really gave me a great respect for integrity (since none of them had any>)

passive-aggression.....  i hate it when people will or cannot be direct about what upsets them. (so i really love this thread)

conflict-phobia........ im sorry becuase i know a lot here are not comfortable with conflict.....  im not talking about the humans i care about on this list....... but i truly have a hard time with conflict-phobia. again, i grew up with it, it made me sickkkk......!!!!!!!

blaming the victim.... no explanation needed there.........


 
those are what bugs me! now, am i a difficult person for that/????  sorry i went over three. im just DIFFICULT@!!!!!!!! eeeeeekkkkkk