I've been thinking of putting up a post about pattern recognition, since this ability is crucial to identifying and avoiding abuse situations. After thinking about the effects of abuse on memory, though, I think it might be more useful to simply list some of the games instead.
Caveat Lector - reader beware - I haven't pulled any punches. However, I know that the tendency to play games is a part of all people, myself included. I am examining my own patterns to see what I can do to be more authentic and less gamey in my own interactions. I can see quite clearly that some of these items apply to me. I intend to address that, beginning immediately.
Rules To Make Others Livid By
1. Speak in a manner that is deliberately calculated to give offense to a specific hearer. When that hearer takes offense, respond like an unjustly accused innocent, while simultaneously doing everything you can to escalate the conflict.
2. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
3. Watch those you dislike for any opportunities to 'take off' on them. Leap into their conversations from nowhere, armed with rebukes and putdowns. When they call you on this, burst into tears and tell everyone what a hard life you have and how mean this person is to you.
4. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
5. Speak lucidly and calmly about issues at times, including extremely sensitive and delicate ones. Then, unpredictably, blow up in people's faces like Mt. St. Helen. This is most effective when the people you blow up at were directing their remarks to someone else entirely [see 3.] and when there is nothing in their remarks that any objective person could see as offensive.
6. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
7. When someone you dislike is ill and admits to it, 'label' them as mentally or cognitively compromised whenever they don't feel well. Then, in the future, when they express any strong feeling, ask with transparently false concern whether they are feeling all right. When they actively request support, however, withhold it. Simultaneously, express great concern and care for those you like, when they are ill. Use this as a 'ricochet transaction' to communicate your dislike of the first person to all onlookers.
8. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
9. Always insist that everything is relative. Unless you happen to be reacting emotionally to it, in which case it is absolutely not relative, and your interpretation is the only correct one.
10. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
11. When your targeted antagonist refuses to play the game any longer and stops engaging with you, accuse them of 'posting and running' [or 'slapping and running', if their last post was uncomfortably 'on target']. This will discredit them, and obscure the fact that they disengaged because they realized there was no good will on your part and therefore nothing to salvage - or simply because they got tired of spinning their wheels, and had other things to do. It will also draw them back into the conflict and allow you to continue consuming their time and energy, since it 'hooks' their pride, their need to be seen accurately by others.
12. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
13. Send double messages. Tell someone you don't intend to respond to them anymore, then respond immediately to their next remark. Tell someone you want to understand them, then refuse to hear their explanations. Tell someone you forgive them, then find some aspect of the supposedly settled conflict to throw at them to rekindle it.
14. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
15. Speak critically of those who address these issues openly and directly. Simultaneously, yearn aloud for healing in your own life and heart.
16. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
17. Insist that you hold no grudges, but pursue those you dislike relentlessly.
18. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
19. Never face the fact that maybe you just don't like someone, and maybe they just don't like you, and maybe you'll never really know why, and maybe the only sensible and grownup thing to do about it is for both of you just to let it be.
20. Never look inward, accept responsibility or take accountability for your own actions.
