I'm interrupting a conversation and feel like a boor because this will break the flow.
but I will feel like even more of a boor if I go much longer without saying thank you - tracks and Ami and besee and Pennyplant.
And responding.
tracks,
. I don't like how strident I get, but I
really don't like how I have been treated here - at times - by some. There is an excellent ancient post about 'the calm abuser' that resonates completely with what I believe I've experienced. Whoever this was, I sure wish they were here now. Emphasis below is mine.
From 'trolls and choices', Reply #9 on: November 22, 2004, 01.27.25 AM. Poster: Anonymous [guest].
yes there are trolls and in addition, finger pointing trolls as well.
there are also moles.
be careful of people who try to win your confidence unnecessarily. Do not become emotionally invested in any one poster. Look for consistency in their stories and attitudes and commitment to growth. If they seem committed to conflict, steer clear.
Instead, build your own intuition about what is emotionally safe for you. Invest in the process of this board. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which are the many voices here to speak truly about their own experiences.
we are not here to build alliances or coalitions but to speak and witness truth about bullying behavior. (hold the semantics about truth for now please.)
Remember that anger is not the same as abuse. It's all in how you express it and deal with it that makes the difference. An abuser will convince you that getting angry and/or holding them accountable is abuse. It isn't.
Name-calling, insults, etc is verbal abuse. We've all done in once in a while in a moment of weakness but when it is a hallmark of someone's communication style, it is abuse.
Keeping one's cool is not necessarily a sign of a nonabuser. There are the kinds of abusers who never get angry and can successfully drive their partner(s) to madness. The madness is only the effect. The abuser's cold cruelty is the cause. Invalidation is only one technique of the calm abuser.
Abusers do not change. Their behavior in controlling you is too rewarding to give up in exchange for your health.
Focus on growth, not on controlling games or drama.
A Troll Survivor
I just refuse, any more, to be held to high standards by people who are unwilling or unable to meet those standards in their treatment of me. I'm going to set my own standards for that type of interaction henceforth. Since I am still a novice at this, I'm going to be rough at first. I will improve with practice. And I'm never going back to where I was.
Ami... you go, girl.
besee, the post you asked about disappeared because the thread was deleted and then reposted by the author, in order to eliminate my posting. Same thing happened with a thread from another poster, about a colleague being self destructive. I thought the person starting that thread did something very destructive to that colleague, intentionally, and was being disingenuous about the situation [IMO]. I was rather blunt about it, because I've seen too much of that type of behavior in my own workplaces.
Making a challenger's thoughts disappear in this fashion "resolves" the challenge without having to actually address the issue they have raised.
That being said, I have accepted what is. I was
definitely blunt. Specific. Explicit. Affect-laden... and intimidating. And, people have a right to their turf. And it's important to know who thinks of what as 'turf'. 'Turf' isn't open space. Turf is closed space, and it's unsafe to think that someone is psychologically open in areas where they are actually closed.
I got turf, too. I've pulled threads when it looked as though they were going down in flames and the whole point of them was going to be lost... so Rosie O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady are sisters under the skin. And a year or more ago, I locked a thread because someone whom I thought - my opinion - entirely mine - was here mainly to be argumentative for kicks, was hassling me, and I wanted to share a controversial idea without its being, um, diluted/diverted. Locked a couple recently, too, but can't remember which ones off the bat.
Difference is, IMO, I knew I was shielding turf. Felt conflicted but it seemed like the best of several bad options.
And I try not to get sucked into donnybrooks, when I feel that the objective is to fight, to have High Drama, rather than to understand or resolve anything. That refusal to engage will certainly look like calm abusing to the other party involved if they don't realize what the dynamics actually are. Which is more often than not the case - who would continue going after drama for drama's sake if they knew that's what the driving force was? [Assuming of course that I figured the dynamics out properly myself!]
Thing is, there's drama and karpman krap, and then there's conflicts and genuine differences in values, and it can seem very relative and subjective trying to sort out which is which. You look at history and how people react to things, and do the best you can with what you know.
Pennyplant...
why do we have to seem so good? How do we maintain a truer balance? How do we admit to things without it all falling apart? I see this in everyday life too. When someone is in trouble, or causing trouble, or being unbearable, the other people just want it to stop. They'll do anything to make it stop. They'll even say, I don't care anymore, just make it stop, give her what she wants, I don't want to hear it anymore.
It's a paradox. Jung said it very elegantly - neurosis is a substitute for
legitimate suffering. What happens so often, so often, in good therapy [sadly rare, good therapy] is that people come into it certain that they'll be utterly destroyed if they face the thing they fear, whatever it is, the sick secret as they say in ACOA. But as they learn to trust their T, the T becomes a sort of surrogate, safe parent. And then the Thing is faced -
and -
my God. Not only don't they fall apart, but actually, all kinds of garbage falls off, instead. It's a cleansing. A liberation. It may come with tears, but it doesn't usually come with the awful things - the longing to die, the endless replaying of horrible relationships, the need for substances or addictive processes, etc. - that the refusal to face The Thing has been causing
all their lives. But instead, we're so afraid of boogeymen that we prefer to spend our lives trapped in the tombs with werewolves and vampires. Giving away everything and anything, just to appease Ns and bullies, who of course cannot be appeased, and never get enough.
And will you look at that. This has come back around to where it belongs. To you, and beth...!!!!
Here's lookin' at you[r posts], kid.
