Are you a puppet or a puppeteer - Playing the victim

There are no two kinds of manipulators, only one kind – the kind who plays the victim. It is incredibly hard to spot them, because they appear so much like real victims.

  At times even they are unaware about their poisonous skills, but they take pride in achieving their goals. They always work with the end in mind  - one of Stephen Covey’s seven effective habits. Every little action, often done slowly and steadily takes them closer to their ultimate goal– to extract something from someone.

  "Playing the victim" type of manipulation involves the manipulator telling the actual victim that he feels guilty about the bad things he did, although he will continue to do the bad thing, and constantly crib and repeat how guilty he feels for doing that.

 For eg: He will tell you that he had a poor upbringing, bad relatives and a difficult life all along- the reason why he is taking drugs or the reason why he did that terrible thing to a friend.You get hooked because his troubles are much worse than yours. 

  You feel bad for him, nothing wrong, it is only human nature to feel bad and sympathize when you hear a sad story. But often their stories are not true, or they are embellished versions of a small incident, or a stroy borrowed from a real sufferer.

 In reality the manipulator feels very little to zero guilt, but the actual victim feels sorry for the manipulator, thinking that the manipulator is the victim. The actual victim slowly falls for the whims of the manipulator, the web of the manipulator grows slowly and steadily. He will take things slowly, never rush you into things, and probably behave in an admirable way at unexpected situations. 

  That way he builds a sense of awe and in turn develop the most important trait of a manipulator - credibility. Rarely do we associate credibility with a manipulator, as a converse anyone with credibility has even fewer association with manipulator. That's the strength of a master manipulator, and that makes him very difficult to spot.

 Once the credibility is achieved, he will begin his manipulation with a renewed vigor, by this time the victim has reached a level of hypnosis - the inertia moves the victim forward. 

  As with Newton's First law, without an external force - a third person or an awareness about such manipulators, the victim continues to remain in the grips of the manipulator. The only exception is the completion of the goals of the manipulator. 

  At that instant, the victim is unceremoniously dropped out , and often ostracized by the manipulator. The victim continues to be in dark about what had happened.     

This is from one of the case studies

This is about a man who had actively participated with two others in the vicious bludgeoning of his victim. When questioned about the motivation for his act, he complained that he had no idea how the vivid memories of the event had haunted him and that he would probably have to live with them for the rest of his life. 

 All of a sudden, don't you feel tempted to feel somewhat sorry for him. Here he was, a vicious killer with a long history of cruelty to others, and he was beginning to appear as a victim of post-traumatic stress. 

That's playing victim. Only a very experienced manipulator can pull it off. And some of us might have even played it at a very innocent level.

  When the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other person to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim.

Have you met anyone like that? 

Case study reference:

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/03/16/playing-the-victim/

What happened to your new year resolution?

In an earlier post, I had proposed to write more about why we fail to follow up on our New year resolutions.

  There are three kinds of people when it comes to resolutions: The first kind who still believe in resolutions, the second kind who stopped believing in resolutions because it didn't work out for them, and the third lucky group who probably wouldn't read this blog - those disciplined kind with enough self-control to achieve their resolutions. I’m definitely not in the third group.

 Now what has self-control got to do with resolutions?

  When resolutions are made, they are often in different realms, like doing more exercise and following a new diet plan. You might think there is a connection between exercise and a diet plan. Yes there is, but a Big No when it comes to resolutions. Often two or more resolutions are packaged as if it is a combo meal at McDonalds.

  You say, ‘A veg burger please’

  The vendor says, ‘ Do you want Pepsi?’

  You reply, ‘Ya, a Pepsi too.’

  ‘Sir, shall I make it into a combo? ’

  Without thinking much, you say, ‘Okay, Combo then.’

There you go, you went there to take a Burger, and finally ended up raking a lot more calories.  That’s how resolutions are made, one sticking on to the other. You are better served if you had struck to just the Veg Burger, so is with resolution, it is better to stick with just one resolution at a time.

What happens when you have more than one objective?

  Let’s say you start your day with some exercise early in the morning. As long as exercise is not a habit, you are exercising considerable amount of self-control to get up early in the morning and go for that jog. It is a different matter when it becomes second nature.

  Let’s say you have 100 self –control points in your kitty, and as you exercise, it comes down to 50 in one hour. Then you've to follow the diet, the diet is new for you, and there are some bland items on the menu. There you need some self–control again to stick to the tough new regimen. But you are not fresh, and your self-control score is on the wane. The waning self-control is a big bane, and that tempts you to drop your diet plan altogether. And that creates a ripple effect, your confidence on the other resolutions are affected, and eventually affect the attempts of developing the exercise routine. In the end, all the resolutions come down flat on your face, and you wait till the end of December to make your next plan.

So what’s the way to tackle this?

  The best way to handle the problem of waning self-control is to take just one resolution at a time. By having just one resolution or one objective at a time, you are allowing optimal consumption of self-control. When I say one objective, I mean one clear objective across different facets of your life, personal and professional.

  Even a tough deadline at office is going to impact the process of building a new habit, because even that takes up a lot of energy – in turn self-control and that means a lower self-control score. This is because, we have only a certain amount of self-control (Say 100) and the self-control score changes based on the activity you perform. (When does your self-control score reset to the highest value? That’s for another day.)

  Agreed we cannot control every external factor, especially when it is a professional commitment. Knowing that the external factors interrupt our good effort, it is only prudent to decide the execution time of your resolution; the new resolution need not be a New year resolution.

  For a successful resolution, we need to choose the most comfortable time, and assign the highest priority to it, no matter what. Awareness on how mundane chores impact your important habit-building activities will go a long way in overcoming the obstacles on the way.

 Go try this at home! Come back with success your story, Good luck.

Ordinary people; extraordinary obedience

  
  Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority" (Milgram, 1974) 

   Milgram's experiment attempts to explain why reasonable people do unreasonable, irrational things when instructed by an authority. Would we, ordinary people, doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on our part, kill thousands of people in a war situation? Especially if prodded by a charismatic leader? Milgram says yes, there is a good chance that we'll end up doing things beyond our imagination if ordered by someone in authority.  

  Although obedience to authority is a watered down answer to how leaders managed to persuade followers to perform heinous crimes without an iota of guilt, the hard question remains why would someone consider such leaders as an authority? How did such leaders manage to prevent an internal uprising among educated individuals?

 A German movie, The wave has some interesting answers to questions on authority and autocratic leadership. Although the leader is the initiator of a movement, the followers are the ones who keeps it alive, they are the ones who make the thought of a leader into a full fledged movement. 

  Just like the greed of the leader, the followers become addicted to the movement, they believe that the movement is bigger than them, and they begin to identify themselves as a part of an elite group focused on a unique goal. In the process, they lose their own identity - they are thinking for the group - they are more worried about the so-called greater good than themselves.  

   In fact, we don't have to travel back to the past. There is no dearth of charismatic leaders’ closer home, occupying the front pages of national newspapers and primetime hours of the TRP hungry TV channels. How did they achieve such strong followers even while their leadership style is far from the ideals of democracy? 

  Will we do it again if there is another audacious authority? You mock me; you think such audacious authorities are a thing of the past. Wait for a moment, think about this. 

  History is full of repetitions, full of charismatic leaders, who thought they were entitled to everything, who thought greed was natural, but none of them lived forever, they fell for their own charm. They may be long dead but their crimes still lives in the pages of history books; some printed, some never printed. Some proven, some unproven. 

   The obedience to authority, unswerving obedience to authority has stood the test of time, and nothing has happened in the recent past to indicate a different future.