Giving Assent: Appearing to Cave In while Digging in Your Heels
This “okay, okay!” tactic is the disturbed character’s attempt to get you off their back by insinuating that they understand what you are asking and are willing to accede to it while they actually have no intention of changing their stance.
We’ve been discussing a variety of tactics that persons with disturbed characters use to manipulate others. These tactics are behaviors that prevent the disturbed character from internalizing the pro-social values and standards of conduct that would enable them to become a better person.
One of the more difficult to detect tactics is giving assent. This is a favorite tactic of the aggressive personalities. (See “Understanding the Aggressive Personalities” and “Understanding the Aggressive Personalities, Part 2”.) When a person is determined to have his way but is not gaining sway with you because you’ve dared to call them on their aggression and you’re holding your own ground, they might feign the willingness to back-down, back-off, or accede to your call for change. This “okay, okay!” tactic is the disturbed character’s attempt to get you off their back by insinuating that they understand what you are asking and are willing to accede to it while they actually have no intention of changing their stance. The eminent researcher Stanton Samenow pointed out that assenting or false concessioning is a shrewd way to appear cooperative without really meaning it.
For the aggressive personalities, nothing is more distasteful than submitting themselves to anyone or anything. That’s the main reason their lives and the lives around them end up like a shipwreck. Caving-in is so distasteful that the best they will usually muster is a half-hearted or purely superficial assent to what is being asked of them. Anything more than that is too much like surrender. It often takes many long months of artful non-traditional therapy to bring such individuals to the point that they can appreciate that “winning” in the long-run often involves conceding in the short-run.
Providing treatment to aggressive personalities who use the tactic of assent is a real challenge for therapists trained in traditional modalities that advocate that the therapist not adopt an authoritarian but rather an unconditionally accepting stance. What the aggressive personality needs to learn — perhaps more than any other lesson in his life — is to genuinely give-in, give-way, or submit occasionally. So, in the therapeutic encounter, they need to learn how, when, and where to concede. True concession necessarily involves both the recognition of and submission to a higher power or authority. If the therapist is unwilling to facilitate this during the therapeutic encounter, no such learning can take place.
In my early years as a therapist, I avoided the authority position like the plague. Then, after realizing that my character-disturbed patients would probably never improve, I began to allow myself to model, stand-up for, and actively advocate the principles of conduct I knew my patients had to eventually submit to themselves if they were ever to become responsible people. Once I did so, everything began to change.
2 Responses to “Giving Assent as a Manipulation Tactic”
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I’ve been on both sides of this one. I’ve said, “ok, ok” in order to avoid being controlled when my behavior was not, in fact, “bad”. For example, when I pointed out that my husband’s extended lack of employment was no longer acceptable, he became irate and insisted that I “take it back”. I said, “ok, ok.” to avoid further confrontation, which at the time, was too painful for me to deal with.
On the other hand, when dealing with my mother who I believe to be narcissistic (I’m just a psych student, not qualified to diagnose so take that with a grain of salt), she has said, “ok, ok” when I’ve confronted her on her lack of protection from my physically abusive father. She’s said, “ok, I was a horrible mother, are you happy?”. While there is nothing she can do about it now, her “ok, ok” was still similar in that she wanted to appease me by pretending to admit to something that she does not truly believe.
Hi So much more than a mom,
That “ok, I was a horrible mother, are you happy?” sounds pretty much like a manipulation tactic to make you feel guilty, especially the “are you happy?” part.
The “ok, ok” thing could be well translated as “don’t break my patience,” “I really don’t care what you think,” or “give me a break, will you?” – Just to name a few, actually the list can be longer…
I felt tempted to say “ok, ok” many times, and probably did at some point, but I usually sigh, take a deep breath, count till ten or stuff like that, especially when I come accross obssessive people who just love to be always right or are fond of playing the blame game.
Confrontation works well when people know (at least deep inside) that they are manipulating others, but when their mental health issues go beyond being aware of what they are doing, it can be pretty draining and a waste of time. The problem is how do we know if a person really does not realize what they are doing… Big task there, and it can be kind of stressful sometimes, too. And, maybe that’s when we are more tempted to “yeah yeah” others in an effort of getting them off our backs (yep).