I agree with most of your points. One has to account and correct themself for their behaviour. This will reap a true benefit to self and others. I have undergone lot of stress and panic in past two year and real cause of these is fear. This is very distructive as you never imagine (which is created by ourself). Once we realise this , change is possible. I have confronted with people (and also apologized for my own behaviour) I had problem with but I have been pushed and made a scape goat.Most people when confronted dont either accept or not aware of their own behaviour when pointed out. Even during the discussion all old situations has been pointed out which are irrelavant to that situation. People have been politely harsh to me.I have been asked by partner to keep quite to resolve the situation. But does that solve problem?

I didnt let it bother me (for long time) and now taking help to develop myself rather than concentrating on others behaviour. When these others are close family it will be difficult and we need to draw a boundary.

Hopefully all my problem will be answered very soon.Im greatful for you time and effort to bring awareness to the people.

Vidhya

Past actions may not totally dictate future actions, but as you say, it’s all we’ve got and it gives a huge hint as to what is going on underneath. I just didn’t want to believe.

Yes, I know what you mean. As for the presumption that there’s always a set of underlying causes to behavior, I agree but our latest research is telling us we must be very careful about some of our more traditional assumptions (e.g., the psychopathic killer was probably unloved as a child) and what some of those assumptions prompt us to believe that those causes might be. As we know from the central tenets of CBT, what we believe influences how we act, no matter how aware we are of the connection. So, as I mentioned before, the most common therapist errors are core beliefs that bias perception and sometime even cloud awareness and judgment to the most subtle kinds of abuse and character disturbance, and sometimes a misinterpretation of what appear to be the dynamics of an abusive situation that is not open, obvious, or intense. Certainly no decent therapist I know would condone obvious mistreatment or deliberately instruct their victim clients to respond in a manner that condones the behavior, either. Can’t say I haven’t seen some egregious cases, though…………

I think I was confusing different issues – how therapists are likely to treat individual clients who are victims of abuse/manipulation and how they might treat the disturbed characters themselves. I remain convinced that your average individual therapist faced with a client who is being abused will not call upon psychological theory to convince the client to feel sorry for their abuser. When faced with someone who uses these abusive strategies themselves, therapists might be more likely to try and ‘understand’. But as you have pointed out, if I remember rightly, a ‘disturbed character’ is extremely unlikely to be genuinely in therapy at all.

As far as the labelling during case consultations is concerned, I take a kind of pragmatic view – I do believe that most behaviour is ’caused by’ something, but that is neither here nor there when dealing with abuse right in front of me. Even if I know a psychopathic killer received no love in his childhood, this has no bearing on how he should be sentenced or how his victims’ families should be treated….do you know what I mean?

George – you know I think that the kind of “psychological theory” that pervades some cultures with the idea that we are all well meaning neurotics, has less influence on how counsellors and psychologists work with clients than you seem to be assuming here… I think *some* therapists may indeed try to understand their clients by bending over backwards to find reasons for their behaviour, but I haven’t yet heard of a counsellor who, faced with a client who was suffering in an abusive relationship, advised them to try and understand the other person better…

For example, I confronted my sister about a left-handed compliment she paid me in an e-mail to someone I referred her to professionally. My professional contact felt insulted by the insult to me, because she was only helping my sister as a favor to me. Anyway, I confronted my sister and she gave me the silent treatment for 6 months, even after I got in an apology about not handling the confrontation diplomatically–instead of talking about my feelings of hurt and embarrassment, I merely took my sister to task. Anyway, I sent my sister a heartfelt letter about this, telling her the silent treatment had to end: that I didn’t deserve it and that she was not worthy of it. The note also said that I loved her and missed her and wanted to work things out. She responded to this with phone call demeaning my note as “Melodramatic” saying she didn’t give me the silent treatment for the last 2 of the 6 months–that she didn’t return my post-apology phone call simply because she was too busy. She also said that she felt justified in “Using any method necessary.” I felt queasy, like I literally couldn’t stomach what my sister was saying and what it meant about our relationship. I froze, felt shocked and stunned and got off the phone as fast as possible. It was an eye opener and I knew then things were terribly wrong: this was toxic behavior.

Reading your book, IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING, was a revelation. Thank you so much. Your book (and this web site) talked about trusting your gut feelings and explained the manipulative tactics used by covert- aggressive personalities. I will practice using your empowerment techniques because we have a family gathering coming up and there’s no way to avoid my covert-aggressive sister.

Also, I’m going to tell my mother about these empowerment techniques and your book, because my step dad is unleashing his whole arsenal of manipulative tactics on her after Mom confronted him about his recent affair–denial, demeaning her, outright lying, minimizing, making himself out to be the victim, making her out to be the bad guy, etc. And his tactics seem to be working.

Are there any other suggestions you have about empowerment? Do you have suggestions about how I can help my mother?

Thanks