CHANGING TIT FOR TAT: HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR POWER

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We often want to retaliate and give people a dose of what they’ve given us, but this does not maintain our power. When you experience chaos, lies, distortions of what you’re doing, accusations, and mind games, of course, you want to stand up for yourself. Though it may feel satisfying to poke back at them, that is usually short-lived. Either our consciences catch up with us or we decide the payback we receive in turn isn’t worth it.

Before looking at how to maintain your power, consider this reality. Coercive controllers have personality characteristics that permit them to go to any lengths to get what they want or to take revenge. They may even have personality disorders. In any case, their behavior is deeply ingrained and perfected. My question is, do you really want to mimic it? We all feel tempted to give it back, but we’ll never win that game. And it’s likely that we’ll confuse the issue for other people whose support we need.  

That is the first reason not to engage in vengeful behavior. We don’t want to condone their behavior by participating in it. Before we get to other reasons, let’s cover starters for maintaining your power.    

Mental Prep for Maintaining Your Power

First of all, don’t take responsibility for how they are acting. Not your circus, not your monkeys. They choose what they do, no matter how much they blame you or others.  

Second, if you’re not happy with how you’ve reacted in the past, you can be accountable by working on that now. Hopefully this blog will help you not retaliate in the future.

Third, be compassionate with yourself. All of us say things we later regret. When you’re learning anew to stand up for yourself, you often begin by making what I call “assertive mistakes.” The atmosphere you’ve been living in has been conducive to learning aggression. First attempts at assertiveness sometimes gets tinged with this. Be gentle with yourself about the past and at the same time, rigorous in learning new strategies.

Fourth, feeling anger, frustration, and hurt are natural responses. You’ve probably gotten many messages from your intimate partner that you’re not okay when you express any of these. Emotions are not good or bad; they tell us to attend to something. We’re now going to learn to attend with strategies that empower you in standing up for yourself.

Respond Instead of React

When you feel attacked, you can easily fall into retaliating. This gets in the way of maintaining your power. With coercive controllers, impulsive reactions cause you to lose power. They are often good at provoking this kind of response. When you engage with them by attacking, they will always up the ante. Since you don’t really want to be abusive, this is a losing strategy.

As part of protecting yourself, you may fall into becoming defensive. This usually leads to being drawn into their tirades, and it’s very draining.

The winning strategy is to respond rather than react or retaliate. Responses come after you have thought it through and decided on what to say or do. Reactions are knee jerk replies to their provocations. In order to respond, you have to learn to pause before you reply. It’s often helpful to take some time drafting a response, something that is easier with email or text. However, you can also tell them that you’ll let them know later and specify the time.

If the person is goading, it’s often best to ignore. Just remind yourself that ignoring isn’t giving them permission. It’s simply not giving them fuel. When you don’t waste your time and energy, you maintain your power.

Acceptance

Okay, next step is accepting what is. In this case, abusive or coercive behavior. Here is what acceptance means:

  • Facing factual reality; it is what it is. It’s rainy as I write this; no amount of wishing will make it a sunny day. We often cause ourselves more suffering by fighting against what is.
  • Acknowledging what you can’t change and letting go of the other person or situation changing.
  • Seeing people for the totality of who they are, not just what we like about them.
  • Recognizing unfairness and injustice and finding ways to empower ourselves against it.

Acceptance is NOT saying you approve, agree, or are okay with something. It isn’t forgiveness and it’s not forgetting or pretending it didn’t occur. It is also not making excuses for someone.

How to Pause

To maintain your power, you have to get past your emotional reaction and access your inner wisdom. Sometimes you may think you’re short on that, but when you pause, you often are able to reach deep inside yourself. Coming from an emotional reaction, we generally slip into old habits. Taking time helps us remember inspiration, wisdom, and techniques you’ve learned. With practice, they become second nature.

Let’s examine ways to ground yourself so that you can pause productively. Use any that work for you.

  • Prayer
  • Meditation
  • Minfulness
  • Yoga
  • Journaling

I’ve also found another method that resonates for many people, even those that have trouble with quieting their minds.

HeartMath[i] has a three-step process that can quickly shift your mental state from one of emotional re-activeness to calmness and perspective. The steps are:

  1. Focus on your breath, feeling its intake and outtake and the sensations in your nose and chest.
  2. Bring your attention to your heart, placing your hand over it. Imagine as you continue to breathe that it’s going through your heart.
  3. After noticing these sensations a few seconds or minute, focus on something that you completely appreciate. It can be a person, an animal, a place, or an experience. Remain focused on your gratitude as if you are with that experience, person, or animal now.
  4. After at least a couple of minutes, ask your heart a question, such as “What is the best way for me to respond?” Stay quiet and wait for a response. Often we get one right away, but sometimes we don’t. Be patient and see what comes later.

You can alter the question to fit your situation, such as “What do I need to know?” The HeartMath Institute has much more detailed information. Consider checking out their web site and books.

Responses for Difficult People

When you’ve accessed that calm place inside you, you’re better able to think about how to respond in the most constructive way. If you need assistance with this, consider a therapist or advocate.

Dealing with what Bill Eddy calls “people who can ruin your life” requires practice and patience. He advises using BIFF[ii] to respond in effective ways and avoid falling into their traps. It involves being:

  • Brief—Keep it short and to the point. Don’t explain and justify.
  • Informative—Give information needed for the issue.
  • Friendly—Think of this as on the neutral side of friendly, not trying to be friends but not hostile.
  • Firm—Stick to your perspective; don’t water it down with things like, “if it’s okay with you.”

Eddy goes into more depth on how to do this, so I encourage taking a look at his work.

Adding tools such as these replaces powerlessness with maintaining your power over your life. That doesn’t mean abusive individuals won’t continue to introduce chaos, but you will feel better able to navigate it.

An added bonus is feeling empowered, strong, and like you are the person you want to be.

[i] Doc Childre, and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution (New York: HarperCollins, 1999) This is a good introduction to HeartMath. The HeartMath Institute publishes many other books tailored for things like depression, anxiety, and stress. https://www.heartmath.org/

[ii] Bill Eddy has several books that address this: BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People (Scottsdale, AZ: Unhooked Books, 2011); Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2011); and 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life: Identifying and Dealing with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other High-Conflict Personalities (New York: A TarcherPerigree Book, 2018) The High Conflict Institute web site contains helpful information also.  webhttps://www.highconflictinstitute.com/biff-responses