Doing It

Not as racy a section as you might be expecting but an explanation of the difficulties I sometimes face in getting people to look at their responses when locked into a "gamey" relationship.

Over the years I’ve come across lots of clients who find it difficult to make changes in “gamey” relationships.

The problem for me is that I’m consulted most often by “Victims” almost never by “Persecutors” - unless they’ve been sent by a despairing spouse and then those sessions are almost always odd as the persecutor attempts to manipulate me.

What most victims want isn’t to liberate themselves out of the relationship but to live in harmony with their persecutor.

They’ve often been on a variety of “happy pills” and still found it hard to tolerate the intolerable behaviour of their persecutor.

Most victims would simply like their persecutors to stop manipulating and bullying them.

That’s where it gets difficult for me; trying to get it across that they can only change their own behaviour in reaction to manipulation - whether or not their persecutor changes his or hers is not within your control. For some this must be very scary or maybe just hard to grasp it’s certainly not complicated - you simply stay with the top shot.

One analogy I use is that many manipulative shots are like an invitation to put your fingers into a mangle - like the one your granny had in the back yard.

Usually, you’ve been so used to picking up on the implied message that you instantly respond inwardly by getting cross or sulking or outwardly by calling the unsaid message out - either way you lose.

When I ask what might have been their response to the top shot, I’ve never known anyone not come up with a reply that would have stopped the game in its tracks.

Don’t read this as me saying its easy its not but neither is it complicated. Once you change your responses your persecutor will have to change his or her behaviour. Their initial response may be confusion and often an escalation of the gamey behaviour - you simply stay with the top shot. He or she may ask why you are being so cocky. Again, you keep your fingers out of the wringer and ask, “In what sense cocky?” a reasonable enquiry that to them, would confirm your “cockyness” but avoids getting into an “Oh no I’m not,” “Oh yes you are cycle.”

The problem with this “simple but difficult” pitch is that what’s scary for my client is that the outcome can’t be predetermined. Remember what most of them want is to live in harmony with their changed persecutor.

After a relationship has got stuck in a persecutor - victim cycle it’s perhaps too simplistic on my part to expect my clients to give up on wanting their persecutor to see the world through their eyes and just treat them with respect. My clients often feel they want to explain it all to their persecutors.

Always keep in mind, the persecutor hasn’t got a problem - they’ve got a solution to their difficulties with intimacy - they manipulate something resembling it. You - the victim have a problem.

Stay with the top shot and you’ve solved your problem. They may in response to the change that you’ve made take a chance with intimacy.