Provoking and Gaslighting

A few posts back, I commented on how a young relative would post things to provoke other people on social media, and then he would act bewildered that they were angry. He was doing this again, and I saw that he was gaslighting the other people, lying and saying he had never said things that you could clearly see he did say further up the conversation, and telling them they were the ones with the problem. I told him he should knock it off, and then he began gaslighting me, so I defriended him. Then I had a blinding insight: this is exactly how his father acts, and his mother before him. It’s so pervasive in our family that I had grown up thinking it was normal until seeing it done to other people on social media. Is this a mental illness of some sort? It seems maladaptive, because people don’t like being intentionally provoked, and so most people avoid these relatives of mine. Family might feel like they have to stick by their side (and as a minor child, I had no choice but to take the abuse), but friends do not like being belittled, told they’re too sensitive, or that they can’t take a joke. These people all complain about how they have no friends, and they really haven’t been too successful in the workaday world either. So why do they do it? It may work for the rare person (see: the current occupant of the White House), but most bosses and coworkers would not put up with this nonsense. I cut off a person who wanted to be my friend when she started showing this behavior. It does not seem like a path to success, so why would people indulge in this behavior? Is it genetic? Or is it learned? And is there any cure for it? And the biggest question of all: why are so many of these people on social media? They even have a name for them: “trolls.” I’m sure there’s a more scientific name for the problem. But how do we solve it?

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My Effect on You

I once had a coworker who told me that when her son was young, he came home from school one day crying his eyes out. She asked what was wrong, and he said the other kids had been yelling at him. She asked what they were yelling, thinking they were making fun of him, but he said they were yelling: “Stop!” Puzzled, she asked why they would yell that at him, and he said because he was poking them with a pencil. This story fascinated me, because I think I was much like that as a child: completely unaware of my effect on others and hurt by their reactions to me. Maybe not so extreme that I was physically wounding them, but I probably said mean things and then was devastated that they said mean things back to me.

This got me to thinking. I know adults who still seem to act like this: they will do something really cruel to you and then be honestly puzzled that you avoid them or get angry. The people who seem to be the most successful in life are those who are keenly aware of their effect on others, because they know how to have a good effect and therefore get what they want from others. People who have no awareness of their effect on others bumble along and then wonder why the world is out to get them. I have worked very hard to become aware of the effect of my behavior on other people, and I have seen a change in the way they react to me, but for a lot of people this seems to come naturally, while other people seem completely incapable of learning the lesson. I wonder why that is?

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Blast from the Past

Last night a guy came to town whom I hadn’t seen in many years. I wouldn’t call him a friend, since at the time we did not like each other, but he was definitely more than an acquaintance. I did not really want to see him, but Rich said he thought I should join them for dinner, and it was great! It is amazing how much time changes people; this guy was not the blowhard I remember, but to be fair I have changed quite a bit too – for the better, I like to think! – and maybe he was pleasanter to me because I was pleasanter to him. Is “pleasanter” even a word? Spellcheck has no problem with it. Sometimes I get a little sad thinking about what a pain I was twenty years ago, and even though it wasn’t entirely my fault, I hate remembering how I acted. Maybe this guy feels the same way. Maybe we are just all jerks in our twenties and we all grow up and become wonderful people, although Tiffy was not a jerk in her twenties, and I didn’t know Rich when he was in his twenties but he was surely not a jerk either. Maybe some of us are just slow to grow up, but now that we are middle-aged we are finally not so bad to be around. Ah, maturity!

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In Tears

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and I will have to miss part of Irish class to go to Mass. I could have gone to the vigil Mass last night but was way too tired after working late, so this is the price I pay for my laziness. Hopefully Mass is somewhat brief so that I can actually get to Irish class before it is completely over! Speaking of laziness, last night Travalon and I did not go swimming (so I walked in place for an hour while watching Downton Abbey), and this morning I did not get up in time to run. Rich just sent an email that he is going to UGGH Club tomorrow morning, but that is undoubtedly at 6 am, and sorry, I just can’t do that. Hopefully Travalon and I can get ourselves to the health club tonight…

I have nothing in particular to blog about today, so let me tell all my readers what a dork I am – I was so excited when the Holiday Train arrived that I cried a little bit. Other things that reliably make me cry, but not in an unhappy way, are Tavener’s “The Lamb” and the part of our wedding video where Travalon and I are exchanging our vows. (Although I did not cry at the time, but maybe a little bit when the priest presented us at the end of the Mass as the “New Mr. and Mrs. Travalon.”) I even cried a little bit on New Year’s Day when the Badgers won the Outback Bowl and on Christmas Eve during “Silent Night,” which is not even a carol I particularly like. Believe me, it is not hard for me to cry at something sad, but what makes a person cry for joy? Am I getting more tearful as I get older? Perhaps everyone gets more sentimental with the march of time. Feel free to tell me in the comments if you cry more easily now than when you were younger.

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Does This Post Make Me Look Fat?

I have been oversensitive lately. I sent an email from a coworker to Light Bright and asked if she thought it was snippy. She said yes, but now she regrets backing me up on that because I think everyone is being snippy to me. She says she is going to make a sign and attach it to the back of her chair that says: “You are being oversensitive!” and if I ask if I am being too sensitive about something someone says, she is going to point to the sign. Light Bright says I should say a quick Hail Mary to myself if someone says something to make me feel bad, so if you say something to me and I close my eyes for a moment and don’t reply, you just made me fee bad.

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The Late-Blooming Flower

Good news: I did manage to bike to work at least once during Bike to Work Week, and that was this morning. Monday was rainy and yesterday was freezing, but today I woke up to sunshine and a phone call from Hardingfele: "Ready to bike?" So we boke to work! (Richard Bonomo insists the verb to bike is conjugated like this: bike, boke, boken. Makes sense to me.)

Emotional maturity has always been a fascinating topic for me, since unlike most people I have been able to watch mine unfold. The average person started maturing emotionally the day he was born, so the process is probably lost to the fuzzy recesses of childhood memory. (With the exception of Rich, who insists he has prenatal memories.) However, I had no emotional development whatsoever until taking a medication for Attention Deficit Disorder, which must have flipped some kind of switch in my brain. Another thing it did was give me depth perception, which I had never had before; when people used to talk about 3-D movies, I had no idea what they were talking about, since to me the movies were no different than real life: flat.

Since the clock started somewhat later for me, and things seem to be unfolding in real time, that means that I went through the stages of emotional development when I was old enough to remember, if not understand. (It took me quite awhile to figure out what was going on!) At this point I am in my late teens emotionally, which means I don't stand out much from my peers. Back when I was in my early twenties with all the emotional maturity of a toddler, that was definitely annoying to people! I can illustrate with a simple example:

Say a friend (I'll pick on Tiffy) is walking through the woods with me in the spring. First she will take a walk with pre-maturity me. We see some pretty white flowers, and she says, "Those are trilliums. My sister has them near her house." The fact of the matter is that they are May apples. The pre-maturity me would think only of how she had the facts wrong.

Pre-Mature Me: "No, those are May apples." (in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that probably comes across as snotty)

Would this response please anyone? I think not. Tiffy put up with a lot of that from me back in the day, but it drove everyone else crazy, and I was not what you would call popular. Then the maturing process began, and had the scenario happened when I was at the emotional age of twelve, I would have weighed the importance of the facts against Tiffy's feelings and tried to compromise by striking a conciliatory tone:

Half Mature Me: "I think maybe, and I could be wrong, but those could be May apples." (in a highly apologetic tone of voice)

Is this any improvement? Undoubtedly, yes, but it makes me sound weak and vacillating. If this exchange happened today I would weigh the possibility of Tiffy's future embarrassment at misidentifying May apples against the present reality of embarrassing her over her mistake, and I would probably conclude that on the grand scale of things, this is a highly unimportant matter. After all, trilliums do look quite a bit like May apples, and the likelihood that she would later embarrass herself at a cocktail party in front of the company president is slim to none. Now I would probably offer a noncommittal answer along these lines:

Mature Me: "They sure are beautiful." (in an admiring tone of voice)

There. That doesn't say I agree with her, so if she knows me well (as Tiffy does), it opens up the possibility for her to ask me what I think they are. (In matters botanical, Tiffy almost always defers to me.) However, if she doesn't notice that I have not backed up her identification of the flowers, all she hears is an agreeable statement from me that the flowers in question are lovely.

While this may not be the most mature tack (after all, I'm only at prom age, not voting age emotionally), I certainly think it is an improvement, and I have noticed a difference in the reactions of the people around me. What I really wish is that everyone who has the same deficits I had could also have that switch flipped. It is very difficult being the girl in Scenario #1 who simply gives what she views as a factual answer and then cannot understand why others dislike her so intensely.

So if any neuroscientists are reading this blog, get cracking on that already, would you?

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