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Verbal Self-Defense
If so, you may be making yourself a victim. But the problem isn’t that you’re weak. The abuser is the problem.
What Makes People Verbal Abusers? The short answer is, they are trying to gain something we all need: Respect. But verbal abusers take the quick fix by getting a little bit of respect all at once, such that if feels quite good at the time. But it’s always a short fix. It never really lasts. He’s like a drug addict who will need his next fix relatively soon, and if you’re the next one who crosses his path, he’ll get his respect by ripping off yours. You Can Remain Strong By Knowing How To Recognize Types Of Verbal Abusers... There are several personality types among verbal abusers. All of them need the same thing—respect—and all of them gain it short term, at someone else’s expense. But you can defend yourself against them by knowing how to recognize them. Here are a few of the types. In all of these examples, I have used the male gender to describe the abuser. (This is just for the sake of convenience. Verbal abusers come in all sizes and shapes, male and female. Also, I have been asked if I am using real examples from my own life, where I have been abused. The answer is, no. All of these examples are composites drawn from situations I have observed second hand, or heard of from others who have been abused.) I. The Insecure Authoritarian The Insecure Authoritarian craves having power over other people, even to the point that he will take a perfectly good situation and ruin it just to cause another person anger and frustration. Example: You are an office clerical staff and he is your supervisor. Your daughter’s school has called to inform you that your daughter is sick and needs to be taken home. You inform your supervisor that, since you have only two hours left on your shift, you would like to take your daughter home and stay there with her for the remainder of your shift. He agrees to that. Then you also request that the two hours be counted toward extra work you did the previous week in which you stayed late. He says no. You state politely that it is company policy to allow flexing your time. Why would it be a problem? He again says no, and orders you to fill out a time off slip. At this point, the abuser is counting on you getting angry. That’s the whole point. He’s trying to boost his feeling of power by stripping you of yours. If you get angry, he succeeds. Especially if you really blow your top and a third, impartial person walks in on the scene. Then he can turn to the third person and give an expression of confusion at your behavior, further stripping you of your dignity. How should you handle this? Of course, don’t give him what he wants. But the question is, what do you do? Or not do. The best response to the Insecure Authoritarian is something called Office Aikido. The art of Aikido is based on non-resistance and letting your opponent’s power work against himself. Now understand something: of all the martial arts, Aikido takes the longest to master. And that means when you apply Office Aikido against an Insecure Authoritarian, you will need to learn patience. It takes time to bring him down—or more correctly, watch him bring himself down. Here’s how it would work in the above scenario: You agree with him. In fact, you even make a short and simple comment that his way is a better idea than yours. Why give him what he wants? It’s humiliating! Because by agreeing with him, you really gave him exactly what he didn’t want! The Insecure Authoritarian very much wants you to disagree with him. That is where he gets his power, by making you do something you don’t want to do. So when you go along with him, you’re robbing him of his opportunity to rob you of your self-respect. Look at it this way: the Insecure Authoritarian pushes authority on others in ways and at times when it is unreasonable. He pushes. In order for his tactic to work, you need to resist him. Think of it as if he has put his hands against your shoulders and is trying to force his weight against you. You’re inclination is to push back. He pushes; you resist. He has a battle. And he will always set the battle conditions in his favor, so he’s sure to have more power than you. (He won’t pull these tricks on his own supervisor!) But when one person is pushing against another person, he can only keep pushing if the other is pushing back. So by agreeing with him, instead of pushing back, you have simply (and cleverly) stepped out of the way. If he keeps pushing, he will fall flat on his face. As in Aikido, you don’t step completely out of the way. You still remain in contact. That way, if you have the opportunity to guide his power push, you can. Here’s an example of how that might work: Some time later, the district manager, his supervisor, is at the office for a meeting; you are taking the minutes. The subject of employee time off comes up. The district manager asks you to provide statistics on how many hours employees have used as paid time off, and how many as flex time. You reply that you can give him the statistics for paid time off, but not flex time, because the supervisor doesn’t allow it. Since it is a company policy to allow flex time, the district manager turns to your supervisor and requests an explanation. “Uh…huh…hm…” …is how your supervisor might respond. Warning! Don’t act smug when you give the district manager this information! Revenge never solves verbal abuse. Just give the facts in an honest, straightforward manner. In the end, Insecure Authoritarians are destined to self-destruct. The hard part is letting them, as well as resisting the urge for revenge. But every time you swallow your pride by agreeing with him, know that in the long run, you’re doing the right thing. Power against power doesn’t work. Even “hard” style martial artists know that. Unlike the Tai Chi expert who lets his opponent push while he gracefully redirects the power, the karate expert attacks a punching arm by blocking against it with force. But the karate expert isn’t really using force against force. He’s using the bone of his arm to make contact with the nerves in the attackers arm. Either way, hard or soft style, you’re not using your strength against your opponent’s strength. That’s just a predictable situation: the strongest one will win. So let him fall flat on his face! Office Aikido really works. The less resistance you give to an insecure Authoritarian, the better. II. The Abusive Victim The verbally abusive Victim is one who frequently blames you for his own mistakes. When confronted with what he has done, he is quick to put the cause of the problem on the person confronting him, or on any person other than himself. The Victim’s abusive behavior can be identified by three categories: 1) He is not at fault for his own mistakes (someone else always is), 2) He is always right, and 3) He deserves sympathy. The Victim is an energy drain to everyone in his world. He doesn’t want to fix his problems—he wants you to. If you don’t agree to his solutions, he accuses you of trying to make him fail. Example: Jane’s husband (Victim) spent money they couldn’t really afford from their budget on a new motorcycle. Clearly, he has made a mistake, but when confronted by Jane, he blames their financial situation on her for not balancing their monthly budget more responsibly. (He has just accused her of the very thing he is at fault for.) Arguing with her husband does Jane no good—no matter how hard she tries to reason with him, he insists he is right. To satisfy his need for validation, he enlists another fried or relative into his side of the argument by twisting the facts in order to gain their sympathy. (“Jane criticizes me every time I spend money!”) The verbal assaults of the Victim can be effectively responded to in the same way you might respond to a spoiled child. They are, after all, very similar. Most abusive Victims are usually functioning with arrested maturity, at least to some degree. How do you respond to someone blaming you for his problems? By not accepting blame. You do this, not by arguing, but by simply not arguing. In other words, you can shut down the Victim’s accusations by giving a non-emotional response, such as, “Mm-hm…I see.” Leaving your responses short and void of emotion gives the abusive Victim the message that you are not accepting the blame, nor are you going to feel sorry for his self-inflicted wounds. Arguing, on the other hand, plays right into his hands. The verbally abusive Victim is trying to make himself feel right by making you feel wrong about yourself. He is trying to transfer his emotions over to you, to make his problem become yours. That way, you can solve the problem for him, and he escapes accountability. As I said, the Victim drains your energy—if you let him. Responding with as little energy as possible gives him no energy to draw off of. III. The Bored Cynic Remember the class clown? Sometimes they learn to channel their boredom pro-socially and grow up to become famous comedians. Unfortunately, not all of them. If “idle hands are the devil’s tools,” an idle brain is his lathe. While it is normal, and healthy, to react to boredom with creativity, the person who manages his boredom with verbal abuse may have a problem deep-rooted anger. He unleashes volleys of abusive sarcasm meant not just to entertain himself, but to entertain by hurting. An example might be a bored husband who is asked by his wife how she looks in her new dress. Some typical responses: “Like a fat ass.” “What’d you do, swipe it off a bag lady?” or “Yeah, like a dress is going to help you look better.” This kind of sarcasm is a form of entertainment for some people. A bored cynic is a difficult person to be around. He’s sort of an armchair comedian, tossing putdowns at the expense of other people for a cheap laugh at their expense. In a group, he can be identified as the most vocal, or as the one who always has something to say, but nothing constructive. His boredom is relieved by getting other people to laugh at his jokes, a means of validation. When his friends laugh at his sarcastic comments, it makes him feel liked, intelligent (he’s the one who came up with the witty comment), and appreciated. But consider the type people who appreciate him! The person who is verbally abusive to relieve boredom is usually very insecure, and relies on the validation he gets when others laugh at his jokes. It doesn’t matter who the target is—in truth, to him, his victim is a non-person, more of a stereotype. That’s why his comments often include racial slurs or cynical comments about gender. Having a good sense of humor, and being able to make people laugh is a great asset in life—but not when the jokes are at another person’s expense. How do you respond if you are the victim of a bored cynic? Our strongest desire is usually to give cynicism for cynicism. But that can become a battle of wits, and getting the last word in on a bored cynic doesn’t necessarily resolve the issue. It’s only playing his game. One of the best responses to the Bored Cynic is your own boredom. Consider this: what is a comedians worst nightmare? A bored, unresponsive audience. While the cynic may have friends present who are laughing at his jokes, it will still drive him crazy if even one person reacts as if his joke was boring, or even confusing, dull, or witless. When you respond to sarcasm with boredom, you must be sure not to come across as though you’re trying to ignore the cynic. He will take that as a challenge to come at you even harder. But being a “dead” audience member will drive him nuts! And it will cause him to reflect on what he’s just said, which is a step toward evaluating his own behavior. Sarcasm is a dim-wit’s brand of comedy. By learning to react with boredom rather than heightened emotion, you can frustrate the Bored Cynic to the point of shutting himself down. IV. The Bully Behavior that involves intimidation is not confined to the school playground. Bullying is, perhaps, the most common type of verbally assaultive behavior, and, perhaps is all types of verbal abuse under one name. There are different types of bullies. They come in so many shapes, sizes, and ages because bullying, at its essence, is when a person projects onto another person a type of behavior that they dislike about themselves. In other words, if a bully has a fear of being considered lazy, he will target someone he thinks is lazy. If he has a fear of being seen by others as fearful, he will target someone who can be easily intimidated. Bullies hate some part of themselves so much that they attack that behavior in others as a way of convincing themselves that they are not like that. Power is usually a driving factor. Bullies feel powerless. He may be a person unable to control his weight, and feels powerless in his efforts to stop overeating. To compensate, he will try to dominate another overweight person, or even torment a skinny person as a way of venting anger over the fact that the skinny person is what he can’t be. A bully is usually very afraid of losing control over his own life. Therefore, he controls yours. If he is afraid of being considered stupid, he will do everything he can to make you look stupid, thereby making himself a contrast. The bully takes your self-esteem because he is insecure about his own. There are numerous effective ways to respond to bullying, depending on the specific way their abuse is being doled out. Of course, most bullies make comments that suggest physical threats at one time or another. Responding with self-confidence shuts down the bully’s game. If you can’t be easily intimidated, he can’t fulfill his need for a short-term self-esteem fix. The web site, Bullystoppers.com, offers an exhaustive list of comeback lines that may be helpful in deflecting the bully’s attacks. While they are a good resource, ultimately, you end bullying by learning how to project the image of a person who is self-confident and not easily intimidated. Bullies love to pick on people who appear weak to them—the trait they fear in themselves. How can you develop the kind of self-confidence that will prevent you from being a bully’s target? Here are three good ways:
Learn More About Verbal Self-Defense With These Links To Articles And Resources…
How Verbal Self-Defense Works Non-escalating VerbalSelf-Defense Violence De-Escalation & Verbal Self Defense Verbal Self Defense Against Sexual Assault, Rape Bullystoppers.com Horrible Bosses And How You Can Survive Them What Is Sexual Harassment?
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