You are being emotionally manipulated by your partner

In a situation like this, where there is a power differential, documenting all communications and/or involving an advocate may be necessary, but it is hard to know his capacity for responding if she has never asked him to do so. Make Room for Observation In the scenario above, the employee recognizes the dance only after she exits the room. The challenge of vicious circles is that they are harder to see when you are dancing within one. This is why abusive relationships and cults limit observational space, depriving participants of contact with outside parties. By reading this article, you have made a space for yourself to explore the vicious circles of narcissism. You can expand on this space in a number of ways. Therapy is a space designed for reflection with the advantage of providing you a trained observer to offer perspective and guidance. Mindfulness meditation builds observational capacities, helping people watch events as they occur--even internal events such as thoughts and feelings. I was only able to shift the dance with my father when I no longer lived with him and through the help and support of my psychoanalyst. The phrase, `How could you be so stupid? It's hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has `cursed' us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily recreate our listener's state of mind. This is important for making change happen as it shows very clearly that what you think you are communicating can be a far stretch from what others are actually taking on board. But it's also important here because the tapper/listener experiment is re-enacted every time anyone picks up a article.

Lauren's Caesar could stand up against any professional's. It's pretty telling that I never really taught her how to bake or even how to cook (I never did the former and rarely did the latter), but she could build a drink. Fortunately, since I never won Mother of the Year, I won't have to give it back for telling you this. What do they say about confession being good for the soul? Eventually, my morning-after regrets and remorse started to outweigh the welcome, comfortable numbness of the night before. I got tired of feeling even more fatigued than normal for someone who gets up at the crack of stupid (we also called it the butt crack of dawn, among many other euphemisms for the hours at which morning radio people rise), and of not having the energy to work out and maintain a healthy weight. Even though alcohol made me feel more comfortable in social situations, as well as wonderfully blissed out during my time at home, it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that words were coming to mind a little more sluggishly than they should have during the show, when everything was live and immediate. I risked hurting a brain that had served me well and rarely failed me, and I recognized that fact. At home during sober hours, I'd started saying umbrella when I meant elevator, dishwasher when I meant microwave. I chalked it up to fatigue and my brain not being on duty, but the truth is, my wires were getting crossed. While a move across the country may not be realistic right now, a long walk may be an option. Think of wedging open space for the virtuous circle of change. Sometimes, we are the ones limiting our time alone. We get addicted to the drama, the conflict, the unsolvable problem. So expect that, when you take that walk by yourself or secure your quiet home for the evening, you might feel uncomfortable at first. You may also find yourself dwelling on the fragile bully or bullies in your life. This section includes tools, such as mindfulness practice, for detoxifying your solitude. Practice a New Dance Vicious circles gain power through repetition, but so do virtuous circles. Once you identify the dance steps in your vicious circle, you can practice new responses.

This time, I am the tapper and you are the listener. As above, we both suffer from an enormous information imbalance. So how can we overcome this? It's a problem that's hard to avoid. Reversing the process is as impossible as un-ringing a bell. You can't unlearn what you already know. There are, in fact, only two ways to beat the curse of knowledge reliably. The first way is down to you and the second way is my responsibility. Your job as a listener is to read this article with an open mind. If you are going to gain the most value from it and understand how to create change, you need that open mind. My husband was starting to notice it too. What was happening to the woman for whom be on your best could have been a forehead tattoo? Well, until anyone other than Rob took notice, I felt I was safe. Maybelline concealer could hide the dark circles under my eyes, and besides, who wouldn't have eye baggage worthy of Samsonite, working the hours I did? Did Lauren take notice of my addiction? Mostly no, she told me years later. The only time we talked about my drinking was when she was eleven years old and I told her that Mommy's going to quit. In the evangelical openness some addicts feel when they're looking at freedom from their habits (and seeking someone to whom I'd have to answer if I didn't meet my goals), I expressed to her my remorse if she felt that my illness had had any kind of bad effect on her. She said it hadn't and she was unaware that I had a problem. Lauren did admit to wondering, however, why I was so tired every weekend and just wanted to lie on the couch.

We've already discussed ways of countering the expected steps in the dances outlined in this article, but your own mapping of steps will help you arrive at customized alternatives. Sometimes the only alternative is to stay away. To borrow the approach used by narrative therapists, start to track your alternative storyline. Note the times you do not engage in destructive sequences, map your journey along the stages of change, and mark the times when you shift the dance enough to make real contact. Applaud your courage to go just a bit longer without the drama of destructive patterns. Find witnesses to this alternative reality. A therapist may serve this role, especially when new behaviors are fresh and you require guidance and support. The right friends can be excellent cheerleaders for your journey. As we've discussed, friends and family members may be tied into the dance, too, so be selective. Narrative therapy employs very concrete strategies that allow individuals to detach from destructive storylines, author new stories, and reinforce the new narrative. Try not to prejudge. Don't dismiss anything without trying it first - and by trying I mean giving it your absolute best shot. My job is to take what I know about the art and science of creating change and present it to you in a clear way. So, let's start tapping. Let's start at the very beginning First, you need to decide what it is that you want to change. It needs to be as specific as possible. Even if you think you know what it is, don't skip this section as it's crucially important that you are as clear as you can be on exactly what you want to change and have clarified in your mind exactly the point you're starting from. So, think about the area of your life where you know things aren't what they could be and change is needed. This could be your health, family, career, hobbies, friends or finances.

Later, I was able to warn her about the dangers of drinking, especially as a child of someone who didn't have an off switch. As a result, she drank very rarely and, when she did, it was lightly. She had neither the constitution nor the need for alcohol. But that doesn't mean she didn't have strong feelings about it. Rob has told me about one of the very few heated exchanges that he had with our daughter when she was a teen, aware of drinking among her schoolmates. In no uncertain terms, she expressed anger at his enabling me: his inability or unwillingness to make me stop. The conversation came in the year before I decided to quit, and I didn't learn of it until very shortly before you did. Of course she knew; Don't forget that this is the child who made pocket change and earned toys by repeating the colourful words she'd heard at home. In 2002, I quit drinking altogether, but I had help. You may need to change how you talk to the people in your life. They'll need updates on how the story has changed. Writing the new narrative helps make it official. You can even write a letter to the old dance and inform it that you no longer have need of it. And, if you'd like, borrow the words that Sarah spoke to the Goblin King: You have no power over me. Make Room for Grief Interactions with fragile bullies can be infuriating, and anger is the emotion most readily identified by those pulled into the dance. Anger can be both clarifying and empowering, and we'll discuss the importance of this emotion further in article 15. The emotion often neglected--the one that takes many worn-out dancers by surprise--is grief.