How to Avoid Taking the Bait

We all carry big stories with us throughout our lives. Like birds picking up bits of grass, twigs and mud to make a nest, we make our nests of words, deeds, environments and attitudes. In dysfunctional contexts, whether we’re speaking about the family of origin or the workplace, interactions have two main players who are vibrationally attracted to one another: the sadist and the masochist. They gravitate toward one another because their dynamic maintains each role intact — both masochists and sadists are borne of verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse. The natural progression of a steady diet of attack from without is to choose a side — an identity fixed in the old trauma. The masochist begins an attack from within - a kind of spiritual self-cannibalism. And the sadist is the abused who learned to continually push back against the abuser and continued the behavior until he or she becomes a newly-minted aggressor ready to find reasons to bully others. You can have compassion for either - one internalizes pain and the other externalizes it. But, most of the time, we find it easier to deal with the masochist whose pain is self-contained and self-inflicted. How do you know where you stand? ‘The victim as doormat’ If you show up at gatherings of any kind without a clear idea of what you need and want from the interaction, this is a self-esteem issue. Time is a very valuable commodity and not one to be thrown into the service of others’ needs without considering your own. Selflessness means you show up fully to a situation to be of maximum service and this requires your emotional, intellectual, and spiritual equilibrium to be intact. ‘The victim as aggressor’ If you show up at gatherings of any kind with a clear idea of what you want and need and what others should do, that’s a sign of low self esteem as well. In thinking relationships are about aggression and coercion, there’s a devalued sense of self and a belief you are not intrinsically likable and choose instead to manipulate your way through life. And this means You haven’t shown up yet. If you suffered from abuse as a child and never received counseling to deal with the negative patterns and habits the abuse left behind, it’s a good idea to see a mental health professional. If the abuse led to self-medicating with compulsive behaviors such as emotional eating, alcohol or drug abuse, caretaking others to avoid your own life or using money to self-medicate instead of for Selfcare, you can go to a 12-step group because they have them for everything: Alanon (for compulsive caretakers), A.A.(for compulsive drinkers), D.A.(Debtors’Anonymous - for people who make emotional and irrational decisions around money), N.A (Narcotics Anonymous - for drug addicts) and the list goes on and on. With the support of a 12-step group and a therapist familiar with support group tenants, you can begin to become more self-aware. Self-awareness requires a tremendous amount of input from others. an analysis of how you move through the world is necessary to see what improvements you can make. Support groups, therapy, meditation and writing about how you showed up in life on any particular day will allow you to see how many times you end up in the same situation, as if the universe were giving you yet another opportunity to pick up a new habit. How to avoid taking the bait and return to old behavior ... - look for the middle ground, which might seemed like looking for a needle in a haystack during a blackout. If you tend to talk a it, listen more. If you tend to listen a lot, talk more. Bother listening and talking are beneficial teachers, so it’s a good idea to practice doing what’s not natural to you. Maybe, talking a lot is a way to commander a situation and hide your fear that someone will challenge your assertions and be more knowledgeable than you. Maybe, listening a It is the protective sociologist stance whereby you get to be present and invisible at the same time. - the person who knows your triggers might get a kick out of getting you to react. When someone utters a hurtful casual statement, be silent instead of reacting. To the person who’s poking at you, your silence will be akin to someone tossing a hunk or raw meat in the middle of an elegant dinner party. It takes two or more to have a stupid senseless argument in which you defend your existence to another human being, so let go of the habit of wasting time on stupid actions - take your analysis and feelings to your journal where they belong. In your writing, the stories of why something triggers or injures you will come to the surface. And those stories belong in your notebook on a shelf, at the therapist’s office, in support groups, in song lyrics,poems, novels,creative nonfiction, fiction and scripts... but they don’t work well in other places. Changing habits changes your brain and the reference point for your compulsive behavior begins to shrink. The new reference point for actions stemming from self-awareness and intuition grows. And life gets better.