This Toxic Relationship Game is about status. The expert player has a range of tools for putting you in your place (which is in a lower status to them) and all are based on knocking you down and then building up again in a way which makes you feel appreciative of their friendship and support!
This game is both crafty and complicated:
Step 1: First they make a disguised criticism of you.
This is designed to undermine you in some way but they claim the criticism is not their view but that of someone else. Crafty, this, since it means you cannot defend yourself or retaliate.
Step 2: Next they comfort you and offer their support to help you deal with this unfair criticism. They are positioning themselves as your only trustworthy friend.
Step 3: In doing this they have created a relationship based on the old highly-questionable sales tactic of ‘Hurt & Rescue’ – first they hurt you and then they rescue you. So they have established a status in the relationship: they are the strong comforter and you are the weak victim who needs them!
Incidentally, the Now, don’t get me wrong… intro is just one of many ways in which they can introduce their disguised criticism. Other intros include:
- People have remarked…
- It’s been said that you…
- I tried to fight your corner but they wouldn’t have it, and they said that you …
- You must be very upset when people say that you’re…
- I don’t know where they got the idea but Jack and Jill have been saying that you…
This is quite a subtle or sneaky game. They will criticise you in order to put you down – but they will claim the criticism is somebody else’s viewpoint. And then they will comfort you or in some way help you get over or deal with the pain of hearing about the negative comments made by those nasty people!
So their way of making, and retaining, friends is to first make you feel bad and then build you up again but in a way which makes you sort of grateful for their comfort and moral support…
Now that is subtle.
(Those of you who have completed the NLP Practitioner Training will recognize, of course, that they are using a version of the NLP Meta Model pattern called Lost Performative or, as we call it in Pegasus NLP, Sneaky Judgements.)