After reading you are assumed fully responsible for yourself and actions.

I call this ‘Attempting Control without Taking Any Responsibility’ for that is what the behaviour feels like to me as a recipient of it.

This is different from passive aggression yet seems closely allied in that my sense of being on the receiving end is that those engaging in this behaviour are not saying; “I cannot ask for my needs to be met openly, for fear of rejection by my family.

You at this moment, place, space in time represent that family member who rejected my needs and me.

So, for me to get my needs met I covertly attempt to manipulate situations, others and you to gain gratification of my needs” and that feels much like I do when operated on by passive aggressive behaviours.

These behaviours may be ‘Games People Play’ (E. Berne) and may possibly stem from low self-esteem.

Other possibilities include not having the skills required to articulate their needs or needing to present some unified ‘Front’ to disguise inner turmoil. This as I understand the world, comes from Fear.

This fear keeps them in recreating, repeating older ways of Being because ‘this is what I do’ and to do anything different would be to create too much new fear.

They hold onto the fear they have because they know it, know what will happen if they play out its scripts and they can be moderately successful in life with it.

To attempt new behaviours threatens this ‘success’ and creates newer fears over which they feel they may have no control.

Heavy stuff indeed, and that is my feeling when around these behaviours, heavy, walking through treacle, befogged in a world of little light and besieged by demons lurking beyond my vision.

I’m sure that you recognise this when it happens to you too and must like me feel that ‘something is going on’ but may not always know what that ‘something’ is.

The difficulty (and terrible beauty) of these behaviours lies in the lack of ownership by those who wish to create them.

Typical encounters with individuals in this place, will be those of the ‘gossipy’ kind, the “oh, he’s…done that She’s done this… Said that…”

The overt message supposedly being: ‘You, I can trust with this information.’ The semi-overt message: ‘ You and I are alike-we’re good people, not like…’ The covert message is the lack of affect or real emotional message; ‘I don’t like … or…  because they make me feel like…. and I don’t want to own that I can feel like that’

Other hidden messages are: ‘they won’t confirm my world view’ or ‘they won’t do as I do…want… fulfil my needs’

Instead what happens is a syrupy dance of conceited disquiet; ‘we are all friends, all things to all people’ (Except in those whisper quiet confidential moments…)

I experience this as a ‘dumping’ or attempt to disown feelings and pass them onto me, or other people or as attempts to create a support group: ‘well, we all feel the same way so … (X) must be true…’ and unfortunately ultimately as self harming.

The idea being to bring you, me and others into a group who feel the same, think the same and this then leaves us open to be manipulated.

Dumping feelings in this covert way leaves us feeling dumped on, screwed over in some way and not always able to accurately understand the ‘something’ that just happened to them.

Any behaviour that hides our own ‘inner truth’ feelings from others and attempts to create a universal ‘outer truth’ feeling only serves to divorce us further from who we are and all that we can be.

My offer of understanding this then is that Fear holds back individuals and people from being all that they can be, to be plain I’m talking cowardice.

The cowardice of denying self responsibility; the denial of owning feelings, the holding of others to blame for our feelings, the slighting comparisons between self and others, the gossiping to attempt control rather than face those we accuse are all fruits of fear: Cowardice. 

I call these behaviours this when there is a refusal to behave differently when awareness has been aroused. When opportunities are created to behave differently, when all that only needs to be said are our feelings about situations, meanings and ourselves, rather than attempt some manipulation into a ‘we think this, don’t we…’

So, how to stop this?

It is I believe overcoming Fear, Fear and its behavioural acting out in cowardice, our fear of others is the fear of ourselves, the fear that we could do/be better than just adequate, the fear that we could be all that we can.

I’m not suggesting that we erase all our defences and sit forever in some encounter circle naked in our fears,

No, only that you and I take responsibility, become more direct, honest, open with each other.

Moving out of Fear is to make meaningful contact rather than hide behind the inadequate defences of our inadequacy.

We can rejoice in our inabilities as we enjoy our abilities and begin a meaningful process in helping rather than hindering our own and others development by talking openly about our own feelings and meanings.

Otherwise is to be ‘attempting control without taking any responsibility’

Neil Benbow

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