People feud in all sorts of funny ways.
Some take up arms — guns and knives and such weapons of localised destruction. Some scrap and brawl. More often people shout and scream and a few, presumably cleverly, plant their landmines entirely in subtext.
Sparring subtextually presents a puzzle to those who prefer to be challenged. The prize goes to those who can do the most damage while maintaining perfectly plausible deniably. Taken beyond a bit of genial rivalry it may, of course, fall into the category of emotional abuse much like that detailed in previous blog posts. The rival attempts to find subtle ways to, at best wind you up, or at the extreme induce a mental meltdown in order to maintain the myth of innocence by diverting blame to someone obviously “crazy.” I personally believe, sadly, the latter precipitates many lovers’ suicides. Someone with a pathological need to release themselves from the actual or potential guilt cannot go back and undo the damage without at some level acknowledging they went too far, and with some “victims” the pain, and inability to express it properly leads to increasingly desperate behaviour.
The weapons of feuds take all forms. Someone left afflicted by severe episodes of abandonment generally responds well (from the point of view of the party attempting to inflict damage) to the silent treatment. In modern times this manifests in social media quite well – we unfriend on facebook, unfollow on Twitter and the like. Needless to say emails go unanswered. Those needing blamelessness pretend they never saw them. Others resort to bullying often illiciting friends and relying on groupthink. Those are the ones I encounter most, but I’m sure everybody knows the concept even if the tactics they encounter differ.
Sometimes the vengeful volley quite comically. When I lived in America I enjoyed a sitcom called “Cybill” starring funnily enough, Cybill Shepherd. While talented and beautiful, the ongoing feud between her best friend, Maryann, and Maryann’s ex, “Dr. DICK,” often stole the show from Ms. Shepherd.
No matter how many times I watch that video I really do laugh out loud.
I used to find myself quite rattled by the sorts of feuds that go on with those in past relationships. But if you read my previous blog post you’ll know I changed my opinion about windups. First of all, people with PTSD make it so easy – we’re the embodiment of a Jack-In-The-Box. Wind us up and sooner or later we pop spectacularly and thrash around helplessly for a while. Why people enjoy doing it I fail to understand – to me it’s not a million miles from jamming a stick in the spokes of someone in a wheel chair – disability-inspired torment.
Now that I own a hard-to-manage dog I can easily compare canine classical conditioning with my own. The pop-up person person I became is a response ingrained by years of conditioning by my dad. I wish I could remember who said it but my favourite quote on the subject is “Of course parents know how to push your buttons – they put them there in the first place.” Realising this I started training myself to react differently. I train my dog in much the same way.
My dog, Hatter, lunged at everything that moved when I tried to walk him. He decided he needed to protect me perhaps, or had been encouraged to fight, I really don’t know why. It presented both a serious challenge and a serious problem – if surprised he nipped as well as lunged. Dangerous dog laws in this country are poorly defined and discretionary. Even just nipping leaves a dog vulnerable to potential destruction.
I pay a trainer to help me deal with some of these issues. For the lunging and nipping she advised immediate distraction. I hold a “high-value treat” — i.e. a bit of meat or cheese or something he loves enough to make him drool – in front of me and say “look at me.” Much to my surprise the technique worked, er, a treat. Little by little he started to look at me when people passed by, then with bikes, then with cats – the things he loves to chase. He still lunges at dogs on leads, I don’t know why but re-conditioning takes time.
I started doing the same with myself. I work to undo many many years of conditioning starting with distraction. The fallout from failed romances continues in the form of feuds, the participants continue to plant subtextual landmines, I continue to step on them. I force myself to distract rather than react. High-value treats mean nothing to me but for some reason playing solitaire or other games does very well. (Very) Oddly I think this may mimic the “tetris effect” researchers found recently, as explained in this article: Tetris ‘helps to reduce trauma’. Works for me, at any rate – eventually I’ll be so used to distracting in the event I won’t actually need to – my body learns not to produce the chemicals that cause the stress. PTSD is as much a chemical reaction as an emotional one. And ironically, the more it happens the more opportunity I get to retrain and desensitize. The more people try to rub my nose in my greatest hurts and fears the more they beat their own swords into ploughshares. They architect their own ineffectualism. Win-Win.
Another distraction, of sorts, lies in how I interpret pot shots ringing out from feud-land. I hold up my hand, I confess – I confuse motives as malice. Yesterday, musing about such things I remembered the first time a boy at school teased me. I liked him and I thought he liked me. Why did he tease me at school? My mom told me boys do that when they like you. As an adult I know it’s because when it’s hard to express a connection, or it’s socially unacceptable to do so, or the person doesn’t have the maturity to express themselves they “pick on you.” One day, few days after the boy started teasing me, while I stayed inside and played, according to my mother, the boy in question hung out across the street from my house – sat on the curb a while but said nothing. I guess he did really like me. Quite touching to think about a shy boy trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl to come out and play. Our modern, horrifically cynical world view probably now terms this as stalking. I certainly would never dream of standing around shyly hoping to meet someone for fear of being labelled a stalker but it seemed so normal and innocent back then.
So I see, or remember more accurately, people often express themselves using annoying actions, or even annoying inactions. They stay connected. “Flattered” strikes me as the more realistic reaction. So I learn to distract, not be bothered and even feel “liked” rather than popup like an over-wound Jack-in-the-Box. Love me or hate me, I win – until you forget me completely I matter. And that, strangely, is a really good feeling.
Hatter The Hard-To-Manage Dog