Mind Games

[blas87]

Surely it's something everyone "hates", but this is more of a list and describe type of thing.

What are your "favorite" mind games people play, have played, etc on you or someone you know? No worries about doubles, there's always room for stories. Even explanations, if you want to play the advocate of the mind game player.

Mine all kind of intertwine with each other. Obviously, mind games are about manipulation and usually blame shifting, all in attempts to make another person feel ostracized and guilty (whether or not they ever really did anything).

The silent treatment would be the biggest one for me. This is a big one for debate, also, because some people have their reasons for avoiding talking to someone right away. But I'm mostly referring to people who refuse to be adults about a situation, and just clam up and act angry when the person they are upset with honestly has no clue what they did or didn't do. In recent times, when I think someone is ignoring me and "waiting" for an apology or something they think I owe them, I usually act dense or like I have no idea what's going on, until they either lose it and make an ass of themself, or finally grow up and we can talk rationally about the problem. To me, there is a difference between being alone to gather your thoughts and calm down, and expecting someone to "know" that you're upset and to act angry and lash out at someone without telling them why.

What can intertwine with that is people who use things like the internet or the telephone to play mind games. People will sometimes not call or text you when they normally do (like a usual "have a good day at work!") if they are upset at you, or if you don't text them when they expect you to, they'll withhold talking to you until you initiate the next contact. Or some other related headache.

A big one in my extended family is my mom's aunt will get upset over something small, not speak to the family for several months (which is great, actually!) and then out of nowhere contact mom again when she wants or needs something.

Alright. What are your favorites?

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I have always shit from great height on "the silent treatment." That's a really excellent way to make sure to get rid of any respect I might have had for the person as an adult.

My sister pulled this shit once when we were still living at home. I think she might have been a teenager. I just let her do it till it got inconvenient for her. I'm not sure what outcome she was expecting, but I'm sure me not really noticing or suffering from her silence was not it.

Then I had a grown ass man...no kidding, a GROWN ASS MAN do it. I should state for the record that this was a man who has a problem shutting up. Seriously, he's infamous for holding forth with an endless stream of non stop babble that would make Ghandi consider murder.

This idiot thought he would "punish" us by shutting the fuck up. It was like he was giving us a gift. I was almost disappointed when he "forgave" us.

People might play games with me, I dunno. I'm probably way too flakey to notice most of it.

[Rageaholic]

The only defense I can come up with for those who do the silent treatment is that maybe they are just in a bad mood about something else and don't feel like talking. However, since it's obvious when people are doing this to spite you, that defense doens't fly. What I really hate about the silent treatment is when you actually try to ask them a question, they just ignore you. I so want to go Jack Bauer on them and DEMAND an answer NOW!!

My favorite mind game right now are those who play victim. These people who act all obnoxious, bossy, and are always telling you what to do, but when you confront them on it, no matter how politely, they act like you just kicked them where it hurts. After all, they were only trying to help and you obviously don't appreciate them. They can always phrase it in such a way to make it seem like you're being rude when you're really just reacting to their obnoxiousness.

[jackfaire]

Oh god this one is one I see everyone do and I want to shake them out of it.


Politeness.

Pathological Politeness.

People will let themselves be treated like shit and denigrated by family and friends because all parties involved are being polite while doing it.

"Why don't you speak up when she is taking advantage of you?"

"Because that would be rude"

Seriously people do backhanded compliments and polite people into obligations and it's nuts it's literally insane.

My parents tried to raise me with the following,

"Respect your elders" this meant if your elders tell you to do something you do it. Doesn't matter they don't have the right to tell you to do it or are just being lazy asshats and using you for slave labor you do it.

"If company is in your home you can't eat unless they are eating too" To clarify that didn't just mean if you have a friend over you offer him some of your pizza. That meant if your older brother is playing video games with his friend in the living room and you get hungry while reading and want a sandwich your SOL unless your brother's friend is hungry too and is willing to take food you make him.

I think being nice is great but I think politeness was invented by people that didn't want others to talk back.

All the rules of politeness I have ever been told are essentially boiled down to "you can't say no you have no right to say no so don't even try to say no just do what I 'asked' you to do and like it"

I will use a fictional reference that just popped into my mind. On the show Friends Monica's mom is always bashing her with backhanded compliments and Monica just takes it. I see this happen in real life too. I never take it. I tell people straight up that it bothers me and why.

I will be nice to you but don't be surprised when I say no to your "polite invitation" to spend time with people I can't stand.

[HYHYBT]

Would people seeing mind games where they don't exist count as one itself? For example, the phone call thing: you have a perfectly legitimate reason for not having a chat. Maybe you're busy, maybe your phone charger quit and you're conserving your battery, maybe you're just not in the mood that day. But then the person you didn't call *thinks* it was retribution of some kind. (Worse if, realizing they'll take it that way, you then do avoid them to keep from getting whatever they decide to pull to get back at you.)

Not the best example, but you get the idea.

[Greenday]

I love the Silent Treatment. If you can't be a grown up and tell me what's wrong even if I ask, then it's not a big enough deal IMO to do something about it. They are just looking for attention and crave the other person constantly asking what's wrong. So I do the opposite. I stop asking and I stop acting like there's anything wrong. Not going to talk to me? That's fine, I'll just go out with my other friends and have fun with them and then make sure you know how much fun I'm having with a clear conscience.

[DrFaroohk]

Guilt trips. Seriously, I don't owe you a damn thing.

Lots of "made up" bullcrap. Like societal rules that are just pulled out of nowhere. They make no sense, have no basis but because everyone just blindly follows it its somehow accepted as a standard.

I always hated the "respect your elders" line...so what, because your parents fucked before mine did, you have power over me? No no, I respect EXPERIENCE. In a field. If I'm in the nuclear physics field, and I work with one guy older than me, but less experienced, and one guy younger than me, but more experienced, i respect the younger guy first.

Having a stutter it's hard for me to have the upper hand in a verbal confrontation and people take advantage of it. Usually comes in the form of manipulative question asking, and they're better at cutting me off so they can basically pick words right out of my mouth.

Also being emotionally manipulated. Like deliberately pissing someone off just to hinder their ability to think clearly enough to argue.

[Andara Bledin]

Self-imposed martyrs.

My former mother-in-law would demand that work be done, set a time limit, then about halfway to the end of that limit she'd do whatever it was herself and act like it was some huge imposition.

^-.-^

[blas87]

Please elaborate, Andara. I'm curious about this type of person....game, whatever.

Oh, I HATE guilt trips as well! I know people who are travel agents for guilt trips (badumpbump).

I got one from my awkward boyfriend the other day. In fact, the telephone mind game was my inspiration for posting this. The silent treatment and imploding/waiting for you to ask what's wrong he has done before, but so many others have also done it that I don't accredit it all to him. That's the oldest trick in the book for me.

Anyway, he guilted me "You MADE me worry!"

Yeah, I MADE him worry because I dared sleep for nearly 12 hours after not being able to sleep well Thursday and most of Friday because of what happened to my little brother. Sorry, didn't realize I had to check in with you first, Dad!

[Ginger Tea]

Skiimed to the bottom to give a few instances of 'the silent treatment' as there is more than one.

At home I used to talk often to one of the guys after work or random points in the day if we passed in the kitchen, then this guy basically lost most if not all my respect and I didn't feel I needed to give more than a basic hello/goodbye for a while till he cleaned up his act, which took him a while. He changed from being a housemate to someone who lives down the hall.

At work, if there is someone I don't care to talk to, I try not to be around them, most times though if I do have to be near them, there might not be a cause to talk past hello unless it's job related.
If I was in no mood to talk to the guy (normally it's guy's) but I was working next to them, but someone else was near by that I talk to, I might hold a conversation with this other guy, the same conversation might have been held with other guy if I was inclined to talk to him, it all depends on what exactly pissed me off to not bother chatting.

but with me its just withholding chatting, and TBH its probably a blessing I don't talk as in one of the above posts, I doubt anyone would even notice I wasn't talking to them, they might see me talking to someone else and think yay my ears get a rest.

Although once I got a bollocking for something small that others did worse scenario, so I chose not to go on breaks at the same time as anyone or talk to anyone for the best part of a week, nor smile and one of the women damn near shouted me down cos I was being petty about it and she wanted the laughing joking loud Tony back, and didn't find what I said (which I forget) that got me in trouble troubleworthy and actually thinks I'm more natural saying shit like that than self censoring.
But I was avoiding general chit chat as my general chit chat it seems can get me in trouble quicker than anything.
Hell one time I broke wind in the teabreak, it even took me by surprise, and one supervisor ran out the room, at first we joked that it must have smelt bad, but five seconds later im in the boss mans office FFS. She was worse than shit on my heel for the rest of the week for that, no I take that back, my exact words to a co worker were "I have more respect for a pedophile."

I don't do much in the way of texting as I've run out of things to say of interest to my brother and he rarely has credit to reply, yet via IM's we could both be online and neither initiate a conversation as I would probably bitch about work and he would bitch about his finances, so all we would do is go over old ground.
So were not giving each other the silent treatment, were just saving each other a repeat of last weeks SSDD conversation.

[blas87]

I'm not you and in your shoes, but I'd say in your instances, you're mostly trying to avoid friction and other drama at work and at home by doing it that way. It doesn't seem to me like you purposely ignore people hoping they'll hound you over what's wrong so you can explode on them.

[Ginger Tea]

aye more or less, there is more than one 'silent treatment' so to speak

[DrFaroohk]

Sometimes I think the silent treatment is warranted. Like when it's something the other person really should've known better about. So you told your boyfriend multiple times you don't like red roses, and then he keeps bringing you red roses constantly...you've already told him, so more words won't work. Sometimes a little cold shoulder to let him know he really fucked up is the only thing that will get the point across.

[Rageaholic]

Here's one I experienced from my childhood a couple of times. I like to call it the "It's not about me" bait and switch. The idea is to make an accusatory statement or gesture toward someone, but when they defend themselves or apologize, claim it's "not about me it's about you".

Example: say a teacher wants to confront Billy about his grade. She goes over and says "Billy! You got the lowest score on the test!". Billy apologizes, but the teacher than responds "Well don't apologize to me! It's YOUR future!". The thing is, if it's not about her, why did she make such a stink about it? Surely Billy is aware he got the bad grade so why bring it up to him? And why act like you're taking it so personally?

Also, if you want to come across as accusatory or judgemental on the web, just capitalize every YOU or YOUR. I always picture those posts as someone pointing their finger down at me while lecturing me on why I'm such an asshole.

[jackfaire]

I thought of one while waiting for the bus today.

This guy came up trying to get my attention. I don't know why. I hadn't dropped anything, he wasn't an official transit employee etc there was no real good reason to deal with him.

Now I work in a call center talking to people all day and it can be stressful as such I try to relax on my way into the office get myself in the right mindset I am pretty much blocking out everyone by not only clearly listening to music but reading a book.

Most people notice this and leave me alone except to say excuse me. Every once in awhile people will come up try to speak to me. I ignore them. They start waving their hands in my face. I ignore them and I continue to ignore them and then they start huffing around offended because how dare I ignore them..

It's this weird little mind game where they think I am going to see how upset they are that I am not paying attention to them and I am going to rush to soothe their bruised feelings.

I don't know what to call it but I have been getting it my whole life. Being a loner I have people I am friends with and people I want to talk to and I don't really care about the rest I will be nice but stopping doing what I want to do to answer the usually inane questions about where I got my laptop, cell phone, etc is not being nice it's you being rude.

Just because I am not talking to another person doesn't mean your not interrupting.