CHAPTER TWO
DISTRUST
‘Other people are hostile’
I find I can’t trust others … my father taught me this … he had survived many years in a concentration camp … he always said, ‘Never trust anyone, just look out for yourself’. I must have believed him. I don’t think I’ve ever let anyone close to me. I always treat people like they are trying to get something out of me … I don’t trust their motives … and I never show any weaknesses, especially in business. I always look for any chance to exploit a weakness that is shown in any situation.
My father spent nearly all his time pissed … he drank all our money, so we were always pretty poor. It was like he was always running away from problems by drinking—he didn’t know how to solve problems without grog—but that just made the problems worse … He would get into trouble in one town and when it got too bad we would leave and go to another town. When I was a child I think I moved about 40 times. I found that I wouldn’t ever get to know anyone too well because I knew we’d be leaving. It made me terrified to interact with people, I couldn’t let them near me … otherwise I just knew I’d be hurt. When my parents separated I spent my time going backwards and forwards between them. My father always had a new partner, and they usually hated me. I think I just expected people to hate me. It just felt like there were too many people, too many changes, and no one to trust.
I don’t think I’ve ever let anyone really know me; I always keep the ‘bad’ bits hidden. Even my husband, who I’ve been married to for more than 30 years, doesn’t know me. There is part of me that says I can trust him to love me, but down deep I don’t really believe it. He’s just not up to it. I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to cope if he knew my darkest secrets, so I keep them hidden. I prefer to show myself in the best light … besides which, this means I can sometimes get him to do jobs and pull his weight around the house by putting him to shame … in comparison to ‘good little old me’ … I’m not sure why I became so distrustful, but I probably learned it from my father. My father always tried to control me … he behaved like a bully, like he hated me (and my mother). My mother was completely broken and submissive during their marriage. I learned to watch my back, and I escaped at the first opportunity.
When I was seven years old my father got out his shotgun and threatened to shoot my sister, who was 17 at the time. The incident occurred because my sister had tried to run away … no wonder, given how he used to behave. My mother stood in front of her to protect her, and I stood in front of my mother. He didn’t shoot us, but it was terrifying just the same … I probably never trusted anyone again after that … anyway, my father was always full of rage. He went ballistic once when I was twelve years old when he saw me talking completely innocently to a boy. I used to trash my room in response to his controlling attitudes. Still there were lots of things I learned from my father, like how to get what you want. He never pays the asking price for anything, and I learned that off him … I always try to get as much as I can out of any situation … it’s me or them, so it might as well be me.
ALL THESE PEOPLE have formed the assumption that other people are hostile, and therefore that other people cannot be trusted. Along with seeing the world as dangerous, they probably formed this assumption early in their lives in response to negative early experiences. It seems that the more explicit these adverse experiences have been, especially in the form of overt bullying or criticism, the more likely people are to hold the latent hostility of others as one of their more dominant assumptions. This is because the survival of children within an explicitly dangerous world depends upon them learning to be wary of other people. These children learn to be suspicious of early signs of hostility in others so they can be on guard and ready to thwart an aggressive action and mount a counter-attack. This sensitivity to early-warning signs is sometimes called ‘mind reading’.
Once formed, the assumption that other people are hostile is taken into the wider world. This is essentially because our brain responses are most influenced by our primary environment. That is, many of our brain habits are formed when our brains are developing quickly during childhood in interaction with our environment. It is only a small jump to reason that, if a significant caregiver cannot be trusted not to harm us, there is very little hope of care from people who aren’t even connected to us, where there is no relationship. As a result of the preformed assumption, the behaviour of others will continue to be interpreted as hostile, whether or not it is.
THE PROBLEMS THAT FOLLOW DISTRUST
Many people who have been raised within secure and nurturing environments see the world as safe, and other people as benevolent. A basic goodwill is assumed on the part of others and of themselves that is perceived as being mutually beneficial. These are people who have not experienced early negativity. They go about forming close and reliable relationships with others, forming trusted business networks, and making decisions on the basis of mutual co-operation. On occasions, they may be let down; but on the whole their perceptions are borne out, particularly as they tend to surround themselves with likeminded people. People who have built their brains within positive and caring environments don’t need to form conspiracy theories, since no one is conspiring against them. They don’t need to assume that other people are hostile and working against their interests. To do so would require them to ignore the goodwill that has been evident within their secure environments.
As we have seen, the formation of the assumption that other people are hostile allows children to survive within a threatening environment. However, when these children have to survive within a different, and essentially non-threatening, adult world, these assumptions become self-sabotaging. There are nine significant problems that follow.
Misunderstandings
When opposing assumptions collide, there is huge scope for misunderstanding. A gigantic chasm exists between the assumptions of people from negative backgrounds and those from positive ones. Each person fails to understand the other’s behaviour, leading to increased alienation between them. Since these assumptions are often formed in pre-language infancy, in many cases we have no awareness of either forming or holding these starting premises.
After the formation of the assumption, subsequent experience is cumulatively stacked onto the existing premise, thereby reinforcing it. In other words, we see and interpret the world as we already perceive it to be. How we perceive the world will be in accordance with our past individual experiences.
Since assumptions are not usually consciously accessible we have to study them indirectly—and the best way is by studying our own behaviour. Our behaviour is consistent, and indeed a logical extension of our underlying assumptions. This is perhaps why behaviour is a much more reliable research measure than characteristics such as conscious beliefs, attitudes, or intentions.
Reinforcement
Partly because underlying assumptions are not openly accessible, misunderstandings between people with opposing assumptions will occur. For example, low-hostility people from positive backgrounds might insist that high-hostility people from negative backgrounds are a lot of marginalised whingers who never get off their backsides to achieve anything. On the other hand, high-hostility people might insist that low-hostility people are a pack of overeducated weaklings born with silver spoons in their mouths, who wouldn’t know reality if they fell over it. It is probably because of these misunderstandings that people usually only form personal relationships and friendships with people who hold a similar hostility level to their own.
Not surprisingly, people with high hostility also lack trust. This is because distrust and suspicion are essential ingredients of survival within a threatening environment. As with hostility, it is unusual to see the mixing within personal relationships of trust and distrust. People of low trust form friendships and relationships with other low-trust people. In this way, underlying premises are further reinforced by the similar assumptions held by friends or partners.
Opportunism
Perceiving other people as hostile and, by implication, as untrustworthy, will lead children to develop opportunistic traits. The rationalisation goes something like this: ‘If others are hostile and can’t be trusted to act in my best interests on my behalf, I will look after myself. I will take care of number one, and I will take any opportunity that comes my way.’
Of course, opportunism can be a useful attribute in certain situations where noticing an opportunity and taking advantage of it before others do so gives you a clear advantage. For example, many business decisions result from noticing opportunities and taking quick action. As might be expected, many well-known entrepreneurs who have made large fortunes have emerged from backgrounds of extreme adversity, where their opportunism has arisen from their high levels of learned distrust.
But opportunism can often work against a person. This occurs particularly in relationships, where high levels of trust are beneficial. Consequently, many high-profile entrepreneurs struggle to achieve harmony within their personal relationships, often failing to find personal happiness despite their accumulation of large fortunes.
As can be seen from the examples of David, Marge, and Anna, whose comments on the subject are quoted at the beginning of this chapter, opportunism at least partly arises from assumptions of distrust. In their own ways, they have each learned to maximise their opportunities, since they believe others are hostile and not worthy of trust. David learned never to show any vulnerability, and to exploit any weaknesses on the part of others. Marge took the opportunity to manipulate her husband for her own ends by shaming him with her own good behaviour. Anna soon realised it was her versus others, and learned to force the opportunity to exploit a bargain or any other situation. Indeed, every week I saw Anna for therapy she would have another excuse as to why she could not pay my fees. Often Anna would come up with reasons and manipulative behaviours in order to try and extend the time of our sessions, rarely missing the opportunity to exploit our previously agreed-upon contract.
The trouble with opportunism is that close personal relationships, and indeed many business relationships, depend upon goodwill and trust, not exploitation. Without trust many relationships cannot be maintained. If you keep on biting the hand that feeds you, eventually the feeder will give up and go away. Since close relationships are usually mutually beneficial, you lose the opportunity to co-operate if you are unable to maintain them—making the opportunistic strategy self-defeating.
Often, people who lack trust are constantly on the lookout for a better opportunity while negotiating personal or business relationships. They usually envisage people with whom they are negotiating as being either explicitly hostile or at least as having opposing interests. Within this framework, the other party is seen as pursuing his or her own, contrary interests.
Low-trust people often see themselves as being on different sides from their negotiating partners, and therefore free to exploit their partners at any opportunity. However, opportunistic attempts at insidious or explicit exploitation destroy trust, making negotiations untenable. This conflicted and low-trust framework carries into so-called ‘intimate’ relationships as well, where partners fail repeatedly to see themselves as on the same side. Without this ability to co-operate, the individuals within the relationship spend too much time in conflict. They miss out on the benefits of co-operation, which would enable them to extensively talk through and plan individual and mutual goals and strategies, thereby strengthening their bonds and enhancing their relationships.
Suspiciousness
People raised in hostile environments are almost always highly suspicious of others. They are always looking to catch a person out for an ulterior motive, whether or not one exists. Of course, it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that high levels of suspicion will lead to high levels of friction. Every action is questioned, even to the point of interrogation. This interrogation is often coupled with a need for enormous amounts of reassurance and a demand for unrealistic amounts of loyalty. Anything less than 100 per cent loyalty is treated suspiciously, and is generally not tolerated.
The trouble with this behaviour is that making demands for absolutes is not realistic. First of all, we do not live in a world of absolute certainty and predictability. Although we are often able to minimise our risks by reasonable planning, unexpected developments can still occur, and things can still go wrong. To be able to cope, we need to accept this, and to tolerate uncertainty in as relaxed a manner as possible. It is important not to try and overcontrol and to make unrealistic demands of people. To keep insisting only leads to vicious cycles of high levels of frustration and even more suspicion when such demands are, inevitably, not met.
Second, people have a range of loyalties that they are juggling at any point in time. This juggling of loyalties is needed for us to be able to function well within society. We all need to weigh up the consequences of more or less loyalty to family members, partners, friends, acquaintances, employers, employees, and business or professional connections. These are highly complex decisions, influenced by all sorts of things such as our degree of personal insight into the short-term and long-term consequences of our decisions, and what result we are prepared or not prepared to tolerate.
No sense of self
Suspicious and demanding behaviour is often underpinned by neediness and insecurity, because children raised within a hostile environment have been unable to develop a strong sense of their own selves. That is, sadly, these children have often been so scared, and have generally been so overly focused on the threat object, that they have failed to notice or attend to their own requirements. In this situation, the children have neglected their own development, failing to learn how to identify and meet their own physical, intellectual, economic, or emotional needs. Having been unable to identify and meet these needs, the children adopt a strategy of trying to get other people to do so, often by being overly demanding of attention and reassurance.
There are a few problems with this demanding strategy. Once children are on the pathway of trying to get others to do things for them they become more and more deskilled over time. This strategy ultimately leads to a profound loss of confidence in their ability to be self-reliant. Also, other people may not want to become preoccupied with meeting the children’s needs, since they are concerned to meet their own. This occurs especially once children become adults. Other people, especially those from positive environments, expect more emotional independence. They expect other people to be less needy: to be responsible for themselves and to get what they want for themselves. This disparity leads to high levels of interpersonal friction that often undermine mutual respect, since respect depends upon roughly equal input from both parties. Not only this, but given that the children/adults have usually not identified their own needs clearly, their demands are often confusing, unrealistic, and inconsistent, making it difficult for others to meet them anyway.
Deceit
Holding the assumption that others are hostile leads to distrust. It gives rise not only to opportunism, suspicion, and poorly identified needs, but also to deceit. Logically, it follows that, if others are hostile and cannot be trusted, and you are on your own, you must exploit opportunities to ensure your own survival. If exploiting those opportunities involves deceit, so be it. Your survival is paramount. After all, others are either trying to do the same to you, or would, if given half a chance.
Looked at from the outside, however, it is not difficult to see how this logic could severely damage your chances of having dependable and truly close relationships. Goodwill and trust, and telling the truth about the important things, are essential elements of any close relationship. In fact, they are important elements of all relationships, including business, professional, social, and intimate ones.
In an intimate relationship, if you are prepared to tell lies to your partner over things that matter, your partner will feel betrayed and insulted. Often in my work I have seen people from low-trust backgrounds keep their ex-partners or other potential suitors ‘waiting in the wings’ in case they need to be called upon. In order to keep these suitors hanging around, and to stop them from giving up hope and going away, a certain level of deceit is often required. Usually the low-trust people imply to their suitors that they are not fully happy in their current relationship, and so there may be some hope of them getting together in the future.
Not committing
Those whose strategy is to keep suitors and ex-partners hanging around create a high level of constant insecurity for their current partners. This strategy maintains a combative element, never allowing the current partner to become too comfortable or complacent within the relationship. Keeping suitors around can also provide considerable scope for ensuring psychological distance from the current partner that is consistent with, and which maintains, the extent of distrust. The threat of leaving for someone better is always implied, if not explicitly stated.
By playing potential suitors off against their current partner, people low on trust can increase their leverage within a relationship to get the results they think they want. Essentially, the low-trust person can say, ‘If you don’t like it, leave; there are five other people who want to be with me.’ As well, by keeping the upper hand through an implied threat, the low-trust person never has to commit solidly to the current relationship. This has two main consequences: without a solid commitment there is no chance for the relationship to deepen or become genuinely close; and when no opportunities are taken to build genuine closeness, assumptions about hostility and distrust are never challenged. The same old patterns keep on being repeated. Although low-trust people think they are winning, in the long term they are preventing themselves from ever being able to experience real intimacy.
Blaming others
Over time, perceiving other people as hostile, who cannot be trusted, allows the low-trust person a ready way to blame others for any mishap. When people are viewed as having hostile motives they become an easier target than yourself. It becomes almost automatic to blame others when levels of suspicion are high. This tendency to externalise and blame others can prevent people from reflecting upon their own behaviour and taking responsibility for a problem that, in reality, could be solved by their own efforts.
Focusing anger on others means not having to look at yourself. But solving problems to do with personal unhappiness requires acknowledging how you are contributing to the continuing problem, even if you do not think it is your fault. For example, a partner behaving in a ‘controlling manner’ is only able to do so because your behaviour is signalling that the controlling behaviour is tolerable. In other words, although you may be saying, ‘Stop trying to control me’, your behaviour indicates that the treatment is all right because you are staying around to put up with it, or because your options are so few that you feel forced to stay around and put up with it.
Sometimes you cannot leave a partner because you are financially dependent upon him or her. However, in the end, no matter how justified you might feel in blaming your partner, all the complaints in the world and all your stored-up resentment will not assist you with solving the problem. You must reflect upon your own contribution to it. Then it is possible to work out how you can behave differently. You might, for instance, have to decide how to meet your own needs. This will involve identifying new strategies, such as those that would enable you to become financially self-supporting enough to either leave or to insist upon different and better terms within the relationship.
Without this acknowledgement of our own roles within problematic relationships, we can never change because we have failed to identify the full scope of what has been going wrong. Many people lash out at others and do not solve the problem for years, sometimes decades. Often I see people who have had one unsatisfactory relationship after another attribute each break-up to the other person’s problems, never their own. Not surprisingly, each relationship repeats the patterns, and reruns the tape (perhaps with a few variations). Yet the central problem is not corrected because it is never acknowledged, and responsibility for it is never taken.
Interpersonal conflict
Another major problem arising from holding the assumption that other people are hostile is that high levels of interpersonal conflict usually develop as a result. That is, people who hold the assumption that other people are hostile tend to become hostile themselves, leading to high levels of friction with other people. Again, this is logical. If you interpret what another person is saying to you as being hostile you feel justified, or even compelled, to ‘defend’ your own position. You feel entitled to match, if not escalate, the level of hostility that you perceive to be present. So you do it. You express that hostility, believing it to be in self-defence. Your hostility might not always be obvious, but it is there. You sulk, you harbour resentment, you withhold yourself, you snigger, you pull a face, you directly or indirectly insult, you make a hostile joke, you criticise, you swear, or you hit. The hostility comes out one way or another. The trouble is that the other person now feels equally entitled to express the same level of expressed hostility back to you. And so it goes. Full-blown conflicts can arise easily when a condition of hostility is assumed at the outset.
While this might sound like a relatively minor result of early negativity, it is one of the most debilitating. It leads to continuing personal conflict that can constantly undermine any chance of forming dependable relationships with people who have not experienced negativity. People from positive backgrounds will often simply walk away, shaking their heads in disbelief, unable to comprehend where the hostility has come from. They will often be confused by the outbursts of hostility, and unwilling to pursue any further interaction.
In this way, holding assumptions about the hostile motives of others will often keep people from negative backgrounds marginalised. It also keeps damaged people hanging out with other damaged people, where their underlying assumptions of hostility are constantly reinforced, locking them into self-defeating cycles of interpersonal breakdown. Explicit and brutal violence can often erupt because the level of conflict can escalate exponentially. People often spend their entire lives engaged in continuing conflict, surviving one crisis just to go on and create another unnecessary crisis, and then another. Their failure to recognise and change these vital results of a negative environment perpetuates their own personal nightmares.
TRISHA
Trisha was 32 years old when she first came to see me. She would tell me that things were fine, yet tears would seep out from the start to the end of every session. I knew she was terribly sad inside, despite her tough presentation on the outside. She came to see me because she couldn’t cope with the violent images that were constantly in her mind. Her anxiety was soaring, giving rise to regular and prolonged panic attacks.
She liked her partner for an opportunistic reason, mainly because he gave her money. But, while he could give her money (he owned a chain of shops), he could not give her anything ‘real’ himself. She was desperately lonely. To alleviate the loneliness she spent large amounts of money every week on gambling.
Trisha was a sex worker. Part of her liked this type of work. She told me she had ‘so much love to give’, her love was ‘too much to cope with’, and that she ‘loved love’. I believed her, but I also knew her behaviour was not allowing love to happen. In fact, it was preventing it. Despite her having so much to give, she was not giving the most important things in her relationship. She was not giving or sharing herself. She was telling lies. Her partner knew that she used to work for several years as a prostitute (that was how they met), but she told him she had stopped that work and was now working elsewhere. She also told her partner that she had stopped taking drugs when, in reality, she often took ecstasy and other drugs. She would say that the drugs ‘make my problems go away, at least for a while’. But she believed her partner would not understand, and in any case it would ‘hurt him to know’. This was her justification for her lies. Her partner also did not know about her gambling problem, nor about the other men she encouraged around her ‘just in case we can’t work it out’. She was busy telling each of these other men that her relationship was on the rocks, and she would soon be free to be with them. They stayed around, living in hope.
The problem with Trisha’s behaviour was that it was helping to ensure she could never work things out with her current partner. Her sex work was providing a pretend vehicle for expressing her large amounts of love. It was not real intimacy; instead, it was a disguise. It was her way of going through the motions of physical closeness without ever having to be psychologically close—which is far more difficult, and takes time and effort. People of low trust often engage in promiscuity so as to prevent any chance of real closeness. When physical intimacy far precedes emotional intimacy, the relationship is distorted. Sexual activity often becomes disconnected from emotion, creating a fetishistic quality to the sex. It can start to focus more on technique and positions, rather than on loving and caring for another person, warts and all. These are what I often refer to as ‘alienated’ relationships, where there is no depth of honesty or truth between the participants about their feelings for one another. Often people of low trust mistake or substitute these more alienated relationships for love.
It wasn’t only Trisha’s sex work that was preventing an intimate relationship with her partner. All her other lies arose largely from her view that her partner was not on the same side as her, and had different interests to her own. If she had been able to perceive both of them as having the same interests, she would have spoken to her partner about the difficulties she was having, and of her perceived need to take drugs and to gamble. She would also have spoken to her partner about her fear of closeness and commitment, which had led to her need to keep other men waiting on the sidelines, in case things got too threatening. Together, they could have considered these difficulties and decided on a course of action that suited both of them and gave them a way to enhance their own relationship. But this wasn’t to be.
Her partner was also low on trust. He was good at making money, but not good at sharing his feelings. According to Trisha, he didn’t have a clue about how she felt about most things. He basically never talked about anything other than business. Trisha was not a very good communicator, either. Although she often made desperate demands of her partner, they were generally poorly expressed and inconsistent. Sometimes she would demand his total devotion and attention; at other times, she would tell him to back off and stop trying to control her life. Because Trisha had not developed much sense of self, and had little idea of what she wanted or needed, she could not assert her needs clearly.
Tricia’s partner was sleeping with other women on a regular basis while he was living with her. Tricia interrogated him about these other women but he continued, like her, to tell lies despite clear evidence of his infidelity. His lies and his lack of emotional communication made Tricia even more suspicious of him, and increased her view of him as hostile and opposed to her interests. Her underlying assumptions were reinforced. She became angry with him, and blamed him, screeching, ‘How could you do that to me!’ Her focus moved automatically away from looking at herself. He was to blame for treating her so badly. And yet, while it was true that her partner was behaving badly, so too was she. Tricia was contributing her own lies, and fuelling the general level of distrust. Blaming him, without any acknowledgement of her own contribution to the problems, did not bring them closer together; indeed, it drove a further distance between them. The failure to accept equal responsibility meant that the problems were never properly identified. This meant they could never be solved.
It was no surprise that Trisha had formed underlying assumptions of hostility and distrust. At three years of age she had been molested by a male friend of the family. Throughout her childhood she was bullied and criticised by her parents. At thirteen she was raped by a taxi-driver. Following this incident, Trisha became withdrawn, and barely communicated with her parents; she felt ashamed and alone. She was sent away to live with a cousin because her parents couldn’t deal with her level of withdrawal. Trisha became even more distressed at being sent away. She hadn’t just lost part of herself during the rape; she had now ‘lost’ her parents. She began to drink heavily. One night she was so drunk she was robbed, and was hit on the head and knocked out. Following this incident she lost the ability to cry for two years. She was frozen in sadness. School was ‘a haze of drugs and alcohol’. She had gone from being a reasonable student to one who barely attended school. Trisha left school completely unqualified, with only a Form Two pass.
Life was a struggle for Trisha. She moved around, taking work here and there. In one country town she was again forced to have sex by a very large man who threatened to kill her if she did not agree. Following this incident, Trisha started to do occasional sex work. She told me that it helped her because it meant she could ‘maintain control’. Often rape victims talk about becoming promiscuous in order to maintain control over sexual situations; Trisha was no exception. Eventually, she travelled overseas, distancing herself further from her family.
In Asia, Trisha formed what she believed to be an opportunistic relationship with a man who had lots of cash. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as well for her as she had imagined. He battered her; on one occasion, smashing her face and head into the concrete floor, and fracturing her skull. He often hit her in the face and stomach. She told me about other occasions:
It didn’t matter how loud I screamed, the violence never stopped … he always threatened to rape me, but for some reason he never did that … but he broke my jaw, my nose and one of my arms … I was like a punching bag … I was completely isolated, and my survival depended upon him … I had no money to get home … fighting back became my only option, I knew I had to break his mind, I knew I would get back at him by eating his mind!
Eventually Trisha made it back home, but I doubt that she ever broke that man’s mind. Her life moved from one broken relationship and crisis to another; her relationships were usually with other traumatised people, where levels of hostility were mutually high. One of the hardest things for Trisha was making herself spend enough time with any one person to build a close relationship. Such relationships were scary for Trisha. For this reason, therapy was difficult to negotiate. There were many times when Trisha would disappear from therapy for lengthy periods, clearly too scared to allow the closeness I was trying to build with her. Gradually, though, she made progress.
HOW TO CHANGE
Probably the most important way that Trisha learned to change her perceptions of hostility and distrust was to become aware of them. This required a quite rigorous examination of many aspects of her own behaviour. We talked at length about how her perceptions had arisen and how they had come, over time, to sabotage her interpersonal relationships. She started gradually to reflect upon what she had been doing to perpetuate and exacerbate her problems. Trisha noticed that she often found herself in trouble with authorities, such as the police or social security, by behaving recklessly and without thinking through the consequences. She especially noted that her interpersonal relationships were often marred by conflict, usually because she did not think about how her behaviour might influence other people. This was because she saw herself as the victim, unable to affect other people whom she saw as more powerful. Continuing to behave like a victim was leading to enormous problems. Although Trisha had once been a victim, this was no longer the case.
Through talking to me she become aware that she had repeated this pattern within her closer relationships, using the same strategies that led to distrust, deceit, infidelity, poor communication, aloneness, an inability to identify her needs, and high conflict with different partners. Trisha realised that she had always had a tendency to keep others at a psychological distance. During this process, Trisha also became aware of her thinking patterns (which are also behaviours), and she noticed that she held too many conflict-based, oppositional, and conspiracy theories. When she was really honest with herself, Trisha realised that she did not just have overwhelming feelings of ‘love’, but that she often had angry thoughts about other people’s motives and intentions.
Importantly, Trisha started to notice her ‘hidden’ resentments. This was hostility that she had not been prepared to take responsibility for and bring out into the open. Usually, when people have been bullied, at a deep level they are very afraid and unconfident—although they often display, like Trisha, a tough and aggressive outward appearance. They believe that they are unable to defend their own interests against others, who they see as being both more powerful and opposed to them. When bullied people repeatedly fail to secure their own interests, large levels of resentment arise; eventually, they are expressed one way or another.
How this is done depends upon individual experience and upon the specific context. Some people express their resentment very openly, repeatedly engaging in physical and verbal abuse. Others will express their hostility very pointedly but through passive means: this might entail ignoring a person, or laughing at his or her point of view; making a snide comment, joke, or facial expression; or through the barb of a subtle criticism. Trisha expressed her hostility both overtly and passively. We took time in therapy to examine the exact styles that Trisha most favoured. In Trisha’s attempts to get her needs met she often initially reverted to trying to be ‘cute’ and speaking in babytalk. Sometimes, if her partner was in the mood, this worked. If it failed, Trisha would immediately feel resentful that she was not getting her own way. This meant that she moved quickly into other passive strategies such as sulking, making snide remarks and caustic jokes, being subtly critical, and adopting frustrated and bored facial expressions. She would often throw in a veiled threat, such as, ‘I don’t think I can put up with this much longer.’
Usually, these passive strategies would go on for some time, leading to high levels of alienation through lengthy periods of silence and lack of progress. When there was a lot at stake and the situation was appearing untenable, the overt strategies would be used. For Trisha, these generally involved a high-pitched, demanding tone of voice, combined with abusive language. She often used blaming language, such as, ‘You’re the fucking bastard’, and ‘Why are you doing this to me?’, as though she had no responsibility for any part of the problem.
We discussed the purpose of expressing resentments passively rather than openly. After considerable effort, Trisha admitted that she adopted passive strategies so she could deny any hostility whenever she was openly pulled up for it. Despite her tough appearance, she was scared to ask openly and clearly for what she wanted. Trisha also realised that she automatically expected other people to meet her needs because somehow she felt unable to meet them for herself. Of course, this was not true; Trisha needed to learn how to meet her needs for herself. Over time, Trisha became aware that there was another purpose to her passive expressions of hostility and resentment. As well as denying the hidden hostility, Trisha could respond to any attempt by others to expose her hostility by making a comment such as, ‘You’ve got no sense of humour’ or, ‘You’re just too sensitive’. This allowed Trisha to pile yet another expression of hostility on the back of the first.
Once Trisha became more aware of her assumptions and the types of strategies they were leading to, we moved the therapeutic focus to how she could behave differently. This required both patience and perseverance. It was worth persevering because, when Trisha deliberately behaved differently, no longer reinforcing her underlying assumptions of distrust and hostility, she was able to change them.
This took several years with Trisha. She was learning to do things differently, and I had convinced her to give up her poor strategies of sex work, gambling, and drugs. These behaviours were interdependent. We discovered that she did sex work to support gambling and ecstasy, and she gambled and took ecstasy because she often felt miserable after sex work. It was best to give them all up, especially since they often put her back on the treadmill of getting into trouble with the police and other authorities.
She took a job in a cafe with the aim of gradually working her way up. The idea was that she would be flexible about doing any reasonable task the boss required. She would try to work hard, show initiative, and behave reliably and responsibly. We set rules: no matter how hard it was, she would go to every shift (unless she was terribly ill); she would not quit; and she would not have any angry outbursts, but keep an even keel at all times. These were all new ways of behaving, and they worked. Most of the time she kept to the rules. After several months she was promoted, and was doing a wide range of tasks. Meanwhile, she was taking a small-business course through a TAFE college. We had a long-term plan that, once Trisha built her skills, she could manage, and perhaps eventually own, her own cafe.
I encouraged Trisha to build herself a friendship network outside her usual group of marginalised acquaintances. She had mostly known sex workers, drug dealers, and criminals, who were often desperate people. We decided that she needed to meet more mainstream people, since her pattern was now changing. To do this, she took up some normal interests. Once she had built other friendship supports, Trisha was able to end her relationship with her shop-owning partner in a clear but friendly manner. After a few concerted attempts at open communication, it had become obvious that he was unwilling to change with Trisha.
After Trisha had the experience of building a close relationship with me, she was able to use this as a model for developing a new relationship with a man who was a different type to those she had chosen in the past. He was good at talking, even about emotions, and he wanted to get close to Trisha as a person. Slowly, Trisha began to open up to him. Trisha is now in a stable relationship with her new partner, and she is doing well. Her confidence has improved, and she is feeling more skilled. Her life is now stable, without constant crises, and she is feeling calm and happier within herself. Her life has taken a turn for the better.
It should be clear from Trisha’s story that changing your behaviour involves working out specifically what needs to be changed, and how. If you are inclined to express your hostility through overt abuse and violence, obviously you must stop doing this. Many people think that anger just rises up and overtakes them to such an extent that they cannot control their temper. This is completely false. This thinking allows you never to take responsibility for your own temper.
We can all control how we behave. Realise that you are using your temper as a strategy to try to intimidate and force others into doing what you want. You have been bullying others to force them to meet your needs. Be honest about this, no matter how much it hurts and how much you want to deny it. Don’t let yourself off by lying to yourself. Understand that the overt expression of anger is such a well-practised and automatic strategy that it ‘feels’ like it wells up and takes over. Decide to stop these angry outbursts now. Let yourself feel remorse at ever having used this strategy.
Be aware, though, that when you stop expressing hostility overtly you may instead express it passively. This can be just as bullying. Remember, you can choose to behave better than this. Resist the subtle barb; resist the snide comment or joke; resist the disapproving facial expression; resist the urge to make demands and wound others in payback for your own pain. If you are in pain, accept responsibility for learning how to make it go away. Stop blaming other people.
Instead, start to behave in friendlier, kinder, and more encouraging ways towards others, and be generous with yourself. By doing this you will find that others want to co-operate with you and help you meet your needs. They will co-operate with you of their own free will because you have offered a trusting basis for the friendship rather than having made hostile demands upon their loyalty. This approach strategy of offering friendliness, kindness, and encouragement up front works much better than making demands and trying to force others against their will.
The ‘seeing goodwill’ exercise
As part of adopting being-more-friendly behaviour, it will help if you do a simple exercise before you go into any social, professional, or business situation:
• Simply remind yourself that the people you are about to meet have goodwill towards you, they will feel kindly towards you, and will like you. Especially remind yourself that they are on the same side as you, and they want to co-operate with you. Remind yourself of their friendliness throughout the interaction, especially when you are tempted to believe otherwise. Try also to relax your body and your face, and smile more readily. There is no need for defensive body language; you want friendly and approachable body language.
• In conversation, it is important to behave with openness without going too deeply, too quickly. A strong basis of trust must be established before trying to go deeper, so initially keep conversations reasonably light with a non-inflammatory content. Gradually, as trust builds, allow the depth and amount of disclosure to increase. Try to indicate an openness and willingness to talk through most issues, as long as they are appropriate for the level of trust.
• Do not let your own fear-driven hostility get in the way of clear, soft, open communication. Do not be afraid to talk through issues in detail, even if you are not well informed on the topic. State your views in terms of ‘I’m inclined to think … but I’m open to being convinced otherwise’. Resist being dogmatic. No one can ever be certain they are right. Particular views may be supported by more compelling evidence at a given time. If you are not convinced, but cannot put up a reasonable case at the time, say you’re not yet entirely convinced and that you need to go away and consider the issue further. Do so, then get back to the person, and either change your views or put up a more compelling case. Never be afraid to say that you have been convinced and that you have changed your mind.
• Initially, you may need to pretend that others are friendly, even when you do not believe it. This might feel risky because you think there is no evidence for friendliness. But give it time. Never hold out for win–lose results. Even where there are opposing interests, mutually beneficial solutions can almost always be reached as long as there is goodwill between parties. It is important to behave as though you have every chance of arriving at a good result for everyone in any given situation. Negotiate with friendliness, softness, kindness, and calmness. Do not assume conflict, even when there ‘appears’ to be conflict. Certainly, do not escalate conflict. Remember that your perceptions about hostility in others arose from your past negative experience, which is best not applied in most current situations. Make sure that you do not allow yourself to fall back into the old patterns. Remember, if you escalate a situation and become hostile, it allows other people not to take your views seriously, and to write you off as a ‘difficult’ person, rather than attending seriously to your calmly put evidence that supports your viewpoint.
• If, after these changes, things are still difficult, consider these issues. Perhaps you want more loyalty and closeness than you are getting in many of your relationships. Before blaming others, look first at your own contribution to the problem. Perhaps you are making unrealistic, 100 per cent demands that other people are unable or unwilling to meet. In this case, you may need to stop behaving so demandingly and to accept more reasonable results. Sometimes we all have to live with less than we want. Perhaps you are not sure about what you really want, in which case you need to consider your preferences more specifically. Perhaps you are not asking for your preferences clearly enough. You need to state your case with good reasons but not in a demanding way, since you have no basis for making demands of other people.
• Finally, you could consider whether your behaviour has been worthy of more loyalty and closeness. Remember, people generally get back what they put in. If you have not put in enough friendly, kind, open, co-operative, encouraging, trust-building behaviour, you will not reap the benefits of close, trusting relationships. This is a completely straightforward consequence of high-hostility, low-trust behaviour. If you want more loyalty and closer relationships, you must learn to behave differently.