How Do You Cope With Abusive People?

[halflifeguy]

In personal life I can easily spot and quickly avoid anyone that is a manipulator/abusive type.

At work, avoidance is often not an option. With pushy bosses there's not much to do. I just keep my head down and work. At heated meetings my 'fight response' kicks in. There's something surreal (slightly out of body) being the one in the room standing up to, literally toe to toe, with a known bully that has a history of anger issues. Not smart!

 

[DogwoodTree]

This isn't my total solution, but part of it is that I try to learn from the situation. What is it specifically they're doing that is being so destructive? (This is a big question for me because most of the people around me are fairly subtle and quietly manipulative with they ways they mistreat people.) What could be going through their heads that they think this is okay? Do I ever tell myself those same things and therefore perhaps miss that I'm treating someone else in this way?

I grew up in such a dysfunctional family that I'm having to retrain myself on how to interact with people. I collected "rules" for how to behave with people, but these rules were built on dysfunctional models, so...having to start over on so much of it, even redefining basic terms like "love" and "gratitude" and "judgment." So now I watch for examples of "healthy" interactions and "unhealthy" interactions and try to distinguish between the two so I can use just the healthy interactions as models.