For a very short, limited insight (that could be expansive)

Here's a short post for a change. I'd like to touch on the simple topic of questions.

Many times, in personal interactions, questions are not asked with the primary purpose of gathering information. They are asked for any one of a number of reasons such as:

To make a person feel - on a subconscious level, perhaps - that their privacy is not respected

To get a person to agree to some principle that, by implication, they have previously not been in agreement with

So that the question-asker may exert social dominance over the questionee (see first point - a subtle lack of respect may be an attempt to denote social rank)

I'm sure there are many other reasons, but these are some that I've reflected on recently. Many of us believe that we must reflexively answer when asked a question, but I have paused to think, taken time to process before responding, or at least reflected later on conversations and I've noticed that many questions don't seem to be very much about getting particular answers; rather, they seem to be totally all about communicating a subtext.

If anyone else can think of examples, please feel free to bring them up for discussion.

I had an experience recently in a commission sales atmosphere (and we all know that scenario is a hotbed of "persuasion.") I walked out without buying anything, but reflected later on the many statements and questions which all had a purpose; they seemed confusing at the time but all made perfect sense upon dissected analysis.

Let's move on to another middle-like start

In my last post I detailed a manipulative method I am not especially familiar with except through reading. It didn't hit a personal chord as much as it is something I read that made sense. So let's move on to something more familiar to me. Before I get into that, I should give some personal background. Dry textbook reading is no one's favorite, and I should give my perspective so this might make more sense to readers. I'm a person who, in my view, sits midway between those most easily manipulated and those who are mess-with-proof. In fact, I have observed that I come in several notches higher, even, than the midpoint (I see others being taken while I figuratively shake my head.) Some struggle visibly with those who seek to move them around like chess pieces, yet I am definitely not on the "do not care, don't listen or give it a thought" list at the other end of that road. I see it as a bit of a spectrum (as many things are when you think about it that way.) Those who don't care one whit what others might ask of them or think of them may have what we'd consider a problem (no insight, no compassion, a toxic-level self-centeredness, to name some possibilities.) And those who protect themselves the least need others to supervise them if they can't get it together - they'll be broke and kidnapped also, in no time, if they accede to every stranger's wishes and requests.

So, here I am in the middle-ground somewhere, and like everyone else, I have my strong points and my weak spots. I watched the video posted by Urspo yesterday (in the comments of my most recent post) and learned a new word origin. I also found myself thinking that I would never hand over my watch to a stranger; would never buy his doubtful promise. Then I thought about the day and age, the social customs, and converted my opinion to a big question mark. In a small-town atmosphere, fearing censure by social peers, I might have given in, also. I can't say without totally understanding the setting and the personnel. Our fast-paced, high-population world of today is different than Thompson's working stage.

I do know, however, that people looking to gain trust look for certain traits upon which to capitalize. Something else I read about, but which immediately resonated with me, is the practice of the manipulator to home in on the trait of conscientiousness. Specifically, I've been taken to task for the following:

"Don't you believe that [insert universally-accepted social platitude here]?" or... "Didn't you say that you [insert previously-claimed universally-strived-for trait here, such as maintaining truthful consistency or keeping promises]?"

One of these people is trying to procure a specific response from the other

To me, the above is heavy-handed, yet I've seen people roll right over in the face of it, and I understand why. It is uncomfortable to have others pointedly question our behavior and our values, and it's not something done within the realm of polite social interactions, so it can take us by surprise. Some of us think better on our feet than others. I'm one who does not. So I employ a strategy I read about long ago: Claiming the right to take my time. This can be used for just about any unpleasant interaction. I'm going to get now into a gender generalization, although I typically don't do that because I don't often believe those hold water. But in this case, I will, inaccurate though it may sometimes be.

I don't know the reasons for this difference, but I've noticed that females believe they must respond to each question or challenge, while males very often meet those with silence. I believe the latter approach can be very useful. I've adopted the no-response tactic, and the results are profound, possibly because it's not expected from a female. I've been yelled at; I've been labeled "B word"; I've had people freak out in my presence, just because I didn't immediately jump when they lit the proverbial fuse under me. I may add in a neutral remark such as, "I'll have to think about that," or "not sure I agree." This gives me time to reflect upon what has been going on, and a manipulator does not want anyone to stop and carefully think. The main point here, though, is that the desired response, or ANY response, is NOT required just because someone has the nerve to expect it. Tool #1 in the arsenal of "fighting no-good-ers" is to remember that your response is due only when and if you decide it is. And it never has to be what your questioner hopes to hear. Their freak-out should not sway you, just in and of itself. They'd hope it would. But you may need time to think, and another's objection to that may be (but is not necessarily) an indicator that "something is up."

This has been all over the map. Does anyone have any insight? I'd like to be more organized in my approach, but I'm touching on some things as they come to mind. I hope others will reply and even add in suggestions for sub-topics to explore.

No better place to start than right in the middle

I plan to host a series, and I hope people will help me write it. (That means commenting if you have a comment, and even if you don't, just commenting for the heck of it anyway, so we can pick collective brains.) I'm interested in exploring what's involved in everyday interactions when people try to steer and direct you for their purposes. As I understand it, all human interaction have to potential to contain some element of this. And we all have a sense for what we feel comfortable tolerating (or find acceptable) and what "rubs the wrong way." I believe that much of the time, discomfort goes on beneath the conscious level. So let's explore what goes wrong, and how to bring it up into the light.

Since I don't know where to start or how to structure this, I'll start smack dab anywhere. Some of this has come from reading I've done, but mostly it's come from personal experience (reinforced and clarified, in some cases, by reading the thoughts of others who have made their research available to all.)

The topic is manipulators. More specifically, the worst kind. Or less specifically, any kind. I think it's worthwhile to talk about the big and the bad and the small and less bad. A series could be written; a year would not cover it. Not with the kind of "research" I've amassed. So let's start with something fundamental that I believe is used frequently, if not necessarily always, when the slickster tries to pull a fast one on "unsuspecting you."

Has it ever been pointed out to you that pointer-outer has done you a favor? More than one favor, maybe, and great favors, as they remind you? Now, it's normal for well-meaning loved-ones to take a bow when they've done you right, but I'm talking about niceties you have to stop and think about because you know you didn't ask for them. And furthermore, you're not sure you would have agreed, given the choice. Or at least, you feel a little quizzical over why it's being pointed out to you by favor-doer that their deed should get some spotlight.

Do you know where this is going? While your head's still reeling over strange conversation, something is then asked of you. The strong implication is that you got, so you should give.

And do you think it's billed as optional? Maybe - on the surface. A surface so thin you don't even know it's there.

Have you ever had anyone interact a little strangely with you, and upon reflection you realize they tried to ingratiate themselves to you (maybe pointing it out, maybe not), and then asked you (surprisingly) for something? Have you ever been given the creeps as such? So that you ponder what's creepy or what seems somewhat... "off"?

The look on your face as you try to figure out what just happened

When people think they've got a hot one on the line

Once again my blog post - which appears to be turning into a monthly-at-best phenomenon - was motivated by grande blogger extraordinaire Urspo (2nd time in a row - What's in the water out where he lives?)  See his post of today for background, then chomp right into the substance of this post.  Or, if not inclined to read his post, for some wildly inscrutable reason, you can still just waltz right in.  I hope everyone can identify with being in one of the below-described roles.  I can recall being all of them (some far more than others, and on a constant basis.  I'm trying to say I'm rarely wrong - and I'm never arrogant about it or anything.  Nor prone to hyperbole, or self-aggrandizing, or... Okay, enough introduction.)  Curtains....

See - people can tell when you're doing this (the stuff in the second paragraph under the photo. [of Urspo's post])  At least I can, a lot of the time, and I have to play games back and forth with the opponent, answering to their, "Oh, why would you think I'm being anything other than straightforward - can you prove it?" and it's a miserable experience.

Do we all do some of that (the misery-making hidden-agenda thinly-veiled confirmation-of-suspicions questioning session?)  I guess so.  I'm one of those people who has a tough time going through life when I realize what people are doing and they think for all the world that there's no way I could know that. Most of the time there's no apology or sign of any contrition at all at the end, on the part of the would-be-Sherlock-Holmes (when they're the one who tried to bust me on something but were all wrong from the half-witted start) or the would-be-Bonnie-or-Clyde (who left neon-fingerpainting-footprints all over and thought I wouldn't see them.)

This isn't me, but I'm pretty sure it's what I look like when I have to sit through one of these sessions.

Sorry - I shouldn't have dumped my issue on your nice blog post.  I'm going to turn it around and say that I can identify with you, as well.  Let me tell you, there have been a few times (it doesn't happen often) when I misread, or get the wrong info, or may just jump to an ill-formed conclusion and make a complete monkey's ass out of myself. (as David described. [in the comments section of Urspo's post])  Here's what I normally do: When in your position as described [in Urspo's post], I just go ahead and pounce and risk being an ass, but I try to keep it non-judgmental and sterile/factual until the person doing the mindf*ckery on me (because the vast majority of the time that's what's really going on) is completely convicted and sentenced.  Then I tell them what I really think if they don't have the integrity to admit to what they've done (which 99/100 they don't.)

What I look like on the rare occasion I wind up being on the misled/mistaken end (wrong, in other words) of a fact-finding session.

What I look like most of the time when it ends up just as I thought - that the person pulling a fast one was up to no good and furthermore, won't even admit to it when totally busted. (This is how I live my life too much of the time.)

Pardon me, may I have a free plastic bag? (or: How was your weekend?)

This post constitutes a comment I wrote for today's post on Ur-Spo's blog, but decided to paste here instead.  Why clog up his comment section when I can tell the long story here?  Read this and enjoy it if your day is going better than this one did.

Upon seeing your face on your blog today (looking "doleful,") I remembered your story about the trek to the opera and throwing up in parks and on sidewalks all the way home from it; on the train, etc.  My heart ached for you when I read it, and obviously it made an impression on me since I remembered it through the present. Maybe I remembered it because we had this experience last weekend.  Not "me" but "he," -that's what I meant in this context when I said "we."

"He" started feeling dizzy upon waking up; I thought he had anxiety or just the normal high-strung disposition was at work.  Sweaty at the train station.  Queasy on the train.  Then something close to two hours (in two different sessions) locked in the urine-stenched train bathrooms, all the way to Manhattan.  Still in the bathroom he was when they announced we should gather our belongings. Odd though it was to touch his collection of plugged-in gadgets (his phone is like his other self), I put his electronics away and got the hats and gloves together.  I didn't have to get employees to cut locks on the bathroom; I didn't have to pound on the door; he staggered out, making dagger-eyes at the people taking their time to arrange all their baggage before de-training, slowing his exit momentarily.

Made it up the escalator to the next level where he hung his beet-red face over a trash can for 1/2 hour, yellow bile discharged occasionally, as people stepped around him with leery eyes.  Eventually I procured a complimentary plastic bag from Dunkin Donuts and had to leave him in the waiting area while I switched our return tickets out for a near-immediate (well, an hour or so later) ride home.  So after staring at the floor and into the bag in the waiting area for that hour, a special attendant took us down some locked, secret passageways to the not-yet-crowded platform for priority boarding where more barfing into the D.D. bag took place.  The attendant told us his wife had just gotten over the same thing.  Thus ended the vomiting, although I've never seen a sadder sight - leaning up against the freight elevator, steps from the platform's edge, coughing into a plastic bag.  The ride home was uneventful and much napping and recovering was done at home over the next few days.  He lived out my nightmare - sick in a station of thousands of people, sick on a moving train ride of several hours' duration, sick in a latrine-like room with wafting odors of hundreds of pee and poo sessions, with the heater on to amplify the same.  My hat is off to "he" for living through it.

I could have made this my own blog post.  In fact, I'll copy it over there now. [I successfully copied it, as you can see.]

"See you next time!" (which turned out to mean never) - Not you readers! Just the dentist

I left a dentist because of the upsell.  We also had this terrible dynamic in which we learned that we attended the same college, only one year apart (but don't remember each other) (wait - this is good so far, right?) and I think we (although I can only confidently say "I") could not figure out who was "the boss."  Normally a dentist would be a type of authority figure to me, more educated (at least in his field), older (although sadly I'm at the age now where I've been shocked to find doctors increasingly likely to be younger than myself) and while he was one year older, this was not enough.

I think the age was just a fraction of, or maybe even a non-contributor to, the confusing context in which we could not place ourselves - it may have been the fellow alumni status, it may have been some possible difference or even uncomfortable similarity in personality that was too strong, maybe he found me especially unattractive (I always wonder and suspect that) or conflictingly attractive (I very much doubt that) - I admit I thought he was somewhat attractive but I think this was influenced primarily by having to spend lots of time 3" from his face, which is not an everyday happening with non-family members and can unduly influence (although usually temporarily!) a perception like this toward the positive side (at least for me that's true, since I'm generally a positive person and like people the more I am around them, all other things being equal).  I have listed possible factors in no particular order from the very likely to the wildly unlikely factors; you can see that I combed through everything I thought it might be in attempting to figure out what was making me dread being in the presence of this person. [It should be noted that I am not anxious about actually getting dental work done.]  All of these little "problems" being unimportant next to this one that I kept coming back to:

He seemed to not like me, and while I tried to tell myself this could be a thought coming from my own head, I could not help returning to it again and again fresh, and this is a sign to me that it could be coming from an external source (such as him truly not liking me.)  Why would he not like me?

 After pondering it long enough, I came to the working conclusion that while I'm a nice enough person to those who "click" with me (which should be nearly everyone), I am not easily intimidated by just the power of suggestion of doing, well, whatever is suggested, and simply repeating the thinly (badly) veiled coaxing in a sterner (or at least while subtracting any feigned friendliness) manner does not typically work to get me closer to the point of agreement sought by the persuader.  In fact, it makes me prone to balk out of reflex, while I spend time assessing the situation, gathering my thoughts once outside the zone of the pressurer so that I can make sure I've made an un-rushed decision. Some people seriously dislike those they cannot "influence" easily, or at least may not know what to make of them.  I've found myself being treated dismissively by some of these people.

This is a long-form way of saying that I believe he thought a taut-lipped, no-eye-contact (interspersed with cold glare shot my way) ultimatum ending with the dumping of me upon his assistant while he walked out unceremoniously would leave me seeking his approval so that I'd cave in to his manipulative tactics.  I don't mean to sound harsh by way of not understanding that the man has professional opinions that he must present to the patient in order to do his ethical duty (and he said as much, in so many words!)  What an asshole I must be, I reflect now... Or maybe, just maybe... I may not be the asshole, and he may be the one with insensitive interpersonal communication skills that amplified this slight-but-growing problem I noticed, which I perceived as "his mood"?

For very quick background, I didn't like the way he would enter the room with back turned (how does anyone do that?  Oh yeah, my back was the one turned, while in a chair), read the chart silently at the counter, fail to say hello, then turn around talking shop without looking at my face first.  Assistants smiled as if this were the way everyone acts, and really, I'm not ultra-picky about this because I realize people are gosh-darned busy and may be having a terrible day.

So another day I came in for a filling and it was just me and him, and let me tell you, he treated me like his best friend.  We talked about old college days, and he told me about his family (now that I think of it, he talked about himself just a little too much, but what else was there to talk about? And I don't like to critique, so this is only in painstaking after-the-fact reflection that I say this) and I think when I was done, we were thinking about getting married. I thought, "Maybe I caught him on a bad day, previously.  He's a nice guy, after all."  So I left in a good mood, but came back for subsequent appointments that resembled the back-turned-no-greet/scowl-terse-words-walk-out.

Typically when I encounter the happy-joking one day / inexplicably cold the next day phenomenon, I suspect a personality problem.  That, or at least a person who may like me a little and puts up with me for professional reasons but basically cannot stand me (OR... the person may simply be a jerk), so I decided to do the best thing for myself and just find another dentist.  I mean, I didn't like doing it, and this was sandwiched around a too-long stretch of time visiting NO dentist (Back on one of those days I drove home crying - and you should know that I am a very-rare crier, not one of those drop-of-hat criers - I actually thought of asking his assistants if he was like this with everyone or if he had a specific problem with me - but I never asked - and reflecting on just the impulse I had to ask told me that I should think about ending the professional relationship.)

The new dentist I have is great; I told him about the previous relationship, and he and his staff are so understanding and sympathetic.  I've noticed him occasionally acting just a bit like the first dentist described, though, which tells me that at least some of this unpleasant experience came from within my head and my unrealistic and unclear (even to myself) expectations of how I would like to be treated by the white-coated people.  At least part of it is due just to the upsell, the first topic mentioned in this post.  I have to remember that he's only my friend for the few hours per year I spend there; he patches and polishes, and he tries to sell me stuff that would benefit me, but that I don't want to pay for, and I have to sort out what's worth paying for, and what's not really necessary, and I don't like doing that.  Everyone's gotta make a dollar, though, and there are so many dollars you could spend at the dentist that it probably makes the world's economy go round.

How do you use your phone?

These days I find myself leaving long blog-post-length comments on the blogs of blogfriends, while my own blog grows weeds in it.  So I'm going to try to post those long comments here, with a referral to the person who got me started thinking and yapping.  Today's thought-provoking (because I am interested in all things sociological) post comes from live and learn, specifically from this post: http://liveandlearn-tossandturn.blogspot.com/2015/12/communication.html  And here is my response (cut directly out of the comment box so that I don't spam up her blog with lengthy, rambling comments)  (Thanks for the rambling inspiration, "live and learn"! :

Here's the thing (and I'm in your age neighborhood) - I can almost never answer a ringing phone.  Particularly a cell phone (we still have a home phone, but it rings maybe once per week and that's often for some automated message.)  I do feel a little alarmed when I get an actual call on my cell phone because that, too, is very, very infrequent.  Sometimes when texts are not going through or suspected of not going through due to no answer, we, as a family with members calling to each other (with a forgotten item for the grocery list or a change in pickup time), will then call,  because calls get through more reliably.

But most often I won't answer my cell phone and it's either because I don't know who is calling or more often, I am driving or otherwise too busy to answer.  I never talk while driving, although I notice just about all other drivers on the road doing so.

I answer it if I know who it is, if I want to talk to them, and if I can!  But oftentimes I can't.  So anyway, I typically check my phone once I'm not driving or otherwise have hands full, and then I get in touch with whoever tried to call me.  I think that's how the "ring once and wait for a call back" evolved - probably from similar scenarios.  What I'm saying is that young and old alike to some degree are seeing the phone as a pager more than anything else.

GRUMPY RANT STARTING:

I'm going to insert a little unasked-for opinionated opinion here:  I can't stand it when people have songs, especially cutesy songs (serious national anthems, classical masterpieces, etc.) as their ring tone.  Ditto for the old-fashioned ringing phone, especially because it's always loud.  I want to hear others' phones as little as possible.  I have some odd little spaceship type tones for mine, and it's not continuous, and it doesn't form a song.  It can barely be discerned by those who don't know what it is.  I like it that way and I wish everyone else did the same.

GRUMPY RANT OVER