I’ve been gathering together some ideas for a mini workshop I’m running at this year’s annual NLP Conference which is being held this coming weekend in London.
No, this doesn’t account for my long silence on this blog. That was due to a particularly busy training period – plus the almost-writer’s-block phenomenon whereby the longer you put off getting back into writing the more reasons you find to continue putting it off…
Anyway, the theme of the mini workshop is how NLP can help in developing and maintaining great relationships. So I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about relationships and have been wondering about the less-than-useful games people play in relationships.
This is in the spirit of that great little 1964 book by Eric Berne “Games People Play’ – still insightful, fresh and well worth reading 44 years on.
So far I’ve come up with quite a few ‘Toxic Relationship Games’ including
- Tell me I’m wonderful
- I’m better than you
- You’re living your life the wrong way!
- I’m an NLP-expert – I can read your mind
- Now, don’t get me wrong…
- Isn’t life awful!
- Let me sympathise with you!
- Hurry up and finish speaking…
- Conversation Hijackers
The first of the Toxic Relationship Games will be posted shortly!
I have a very old and battered copy of Games People Play and I agree that is well worth reading, 44 years on.
I think that antidotes to toxic games are not so easy to find because there are some very sophisticated game players out there (perhaps we all play a few games). Even for people with high levels of awareness, a clever player can still suck them into their game.
Once you are sucked in, the player will give you all kinds of reasons (and rewards) to stay in the game and that often includes a variety of threats should you walk away.
After a long time and some tough experiences, I have found that my best strategy to decline or back-out of a game is to keep my highest values at the forefront of my mind. And then to carefully evaluate the threats of regret which might come my way and have the courage to act on my judgement.
I’d be interested in your views on this Reg. Of course, it is important to recognise and understand toxic games, but what to do if you find yourself ‘trapped’ in one?
- Graham.
I don’t think any of us is immune to, or averse to, game-playing, Graham.
In using NLP to model the Toxic Games I had a few uncomfortable moments of recognition! (Incidentaly, they’re not all posted in the blog by any means – will get around to posting a few more soon, if enough interest is shown in them).
And I do think that the first application of the Toxic Games idea is to recognise the games we play, ourselves! And to eliminate them as we identify them.
The second application is in self defence – not necessarily by interacting with the game-player but by identifying the game and deciding not to get, as you term it, ‘sucked in’.