When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept getting involved with people who would say, âOh, Iâm a bad personâ any time I brought up ANYTHING that was the least bit of a disagreement.Â
Like, âPlease donât leave my X on the floorâ would get, âOh, Iâm a horrible person!â
HEREâS WHY THIS IS A HUGELY PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR, and if you think Iâm calling you out and you think youâre about to shut down, take a breath, remember that this is about learning, and keep reading.
What is important is what happened after. My boyfriend might say, âOh, Iâm just an awful boyfriendâ and instead of him acknowledging the BEHAVIOR and working on fixing it, heâd get me trying to buck him up for the next half hour, telling him he was a good person. The behavior that started it all would not change.
Well, things led to things and I went back home to live for a while, and found that the same exact thing was happening⊠with my mother.
And then I learned about pattern arguments. Pattern arguments are the ones where you keep having the same nonproductive argument over and over again. They donât all follow this pattern, but this is a really common one.
First you have to know what the pattern is. In this case:
1. Grievance
2. Self deprecation
3. Ego stroking
So, with my mother, we started in on one of these, and she said, âI guess Iâm just a terrible mother.â
And instead of reassuring her, instead of derailing the issue and letting it go⊠I said, âWhen you say that, it makes me wonder how terrible a daughter I could be that you would think you were a bad mother. We have this conversation this way over and over, and the problem that I have always gets pushed aside in favor of trying to make you feel better. When youâre willing to have a real conversation about this, Iâm happy to talk to you, but Iâm bored with this argument, so Iâll see you later if you want to really talk.â And I left the room.
Now, my mom is a reasonably self-aware person, and does a lot of hard emotional work, and so she got it, very quickly. 10 minutes later she came out and found me, and we had a real conversation about whatever the hell the issue really was, and we have literally NEVER had that particular pattern argument again in 23 years.Â
Boyfriend came to visit. I was upset about something, he started in on the âIâm just a shitty boyfriendâ thing⊠and my response?
âYep. You are.â
His jaw dropped. He blinked.
And I said, âLook, thatâs what you do. You say shit like that and it means you donât have to change your behavior, and Iâm tired of the pattern we have where I tell you something isnât working for me, you tell me youâre terrible, and I spend half an hour making you feel better. Iâm tired of it and Iâm not doing it anymore. If youâre willing to have an actual conversation about this, and not just the same old argument, Iâm game. But this thing we do where you talk yourself down and I butter you up? Is boring. And Iâm over it.â
We also did not have that argument again. (The relationship finally ended for real a while after, but it ended in a grown-up way, and not with a ridiculous meaningless fight.)
When you knock yourself down, the gut instinct for the people around you is to pick you up. But that means youâre not pulling your weight in the relationship. Youâre making them do the work and youâre not actually hearing them.
So that brings us to another point:
How to deal with criticism
Okay, so if youâre not going to knock yourself down when someone says something negative about you, what DO you do? We donât actually train people to take criticism well. But it is an art and a skill and NECESSARY to finding emotional stability in the face of a critical world.
I see it as a flow chart, but since the flow chart I made for it ended up in a book that I donât own the copyright to (not a big deal) Iâll write out the decision tree here instead:
1. Someone offers criticism (constructive or not!)
2. Listen and think about it without immediately trying to defend yourself. You can say, âOkay, I need a moment to take that in and think about it because I want to understand it.â Or something else appropriate to the situation. It is okay to ask for time to think in most circumstances. Most people will appreciate that you are thinking about their words instead of immediately getting defensive or counterattacking. Think about whether what they are saying is valid, might be valid or is not valid.Â
3A. If it is valid, then you have a choice. You can try to fix the behavior or you can acknowledge that it is a valid criticism but decide you arenât likely to fix it. Start by acknowledging the validity of the criticism, and then say what youâre going to do to fix it, or say that itâs valid but it isnât something youâre willing (or possibly able) to change, or say that itâs a valid criticism and youâll need to think about possible solutions. They may have a suggestion. Taking it or not is also a choice.Â
3B. If youâre not sure itâs valid, but it might be, tell them, âI really need to give this some more thought.â or âCan you tell me more about this? Iâm not sure I understand the issue well.â  Or âIf you can point me at some reading material or search terms, Iâd like to study this before I decide what Iâm going to do.âÂ
3C. If you know it is not a valid criticism, STOP a moment, and look at WHY they are making it. This is where Active Listening can be very helpful. âI hear you saying that X is a problem. I donât see it that way right now but Iâd like to understand better why you do.â Or if you think they donât have enough information, âI hear you saying X, but my understanding of the issue is Y. Hereâs what I know about it if youâre ready to listen.â If theyâre just looking for a fight, tell them youâre not interested in fighting, and disentangle yourself.Â
4. If the criticism is something you are going to listen to and take action on, tell them what kind of action youâre going to take. If itâs something youâre hearing and thinking about, tell them that. If itâs not something youâre going to do anything about or itâs just wrong, thank them for their input and move on.
Literally never is it going to be helpful to say, âOh, Iâm just a terrible person.â Thatâs very much like a nonapology-apology in terms of how unhelpful it is to any conversation. Itâs kind of worse because it actually expects emotional labor from someone who is already having to bring up something unpleasant with you.
Think about what they say
Decide whether youâre going to do something about it
Do the thing, or tell them youâre not going to do the thing.Â
Donât demand emotional labor from other people when you were the one who messed up.Â
Apologize if appropriate.Â
This is all predicated on the notion that youâre talking to someone who actually wants to communicate and isnât just an asshole on the attack.Â
Because seriously, the whole âIâm a terrible personâ thing?Â
Boring as fuck. Knock that shit off. Maybe you are. Maybe you arenât. But take responsibility and have a little self-respect and donât make others pick your emotional dirty towels off the metaphorical bathroom floor.Â
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