Defensive Coping Strategies of
People Who Need to be Right
_____ Braced yourself and constricted your energies to avoid invasion from another person's words or actions
_____ Thought "You can't tell me what to do and I don't have to listen" when a parent or teacher corrected you
_____ Felt overly proud at being rational and logical at the expense of being intuitive and experiencing feelings
_____ Needed be seen as tough, powerful and strong
_____ Decided that your ideas were better than others so shut their opinions off
_____ Became angry when you expected others to see things your way and agree with you and they didn't
_____ Judged others harshly when they disagreed with you
_____ Became overwhelmed when information presented was too much to process
_____ Felt threatened when new ideas came from someone else
_____ Feared hearing about new information that threatened your beliefs
_____ Feared letting go of control
_____ Devalued the sensitivity and feelings of others
_____ Felt uncomfortable with your expressing sensitive feelings
_____ Felt entitled in doing what you had to do to get others to go along with you
_____ Decided that someone who disagreed with you should "just get over it"
_____ Used insincerely to get win another person to your point of view
_____ Started blaming and putting the other person down to settle the argument
_____ Feared the anxiety and feeling fragmented when there was disagreement
_____ Felt satisfied and pleased because you manipulated someone to get your way
_____ Overrode the boundaries that someone else was trying to set
_____ Refused to see the problem from the other person's perspective
_____ Decided that the issue didn't affect you and assumed it did not affect others
_____ Argued your point of view in thoughts or words and refused to hear the alternate argument
_____ Badgered and intimidated someone to shut him down
_____ Became agitated and stubbornly attached when your ideas were attacked
_____ Became irritated at an assumption of the other person and stopped listening
_____ Minimized the importance of a personal problem you were being confronted with
_____ Refuse to deal with a problem because you thought it was temporary
The need to be right, as a defense in life, can be broken into IF you are willing to observe yourself and catch yourself in the act of being adamant and inflexible. Being willing to own the behavior and then forgive yourself for doing it WILL boost you to a higher level of consciousness. Breaking into rigidity will give you an increase in personal power. Instead of having power over others, you develop a power over yourself. This is real self-esteem!
Being inflexible can continue because you have not known how to break the pattern or you do not want to give up being in control. Ask yourself, "Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? Do I want to get my way or do I want to feel closeness with others? Am I willing to balance my logical, left brain with my intuitive, feeling right brain to make me a well-rounded person?" Check each unhealthy coping behavior from the list below that contributes to your closed mindedness and rigidity of thinking.
What Do You Really Want?
What we all want down deep when we strip away the defenses of control is to be loved. We want to feel safe. We want to be heard and understood. The fear of losing control and resulting hostility is always a sign of needing the experience of deeply being loved but not knowing how to get it. Alas, anger to get what you want is a cry for love being armed with tools for war.
A whole set of tools are needed to help deal with feelings in building a whole, healthy human being. You become more secure and are less upset as you understood that things don't always have go the way you want. Life becomes less threatening, as you understand that feelings are only feelings and uncomfortable states of emotions can be endured and regulated. Learning to deal with vulnerable feelings will help you become a more well-rounded individual, going from "I need to be right" to "I choose to be a real person, uncomfortable feelings and all."
As a wise woman said, "We are as happy as we are able to be responsible for our own feelings and behavior."
The superior man or woman is always open to consider that there may be another reality other than the one that they see through the lens of their life. Putting down the tools of war and picking up the tools of communication, conflict resolution, connection and commitment can create a life that produces long lasting love.
The Archie Bunker Style--The Fear of Feelings
Fear is the major dynamic operating in this condition. People who have the need to be right usually are very strong physically. They are not usually afraid of the most common fears of physical pain, heights, snakes, public speaking, etc. Their hidden fear is feeling vulnerable, emotional and out of control. They have a low tolerance for emotional pain and cannot tolerate feelings of shame. They use the sense of being right as a narcotic for uncomfortable feelings. They feel threatened when other people bring up a differing point of view--this is the fear of being wrong. Freud called this dynamic "omnipotence of thought." He considered it a psychological defense to avoid inner anxiety and a sense of becoming fragmented when there is disagreement.
The "need to be right" defense was probably learned early in life when you did not have power and someone else was critical, angry or abusive with you or others in your household. Refusing to yield to the needs of others is learned by the young child as he observes that mean adults or bullies, who were the loudest and angrier, often got their way. The child learns that putting power trips on others is rewarded. He then rationalizes that this is okay, and it becomes a habit whenever he feels threatened inside. Defending against taking in new information becomes a generalized way of thinking and acting that comes up whenever there is a threatening situation. Others yield to avoid your anger and you inadvertently shut down avenues of growth for yourself. New information is squelched. Refusing to hear new data closes down your mind and your consciousness.
People who cannot feel and express emotions are called repressors in the psychological literature. Uncomfortable emotions are repressed so that they do not have to be known and experienced. Repressing of the negative emotions is more likely to be found in men and may be related to high levels of testosterone, the male hormone. A new study of 1704 men aged 40 to 70 suggests that men who have high levels of testosterone in their blood are less happy in life. High testosterone levels often results in aggressive behavior and alienation of other people. Men high in this male hormone have double the divorce rates of men low in the hormone. Men who have an inability to connect on a deep level with others often cover this up with a sense of bravado and aloofness. The higher testosterone powered men in the study reported finding less pleasure in life and did not look forward to the future. Most often, this stance softens as the person grows older and learns to express feelings.
It's part of being human to want to have our way. We all have a touch of the need to be right and control others. We all have areas of self-righteousness where we believe that we know better than others. To the extent that this need to be right and resulting defensiveness permeates one's life, the less connected you will be with others. It's sad, but true, the more of you have of the following characteristics of rigidity of thought, the more anger and disapproval you will get from others:
_____ An insatiable need to be right in search of the truth
_____ A high need to expect others to see it your way
_____ Feeling threatened when new ideas come from other people
_____ Fear of hearing new information that threatens your beliefs
_____ Fear of letting go; need to be in control of self at all times
_____ Preoccupation with winning approval from others
_____ The need to always be seen as tough, powerful and strong
_____ Pride at always being rational and logical
_____ Uncomfortable with expressing sensitive feelings
_____ Believe that others who disagree with you are wrong and should "just get over it"
_____ Use charm, anger, withdrawal or blaming to settle arguments
TAKE A STEP BACK AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH IN
Source: "Whether you point your finger in blame or extend the hand in partnership is only a matter of perception." -- Virginia Satir
Replies
personally i don't like the word 'troll' ... but if people following somebody around, maybe they like those people ... ;)) - it has to be reasons ... ;))
Back in school, there were a boy in my class who always peak on me, i told my dad about it, he told me that maybe that boy likes me - the funny part was that my dad was right ... who knew, many years later i find out about it ... ;)) nothing is black and white
in some way you are right it takes 2 to tango, however it’s not always about reflection, there are just ‘impossible’ people, they set they mind about life so much there is no room for ‘others’ to be acknowledge, no matter what you say or how you say it, using a nearly endless ‘laundry’ list of complaints from the past/present against you. Even if time goes by you may hear about it with an angry remark putting blame on ‘you’, with an endless supply or arguments to support their ‘ideas’, seizing anything that twill provide them the opportunity to lay blame like it was gold. The sad part is it becomes a vicious circle, as you could find yourself adopting much of the behavior, even if you trying to avoid it. We all have emotions, different life conditions and personal journey as individuals; there is no manual and no black and white. What about caring for one another, just that alone could defuse some conflict. Or perhaps to have rewarding conversations is an example of mature individual, not a kindergarten behavior – so maybe treat them like children … but then some times it works and some times it doesn’t especially dealing with people who ‘can do no wrong’ … it’s like banging head against a brick wall. Perhaps there a many way to deal with the situation, everybody have their own methods, but being responsible always start with oneself … not somebody else.