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If someone defines you, even in subtle ways, they are pretending to know the unknowable. There is a quality of fantasy to their words and sometimes to their actions. Even so, they are usually unaware of the fact that they are playing "let's pretend." They fool themselves and sometimes others into thinking that what they are saying is true or that what they are doing is right.
When people "make up" your reality -- as if they were you -- they are trying to control you, even when they don't realize it.
When people attempt to control you they begin by pretending. When they define you they are acting in a senseless way. They are pretending. When people act as if you do not exist or are not a real person with a reality of your own...they are pretending. In this subtle and often unconscious way, they are attempting to exert control over you -- your space, time, resources, or even your life.Controlling People:
How to Recognize, Understand,
and Deal with People Who Try to Control You
page 58
To control is to act to effect an outcome, generally by means of restraint, physical or verbal, with regard to self, others, or the world around one.
There are two kinds of control. One is the nurturing control that we have over ourselves, our lives, and those entrusted to our care. The other is oppressive control.
Nurturing control supports one's own and others' freedom to be themselves, while oppressive control does just the opposite. Most people exercise nurturing control throughout their lives by the choices they make and the actions they take to ensure their own and others' sustenance and survival: to put off immediate gratification for a future good; to manage their resources -- money, time, space, and environment; to pursue their work and their relationships; and to care for their children and their families. In other words, to direct their lives, but not at the expense of another.
When Pretenders connect backwards, anchor in someone, and then attempt to keep their Pretend Person alive and well and exactly as they want him or her to be, they attempt to control the individual in whom they've anchored. Some people are aware of their behavior. Some are not. Some comprehend the likely outcome. Most do not.
If Pretenders don't get out from under the influence of the spell, they launch even greater assaults, especially if their definition of the other is not accepted... In this way Pretenders exert increasingly oppressive behavior. In relationships, while they may believe that they are only getting closer..., they are, in fact, aligning with the forces of oppression.
On one side, the person defined by the Pretender usually experiences this behavior as restrictive, oppressive, or as an attempt by the Pretender to control him or her. But if the person defined is very young or very naive, he or she may be unable to recognize the control tactic and may simply agree with the Pretender, taking in the Pretender's definition as truth. On the other side, the Pretender is attempting to gain or experience an ongoing kind of connection -- a feeling of closeness. Hence, I call this way of connecting to another person a Control Connection.Controlling People:
How to Recognize, Understand,
and Deal with People Who Try to Control You
pages 112-113
In the workplace, control connections jeopardize the health and well-being of employees. A saleswoman told me that her boss repeatedly said, "You aren't trying." But she was trying to do a good job and, in fact, she was doing it very well. She didn't realize that her boss was defining her intentions before he asked her what they were, and that he was actually trying to get her to conform to her pretend person (possibly a billion-dollar dream saleswoman). She worked double time to prove she really was trying. Soon she felt burned out and left her job. Her employer lost an outstanding employee.
Control Connections in familial relationships are truly devastating. Once the Controller creates a pretend partner, child, etc., he or she can neither hear nor see the real person and so defines him or her in myriad ways. Controllers will indulge in this behavior whenever they feel that their Pretend Person (their Teddy) is not there for them...
Mistaking the other for an illusory person explains a strange paradox: that some people in couple or parent/child relationships truly believe that they love the other while they act in hurtful, alienating, or even hateful ways, trying to change a real person into an illusory one.Controlling People:
How to Recognize, Understand,
and Deal with People Who Try to Control You
pages 120-121
[from the softbound edition]
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