Ping Pong
Where one person is trying to manipulate another, there is a, “game,” going on. In ALL games the communication takes on a ping-pong quality.
e.g. 1
For the last ten years as Newsnight begins,
“Ee, is it that time already?” Says Bill.
“What would you like for your supper?” Replies Jenny.
E.g. 2
Grandma, her daughter and the baby about to set off for a walk.
“Do you think he’ll be warm enough like that?” asks grandma.
“Well pass me his blue cardigan off that chair,” replies the daughter, feeling cross.
To a visitor from Mars, there's communication going on but they would feel they’ve missed something. They have.
In ping-pong communication (see illustration below) the real messages are sent and received under the table. The top shots are really a sort of camouflage, which allows the persecutor to seem benevolent in stead of manipulative.
Persecutor
Victim
One way out would be for the Victim to, “call out,” the game, such as;
“Why don’t you just say, ”Jenny make my supper,” if that’s what you want.
And, “Why don’t you just say, “I think you should put his cardigan on.””
In both cases the Persecutor would reply something along the lines of, “What’s got into you, all I said was …………..”
The Victim will then conclude they just can’t win. When they say nothing they lose out and when they stand up for themselves they still lose out.
The only was for the Victim to win is simply not to play.
The way you do this is by only responding to the top-shot.
So in the first case Jenny replies, “Yes.”
And in the second case the daughter replies, ”Yes.”
Many, if not most top-shots are statements to which silence would be the most appropriate response, but as a first step silence can be scary.
It sounds so simple you’d think there’s got to be more to it than that. Well, there is. If you’ve been a pin-pong player all your life, and like much else these things are generally set up in childhood, and you start only responding to top-shots, in a relationship where most of the communication is along these lines, the effect can be dramatic, not to say explosive.
If you are going to change, and in truth, once you’ve seen what’s going on it’s hard not to, you need to make a start on the little things and experience just how easy it is to simply not play. Nobody can play ping-pong on their own, you have to play to keep the game going.