This article is an addendum to a previous one on this site entitled “The Fabulous Fours” about how to deal with difficult, aggressive and stubborn people. In the previous article we examined several methods including the Toltech Wisdom approach( The Four Agreements), Marshall Rosenberg’s “Non-Violent Communication” and the work of Lindsay Gibson explained in her helpful book called “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”. Although each of these can be effective in many similar circumstances, none of them meet the challenge when dealing with a serious,skilled guilitifyer!
For example, in Lindsay Gibson’s work the principal strategy is to remain mindful and curious and not to react. In that case the guiltifyer just continues to believe they are right! Similarly in Non-Violent Communication, the communication just goes over the head of the intended target who is just more convinced than ever that she or he (I think women are generally more skilled at this art lol) is justified in their reproaches..
Remember the Jewish mother, the ultimate practitioner of the art of guiltifying , a mother by whom I myself was raised! May her soul rest in peace .No-one knew what to do. T he best my brothers could come up with was :”you’re doing the guilt trip again, Mom” they would say. Absolutely no effect!
An important distinction The distinction between valid criticism and insidious guiltifying. Criticism usually has some validity to it. And the he person being criticized is able to see the fault being highlighted . If he or she is humble enough(admittedly a big if lol) he can work to correct it. One of the great Islamic scholars Imam AshShafi r.a. founder of the Shafii school of jurisprudence was once asked: “Oh. Imam how did you attain such good character?”. And he responded: “Whenever anyone criticized me, friend or foe, I would look sincerely inside myself to see if there was validity to it and if so I would do my best to correct it”! Mashallah. Tell that to Trump lol!
But guiltifying itself is designed not to correct but rather to make the other person feel bad and the guiltifyer to feel moral superiority. A much more sinister motivation. Guiltifying is not the same as valid criticism. Valid criticism can be beneficial to the person being addressed, especially if he is able to admit his/her fault and work to correct it. Guiltifying is meant to make the other person feel bad and the guiltifyer to feel right!
Clinical Lore: There is a fairly common observation in clinical practice that when the alcoholic recovers from his addiction, the marriage breaks up. That would, at first, seem counterintuitive as that is exactly what the partner had wanted for years! Now there are several possibilities as to why that would occur. .One of them would be that the husband, without his alcohol, would become more rigid and irritable. Possible…. But I think that there is a more sinister explanation that is also more likely. You see Predatory Guiltifying is not like physical predation( bullying and intimidating).Nor is it like financial predation where one partner is taking advantage of the other economically. No Predatory guiltifying is about being morally superior! If you are married to an alcoholic, you are always the one in the right! No matter what he does he is wrong by definition! If he suddenly goes sober for awhile, the partner loses the moral high ground and the perverse incentive that goes with it. Not a pleasant experience, no doubt!
Possible solutions:
1) Probably one of the commoner approaches is just to let it be-as in the Gibson approach. Be patient and accepting. But that gets us nowhere!
2) Another way would be simply to exit the scene or even more radically to leave the relationship. But that is not always doable or even desirable. You’re not going to cut off your mother or your sister or even your wife lol just because she guiltifies you!
3) The most common reaction is to go on the defensive and even to get angry and aggressive. That will just make things worse! Then you are in the wrong!
4) the way I am proposing here is to push back with counterguiltifying. Now this has to be done in a measured and skilful way. No angry outbursts, no escalation. In as calm a way as the original guilt was delivered( they call that proportional response in military language lol), one asserts the guilt of the other .I will show you what I mean in the following clinical vignette.
This is about a Moroccan client- one of three sibs-an older sister and a younger brother.. Her older sister had been abusive to her all through childhood-insulting her and hitting her at will all through childhood- and had even been charged criminally for her behaviour outside the family. However, the parents were insisting that my client be present with her sister at regular family events- even though this often triggered PTSD symptoms.. They used the Islamic principle of “rahim wassilah”(keeping up connections to the extended family )to try to pressure her and guiltify her into attending, but each time she did, she would have more PTSD symptoms.So she was in a dilemma.
The suggested counter-guiltifying involved criticizing the parents in turn. She would mention (also an Islamically valid reproach ) how they hadn’t raised their older daughter correrctly-hadn’t done the “tarbiya”( training) incumbent on Muslim parents and even that they would be accountable on the other side for their negligence. Now ,of course the parents, not being like Imam AshShafii, would dismiss her charges -unless they were particularly sincere. But at least the client would have defended herself and thus would feel somewhat better and more justified in her reactions!. And she would the dubious pleasure of making the parents squirm,-even if only for a moment lol
Now this is a new idea for me so I am not sure how well it will work.Bu t I dont see any other avenue for now. Do you?! Tell me about your own experiences and experiments in this area in the comments.
Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim