>>Granted "see things from the other person's point of view" is about the dumbest advice ever, since it's impossible.<<
It's not impossible. It's just something that many people find very difficult, and not everyone can do. For me, I can do it fluently in fiction but I suck at it in person. I've spent a lot of years trying to learn how to do it, though, and I can see the progress. I've mostly quit trying to give people advice that would work for me but not for them, at least.
>>I think I'm especially bitter about this book because I went to it expressly hoping it might help me with being abused, controlled, and belittled by people I am required to love but still (irrationally) fear.<<
It sounds like the book you need has not been written yet. Maybe someone will pick up on that eventually -- there must be other folks who would benefit from it also. *ponder* It occurs to me that some of what male victims need is different from what female victims need, so much that a generalized approach doesn't cover enough ground to work. I've seen that problem with rape/sexual abuse survivor support. The social context is so far apart that the same techniques don't always suffice.
>>My opinion is that at least in the childhood years the females are much more sophisticated, on average, than the males. And are therefore much more able to crush the soul with words than the males are. <<
I think emotional manipulation tends to grow in quicker for girls. Plus it's tempting because it doesn't require either physical power or social rank to do a lot of damage quickly.
>>Of course I'd be a fool to ignore the statistics that my own gender is far more likely to fly off the deep end and resort to physical violence<<
True. When it comes to verbal abuse, though, men and women tend to manifest that in different ways. There are people I avoid because of their preference for emotional violence -- and of the worst in my close experience, one is male and the other female, and they do not load the same artillery.
>> although in my own case it went internal, only so far as sucking on a pistol barrel, and at this late remove I'm not even sure I was serious about the thought of pulling the trigger.<<
I'm sorry to hear that things have been so rough for you.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Well...
Date: 2010-11-25 01:49 am (UTC)It's not impossible. It's just something that many people find very difficult, and not everyone can do. For me, I can do it fluently in fiction but I suck at it in person. I've spent a lot of years trying to learn how to do it, though, and I can see the progress. I've mostly quit trying to give people advice that would work for me but not for them, at least.
>>I think I'm especially bitter about this book because I went to it expressly hoping it might help me with being abused, controlled, and belittled by people I am required to love but still (irrationally) fear.<<
It sounds like the book you need has not been written yet. Maybe someone will pick up on that eventually -- there must be other folks who would benefit from it also. *ponder* It occurs to me that some of what male victims need is different from what female victims need, so much that a generalized approach doesn't cover enough ground to work. I've seen that problem with rape/sexual abuse survivor support. The social context is so far apart that the same techniques don't always suffice.
>>My opinion is that at least in the childhood years the females are much more sophisticated, on average, than the males. And are therefore much more able to crush the soul with words than the males are. <<
I think emotional manipulation tends to grow in quicker for girls. Plus it's tempting because it doesn't require either physical power or social rank to do a lot of damage quickly.
>>Of course I'd be a fool to ignore the statistics that my own gender is far more likely to fly off the deep end and resort to physical violence<<
True. When it comes to verbal abuse, though, men and women tend to manifest that in different ways. There are people I avoid because of their preference for emotional violence -- and of the worst in my close experience, one is male and the other female, and they do not load the same artillery.
>> although in my own case it went internal, only so far as sucking on a pistol barrel, and at this late remove I'm not even sure I was serious about the thought of pulling the trigger.<<
I'm sorry to hear that things have been so rough for you.