17. Unconscious Confrontation: The Restatement

While the wife is finishing up the dishes, the husband says (for what seems like the thousandth time), “You are exactly like your mother!”

What would you tell her to say or do in response?

This is just one article in a series that looks to demonstrate how to Dissolve bullying. Treating this article as if it is comprehensive may lead to responses that are themselves bullying. The simplest example is any communication that violates the healthy communication guidelines, which we showed are how we diagnose whether someone is a bully or not. In fact, the person’s unconscious brain knows they are being a bully when they don’t follow these guidelines!

Since this is a complicated issue, the goal is to present a weekly article that takes about 5 minutes to read so people can spend the week digesting it. I recommend facilitating your understanding by sharing these articles and discussing them with others. Chances are, you’ve never heard the perspective that will be presented. Why?

For over 20 years, I helped executives and managers deal with coworkers by using the only non-contradictory model for the mind and brain. About seven years ago, I realized the habit of bullying begins around 10 years old, so I offered this information to teachers and students. It turns out the bullying in schools is beyond anything we see in the workplace. Once I developed a program that successfully helped preteens, I found the same program has led to me being undefeated helping adults deal with bullying in the workplace including on LinkedIN!

Today, 99.9% of people are in the Regulation (habitual/addictive) thought process. THIS IS THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!!!

When you talk to someone and they respond, do you believe the person replied CONSCIOUSLY? When they don’t answer your question, do you believe they are CONSCIOUSLY avoiding your question?

Take a moment and answer those questions, because it seems to me everyone's actions are that they think everyone else is speaking consciously at Self-Regulation.

People are saying some of the most inane statements we have ever heard and our immediate response tends to be:

"No!"

"You are wrong!"

"You are an idiot!"

If the person who made the inane statement is at Regulation, what do you think YOUR response will do? It could send them to Dysregulation: Fight, Flight, or Freeze...and it would be YOUR fault that the zombie attacks you.

Are you saying that making people aware of a problem and not actually helping them is valuable?

The key is to use an unconscious confrontation. The previous three posts presented the first two methods of unconsciously confronting people: Flipping the Pronouns and The Right Question. This post will cover the third method: The Restatement.

The Restatement is simply asking the person if they meant what they said by restating what they said.

Remember, we are doing this because we are in the Zombie Apocalypse: 99.9% of people are at Regulation and aren't consciously focused on what you are saying AND their own response.

The key to the Restatement is the inflection. The goal is to restate what they said, but do it with an inflection that implies: "I want to make sure you answer this correctly because you are one step away from being WRONG!"

The reason the Restatement works is the unconscious warns the person if they agree with what they unconsciously stated, then they will be WRONG and the other person will be able to publicly declare them as WRONG AND the insecure person who made the original inane statement has taught their unconscious brain they HATE being proven WRONG!!!!

Summary: The Restatement is sending an unconscious message that the person is WRONG.

Remember the example that began this post?

As she finishes the dishes, the wife takes a breath and remembers the Restatement that she had rehearsed due to our training session, "So, you think I'm EXACTLY like my mother?"

One of the ways you know it is an unconscious confrontation is when the person doesn't answer the question...and he didn't, so she walked into the other room.

For the next 15 minutes, he followed her from room to room like a puppy dog because he was trying to settle his unconscious without admitting he was wrong. (I won't get into all of the unconscious confrontations that were implied by his statement, but there is a pretty MASSIVE one if he said yes that would drain all of the energy out of his favorite activity...if you get my drift.)

Eventually, he ended up giving her a foot massage because he couldn't figure out any other way of dealing with the uneasiness due to the Restatement.

The Restatement causes the person's unconscious to WHACK them on the side of the head to wake them up to the potential consequences from consciously stating what they wrongly unconsciously and reflexively proclaimed.

It has been MONTHS since someone has answered my Restatement with a "yes".

The next time you feel like telling someone they are wrong, get yourself to Self-Regulation and do a Restatement...

...and see how many it takes before you get a "yes"!

Next Chapter: 18. Unconscious Confrontation: Parables