21. Unconscious Confrontation: Last Resort

The person won’t listen to you. (It could be your child, spouse, employee, etc.) No matter what point you make, they instantly reply with a response that negates your words. Eventually they say, “I don’t have to listen to you.”

How do you respond?

The previous seven posts presented six methods of unconsciously confronting people: Flipping the Pronouns, The Right Question, The Restatement, Parables, Don’t Look At Them, and Confront in their Uniqueness.

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!

The seventh and eighth unconscious confrontations cover the "last resort". These are the approaches to use when nothing else works. The difference between these last two unconscious confrontations depends on whether you are trying to get the person to talk or to stop talking.

Most of the time, we deal with someone who won't listen because they won't stop talking. The problem with talking (or writing) a lot is the more you share the more likely you will have a contradiction. This is especially true for people who won't stop talking.

The way to get them to stop is to use a "looping question".

Basically, you take something they said and you feed it back to them in a question.

Even though they consciously want to continue negating you by talking over you, they can't because they will be negating what they said...and their unconscious will start to punish them, so they stop talking. However, when they are looking at you, you will see they have a sinking feeling in their eyes because they are trying to talk but they realize they can't!

Let's take the above example where you want to get someone to listen to you and they eventually say, "I don't have to listen to you."

The two ways to pose the looping question is either by focusing on the future or the past.

Future Looping Question:

Will it be wrong in the future if someone doesn't listen to you?

Past Looping Question:

Would it have been wrong in the past if someone didn't listen to you?

The more destructive the person is, the more likely I will use the past looping question because it INSTANTLY brings the punishment and the person is insecure enough that they will only listen to a punishment occurring now.

If they are less destructive, I use the future looping question because they are more likely to be affected by it.

Notice, the direction of the looping question would also be more effective if you understand their Intangible Driver WHY. For example, Exhorters will completely shut down over a future looping question because they don't want to live in fear of the future. On the other hand, a Perceiver will instantly remember all the times they complained about others not listening to them.

The final unconscious confrontation is used as a last resort with someone who won’t talk.

Let's take the example of asking a person a question and they won't answer. In fact, they seem pretty proud they aren't going to talk at all.

Rather than get frustrated, use a future looping conclusion like this: “Okay, it seems like you can never get mad at anyone in the future when they don't answer your question.” Then try to walk away.

You won't get very far because the #1 thing every human hates, from age 4 to 104, is dealing with a difficult situation and not being able to complain about it.

Humans LOVE to complain more than anything else in the world - look at social media.

All you have to do is show the person how they've lost the ability to complain in the future. This is hell: having to go through something and not being able to complain.

The person will begin talking!

If they try to say they can complain, they won't get very far because their unconscious will punish them, especially if they acted proud about not talking at all to you.

If they get mad at you, just respond that if it is okay for them to do it to you, then it has to be okay for others to do it to them...but notice: THEY ARE TALKING!!!

We have completed our miniseries covering unconscious confrontations. Next week, we will look at a more complicated approach before we begin looking at real world applications.

Next Chapter: 22. How to Argue in 3 Questions: Question #1