The AnteUp Game

The Therapeutic You Message

Everything seems like it is going well. Perhaps you are entertaining and expecting to enjoy yourself.
One of most hurtful communication ploys from others (or yourself to others) is the unexpected
aggressive comment. For the sake of this discussion, let us assume the other person is suddenly
inconsistent and degrading to you. You were having a pleasant conversation, and feeling fine.
Perhaps you were taking care of business, and thinking that things were going well.

Then comes the sting. The assault on your self-image and self-esteem is unpredictable and ruthless in
its attempt to bring you down. You wonder, “Was I having too much fun?” Later, you realize that if
you had your guard up better, you still could not have protected yourself, because the verbal attack
was unexpected, sly, basically dishonest, and a variation on unkindness that left you speechless. (It is
easier to anticipate truth and authenticity than to respond to tactical lies and manipulations. See the
later discussion on Cost-Benefit issues of purposeful, effective communication.) It was a Discount,
because it in no way flowed naturally from the conversation topic at hand, and was therefore intrusive
and selective in its aim (see the later discussion on the definition of this nasty communication ploy),
with added aggression and meanness. It aimed straight for the place in your heart that holds access
your deepest fears of rejection, ostracism, betrayal and abandonment. It made its mark. In pain, you
will push your own buttons before you can stop yourself.

You respond immediately, not with a verbal or physical defense, but with an emotional flooding of
embarrassment, feelings of shame, and confusion. Why would someone who supposedly wants a
good relationship with you say such a hurtful thing? The color of your face and neck belies your
response to the sting. The tension you feel in your chest makes you afraid of the anger that you feel.
Your brain searches for a response, while you struggle to know whether to fight back, to run away, or
to weep in front of everyone.

You might respond with passive-aggressive sarcasm to defend yourself, but that will only make you
look like the loser in this attempted ‘win-lose’ exchange (See later discussion on decision and
agreement and mutuality of benefit). You might attempt to ‘match’ his or her words with your own
pettiness, aggression or even silliness; then everyone will pay more attention to your wrong-doing than
to the person who instigated the exchange. You might respond with direct assertive limit setting, but
then you will look like you took it all too personally, and are making too much of it. You might sit in
stunned silence, and then spend weeks and months thinking about what you wished you had said in
response. You will ruminate about the exchange to no avail, because this is a puzzle with no solution.
Nothing you could have said that would have worked. The mere attempt to respond verbally would
mean that you were willing to play a win-lose conversational game in which you get to lose one more
time.

It is not really a crisis. This same scenario has occurred many times before, so much that you have
learned to forgive and forget too rapidly, without developing a competent response to such behavior.
It may not be a crisis, but the conversational culprit is attempting to bring you down, with a sudden
blow that will knock you off balance. They believe they are David, bringing down Goliath. For indeed,
this tactical ploy against you probably indicates the presence of jealousy or envy about some
excellence in you that they cannot realistically match in the real world.

Perhaps it is a former husband successfully making you look bad in front of your children. It might be a
rejected suitor, or a jealous sibling. It might be a competitive coworker trying to discredit you by
making you look weak. It might be an abuser, who feels powerful if they can knock you off balance,
control your mood, or induce ridiculous behavior.

How many clients come to a therapist in very real and commanding pain over such exchanges with
people from whom they cannot escape?

Thus, we need communication strategies that are developed specifically for this problem. They are, as
described below:

The Therapeutic You Message
The Scorpion Story
The Principles of Over-compliance, as taught by Jesus Christ
The Principles of Classical Conditioning

The Therapeutic You Message

There are, for the sake of this discussion, three types of verbal messages. The first one is the
Aggressive You Message, such as the one just directed at you. Examples of this are forms of name-
calling: “You are a Bitch!” The word “You” might be included in an insult: “You are so stupid!”
Furthermore, the word “You” might be used patronizingly to make you feel small or foolish: “What don’
t you understand about No!”

Your rule for life is that you will never use this message, because in so doing you will reduce yourself to
the level of your opponent (enemy). You will not use it, because it does not accomplish anything that
you want for yourself, unless it is a simple indulgence in revenge or incompetent attempts at control.

The second one is the Assertiveness Message, or The “I” Message. Your rule for life is that you use
assertiveness messages only with reasonable, trustworthy people, people that you feel confident and
safe when you are with them. They will appreciate the candor and authenticity of your “I” Messages,
and will match your comments appropriately. You therefore can send them messages that include the
word “I.” You can say, I think, I feel, I want, or I will. Your trusted cohorts will respond to your clarity,
with equally understandable responses.

This information is contrary to all the misguided lessons about assertiveness that do not acknowledge
that occasionally you must avoid “I messages” for the sake of your own safety! This might be true with
aggressive family members, or even with workplace coworkers and superiors.

The third type is the Therapeutic You Message. It is called therapeutic because most people in
therapeutic or healing roles use this method of reflecting back to the speaker the words or attitude they
are presenting. For instance, a well-meaning therapist might indicate, “You look tired. What is going
on?” She is making an educated guess based on intuition regarding perceived body language. In such
a case, if the therapist is correct, then the client will elaborate and expand on the topic of concern. If
the therapist is wrong, then she will quickly acknowledge the error and ask for clarification. In either
case, both client and therapist benefit from exploration of the emotional condition of the client.

What is happening here is what you might call Mirroring. Just as a child sees themselves in their
parent’s eyes, so also does the client learn see herself as the therapist (and possibly others as well) sees
her. This authentic and validating interpersonal exchange leads to the healing of both her emotional
state and her personality development. Theoretically, the therapist is competent and experienced in
the use of this communication tool, so that repeated use of it leads to healing and not harm to the
client. In fact, if such mirroring injures the client, then the therapist might have accidentally used an
Aggressive You Message instead of a Therapeutic You Message!

What is the emotional state of the therapist during this exchange? In a word, healthy detachment.
Therefore, I tell my clients that detachment is the highest form of love. It is the use of my energy to
work towards the best interest of another person. It means that I have stepped out of my own world,
my own concerns, and my own self-interest with the intention of temporarily joining the world of
another person. While I am in their world, I can see and feel what they see (accurate empathy), and
can minister to the pain that I find there. If there are false beliefs triggering constant levels of pain I will
find that also.

However, what if I cannot maintain that healthy detachment? What if, in response to the sadness of
your story, I remember my own pain, and begin to focus on that? Then you will have to stop thinking
about yourself and begin thinking about me? That might prove that we enjoyed some kind of
simpatico, such as two people who commiserate over similar surgical traumas, but it would not be
empathic, because our mutual attention is distracted from you to me. Indeed, it would be unloving to
compete with you for attention on your expressed problem!

You can see that healthy detachment is not the same as disinterest or indifference. Let those words
stand by themselves to define cold and unfeeling attitudes towards others. The word detachment is a
healthy word that describes my putting your interests above my own in very specific situations and for
therapeutic reasons. Therapists, of course, do this by contract and agreement. The client schedules an
appointment and pays the therapist a fee. So there is no attempt to imply that there is present in
therapy the unrealistic wish-fulfilling state called ‘unconditional love,’ which does not exist in the real
world, except between infants and healthy mothers. (Thus, if you missed it there, the chance is gone,
and you will have to learn how to give yourself the gift of unconditional dedication to your own
healthy relationship with yourself, God, and others.)

Now how is the concept of detachment important to this discussion of the Therapeutic You Message?
Why do we develop it deliberately as a response to the aggression of others? How do we develop a
protection between ourselves and another person to protect ourselves from harm, without
simultaneously hurting the other person in return? If you picture in your mind a wall, then you would
not really be responding appropriately to your need to protect yourself from harm. In such a case, we
could hide behind the wall, in stunned silence, but that would not solve the problem of aggression.
However, if you picture yourself holding up a mirror, in which the other person could see
himself/herself, then you might be doing that person some good.

So imagine that you are in Australia, learning how to use a boomerang for hunting. This weapon
comes back to you when you throw it. Next, suppose that you were able by your own cool-headedness
make another person’s aggression return to them. This would be using the concept of mirroring, to
make the person’s aggressive statements return to the person who made them. The mirror would also
serve as a form of detachment, a healthy barrier, such that the wounding, spiteful words would not
penetrate the victim’s heart and mind and create emotional havoc.

How does this work? The technique is called, “Repeat after me.” You will repeat the words said to you
by your accuser. You will use the exact words they said, or you will look like a parrot. You will
paraphrase their words just as accurately as a person of good will can do, and put that set of words in a
‘You Message.” You will be very careful to be calm, and to avoid any emotional verbal or body
language, because indicating your feelings would turn the message into either an aggressive or an
assertive message style that would definitely not work in this situation.

Suppose you said to me, “Nancy, you are a Bitch!” I would bend my head ever so slightly to the right,
and say with a calm attitude of surprise, “You just called me a Bitch.” When you responded, “Damn
right I did!” I would say again, “You just called me a Bitch again.” This can go on until the aggression
stops.

What will happen here is that the abuser will see his/her behavior accurately. He will not be able to
redirect his attention to you, putting you on the defensive, and making you focus on yourself and your
own inadequacies. If you make an error, and include various expressions of your own personal feelings
and attitudes in your message, then he/she will be able to divert his attention onto your attitude. Thus,
the method will fail for you, until you practice it enough to get it right!

If a person is healthy, he/she might say one of the following:

“I did not say that!”

“I did not mean that!”

“I was only joking.”

If he/she says any of the above, your appropriate response is to accept this as an apology, whether they
meant it that way or not. Think about it. Repentance means change of behavior. Change of behavior
requires acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Therefore, when the behavior changes, then you can
count it as an apology. Say no more about it, and feel good about yourself and your own relationship
skills.

It could happen that the person would offer a clarifying statement, such as, “What I really meant
was….” In this case, the Therapeutic You Message actually worked to facilitate better understanding
between two people.

In a worst case, the offending person might become increasingly abusive, verbally and physically. If
this occurs, you have important information about that person. Stop using the TYM immediately, and
instead plan for an exit from that relationship. In other words, using TYM will accurately ‘flush out’ true
abusers who typically hide under the cover of charm and helpfulness, but who have toxic long run
effects on your health and personality.

Of all the skills I teach my clients, this is the hardest one for them to grasp and learn. That is because
you cannot begin to learn it until you do the following things for yourself:

You must give up the need to be right.

You must give up the need to be perfect.

You must give up the need to argue and defend yourself.

You must give up the need to correct or ‘fix’ the other person.

You must begin to understand that all the above attitudes do not work.

You must give up the fear of feeling embarrassed when you get it wrong.

You must develop the ability to try again if you get it wrong.

You must give up your hope that this person will be nice without action from you.

You must stop wishing for an already perfect Knight-in-Shining-Armor

You must begin to enjoy honest mistakes by honest people. Such people make lots of

errors, but they do not de

liberately sting!

Well then, who does sting? To illustrate this principle,
and to learn new skills and strategies,
we need to gain wisdom from

The Scorpion Story

There is a story told by 12 step recovery groups about a frog and a scorpion. In this story, a frog
maintains a small boat for helping persons needing to cross a river. One day a scorpion comes to him
and asks him to ferry him across the river. The frog responds, “I will not get in the boat with you. We
will get out into the river. You will sting me and we will both die.” The Scorpion responds, “Why
would I do that? That does not make sense for me to kill myself, along with you.” Thus, the Scorpion
persuades the frog to attempt the river crossing with him in the boat.. As the frog earlier foretold,
when they get to the middle of the river, the Scorpion stings him. As they both lay dying, the Frog asks
“Why did you sting me, knowing that now we will both die?” The Scorpion replies, “You knew what I
was when you got into the boat with me.” The moral of this story is: A Scorpion is a Scorpion is a
Scorpion….

I like to add my own variation to this story when helping people recover from the pattern of excessive,
unrealistic, ineffective caretaking commonly known as Codependency. In my story, I ask a group of
women to imagine that we are confined together in my office.

A Scorpion lives in the northeast corner of the room, just behind the piano. The rule is that we cannot
kill the Scorpion and we likewise cannot leave the room. From hence we will begin to recover from
codependency, in three predictable phases.

At first, we will try to “fix” the Scorpion. We will crawl right up to him and try to persuade him that if
he would just be nice, then we could all be happy. After being stung enough times, we finally
understand that a Scorpion is a Scorpion is a Scorpion. Eventually we therefore give up attempting to
change his nature.

Next, we become obsessed with where the Scorpion is hiding, and with his movements. After all, if we
do not pay attention to his whereabouts, then he will invade our space and sting us again. During this
phase of recovery, we are truly miserable, because we cannot think about anything except the Scorpion
and his movements!

Then one day, one of us says, “Wait a minute. Except for the Scorpion in the room, we have a nice life.
We have each other. We have great books, music and movies. We have beautiful objects in the room
to enjoy, and a wonderful landscaping view through our spacious window. At that point of our
recovery, we begin to define for ourselves this principle: what is the least amount of energy that we
can spend locating the Scorpion

Every woman who has ever birthed a baby understands about this principle. A tired mother can lie
down and sleep peacefully. Yet, while she sleeps, some small bit of energy directs itself to only one
purpose, and that is to listen for her baby’s cry. Likewise, the recovering caretaker must learn to direct
this least amount of energy towards maintaining awareness of the activities of the Scorpion. Happily,
after learning this skill, he/she can use the rest of his/her energy for more pleasurable or worthwhile
activities. Accomplishing this attitude and skill is the definition of healing for the codependent. In this
process, the caretaker exchanges inappropriate, unhealthy care-taking for realistic assessment of danger
and need, and for consequent reasonable choice for action.

The story illustrates the progress towards learning how to cope with problems that we cannot solve.
The Serenity Prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage
to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”

The story illustrates our progress in accepting the difficult, hurtful parts of other people. We learn to
protect ourselves from harm, even as we stop trying to change things that cannot be changed.

The Scorpion does not represent a whole person. The Scorpion represents the part of another person
that is irrational, unpredictable, hurtful, dangerous and destructive, maybe even evil. Lest we become
self-righteous, we will eventually find, even in ourselves, something unacceptable, unhealthy, terribly
unreasonable or truly destructive. Even as we learn to control our contact with the ‘Scorpion’ in
another person, so also do we learn to govern the ‘Scorpion’ in ourselves. We cannot eliminate it, but
we can manage it. In the New Testament, Paul the Apostle talked about asking God to remove “the
thorn in my side.” God refused to grant him his request, telling him that his through his weakness God
would demonstrate benevolence and power. Thus, we learn to accept the weaknesses that we cannot
overcome, but we do not give in to them, because we always have the opportunity to reach for help
outside of ourselves in our quest to cope with inadequacy and suffering. Indeed, our weakness can
empower others and give them opportunity to minister to us.

What does The Scorpion Story teach us about the AnteUp Game and the Therapeutic You message?
First, we learn to perceive and accept the ‘Scorpion’ in another person (or the weakness in ourselves).
Then we learn how to direct the conversation towards health in others (and ourselves). We stop
wasting energy relating to the weaknesses of others (See the Chapter on the Cost-Benefit Theory of
Energy). We aim for truth and not lies, for health and not toxicity, for generosity and not stinginess, for
humility and not pride. We use the AnteUp Game to increase or decrease the level of intimacy
according the situation. We avoid the Discount, or we perceive and attend appropriately to it (See Cost-
Benefit). We use the Therapeutic You Message to respond to Aggressive You Messages from others,
even as we use lower levels of the AnteUp Game to restore peace with them if possible

What happens if a destructive or domineering person assumes a powerful place in our lives, and we
cannot get away from them? For instance, sometimes we cannot leave a job in which we feel tortured
by our domineering and inconsistent supervisor. How do we handle that, using the AnteUp Game and
The Therapeutic You Message?

The Principle of Over-Compliance

Here is where we need the Principle of Over-Compliance as taught by Jesus Christ. Jesus taught
that when we are over-powered, instead of escaping (avoiding) or fighting, we should cope assertively
with the art of Over-Compliance. How does this work?

Suppose that my supervisor orders me to do an unfair task. I cannot get out of the task, or away from
my supervisor. Yet, I do not want to feel that I do not matter as a person. I do not want to feel
dominated. I also do not want to do anything to reduce my respect for myself in the long run. In this
case, I have an opportunity to make a decision that will strengthen my sense of myself as a person,
even while I comply with unreasonable orders. (See the Chapter on Decision and Agreement). Here I
will rely on Jesus instructions for non-violent resistance. When Jesus taught his Disciples to ‘turn the
other cheek,’ or to carry the Romans burden ‘an extra mile,’ he was telling them to overdo carrying out
the demands of another in such a way as to cause them to disobey their own laws. By so doing, the
domineering persons will learn how to set limits on themselves.

Therefore, if my boss tells me to mop part of the room, and I mop twice as much as he told me to do,
then I have used my power of decision to increase my sense of self in the situation. Meanwhile, how
can he criticize me for doing twice as much as he asked?

I have found in my life that the Principle of Over-Compliance is the most effective tool available to us
for dealing with the unreasonable, unfair, or even illegal demands of others. When the struggle is past,
my soul, my personality and my self-image is still intact. In addition, I may have learned some valuable
lessons and skills in the process!

The Principle of Classical Conditioning

There is one last consideration about the Therapeutic You Message. Let us assume that sometimes we
over-react to the words of another person. What if they are sincere, perhaps just a bit inadequate in
choosing the most effective words for the situation, and have no intention whatsoever to harm us? In
that case, why do we feel so stressed, and what can we do about it?

To understand our dilemma, we need to learn a bit about Classical Conditioning Learning
Theory. This is the old-fashioned learning theory that all first year psychology students learn about in
Introductory Psychology classes. This is the story about Pavlov’s dog.

Pavlov was a Russian scientist of long ago. He connected gadgets to a dog’s head that would measure
salivation. He fed his dog, then measured the dog’s salivation. Then he fed his dog, and rang a bell at
the same time, and measured the dog’s salivation. Eventually he could ring the bell without presenting
food and the dog would salivate anyway. The dog was ‘conditioned’ to salivate when he heard the
bell, even if no food was present.

Notice that in Classical Conditioning Theory the reward occurs at the same time as the learning
experience. This is not the same as B.F. Skinner’s learning theory that claims that all behavior that
occurs a second time was reinforced the first time. In this latter case, the reinforcement occurs after the
behavioral event. Thus, the child receives a good grade for a paper written earlier in the day, or a
scolding for a chore neglected the day before.

Why is Classical Conditioning important? This happens because sometimes we find that we have been
‘conditioned’ to respond in certain irrational ways. Suppose that there are family quarrels every
Christmas Eve during our childhood. Once we are grown up, we believe that we should be able to be
free of the pain of our childhood troubles. Yet, we feel sad every Christmas Eve, even though we want
to share good times with our new family. Because of the lasting effects of our early childhood
conditioning, we feel tense and irritable, even when we do not want to be that way. In such cases, we
may also misunderstand the words and intentions of other people. Then we end up saying things that
we wish we had never said.

Here again the AnteUp Game and the Therapeutic You Message is useful. If a tense person makes an
unpredictable remark, we can you the Therapeutic You Message to mirror the person’s words, and give
them an opportunity for clarification and correction. Or we can use the AnteUp Game to decrease
intimacy to a lower level, where there is less tension and pressure.

One time, years ago, I made an idealistic comment during a Christmas party that I worried that teaching
my children about Santa Claus would result in my children thinking later that I told them a lie. This
ruined the mood for some of the people present, and one man stated, “Nancy, why do you always have
to be so serious?” This, of course, hurt my feelings.

How would the AnteUp Game have helped this man and me to do better in this social situation? First, I
would not have made a Level 4 comment during a Level 1 conversation! Second, the friend could have
mirrored my inappropriate comment more gracefully (less aggressively), thereby saving my feelings,
and the mood of the party as well. He could have said, “You seem concerned about that,” then
immediately returned the conversation to Level 1 or Level 2, thereby effectively decreasing the
discomfort level. The story had a good ending. In later months, this man had difficulty writing an
essay for a mandatory class at work. This very serious English major helped him improve his work and
make the grade! We were friends again, and my seriousness did not bother him so much after that.

The point here is that had I not been ‘conditioned’ to be sad during Christmas social events, and had
this man not been ‘conditioned’ to dislike serious women, the incident would not have happened.
Clearly, neither of us had ill will towards the other. We were just being our inadequate selves, and we
needed the AnteUp Game to pull our Donkey Out of the Ditch (as they say in Arkansas)