Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life by Mark Goulston

Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life by Mark Goulston

Author:Mark Goulston [Goulston, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780814436370
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2015-10-20T15:00:00+00:00


Usable insight

Show me a person who can’t say, “I need help,” and I’ll show you a person who can’t tolerate hearing no.

Action Steps

1. Identify the people in your life who can’t ask for help.

2. Wait for a time when these people are in a receptive mood.

3. Then order them—don’t ask them—to ask for help.

chapter 18

Coup Contrecoup

Turning an Irrational

Person’s M.O. to

Your Own Advantage

If You Fall in the shower and hit your head, your brain will suffer an injury at the spot where you hit it. In addition, it’ll suffer an injury on the opposite side, as your brain bounces off one side of your skull and caroms into the other side. In medicine, we call this type of injury coup contrecoup.

What does that have to do with crazy? In the types of situations I’ll talk about in this chapter, irrational people will attempt to injure you by being nasty or sarcastic. But you’re going to take their crazy and shove it right back in the opposite direction. Coup contrecoup.

As you can guess, this is a risky thing to do. However, there are smart ways and not-so-smart ways to do it, and I’m going to minimize your risk by showing you the smart way.

First, however, let me illustrate the not-so-smart way.

By the time I finished medical school and started my internship, I knew I wasn’t cut out to treat cancer, deliver babies, or perform hernia operations. Instead, I was fascinated by the mind, and I was discovering that I had a real knack for getting through to unhappy, angry, or even psychotic people.

Nonetheless, I gave it my all as I rotated through the different medical specialties. And most of the doctors I worked with respected my hard work. But one of them didn’t.

This doctor—let’s call him Dr. Jerk—was a surgical fellow. He was very good at what he did, but his M.O. was to make people feel small and stupid. As a result of his nasty manner, his students learned far less from him than they should have (because they were terrified of being mocked if they asked the wrong questions), and most of the staff despised him.

As an arrogant surgeon, Dr. Jerk was especially scornful of psychiatrists. And needless to say, he never missed an opportunity to let me know it.

One day, I was following along as Dr. Jerk made rounds with a surgical resident and several medical students. At each bedside, he’d ask us a few questions. I was doing a fine job of answering, but that didn’t stop him from going on the attack.

At one point, he turned to me and asked a question. But before I even had two seconds to formulate my answer, he looked at me and said, “I don’t know why I bother even asking you.”

Up to then, I’d tolerated Dr. Jerk’s sarcasm over and over again. But that day, I’d had enough. So I decided to throw his own M.O. right back at him.

For a moment, I simply stood there silently and stared at him.



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