Article: WGO? Cope Strategies - What Do You Do?

How often do you run into communication situations you don’t like or want? People trying to push you around? Acting like they know it all? Judging? Criticizing? Shooting you down? Gossiping about you?

How often do you feel you can’t get through to people? You’re about to explode? You’re cut to the core? How often does it seem people don’t care?

And you say nothing because you don’t know what to say, or you say something you wish you hadn’t?

If you’d like to be able to handle situations like these without striking out, and without sucking it up... without dominating or submitting... without being an... ass... or a doormat... If you’d like to be able to handle yourself with class and style you can be proud of - and other people will admire...

Let’s explore what’s going on - What Hurts, and what we can do about it - What Works. Starting with What Hurts.

COPE STRATEGIES

When we’re faced with a situation we don’t like or want we need a way to deal with it. “Cope Strategies” help us cope with whatever it is that’s happening that we don’t like or want.

Broadly, they fall into 3 groups;
* Power Plays
* Compliance Capers, and
* Escapes.

Here’s an introduction to the first two of these groups.

POWER PLAYS

Sometimes the way we cope with a situation we don’t like or want is to manipulate/coerce/force others to do what we want using Power Plays.

Power Play: |ˈpou(-ə)r| |plā|
tactic used to manipulate/coerce/force people to do what we want them to do, regardless of what they want (or would want if they knew the reality of the situation).

For example;

Discounting, Judging, Dictating, Manipulating, Diverting, Confusing, Avoiding, Excluding, Deceiving, Guilting, and Intimidating.

Power Plays amount to avoiding the reality of what’s going on with others and manipulating/coercing/forcing them to do what we want. Which means we get what we want - at others expense.

eek! Where might we be doing this? And where might others be using Power Plays to get us to do what they want?

COMPLIANCE CAPERS

Sometimes the way we cope with situations we don’t like or want is to manipulate/coerce/force ourselves to do what others want using compliance capers;

Compliance Capers: |kəmˈplīəns| |ˈkāpər|
tactic used to manipulate/coerce/force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do, and accept what we don’t want to accept.

For example;

Denying, Distorting, Displacing, Disowning, Deferring, and Over-adapting.

Compliance Capers amount to avoiding the reality of what’s going on with us by manipulating/ coercing/forcing ourselves to give up what we want; in favor of others and what they want. Which means others get what they want - at our expense.

eek! Where might we be doing this? And where might others be using Compliance Capers to give up what they want in our favor?

If you’re willing to share your experiences they’re welcome here on the blog.

Details of each of these Power Plays and Compliance Capers in upcoming posts. If you’d like more information sooner the digital version of the book is available here now.

Read more about it here

Buy the book here

Link to the Video post here

Until next time... Here’s hoping we experience less of what hurts and more of what works!