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%TRANSCEND COLLUSION DISHONEST BATTLE CONFLICT EVIL+931214
 %CONFRONT TRUTH TRUE RESOLUTION PRETEND PLAY GAMES 931214

     When we are confronted with people who are engaged in
collusive,   addictive  and/or  codependent  patterns   of
behavior  there  is a profound dilemma.   How may we  best
transcend,  overcome,  resolve or eliminate,  conflicts or
in any other way "succeed"?

     We   are  often  confronted  with  people   who   are
playing  collusive   games  and  they are  probably   more
skilled  at  playing  their  dishonest   games   than   we
are.     If  we challenge them at playing their  kind   of
games  we  are  not likely to  "succeed".     Their  games
entail  dishonesty  as a key ingredient.    We do need  to
transcend their dishonesty and so need to be honest,   but
we   need   to   take  care  not   to   be   unnecessarily
confrontational---because  another of  their games is  the
game  of trying to be in control.    If we  try to  be  in
control  of them we are falling into the trap  of  playing
one  of  their  games---and  they are  likely  to  win  by
dragging   us  into  their  disintegrative   pattern    of
attitudes, assumptions, thoughts, decisions and actions.

     Overt  confrontation is bound to raise other people's
defenses.    Being defensive is another of the games which
insecure people play.  They cannot imagine the possibility
of  being  truly  secure through being free to  be  safely
vulnerable.    By being coercively defensive many insecure
people put  us and others on the defensive---thus dragging
us into participating in their disintegrative games.

     In  a  paradoxical sort of double-think way  ---   we
may   need  to  outsmart  participants  in  collusions  by
carefully  playing  something like their deceptive  games.
They pretend that they are not participating in  dishonest
games of mutual self deception.    Direct confrontation in
which  we   try  to  convict them  of  playing   dishonest
games   of  mutual  self  deception  will   likely   bring
sophisticated  denials  that   they  are  participants  in
collusive  games of mutual  self  deception.       We  are
most   likely   to  be successful  if  we   go  about  our
business    and   regularly  affirm   truths  which   they
implicitly  deny,   and  regularly  undermine   falsehoods
which  they  implicitly  affirm;  we pretending all  along
that  there  is  nothing unusual in  our  honest  behavior
compared to their systematically dishonest behavior.

     Participants  in  collusions  have as  one  of  their
highest  principles  that they are  not  being  dishonest.
When they are confronted with our honesty which  contrasts
with  their "nonexistent"  dishonesty they are caught in a
trap.    They  dare  not overtly challenge  us  for  being
dishonest,    because   a full examination of  the   facts
will  expose    their   dishonesty.      They   can   only
implicitly challenge our truths and in time may find  that
it does not pay to play dishonest games,   and does pay to
participate  in  truthful  relationships  rather  than  in
dishonest relationships.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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