Have you ever been in a situation where you are given information that feels confrontational, by one person on behalf of another person? You might have wondered why the person being represented had not brought the issue to your attention, but you still felt an obligation to respond…more than not because you cared deeply about the relationship. It may sound like this:
“You really hurt her feelings when you….”
“He is going through a hard time and needs your understanding.”
“I feel uncomfortable about what I am hearing regarding ….”
While it is important to acknowledge that the person coming to you might have positive motivation, if you are left feeling misunderstood and manipulated, it is because you are. The approach, by definition, puts you on the defensive to not only the person being represented, but the new party who has taken it upon themselves to intervene. You might not even realize you feel uncomfortable with the situation until later, when the situation being analyzed gets worse before it gets better.
As a mental health therapist, I hear about situations resembling this from clients and like everyone, I experience them in my own life. It is called triangulation. It is a manipulation tactic that people use both intentionally and unintentionally when trying to get control of a situation that is bothering them. The people involved may be wonderful, well-intentioned, caring people but the result of triangulation is rarely positive; friendships are broken, marriages put at odds and work environments poisoned.
Emotionally mature people should speak for themselves
Even if well-intentioned, let’s be absolutely clear that Triangulation is a manipulation tactic. One person is choosing to not communicate directly with another person, and instead uses a third person to relay communication to the second, thus forming a triangle. Both the non-communicator and the communicator are part of the manipulation as one is avoiding a job that belongs to them and the other is taking on responsibility that diminishes the intelligence of the person they think they are representing. Simply put, emotionally mature individuals speak for themselves.
Part of the reason Triangulation is dangerous is that triangulation causes splitting. That is where one person manipulates a relationship between two parties by controlling communication between them. Some of the less than enjoyable results of this might be an artificial rivalry or a result called ‘divide and conquer’ where two people are played against one another.
In the context of narcissism, an ever increasing diagnosis, triangulation is when the narcissist attempts to control the flow, interpretation, and nuances of communication between two separate people or groups of people. Ensuring communications flow through, and constantly relate back to the narcissist providing them a feeling of importance. Common scenarios include a parent attempting to control communication between two children, or an emotionally abusive partner attempting to control communication between the other partner and the other partner’s friends and family. A narcissistic person wants to ensure the other actors communicate through them but remain otherwise isolated. In some cases narcissists will use control of communication to drive a wedge between the other parties. This can be done by falsely making one of the people into a scapegoat for problems that the narcissist is actually responsible for or that are otherwise unrelated. In addition the narcissist may falsely credit the other person with saying or thinking something hurtful, or may put too much emphasis on an aspect of something that was said to them that ignores the wider context. (Morrigan, Danu, You’re Not Crazy – It’s Your Mother: Understanding and Healing for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
Breaking the triangulation cycle is not easy
If you find yourself being manipulated in this way, I encourage you to get out of the way. I tell my clients to sit on your hands and put a lock on your mouth until you can talk directly to the person that is at the heart of it. If you engage, the situation can only get worse. But let me tell you, this is beyond tough to do because as was pointed out, if it triggers you, the relationship is most likely an important one and you might have to fight back the desire to “get the truth out there”. But the truth should only be discussed between the two parties directly involved, especially when both parties want to be emotionally mature adults.
Boundaries are hard to set and often the process hurts like a mama. The hope that one must cling to is that positive, healthy relationships await at the end.
With love,
Sonia
Let me start this piece by saying that our individuality is SUPER DUPER important. Our uniqueness should ABSOLUTELY be celebrated. But, can we all consider, for just a tiny second, that
As my clients know, I am a relentless advocate for boundaries that protect the individual. There are more than a few of us that get bloodied by the inability to stand up to people who take advantage, and a large part of my work is focused on empowering the downtrodden. Additionally, I believe we are each God’s creation, made in His image, to live a life that glorifies our creator. That said, we are also to use our uniqueness to bring symmetry, balance and creativity to the systems we are a part of: our marriages, our friendships, our workplaces, our country, our world.
It seems in my line of work, themes present themselves. I am coming out of a season of working with a number of blended families. Marriage, after the death of a spouse, or after a divorce, has a number of challenges. Some of these challenges center around the children who are expected to be resilient and as excited as their parent, who has found a new love to share life with.
If you grew up with the Brady Bunch on TV, you know that the Brady family knew how to make a blended family look ideal. If you think about it, the whole show was about navigating through life issues but the ending was always just a little too Pollyanna. In real families, conflicts are not always resolved in one family meeting while the maid makes dinner. In real families, there might be deep wounds being brought into the mix because of past hurts. There might be visitation rights and shared schedules that interrupt the work that a new blended family is doing. Many times, there are issues with expenses and hurt feelings when the new marriage takes precedence over something that had once been important to the kids. Two people that thought they would parent well together find that they are triggered by their new spouse when they do anything that looks or sounds like the person they divorced. Blending families can be difficult but when done well, blended families can offer new life.
We all have heard that money is the most argued topic amongst married people. Well, when I began my career as a psychotherapist, we were in the middle of a down economy. For the first two years, literally every couple I saw in counseling was experiencing the strain of this, in the form of unemployment, under-employment or overall strain to the finances because of higher cost of living, coupled with lower take home pay. I sat with a number of men and women who had gone to school, worked hard and planned well, but were facing financial strain beyond what they ever imagined. As a result, marriage relationships were being tested.
Keeping an open mind in this process is important since we all tend to think about what should be kept and what needs to go, in terms of our own personal viewpoints. While the highlights your wife has put in her hair may seem like a luxury to you, it might be something she is willing to sacrifice in other areas, to keep. (Hey…I am just keeping it real with a very personal example.) If highlighted hair is more important to her than an updated cell phone, new clothes or dinners out, that has to be discussed with understanding and appreciation. 
As with all relational conflict, if the discussion can change from facing one another and pointing out the issues we have with one another into a dynamic where a couple or a family stands side by side and faces the struggle as a team, the outcome can be drastically altered. Financial crisis should not cause a dynamic of anger or shame or guilt. It should be a time of team building and character growth in a marriage or a family. If you need more assistance, please give me a call.
You might already know that mental health professionals use a book called the DSM to support diagnosis in the counseling space. This book has all the descriptions and codes necessary for us to better understand our clients, but also gives codes used by doctors to insurance agencies to represent the client issues. A few years ago, a new and updated DSM was issued and one of the BLARING omissions was the diagnosis for Narcissism. That is because, for something to be abnormal behavior, the majority of the population can’t be diagnosed with it. Well, my fellow Americans, you can see where this is going! The majority of Americans fall somewhere on the spectrum so it is considered normal. No formal diagnosis… but the folks who noticeably fall into the spectrum make life a little tricky for the rest of us.
are not just selfish, greedy people. There are plenty of those around but they may not be narcissists by definition. In fact, there are a large number of people who have narcissistic tendencies in positions of ministry, the military, teaching and other very admirable occupations. Quite honestly, many narcissists are extremely friendly, engaging and charismatic. 
conflict comes when concessions need to be made. If you are in a relationship where you feel like the only one making concessions, and your efforts go mostly unnoticed, you might need to come up with some strategies to work with your narcissistic counterpart. You might also need help identifying the “hook and pull” that occurs when the narcissist finally identifies that you might have had enough and they work extra hard to get you back to orbiting their world via words of affirmation, actions that have been requested numerous times in the past, or gifts. And…if truth be told, you may need a nudge to come up with a plan for if your strategy doesn’t work. 
Hotchkiss, in her book Why Is It Always About You?, lays out some ways to identify and work with the narcissists you love, have to work with or even those you helped to create. This book is life changing for many and has helped me, deal with some people who I don’t want to abandon, but also enabled me to walk away from a few relationships that were not worth the ongoing effort.