Talking to 'Crazy'

How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life

Mark Goulston

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780814439593
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Comunicar y hablar en público

No matter how hard you try to reason with irrational people, it never works. So how do you talk to someone who just won't listen? You can't win by ignoring the insanity, and you can't argue it away. However, you can stop it cold.

Top-ranked psychiatrist and communication expert Mark Goulston shows you just how to do so in this life-changing book for everyone trapped in maddening personal or professional relationships.

Goulston unlocks the mysteries of the irrational mind, and explains how faulty thinking patterns develop. His keen insights are matched by a set of counterintuitive strategies proven to defuse crazy behavior, along with scripts, examples, and exercises that teach you how to use them.

In Talking to "Crazy", you will learn:

• Why people act the way they do
• How instinctive responses can exacerbate the situation, and what to do instead
• When to confront a problem and when to walk away
• How to activate the Sanity Cycle, which quickly transforms you from threat to ally
• How to use 14 simple yet effective communication techniques, including assertive submission flattery, the kiss-off, and more

You can't reason with unreasonable people, but you can reach them. Talking to "Crazy" shows you just how easy it is to do it.

SECTION 1

The Basics of Talking to “Crazy”

To reach irrational people, you need to know why they’re irrational.

What’s more, you need to know why arguing or reasoning with crazy doesn’t work, while leaning into the crazy does.

chapter 1

Understanding Crazy

AFTER DECADES as a psychiatrist, I know crazy—and that includes some serious crazy.

How serious? One of my patients stalked Britney Spears, and another jumped off a fifth-story balcony because he thought he could fly. Still another called me from a jail in the Dominican Republic, saying he was there to start a revolution.

In addition, I’ve worked with 80-pound anorexics, strung-out heroin addicts, and hallucinating schizophrenics. I’ve taught hostage negotiators how to get homicidal criminals to surrender. And these days, I show CEOs and managers how to deal with out-of-control people who threaten their companies’ bottom lines.

In short, crazy and I are pretty much on a first-name basis.

However, a while ago, something occurred to me: I expect to deal with crazy every day, because it’s my job. But I suddenly realized how often you have to face down crazy—not the jump-off-a-balcony, stalk-Britney-Spears kind of crazy, but what I call everyday crazy.

My “aha” moment occurred when I went to a meeting for estate planners who needed advice about helping families in crisis. I expected the event to be a little dry, but instead, I was mesmerized. I found out that just like me, these people have to “talk to crazy” every day. In fact, nearly every issue they discussed involved clients acting completely nuts.

These lawyers had no trouble writing wills and creating trusts. But what they didn’t know, and desperately needed to know, was what to do when they can’t stop their clients from acting crazy.

That’s when it dawned on me that everyone—including you—has this problem. I’m betting that nearly every day, you deal with at least one irrational person. Maybe it’s a boss who wants the impossible. Maybe it’s a demanding parent or a hostile teen or a manipulative coworker or a neighbor who’s always in your face. Maybe it’s a tearful lover or an unreasonable client.

And that’s what this book is all about: talking to “crazy.”

Now, a word about the word crazy: I know it sounds inflammatory and totally un-PC. But when I use this word, I don’t mean mentally ill (although mental illness—which I’ll address separately in Section 5—certainly causes crazy behavior). And I don’t use the word crazy to stigmatize one group of people either. That’s because all of us, at some points in time, are crazy.

What I mean by crazy is irrational. There are four ways in which the people you deal with can be irrational:

• They can’t see the world clearly.

• They say or think things that make no sense.

• They make decisions and take actions that aren’t in their best interest.

• They become downright impossible when you try to guide them back to the side of reason.

In this book, I’ll share my best tricks for breaking through to people who are irrational in these ways. I’ve used these techniques to do everything from settling office feuds to rescuing marriages, and you can use them just as effectively to handle the irrational people in your life.

The Key: Leaning into the Crazy

The tools I’ll give you in this book take some courage to implement. That’s because you aren’t going to make crazy go away by ignoring it, trying to reason with it, or arguing with it. Instead, you’re going to lean into the crazy.

Years ago, someone gave me the following advice about how to react if a dog sinks its teeth into your hand: If you give in to your instincts and try to pull your hand out, the dog will stick its teeth in deeper. But if you counterintuitively push your hand deeper into the dog’s mouth, the dog will release it. Why? Because, in order to do what it wants to do next—swallow—it has to release its jaw. And that’s when you can pull your hand out.

This exact same rule applies to talking to irrational people. If you treat them as if they’re nuts and you’re not, they’ll bite down deeper on their crazy thinking. But if you lean into their crazy, you’ll radically change the dynamic. Here’s an example.

After a horrific day—one of the most frustrating in my life—I was wrapped up in my woes while driving home from work on autopilot. Unfortunately, that’s incredibly dangerous in California rush-hour traffic.

Just as I was entering the San Fernando Valley going south on Sepulveda Boulevard, I accidentally cut off a large man and his wife in a pickup truck. He honked angrily at me, and I waved to gesture I was sorry. Then, a half a mile later—idiotically—I proceeded to do it again.

At that point, the man caught up to me and pulled his truck to an abrupt stop in front of me, forcing me off the road. As I stopped, I could see the man’s wife gesturing frantically to him not to get out of the truck.

But he didn’t listen to her, and in a few moments, he did get out—all six and a half feet and 300 pounds of him. He stormed over to my car and banged wildly on my side window, screaming obscenities at me.

I was so dazed that I actually rolled my window down to hear him. Then I just waited until he paused to reload on more vitriol.

And at that moment, as he stopped to take a breath, I said to him:

“Have you ever had such an awful day that you’re just hoping to meet someone who will pull out a gun, shoot you, and put you out of your misery? Are you that someone?”

His mouth fell open. “What?” he asked.

Up to that point, I’d been incredibly stupid. But in that instant, I did something brilliant. Somehow, in the midst of my brain fog, I said exactly the right thing.

I didn’t try to reason with this terrifying man, who probably would have responded by dragging me out of my car and smashing his fist into my face. And I didn’t fight back. Instead, I leaned into his crazy and threw it right back at him.

As the man stared at me, I started up again. “Yeah, I really mean it. I don’t usually cut people off, and I never cut someone off twice. I’m just having a day where no matter what I do or who I meet—including you!—I seem to mess everything up. Are you the person who is going to mercifully put an end to it?”

Instantly, a change came over him. He switched to being calming and reassuring: “Hey. C’mon, man,” he said. “It’ll be okay. Really! Just relax, it’ll be okay. Everyone has days like this.”

I continued my rant. “That’s easy for you to say! You didn’t screw up everything like I did today. I don’t think it will be okay. I just want out! Can’t you help me with that?”

He continued with fervor: “No, really. I mean it. It’ll be okay. Just relax.”

We talked for a few more minutes. Then he got back into his truck, said a few things to his wife, and waved to me in the rearview mirror as if to say, “Now remember. Relax. It’ll be okay.”

And he drove off.

Now, I’m not proud of this episode. Clearly, the guy in the pickup truck wasn’t the only irrational person on the road that day.

But here’s my point. That guy could have punched my lights out. And he probably would have if I’d tried to use reason or to argue with him. Instead, I met him in his reality, in which I was the bad guy and he had every right to hurt me. By instinctively using a technique I call assertive submission (which I’ll talk about in Chapter 8), I turned him from an assailant into an ally in less than a minute.

Luckily, my response came naturally, even on that really bad day. That’s because I’ve been leaning into people’s crazy for years as a psychiatrist. I’ve done it thousands of times, in different ways, and I know that it works.

Moreover, I know that it can work for you. Leaning into crazy is a strategy you can use with any irrational person. For instance, you can use this strategy to talk with:

• A partner who screams at you—or refuses to speak to you

• A child who says, “I hate you” or “I hate myself”

• An aging parent who says, “You don’t care about me”

• An employee who constantly melts down on the job

• A manager who’s a bully

No matter what kind of everyday crazy you’re dealing with, leaning into that crazy can empower you to break free from communication strategies that fail every time and break through to the people you need to reach. As a result, you’ll be able to walk into just about any emotional situation—anywhere—and feel confident, in control, and unafraid.

Replacing Fight-or-Flight with the Sanity Cycle

One thing to understand is that leaning into the crazy doesn’t come instinctively. That’s because it’s what your body doesn’t want you to do.

When you’re dealing with an irrational person, your body sends you danger signals. Pay attention, and you’ll notice that your throat tightens, your pulse speeds up, you get a sick feelin...