Selection 3Tyranny of WeaknessIf I were to ask you who are the most aggressive people you know, chan
美国本土化妆品_美国本土的优秀大学阅读教程：朗文高级英语阅读：selection 3
Selection 3
Tyranny of Weakness
If I were to ask you who are the most aggressive people you know, chances are you would describe someone who tells other people what to do, bosses people around, has a great deal of energy—a forceful personality.
Wrong! The most aggressive, the strongest people we know are the weak ones. They are people who want someone else to take care of them and have somehow managed to convince those around them that they are too sick, too weak, too helpless, too incompetent to do anything for themselves. They are not really sick or helpless at all, but they have found a way to control the world that is fool-proof.
I suppose it begin in childhood when a child realizes that helplessness is a way of controlling parents and teachers and other kids. And anyone who chooses such techniques may very well believe they really are unable to function.
I recall a time when I had been on a book publicity tour for 10 days and came home to face preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 14 people. I asked a friend who did not work if she could bring salad and she said she was too tired. Or there is a man who was sure he wanted a quiet, shy helpless wife because his mother had been aggressive, competent and somewhat overpowering. So he has spent his life taking care of a wife who “gets sick” at every family crisis and takes to her own bed if a child gets sick, if the family has to move, if her husband is in a car accident.
Often people who have been strong and competent become helpless after some major emotional trauma. A friend told me, “I have a full-time job and three school-age kids, and when my father died, my mother, who had always been a competent person, suddenly turned into an infant. She expected me to take her shopping, cook for her, stay at her house, drive her everywhere, listen to her endless complaints. I became so exhausted that it began to dawn on me that she wasn’t weak and helpless, she was a tyrant!”
Weakness and helplessness can be a form of aggression. But its origins may start with feelings of incompetence, fear, lack of self-estenm.
When we meet with the tyranny of weakness, we need to help the person discover strengths, ways of accepting the challenges of life.
One husband, married 40 years, told me “I don’t know what happened, except I finally realized my wife had made me her slave—not by yelling at me or ordering me around, but by appearing to be helpless. I was getting a few aches and pains of my own, I guess, and it wasn’t fun anymore feeling I was ‘The Big Man’ who could do everything. Finally, one day when she told me to mop the kitchen floor because she needed to take a nap, I said, ‘Do it yourself or leave it dirty!’ I thought she’d faint from the shock, but it did her a world of good. I seemed to break a pattern that was bad for both of us.
It’s a very good idea to keep in mind that it is not only the strong who push us around, but very often it is the person who appears to be weak and helpless.
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Tyranny of Weakness
If I were to ask you who are the most aggressive people you know, chances are you would describe someone who tells other people what to do, bosses people around, has a great deal of energy—a forceful personality.
Wrong! The most aggressive, the strongest people we know are the weak ones. They are people who want someone else to take care of them and have somehow managed to convince those around them that they are too sick, too weak, too helpless, too incompetent to do anything for themselves. They are not really sick or helpless at all, but they have found a way to control the world that is fool-proof.
I suppose it begin in childhood when a child realizes that helplessness is a way of controlling parents and teachers and other kids. And anyone who chooses such techniques may very well believe they really are unable to function.
I recall a time when I had been on a book publicity tour for 10 days and came home to face preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 14 people. I asked a friend who did not work if she could bring salad and she said she was too tired. Or there is a man who was sure he wanted a quiet, shy helpless wife because his mother had been aggressive, competent and somewhat overpowering. So he has spent his life taking care of a wife who “gets sick” at every family crisis and takes to her own bed if a child gets sick, if the family has to move, if her husband is in a car accident.
Often people who have been strong and competent become helpless after some major emotional trauma. A friend told me, “I have a full-time job and three school-age kids, and when my father died, my mother, who had always been a competent person, suddenly turned into an infant. She expected me to take her shopping, cook for her, stay at her house, drive her everywhere, listen to her endless complaints. I became so exhausted that it began to dawn on me that she wasn’t weak and helpless, she was a tyrant!”
Weakness and helplessness can be a form of aggression. But its origins may start with feelings of incompetence, fear, lack of self-estenm.
When we meet with the tyranny of weakness, we need to help the person discover strengths, ways of accepting the challenges of life.
One husband, married 40 years, told me “I don’t know what happened, except I finally realized my wife had made me her slave—not by yelling at me or ordering me around, but by appearing to be helpless. I was getting a few aches and pains of my own, I guess, and it wasn’t fun anymore feeling I was ‘The Big Man’ who could do everything. Finally, one day when she told me to mop the kitchen floor because she needed to take a nap, I said, ‘Do it yourself or leave it dirty!’ I thought she’d faint from the shock, but it did her a world of good. I seemed to break a pattern that was bad for both of us.
It’s a very good idea to keep in mind that it is not only the strong who push us around, but very often it is the person who appears to be weak and helpless.
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