EXTREME RELATIONSHIP STYLES
This blog is part of a series that will help you to relate to people who are very different from you. We all know how to relate to people like ourselves: We just act naturally.
Unfortunately, when we act naturally to different kinds of people, we have serious problems. We don’t understand them or know what to say or do. That issue was briefly discussed in another blog: “The First Coaching Session.” You may not like it; many people don’t. It said:
- The MAJOR reason for your relationship problems is that you can’t or won’t take uncomfortable actions.
- You should relate to people on their terms because they won’t relate on yours.
Of course, you don’t want to relate on their terms. You want to relate on yours. The more different your relationship styles are, the harder it is to relate on their terms. You must act unnaturally, and nobody likes to do that. But, to have good relationships, that’s exactly what you must do. If you’d like to read that blog, just click HERE.
For decades I’ve taught people all over the world how to adjust to different types of people. Amazon sells eighteen of my books and eight of my videos. The ones you’ll find most helpful for improving your relationships are:
- Selling: The Psychological Approach
- Negotiate to Win: Gaining the Psychological Edge
- Is Trump’s Negotiating Style Right for YOU?
THE THREE RELATIONSHIP STYLES
Our relationships depend upon how well our styles fit together. Some combinations fit easily; others can fit with some work, and some just won’t fit together. My books and videos discussed how our own and other people’s styles fit and clash with each other.
My works borrowed from Dr. Karen Horney, an eminent psychoanalyst. She often wrote that there are three basic ways to relate to people:
- Friendly people move toward others with warmth, trust, and receptivity.
- Aggressive people move against them with strength, force, and competitiveness.
- Analytic people move away from them with facts, logic, and impersonality.
These movements are dimensions. You can be high, medium, or low on any of them, and you probably combine two or all three.
Three of my blogs describe extremely aggressive, friendly, and analytic people. Another one presents a short test of your own style. Understanding your own style and its effects on others is an essential first step toward improving your relationships. If you don’t know where you’re coming from, you can’t decide which way to go. Other blogs recommend the specific changes you should make to relate to various kinds of people.
You can read my other blogs by clicking HERE.
ALL EXTREME TYPES ARE INSECURE
Dr. Horney regarded the extreme types as “neurotics.” It’s natural to need warmth, power, and distance, but an excessive need for any of them is unhealthy and self-destructive.
Any extreme need is essentially insatiable, and it causes people to make too many demands on others. These demands often backfire. Demanding too much affection drives people away, increasing loneliness and creating greater demands for affection. Pushing too hard makes others fight back or run away. Being too distant frustrates other people’s needs for closeness, deference, and other reactions. They demand more intimacy or submission, and extremely analytic people won’t give either one.
In addition, people with extreme needs have low self-esteem and unhealthy relationships. There are huge, painful conflicts between what they seem to be and what they really are. Extremely friendly people seem very trusting, but they have intense doubts that others really love them. So they demand frequent reassurance, which drives people away, increasing their insecurity and intensifying their demands.
Extremely analytic people seem self-sufficient, but – unless they are hermits – they can’t completely avoid dealing with other people. When the others try to relate to them personally, they get scared and run away.
Extremely aggressive people often look supremely self-confident, but they are as insecure as the other extreme types. They just hide it better. Donald Trump is an excellent example. He looks so sure of himself that millions of people voted for him. But, if he was really that confident, he wouldn’t need to brag or fight so much.
All three extreme styles deceive themselves by exaggerating their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses. Personal characteristics that others see as weaknesses they see call strengths. “I’m not clingy; I’m warm and giving.” “I’m not overbearing; I’m confident and decisive.” “I’m not afraid of people; I just want them to be logical and predictable.”
Believing a liability is an asset may seem to conflict with my point about low self-esteem. But there is no conflict. People who feel good about themselves don’t have to pretend. They can honestly look at themselves, admit their faults, and make necessary adjustments.
LESSONS FOR LESS EXTREME PEOPLE
You may be wondering, “Why is he telling me so much about neurotics? I’m not that extreme, and neither are the people I care about.”
I wrote about the extremes because it’s much easier to see how their styles affect relationships. If you understand how extreme people relate to others, you can recognize the general pattern that applies to moderste ones like yourself and your lovers, friends, enemies, coworkers, and so on. Their styles have the same kinds of effects, but it’s harder to see them.
If you’re a Trump-lover or Trump-hater, you may dislike my stories about him. You may even think, “I’m sick of hearing about Trump. Let’s focus on regular people.”
I can certainly understand being tired of Trump, but he’s the perfect example of how personal styles affect other people. I asked a Trump-hater and a Trump-lover to comment on my online course, Is Trump’s Negotiating Strategy Right For YOU? Both are successful professionals with advanced degrees. Their reactions were utterly childish.
The Trump-hater wrote that Trump never had a strategy and never would have one. When I asked how he had made billions of dollars and won the presidency, my friend said, “He was just lucky.”
The Trump-lover’s reaction was equally silly. He said there was no evidence that Trump had bad relationships. When I asked why Trump has had so many fights and had been impeached twice, he said, “The Democrats were just out to get him.”
Both of them were obviously denying reality. Nobody can make billions and become president just on luck, and Trump’s battles started long before he became president, and they will continue until he dies.
You can’t afford to deny reality about ANYBODY, especially yourself and the people closest to you. No matter how much you dislike certain kinds of people, you MUST relate to them as they are, not as you want them to be.
You and they are not as extreme as Donald Trump, Albert Einstein, or Mother Teresa, but you all have some of the extreme people’s strengths and weaknesses. The more clearly you understand the effects of various styles, the better your relationships will be.
HOW CAN YOU UNDERSTAND EXTREMELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE?
Dr. Horney and other psychiatrists frequently asked: “Why do people develop unhealthy needs, feelings, thoughts, and habits?” These blogs will rarely consider those questions. You probably don’t care why anyone has certain needs or tries to satisfy them in frustrating ways. You just want to improve your relationships with them.
You can’t relate to them if you don’t recognize who they are and how they think and feel. To help you relate to them, future blogs will discuss nine aspects of each extreme style:
- General characteristics
- How others see them
- How they see themselves
- How to recognize them
- Fears
- Hidden question
- Attitudes toward other people
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
If you read these blogs, take the quiz about your own style, and look hard at yourself and others, you’ll be amazed at how quickly your relationships and comfort improve.
Dr. Al Schoonmaker
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