Drama-Baiting: What are you fishing for?

I have had conversations with people in my life that use language to communicate in a way I was not raised to respond to. In a household of three women, my step-father always told us, “say what you mean and mean what you say.” In other words, use clear, direct language because he did not want to spend time trying to infer and read between the lines of what three different women were saying.

While I value the lesson to this day, I don’t know that I always succeeded in clearly communicating my message. In my defense, up until the last five years or so, I’m not sure I always knew what my message was. It’s only in recent years that I have been able to observe my emotions and interpret my feelings more accurately, therefore communicating more clearly. It’s the difference between unconsciously reacting and deliberately responding.

What’s all this got to do with drama-baiting; and, what is drama-baiting anyway?

Ideally, the intention behind communication is to send a message. If I know what the message is I want to share, I say it directly and clearly. What I’ve come to identify as drama-baiting is when people use language, not so much to send a clear message, but instead to elicit an emotional response, baiting the receiver to participate in their emotional experience.

For example, it’s the difference between someone asking, “Doesn’t that make you feel bad?” as opposed to, “How does that make you feel?” It’s subtle, but it can have a significant influence on how the person responds. Maybe you didn’t feel bad at all, but now you’ve been invited to participate in the drama they have scripted in their head. Similarly, it can be more direct, like guilt-tripping.  For instance, when someone is playing the victim and makes statements like, “Do you really think I’m that mean?” or “Maybe if you liked hanging out with me more, we could…”

Granted, tone, inflection, and context play a role. Ultimately, the person is not clearly communicating their feelings. Rather, they are baiting you to participate in their emotional melodrama.

I suppose, what I collectively call drama-baiting falls into well-defined psychological definitions of behavior. It can show up as negatively flavored neurolinguistic programming, mild forms of gaslighting, or a good old-fashioned guilt trip. Regardless of its hue, to me, drama-baiting is anytime someone uses language to elicit a reaction that gets the receiver on board their emotional train.

Whether the person is doing it consciously is not the issue. Ideally, it’s an opportunity to practice Awareness. Awareness of what and how we and others are communicating, and the intention and impact behind the communication.

Language is our primary means for defining the world we exist in. And I’m not talking about how we define the external world. I’m talking about the world we create in our head by the internal narrative we run. When we observe how we communicate with others and how they communicate with us, it gives us insight into how aware we are of what’s going on inside us – both through our internal dialogue and emotions.

Whether you are communicating with yourself or others, are you “saying what your mean and meaning what you say”?

As always, please feel free to connect. Whether you agree with my observations or not, when we exchange ideas it’s an opportunity to identify our blind spots and continue evolving!

Happy Evolving!