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Friday, March 6, 2015

Manipulation

Recently I taught on Manipulation.

It's a huge problem amongst the abandoned kids I work with.  The biggest challenge with kids that have been abandoned is that they believe they are unwanted and unloved.  Unfortunately, sometimes this is true.  What is not true, however, is that they are the cause of this problem and that they themselves are no good or unlovable. 

But they believe it, and so they also believe that the only way to protect themselves in this world is to depend only on themselves and take whatever they need.  If they need attention or love, they try to force it out of you (because no one would actually offer it freely to someone who is undesirable and unlovable).

I used an example of someone starving.  So they take a gun and rob a store for food.  Their need for food is real.  But, it was a terrible (but effective) way to meet their needs.  That's what these kids are doing to the people that are trying to help them.  They are robbing them to get what they need.  My training touched on points for how we can help meet these needs before the kids resort to stealing it from us.  But we have to realize what the needs are in order to meet them.

We also have to meet their needs faster than they can steal it from us - which is hard to do.  And then it's a process to make them believe we are sincere and don't have ulterior motives in these acts. Trust.


Building trust is the most difficult part of my work here.  Not dealing with the trauma, or all the other issues involved.  Because without trust, nothing I can offer is of value to them.