Good Morning Spaceweasel,
I can certainly concur with your post, in my r/s with u/BPDw… I can immediately sense when she is “too far gone”… and as you describe;
“(she) realizes she's powerless to pull out of it but me disengaging from a conversation will make things worse.”
At that point, SET is indeed useless;
“A lot of times she reads empathy as pity and just freaks the absolute heck out.”
,
Roland writes; I have also had limited success with SET. My wife saw right through me.
Yes, something along these lines occurred just last night with me, and u/BPDw… there is a trip coming, a lot of travel, and against my better judgement, I have agreed to go with her… I have kept my mouth shut, but I can already tell you (myself) how it will go, the “historical source data” of past trips with her; speaks for itself… at some point, along the way, she is going to lose her $hit, over something yet unforeseen, and also completely unavoidable, so there we will be, in an airport, in a hotel room, far from home base, and she is going to melt down, and there is nothing I can do, and there will be nowhere to escape to either, oh’ yes, it will be “fun”.
She has tried to hook me several times in the last twenty-four hours, ie’ last minute self-sabotage, but I did not take the bait… we leave tonight, for a week, oh’ boy.
“But I'm getting frustrated with her need for me to anticipate everything that she might mis-read and defuse it in advance.”
Perplexing, and exhausting… yes it is !
Red5