You may have heard, or even said, “The cheater is making me crazy,” or a similar version such as ‘they are making me mental.’ Some people may dismiss such claims. My experience is that when you stay in a crazy-making situation long enough, it affects you.
All the lies, double-messages, sick games and put downs will start breaking you down. You can’t stay in a crazy-making situation without consequences.
Handling the Cheater Who Makes You Crazy <<– listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you tuned in today’s show. Here at Affair Recovery Radio my goal is to help you through affair recovery one step at a time. We’re going to be taking you through another one of those steps today.
The focus of today’s show is “Handling the cheater who makes you crazy”. Along the way, as you’re dealing with cheaters and this whole affair situation, there will be times that you may find yourself saying they’re driving me crazy.
Or “They’re making me crazy”. We’re going to be dealing with that. You may even have some other version of the phrase. “They’re making me mental”.
You want to know how to deal with it, because this topic came to me from a question there on the blog, how to handle those situations. We’re going to be dealing with that. Because some people may dismiss these types of claims that the person makes you crazy.
I recall when I was starting off my training as a counselor, I’d say well, people can’t make you crazy. At least that’s what they told me in a classroom.
Now, I’ve learned since then that they can. Because whenever you stay in a crazy making situation long enough, it affects you. You can say that it doesn’t, but it does.
When you’re under stress over a long enough period of time with a crazy making situation, or a crazy making family over a long enough period of time, it will affect you. With all the lies, the double messages, the sick games, the put downs, all this type of stuff will start breaking you down.
And you can’t stay in a crazy making situation without consequences. Let me repeat that, because you may need to hear that. You cannot stay in a crazy making situation without consequences. It will affect you in some manner, be it physically, psychologically, spiritually, or relationally. It will leave a scar.
How do you handle crazy making situations? Well, that’s what we’re going to be dealing with today.
In terms of the answers, the simple answer I am using the acronym choose, change, and get. When I was putting this down, choose change get, choose change get, it reminded me of the childhood story The Little Engine That Could, because you’ve got to chug-chug-chug a thing out, and this kind of choose change get, choose change get, choose change get, reminded me of that chug-a chug-a thing. But we’ll go into this.
1. Choose not to play the games. Because when an unhealthy routine or cycle starts, you need to do something to interrupt or disrupt it. You want to break the game and choose not to play.
Years ago when I was a teenager, the movie War Games came out. I remember one of the lines in the movie, the main character chose not to play a game. And you can choose not to play.
When people start trying to do these crazy making games, a lot of times what happens, you find yourself getting sucked into them.
Because you think you know either how to play, you think that you can win, or you feel like you have to defend yourself. Those are all hooks, and you have to choose NOT to play.
Because if you play the game with a sick individual, you’re going to be following sick rules and under sick rules you will not win. Because they will change the rules on you.
So don’t do it.
2. Change your reality. This may sound a little strange when you start talking about reality and some of that other woo-woo stuff, but you don’t want to let the cheater decide your reality.
When a cheater is making statements like this is the way it is, or spouses are supposed to . . ., or you must _____, statements like that are ways of them deciding your reality. They are essentially saying this is the way it’s going to be, or this is the reality you are going to be operating under. This is the way it is going to be.
It’s not just a matter of setting up rules and structures for the home. They are trying to set up rules and structures for your mind. For your emotions. And you’re going to need to either reject or modify those realities.
Okay, you say this is the way it’s going to be, we need to make this change, we need to make that change, you need to find some way to modify it or change it so that you have some say-so over that reality.
When you start giving in to their definitions of reality they’re going to continue ratcheting it up more and more, changing it on you.
And that’s the type of stuff that you’re going to feel is making you crazy, because they are shifting your reality and saying you have one set of experiences in your heart and head, and they’re telling you it’s something else.
When you’ve got that disjointing or that not fitting together of those two realities, that’s going to leave you feeling crazy. Because they are not going to fit with each other.
That’s why you’re going to need to change or modify these realities.
3. Get healthy. This means surround yourself with healthy friends and support.
With greater frequency I’m seeing more couples finding themselves in a very isolated existence. This gets to be dangerous, because if you’ve got a crazy making situation going down, it’s going to intensify the experience.
And yes, I have met couples where like the husband keeps the wife very isolated, only allows them certain friends, only allows them to leave the house at certain times, many times maybe does not allow them access to an automobile or any kind of transportation. That’s a very dangerous situation. I know those things happen.
So you will need to surround yourself with healthy friends and support. Because when you stay in the sickness too long what starts to happen is that you lose your sense of perspective.
You get caught up in their reality, but you also lose any idea of what a healthy world is, and what is healthy, because when your spouse, who if they’re the cheater and they’re making all the rules, they’re going to have you feeling like you’re the one who’s crazy. Like you’re the one that has the problem, not them.
I don’t want you to get caught up in that. Because that type of existence, that’s a very desperate existence, and that will have you feeling very desperate, very isolated, very alone. That, in some ways, are the basic factors that you would need to brainwash them. You have them isolated, you have them surrounded with your reality, and eventually you break them.
And a lot of spouses, I know they haven’t been trained in how to do brainwashing, but they have kind of stumbled on these techniques and they start using them on people and it will drive you crazy.
I know that those intro psychology professors tell you people can’t make you crazy. Well, yes they can. If you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about. This will give you some ways to start taking those first steps to get out of the crazy situation.
Because if you’re in a crazy making situation where there’s an affair, you have to get out of the crazy making situation then deal with the affair.
If you try taking on the affair before the crazy making situation, it tends to whack things out even more. It makes you feel more out of control and the situation spins out of control quickly. We want to avoid that.
So for your own safety, deal with the crazy making situation first then deal with the affair. For that reason we dealt with the topic of handling the cheater who makes you crazy.
If you found this helpful, I deal with more communication games and ways of dealing with them in the “Affair Recovery Workshop“. This downloadable program guides you in dealing with challenging communication situations.
When you’re at wits end and don’t know what else to do, you need the Affair Recovery Workshop. You love your spouse, but they are driving you crazy. You don’t have to let that happen. Click the link and download your copy today.
Best Regards,
Jeff
