Still in the place where thinking about some stuff is making me shake. Well, either that or the MS is really acting up. I think it just may be unexpressed rage which has decided to come out and play. Like all civilized people, there's plenty there lurking in my lizard brain, I'm sure.

A friend has loaned me the book Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini (the revised edition). Very interesting. It is referred to in the book about Emotional Vampires that erudito recently posted about. My friend thought that Reciprocation would be the killer, and indeed there are people in my life who excel at that one. But so far what's wigging me out is Commitment and Consistency:

Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize....Sealed within the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be impervious to the sieges of reason. p. 61

If, as it appears, automatic consistency functions as a shield against thought, it should not be surprising that such consistency can also be exploited by those who would prefer that we not think too much in response to their requests for our compliance. For the exploiters, whose interests will be served by an unthinking, mechanical reaction to their requests, our tendency for automatic consistency is a gold mine...they structure their interactions with us so that our own need to be consistent will lead directly to their benefit. p. 64

So there it is. I find this book disturbing in ways I'm not comfortable about. My brain still seems to be shying away from what it is seeing.