Author: chriscol

Oh, sweet.  A candy-coated attack! Examples (Nov 3, 2004):     “Everyone understands why a woman your age might get emotional at a time like this.”     “Everyone understands...

Verbal Attack Patterns so far: Pattern #1: “If you REALLY X, you’d Y.” Pattern #2: “If you really A, you wouldn’t WANT to B.” Pattern #3: “Don’t you even CARE about X?” Basic...

Verbal Self-Defense is even more important among friends than against enemies. Take a minute and imagine the rest of the conversation… If we want to learn how to avoid internal pie wars–and how to fight the external...

OK–Can I get some readers? And some feedback? This is essentially a repost of an earlier kos diary. However, I’ll be revisiting the theme in light of the pie wars shortly. “Don’t you even CARE about...

The Presupposition: Name calling without calling names. The most primitive kind of verbal attack occurs in preschool–name-calling. Because adults on the attack rarely wish to appear childish, the skilful ones learn to...