Word Traps

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I've noticed that some people in my life set word traps pretty regularly and that I pretty regularly fall for them.

What I mean by "word trap" is something said that pushes the other person into saying things that make them look bad. It's playing with context to change meaning. I have no idea if it's normally done on purpose.

An example of this happened to me a few months ago at my older brother's house. I was trying to explain to my father, who was there, that I had to deal too much with people at my job, and I said lightly that I "hate people," which I know is a phrase I shouldn't use, but it slips out sometimes. My older sister overheard this and interjected by correcting me, saying "It depends on the person though, right?" And this made me realize that my sister-in-law's friends, who were near me on the couch, must have reacted nonverbally to what I said and, knowing that I shouldn't have said "hate," I retracted my previous statement and amended that "the new people aren't as bad," which was true -- but irrelevant to the point I had been trying to make, which is that I absolutely require huge amounts of solitude to function at capacity, and that my job didn't allow for that.

I was trying to make a good and important point, and I got tricked into looking rude. It took me over a day to realize what had happened.

That happens to me all the time. I'm often taken for being rude when the words just come out wrong. There's a lot of pressure in spontaneous conversation. When they turn what you said upside down and get some other meaning out of it, it sends me into confusion and withdrawal. I usually try to pass it off as a joke and start laughing which is often inappropriate and makes matters worse. Sorry no help!!

Sound almost like putting words into another's mouth. Tends to happen when one says something and is misunderstood or misinterpreted as mentioned already. Or definitely when someone takes what you say way out of context. These are scenarios where I had to learn that it won't matter what your intentions were.. the only thing that mattered to others was how you made them feel with what you said.

example: I came into work sick many years ago during a shift when I worked at Wal-Mart. I asked the boss if I could leave early and got the response "we'll see." Later on during lunch I asked him if I was to stay because it sounded like he wasn't interested in letting me go He told me not to put words in his mouth and to quit assuming that everyone is unreasonable. Even stated that if I felt like crap and couldn't finish up the night, I could go home. He then reminded me again not to put words in his mouth.

Sometimes, that kind of "trap" is a way NTs form social bonds. Your sister probably had no interest in what you thought of your colleagues, she may have asked the question to get you to say you didn't hate her and her friends. That would then have been the cue for them to sympathise with you, probably by recounting how much they hate their own co-workers.