One of the most common tactics you're going to deal with, when faced with someone who’s resistant to being challenged or obeying boundaries—someone who's deliberately disrespectful—is for them to turn the tables and attack you while you're trying to confront them about their behaviour.

You can also expect this kind of behaviour from people who have temporarily lost control of their emotions and are in conflict from being confronted.

In these kinds of situations you need to hold strong.

By "holding strong," I mean that you don’t allow anything, no matter how rational, sensible, or reasonable it might sound, no matter how elevated, agitated, or outraged they get, to take you off topic.

They never have a good reason to take you off topic.

You're the one who initiated this confrontation.

You're the one who has a boundary to set.

That's what this conversation is about, and nothing else.

You could firmly state something like, "I will not tolerate you changing the topic. We're staying on point. I will not put up with this kind of distracting manipulation."

If you're dealing with someone who you think isn't really intending to be manipulative—someone you love who’s just having a bit of a reaction—you can be a bit gentler and say something like, "Look, if you have a problem with me, we'll talk about that another time. For now, we're discussing my boundary and my issue."

My favourite technique for dealing with this is a combination of cold silence and ruthless repetition.

What I mean by that is, when they come at me with the counterattack, I'll just stare at them. I especially use this cold silence with people who I know or feel certain are trying to use a tactic on me.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here:

https://youtu.be/63G0sSWfx3c

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