Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
"I'm not going to kidnap him": self-defense
Hello TPM community,
today a mother who's also a chief nurse in another hospital (not pediatrics) is in her room with her hospitalized newborn. A nurse takes the baby out of the room to clean him, she says:
Nurse: I'm not going to kidnap him! (smiles)
Nurse: I'm not going to kidnap him! (smiles, making sure she was heard and seen from everyone, proud of her joke).
Mother/Chief nurse: I know who took him! Hahahaha
I think it was a brilliant self-defense. Because even if the joking frame was obvious to everyone it was still disempowering.
POWER MOVER
Nurse: I'm not going to kidnap him! (smiles)
The frame is:
"I could kidnap your kid if I want to. But I'm not going to do it (because I'm cool/because I like you/because it's not cool/no matter what you think, etc.)."
It means: she has the power to take her kid away.
DEFENDER
Well, the power-aware chief nurse did a perfect self-defense on the same joking frame.
Mother/Chief nurse: I know who took him! Hahahaha
The frame is:
Even if you did, I would still find you. So you have no power over me nor over my baby.
NET EFFECT
She beat her within her own frame.
We could say it's a high-dominance frame here. And with her laugh she keeps rapport and stays within the friendly/joking frame. As in "we are cool with one another but don't f*ck with me girl".
Beautiful. One-Up -> One-Up -> power move cancelled.
This woman is also brilliant at reframing everything that happens in the positive. Quite inspiring.
