SYTB 3: Did You Get The VACS, Bro?

Why I'm actually pro-VACS.

I admitted it. I am not anti-VACS. Go tell all your friends you read it here.

Does this make me sound less like a nutso conspiracy theorist? I’m actually more of one than you imagine.

See the VACS is a Voice Activated Control System, and we all got one. It’s that mechanism inside each of us that gets triggered when someone says something that reminds of us of a time in our childhood when we felt small. Now, there’s no point in denying that you got your VACS. The more in denial of it, the more power it has to work on you and run you like a Manchurian Candidate. While I am doing this series on saying, “Yes!” to boundaries, one of the first steps is saying “yes!” and acknowledging your VACS status is positive.

So let’s look at some of the key components of the VACS so we can identify it, identify the key operators, bring awareness to their motivations, bring awareness to how we react to them and ultimately, use it as a tool and take back the operating system of our own minds.

Ready? Yes! Of course, you are!

Have you ever finally mustered up the gumption to confront someone, and it went all wrong, like just completely fell apart? You had all your talking points mapped out, you were going to be concise, yet thorough. However, as soon as you brought it up, the plot somehow got hijacked, and you ended up talking about why you did something in 1982 with the full conviction of living it out all over again in that moment. You’ve been hacked!

Some people, call them narcissists, call them sociopaths, call them codependents, whatever label you need, doesn’t matter. I call them MK Ultra handlers. Now, did all these people go through some kind of CIA course to learn this special honed skill? Are you asking me technically, personally, professionally or what? Hahaha! I mean, aren’t we all living in some kind of programming matrix out picturing of the MK Ultra program taken on a massive scale? I think so. Some people are learning quickly how to become the master programmers of deflection, gas lighting and so on. Frankly, though, none of this is new.

When people don’t want to own responsibility, you can’t make them drink. They’ll circle and circle that pond telling you about the grass, the trees, the forest, the mountains, the birds, the air quality, the EPA, but what they won’t do is sip from that pool. People are designed with an ego and what that really means is they have a nuclear armed antimissile defense system in their heads running constantly to avoid change. They shoot potential change out of the sky before anyone can see it coming. So your confrontation, that’s just not going to work for someone with an over active ego, no matter how nicely or diplomatically you had that speech planned in your head. Should you get close to the point, it won’t ever get to sound diplomatic. It’s going to be reframed as a blood bath and you, Hitler. You are going to wish you never brought it up and if you did so for the normal reasons, like you truly cared about the person and the relationship you wanted to salvage, you’re going to apologize for everything you didn’t mean to say and did before it’s all over. Why? Because you are the “Yes” person. And that’s ok, in fact, it’s better than ok.

So, let’s just get this bit out of the way, shall we? Make our blunder and now, what?

We see we can’t approach this person in the usual polite way. We make our apologies for losing our cool. We regroup.

What is it you really require from the relationship for it to move forward? Is there a promise or some kind of commitment or new agreement you need to hear that has nothing to do with what happened in the past? Think about it. Write it down.

How does this play out?

“Look, I don’t care about X, Y or Z that happened in the past. Water under the bridge. However, for me to trust you and have you in my life, I need to know that in the future such and such (positive action) is the protocol going forward. Can you agree to that?”

So we are no longer asking for them to acknowledge wrong doing. We aren’t talking about our feelings-that quagmire in relationship to the past behavior. Isn’t that how we were taught to communicate? “When you did this, I felt that.” Fuck that bullshit. Not gonna work with an activated ego. Sorry, not sorry. And you aren’t the one who has to say “yes” or “no.” Because we all know what you’d say if given the choice.

You may get some hmming and some hahhing, some long deliberations. Do not feel inclined to bargain. In sales, the person who speaks first loses, and this is a sales negotiation. You are asking if this person wants to buy your friendship or not. I know, that’s pretty uncomfortable and seems vulnerable for you as you could be rejected in a very direct way. They know it. But that’s what makes this fool proof. You actually have created a win/win scenario for you. If you keep your trap shut and assume they are going to say “yes” to the new agreement, you’ll probably win the negotiation. If they say “no,” scary as that sounds, you still win because you got clarity on how to proceed with your life- without them and without ever having to say “no” to anyone.

There is one catch. Those of you who read my book and the story of my father might already know what it is. The catch is, the person could say “yes” when they mean “no” to sound good and keep the game on going.

I’m gonna tell you why you STILL win. You have them giving their agreement to something very specific. When they break that agreement with their behavior, all contracts are null and void. Essentially, they said “no” to the relationship with their actions. You can simply walk away without any justification, not even a word. If there was a word from you, it would be two words: “thank you.” This is the clearest and most direct anyone can be with how they want to proceed in relationship with you or not since they only had two choices, a positive, considerate course of action going forward or act like a bastard, undermine you and break their own agreements. You only have one choice remaining and that’s to put someone who wants you in the space they were holding in your life before they tore up the contract.

Ok, well, that was pretty direct.

What if it’s not? What if there’s no real confrontation, not that you know of and it’s just subtle manipulation? What if your VACS is going off and you don’t seem to detect it until like 5 hours later after what seemed like a mostly pleasant conversation, you are irritated, losing your cool, distracted, burning your dinner, picking fights with your husband to validate your goodness and screaming at your kids? What happened?

Some handlers are more smooth operators than others. Their methods are far more covert. Dane Cook made a funny sketch about this in his comedy tour Vicious Circle when he describes a girlfriend throwing a grenade inside her boyfriend’s brain by saying, “you’re just like your father.” At first, a boyfriend might think, “what did that mean?” Then he may respond defensively, “Yeah, well, he was a great man.” 4 hours later, the boyfriend is sucking his thumb in a fetal position on the floor. I appreciate the humor Dane brings to this subject because when this manipulation happens, it doesn’t feel funny at all. However, knowing we all relate in how we react to things like this, that millions of people watched that sketch and laughed at how effective this subtle undermining works on all of us, as exaggerated in the outcome (hopefully) can help us deal with the humiliation of having been spun up and then unwound by our VACS.

Some handlers really do operate silently in the background. They know how to play the right card at the right moment and walk away. You tend to allow these people in your life because they are invisible as handlers. What they say works at you because you chose to let it. You chose to think about what they said over and over again. What they said, wasn’t necessarily wrong or bad or even untrue. So they get away with appearing benign. You do all the dirty work to yourself.

Here’s the thing. If you’ve read a couple posts back, the foundation for boundaries is framework. It’s what you want in the frame of your life. When these people show up, they always look great in the picture. They play their role in your life perfectly, and they appear to be a benefit to you and your dreams. They may often appear to be perfect supporting cast. They may be the ones helping you pick up the pieces. They may be the calm one when you are always losing your shit. However, it’s you who starts to look crazy, taking on the form of Jekyll and Hyde under their influence. It’s you who becomes unreliable and looking like the Asian TikTok guy describes, “emotionally damaged.” Something tells me, if you are saying “yes” to boundaries and you are putting what you want in the frame of your motion picture, this is not all you hoped and wished for.

I dare you to dream again about the peaceful person you know you can be, in control of your emotions and ask yourself to honestly assess what sets you off. I can guarantee you that if you have done a lot of healing work and self reflection, it’s not you. I mean, it’s your VACS. Really, it’s someone pushing all the buttons at once until you short circuit and blow up your own life. This is where acknowledging the VACS can help. When was the precise moment you started to feel small? Really, think about this.

Once you’ve identified your handler, you might be asking yourself: what’s their motivation? I don’t know all the various handlers in the world. A simple stab in the dark (and I’m pretty good at these) is that keeping you always off, crippled and feeling small keeps you from looking harder at them. Again, ego. Or hurt people hurt people. Sometimes if an insecure person is full of sewage and has that lid on too tight to hide it, it just erupts from deep within and spills onto others. Again, trying too hard to be perfect and protect one’s self image can create it’s own issues. An insecure person might also do this to feel more powerful by comparison. Remember the beautiful person doesn’t do comparison. An insecure person might also do this so he or she feels needed or necessary. Since you are so good at wanting to fix what’s broken about you, finding all your broken parts for you to work on one by one, like leaving Legos on the floor randomly for you to step on every three weeks gives you a purpose of picking up Legos or constantly having to wear shoes in the house to protect your feet.

The VACS shows us places where we were hurt. It’s not as important as you think to eliminate every single past hurt one by one to have what you want in life. So if you are still sitting in your therapist’s chair waiting to be perfect before it’s your time to shine, I’ve got news for you: that belief is your most destructive programming. No one is above getting hurt once in a while. It’s how we recover from it and stay focused on the life we want, though, achieving our purpose that ultimately minimizes the suffering we feel when our VACS get activated from time to time.

Look inside yourself. What are you gaining from continuing to do this play with this person? Since you are what matters, I’m going to ask you if you believe this is your highest purpose? Is unearthing all these little past wounds and past shit what you want to devote your time to day in and day out or is there a way to teleport forward quickly and keep some fertilizer in your garden for future flowers to bloom?

Yes! There is a way. What do you want to be focused on? Who do you want to show up as in your film when it’s all said and done? How valuable is this person to the final cut?

In this case, I suggest making a silent contract with yourself. This person can stay in the picture if (fill in the blank). What’s your highest ideal? You may want to go through the process as with the other handler and ask them to take the contract. The issue, though, is that it’s much harder to pin down when this person is doing something subversive and undermining of your authority in your life. These people also have done everything in their power to already look like the picture of the supportive character. They may not even be operating consciously in these seemingly vindictive ways.

If you really want to keep the person in your life, I advocate distance. Since it’s often something that spills out in casual conversations, avoid casual conversations. Yes, it’s that simple! Let all of your contact be in writing, via email and such. It’s much harder to hide subversive comments in writing and the person will have less opportunity to do so if there’s a record. Ego will prevent one from exposing him or herself. If you still value the person, use their ego as a tool for both your benefits.

If you’ve come to the point wherein you’ve made a contract with yourself and the contract states that as long as the person isn’t dropping grenades in your life they can stay (seems like a pretty low bar for friendship to me) then you honor your contract. Their participation is based on their behavior. Again, they drop the bomb, they scratched the contract. You can walk away without a word. With these people, don’t even bother with “thank you.” Say it to yourself after you’ve walked away and kept your agreement to yourself.

Eventually, you will be thankful to them for showing you who they really are and what values they may or may not have to your final production. You’ll also be thankful once you eliminate the handlers and replace them with loving supportive people.

Mostly, you’ll be thankful to your VACS for showing you how to find the people who make you feel small and keep you distracted from the life purpose of your choosing. When all is said and done, you will be filled with joy once you take on the simple task of extinguishing threats to your production of a whole and happy life and put you and your desires back in the center of your picture.