An employee or a loved one comes to you to “advise” to puzzle you with problems that they create for themselves.
The first and usual internal reaction to this is quiet pride: “Here, they consult me … Appreciate me!” However, this visit to you is hardly a recognition of your wisdom. The reason is much more prosaic: people are not accustomed to think, and when someone does this work for them, they are happy.
A person comes to you with a problem himself, he trusts you, he hopes for you, for you «moral responsibility», and that is why it is so easy, you will not get out of his game …
This is a game, and the pattern of such games is more clearly visible in childhood, when they still play not so elegantly, but straightforwardly, openly and rather goofy.
Here is an unfortunate child demandingly shouting: “Mom, my mittens are wet, I’m cold!” — at the same time, and usually and in thoughts, no one has that he climbed with mittens in the wet snow and created a problem for himself, the child himself: the child is sure that he has nothing to do with it, and the mittens are to blame («Why do they get wet!») And mother …
Why is mom to blame? — Because. Because mom is to blame for him always and in everything!
And in this he is right: the mother really feels obliged now to serve the child and look for a way out of the situation when the child is not satisfied with anything. This is done easily: if the mother offers to put on others, blue ones, the child will offendedly refuse: “No, they are prickly!”, And on “Well, then let’s go home” he will express an indignant protest: “But I haven’t walked up yet!”
A fairly typical version of the manipulative game «Yes, but …» described by Eric Berne1.