In Your Experience, in Journal

Have you EVER been able to turn an aggressive, defensive, personally attacking and projecting person around in conversation? What worked? Is it entirely hopeless?
As always, I ask myself, why am I thinking about this? Why do it want to engage with such a person?
And, I admit that it is totally selfish! I am deeply troubled by the irrationality, the vitriol, the personal attacks that of course have nothing to do with me, but which are evidence of an abusive personality. I want to believe that it’s possible to at least improve from rank aggression to recognizing projection.
The question that always worked for me was “How do you know?” As in, how do you know I’m critical, judgemental, guilt-inducing, shaming, negative, etc? What empirical behavior have I displayed? What have I said? And, of course the answer is always a contrite “well… but you made me feel [Fill In the Blank].” Yeah? okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.
But that is a level of self reflection that one must actively employ.

Dear Random FB Mom
Please allow me one more try.
I just want to point out that I’m engaging here with information and not you, personally. Of course, I don’t know anything about you! How incredibly conceited would it be of me to make massive assumptions about you. My sharing and engaging with the information that I’ve shared included information that you’ve provided. And, I want to explain that my main point is just that- information is required for good choices.
My second point is also informed by our exchange. You’ve used some dare I say, negative adjectives to describe me or my actions. Which as you may know, are statements about me, personally. Now, I am not mad- how could I be? I’ve already admitted that I know nothing about you and that includes whether your opinion is valid. But you also know nothing about me, and so this particular opinion is entirely invalid. Again, I’m not mad. It was me who invited you to the discourse, so I have whole responsibility for anything whatever that occurs.
So please let me just try to convince you that I am not passing any personal standards onto you. I shared verifiable information because it is rare, and therefor valuable to everyone who is making a decision. I cannot judge you without an incredible amount of information and even then- why would I want to? I really do not care enough about you to do that. I am happy to discuss these ideas and share them with others- as I did with you- because of a selfish desire to be surrounded by happy people. Good decisions require good information, and when good information is lacking, or no one is willing to share it with you for fear of personal attack, we all pay the price in long-term unhappiness.
As the truism states; pay me now or pay me later.