Who legitimises influence? And what compromises our capacity for discernment.

How can influence undermine our choices, and how do people create illusions of legitimacy that may bypass our awareness?

Who decides what passes for normal?

Just prior to commencing university to read psychology, I remember a boyfriend telling me about a sociology lecture he attended where they said there was no such thing as normal. During my studies, there seemed to be a great deal of emphasis on researching what was considered normal versus abnormal. Today, the debate appears to continue not only across the scientific disciplines, but also in everyday conversations.

Yet what we entertain as our new normal can now emerge incredibly quickly.

In an age of digital media, influence has gone a bit batshit crazy. With the proliferation of self-declared experts and the dissemination of information becoming a dodgy version of Chinese whispers, checking our sources is no longer the only consideration. We also need to be asking ourselves, who says this is legit for me?

Because not all influence is appropriate, impartial or without an agenda.

Perhaps we need to consider the personal relevance of what we encounter alongside assessing its veracity. The problem is that kind of discernment takes focus, time and energy, and what happens when those resources aren’t easily available?

Rapid-fire influence

We can passively accept and normalise behaviour that might not always benefit us, now or later.

Being able to discern between what is helpful and what could be harmful is much harder when you are being bombarded with multiple influences and the rest of your life is running at full throttle. With the unrelenting flow of information and the pressure being tuned up on personal expectations, this can leave us with little time to think and little energy to act.

And interestingly, this is often how scams work. They start by activating you emotionally, perhaps making you feel nervous or afraid. There is often urgency, drama, and before you even realise what has happened, you’ve handed over your credit card details, the deeds to the dog and watched your car drive off into the sunset.

Which is exactly what happened to me.

My husband and I were moving between France and Spain in 2005, and just outside Barcelona we were “guided” off the road by a fancy Lexus (because fancy cars hold fancy people, not criminals, right). Once stopped, they ran over, pointing and screaming, and talking so rapidly it felt like civilisation was about to end. With all our attention locked on a supposedly dodgy back wheel, we were completely absorbed.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the car rolling forward. Seconds later, when I heard the engine rev, I actually thought, “Oh my God, the car is malfunctioning and going to cause a pile-up” (to be fair, it was a VW Beetle, and I grew up in the era of Herbie Goes Bananas). From behind me, my husband said softly, “No, they’re stealing it” as if he knew what I was thinking. We were left at the side of the road with nothing but the clothes we were wearing and our sunglasses.

When we are feeling under stress, focusing our attention on multiple or demanding tasks, and experiencing emotional activation, we might not be able to fully employ our critical thinking skills. Most of us have had that hindsight moment of going, “Oh, I should have said this or done that.”

The criminals controlled where our attention went and never gave us a moment to do anything but follow their narrative. We focused on their urgency and the show they put on, all the while believing they were there to help.

Meanwhile, the thing that actually mattered was happening somewhere else.

And this technique of using influence to take control is much bigger than just scams.

Influence: the slow burn

Some kinds of influence overwhelm us quickly. Some change the baseline so gradually that we don’t even notice it happening. And this is where we find influence hiding in the nooks and crannies.

Without being able to take a moment and reflect on what is unfolding, we can end up passively engaging without actively discerning. But equally, if something starts off as seemingly innocuous and unthreatening, and has a thread of reasonableness to it, we might not recognise where it could ultimately take us.

A common place we see this kind of more invisible influence is in our interpersonal relationships. For example, someone who has a bad relational experience might find it affects how they interact with others in subsequent relationships. An individual who experiences infidelity might feel unsafe and mistrusting of new people. They could then look for someone who can both understand this and is prepared to assuage their insecurity by showing consideration and, if necessary, modifying their responses and behaviour.

The new partner’s emotional empathy may initially lead them to feel compassion for the other person and be willing to provide that reassurance and clarity. But what happens if this isn’t enough, and the other person wants more?

What if security starts to look like being asked to provide access to your location, with the explanation that it’s also to keep an eye on your safety? What if it morphs into asking to see your phone, maybe even having access to your bank account? Or perhaps expressing feelings of abandonment when you spend time with friends and family.

What started off with someone feeling legitimate empathy for another person’s experiences has gradually become part of a coercive controlling dynamic.

Influence can stem from genuinely hard experiences, but without personal accountability or consideration of what is fair to ask of others, influence can become something unhealthy and unsustainable.

When influence becomes part of who we are

Influence is convoluted, and discernment doesn’t necessarily occur on a blank psychological canvas. Our previous influences may shape what current influences feel legitimate, and they could even keep us trapped in unhealthy patterns.

We know that influences show up throughout childhood, including through family dynamics, cultural beliefs and societal expectations, often creating beliefs, informing values and setting down personal expectations. But what happens when those influences develop primarily in accordance with someone else’s priorities and needs?

Someone who has grown up with a parent who makes them believe they are emotionally responsible for their well-being, leans on them for comfort and reassurance, and seeks validation and positive affirmation from them, might develop a pattern of putting others before themselves.

If the child also felt they needed to behave in certain ways in order to keep the peace, learned to make themselves small, and avoided asking for their own needs to be met because when they had done so previously they were met with violence, verbal abuse or other negative responses, they may later find it difficult to advocate for themselves.

Survival can become linked to normalising behaviours that may not always be in our best interests. And if someone is naturally inclined towards being kind and caring, they could believe that their behaviour is simply an intrinsic part of who they are, despite it setting them up on unsustainable paths that could cost them later.

Survival now, sustainability later

These kinds of subtle injuries of influence can shape our beliefs, values and patterns of responding to both ourselves and others. Unobserved, they can gradually lead to an overspending of finite resources and could undermine our well-being, because survival is going to a higher priority than sustainability.

There’s no escaping influence. It is part of being human. And of course, it’s never quite as straightforward as saying simply tune out of this and don’t expose yourself to that.

It is not about the amount of influence around us, but how we create space to discern whether certain influences are legitimately aligned with our best interests and our capacities, both now and in the future.

DIY legitimising

Discernment might not happen if you’re hyper-focused on someone else’s narrative or more concerned with their needs than your own. It could also be difficult if you’ve been accultured by earlier influences that have made you feel unsafe, insecure, less than, or not allowed to have needs.

It may mean looking more closely at how you are spending your time and where you are putting your energy, to see if there are ways to increase your capacity to be able to practise discernment. It might mean looking at any blocks you could have to considering your own needs. It might be about learning how to hit the pause button, take that one breath and remember your unique self in the equation.

It may not be a quick and easy process learning to interact with influence from a discerning perspective. But what it could save you later may be worth the extra effort. It also doesn’t mean you are going to screen every single possible influence.

Sometimes the better part of discernment is recognising when you are overthinking something. And legitimisation can lie in that considered choice too.

Pause: Do you find time to create space in your life to consider what might be influencing your behaviour and feelings?

Reflect: Are there any skills you might need to evolve or practise more often to support yourself in actively discerning?

Landscape: What happens collectively to us when millions of individual acts of discernment are surrendered, and what might that mean for the world we continue to create together?