“Being a control freak makes us tense, stressed out, and unpleasant to be with. Surrendered people understand that they can’t always change a situation, especially when the door is shut. They don’t try to force it open. Instead, they pay attention to their own behavior, look at the situation at hand, and find a new, different, and creative way to get beyond the obstacles.” Dr. Judith Orloff
You know when you are being manipulated by others using the all-familiar tactics of fear, obligation and guilt. But at other times, you can be entangled in the web of other people’s preconceived control-freak game before you are consciously aware it is taking place. This is when others will set up or spin situations to their benefit, much to the infringement of your own free will and immediate knowledge. This is bullying. This is abuse.
1. What is the telltale sign this is happening to you?
2. How do you make it stop?
3. How do you get control of your life back without threats by others?
If you are being bullied, tell someone. Seek counseling.
If you are being abused, tell someone. Seek counseling.
Has anyone ever said to you, “You need to do this, that or the other thing, or else I won’t speak to you anymore,’ or, ‘If you speak to that person, I will never talk to you again,’ or, ‘Stop it, or else I won’t love you, speak to you, or have you in my life anymore.’?”
If so, and you go along with it, you have been or are being manipulated.
Sadly, this is even used as a weapon in divorces. If you go along with the manipulator’s whims, you will only be able to speak with or associate with only the people manipulator says can be in your life, or any other conditions they wish to control. Sometimes the abuser of manipulation uses other threats, but there is always a threat involving the relationship you and the abuser share. It’s a control-freak game.
Manipulation and guilt are forms of psychological and emotional abuse.
Once it is recognized by the victim, health only returns to the person who has been bullied by manipulation tactics when the situation is addressed. It requires a one-on-one communication with the manipulator, no middleman or referee. Once anyone has stepped between the manipulator and the person being manipulated, no healing can take place until or if the manipulator and the person being manipulated address the situation personally.
Once the manipulation abuser becomes aware that they themselves were often first manipulated by this bullying technique, their mental state can only become healthy when they recognize how manipulation first restricted them and fully acknowledge that fact. It is quite an eye-opener.
At first it is a hard pill to swallow because manipulation abusers want to justify their past actions. It hurts when the manipulator first comes to the realization that they themselves were first victims of bullying, manipulating games by those they loved, or included in their lives through work, social and all other human interaction circles.
Families, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and other family relations, work relations, and all other human interactions have been split up by these hurtful words lasting a lifetime. Sometimes it is over a one-way situation, leaving one person in the two-step manipulation dance of avoidance totally in the dark. For non-family manipulation and bullying situations, you can simply walk away. But when it comes to family, it is good to know that these situations can heal if both sides care to work on it.
Manipulating to get your way is a childish act, something two-year old children discover to be very effective. In the maturing process, sometimes we all forget to be better people.
Once someone has been the victim earlier in their life in the manipulation game, they have also learned how to be manipulators themselves, continuing the control-freak downward spiral. If they are smart, and many are, and recognize that they do not want to pass on the terrible bullying and manipulation tendencies to continue the victimization cycle, they stop, seek restitution to the relationship, opening the door to forgiveness. This takes inner fortitude. It is difficult, not impossible.
The victimization cycle can be broken. You can emotionally and psychologically grow up. But it requires brutal honesty with yourself. It also requires a forgiving heart, not just for those you may have victimized, but also for yourself. You can be the world’s worst critic of yourself if this happens to be you. You need to learn how to forgive yourself so you can then forgive those you have hurt by your own thoughts, words and actions. Healing is possible.
Sometimes it is harder for those of you who were or still are victims to forgive your emotional and psychological manipulation and bully transgressors. But this also can happen, even if the manipulation bully-abuser has deceased. It is the forgiving intention and action that heals the heart.
Most often these situations brew over time. It is less rare that bully abusers pop up overnight. It happens in families. It happens in work, social, religious, educational, financial, governments and all human interaction circles. Manipulation caused by intentional fear is at the root of the guilt and obligation you feel in these cases.
Sometimes the manipulator succeeds in twisting the truth so much that you are led to assume that you are the one who is at fault and need to get the blame for the broken relationship. At other times innocent characters get slandered when truth twisting gets neatly spun into a web of convenient lies, as if manipulating and bullying aren’t devious enough.
This is part of the intended victimization process. But once light dawns and you see things clearly for what is actually taking place, you can take a deep breath and begin to do what you can to heal the situation when such opportunities arise.
If the possibility of healing does not present itself, YOU DO NOT STAY IN THE VICTIM ROLE. You do what you can and move on and live your life peacefully with faith, hope and love. Those are the only answers.
If emotional and psychological healing is what you want for both sides, then you might first lean on prayer. Prayer cannot be underrated and may be the only thing that can work when all else fails. What you focus on grows. I suggest you focus on healing the relationship whenever possible.
Healing involves a decision. To move past unbelievable hurt in broken relationships, you need to be ready for reconciliation when it becomes possible and desired, if ever it happens, even when you think this opportunity might never present itself.
This post addresses emotional abuse, not physical abuse, which includes other guidelines and counsel.
It is never too late to mend a broken relationship while people are still alive.
Preston Ni, a professor, presenter, private coach and author of Communication Success With Four Personality Types and How To Communicate Effectively And Handle Difficult People, authored the article in Psychology Today entitled, 14 Signs Of Psychological And Emotional Manipulation. His 14 signs of psychological and emotional manipulation are listed below.
Relationships can be confusing. To help clarify what you are going through and to decide the best way to proceed to a healthier state, it is good to look at the 14 Signs Of Psychological And Emotional Manipulation. It will help to recognize manipulative signs to put a stop to them, either by you being the manipulator or by you being the abused victim of the manipulator.
Here are the 14 Signs Of Psychological And Emotional Manipulation:
“Psychological manipulation can be defined as the exercise of undue influence through mental distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention to seize power, control, benefits and/or privileges at the victim’s expense.
“It is important to distinguish healthy social influence from psychological manipulation. Healthy social influence occurs between most people and is part of the give and take of constructive relationships. In psychological manipulation, one person is used for the benefit of another. The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance of power, and exploits the victim to serve his or her agenda,” Ni says.
Ni lists 14 tell-tail signs to watch out for:
1. A manipulative individual may insist on you meeting and interacting in a physical space where he or she can exercise more dominance and control. This can be the manipulator’s office, home, car, or other spaces where he feels ownership and familiarity (and where you lack them).
2. Many salespeople do this when they prospect you. By asking you general and probing questions, they establish a baseline about your thinking and behavior, from which they can then evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. This type of questioning with hidden agenda can also occur at the workplace or in personal relationships.
3. Manipulation of facts is another sign to watch out for. Examples of this include lying, excuse making, being two faced, blaming the victim for causing their own victimization, deformation of the truth, strategic disclosure or withholding of key information, exaggeration, understatement, and have a one-sided bias of issue.
4. Some individuals enjoy “intellectual bullying” by presuming to be the expert and most knowledgeable in certain areas. They take advantage of you by imposing alleged facts, statistics, and other data you may know little about. This can happen in sales and financial situations, in professional discussions and negotiations, as well as in social and relational arguments. By presuming expert power over you, the manipulator hopes to push through her or his agenda more convincingly. Some people use this technique for no other reason than to feel a sense of intellectual superiority.
5. Certain people use bureaucracy – paperwork, procedures, laws and by-laws, committees, and other roadblocks to maintain their position and power, while making your life more difficult. This technique can also be used to delay fact finding and truth seeking, hide flaws and weaknesses, and evade scrutiny.
6. Some individuals raise their voice during discussions as a form of aggressive manipulation. The assumption may be that if they project their voice loudly enough, or display negative emotions, you’ll submit to their coercion and give them what they want. The aggressive voice is frequently combined with strong body language such as standing or excited gestures to increase impact.
7. Some people use negative surprises to put you off balance and gain a psychological advantage. This can range from low balling in a negotiation situation, to a sudden profession that she or he will not be able to come through and deliver in some way. Typically, the unexpected negative information comes without warning, so you have little time to prepare and counter their move. The manipulator may ask for additional concessions from you in order to continue working with you.
8. This is a common sales and negotiation tactic, where the manipulator puts pressure on you to make a decision before you’re ready. By applying tension and control onto you, it is hoped that you will “crack” and give in to the aggressor’s demands.
9. Some manipulators like to make critical remarks, often disguised as humor or sarcasm, to make you seem inferior and less secure. Examples can include any variety of comments ranging from your appearance, to your older model smart phone, to your background and credentials, to the fact that you walked in two minutes late and out of breath. By making you look bad, and getting you to feel bad, the aggressor hopes to impose psychological superiority over you.
10. Distinct from the previous behavior where negative humor is used as a cover, here the manipulator outright picks on you. By constantly marginalizing, ridiculing, and dismissing you, she or he keeps you off-balance and maintains her superiority. The aggressor deliberately fosters the impression that there’s always something wrong with you, and that no matter how hard you try, you are inadequate and will never be good enough. Significantly, the manipulator focuses on the negative without providing genuine and constructive solutions or offering meaningful ways to help.
11. By deliberately not responding to your reasonable calls, text messages, emails, or other inquiries, the manipulator presumes power by making you wait, and intends to place doubt and uncertainty in your mind. The silent treatment is a head game where silence is used as a form of leverage.
12. Pretending ignorance is the classic “playing dumb” tactic. By pretending, she or he doesn’t understand what you want, or what you want her to do. The manipulation/passive aggressive person makes you take on what is her responsibility and gets you to break a sweat. Some children use this tactic in order to delay, stall, and manipulate adults into doing for them what they don’t want to do. Some grownups use this tactic as well when they have something to hide, or obligation they wish to avoid.
13. Guilt baiting and unreasonable blaming is used, targeting the recipient’s soft spot, holding another responsible for the manipulator’s happiness and success, or unhappiness and failure.
14. Examples of victimhood include exaggerated or imagined personal issues, exaggerated or imagined health issues, dependency, co-dependency, deliberate frailty to elicit sympathy and favor, playing weak, powerless or pretending to be a martyr. The purpose of manipulative victimhood is often to exploit the recipient’s good will, guilty conscience, sense of duty, obligation, or protective and nurturing instinct, in order to extract unreasonable benefits and concessions.
We may all see ourselves in one role or another as we look back on our lives. Growth in character and psychological and emotional development is always possible. We can always choose to be better people.
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