Tag: victimization

The Control-Freak ~ Fear ~ Obligation ~ Guilt ~ Manipulation Game ~ “Do It Or Else” ~ “Don’t Do It Or Else” ~ “You’re Wrong” ~ “It’s Your Fault” ~ This Is Bullying ~ This Is Abuse ~ 8/10/2019 Repost


“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.

Nothing Can Enter Your World Unless You Invite It In ~ No One Is A Victim Of Life


If you remove all the Jews, Arabs, and immigrants from this picture, there would be no people.

Whether it is harmony or disharmony, nothing can enter your or my world unless we invite it in. What we focus on grows. We have a choice. We are not single-subject vehicles of life. Rather we are multifaceted individuals radiating the energy of our feelings spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, physically, politically, socially, financially and in many other ways into our world. We are whole. We are One.

There will always be chaos, dysfunction, and lack of peace in this world. This has been the case since its first inception eons ago, echoing out into the ethers and astral realm. Volcanoes belched out destructive lava. Cataclysmic floods ripped apart the earth until its new land masses were unrecognizable, continuing to this day reshaping coastlines everywhere.

Even in when Jesus was born, Herod sought to kill him. As a result Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt with Jesus, making them immigrants in an unfamiliar land so he would not be slaughtered along with the rest of the infant boys, age two and under. They were not put in cages. They were met with hospitality for years in their home away from home before it was safe to return. Still, they decided to settle in Nazareth so as not to bring too much attention to Jesus as he grew.

All of us are no different. People of every race, ethnicity, culture, color, creed, gender, and age are all part of the human race. We are all part of nature. We can be volatile. We can be peaceful. It is what we focus our attention on that makes the difference. I can choose to be part of the problem or the solution.

Somehow we expect perfection in our lives and in our countries as if we just think, speak, and do the right things, we could railroad things through. Nothing could be further from the truth. We cannot manhandle, manipulate, guilt or force others into our sense of perfection with the crack of a whip. That’s not how energy works.

What drum are You beating?

We look at the political scene and try to manipulate outcomes by concentrating on what is wrong in order to make it right. What we focus on grows. Concentrating on what is wrong is the wrong basis to build what is right, useful, and sustaining.

We look at spirituality and religions and see what is wrong in the hopes of making them right. Again we miss the mark we so desperately seek to achieve. We erroneously think, “If only people would think, say, and do the same as me then it would all work out.” This also is not so.

Why?

Notice nothing happens when any thought crosses our mind. It is only when the feeling behind the thought grows that it motivates us into action. It is the feeling that is the impetus to change.

What?

Isn’t it my brain, common sense, my thoughts that generate my world, experiences, beliefs into action?

No.

Nothing happens with any thought until the feeling of any subject inspires us into action. Without feeling, we ponder and ponder possibilities. Our thoughts will go round and round the merry-go-rounds of our minds until we decide, inspired by our feelings, to do something about the matter.

Guard your feelings with the shield of awakened consciousness. Feelings ignite all your thoughts into actions. Take the care of a gymnast training for the Olympics, or the runner training for a marathon the same as you prepare your future actions by the life-giving spark of your feelings. How many of us have regrets over our actions when we fuel the renegade feelings we choose not to control?

By the use of our free will, we decide which feelings to follow up on and which would be better not responded to. Decide never again to respond to anything. Instead, consciously decide how you will act, with empathy and compassion or not, with judgment or non-judgment, etc. It is in this conscious decision that we build up or tear down. Nothing can enter your world unless you invite it in.

Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. However, if you do not like how you are feeling, change how you are thinking. They go hand in hand. Just realize that the power to do anything comes from the feeling, not the thinking. Just like feelings, you can change your thoughts. You are in the driver’s seat of you.

You are not the victim of neither your thoughts nor your feelings. You are in control of them. They are not in control of you. People who play the role of the victim of their lives simply have not yet learned this healing and life-generating principle.

The solution is so simple, yet our misguided feelings distract us to the point of bringing on our own dysfunction, personally, spiritually, politically, financially, socially, as well as nationwide and worldwide. It is when we lack self-control over our feelings that we decide to focus on where we do not want to go rather than the choice to foster and fertilize the ground where we do want to walk.

If only we would use our free will to focus on the good we see as opposed to the bad that captures our attention. Pour your feelings into positive thoughts, energizing them with the personal power to do good.

Pouring your feelings into negative thoughts that harm others physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, politically, or financially is the biggest recipe for failure. It is self-sabotage in the highest degree. It is a recipe for disaster. It is only a matter of time before the misdirected energy is met by its equal and opposite force.

Try this instead; transform your world, your personal space, your belief system, your neighborhood, your church, your work environment, your social circles, your political and financial aspirations with life-affirming, soul-inspiring goals.

Change your focus from countering the negativity and failure of broken systems to promoting healthy equality, fairness, kindness, loving and peaceful actions. In this way, you begin taking steps forward, healing your own lives and the lives of all around you. From now on, pay no attention to what you do not want to grow.

This works in all areas of life, especially at this time of the COVID-19, Sars Co2 epidemic blanketing the world. The energy of closing your eyes and focusing your feelings on denying the reality of the death and destruction of life at this moment in history will only grow more of the same if that is your focus.

Once your feelings motivate you to whole and healthy aspirations and problem-solving remedies, you will find a quicker advancement into solutions to COVID-19 and every other problem that benefits you personally, as well as in your family, neighborhood, country and world.

Yes, others with dark, self-serving and greedy agendas will continue. It has been this way since the beginning of time on this planet. Tsunamis and worldwide cataclysms will continue to manifest as they always have. Still focus on solutions over problems.

Using your free will to fuel feelings of rage and discord will ultimately sabotage every endeavor. It is only a matter of time before that house of cards crumbles. It always has and always will.

As a counselor, I never advised punching that pillow to get all the anger out, because fueling those negative feelings only fuels more hate. Yes, you will be exhausted afterwards, but you will have wasted a great amount of time not moving forward. That is only a diversionary tactic.

You cannot move forward by looking backwards. If you have been in counseling for years, you are with the wrong counselor. When you are finally ready to heal, (sometimes we are not ready, willing, nor able to heal), then and only then will you see the truth to what I am stating here.

We need to be in balance with every aspect of our human being, not only spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, physically, politically, socially, financially and in many other ways in our world. As a fully formed human, we all need to be in balance and foster good over evil. We reap the seeds we sow in this world.

If we do not like what we are seeing and hearing around us, it is up to you and me to plant everlasting seeds of love, light, peace, joy, happiness, health, faith, equality, forgiveness, empathy and understanding just as Jesus did when he walked this earth beginning so many Christmases ago.

God Bless Everyone Everywhere

Christmas Is A Wonderful Time To Heal Broken Relationships ~ Manipulation ~ FOG ~ Control Freak Games


Most of us know when we are being manipulated by others using the all familiar tactics of fear, obligation and guilt (aka FOG). But at other times, we can be entangled in the web of other people’s preconceived control-freak game before we 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 our own free will and immediate knowledge. This is bullying. This is abuse.

1. What is the tell tale sign this is happening to us?
2. How do we make it stop?
3. How do we get control of our 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 manipulators say can be in your life, or any other conditions they wish to control. Sometimes the manipulation abuser 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 middle man 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 in their past actions. It hurts when the manipulator first comes to the realization that they themselves were first victims of the bullying, manipulating game 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, we 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 in order to get ones way is a childish act, something two-years-old children discover to be very effective. In the maturing process, sometimes we 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 can be difficult, but it is not impossible.

The victimization cycle can be broken. People can emotionally and psychologically grow up. But it requires brutal honesty with ones self. It also requires a forgiving heart, not just for those we have victimized, but also for the manipulator her/himself. We can be the world’s worst critics of ourselves. We need to learn how to forgive ourselves so we can then forgive those we have hurt by our own thoughts, words and actions. Healing is possible.

Sometimes it is harder for those of us who were or still are victims to forgive their emotional and psychological manipulation and bullying transgressors. But this also can happen, even if the manipulation abuser and bully 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 they just pop up over night. 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 we feel.

Sometimes the manipulator succeeds in twisting the truth so much that we are led to assume that we are the ones who are 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 we see things clearly for what is actually taking place, we can take a deep breath and begin to do what we can to heal the situation when such opportunities arise. If the possibility for healing does not present itself, WE DO NOT STAY IN THE VICTIM ROLE. We do what we can and move on and live our lives peacefully with faith, hope and love. Those are the only answers.

If emotional and psychological healing is what we want for both sides, then we should first pray. Prayer cannot be underrated, and is the only thing that can work when all else fails.

Healing involves a decision. To move past unbelievable hurt in broken relationships, we need to be ready for reconciliation when it becomes possible and desired, if ever it happens, even when we think this opportunity might never present itself.

This post is addressing emotional abuse, not physical abuse, which include 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 we 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 in order to put a stop to them, either by us being the manipulator or by us being the abused victim of the manipulator.

“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 sales people 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.

Yes, we have a right to our feelings. Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. But it is also true that whatever we focus on grows. So, if we focus on how hurt we are and how justified we are at being hurt, poor us, then no healing is possible when we cling to the division that separates us. This is a decision we consciously make.

It is just as possible to reach out and consciously make the decision to heal broken relationships, no matter what has happened. Forgiveness is humanly possible, no matter what our insane, puffed-up ego says. The ego wants to be right, but our mental and psychological health needs the healing of the relationship(s) in order to be whole.

We can mature beyond past hurts. This is part of human character development. To remain in unforgiveness, one way or the other, is to remain in a child-like state mentally and psychologically. No one says we have to mature, but what a sad state of affairs it is for adults to remain as children.

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.

Let us take this opportunity of the Christmas Season, one of new hope, new love, new forgiveness of our shortcomings, to reach out to one another, and heal what is broken.

God Bless

Christmas Is A Wonderful Time To Heal Broken Relationships ~ Manipulation ~ Control-Freak Games


Most of us know when we are being manipulated by others using the all familiar tactics of fear, obligation and guilt. But at other times, we can be entangled in the web of other people’s preconceived control-freak game before we 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 our own free will and immediate knowledge. This is bullying. This is abuse.

1. What is the tell tale sign this is happening to us?

2. How do we make it stop?

3. How do we get control of our 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 manipulators say can be in your life, or any other conditions they wish to control. Sometimes the manipulation abuser 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 middle man 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 in their past actions. It hurts when the manipulator first comes to the realization that they themselves were first victims of the bullying, manipulating game 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, we 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 in order to get ones way is a childish act, something two-years-old children discover to be very effective. In the maturing process, sometimes we 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, but not impossible.

The victimization cycle can be broken. People can emotionally and psychologically grow up. But it requires brutal honesty with ones self. It also requires a forgiving heart, not just for those we have victimized, but also for the manipulator her/himself. We can be the world’s worst critics of ourselves. We need to learn how to forgive ourselves so we can then forgive those we have hurt by our own thoughts, words and actions. Healing is possible.

Sometimes it is harder for those of us who were or still are victims to forgive their emotional and psychological manipulation and bullying transgressors. But this also can happen, even if the manipulation abuser and bully 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 they just pop up over night. 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 we feel.

Sometimes the manipulator succeeds in twisting the truth so much that we are led to assume that we are the ones who are 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 we see things clearly for what is actually taking place, we can take a deep breath and begin to do what we can to heal the situation when such opportunities arise. If the possibility for healing does not present itself, WE DO NOT STAY IN THE VICTIM ROLE. We do what we can and move on and live our lives peacefully with faith, hope and love. Those are the only answers.

If emotional and psychological healing is what we want for both sides, then we should first pray. Prayer cannot be underrated, and may be the only thing that can work when all else fails.

Healing involves a decision. To move past unbelievable hurt in broken relationships, we need to be ready for reconciliation when it becomes possible and desired, if ever it happens, even when we think this opportunity might never present itself.

This post is addressing emotional abuse, not physical abuse, which include 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 we 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 in order to put a stop to them, either by us being the manipulator or by us being the abused victim of the manipulator.

“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 sales people 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.

God Bless