Red Flags When You Get to Know a Guy

Emotional manipulation tin undermine close relationships and leave the manipulation victim feeling powerless, confused, and frustrated. Yet all people manipulate others from fourth dimension to time—often without intending to. And some definitions of emotional manipulation are and so broad that they can utilize to any behavior, even something as innocuous as a baby crying for nutrient.

So when is an attempt to get one's needs met or to achieve one'south goals actually a form of manipulation? And when does manipulation cross the line into emotional corruption? Hither are some crimson flags that may signal a serious relationship trouble.

What is Manipulation?

Manipulation is any attempt to sway a person's emotions to get them to act in a specific way or feel a sure thing. While it's common in interpersonal relationships, information technology besides frequently happens on a broader scale. Advertisers routinely try to dispense people's emotions to get them to buy a product. Political candidates manipulate voters to win votes, convince voters of untrue claims, or change a voter's opinions almost a given issue.

"We're all manipulators," says Melissa Stringer, LPC, NCC, B-TMH, a Texas therapist who works with many clients to handle a wide range of individual and interpersonal concerns. "Socially acceptable manipulation, such as smiling and making eye contact, are considered salubrious ways to increase the chances of human connection. But when manipulation is used to avoid vulnerability and constitute ability over others, it becomes unhealthy."

People who are deliberately manipulative often do and so in an attempt to avoid healthier strategies, such as straight communication of their needs or mutual intimacy and vulnerability.

Twelve Common Manipulation Tactics

People can manipulate others using hundreds of tactics. Some of the virtually mutual include:

1. Using intense emotional connexion to control some other person'due south behavior. For example, an abusive person may try to manipulate a person by moving very quickly in a romantic relationship. They may overwhelm their victim with loving gestures to lower their baby-sit or make them feel indebted.
2. Playing on a person'south insecurities. This is a pop tactic among advertisers, such equally when a corrective company makes a person feel unattractive or "onetime." It also works well in interpersonal relationships. For instance, someone may make their romantic partner think no one else could e'er maybe love them.
3. Lying and denial. Manipulators may bombard their victims with lies. When they're defenseless, they may deny the lie or cover it up with another falsehood.
4. Hyperbole and generalization. It'due south difficult to answer to an accusation of "never" being loving or "never" working hard. Specific details tin be debated, while vague accusations are oft harder to dispute.
5. Changing the subject. In an argument about one person's beliefs, the individual may deflect attention from themselves by attacking their critic. The deflection often takes the form of, "Well what virtually [X]?" For example, when one spouse expresses business organisation virtually their partner's drug utilise, the partner may attack their spouse'due south parenting skills.
6. Moving the goalposts. This happens when a manipulative person constantly shifts the criteria one must come across in order to satisfy them. For example, a bully may apply their coworker's dress as an excuse to harass them. If the private changes outfits, the corking may claim the person won't "deserve" professional respect until they change their hairstyle, their emphasis, or another miscellaneous trait.
7. Using fear to control another person. For instance, a person may use threats of violence or physically intimidating body linguistic communication.
8. Using social inequities to command another person. For instance, a neurotypical person might attempt to use a cognitive disability to demean another person or dismiss their experiences.
9. Passive-aggression. This is a broad category of behavior that includes many strategies such equally guilt-tripping, giving backhanded compliments, and more. Passive-aggression is a way of voicing displeasure or anger without directly expressing the emotion.
10. Giving a person the silent treatment. It'south fine to ask for time to reflect on an statement or to tell someone who deeply hurt you lot that y'all no longer wish to speak to them. Merely ignoring a person to punish them or brand them fearful is a manipulative tactic.
11. Gaslighting. Gaslighting involves causing the manipulation victim to doubt their own agreement of reality. For example, an abusive person might deny that the corruption happened, telling the victim in that location's something wrong with their retentiveness.
12. Recruiting others to help with manipulation. For example, an calumniating parent might ask family members to remind a kid how much the parent has sacrificed for the kid. The social pressure may convince the child to stop lament about abusive behavior.

A manipulative person may combine these tactics or alternate between them depending on the context.

Why Do People Manipulate Others?

Not all manipulation has malicious intent, fifty-fifty when it causes immense impairment. Some common reasons people engage in manipulation include:

• Poor advice skills. Some people may be uncomfortable with direct communication. Others may have grown up in houses where manipulative advice was the norm.
• A desire to avoid connection. Some people treat others equally ways to an end and use manipulation to control them. This is sometimes a symptom of a personality disorder such as narcissistic personality.
• Fear. People may appoint in manipulation out of fear, particularly fear of abandonment. This often happens during breakups or relationship fights.
• Defensiveness. Manipulation tin be a way of fugitive arraign. While some people avoid blame as a way to command or abuse another person, others do and then because they fear judgment, accept low self-esteem, or struggle to confront their own shortcomings.
• Social norms. Some forms of manipulation are normal, and perhaps even beneficial. For example, most people larn that information technology is of import to be friendly and cheerful around work colleagues in gild to professionally advance.
• Marketing, ad, and other financial or political incentives. Entire industries are defended to manipulating people'due south emotions to modify their minds, convince them to purchase products, or urge them to vote a certain way.

"In many cases, manipulative individuals were not taught constructive advice skills. Or worse, they were punished by an influential figure for expressing needs or wants. As a result, the original means for connecting gets overridden and replaced past strategies centered around fugitive any sense of fault. This is adequately accomplished in ii primary ways: indirect communication and a refusal to be accountable for actions," Stringer emphasizes.

Protecting Yourself from Emotional Manipulation

If y'all accept fallen for manipulative tactics in the past, know that you are not at fault. Nearly anybody is manipulated at some point. There's no mode to prevent all manipulation.

However, a number of strategies can reduce the impact of emotional manipulation and help you set articulate boundaries. These include:

• Communicating in direct, clear, and specific means. Straight communication models the behavior you hope for in your relationships and can make it easier to place manipulation.
• Understanding when manipulation is normal and when it'southward not. Most people occasionally make passive-ambitious or manipulative comments. Manipulation is more problematic, and may even be abusive, when information technology is part of a systemic attempt to control or harm another person.
• Setting clear boundaries around manipulation. When a person attempts to manipulate you, tell them how you want them to care for you and and so follow your own guideline. For case, "Mom, I empathize that you sacrificed a lot for me, but that doesn't hateful you get to belittle me. I can't talk to yous about this until you're willing to stop changing the subject."
• Asking for insight from trusted 3rd parties. This can be risky, since manipulative people sometimes recruit outsiders. Merely if you lot have a spouse, friend, or family member whom yous can trust to be objective, they may offer helpful insights.

Victims of chronic manipulation and emotional corruption may find relief in therapy. A therapist tin work with yous to identify manipulation, break free from an abusive relationship, and reduce the gamble of being trapped in a relationship such again. In therapy, y'all'll develop healthy boundaries and work through whatsoever reluctance y'all have to enforce those boundaries.

Families and couples who struggle with manipulation tin also detect help in therapy. A therapist may work with all parties to understand why direct communication is a challenge for them, cultivate healthier communication patterns, and discover better ways to get their needs met.

Begin your search for a therapist here.

References:

1. Burton, N. (2015, Apr 14). Don't fool yourself: seven signs you're being passive-aggressive. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://world wide web.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/04/xiv/dont-fool-yourself-vii-signs-that-youre-being-passive-aggressive/
2. Collins, R. F. (north. d.). 10 ways to manipulate at piece of work or at home [PDF]. Retrieved from https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~rcollins/manipulationposter9-sixteen.pdf
3. What is gaslighting? (n. d.). Retrieved from https://www.thehotline.org/what-is-gaslighting

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Source: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/red-flags-are-you-being-emotionally-manipulated-0917197

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