Emotional Manipulators

If you frequently feel somebody got you to do something you didn’t really want to do, or if you end up in a situations that you didn’t choose, you might want to consider whether you are being emotionally manipulated.

Emotional manipulation occurs when someone intentionally controls and manipulates you into feeling or acting a certain way. It feeds the manipulator’s own secret agenda and desires.

All of us are vulnerable to being manipulated in a relationship. Anyone is subject to emotional manipulation by the highly skilled. Whether the relationship is a friendship, partner, spouse, family member, employer, coworker or neighbor, we can fall prey to being controlled and manipulated.

An emotional manipulator is an expert in turning things around, rationalizing, justifying and explaining things away. It is a form of abuse. Although it may not be as obvious and easily identifiable as physical or sexual abuse, it can be just as damaging.

Emotional Manipulators:

• know how to detect your weakness and use it against you
• don’t care what you want
• are charming so everyone will like them
• make you out to be “crazy”
• put you on a guilt trip
• make you feel unworthy
• make you feel inadequate
• deny any wrongdoing
• portray themselves as the helper
• are passive-aggressive
• intimidate people
• have no sense of accountability
• are indirect, often speaking behind your back
• need to one up you by having it much worse than you
• know what gets to you and how to hurt you
• use your secrets and fears to make you appear unreasonable or unstable
• convince you to give up something of yourself

If you find yourself involved in this type of relationship, therapy provides the platform to recognize the features of manipulation. It provides the opportunity for you to look within and identify your contribution to the manipulation.

While you may not be able to change the behavior of the manipulator, you can change your own responses. Taking power back in an emotionally manipulative relationship takes real commitment on a daily basis. Therapy supplies you with the tools.

Tell me your story.

Carrie