The emotional manipulator is someone who acts intentionally to benefit others; uses mental distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention of taking power, control, benefits and privileges from a victim.
Emotional blackmail, emotional manipulation or psychological manipulation occurs when a manipulative person tends to persuade others to do things that are more convenient for him than for others.
It is important to distinguish healthy social influence from emotional blackmail. Healthy social influence occurs among most people, and is part of the give and take in constructive relationships. On the contrary, in psychological manipulation, a person is used for the benefit of another person.
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The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance of power and exploits the victim to serve him in what he wants to achieve. According to George K. Simon, psychological manipulation involves:
In this article I will show you ways to recognize manipulative people and disarm blackmailers, a capacity that will save you a lot of problems and frustrations in your daily life..
Day by day we meet a multitude of people in our environment. Among them, the manipulators will try to quickly gain trust with you to take advantage of the relationship.
There are different ways that manipulators control their victims:
The following are signs that allow you to recognize emotional manipulators:
Examples: lying, making excuses, blaming the victim, distorting the truth, withholding information, exaggerating.
Some people raise their voices during arguments as a form of aggressive manipulation. The assumption may be that if they project their voices out loud or show negative emotions they will give them whatever they want. Aggressive voice is frequently combined with aggressive non-verbal language.
A manipulative person hates receiving "no" for an answer. Thus, when you try to resist the persuasion attempts of a manipulator, you may observe that they will not respond gracefully, as they normally do..
You could even lose your papers even by disrespecting, insulting or threatening.
Manipulative people are not focused on what they can offer or how they can help. You can see that these people live centered on themselves and seem not to know the meaning of the word reciprocity..
They will always talk about themselves and rarely ask disinterestedly how you are or if you need anything. Also, you will realize that as you "do favors" for them, they will never thank you unless it is for you to do something else for them..
Manipulative people love to show off their strengths and prowess. They are rarely shy people.
Manipulative people tend to hold others responsible for their blame.
Manipulative people are masters of emotional blackmail: they use the needs of the manipulated for affection and approval to threaten to retain or eliminate that affection, or worse, to make the manipulated feel that he must win it..
Manipulative people have a predilection for the use of three tools: fear, obligation and guilt.
Manipulative people are often extremely insecure. Despite this, they will try to show the opposite: they will use selfish and domineering attitudes to cover up their fears.
This is a common tactic in sales and negotiation, in which the manipulator pushes to make a decision before the other person is ready..
By not answering phone calls, text messages, emails, or other inquiries, the handler tries to show power.
Examples: exaggerated or imagined personal problems, exaggerated or imagined health problems, dependency, showing frailty to elicit sympathy and favors.
When someone needs or wants something from you, the usual procedure is to make a more or less direct request depending on the trust they have in you.
If it is a “difficult” request, the person will accompany the request with the justification of why they are asking you and with information about their situation. This is because generally asking for favors is unpleasant for those who ask..
If the person who needs a favor responds to the profile of manipulator, he will not make a request at all, much less will he try to justify it with arguments that demonstrate his dependence on your help..
On the contrary, manipulative people will engineer situations so that your behavior is directed to their own benefit, even though it is unfavorable for you. If the manipulator is good, the person manipulated will not realize that he is falling into his game.
The head of your company needs to ask his employees to perform an extra function. Instead of asking for it directly, facing the possibility that the person who performs that function asks for an extra salary bonus, he decides to resort to manipulation.?
You will notify your staff of an emergency meeting, since there is a big problem. He will describe this extra function as a problematic situation that needs to be tackled as a team and will state that he does not know how to solve it.
You will ask the staff to come up with solutions as a team. In this way, you will get a particular member or the group as a whole to reach a solution assuming this function as “your own decision”..
Since the decision has not been made by the boss but by his employees, they will not feel in the position to ask for bonuses or to protest. After all, no one has forced them to be "such good employees".
Since realizing that you have been manipulated is something you probably dislike, change the trend: make the manipulator learn that asking you directly is more effective.
In this way, when the person in question asks you for something directly, grant it. However, when you begin to detect his manipulation attempt, indirectly refuse to do the favor or, directly, do not do it without being explicit.
Over time, the manipulative person will learn that manipulation does not work on you but that the most effective thing is to make direct requests of you. These are much easier to reject and less frustrating for you..
The situations and contexts in which the manipulative person tries to manipulate you are usually quite similar. This means that you can learn from one to the next. Prepare to react next time and realize that you will have to be stronger than the manipulator.
After being manipulated, reflect on how you should have responded to avoid or cut off the situation. The next time it happens to you, use this response that you have planned. The manipulator will insist a thousand times. At that point, you will have to answer a thousand times in exactly the same way. Be tiresome, as much as the manipulative person.
If the conversation does not end, say that you have to go "right now" for some reason and be blunt, do not stay longer.
A good way to avoid being manipulated is not to find yourself alone with the manipulator. When a third person is present, the manipulator will not try to manipulate you so easily because, although they know that you can be manipulable, there is the possibility that the third person will notice the intent, something unacceptable for a manipulator.
If you still feel that you have been manipulated when the third person was present, talk to this person to ask for their outside opinion and advice. That third person will offer you a more objective view of the situation.
This strategy is the most radical of those I will mention, but it is undoubtedly the most effective. The best way to end a manipulative situation that has become a problem in your life is to confront the person who manipulates you. That is, tell him that you do not accept or do not want to do what he / she wants.
Don't confront him aggressively unless you have no choice. If you use aggression or get upset, you will most likely lose the battle and the manipulative person will “turn around” the situation without you even realizing it..
The best way to confront a manipulative person is to do it with calm and advice, always speaking seriously.
Reflect on what aspects of your life the manipulative person is negatively influencing:
Then assess the benefits that this person brings you and that you could not obtain by yourself or from another person (not manipulative).
Finally, carry out a cost-benefit analysis and, if the answer is clear, make a decision.
It is probably very hard to decide to remove someone from your life even if they are manipulative: it can be your partner, your best friend, a member of your family, etc. Perhaps there are intermediate options: instead of pushing the person into the background.
There is nothing better than having an experience to learn something. You could read books or look up information on manipulation, which would help you a lot. However, in this case, the teachings that life gives you will form an imprint that you will always remember..
The keys are prevention and reaction:
Manipulators manipulate because they find it to be an effective way to get what they want. If you do nothing to avoid being manipulated, the manipulator will get what he wants and all you will do is reinforce his manipulative behavior towards you.
Manipulators always test which people they can manipulate and will only maintain a “close” relationship with those people who can manipulate or with people from whom they could gain some benefit..
Manipulative people are extremely skilled at detecting those in their environment who match the profile of a dependent person. Without hesitation, they will take advantage and make you a victim of their manipulation.
The signs of dependence that the manipulator will look for in the manipulative are: need to be careful, indecision as to what he wants or needs, difficulty expressing disagreement, submissive behavior, insecurity.
Be careful who you open your heart to to tell things. If by chance he is a manipulative person, he will offer you all his support to gradually become his manipulative tool and never let go of you..
First of all, clarify that this fear is part of our nature as human beings and, therefore, social beings. Like others makes life more enjoyable while feeling rejected makes us feel bad about ourselves.
Keep in mind that any relationship that does not make your life more pleasant and costs you efforts that make you feel frustrated or bad about yourself, breaks the general rule. These are the relationships that you should question, is it worth it??
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