What Is Emotional Manipulation?
Emotional manipulators can be clever. Emotional manipulation is described as type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics. This is very exploitative of the victim by the abuser.
It can be extremely hard to spot when you are in the relationship yourself but there are numerous signs of emotional manipulation that you can look out for.
What Are The Top Signs Of A Manipulator?
Emotional manipulators love playing mind games so you often won’t notice the signs that you are being manipulated for quite some time. So what signs of emotional manipulation should you be looking out for?
You may find you have to meet or interact in a space that they can exercise their control – their house, their car, their workplace – and you feel as if you cannot say no. Sometimes they will let you speak first then pick out your weaknesses from your statement and use them against you.
They will lie, they will make excuses, they will try to shift the blame. If you ever feel like they did something wrong and you find them lying about it and trying to shift the blame onto you, chances are you are being emotionally manipulated.
Sometimes manipulators will use what is called intellectual bullying and try to confuse you with facts and statistics you know little about. They may also use things like laws, by-laws and paperwork against you to try to keep you in control, again with you knowing little about it.
They may react in a negative way to you, raise their voice, not give you time to make a decision on anything, make fun of you and criticize you too. They may also play dumb when you are talking to them or give you the silent treatment.
All of these are signs of an emotional manipulator and you may not even realize that you are being manipulated.
How to Avoid Emotional Manipulation in a Relationship
It may seem easy to give tips on how to avoid emotional manipulation when in a relationship with someone but it really isn’t. The best thing that you can do is keep an eye out for the warning signs – one or two may just be your partner in a bad mood but if they show quite a few of the signs in their behavior, it’s time to get out of that relationship. Avoiding it entirely may be tricky but if you know what signs to look out for from the offset, you can nip it in the bud before you get too deep. So many people don’t realize they are being emotionally manipulated until it’s too late and then they feel trapped in a horrible relationship. By keeping an eye out for the signs, you can try to avoid that yourself.
Perhaps don’t let yourself get too deep until you truly know the other person – that may be the only way to avoid such manipulation.