To all of the people who have been called crazy for reacting normally, this one’s for y’all. We all have experienced a situation where someone criticizes our justified emotional reaction to something they did wrong – or, better yet, controls us into submission. Manipulation is defined by using the mental or emotional state of others to coerce and take advantage. Manipulators benefit from distorting the victim’s reality and further evading accountability through urging complicity or submission – they render you voiceless by humiliating you for reacting normally. This troubling dynamic can develop in relationships, friendships, and in the home.
As a teenager, I experienced emotional manipulation, both in my family and in my relationships. These conditions were exacerbated by my own anxiety and comfort in toxicity, and in turn I became passive, isolated, depressed, resentful, and desperate for external approval. Every time I felt guilty or crazy, I would punish myself by allowing the manipulator to control me. I thought I didn’t know any better than to do so, as my intelligence had been so undermined. The worst of it took place in my junior year of high school, cementing the arguably most important year of high school as my most torturous. The effects of covert forms of manipulation were so severe that I withdrew completely from my social life, hardly attending school and living with the belief that I deserved everything that happened to me. I learned things the hard way.
Thankfully, years of putting in the work at therapy and practicing self-love has led me to where I’m at today, where I can be kinder to my past-self while also using her experiences as a cautionary tale. I felt so alone while it was happening to me, but I hear stories like mine all the time from the resilient, strong young people I meet in college. We all shared a common fault: we didn’t recognize it until it was too late. My goal is to inform you about the lesser-known forms of manipulation to show you’re not alone, even if someone tells you you are or that you deserve to be.
Stonewalling
The perenniality of social media as a form of communication has sparked a new form of manipulation: something I’ve heard referred to as stonewalling, or the silent treatment. This form of manipulation involves the perpetrator intentionally ignoring the victim to withhold power. This could mean putting the victim through emotional or physical withdrawal as a punishment, with the end result of making the victim crave their attention or love. If they hit that “block” button whenever you have an argument until you apologize, even if it isn’t all your fault, it’s manipulation.
love-bombing
If they tell you they love you after the first date and insist you’re the missing puzzle piece in their once-hollow lives, respectfully run. Love-bombing is a form of emotional manipulation that involves the manipulator showering you with love and extravagance in a way that feels too good to be true. This is different from simply showing love because love-bombers demand the time and full devotion of the partner before solidity is even established. Some acts of love-bombing include buying expensive gifts extremely early on in the relationship or insisting that they know you far better than you know yourself. Once the manipulator gains your trust and devotion, they tend to drop the facade and exhibit toxic behaviors such as jealousy, distrust, and bitterness. Confrontation is often followed by more love-bombing to win you back, thus creating a truly disillusioning cycle. This is all a toxic exertion of power and control, not the fairytale connection you may have thought it to be initially.
comparison
This one is particularly gutting. Comparison as a form of manipulation occurs when the manipulator compares you to another person to make you feel guilty or insecure. This can be seen in the home, where your parents might say something like, “why can’t you be more like your sibling who never retaliates?” if you find yourself in any sort of disagreement with them. This type of manipulation puts pressure on you to act accordingly, making you feel like everyone else around you is doing something that you’re not. This likewise is particularly common in relationships, where a partner might compare you to their ex by saying things like, “you’re just like them, I thought you were different”, or “my ex would never do this to me”. This, in turn, could foster unhealthy habits where you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to their former partners while trying to pinpoint your own deficiencies. The funny thing is that it’s extremely likely they did the same things to the exes you’re jealous of.
emotional humiliation
This is different from shame, something private and harbored internally. Emotional humiliation is public, and includes a defamation of your character or status. Manipulators humiliate by slowly making you powerless in a variety of different ways, many of which are specified above, and then tell others about how foolish, crazy, clingy, or overly emotional you are. This is done usually to garner sympathy and fuel the manipulator’s ego, as it’s easier for them to believe you’re the epitome of the crazy ex-girlfriend trope than to unlearn harmful methods of control. A manipulator will slowly plant a seed of insecurity in you, deprive you of any sense of control, undermine your intelligence, and then pick apart your justified emotional reaction with others. This, in turn, affects how others perceive you and makes them question or distrust you – which is exactly what a manipulator wants.
what to take away:
It is so important to recognize that manipulation is a habit (for some, even a coping mechanism), that does not reflect your own weaknesses. In fact, those who are emotionally open are the most-commonly manipulated. Shoutout to all of the fellow emotional water signs out there – it’s not easy.
The first step in preventing yourself from being manipulated is to recognize when it is occurring and to actively address it. Setting boundaries and then asserting them is the next critical, albeit the most difficult, step. It isn’t enough to just pull back, so you must communicate your boundaries and expectations. It is uncomfortable and hard, but you can do it.
Additionally, everyone deserves an outlet. Some manipulators may insist or threaten that you should stay silent about what is happening, and while I don’t recommend airing personal problems out to the whole world, you are not a demon for confiding in your bestie, your therapist, or whatever your support system is. It’s healthy to do so. Trust.
To make sense of what happened to me, I spent a lot of time in therapy, unpacking the manipulation I experienced and the harmful, self-sabotaging habits that I exhibited during and after. It was the best decision I ever made, but if therapy isn’t for you or is inaccessible to you, I additionally found refuge in self-love podcasts, journaling, music, and those around me. I can’t change a manipulator’s psyche or their actions, but I can build up my self-esteem and focus on the things that I love. Only when I made peace with myself did I find true peace and forgiveness.
I am by no means a therapist or an expert on this topic, but I felt it imperative to provide a general overview of some forms of manipulation. While I can’t turn back time to bestow this information on my past self, maybe helping someone make sense of what happened to them is enough for me.