Emotional manipulation can happen to anyone, in any circumstance and at any age. When I was younger, I felt like I could easily protect myself against emotional manipulation. Seeing when other people were emotionally manipulated seemed pretty easy to identify so I felt like I could easily spot emotionally manipulative people within my own life. Unfortunately that was not the case. Some people are very good at manipulating others, to the point where the signs can be subtle and unrecognizable. Other emotionally manipulative people have been in our lives for as long as you can remember such as a family member. You may not even realize the dynamic is manipulative or unhealthy until years later. You might have a very good intuition about people and know when people are being manipulative, but some people might still be able to escape your radar.
Emotional manipulation can occur in a variety of situations. Below are a few scenarios where emotional manipulation can occur.
- A romantic relationship: Your relationship started smoothly and wonderful. Yet, your girlfriend always seems to make you feel guilty nowadays. Whenever anything goes wrong in her life, she tends to blame you, even if it is not your fault. You had to give up your friendships because she was jealous and uncomfortable with you spending time with your friends. When you try to speak with your girlfriend about your concerns she gets very upset, begins crying, declaring you don’t love her and the situation is never resolved. If your girlfriend ever does make you upset, she denies what happened, turns the situation around to make you look like the bad guy and twists your words.
- A date: You met a great guy recently. He’s cute, charming, makes you laugh and is a fun person. He asked you out on a date. The date went very well and smoothly. However, you noticed a few things that seemed a bit off. He tended to give you a few backhanded compliments that seemed like compliments but retrospectively could be insults. There were a few things he said that made you feel slightly uncomfortable that suggested he wanted sex. When you asked him about the comments, he laughed it off and quickly changed the subject. You aren’t sure if these are red flags but continue to go out with him anyway.
- A family member: Your father has always been very demanding of your time, money and energy. He always needs you to help him, is always asking for money, your time or needs to crash at your place. He’s very critical of certain aspects of your life such as relationships, career choices and what you are doing in your life. When you try to talk to him about the situation he calls you crazy and says you are taking things too personally. Your father knows your weaknesses and always seems to take advantage of you whenever he can. You end up neglecting your own life to cater to your father’s needs.
- A coworker: Your coworker has unrealistic expectations about you. Anytime you make a mistake, the coworker makes you feel terrible and ends up giving you insults. You have tried to talk to your coworker about this situation but she has gotten very upset with you as a result and made you feel guilty. After the conversation, she ended up gossiping about you in the office and making other coworkers feel like you are a jerk. You need to work with her regularly so avoiding her is not an option.
Below are some great ways to protect yourself from emotional manipulation.
1. Don’t feed into the drama. An emotional manipulator enjoys drama and getting people to react to their attempts at manipulation. The best way to deal with these situations is to just ignore it, stay calm and be kind whenever possible. I have an acquaintance who is prone to being emotionally manipulative. He often spins stories, exaggerates what happens and is asking details about everyone’s personal lives to create more drama. I cannot always avoid spending time with this acquaintance due to our mutual friends so I have learned to just ignore him. If he asks me a question that I can feel will lead into drama, I choose to either not tell him anything or be very vague on the details. I still treat him with kindness but I don’t react, get angry or emotional about anything he says or does. In cases where you cannot avoid someone such as a coworker or family member, the best solution may be to find ways to not allow the drama to continue. You can make your social media accounts private to these people and limit your time interacting with them.
2. Keep your distance. When you suspect someone of being manipulative, your first step should be to distance yourself. You might be tempted to try and resolve the situation or make the person change. Trying to change the person will not work at all. People can only make the choice to change themselves. You have probably figured out someone is manipulative because you have already tried to resolve the situation many times. People often show their manipulative sides when you express your feelings about a situation or try to resolve things. At this stage you need to accept that you have done what you could to resolve the situation and now you need to create space. Keeping your distance may be difficult if you find out that a family member, partner or close friend is being emotionally manipulative. In some cases you may not be able to cut a person out of your life such as a manipulative boss or parent. Yet, you can continue to keep some distance so that the manipulation doesn’t influence your life as much.
With a close friend, you could stop hanging out with them one on one, stop sharing personal information with them and either end the friendship completely or only hang out with the friend in group settings. Although you cannot avoid a manipulative boss completely, you can limit your interactions with your boss while maintaining a positive attitude. You may choose to only speak to your boss with a group of people so that the chances of emotional manipulation are limited. An emotionally manipulative partner is probably a relationship you need to end, or at the very least, get some space so that you can clearly think about what you want in a partner.
3. Take time to think things through. Emotionally manipulative people tend to put us on the spot. You might be asked to do something very quickly that could impact your career or personal life. A partner might ask you to make a hard decision without even giving you time to think. You cannot rely on an emotionally manipulative person to give you time to think things through. This person will put you on the spot and expect a response straight away. The best thing you can do is think about responses that give you more time to think things through.
Let’s say your partner demands that you cancel your weekend plans so that you can do something for them instead. Your tendency might be to say yes even though you don’t want to or feel that request is fair. Instead find a response that gives you more time to think through your response. Instead of immediately agreeing to an unreasonable request, you could just say, “I’ll get back to you about that in a few hours or tomorrow morning.” Buy yourself time to consider what is happening. Giving a decision in the moment might cause you to agree to something that you don’t want.
4. Take notes. Emotional manipulation can start to make us wonder if we are going crazy ourselves. The other person will continue to lie to convince you that they are right and you are wrong. An emotional manipulator may even say that you have a bad memory or that you are a liar. Protect yourself by keeping notes. The note taking is not so that you can have a solid argument for the emotional manipulator. Instead note taking is to keep you aware that you aren’t crazy and to get a better idea of how badly the emotional manipulation has gotten to.
Back up text messages and emails with this person. You can download an app that will automatically log all messages and save them into an email account. Note down odd things that occurred in a conversation with this person straight away. Have a trusted friend around during your interactions with this person. An emotional manipulator may not show their true sides around this person but sometimes it can come out. The more evidence you have to show that you aren’t spinning things and aren’t crazy, the more you will start to trust yourself and realize that this relationship needs to change otherwise you need to leave.
5. Set boundaries and have consequences. With an emotionally manipulative person you have to establish boundaries. Emotional manipulative people will tend to not respect your boundaries so it is important that you have consequences for that behavior. You are teaching this person how to treat you. I once was dating a guy who came across as emotionally manipulative although I did not realize it at the time. While on a date he called me by a nickname that I informed him I did not like. When he repeatedly called me this nickname, I kindly requested that he stop calling me by that name. The next time I saw him he continued to call me by that nickname. I was immediately offended as I felt he was not respecting me at all. I deleted his number immediately and did not have any intention of going on a date with him again. The next day he began apologizing for calling me by the wrong name and wanting to make up for his poor behavior.
With manipulative people you have to remember that they will likely not respect your boundaries. As a result, you need to have firm consequences and stick to those consequences which may involve you cutting the person out of your life, not doing them a favor anymore or getting some space. As a result, sometimes the emotionally manipulative person will begin to treat you with more respect. Other times they may just give up on the friendship or relationship since they realize you will not put up with their manipulation tactics.
6. Understand you have the right to have boundaries. Emotional manipulators may make you sound crazy for having boundaries. If you don’t want to rush into sex, suddenly you are acting like a virgin or a prude. When you don’t always want to do errands for them everyday, they might state that you don’t care about them, are selfish and a horrible person. If you stand up for yourself and demand respect, an emotional manipulator may break down, start getting very upset and tell you that you are being unreasonable for demanding respect.
In all of my healthy relationships, not one person has made me feel bad about having boundaries. They may not understand my reasoning, agree or understand why I have my boundaries but they all understood I have a right to have those boundaries and have chosen to respect it. Same goes for the people in my life. They are entitled to their boundaries and I need to respect those boundaries. If someone does not respect your boundaries, then that is a sign that this person is being emotionally manipulative.
Say no. Never underestimate the power of saying no. What often happens is even if you say no the first time, you might end up saying yes. Work on being firm with saying no. Do not budge on your decision or show insecurity about saying no. If you show that you feel guilty about saying no, an emotionally manipulator will be able to convince you to say yes. If you have the tendency to say no but change your mind later, an emotional manipulator may have figured out the pattern. For instance an emotional manipulator asks you for money, and you firmly say no. A week later the emotional manipulator says a lie such as “remember you promised to give me money to help me pay for my bills. Now I need the money otherwise I’ll be kicked out of your home.” You might be tempted to say yes in this scenario but instead continue to firmly say no. Emotional manipulators don’t make saying no easy. Remember that this is not a healthy relationship where you expect a person to respect when you have told them no. As a result you need to stay firm in your decision about saying no and not back down.
7. Have a strong sense of self. Know who you are and what your values are. Emotionally manipulative people thrive off of others who do not have a strong sense of identity. Emotional manipulators try to point out your flaws and weaknesses. As a result, you might be easily swayed and start to doubt yourself. In the past, I did not have a strong sense of self and was prone to indecisiveness and did not even have boundaries. If an emotionally manipulative person said I was crazy, being ridiculous or spinning things, I would start to wonder if I was the one who was crazy. I once had a loved one completely fabricate a story to me. When I found out about their lie, the manipulative person tried to make me feel like I was the one who was the liar or crazy. If I had a strong sense of self, I would have more easily seen what was occurring and would not have put up with that nonsense.
It can be very easy to play the victim when you are dealing with an emotionally manipulative person. Yes, someone who is being manipulative is not treating you right. However, you need to develop a strong sense of identity so that a manipulative person doesn’t start making you feel like you are going crazy. You can’t always avoid emotionally manipulative people but you can prevent them from causing damage to your life. When you know who you are, your values and what you truly believe, you will not be easily swayed by a manipulative person. Having a strong sense of identity does not happen overnight and has personally taken me years to develop. Be patient with yourself but also continually work on knowing who you are and standing by your values. You’ll find that you don’t tolerate manipulative people so easily and end up holding onto people who are genuine and truly love you as a result.
8. Take care of yourself. Emotional manipulation works quite effectively on people who are not taking care of their physical or emotional needs. If you feel depressed, you will be more likely to latch onto unrealistic promises and are more susceptible to manipulation. Let’s say you recently came out of a horrible break up with a partner. If you don’t work on taking care of yourself and giving yourself time to heal you may be susceptible to attracting emotionally manipulative partners due to your vulnerability.
When you work to build yourself up emotionally and physically, you’ll have stronger defenses against emotional manipulation. Not only will you be able to recognize when someone seems to be manipulating you but your tolerance level for such behavior will drop significantly. Take care of you first. Eat healthy, get regular exercise and work on making positive and lasting changes in your life. Reach out to your trusted and reliable support networks or a therapist if you need help to take care of yourself.
9. Change the dynamic of the relationship. You are the one who can control this situation. The best thing I have learned about emotionally manipulative relationships is that the change begins with me and not the other person. Once you discover someone is being emotionally manipulative you cannot continue the relationship as is. Unless you enjoy being manipulated and the drama that comes along with the situation, you need to focus on taking control.
In a romantic relationship you may want to end the relationship completely or not allow the manipulation to occur anymore by enforcing consequences for violated boundaries and saying no more often. Keep in mind that unless the emotionally manipulative partner chooses to show you respect and change, that this person will likely leave the relationship. An emotionally manipulative parent or child may be a more complicated situation. You may not be able to leave these relationships but you can create healthy distance. You might choose to not support your adult child anymore until she gets her act together and treats you with respect. You may limit your visits with your parent to holidays, birthdays or emergencies instead of catching up every other week as normal.
Take control and do what you can to limit how much you deal with these unhealthy dynamics. Be willing to take the risk that the relationship may end. Yet, keep in mind that for a healthy relationship to occur you have to be willing to say goodbye to unhealthy dynamics. Emotional manipulators have a tendency to promise to change right as you are willing to walk away. Be aware that this is likely to happen with manipulators and does not mean the person is ready to make real changes in their life. Emotionally manipulative people can change and develop healthy and positive habits. However, this person will admit they have a problem and will usually seek help from other resources such as therapy. You need to be in control and recognize that an emotionally manipulative person may not be sincere and may promise change but under deliver.
You cannot avoid emotional manipulators. Everyone will encounter someone who is emotionally manipulative at some point in your life. The good news is that you can protect yourself from this manipulation so that it doesn’t have an impact. What ways have you dealt with emotional manipulation?