Humans manipulate. That’s just what they do. From the very first cries for food or warmth - and subsequent cries for the simple joy of watching your dad run back to your crib (and knowing that yes, you had the power to make that happen as a teeny baby!) - we call on others to satisfy our needs. Those needs morph through time as we grow into children, teens, and then adults, and as we close the chapter on yesterday’s needs by employing various techniques of self-soothing, letting go, or laughing it off, we open tomorrow’s chapters of needs. As needs grow in complexity, so does our resilience and ability to satisfy our own needs. By the time we are in old age, perhaps because we’ve learned that happiness only comes from within and we’ve self-soothed our way to personal happiness, we’ve released into one simple and final need: peace and completion. The gift of unsatisfied needs is the resilience and tenacity to satisfy them yourself - or just let them go. A need is not a need if I’ve determined it’s no longer a need.
Some people never learn how to move on or let go. They still expect others to satisfy their needs long after it’s suitable; in other words, the situations I need consolation for at age 13 should not be the same situations I need consolation for at age 47. As a responsible adult, I should have built resilience in those 34 years. Yet some people seem to never advance past youth’s incessant neediness. When people can’t learn to move along the need spectrum, they thrash in their arrested development and seek heightened ways to ensure that others will continue to come to their rescue. This comes in the form of more egregious and nefarious manipulation. A natural human behavior to get what we want becomes twisted for play and advantage. Since crying doesn’t bring dad back to my crib, maybe harming someone else will. Twisted. There is a line between the acceptable manipulation that a child will throw our way (we expect it!) and the outright mental and emotional manipulation by an adult to hurt others for one’s own gain.
A manipulator utilizes many tools in their toolkits:
“If you loved me…” The manipulator knows that their people-pleasing victim will always try to do more to prove that yes, indeed, they do love the manipulator. This can be exhausting to the victim. One day the victim wakes up to realize that the manipulator is an endless void that can never be filled. Victims often end up with adrenal burnout and then a sigh of relief realizing that deep down they weren’t wrong. Victims often walk away from the manipulator, even if it is in a familial context wherein the manipulator is a parent.
“Always” and “Never”. These words are meant to harm, to criticize. They polarize the victim into a category that the victim then feels they must defend. It can be a play of argumentative tangents to use these words. It’s often used as a deflection mechanism. Let’s get the victim to get upset and defend herself to deflect from the topic at hand.
Gaslighting - "that didn’t happen!” or “you don’t really know her (even thought you’ve known her for years)” - these are attempts to brainwash the victim. This is harmful - it has YEARS of harmful affect, especially when done to children. Gaslighting a child says to them that they cannot trust their own judgment; it stunts their growth. Gaslighting another adult says they don’t matter. It’s simply cruel.
Demeaning talk. “A normal person wouldn’t feel that way!” In other words, feel bad for the way you feel. Gaslighting is demeaning as it robs the victim of their reality.
Blame-shifting. Anything I do to you is because you did something to deserve it. Tit for tat. Blame-shifters can find infinite ways to throw something back your way. “Why did you talk to me like that?” “Because you talked to me first like that.” The excuses go on and on.
Passive aggression… “Oopsies, I forgot!” with a shit-eating grin is clearly an aggression. No, you didn’t forget. Yes, you’re a smirking jerk.
Using someone’s good nature against them. This is the manipulator’s favorite. They take your best quality and turn it into your Achilles’ heel. Maybe you care about your appearance ; the manipulator will make comments that your hair isn’t up to par. Maybe you care about your pets; the manipulator will tell you you’re a horrible caregiver (or worse yet hurt your pets to hurt you).
The techniques go on and on. Some people are calculating manipulators while others subconsciously do it. How to tell? Call their attention to their manipulative behavior and see what kind of response you get. Do you get a remorseful response? A “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it; I didn’t mean to hurt you” or do you get a “well, you’re this and that so I’m justified to act this way! ” … the former is a reflective caring person. The latter has narcissistic or vengeful tendencies and likely will never improve until they’ve somehow self-soothed and moved on.