What Is Emotional Manipulation?
Emotions can serve as a guide, but they can also serve as a vulnerability. When we are feeling deep emotions, our logical thought patterns can become clouded. Love for others is a beautiful thing, yet it can also be used as a weapon against us. The piece of you that believes the best of others can also be the piece of you that ignores your own intuition and better judgement.
It is essential to learn to feel deeply, but refrain from being swept up in emotion. We must love and trust without completely dismissing our own logic and intuition. Emotions, love, logic, and intuition should strike a balance. When that balance is struck, you are safer from being caught up in emotional manipulation. When balance is lacking, you become a target for emotionally manipulative people.
Why Did They Choose To Emotionally Manipulate Me?
Emotionally manipulative people are marked by being calculated. The truth is, emotionally manipulative people do not choose you by accident. They tested your boundaries early on and saw that there were openings in place that they could take advantage of.
Being emotionally manipulated is not your fault. Exploiting others cannot be justified and the people who choose to use love against you will live out their own consequences naturally. In the meantime, going through emotional manipulation can teach you the importance of having boundaries and a healthy dash of skepticism.
Your responsibility in life is to guard your heart, and live with integrity. Loving and trusting others is a beautiful thing, but it must done responsibly, seasoned with the wisdom that not everyone has pure intentions.
5 Signs of Emotional Manipulation
Knowledge is power. If you are being emotionally manipulated, you need to be able to understand the signs. Here are five major signs of emotional manipulation.
1. They try to influence your decisions in moments of high emotional stress.
Emotionally manipulative people see major moments of transition or change in your life as opportunities to influence your decisions. If you are going through extreme anger, sadness, or disbelief, the emotional manipulator will use that moment to their advantage. They will prompt you to open up about the topic and then will try to sneak in their own thoughts and opinions as your own while your guard is down. This can grant them access to influence your decisions and thoughts during a moment of vulnerability.
2. They treat you like their only hope.
Emotional manipulators will come to you like a damsel in distress seeking out a savior. They know that you love them and would do anything for them. They also know you have a heart to help, and let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good chance to feel like a hero? They use this to their advantage and treat you as if you are the only one that holds the keys to their solution. Inadvertently, they are transferring their own stress and responsibility to navigate problems onto your shoulders and are making you feel good about taking that on as if you are doing the morally right thing. In the meantime, they just successful solved their issue without lifting a finger.
3. They rally other people around you to influence your decisions.
If the emotionally manipulative person feel’s they are unable to sway you alone, they will start pulling other people into the scenario to add credibility to their message and to increase the pressure towards you. They gossip with the circle around them, specifically targeting people that they feel could get through to you. They may feed them false information and will do whatever it takes to sway them to influence you. The more skilled the manipulator is, the more subtle this attempt will seem.
4. They provoke you with emotionally triggering topics to win your favor.
In an attempt to sway you during a conversation where you may be on the fence about an important decision, they may slyly bring up a topic that they know upsets you. This is an attempt to disorient you and assert control. They will try to make this appear like a natural comment during the flow of the conversation, but if you are paying attention, you will see right through it.
5. They prompt you to question your own judgment.
If you are in the midst of making a decision and share that information with them, they may try to discredit you to cause you to question your own judgment. The more unsure of yourself you feel, the more you will depend on them for advice and council, this increasing their influence over your life.
Understanding the signs of emotional manipulation will be essential in your process of detangling yourself from its tentacles. With firm boundaries and a clear mind, no one will be able to successfully cloud your judgment and lead you to do things that you don’t truly want to do.