Who are they, what techniques do they use and how does one become a manipulator? The manipulator can also be a parent, a child, a friend, an employer…

Who are the manipulators?

These are people who use psychological and emotional manipulations to create an imbalance in terms of power, rights, control, responsibility.

Power represents the prospect of carrying out one’s own will within a social relationship despite resistance, regardless of what those prospects are based on.

From this definition of Weber, it can be seen that power is understood as the ability of an individual or a social group to impose their will, regardless of whether others agree to it or not.

Intimidation techniques, distraction, guilt are used, dependence on manipulators is strengthened. If you are interested in more about it, google after “Noam Chomsky on manipulation”.

The manipulator weakens his victim in all ways so that she becomes dependent on him.

Not only in the emotional and financial sense but also in the sense that the victim of the manipulator becomes so insecure in himself and his abilities that he is no longer sure whether he can cope in life without the manipulator.

The manipulator does not have to be aggressive. Some people manipulate the people around them with the role of a victim. In this regard, they use guilt as the main tactic.

Example: A child wants to leave the family home and work abroad. The parent protests blame how he neglected his whole life because of him, how he invested in his schooling, house, etc. and the child now wants to leave. How can he? How can he not be sorry?

The child turns out to be wrong because he wants to live his wishes and not the wishes of his parents. The parent becomes the victim. The child is to blame for the fact that he or she feels bad now.

Manipulation of guilt is perhaps the most perfidious form of manipulation, but the manipulator often does not do it intentionally, but he was manipulated in the same way during his life, and he does not see anything wrong with that.

We will not demonise the manipulators because they also have their reason why they became so. The reasons are generally not pleasant. Many have experienced some form of bullying or neglect in childhood and have learned to use manipulative behaviour as a defence mechanism and a way to survive.

This is not an excuse for their behaviour, but a signpost for you on how not to lose yourself in your intention to help the manipulator.

Is the manipulator changing?

If you ask me if you can change the manipulator, my answer is NO.

If you ask me if a manipulator can change – my answer is yes, but only if he truly wants it for himself, not for others.

Is it easy to change even though he really wants to?

No, that’s why they rarely change. Deep work on personal traumas is needed.

I would like to say at the beginning that we will not call them daffodils because I noticed that the term “narcissus” began to be used for people who have healthy self-confidence and healthy boundaries and daffodils are called by those who do not have self-confidence and personal boundaries. That has.

The text is therefore intended to understand why someone behaves manipulatively and to learn how to protect ourselves and how not to enter the role of the saviour because it can easily ruin our lives.

What does the life of a person related to a manipulator look like?

He constantly thinks that with more effort, love will manage to change something. I will not.

A manipulative person is not changed by hard work and love. However, every time you hope that this time you will succeed, and you continue to invest effort, more understanding, more love.

Essentially, the person who is with the manipulator knows that something is wrong, but very often he or she asks himself or herself if it is really up to him or her. She is not sure who is to blame. With the help of the gaslighting technique, the manipulator assures her over time that she is actually crazy, hypersensitive, paranoid and that everything is fine with him.

Anger and understanding are constantly changing

A person who is with a manipulator often has a problem with anxiety, poor concentration and memory, depression and various forms of addiction.

Addiction can take many forms – emotional overeating, alcoholism, consuming other psychoactive substances, taking tranquillisers, impulsive shopping and primary – addictions to manipulators.

All these addictions are just a symptom of the main problem

There is a constant feeling of emptiness and anxiety that needs to be filled with some of the activities or substances that are usually not good and that negatively affects a person’s physical and mental health.

They often turn for help precisely because of anxiety, but when they dig a little deeper, we come to the point that they have a manipulator in their life who is an emotionally or formally important person for them.

It happens that they completely ignore their intuition, feel guilt and responsibility for literally everything. They try to help the manipulator, but with that, they sink deeper and deeper, and it is more and more difficult for them to get out of such a relationship.

This creates a traumatic attachment

This way of emotional attachment comes through a cycle of abuse that is alternately accompanied by the most beautiful and worst things from the same person. At one moment, a person removes the stars from the sky, and at the next, without any announcement, he mentally abuses you. You then look for excuses and excuses because “not everything is so black”.

A person usually flourishes when he or she comes out of such a relationship, he or she knows himself or herself in a completely new way, but the termination of such a relationship and for some time after the termination is very difficult.

If you are currently in such a relationship, or you have just come out of it wholeheartedly, I recommend that you contact a professional. After this relationship, people have to rebuild themselves and the image they have of themselves.

If you do not re-examine yourself, you may again attract an identical partner only in another package.

Not in the sense of “how you radiate – that’s how you attract” but in the context of having certain things to deal with so that such partners would not attract you.

What if you are married to a manipulator, or someone in the family is a manipulator?

Sometimes we can’t just avoid the presence of a manipulator. Sometimes it is our parent or spouse, sometimes it is the father or mother of your children.

If that is the case, if you think that the situation is not too critical, if there is no physical harassment, blackmail and threats and you still decide to stay with the manipulator – then you have to change yourself because, as we said at the beginning, you cannot manipulate.

The basic thing is to recognise that you are in such a relationship, to learn what your assertive rights are, to recognise manipulations and not to react to them with anger. Anger feeds the manipulators, and you only get deeper into the problem.

Learn how to stand up for yourself and not be subject to manipulation, especially not manipulating the feeling of GUILT.

Remember your strengths and abilities because you have probably forgotten them in this relationship. Find a way to make your life beautiful and not waste nerves and time in trying to be good enough for the manipulator.

They are very often guided by “Attack is the best defence”, so it is good to keep that in mind when you blame them for something and they turn everything against you by convincing you that you are actually to blame for everything.

Well, you don’t even know what the debate was originally about, in the end, you apologise for everything ever.

Do you become a manipulator alongside a manipulator?

This can happen as you move to play their game. It happens that you cannot recognise yourself and wonder when and why you became such an evil person. However, it is good to know that it does not have to be like that forever and with everyone.

Concerning the manipulator, that may have been the only way to stand up for yourself. In a healthier relationship, there will be no need for that.

It may be difficult for you to trust someone again, but give yourself time. Work on yourself in detail, the way out of this relationship requires deep work and empowerment. Allow yourself to realise again that you are strong, capable, determined, smart, a person worthy of love.

Don’t go from relationship to relationship because you need it the least at that moment. However, do not allow yourself to be isolated. Give yourself a chance to meet new people.

Tactics used by manipulators

The connection with the manipulator is almost like a rule at the beginning of a dream. Film. You wonder if it might be too good to be true. If you are wondering that, you are probably right.

1) Love bombing

They shower you with “evidence” of love to the point that it becomes uncomfortable.

2) They question you, build trust and isolate you from other people

They try to find out everything about you. They are especially interested in your weaknesses and unfulfilled desires. They try to make all your wishes come true, and they remember all the weaknesses to play that card when the time comes. They try to isolate you from friends, family and present themselves as if they are the only ones who think well of you. They are especially bothered by your friends who failed to enchant.

3) Criticism

Even though you were the best in the world in the first phase, you are suddenly the worst in the world – stupid, incompetent, rude, ungrateful, etc., etc.…

4) Gaslighting or “gaslight syndrome”

They assure you that you are to blame for everything that you are imagining that you are oversensitive that you are exaggerating that you are crazy, paranoid. They give examples when you really made a mistake in the assessment, but they ignore those 313883 times when you were right.

5) You leave control for a little love

Since you are already mentally weakened, you no longer know what to believe in, you wonder if you are really exaggerating, you indulge in the relationship and do everything that the manipulator wants for at least a little attention that you had in the beginning. Because “by your criticism” you have lost the love that you need now. You remember the beautiful days, and you want to do everything to get it back.

6) Losing yourself

In trying to be a good manipulator, you completely lose yourself. You no longer know what your desires are, who you are, how much you can, whether you are capable at all. You don’t even know if you’re normal anymore. You do not see your value, and you do not have the will, strength or self-confidence to move from that point.

7) Addiction

Only when you try to leave a few times, do you realise that you are dependent on that person in many ways. Your body is constantly flooded with cortisol (stress hormone), and you crave at least a little dopamine (happiness hormone). That dose of dopamine is given to you by every and the nicest gesture of the manipulator, and your brain literally becomes addicted to it in the way it becomes addicted to psychoactive substances.