Growing up, my brothers and I were manipulated by our birth mother. We are not necessarily different in that. Many of us are manipulated at some point in time, and if you have a narcissistic person in your life, manipulation is a common ordeal.
Among us brothers, some of us broke away from the manipulation sooner than others. The youngest of us was the first to break away from our birth mother, and I, the oldest of us three, was the last. But even breaking away from the person doesn’t stop the attempts at manipulation. If you can spot them though, you can reduce, or prevent their effectiveness.
One of the problems with manipulation is that we are geared to be effected by it. Generally, we are more prone to trust others, and at the same time, we have a tendency to believe that we can’t be manipulated. This in itself opens us up to manipulation. This can lead some to distrust everyone, which doesn’t prevent manipulation, and over the long run, isn’t healthy.
So how do you figure out someone is trying to manipulate you? Part of it is catching the individual in their lies. For me, that was easy as our birth mother admitted to being a compulsive liar. While we all could see some lies from time to time, having her admit that she was a compulsive liar made everything she said questionable. Here’s the thing though, even her admitting that she is a compulsive liar was a form of manipulation.
This may seem counter intuitive, but it comes back to our innate predisposition to believe others. By her admitting that she is a compulsive liar, she is admitting a fault, and revealing the truth. At the same time, it’s accompanied by a promise that they will work on that. It’s meant to bring you in, and form a trust for them, as they are revealing a secret. It’s a small bit of truth, enough to pull you in, and not question them. For our birth mother, it had the opposite effect, and could be seen more as a last ditch effort on her part.
Another common tactic of manipulators is to pull on your emotions. Crying, acting in a panic, and even yelling can all effect your emotions, and by effecting your emotions, it becomes easier to manipulate a person as you’re preoccupied. It gets you to let your guard down, and once it’s down, it’s easier to manipulate.
This can eventually also lead into somewhat of a good cop bad cop scenario, where the person acts as if they are understanding, and then launches into anger, or into crying, and then comes back to understanding. It plays with your emotions by spiking them, and then giving you relief, only to spike them again, which makes a person much more susceptible to manipulation as the emotional and even physical toll on a person wears them down, making it more difficult to fully process everything going on.
This sort of tactic often comes out
when the person is beginning to be found out. For our birth mother,
she would use this when she was confronted. When I finally broke the
ties, she did everything from admitting that she was at fault, to
then threatening to sue me, to harassing my wife, to screaming
obscenities.
Once you know there is manipulation going on
though, it become easier to combat it. With a narcissist, it can
often be a bit easier to spot it as well because they have such a
high view of themselves, they see themselves as intellectually
superior, and thus they see others as inferior. This often reminds me
of Michael Scott from the TV show The Office, where he attempts to
use reverse psychology. It’s clear to everyone else what he is doing,
but he believes he’s outsmarting others.
From our birth mother, we’ve seen it quite often, especially since we started this page. Her tactic is to make it appear as if she likes the fact that we created this page and are speaking out, because it supposedly is helping her obtain evidence that she will never show anyone. Yet we know that isn’t true because actions speak much louder and she often reacts in anger, which ends up showing what she truly thinks.
The goal of this sort of “reverse psychology” is to make it seem as if speaking out, and exposing the narcissist for who they are, is actually helping them, so you might as well stop because it’s only hurting you. But the truth of the matter is that the person is just trying to silence you. They want you to be quite so that you don’t continue pealing away their lies.
Other forms of manipulation comes in terms of intimidation. Threats of lawsuits, or threats of exposing evidence are quite common. But the threats are almost always hollow because the narcissist, or manipulator, doesn’t actually have a foot to stand on. In our case, we’ve been waiting for the damning evidence or court case for almost half a decade. It will never come though because it doesn’t exist, but it’s meant to be intimidating.
Being aware that manipulation is going on though is key, and once you realize what it is, you can combat it.
