Have you ever been manipulated by someone? If you have, you
know how awful it feels. You feel betrayed. You lose trust in the person. And
you are fearful of continuing to be around the person because you’re worried he
or she might try to manipulate you again.
For better or worse, I’ve met more manipulative people than
I care to count. I’ve been hurt by some of them. People I love have been hurt
by some of them. And some of them haven’t been able to manipulate me because
I’ve learned how to recognize and defend against them.
Whether we like it or not, we interact with manipulative
people on a daily basis. I’ve written this article to make you more aware of manipulation,
how to spot it, and how to avoid both manipulating others and being manipulated.
What Is Manipulation?
Manipulation can mean lots of different things, so I need to start by providing a definition of manipulation. To manipulate someone means to gain
control over that person’s behaviors. This may sound a bit extreme since most
of us aren’t dealing with situations where another person is physically forcing
us to do something against our will. This definition is simply
the purest form of manipulation.
But that doesn’t diminish the existence of milder forms of
manipulation which most of us have experienced or may be experiencing right now. These milder forms of
manipulation occur when another person gains the power to limit our options so
that we will willingly choose the option the manipulative person wants us to
choose.
At first, manipulation may sound a lot like influence, but
manipulation is not the same as influence. A person who is being manipulated chooses
certain behaviors due to the threatened consequences from the manipulative
person for choosing different behaviors. On the other hand, a person who is
being influenced chooses certain behaviors without any threatened consequences from
the influencing person for choosing different behaviors.
Lastly, in our culture, it is commonly understood that a
person is only manipulative if the primary intent behind gaining control of
another person’s behaviors is to benefit the manipulative person.
To
gain control of another person with the intent of benefiting the manipulated person, then, would
not be considered manipulative. But I define manipulation as any control we exercise
over another person’s behaviors, regardless of the intended beneficiary.
Hopefully this gives you a picture of the way I'm defining manipulation throughout this article.
How Does Manipulation Work?
Two chief principles are at work in manipulation. The first
is that all of us have needs. I have needs. You have needs. And every single
other person on this planet has needs. Maybe you need words of affirmation.
Maybe you need attention. Maybe you need respect. Maybe you need an intimate
relationship with another person. Whatever your needs are, you feel empty
without these needs being met.
The other principle in play is power. Intrinsically, we all
have an equal amount of power, meaning that no one has the power to cause
another person to exercise certain behaviors.
The
type of manipulation we usually encounter occurs when another person–such as a
coworker, vendor, or spouse–who has an equivalent amount of power to us
attempts to gain power over of us in an effort to control our behaviors, even
in mild ways.
The combination of these two principles creates the most
common form of manipulation I’ve both experienced and observed: Someone offers
to meet your need(s) in exchange for your submission to his will. Once this
person has power over you, he may request you to do things you may not want to
do, but you feel obligated to do them because you’re terrified of your needs
not getting met in return.
Is Manipulation Obvious?
The quick answer to this question is: No, manipulation is
rarely easy to spot. If it was obvious, I wouldn’t be writing about it. One of
the reasons why manipulation is so hard to spot is because it is often very
subtle. If I were to walk up to you and tell you I’d meet your needs in
exchange for you giving me control of your life, you probably wouldn’t make
that trade. The only people dumb enough to do that were the Israelites when
they demanded that God give them a king.
Because
manipulation is often subtle rather than overt, it’s hard to spot it unless you
know what to look for.
Although much of the information I’ve read about
manipulation appears to claim that we can observe manipulation through another
person’s outward behaviors, I don’t see how even the most thorough analysis of
another person’s outward behaviors, by itself, can determine whether another
person is trying to manipulate us. For example, a person may meet your needs
because he is trying to gain control over you, but he may also meet your needs
because he loves you.
Either case could be possible. The first case is obviously manipulation while
the second is far from manipulation.
How Can We Spot Manipulation?
Manipulation takes place with a variety of creative
techniques. So unfortunately, there’s not a single test you can run to
determine whether another person is trying to manipulate you. But if you
suspect someone is trying to manipulate you, here are a few questions you can
ask yourself:
- Does the person threaten to withhold meeting
your needs?
- Does the person give you complex, passionate
explanations for why he can’t meet your “unreasonable” requests?
- Does the person make critical remarks to you
which make you feel inadequate and inferior (Sometimes these remarks can be
disguised as jokes or sarcasm)?
- Does the person display sudden emotional mood
swings?
- Does the person blame you for his problems?
- Does the person withhold important
decision-making information until asked for it?
- Does the person give you little or no time to
make important decisions?
- Does the person give you the silent treatment?
- Does the person make you feel guilty for not
meeting his needs?
Although the person you’re thinking of may not use all of
these techniques, if he uses one or more of them on you, then it’s likely he’s
attempting to manipulate you to some degree.
What to Do If You Think You’re Being Manipulated
When I first recognized that someone was manipulating me, I
decided to cope with it by getting as far away from that person as I could. Although
avoiding manipulative people may be a viable solution in your particular
situation, I wouldn’t encourage you to adopt this approach as your primary way
of coping with manipulation since you can’t run away from your certain people in
your life like your coworkers, family, and your spouse. Here are a few of my
suggestions for steps you can take if you think you might be a victim of
manipulation:
Become more self-aware
of your needs. The first step we can take is to become more aware of our
own needs. What needs do we have that are so strong we’d do anything to get
them met? Once we have our list, we can either find a way to get our needs met without
becoming someone’s slave or learn to be okay going without them getting met. Personally,
I try to allow God to meet my needs rather than depending upon a host of people
to meet them. If we fail to recognize our propensity to sell our souls in order
to get some of our needs met, we will certainly become victims of manipulation.
Become more
self-aware of your tendency to manipulate other people. Although I’ve spent
this article trying to help us spot manipulation in other people, it’s
important to also spot the manipulation in ourselves. Whether we want to
believe it or not, all of us, to one degree or another, have tried and/or are
currently trying to manipulate people around us. I don’t think manipulation is
a mental disorder, but I do think we need to work through it since it’s not in
alignment with the character of God and it’s destructive to the people around
us.
Become more aware of
the people around you. It’s much easier to spot manipulation when we’re not
the ones being manipulated. Observe the way the people you interact with
interact with other people. Do you observe them doing some of the things I
mentioned above to other people? If you observe someone trying to manipulate
other people, I would encourage you to keep some emotional distance from that
person. You could end up being like the frog that was put in a pot of tepid
water which was slowly brought to a boil, killing the frog as he was boiled alive.
If someone you know has demonstrated an unrepentant tendency to try to
manipulate other people, sooner or later, he’s probably also going to try to
manipulate you.
Become more willing
to say No. Although we can’t avoid interacting with manipulative people, we
can choose how we interact with them. Another person only has control over you
if you give him control over you. If you find that a certain person has a
tendency to try to manipulate you, then avoid giving him the opportunity to
meet your needs, even if that means your needs go unmet. That’s not to say we can’t
ever look to other people to meet our needs, but we’ll lessen the risk of being
manipulated if we avoid trying to get our needs met by people who have a
tendency to use need-meeting as an opportunity to manipulate us.
