Emotional manipulation is when someone tries to control your actions, thoughts, and feelings through intentional behaviour. Emotional manipulation can undermine your self-worth, make you feel obliged to do certain things, or leave you feeling confused about the reality of the situation. It can surface in personal and professional relationships, between romantic partners, family members, friends, colleagues, and supervisors.
If you feel a lack of control in a relationship (like your actions or feelings are at the whim of someone else), it is important to recognise the signs of emotional manipulation and how to extract yourself from the situation or seek couples therapy to help put a plan in place.
8 Common Emotional Manipulation Signs
1. You feel guilty on their behalf
Emotional manipulators use guilt tripping – making dramatic statements that make you feel responsible for their emotional state or circumstances. Guilt tripping statements are designed to pressure you into making a decision or changing your mind.
Emotional manipulation at work can look like a manager saying, “If you don’t finish this task, you’re not committed to this job.”. This implies that not completing a task on time means you’re not dedicated to your job, which is not true.
In a relationship, a partner might say, “You don’t want to go on this trip because you don’t really love me.”. This blows a disagreement out of proportion to make you feel that you’re not committed to the relationship.
Sometimes, an emotional manipulator may also give you the silent treatment or make passive-aggressive statements to make you feel guilty about a decision you’ve made.
2. You are constantly lied to
Lying is common in emotional manipulation and can be used to control actions or distort reality. This is referred to as ‘gaslighting’, where someone makes you doubt your own memories or insists certain things didn’t happen. Gaslighting can leave you feeling confused and negatively impact your mental health.
3. You get blamed for everything
Emotional manipulation can result in the problem always being pinned or blamed on you – even if the other person is partly or fully responsible. It’s common for emotional manipulators to shirk responsibility for their actions and shift the blame onto you, leaving you feeling more apologetic and pressured into making decisions.
4. Your weaknesses are taken advantage of
Emotional manipulation can look like exploiting your personal weaknesses by poking fun at your fears in an attempt to embarrass or humiliate you. This can include private or personal information that you may have shared in confidence, leaving you feeling vulnerable in the relationship.
5. You are constantly undermined
Emotional manipulation can leave you feeling like you’re consistently undermined; invalidating or dismissing your efforts.
- Reducing the significance of a personal achievement by comparing it to their own or those of others
- Diminishing the value of your contributions to a project
- Downplaying your thoughts and feelings
This can leave you feeling inadequate or even dependent on someone for validation, causing you to develop an unhealthy self-image, like during the trauma bonding process.
6. The relationship is extremely intense
Not all signs of emotional manipulation are negative at first glance. Someone may try to develop a close relationship by showering you with love, affirmation, or gifts early in the relationship, only to swing to the other extreme later on with manipulative tactics or abuse.
Also known as ‘love-bombing’, this intense start to a relationship can be a red flag for potential emotional manipulation.
7. You face changing expectations
Experiencing emotional manipulation can involve constantly changing expectations. For instance, a partner may tell you to leave them alone, only to later express disappointment at a lack of concern for their feelings. At work, this could look like a supervisor who instructs you to do things a certain way, then criticises you later for not doing it differently.
These contradictory or vague expectations can leave you feeling confused about how to satisfy their needs or meet expectations.
8. You don’t see promises fulfilled
Emotional manipulators make a lot of promises but rarely follow through with actions. Often, these promises are made to keep you expectant that things will get “better”. In reality, manipulators provide empty promises to maintain control over others in the relationship.
How to Protect Yourself Against Emotional Manipulation
So, how do you deal with an emotionally manipulative person? The best way is to distance yourself or end the relationship. However, sometimes this is not possible, when the manipulator is a family member or at work, or in extreme cases, it’s unsafe for you to leave the relationship.
If the relationship is unavoidable, here are some steps you can take to manage the situation and find safe ground with your feelings.
- Set boundaries – Setting boundaries gives you more control over your feelings and actions. This could be as simple as learning to say no to favours or standing your ground when someone guilt trips you. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but setting these boundaries can free you from someone else’s control and help you make better decisions for yourself.
- Focus on the facts – Emotional manipulators often bend the truth or lie to create feelings of guilt, sadness, and confusion. Instead of responding emotionally, try to focus on the facts of the situation – having an objective understanding of the situation can prevent you from being caught up in manipulative tactics.
- Seek help from a mental health professional – Dealing with an emotionally manipulative person can be mentally and emotionally draining. Seeing a psychologist for counselling support can provide you with a safe space to vent your frustrations. Psychologists can also identify the personal triggers or vulnerabilities that manipulators exploit, and equip you with targeted strategies to protect yourself.
Our team of psychologists at the Centre for Human Potential are experienced in helping individuals overcome emotionally manipulative relationships. We provide professional counselling at our Brisbane psychology clinics for people of all ages and backgrounds, and have a culturally diverse team of psychologists to deliver counselling in your native language.
