As practice shows, it is impossible to always function normally in society and be free from it. Throughout his life, each person is in contact with a huge number of different people. And not all of these contacts can have a positive effect on us, some of them have a very destructive effect. Sometimes there are situations in life that can cause serious harm to the psychological he alth of a person. First of all, we are talking about contact with someone who is called a manipulator, an energy vampire. There is even a scientific definition of this type of personality - perverted narcissist. They are also called manipulators. So how to resist manipulators?
Who are manipulators?
Manipulator - a person who does not go to open conflicts, the struggle for power, the use of force. These people get what they want.through psychological violence against other people. Any person can match the signs of a manipulator. A perverted narcissist can even be a mother, father, brother or sister. This is even worse than if the manipulator was an outsider. As practice shows, most often this category of people includes men, from whom you least expect a stab in the back. How to manipulate in a relationship?
Why do manipulators act like this?
Manipulation is a process of influencing another person, the activity of which is based on a huge desire to pervert, twist, turn everything upside down. The name "perverse" comes from the Latin word pervertere, which means "perverted". Usually these people hide behind some non-existent childhood traumas or say that someone brought them up, but this is not entirely true. Manipulators have chosen a strategy of psychological violence in their behavior only because they have no emotional life. Most often, people ask the question: "How to resist the manipulator at work?" It will be answered below.
What is the lack of emotional life?
The signs of a manipulative person is that he is not capable of true human feelings purely on a psychological level. A person never experiences such emotions as empathy, compassion, he does not face such a problem as a nervous breakdown, and in fact he does not have any emotional trauma, forwhich he usually hides. Despite the fact that the manipulator did not experience all this range of feelings, he is faced with the task of provoking such feelings in his potential victim. He takes pleasure in destroying another person by taking on other people's feelings.
Why is this happening?
The behavior of manipulators consists in psychological violence, destructive impact on another person, and so on. That is why such people began to be called energy vampires. The thing is that this is the only acceptable way of functioning for them, otherwise they do not know how to exist. Manipulators do not perceive others as individuals, rather - as objects or objects. That is why the attitude towards them is consumer, as to objects that perform specific functions, and these people "serve" the manipulator as long as they can do what he needs.
Who are the victims?
Many are of the opinion that the victims of a manipulator are people with some kind of mental problems who are easily influenced by others. And this is fundamentally wrong. The situation is quite the opposite, because such “victims” are already initially uninteresting to the manipulator. They are just interested in strong people who give the impression of being unbroken, optimists in life, energetic, successful, positive, those who do not like cynics and liars, always defend their point of view and are considered very independent in making important decisions. Such individuals are the number one goal formanipulators. Here the victim is no longer a psychological characteristic of a person, it is a role that a person gets according to the situation. You can become a victim once, or you can succumb to the influence of the manipulator over and over again, without even realizing it. In fact, absolutely anyone can fall for the bait, who simply trusts the opinion of a loved one, listens and is ready to build strong and he althy relationships with other people. The manipulator begins to put pressure on these feelings, and here a cruel game already begins, and not a sincere relationship. Usually a person becomes a victim exactly at the moment when the manipulator has decided that a particular individual has something that he urgently needs to appropriate for himself. Therefore, if you believed that the victim herself attracts the offender, then this is fundamentally wrong. The manipulator literally parasitizes on a person and affects him only through psychological violence. It is quite difficult to understand that you have become a victim of such a person, because these people do not act by force. How to resist manipulators?
Stages of building a relationship with a manipulator
Psychologists believe that the relationship between the manipulator and the victim of manipulation consists of several specific stages. Perhaps their manifestation in different situations will take place in different ways, but the essence remains unchanged. So, let's analyze each stage and rules when dealing with manipulators.
Seduction stage
It all starts with the most banal seduction. The manipulator positions himself as the right person forvictims and begins to feign love, affection and care. If relationships are built between a man and a woman, then at this stage constant attention from the manipulator is manifested. These are messages, calls, care and "sincere" interest. The victim does not have to be a lady, but most often it is women. The manipulator, as it were, scans his victim in order to create an ideal model of his behavior for her. At this stage, he, as it were, catches the victim on the hook of emotions, after which the ability to think rationally and adequately evaluate what is happening is completely turned off. The stage of seduction is characterized by sharply erupted feelings that are exaggerated as much as possible in order to confuse the victim. Usually the manipulator spends the maximum amount of time with his victim, using the most common seduction techniques: flowers, dinners, gifts, and so on. At this stage, the task of the manipulator is not to make the victim fall in love with himself, but to instill in her the idea that someone needs her love.
Ingrown stage
The task of the manipulator at this stage is to get the victim "on himself", like on a drug. He takes care of the victim, not letting her feel lonely for a second. At this stage, he is already beginning to use those “benefits” that he initially counted on with might and main. Also, this stage is characterized by the following: the manipulator encourages the victim to move away from friends, relatives and relatives, so that all the energy of a person is concentrated on the manipulator. It is important for him to think and decide for his victim. From a narcissist you can hear phrases thatyou do not understand feelings, and only the manipulator knows how you really feel, or will claim that he knows what you want, and no denials will help. Even distance from friends and relatives can be perceived by the victim as the only true option for the development of further events. Already at this stage, the victim does not have any personal space left, and what can we say about the time or energy for something other than the desires of the manipulator! Any personal boundaries are erased, and the victim has already been reprogrammed to the desired behavior for the narcissist. The manipulator acts very carefully and gradually, the victim "devalues" himself systematically. Naturally, this comes at the suggestion of a narcissist.
Operating stage
Now you can move on to the stage of open manipulation of the victim. This manifests itself in avoiding the conversation, ignoring, he may disappear for a while, and then refuse to explain what is the matter here. His mood and behavior changes too often. He may, in principle, refuse to maintain a dialogue, based on the position that they do not communicate with objects. But it can build a disgruntled face, sigh heavily or completely deny the conflict in principle. The victim makes an attempt to understand what happened, what was done wrong, but does not receive any answers to the questions asked. Now it remains only to wait for indulgence from the narcissist. And when he deigns to speak with his “ward”, the victim seems to be paralyzed, because she was not given the right to be heard, they were not given the right to know the truth. Such manipulationthe energy vampire shifts the blame for his activities onto the shoulders of his victim. Ignoring leads to the fact that a person takes responsibility for the relationship, begins to apologize for all mortal sins, while not realizing that it is not his fault. In fact, it was precisely this behavior that the “master” wanted. The minimum program has been completed, now the manipulator has every right to educate his ward further. A new stage of devaluation of the victim's personality begins. There is pressure on everything, whether it is a figure, appearance, mind, work, family and so on.
What happens to the victim at this moment?
The victim still does not understand what is happening, because she cannot even admit the thought that such a dear and beloved person can do this on purpose, fully aware of the consequences of their actions. That is why a person does not see the danger from the side of the manipulator. In the eyes of the victim, the "owner" looks as confident as possible in his abilities and words, has unconditional authority. That is, theoretically, there is nothing to complain about in his behavior. He operates with phrases such as "don't make it up", "you're acting wrong", "try a little and everything will be fine" and so on. And if the manipulator is already 100% "immersed" in the victim, then he does not let the ward into his inner world. The victim begins to live in constant stress, every second it begins to seem to her that she is doing something wrong and wrong, and feels guilty for all this. After a certain amount of time, after constant conflicts and misunderstandings, the mental he alth of the victim becomes precarious. BUTthe manipulator sticks to his behavior and continues to play his game. The main problem is that the victim cannot determine what exactly they should complain about. After all, it is she who is constantly to blame, it is she who is like this, it is all because of her. The victim gets used to the fact that the manipulator does this to her only because something is wrong with her specifically. He begins to put pressure on her more and more, and every time she looks for more and more excuses for herself. The victim is not allowed to splash out their own emotions, accusing her of an unstable emotional state, constant mood swings, and so on. And the victim has to keep all emotions in himself, as she is sure that this is necessary in order to continue communication with her.
Changes occur at the physiological level?
People-manipulators in the psychology of the victims change everything so dramatically that it also affects the physiology. This is due to the constant change in the level of hormones in the body of the "ward". It works like this:
- At the initial stage, the victim's body was oversaturated with endorphins, hormones of happiness.
- Then, during times of stress, cortisol is released.
- The ingrowth stage, as well as manipulation, entails constant surges in hormone levels.
It turns out that when a person manipulating another is favorable to the victim (for example, answered the phone), endorphins are produced, then there is a period of ignoring and cortisol is released. Now think about what will happen if these jumpshappen all the time? It turns out that the victim acquires both psychological and physiological dependence. This effect resembles the effect of drugs and the victim constantly needs a dose of attention from the manipulator. After all, she has no other sources of energy consumption for a long time. Old friends and acquaintances are left in the past, communication with relatives is lost, the manipulator has become the only light in the window, because the victim literally dissolves in it, and it is he who becomes one of the possible sources of energy. To maintain this state, the manipulator constantly keeps his victim under stress so that he does not have the opportunity to recover and rationally evaluate what is happening.
Stage of destruction of the victim
There are two scenarios here:
- The first is to simply accept everything that happens, submit and come to terms with the psychological abuse. And when habituation begins, the victim may even "beg for more." The manipulator retains interest in the victim exactly as long as she still somehow resists. As soon as the victim meekly falls at his feet, he immediately becomes uninteresting. It turns out that after that the narcissist goes in search of a new goal. As for the victims, they simply break down, usually here they can’t do without the help of a psychologist. Quite often, victims reach suicide.
- The second outcome of events is possible only for initially psychologically strong people. At some point, they begin to realize that this whole situation will simply kill them if they do notwill not solve the problem and take action in response. When this realization comes, the victim begins to change the pattern of behavior, she snaps, she is humiliated - she humiliates in return, and so on. As practice shows, this is the only way to escape from the paws of the manipulator. When the number of such situations increases, the manipulator has to abandon his victim and go in search of a new one. From the outside it may seem as if the kindest person in the world is escaping from the clutches of an unbalanced hysteria, but in fact it is quite the opposite.
Whatever one may say, manipulators are scary people, in whose world you are just an object that can be used to benefit.
How to understand that you are being manipulated?
If at least once in your life you have thought that friends or loved ones can manipulate you, then do not forget to stop yourself and ask yourself the question why you are doing what you are asked to do. Analyzing yourself and your behavior, you will eventually know your weaknesses, which the manipulator can put pressure on. After that, it is worth starting work on these weaknesses. The best way to resist a manipulator is to try to control and understand the motives for performing certain actions. Also, do not forget about the presence of your personal space and do not take someone else's responsibility on yourself, be aware of your area of responsibility. For example, mom's sick stomach. This is primarily her area of responsibility, because she is an adult. If your manager gave you a task later than it should have been, just because he forgot about it, this is alsohis area of responsibility, and there are thousands of such examples. Do not fulfill all requests and tasks thoughtlessly. Try to give yourself time to think and analyze the situation, especially if you feel the urge to succumb to the persuasion of the manipulator. Keep your emotions under control, and when the narcissist sees that his pressure is not having the desired result, he will simply switch to another person. Another good way to confront a manipulative woman or man is to ask him leading questions and behave outside the box, to confuse him. Offer an alternative, take the reins into your own hands, let him know that you are in control of the current situation at least on an equal footing and are definitely not going to give in to anyone.
What is the result?
Manipulation is a destructive effect on a person. In order not to fall into the clutches of a manipulator, develop self-confidence, self-control, do not take responsibility for others. Remember that the manipulator has no feelings for you, this is only about psychological abuse. This is not sincerity, but the purposeful destruction of personality.
