How to break the cycle of emotional manipulation? Expert offers tips

Relationships of any kind can run the scare of being emotionally manipulated. Manipulation, as Psychologist Nicole LePera puts it, is a way of a person coping up. When a person has not been brought up in a healthy environment, they tend to refrain from healthy ways of asking for their needs to met. This further leads to a cycle of emotional manipulation, guilting the other person and asking for their commitment or the evidence of their love. This in turns leads to a toxic environment for a person to thrive and grow.

ALSO READ: Disagreement with partner? Here’s what you can do

Nicole LePera wrote, “Manipulation in family dynamics can be unconscious— meaning members aren’t even aware of these patterns. Many of them have been based from generation to generation.” Manipulation can be of many kinds:

1) Sometimes it can be asking to prove the commitment to the family or our love to our parents by doing something which they want us to do.

2) It can also involve taking more people on their side and making us feel bad for being on the other end.

3) Emotional manipulation can also border on toxicity such as guilting or shaming.

4) Using our past or our unresolved traumas, bringing up our insecurities into the conversation to make us do something is another way of emotional manipulation.

5) Usually, a no is never taken for an answer. When we speak up against doing something, they can make us feel bad for saying how our decisions impact us – this in no way considers the emotional experience of us.

6) Shutting us off completely or giving us the silent treatment can be another way of emotionally manipulating us.

7) When our choices or decisions are mocked, made jokes out of and disrespected, that is also another way of pressurising us in order to change the choices and take their side.

How can we break this cycle of emotional manipulation?

Boundaries – Create your own boundaries. They are not for others to follow, but your own choices.

Breathe through it – People may not be okay with your boundaries. This may involve emotional outbursts. Breathe through the negativity and remove yourself from the situation.

Be kind – Sometimes people will make you feel that you are selfish for choosing yourself before anyone else. That’s okay. Be kind to yourself in your thoughts.

Seek your Peace – maintain your mental peace, no matter what it takes.

Grieve – Sometimes moving out of a situation where you have been the fixer for someone else may make you sad. Give time to yourself to grieve through it.

Don’t question your reality – emotionally manipulative people often make us question our choices and reality. Healthy people can accept us the way we are.