HealthyGamerGG - How to Deal with Emotionally Manipulative People

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

🎙️ Join Dr. K for advice on dealing with emotionally manipulative partners. Learn to vocalize your emotions, set boundaries, and take control of your relationships. 💪 Don't let emotional manipulation rule your life - tune in now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right. So today we're going to talk about how to deal with people who are emotionally manipulative. And this is like such a big problem because there are some people out there who if you are in a relationship with them, always make things your fault. Right. Like even when you criticize them or you're kind of like trying to tell them to, hey, stop doing this. You really need to be doing better. If you say anything to them, like any kind of conflict or even remotely thing that's close to conflict somehow becomes your fault. So they engage in particular behaviors or like evoke certain feelings in you where they kind of make you feel like crap. And then you're in this weird sort of situation where like every moment that goes by or every day that goes by, they're kind of sitting there and you're feeling like worse and worse and worse. And then you even see that they're doing this to you. You see that like, hey, I'm feeling manipulated.

I'm being put into a corner. But you can't like deal with it, right? So the guilt builds up or you feel like more and more of an asshole. and eventually you kind of give in. And then there's some degree of harmony for some amount of time. But inside you, there's like some amount of resentment building up too, right?

Because you kind of, you were trying to tell them like, hey, this problem in this relationship that we're having, like, you're somewhat responsible for it too. But if you ever open that door with them, the emotional manipulation begins again. So they'll engage in particular behaviors

or like make you feel a particular way. And then it's almost like they're like bludgeoning you or bullying you using your own emotions. And so you feel out of control and you feel powerless and you feel frustrated. But this is the kind of tricky thing is like even if you ever try to set a boundary with them, they make you feel like an asshole. And if advocating for yourself in a relationship makes you feel like an asshole or a piece of shit,

that is a problem. And today we're going to teach you a little bit about how to deal with that situation, how to understand that situation, how to understand yourself, how to understand them and literally what to say to sort of level that playing field and help them take responsibility. If you're in a situation like this, you really encourage that person to seek at least a mental health evaluation because a lot of these things, it's not that this person is bad, it's that the way that they learned how to relate to their own emotions may be indicative of some kind of traumatic experience in childhood where a therapist could really help them. On the flip side,

if you're in one of these situations, you can absolutely get therapy as well to sort of help you manage the stress. But this is sort of why we designed a coaching program to sort of help people understand these kinds of principles. As you go through life, what is it that controls your behavior? What are the things in your life that like you know we're wrong, but you can't really fix because there's something internal that gets in the way? So if you really want insight into like, okay, why do I procrastinate or why do I end up in these situations over and over and over again? or how do I better understand this balance of, okay, this is what's an appropriate emotion and this is what's inappropriate, and how can I balance those things to move in the right direction? Then definitely check out coaching.

So let's start with this. Who are you? You are a good person. You are someone who does not like to feel negative emotion, and you are someone who, when you feel bad about something, you tend to try to do things to fix it. this is what it usually takes to develop a relationship with someone who emotionally manipulates you, right? You have to be like when you feel guilty or ashamed or angry or something like that, you need to deal with those negative emotions by fixing something in the situation. So if I'm feeling guilty, I can't just sit and feel guilty.

I'm not like an asshole who can just be like, eh, screw you, right? That actually bothers me. I can't be a sociopath. So I have to be like, when I feel negative emotions, I have to do something to fix. those negative emotions, which means chances are you are a decent human being. Now, let's talk about the person that you're in the relationship with. Now, this person is not necessarily a bad human being by any means, and I've worked with a lot of people who are very emotionally manipulative, who have, like, psychiatric diagnoses,

and so we'll talk about that in a second. But the most common thing for the person who is emotionally manipulative is a history of trauma. So they may have a diagnosis, may not have a diagnosis. We're talking about things like C-PTSD. we're talking about BPD, we're talking about growing up with parents who are narcissistic or abusive. So chances are the person that you're in the relationship with has some degree of trauma. The other thing that we really have to consider is that the way that they manage their emotions is by offloading them on to another human being. So let's take a look at how that works.

Okay? Here's you. Okay? And here's the person you're in the relationship. with. And when you're in a relationship with someone, sometimes something happens. There's some kind of conflict or whatever. It doesn't really matter what it is. But this person starts to feel some amount of negative emotion. And so as their negative emotion starts to build up, what is the way in which they process or deal with that negative emotion? Now, this is the key thing to understand about trauma.

When we have a history of trauma in our lives or even, it's not like you have to be, you know, assaulted in some way or something like that. It can also be like in a, a, neglectful household. The key thing here is these are people who when they were growing up did not learn, usually growing up, did not learn how to manage their emotions in a healthy way. So what does this mean for you? This means as their negative emotions start to rise, what a healthy human being would do is they'd start to like manage these emotions through stuff like meditation or therapy or, you know, going for exercise or maybe having a spa day. you know, like going out with friends, and then, you know, like sort of offloading those emotions

and sort of a healthy way, maybe playing volleyball or video games or whatever. But that's not what these people do. What do these people do? They transfer their emotions over to you. So as they start to feel bad, they engage in certain kinds of behaviors or they use words or something like that that then makes you start to feel bad, right? And so like a good example of this is like, let's say you're dating someone and you'll get into an argument and you're pissed off at them because whatever, whatever. You guys get into some kind of argument and they do this kind of thing where they just like start crying, right? And they don't like talk to you. They just start crying. They start to feel bad. Their negative emotions start to rise and they don't say anything to you or they'll say like, I wish that you understood me or I wish you would listen or like I just feel so unloved right now. Or like they'll just say like, some random crap.

Like, they don't even necessarily accuse you. In some situations, it is absolutely like an accusation. We'll get to those in a second. But as this negative emotion starts to build up, like they start transferring it over to you. Right? They're like some kind of, I don't know, like some reverse energy vampire kind of thing where instead of like sucking your negative emotion away, they're like transferring negative emotion to you. It's like some kind of umbilical cord where then what happens is as you start to feel guilty. Right.

Then this guilty becomes unmanageable. And like, why is, and this also kind of explains why, I'm so excited about this. So why, like, every scenario ends up like this. It's because even if both you all are fighting, there's this umbilical cord where they are transferring their negative emotion to you, which explains why no matter what the conflict is, you always end up feeling like crap and they're like kind of okay with it. Do you all get that? Like there are these scenarios where both y'all are fighting, but something is happening where like, The longer the fight goes, the more stable they seem to get and the more unstable you're getting. And that's because there's this emotional transfer of energy.

They'll engage in particular behaviors. They'll say certain things that make you feel worse and worse and worse. And now here's the key thing. So, since you are someone who does these kinds of things, right? So you manage that emotion through healthy behaviors. You don't just transfer it to someone else. usually what you end up doing is this emotion gets so much to bear because not only is it like your own intrinsic guilt, which is maybe like this much of it, right? This is your own intrinsic guilt. But then there's the transferred guilt as well.

So what this sort of means is that you like they'll kind of like, it's almost like a game of chicken where you will experience more negative emotion in the relationship before they do. And then eventually it'll be too much for you and then you'll cave. right they're sitting there crying you feel like such an asshole so then eventually you're like i'm sorry fine and then like you do something like you get flowers or like you make them a nice meal or you apologize or you tell them that you love them and then what you have to do is take these negative emotions and you got to bottle them up they get to keep crying but you don't get to keep crime right or in a situation of like anger right if you're with someone who's like emotionally manipulative and is like angry at you you don't get to feel angry

with them, right? You just have to take it and you have to say, yeah, you're right, or you have to cave and be nice to them or something like that. Like, there's something that happens where you end up having to take this crap and you have to manage it. You have to change behavior. You have to appease them in some way. And then you feel terrible about it. So what do we do about this situation? Okay? So a couple of things to understand. The first is what we need to do to fix the situation fundamentally is we've got to stop this like transfer of emotion from them to you. You need to be able to equalize responsibility of fixing the problem in the relationship. Okay.

So how are we going to do that? So the first thing that we're going to do is vocalize our own emotions. And then instead of us fixing the problem, we are going to try to encourage them to fix it with us. And I'll give you all an example of what that means. that I get into an argument and then my partner just starts crying, right? And then I feel guilty and they're like, oh, I can't believe you don't understand me. And then like, they're not like proactive about trying to fix it. You all get that? They're just expressing a lot of emotion and kind of transferring it to you. It's sort of your responsibility to figure out how to make this

better. That's what's so frustrating about emotional manipulation. So instead of what we're going to do is we're going to say, hey, I can see that you're upset. I'm feeling upset as well. I know is important. What do you think we can do to fix this? And this is where they're going to come back with all kinds of other crap that will be emotionally damaging because they don't want to accept responsibility. Why do they need to accept responsibility? Because thus far in the relationship, they've been feeling like crap and they just transfer

that crap to you. I'm going to ship you all of my emotional crap and then you're going to pay off that debt. I haven't needed to fix it so far. And that also is sort of not their fault because they probably grew up. in a situation where that is exactly what happened to them. So that's the rules of the game as they learn them. They haven't learned how to do like shared decision making or shared problem solving. So instead of what you're going to say is you're going to say, hey, I can see that you're

really upset. I'm feeling really upset too. You vocalize your emotions. And then you can say, what do you think we can do to sort of move forward from here? So what you're going to kind of do is dump it in their lap. You can say, what can we do? And this is where what you're going to see is an emotional escalation. It's not their problem.

it's your problem. So they're going to say, I can't believe you don't understand me. I've tried to explain. If you don't know, this is one of my favorites. If you don't know what's wrong, I don't know how to explain it to you. Right? They'll use phrases like that, which is like, that's so frustrating because like, you know, and so they're going to say things like that. And then what you're going to do is you're going to repeat back to me. You don't want to get emotional. You want to say, I'm hearing you say that, you know, you expect me to understand what is going on in your head and in your mind and you expect me to know these things, I'm sorry, I don't. Are you able to communicate that to me? And if they say, they're not going to be able to answer that question. They're going

to dodge. So be prepared for the emotional manipulation. They're going to say, look, oh, if you don't know what's wrong, I don't know how to say it. And then it's like, what you're going to do is just pause for a second. Okay. So some of this is internal. You don't even have to say it. Notice that, hey, they're expecting you to know what's going on with them, but they're the ones who are living it and they can't even articulate it. So why on earth are they? expecting you to know what's going on with them if they're the ones that have 100% info and they can't articulate it. So then what you're going to do is you're going to say, hey, until you're able to articulate this, I'm sorry, I'm not telepathic. I think in order to fix this problem, I'm going to

need your help. If you're not able to articulate what's wrong, I think I need to take a step back from this. If at some point you're willing to have a conversation about it, please let me know. And then we're going to step back. Then they're going to start crying over and over and over again. And that's when like, Even if they cry if you leave the room, right, what's going to happen? They're going to start crying louder. This asshole, he's leaving the room and I'm crying. I'm going to show him. I'm going to start crying.

I'm going to start, ah. That'll be an emotional escalation, right? And so that's where you can say, hey, I can see that you're getting more and more upset. I don't know how to engage with you unless you're able to articulate what the problems are. I'm sorry you're feeling upset. I'm feeling really frustrated as well. when you've calmed down if you're able to engage, I really hope you're able to. But the key thing that must happen, must, must, must, must, must happen is they must take responsibility

for some of their own emotions and the problem solving in the relationship. The key thing for you to understand is that they are going to make you feel guilty. And what we're going to do is we're going to take that guilt that we feel and we're going to pass half of it back to them. We're not going to say all kinds of negative things to them. that doesn't really work well. Right? We're not going to say, you don't love me and you did this and you did this.

We're not going to do that. We're going to say, hey, I need your help to fix this problem. Are you going to be my partner in this? That's the general approach. And they can emotionally escalate as much as they want to. And then what you are going to say, you're going to articulate this to them and articulate this to yourself. I cannot fix this relationship by myself.

There's no way. You've been trying, right? You've been trying to manage their emotions and your own. but if this is a relationship, they've got to be participants. And so as you tell yourself that, just say, hey, like, this is what it's going to take to fix the relationship. I'm going to need their help. You can articulate some of that to them, but you don't have to share all that, but that's how you manage your own emotions. Then you just notice this pattern, recognize that a lot of what you're feeling is actually being

offloaded by them and is not yours to fix. Because the other thing that happens is that when these situations arise, you're left guessing how to fix it. They don't even articulate what they want you to do. So you're just like left feeling guilty and then you're like trying to like, you know, play darts with a blindfold and you're trying to hit the bullseye and like you don't even know what they want. Right. And so then you're jumping through a thousand hoops. Whereas if they took some responsibility to tell you, hey, here's what I need to feel better, then it would be like so much less effort for you. But you're left like spinning your wheels and blind and stuff like that.

You don't know how to fix it. But you keep trying and you keep trying and you keep trying because you feel guilty. you feel guilty, you feel guilty. And then what ends up happening is oftentimes will get so frustrated that we just have to break up with them or something like that. And then that creates a whole other thing where they like start to, you know, escalate even further. And because anytime they feel negative emotion, what are they going to do?

They're going to use that emotional umbilical cord to dump it back on you. So just recognize all of this stuff that's going on. And if you want to engage in a relationship with this person, which I know that the internet will say, oh, this person is emotionally really able to break up with them. The truth of the matter is that like half the human beings, on the planet are in relationships with people who are like emotionally manipulative in some way, right? I don't even have statistics about that. That's just my gut. Okay. The key thing, though, is that, like, a lot of times we don't want to break up with this person. Because this person

isn't like a bad human being. They just don't know how to articulate their emotions. They don't know how to accept responsibility for their emotions. They don't know how to be a partner in relationship. So what we actually need to do is if you want to try to maintain some kind of relationship with them is use this technique, right? First of all, recognize the emotional transfer. and then acknowledge their emotions. And then what we're going to do is instead of like us being omniscient, we're going to admit our failures. And we're going to ask for a help.

Hey, I need your help to figure out like how to move forward from here. How are we going to fix this? So you want to use like first person plural language. And if they're going to come back with all this kind of crap and they're going to say, oh, if you don't know, then I don't know how to tell you. And you can say, yeah, that's really hard for me. When I'm in a relationship, you just want to state what's happening. I'm in a relationship with someone who is not able to articulate what they think is wrong.

I don't know how to fix that relationship. Period. I can't fix relationships in which my partner can't articulate what's wrong. Period. And then they'll start crying a lot. And then you can say like, okay, I can see that I'm telling you I need help and I'm not getting to help. I'm not getting any communication. I'm going to step away from the situation.

And then what you need to do is like step away from a sensory standpoint. you can say, hey, I'm going to like step outside. I love you very much. I just can't function in this kind of situation. If at some point you're able to participate in a conversation, great, I'm more than happy to have it. I don't see that that's, I can't fix this without you. Love you and then you peace out, right? You step away. So if you all are listening to this, you may start to think, well, I don't think this would actually work with the relationship that I'm in. the emotional manipulation is so strong that this kind of limit setting may not be successful. And so what we're going to do is give you all an sort of easier option that moves things

in the right direction. So the core of the problem right now is that when your partner or the person you're in the relationship with, parent, child, whatever, friend, when they start to feel negative emotions, they displace those emotions on you, your negative emotions pile up, and then you end up giving in in some way. That's why we use the phrase, manipulation because they're changing your behavior. But it feels like you're kind of being pushed into a corner. In these emotions like guilt, or maybe they're crying or they're sad or whatever, they're engaging in certain ways where they're like forcing your behavior. And so this is the other really tricky thing is that a lot of times what we may sort of think is, okay, if they're forcing

you into a behavior, just don't do it, right? Use willpower and resist. Just resist, set limits, set boundaries. But the whole point is that we can't do that. If we were able to resist our emotions, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. So instead, what we're going to do is teach all a slightly different technique to change the dynamic of the relationship. So the core of the problem here is that you're engaging in behaviors in the relationship without kind of getting credit for it. Right. And if you really think about it, they're not really asking you what they want. They start crying and then you feel guilty and then you're left playing this kind of guessing game to try to fulfill their wants. And even when you do something positive in the relationship,

it doesn't feel like a win, right? It still feels like a loss. Even if you do something to help them stop crying or demonstrate your love or provide emotional support, you feel like you were kind of forced into it instead of them like asking you for something and you kind of like doing your fair share.

So the tricky thing about this is that even when you do that kind of stuff, it's reinforcing the behavior of emotional manipulation. Because now when they express emotions and then make you feel guilty and then you do the quote unquote right thing what are you actually reinforcing in the relationship? You're reinforcing them to emotionally manipulate you more

because this is how they get their needs met. And this is what's so infuriating for so many people is they don't realize like, how do I get in the situation? Why does this keep happening? It's because you're reinforcing the behavior. Because if emotionally manipulating you gets you to do what they want, they're going to keep doing it. So instead what we need to do is if you can't set a boundary or resist,

then what we need to do is change. the way that they get their needs met. And what we're going to focus on is having them articulate what they want. So the key thing is it's not that you don't have to do it or you need to break up with them or any of that stuff. You know, if you want to do that, that's your choice. But a lot of people want to try to make these relationships work. And if you want to do that, and the key thing is, instead of reinforcing their emotional manipulation, reinforce their articulation. So this is where as they start crying, for example, you don't want to give into the crying, but you can say, hey, I see that you're really hurt. Can you help me understand what you need in this moment to

help you feel better? Can you please let me know what you think I've done wrong or, you know, what can I do? It hurts me so much. So own that emotion to see you cry. I'm really worried about you. Please let me know what I can do to help. So there's something really tricky there. You're not really giving in per se, but you're also not saying, hey, like, I'm not going to help you. And like, this is your emotions and you need to handle it. So you want to be emotionally supportive. but this is the key thing. You're not going to do anything until they ask for it. Because what really weighs on people, what really burns people out in emotionally manipulative relationships is that they're left guessing all the time. The other person doesn't even ask you to do

anything. They just sort of force you into doing stuff. And so instead of what we want to do is you say, hey, can you please let me know what I can do to help you feel better? And then if they articulate it, you can provide it, right? Presuming it's an appropriate kind of response. And that's really important because what we want to do is shift their behavior. We want to sort of encourage them to actually articulate what they want and then we can do it for them. The more that you're able to do that, it's going to change the dynamic of your relationship. So now instead of, hopefully, emotionally manipulating you as you do this more and more, they're able to actually articulate, hey, what you did the other day made me feel neglected and hurt. And I really feel like you should have

spent more time with me. I think you should have done this. I think you should have done this. And then that's when you can say, okay, thank you for letting me know how you feel. and now instead of making you feel guilty, they're communicating with you. That still may make you feel guilty, and they may ask you to do things that are a little bit unreasonable, but it's a step in the right direction. So if you're not able to, like, kind of take a step back and walk away from the conversation, if your emotions get the better of you, this is a technique that can actually work a little bit better. So the tricky thing about being in a relationship with an emotionally manipulative person,

and this is the key problem, is that they will, like, evoke emotions in you, and then you were left managing those emotions and trying to fix the problem. Even if you try to criticize them or you like sort of ask for their help or you point out to them things that they're doing wrong, they will somehow activate their emotional circuitry, turn on your emotional circuitry and make their faults your problem to fix. And this is an unsustainable relationship. And it's incredibly frustrating. But the problem is that we have this vulnerability, right? they've learned some really interesting technique, which is this like emotional offloading.

So the more negative emotion they experience, they start offloading it to you, which means that their boat isn't sinking. They're taking on some water, but what they're doing is they're taking all the water that their boat is taking on. They're transferring it to you. So you start to sink faster than they sink. So it's like a game of chicken where you have to cave and you ultimately have to fix this problem. And then the problem is that even when you start to cave and you fix the problem, what have

you actually reinforced. You've reinforced that when there is a problem in our relationship, the right way to fix it is to make you feel emotionally worse, right? Because if that person can make you feel emotionally bad and worse and worse and worse until they reach that threshold, then you'll fix it. So this is sort of like, you know, it's kind of like a roommate who like, I'm not going to do the dishes. And you get pissed off about the dishes more than I do. So I never have to do the dishes. All I have to do is wait until you get so pissed off about the dishes that you'll do them on your own. And so this is the frustrating thing about being in a relationship with an emotionally manipulative person is that you're in a relationship, but you're the one who's kind of like

doing all the work, right? It's not like a real relationship where it's a partnership with shared problem solving. It's something where no matter, like if you have a problem, they're going to emotionally let you know. And if they have a problem and you try to tell them, they're going to flip it back around on you. So literally what you need to do is recognize this transfer of energy, invite them to participate, and also be able to step away and kind of absolve yourself of their part of it. You can't accept 100% responsibility for fixing the relationship, which is absolutely what happens. You have to accept at most 50% and put the other 50% on them. And if they want to cry about it, that's their choice. You can't make a relationship work for two people.