Sadly, some of us are taught that we have a duty to submit to manipulation without recourse because all Christians are supposed to “seem nice.” Some of us fall for it because we feel so badly about ourselves that we don't believe that we have the power or the right to stand against it. False and malignant beliefs about ourselves and how we fit into the world make manipulation that much easier for others who seek to take advantage of our goodness and our best hopes. Myths that Christians should always be pushovers and sweetly agreeable make this an even bigger problem within Christian circles.
But you need not be a Christian to get
caught up in a relationship with a manipulator – people who control
others through emotional blackmail, superiority, insult,
inappropriate poor opinions of others, and especially the mind games.
These kinds of toxic relationships erode our sense of worth, our
good beliefs about ourselves, and we can lose healthy perspective
when we encounter offenses within these relationships. That loss of
perspective can inhibit our ability to respond well to offenses,
interfering with our ability to forgive.
Avoiding Offenses Before they Occur
One way of avoiding this kind of
tension in relationships comes through avoiding offenses in the first
place. But how does one go about becoming more “offense
resistant.” We've discussed realism and more realistic ideas about
ourselves and our relationships as one primary way. If we don't
expect unreasonable things from people, we reduce the likelihood that
we will get offended. But how do we change our expectations, in
addition to examining our thoughts, measuring them by the Word of
God? We can make ourselves “hard targets” for manipulators, thus
avoiding the offenses that follow from exploitation.
The Best Offense is a Good Defense
Obviously, we get offended by all of
the people in our lives at some point or another, especially those
with whom we spend the most time, including our family. But I think
that Robert Hare in Without
Conscience offers us some good advice on this subject, even
though his book discusses psychopaths/sociopaths. Those who wish to
avoid manipulation should be not only aware of the behavior of
others, but perhaps their greatest means of resisting manipulation
comes through self-awareness and an honest assessment of natural
weaknesses in personality and habit.
Know yourself. Psychopaths are skilled at detecting and ruthlessly exploiting your weak spots, at finding the right buttons to press. Your best defense is to understand what your weak spots are and to be extremely wary of anyone who zeros in on them. Judge such people more critically than you do those who do not seem to be aware of, or catering to, your vulnerabilities (pg 212).
Likewise, George Simon tells us in his
book, In
Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing With Manipulative
People, that no one can interact with others in a healthy way
if they approach the relationship from a “one down” position,
assuming a place of lower esteem. When dealing with a manipulator,
the interaction is not just unhealthy but can also be quite harmful
to the person being manipulated. To avoid exploitation, Simon lists
three primary ways of “redefining terms” with a manipulator.
“Becoming a better judge of character” considers the manipulator
himself and the ways in which they operate, much like the theme of
the recent posts on this blog in terms of less-than-ideal
forgiveness. He also offers the same advice as Sandra Wilson's
radical realism by noting that developing realistic expectations by
way of “letting go of harmful misconceptions” as a means of
changing the power dynamic in a manipulative relationship.
Shifting the Balance of Power
through Self-Awareness
But he offers the sage advice of
knowing oneself as the third means by which a person can shift the
balance of power back into a more healthy and equitable place for all
involved in a disagreement. Part of a manipulator's power rests in
their knowledge of their “mark's” weaknesses. By paying full
attention and respect to one's own limitations, you can “level the
playing field” somewhat which will help you make better decisions.
As a potent means of self empowerment, Simon suggests that most
people fall prey to manipulation through naivete,
over-conscientiousness, low self-confidence,
over-intellectualization, and emotional dependency. He reminds the
reader that the best place to put one's effort should be in their
strengths. In this case, knowing oneself can become a strength which
is right in line with any person's greatest strength: that of their
own behavior.
The element of over-intellectualization
that Simon includes in his list can be quite complex. Many people
can avoid their own emotions by perceiving all social interactions as
a matter of logic, just because they are uncomfortable with their own
emotions. In this way, over-intellectualization could be stated as
what I would call a lack of emotional self-awareness. Feelings are
as much a part or even more of a part of an offense, but many people
can handle them as matters of cold logic. Also, perfectionists can
also get caught up in the “paralysis of analysis” through
over-intellectualization about the right thing to do in a given
conflict. Every one of these factors can give a manipulator a
powerful foothold in a conflict which they can use to exploit others.
Fears and
Desires
Awareness and
management of weaknesses helps to protect a person from manipulation,
but one must also become mindful of both desires and fears. A good
manipulator can smell both desire and fear like a shark can detect
blood in the water, something that drives the predator to its prey.
The very skilled manipulator can hold out the promise of something
good to you that will solve many problems for you, allowing you a
means of obtaining that which you want more than anything else. For
some, desire to possess something that they deeply desire presents an
area of vulnerability to many. And for others who struggle with
fears, the manipulator may offer a means by which those fears and
threats can be avoided. These promises become much like bait by
which the manipulator hooks their prey.
When you face your
fears and your desires and treat them honestly, you “gain an edge”
over the manipulator. The best of manipulators exploit others
without being noticed to gain influence which they use as leverage to
get what they want. By self awareness concerning weaknesses as well
as desire or a tendency to avoid certain experiences, you can prevent
the manipulator from establishing sway over you.
Tools to Help You Identify Your Weak
Areas
I often recommend Harriet Braiker's
book, Who's
Pulling Your Strings, for a host of reasons. It includes a
very concise review of the characteristics of a manipulator as well
as how the manipulator perceives the world and how they think. Many
excerpts along those lines appear here at UnderMuchGrace.com. The
book also includes specific strategies about how to confront and
stand one's ground with a manipulator, too. But what might be the
most valuable element of the book includes it's set of
self-assessment tests to help the reader determine their own
weaknesses – those which are very similar to the list offered to us
in Simon's book.
Some people who Braiker identifies as
“soft targets” for manipulation make the manipulator's job very
easy. All human beings are imperfect, therefore all human beings
experience some degree of shame or disappointment over their
inadequacies. People who are “soft targets” for manipulation
tend to have more shame and a more ambiguous sense of self, and these
characteristics give manipulators an even greater foothold and
opportunity than they have with people who are “hard targets.”
Braiker lists personal tendencies that are associated with “soft
targets” for manipulation. Expanding upon her list and also
drawing on some of the literature from the anti-cult movement, those
tendencies can include but are not limited to people pleasing
tendencies, approval/acceptance seeking imperatives, poor ability to
tolerate negative emotion, difficulty with ambiguity, lack of
assertiveness, blurry sense of identity (what one might call problems
with boundaries),
low self-reliance, and external locus of control (sense of peace and
worth derived from performance and approval – those things external
to the self). The concept of locus of control is discussed in
this post as it relates to forgiveness, while this
post talks about how an unhealthy locus of control can develop.
But the author doesn't leave the reader
to despair over their faults, resigning them to the knowledge that
they're easy prey. She gives readers strategies to also build up and
shore up their weak points. I think that it's my favorite place to
have people start to develop this kind of self-awareness because her
book encompasses such a broad range of personal traits. Who's
Pulling Your Strings can be a great tool to help those who are
just beginning to learn about how to protect and defend themselves
when negotiating forgiveness after they've been offended by a chronic
manipulator. I consider it to be essential reading for understanding
manipulation in general, the exploitation that takes place in
spiritual abuse, a tool for understanding how manipulators think, as
well as a tool for resisting this kind of undue influence. They all
help to transform a “soft target” into a hard one, a tool to help
a person learn how to balance self-love with love and concern for
others in both a healthy and a Biblical way.
One more post on forgiveness that
doesn't go according to the ideal,
and then on to ideas about how to foster trust
in order to encourage forgiveness and to help us
in the process of repentance
