We frequently fail to recognize the ways in which the people we care about or interact with try to manipulate us.
Narcissists have a selfish attitude. They frequently monopolize talks, mistreat their family members, and act dishonestly in order to make money. We make an effort to avoid these dishonest people, yet we occasionally find ourselves at their mercy.
You may best safeguard your mental and emotional health by recognizing their negative impact and freeing yourself from narcissist manipulation.
Manipulation Tactics Narcissists Use To Control You
1. The Big Lie
Spinning an extravagant lie that is so difficult to even attempt to disprove.
Narcissists are persuaded that anything they say in the heat of the moment is truthful in every way. Lies frequently come naturally. They are aware that the more outrageous the falsehood, the more likely it is to deceive and fool others.
Narcissists practice it repeatedly and get better at it until it becomes second nature. They also employ lying by omission, which is when they suppress the truth rather than making false claims.
In order to take advantage of the victim’s ignorance of some crucial information to him or her, omission seeks to isolate the victim behind a wall of concealment.
2. Discourage And Criticize
Instead of criticizing the victim’s good channels for expression, the criticism aims to dissuade them.
The manipulator will discourage, undermine, or destroy any efforts made to join a social club, team, or organization. Any attempts at artistic, musical, or other forms of creativity will be ridiculed, and the victim’s work will also be denigrated.
The intention is to undermine the victim’s sense of self-worth and keep them away from anything that would earn them praise or attention from others.
4. Total Control
They manage practically everything, including the talk, the food, the social trips, and the expenses. To ensure that they are the center of attention and the relationship’s primary focus, the narcissist feels the need to exert control over these factors.
Go ahead and discuss your day if you want to. But be aware that they won’t hear you, won’t pay attention to what you say, and will start talking about their day right away.
You gradually forget everything about yourself and your goals as a result of this. Stop and reflect on what you are doing and where you may go next to improve your life as soon as the relationship reaches this point of manipulation.
5. Eliciting Difficult Emotions
By inciting distressing feelings, narcissists continue to exert control over the people in their lives. The narcissist shifts from “grooming” someone for an intimate connection to using shock, awe, and guilt to keep them under control.
The exaggerated, emotionally fueled tantrums that break out when the buddy (spouse or lover) disappoints the narcissist cause shock and amazement. The majority of regular people find such intense emotions tiresome and unusual, therefore they start to make a lot of effort to prevent a repetition.
6. Monitoring and Stalking
The manipulator is always there, watching the victim from behind his or her back or from a safe distance.
If the manipulator is narcissistic or psychopathic, it is typical for them to track the victim’s every move by keeping an eye on their phone or computer and even using surveillance tools.
Maintaining awareness of everything the victim says and does, as well as their whereabouts and social circle, is the straightforward objective here.
7. Public and Private Shaming
A narcissist will criticize you, whether in a public place or in the solitude of your own house. Making people feel tiny, weak, or less intellectual than themselves gives them joy.
This type of manipulation is deceptive and harmful. If it hides behind the phrase “I’m only kidding,” you won’t identify it. “Are you incapable of humor?” or “I’m only attempting to assist you.” You eventually start to depend on their damaging comments. Or, you rely on the notion that you will be “good enough” one day and they won’t have to say those things. I’m telling you, you are already competent.
8. Gish Gallop Technique
This is a rapid-fire barrage of claims, inquiries, and accusations directed at another person without allowing them an opportunity to react.
This technique, which bears the name Duane Gish, a creationist from the 20th century, aims to persuade or overwhelm listeners by providing a long list of concise arguments, any one of which could be easily disproved, but which when taken together seem convincing and would require a lot of time and effort to disprove.
Narcissists like the sense of authority and power they get by spewing forth several remarks that make other people seem stupid or uneducated.
9. Playing Hot and Cold Games
Narcissistic personalities are often known to play games. Playing deceptive hot-and-cold games is one of the ways narcissists try to influence you. To convince you to do what they want, they may praise you one week, then employ aggressiveness the following week.
Positive and unpleasant moments alternate such that you might not even be aware that you are being misled. The only way to overcome this is to exercise caution when it comes to compliments and praise. Don’t let the love-bombing be used against you as a sort of bribery; instead, take everything with a grain of salt. Niceties shouldn’t depend on anything.
10. Treating as an Object
The victim is used as a tool by the manipulator for their own ends. This might be done for sexual purposes or just to harm and ruin for their own satisfaction.
The intention is to reduce the victim to the status of an object, as though the victim’s feelings and experiences are unimportant. Long enough will cause the sufferer to experience the same feelings about themselves.
11. Silent Treatment
The manipulator shuts off communication and imposes punishment through emotional and/or physical withdrawal.
This is meant to express scorn and the idea that the target of the manipulation is not deserving of the manipulator’s recognition. The intention is to make the victim helpless to alter the current circumstance and to elicit feelings of rejection or abandonment.
The victim may start to feel emotionally neglected if the manipulator withholds their love and attention.
12. Repeating to Make You Believe
This involves continuously using a term or phrase to divert attention from the topic at hand.
The idea is that if something is repeated enough times, eventually people will learn to believe it. It’s also a tactic for ignoring what someone else is saying by talking over them, using cliches, or showing little interest in continuing the conversation.
13. Playing the Victim Role
Despite the fact that you are the victim, the narcissist will make everything about them instead of you. The narc may respond with something like, “See? I told you it felt like you were talking to a brick wall when you tried to get through to them. I just can’t seem to connect with you.
The purpose of this manipulation technique is to arouse sympathy, sympathy, or compassion in order to escape responsibility for wrongdoing or even to secure assistance and collaboration from unwary outsiders.
14. Minimization
The deceiver claims that their actions aren’t actually as destructive or reckless as another person could be alleging. He who is without guilt among you, let him be the first to cast a stone, or similar logic may be used to minimize the action by comparing it to others.
Making a mountain out of a molehill enables the manipulator to continue their abusive actions or, at the very least, to absolve themselves of much of the blame.
15. Symbolic Aggression
This might be as simple as making a gesture or “glance” at someone. A door is frequently slammed, a wall is punched, or something is thrown; otherwise, there is a demonstration of force that is not aimed at the victim.
A more severe scenario might involve exhibiting a weapon, or at the very least alerting the victim that a weapon is there and available to the manipulator, but perhaps in a non-threatening manner.
This manipulation technique aims to warn the subject and scare or frighten them into complying with further requests.
16. Hurt and Rescue
Push the person into the water, then toss them a rope because a drowning person will grasp at a straw. Hurting someone else doesn’t always include doing them bodily pain, and it might not even involve making them feel awful; rather, it involves putting them in a precarious situation that they want to get out of.
The intention is to manipulate the victim into cooperating with the manipulator so that they may come to their “rescue,” only to deceive the victim into believing or depending on them.
17. Avoidance
The goal of manipulators is to avoid confrontation and accepting accountability at any costs. They could just refuse to talk about their conduct in order to avoid having dialogues about it. This may be accompanied with an assault, such as “You’re always bugging me,” which would put you on the defensive while laying on the guilt, shame, or blame.
When a manipulator changes the subject, avoidance might be subtle and undetectable. You could forget why you were offended in the first place. It might be disguised with bragging, flattery, or words you want to hear, like, “You know how much I care about you.”
18. Love Attacks
Is an effort by the manipulator to sway a subject by extravagant displays of attention and affection. The manipulator plays on the vanity and vulnerability of the target.
Once they have located their target, they will become extremely interested in the victim and will develop a deep “passion” for them.
Its goal is to undermine the target’s capacity for critical thought so that the abuser can exert control and manipulation. In essence, they will take control of their victim by causing them to become emotionally reliant on the manipulator.
19. Crazy Making
Later, the manipulator will deny ever having said or done anything along those lines.
Making the victim question their own sanity and sense of reality is the intention. Over a number of occurrences, slowly and methodically driving them insane.
When the manipulator gets other people to do the same, the effect can be amplified or expanded.
20. Gaslighting
Is a type of mental abuse when facts are distorted, left out purposefully to benefit the abuser, or presented as untrue with the goal of making victims question their own memory, perception, and sanity.
Usually, a variety of different strategies combined into a significant attack on the victim is used to disrupt the victim’s support network.
21. Threatening
Rarely do they take on a physical form; instead, they tend to be cognitive and social in character. One of the biggest challenges to our urge to be a part of a family, lover, etc. is social marginalization.
Threats do not alter beliefs, but they are frequently quite successful in altering behavior—at least temporarily. If done forcefully, the intention is to terrorize the victim into submission by essentially seizing control of their life and decisions.
22. Infantile Attitude
The manipulator disregards the emotional and psychological development of their victims. The victim is treated as though they are ignorant of life and have never had to face its difficulties.
In order to degrade a person’s rank in society and take away their capacity for choice-making, both the victim and the manipulator want to reduce them to the level of a baby or kid.
23. Failure in All Cases
The victim is damned if they do and damned if they don’t in the manipulator’s sight. Whatever option a person chooses, the manipulator will constantly point out that they ought to have gone with the alternative.
There can be comments like, “Well, if you had done that, I would have done something wonderful for you, but forget about it now” in response.
In order to make the victim reject their own judgment and instincts, this manipulation technique aims to physically and psychologically exhaust the subject.
24. Feigning Innocence or Confusion
The manipulator makes claims that any harm was inadvertent or that they were not responsible for the alleged act. They can present a surprised or angry expression.
The manipulator may also attempt to appear ignorant by acting as though they don’t understand what the victim is saying or are baffled by a crucial point that has been brought up.
The aim is to get the victim to doubt their own sense of judgment and sometimes even their own sanity. The victim feels helpless when others are tricked by a manipulator in this manner.
25. Brainwashing
The process of altering someone’s mind or heart via intense mental or emotional abuse or pressure is also known as “heart washing.”
When the victim is greatly outmatched by their manipulator on any of the following fronts—mentally, physically, monetarily, or socially—this is what usually happens. There are various methods to accomplish this, but most often the victim is in a precarious position and will use several strategies at once.
The purpose of this manipulation technique is to persuade the victim that their opinions on life, other people, or the world are naive or pitiful and should be changed to reflect the manipulator’s point of view.
Conclusion
These strategies are harmful. You can forget, but you can also forgive. Most certainly, manipulation will continue. This is traumatizing over time and can seriously diminish your sense of value. The first stage is to become aware. To clearly perceive things, you might require assistance. Write down talks and make an effort to pinpoint abuse and any other techniques. Even harder is learning how to react and not take the manipulator’s statements personally.