Emotional Blackmail Options

[constantine_demu...]

Emotional Blackmail

Dr Sarah Forward with Donna Fraser

• Remember – Blackmail takes two; it is a transaction!
• Each of us brings into any relationship our own potent set of hot buttons – our stored up resentments, regrets, insecurities, fears, angers. These are our soft spots, places that hurt when touched. Emotional blackmail can only operate when we let people know they’ve found our hot buttons and that we’ll jump when they push them.
• Our early life experiences have shaped the automatic emotional responses that power our hot buttons.
• It’s tough to acknowledge that through capitulating, we actually teach the blackmailer how to blackmail us.
• But the hard truth is this: our compliance rewards the blackmailer, and every time we reward someone for a particular action, whether we realize it or not, we are letting them know in the strongest possible terms that they can do it again.
• We may even duplicate the dynamic that’s making us suffer and become blackmailers ourselves, taking out our frustration on someone weaker or more vulnerable than we are.
• Many people who use emotional blackmail are people with whom we have close ties that we want to strengthen. They may be people we love for the good times we’ve shared.
• The blackmailer’s comments and behaviour keep us feeling off balance, ashamed and guilt-ridden. We know that we need to change the situation and we repeatedly vow that we will, only to find ourselves outwitted or outmanoeuvred or ambushed again.
• We begin to lose confidence in our own effectiveness; our sense of self-worth erodes.
• I have been a therapist for 25 years. I have treated many thousands of people and if there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that CHANGE is the scariest word in the English language – Our actions may be making us miserable, but the idea of doing anything differently is worse.
• Nothing will change in our life, until we change our own behaviour. We have to act! We have to take the first step and start the journey.
• The six deadly symptoms are: a demand, resistance, pressure, threats, compliance and repetition.
• Manipulation becomes emotional blackmail when it is used repeatedly to coerce us into complying with the blackmailer’s demands, at the expense of our own wishes and well-being.
• When we’re talking about emotional blackmail, we are automatically talking about conflict, power and rights. When one person wants something and the other doesn’t – how hard can each reasonably push?
• Once blackmail had touched a relationship, it becomes rigid, stuck in patterns of demands and capitulation.
• Most glaring are “Punishers” who let us know exactly what they want – and the consequences we’ll face if we don’t give it to them.
• “Self-punishers” turn the threats inward, emphasizing what they’ll do to themselves, if they don’t get their way.
• “Sufferers” are talented blamers and guilt-peddlers who often make us figure out what they want, and always conclude that it is up to us that they get it.
• “Tantalizers” put us through a series of tests and hold out a promise of something wonderful if we’ll just give them their way.
• We may be the target of blackmail in one relationship and turn right around to become the blackmailer in another. For e.g., if your boss is using emotional blackmail on you at work, the frustration and resentment you feel and either can’t or won’t express directly to him, may cause you to use the same tactics on your partner/children to regain some sense of control.
• Projection is a subtle psychological process in which blackmailers assign their feelings and behaviour to the other person, blaming the target for the very thing they are guilty of. Projection involves negative labelling. Its astounding how many targets will accept that label, even though it may be far from the truth.
• Free-floating guilt which comes from knowing we’re not perfect but believing we should be makes us vulnerable to negative labels.
• Try to remember that people who want something badly often read, listen and hear SELECTIVELY, lighting on any and every bit of ‘expertise’ to reinforce their own position.
• “Why can’t you be like…?” Blackmailers often hold up another person as a model – a flawless ideal against which we’ll fall short. “That” person would have no problem satisfying the blackmailer’s demands – so why can’t we?
• The person we’re being compared to seems to get all the love and approval we want for ourselves, and it’s only natural that we react competitively and try to get into that position ourselves.
• There is no end to comparisons, and no way to measure up!
• Emotional blackmailers hate to lose – The saying, “It doesn’t matter how you play the game, as long as you don’t lose.”
• Most blackmailers operate from an “I want what I want when I want it” mindset. They seem to have a childlike inability to connect behaviour to consequences, and they don’t appear to give any thought to what they’ll be left with once they’ve gotten the target’s compliance.
• The primary cause of friction is probably the blackmailer’s pressure tactics rather than the content of the demand.
• We energize our fears by constantly feeding them with mental attention.
• The most important thing to take away from out tour of the blackmailer’s psyche is that emotional blackmail sounds like it’s all about you, but for the most part; it’s not about you at all!
• Instead it flows from and tries to stabilize some fairly insecure place inside the blackmailer.
• How vulnerable to manipulation you are if you put your emotional survival on one person!

[MzAflatoon]

This is not something that can be avoided in any relationship whether it is with another human (mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, friends etc.), animals or even a perons own concious.

This post has been edited by MzAflatoon: May 23 2009, 12:19 PM

[Inc0gnito]

I've emotionally blackmailed a few moderators.

[Ayesha_786]

i am victim of being emotionally blackmailed recently

[safir]

Yes some people do use emotional blackmail to achieve what they desire. But when a relationship is based on mutual respect and love, blackmail has no place in it.

[cozmik_chill]

This is a good tool to get your way round in almost anything, I've used my 'emotional blackmail' powers on my parents and close mates and it always always alwaaaaaayyys works. lol

[ArdentCommunist]

^ u are a sad case.

[constantine_demu...]

This is not something that can be avoided in any relationship whether it is with another human (mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, friends etc.), animals or even a perons own concious.

It can be Untill or unless you are well aware of it... Sometimes people like to be emotionally black mailed because they are used to it

I've emotionally blackmailed a few moderators.

AHan.. mind sharing the methods

i am victim of being emotionally blackmailed recently

And I am sure you want to be again

Yes some people do use emotional blackmail to achieve what they desire. But when a relationship is based on mutual respect and love, blackmail has no place in it.

Love is the most common tool to blackmail in everytype of relation...

This is a good tool to get your way round in almost anything, I've used my 'emotional blackmail' powers on my parents and close mates and it always always alwaaaaaayyys works. lol

Good, What goes around comes around... wait for it...