How to Deal with Emotionally Manipulative People

In this video, we'll explore effective strategies and insights for dealing with emotional manipulation in various relationships.

Encountering emotionally manipulative individuals can present significant challenges, impacting our mental well-being and the dynamics of our relationships. Our conversation aims to shed light on identifying manipulative behaviors, understanding their underlying motives, and discussing healthy approaches to address and manage such situations.

▼ Timestamps ▼
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00:10 - Why is this such a big problem?
03:08 - Developing a relationship with someone who manipulates you
04:45 - How does emotional manipulation work?
09:26 - Fixing the situation
13:33 - What must happen during emotional escalation
15:44 - Maintaining a relationship with this person
18:01 - An easier option to move things in the right direction
20:24 - Articulating what you want
22:36 - The difficulty of being in an emotionally manipulated relationship

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DISCLAIMER

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All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

#healthygamergg #emotionalmanipulation #relationships

[aaronraycove]

Sometimes you don't realize you're being manipulated until you're out of the situation.

[jennw]

"...an emotionally manipulative person... <will> make their faults your problem to fix."
-Dr K.

[amberfuchs]

"You cant make a relationship wotk for two people." Wise words. If there's no reciprocity, secure attachment can not be built.

[buddha]

My mom does this. She's done this for ages, it really breeds negativity in the family. Although my dad takes the brunt of it, my sister and I have got our fair share of this growing up. Problem is that she takes any attempt at getting her to visit a therapist as an attack on her and her behaviour gets really bad when we do this. She cries enough to alert the neighbours and tells terrible stuff about my dad, my sister and how we are utter failures as children and as a husband. This increases our guilt and ultimately we get tired. She's able to continue that pointless argument while without breaking a sweat for hours on end. Even after we stop, she's not done until the day is over.

[Thial]

I'm too autistic to be emotionally manipulated. I realized too late that I would always kindly and naively deflect thier attempts at manipulation and that they would get upset and emotionally distant over it while I'm still cheery and act like as if nothing changed lol.

[pencil]

I feel like he should've used better or different examples than crying as a manipulation tactic. The most manipulative people can actually be quite stoic and calm, and they bring out the emotional outburst in you

[moniquelewis]

I don’t necessarily think the person manipulating is always the one crying. Sometimes the one crying is battling an emotional manipulator who would die before they cry. They manipulate with anger and silence which causes the other to cry. When you tell an emotional abuser what you want often times they take it personal, put it on you, and you end up crying and apologizing to keep peace. I think I take offence to crying always being put on the manipulator. Some people just cry when they hurt. I know I need help!

[randomchick]

My husband does this, except instead of crying it was extreame anger. IF I was calm and said I wasn't a mind reader, he would explode. If I was getting worked up he'd be so calm. He would respond to this type of approach withstraight rudeness, berate me, everything was my fault (not an appropriate response) and when I would suggest actionable things, like going to therapy(even couple's therapy), he would act like I was trying to change him as a person.
We are getting a divorce in June. I'm struggling to survive, but I am so much happier now that someone isn't telling me I'm shit all the time.

[skodabanga]

I wish I saw this information earlier in my life. I'm the manipulative person and the worst part of it is everytime I behave like this it all feels 1000% true and real. It's like my body and mind can't figure out how to express and how to calm down.

I grown up with an alcoholic abusive father and my mother worked as a nurse and were absent sometimes for few days in a row trying to escape the household. My father was emotionally manipulative too and I think I picked up lots of bad behaviours from him.

Bless my patient and understanding husband.I was in therapy and improved a lot, but the manipulative part of me is still very present. :(

[rileylovebucket]

A really good indication that you're being manipulated is if you're afraid of saying anything to the person. I've learned to recognize when I'm being manipulated, but I've also learned to recognize when I'm manipulating someone else, to see my fears reflected back at me. I tend to see a lot more claims of people being manipulated by others than vice versa, which doesn't really square, unless I accept that most people have both been manipulated and manipulated others. That's my intuition, which is of course biased. But I do feel a need to cultivate empathy for both conditions, mostly for myself.

[ewak.]

My dad is that way except he will actively blame you for everything and it's not soft crying, it's yelling and cursing and refusing to take any sort of responsibility. I always ended up crying after our arguments and he was calm, begrudgingly quiet, sure, but calm. I luckily don't live with my parents anymore but every time I visit, he'll eventually get angry or frustrated enough he'll take it on me on my mom and the cycle goes again. Idk why I expect things to be different every time I visit. It's annoying when you have to be more emotionally mature than your parents

[HoshPak]

Yeah... No, thanks. I've been in these kinds of relationships too many times. Every time I have been blamed to be the manipulator, to be emotionally immature, have been guilt tripped into putting up with bad behavior and had to bear the consequences of other people's actions. I'm tired of it... And it's been a great relief for me to accept that it's not my responsibility to fix that person and that their actions and situations are not my fault. The day I realized that I learned to walk away.

Life is too short to be someone's unpaid therapist. There's people out there who aren't fundamentally broken and truly appreciate your time. Seek out connections with those and remain friendly but distant with everyone else.

[physicianskitchen]

Honestly at some point I am tired of doing all this extra cognitive and emotional work for someone who doesn't lift a finger in years or decades. There are enough people in the world with whom you can have a healthy dynamic to at some point say enough. If they want to keep the relationship they need to do some inner work with a professional which is not me.

Edit to add: I appreciate dr. K's work and effort. But if you don't have an extensive emotional/psychological tools, training and experience and frankly, authority that he has, trying to "re-train" emotionally manipulative people without them addressing deeper issues feels pretty futile and almost manipulative as well. If an adult acts like a toddler majority of time- goodbye.

[crazystupidgamer]

This video was on spot. I gave up my fight with my partner who's emotionally manipulative. The literal exact thing you said. Led to anxiety, depression, and I am now burnt out. We're on a break now, and I don't think I'm getting back together. I don't know if I can trust her to not do it again. 6 years in, it hurts to let go but I can't take it anymore. I even offered to take us to therapy, but she wanted me to work on myself first, not realising that she was one of the biggest problems that caused me to be depressed.

[cptmtns]

Another problem with these kind of people is that many of them aren't even aware of their behavior

[mariatamburro]

Even reading through the comments has been so therapeutic. I cannot thank you enough for building this community of people willing to share openly like this. I have enjoyed your videos before, but this one was extremely significant to me. Thank you very much for what you do and how you communicate it.

[rebecca_stone]

"You're left playing darts with a blindfold trying to hit the bullseye". Lol! Perfectly said. That's exactly what it's like trying to communicate with a volatile, emotionally immature person. Context: I'm a month out of a 4yr relationship which turned domestically violent. Please step away from these types of people if your first few attempts to resolve issues fail, as some can get worse - much, much worse and you'll actually get injured for your trouble.

[mattxgill]

I wish I had discovered this channel 5 years ago. Even though I’ve only discovered it recently, my understanding of mental health has improved massively. I can’t thank this channel enough for giving me the tools to not only understand myself better, but to also protect myself from being manipulated or taken advantage of again.

[petesfeeder]

Being married to an "emotional manipulator" for 30 years I will attest to this being good advice. To be honest the biggest contributor to being manipulated is being manipulated. It's difficult to step back and realize just how responsible you are for amplifying the situation. Being a "fixer" (which is also a manipulation) is awesome in mutually understanding relationships. Two under developed people on opposite ends of the emotional intelligence spectrum feels so good in the beginning. Pressure on one side fills the vacuum on the other. But eventually both vessels become pressurized creating an explosion of emotion of which neither understands how to mitigate. It took 20years to start to realize this and still working on it to this day.
Much love
Love is not happiness but happiness is love.

[mightymouse]

It's like being a chicken in a tornado. Your so busy and distracted trying to survive being blown up, down and around. Only when it's over, do you see the damage