Careful! Someone’s Manipulating You!
Be careful, someone is playing with you. Living together with other people could be so beautiful and harmonious. If each and every one of us always acted with good intentions and made an effort, we’d have world peace. However, the universe and God alike seem to have a soft spot for diversity. Their protagonists, we humans, are characterized by a plethora of diverse characters. Some of them pursue their very own goals, which are not always aimed at the common good. One of the less pleasant traits that some people display is manipulating their environment. For a variety of reasons, they love to play with their fellow human beings as if they were puppets hanging on invisible strings. If we allow our intuition to have a say, it will warn us in time and reliably against such dishonest intentions. Nevertheless, in this article we would like to present you with six clear signs that someone is shamelessly harnessing and manipulating you for their own purposes.
1. Someone is constantly keeping a critical eye on you.
Do you sometimes feel like you're under a microscope or a rabbit in an experimental lab? Are the smallest changes in the way you dress or act immediately meticulously registered? Then someone has you on their control screen. And you might still have time to get out. Some people cast their nets before they choose their next target. Narcissists, for example, proceed very methodically here. They give their unsuspecting victims the feeling that they are the chosen ones from a broad mass of potential partners who willingly throw themselves at their feet. You will probably feel very flattered at the beginning, when someone notices even the smallest change in you and soon knows all your habits by heart. However, the line between admiration and stalking is blurred here. If someone wants to manipulate you, the first thing they’re going to do is find out as much as possible about you. If you sense that you are being targeted by someone you don't feel comfortable with or whose ambitions you don't want to reciprocate, be on your guard. Especially important: Don't give out information about yourself that is emotionally difficult or stressful. Manipulators target weaknesses.
2. You begin to doubt your perception.
A much more advanced stage of manipulation is called gaslighting. Manipulative people will often make you think your reality is imagination. They tell stories completely differently than you remember them and also correct your explanations in front of an assembled group. They expose you and insist that you are imagining the situation or that, in retrospect, you have remembered it quite wrongly. If the doorbell rings, they'll deny it. If you're looking for your smartphone or keys, those things will miraculously reappear only after your manipulative partner or friend helps you find them. You begin to seriously doubt your sanity over time.
3. They constantly compare you to others.
Manipulation also manifests itself by playing with your self-esteem. You are constantly compared to others around you, and this involuntary competition is never in your favor. Some of us had to learn this tactic as children. Constantly comparing ourselves to classmates and playmates was and probably still is a popular, albeit dubious, parenting tool. As adults, we really shouldn't have to compete with others all the time. If someone deliberately puts you in this position over and over again, she or he has their own plans for you. You will soon start to feel uncomfortable with this situation. No one likes to be talked down to and judged like a trash reality show. Be sure to trust your gut in this situation as well. What feels bad is bad for us.
4. You're suddenly to blame for everything.
A popular tool for making people do your bidding to your heart's content is to continually blame them for everything. You can successively undermine every bit of their self-confidence this way. The victims become insecure and feel more and more encouraged to seek help and support from the very people who are deliberately staging this horror show. Here too, sooner or later we begin to doubt our sanity and our perception. The more insecure we become in this, the more prone to mistakes we become, and the diabolical circle closes.
5. Lovebombing and the cold shoulder alternative.
In the past, this behavior was known as carrot and stick, but today the term lovebombing is in season, and it often stands at the beginning of a toxic relationship. Victims, as the name suggests, are literally bombarded with text messages, phone calls, romantic gifts and exuberant gestures. The beginning of a relationship with a manipulative person feels like a cheesy Hollywood flick, and indeed it is actually too good to be true. Once at their destination, the manipulators immediately change tactics. They reward desired behavior with praise or attention, while undesired behavior is punished with icy silence and a cold shoulder. We then run up against this like an invisible wall. Using silence as a method of torture and punishment is a very characteristic trait for toxic personalities.
6. You make decisions that are atypical for you.
At some point, we reach a point in the crosshairs of a manipulative person where we realize ourselves that we are on the wrong track. It's just unfortunate that the alarm signals aren't always loud and convincing enough for us to hear. If you suddenly veer off your usual course and make spontaneous decisions that are completely out of character for you, someone may have brought you to that point. Constant manipulation is like poison to our ears and minds. It clouds our perceptions with a persistence that we eventually can't escape. Sooner or later, we believe exactly what someone else wants us to believe. These deviations then have nothing to do with our free will and our own plans. Probably friends and other people who have known you for some time will draw your attention to your unusual behavior. Fatally, at this stage we are often already completely resistant to well-intentioned advice from outside. The toxic person in our lives, who keeps us on a short leash, has certainly already successfully ensured that we do not believe such prophecies of doom. After all, only she or he really means well by us, right? Isolating their victims from families and friends is the most effective exercise for manipulative characters.
Today’s Conclusion:
Let your intuition take the lead. Unfortunately, our intellect is not nearly as smart as our gut feeling when it comes to interpersonal matters. It’s especially bad intentions and deceitfulness that can be detected much faster by our intuition than by our head. Most manipulative contemporaries follow a very specific agenda. However, they often betray themselves in the process, if we approach them attentively and without bias. The fact is, if it's too good to be real, it probably is. Those who need grand gestures to convince you of their worth have nothing to offer except this bluff.