How to manipulate people (part 1)
A guide to understanding (and hopefully the first step to breaking) toxic patterns in your day-to-day life
“Can you do this for me? You are way better at this, than I am!” Ever heard this sentence from someone close to you? If your answer is Yes, then you should keep reading.
A few months ago, I was lying on my yoga mat, completely exhausted, as I often felt (at that time). “Why did you do that?”, I thought to myself “you knew perfectly well that you didn’t really want to. How in heaven’s name did you get here again?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I used to end up in places I didn’t want to be in to begin with. I found myself with way too many responsibilities that I didn’t want to carry, I was going to too many events I didn’t even want to attend, and I was having discussions that I could never value nor appreciate, everything within me screamed “fight or flight”, but I didn’t quite know what my body wanted me to flee from or what my head wanted me to fight for. I could only explain me ending up in these places with something I didn’t understand yet; something way beyond the surface. So, I digged deeper. Deeper than my conscious self could go, to be exact. To get to my clearest state of mind I went on a social detox for a few months: No social media. No big events. No fancy dates. Just me, my punching bag, and a bunch of books.
And here is what I found:
Have you ever heard about the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)? The SNS is one of the major neural pathways activated by stress and part of it is also famously known as the autonomic system that triggers the fight-or-flight response (autonomic nervous system). It innervates nearly every living tissue in the human body, and it works largely unconscious. Now, why the heck am I talking science and yoga mats when you are here to learn the art of manipulation?
Well, I want you to understand, that our bodies can overreact to triggers, such as constant difficulties with our partners and families or work pressure — without us even knowing. Basically, our own body can manipulate us. It does things we can’t really control, and it will use the same excuses and indications that manipulative people use as well — with one significant difference: Our body manipulates us to truly protect us from things that could really hurt us. The sympathetic nervous system notices a dangerous situation and activates certain body functions to get us out of there. Its’ counter system, the so-called parasympathetic nervous system, is supposed to calm you down once you are out of the trigger zone. But what if these triggers and dangers are in fact around us all the time? What if our body keeps reacting to them unconsciously? In these cases, the sympathetic nervous system can be continuously activated without the normal counteraction of the parasympathetic nervous system, leaving the body in a state of constant stress, which could explain why some of us always feel exhausted or tired.
Let’s leave our unconscious body functions out of this for a second and look at a clean definition for one of the probable causes:
“Manipulation is an emotionally unhealthy psychological strategy used by people who are incapable of asking for what they want and need in a direct way. People who are trying to manipulate others are trying to control others.”[1]
This definition tells us two things about the questions I was asking myself in the beginning of the article. First, reading it, felt like an awakening to me. So, the answers to my questions could have something to do with some of the people around me. And secondly, it wasn’t (just) a feeling of restlessness or exhaustion, it was a sheer feeling of powerlessness because — to a certain extend — I was being controlled by the decisions of other people. I’d also like to think of manipulation as people using your (!) abilities to get what they (!) want.
I’d also like to think of manipulation as people using your (!) abilities to get what they (!) want.
[1] I stole this definition from Sharie Stines, a California-based therapist who specializes in abuse and toxic relationships: https://time.com/5411624/how-to-tell-if-being-manipulated/.
