What do manipulative people REALLY WANT?

If you're watching this video, then I'm guessing that you already know you have a manipulative person in your life and you're probably trying to make some decisions about what level of relationship you want to keep with this person. You may be deciding you want to get rid of them completely or that you at least want to back up and distance yourself from this person. And I'm also guessing that because you're watching this video, you've already figured out that getting out of a relationship with a really manipulative person and isn't very easy. It's not a cut and dry issue. It's going to take some strategy and tactic, otherwise the whole situation could blow up on you and things could be ten times worse. Now, manipulation isn't always bad. Everybody manipulates to some degree. And some forms of manipulation are fairly mild and benign and other types of manipulation are very serious and toxic. And those are the incidences which you're going to want to back up from these. And the first key to making this decision about what level of relationship you want to have with this person is this the sort of mild or benign kind of manipulation or the really toxic, chronic, not going to go away, serious type of manipulation. So I've made a list for you to help you understand the different reasons why people manipulate you. And I've put them in somewhat of an order of severity. We're going to start with the more milder forms and we're going to go down to the more serious toxic forms. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get your life and your loved ones back on track, back to living the life that you want to live. Alright, back to our topic. So before I give you this list about why people are manipulative, I do want you to first understand that not all manipulation is bad. In fact, sometimes people try to manipulate other people into doing things that are actually really good for them. Like your mom might try to manipulate you into eating your vegetables when you're a little kid. And that's not the worst thing of all. In fact, a really good way to sort of differentiate these two things is to remember that manipulation is when you're trying to get someone to do something for your benefit, for a selfish benefit, and persuasion is when you try to get someone to do something for their benefit. Now that we got that settled, I'll go ahead and tell you that all the things I have on this list fall into the real manipulation category. And we're going to start with the most obvious ones. Now, the first reason someone might be manipulating you is because they want a favor from you. And you may be thinking, oh, it's just a small favor, no problem. If it truly is just a small favor, no problem, then it isn't a problem. Go ahead and do it. But sometimes a favor can become problematic when someone wants you to do that favor over and over and over again. When someone won't accept no. Like maybe they want you to watch their kids and they just won't let it go. Or they try to use unfair emotional tactics to try to force you to do something you don't want to do. That's when a favor becomes more than just a favor. That's when you're really dealing with a manipulation tactic. Now, another fairly obvious form of manipulation, especially when it comes to addiction, is when someone's trying to get you to give them something of financial value. So they could be asking you directly for money or for help to pay a bill or to put some gas in their car, so they're wanting something financially from you. And that kind of manipulation is financial fairly easy to spot. Now, another reason someone could be trying to manipulate you that maybe you haven't even thought of in this category is that sometimes people want to be associated with you for all different, various kind of reasons. Maybe they want to be associated with you for some kind of status reason or protection reason. So you've got to be careful about what someone's motive is when they're trying to get on your good side. These next couple of reasons why people manipulate get into a little bit more of a serious problem. Sometimes people want to manipulate you into validating their feelings or their narrative, especially if they're stuck in some kind of unhealthy drama triangle role. If you don't know what the drama triangle is, I will put the drama triangle video up here for you so you can check that out. But basically, it's like if someone stuck in a victim role is someone trying so hard to get you to see their side of an argument or a conflict or a problem, and they're manipulating you to be on their side. Maybe they're flying flat out lying to you. Maybe they're splitting you against other people. Maybe they're telling you some kind of really sad story to get you to be on their side. And this kind of tactic can be really dangerous because sometimes someone can get you so far on their side. And you can become so, like, enmeshed in the situation. You may want to protect them. You may go after people or do things you wouldn't normally do because you think you're protecting this person or you're looking out for them. But you've really got to be careful that you're not playing into someone else's narrative. This is actually a really common thing that therapists do. Right? Therapists have natural empathy for people. And when we hear people being in difficult situations, of course we empathize with that. But it's super important for us to understand that situations are really complicated and not to just completely fall into whatever narrative that someone's giving you. Especially if that narrative is about how they're really good, perfect person and someone else in their life is a really terrible, horrible person. Could that be the case? Yes. But if you'll put on your objective lenses and look at it, you might see that it's a little bit more complicated. Now, that doesn't mean you should never have empathy for someone. I'm just asking you to really think about the situation before you fall wholeheartedly into someone else's victim narrative. Another example of this could happen, like, even in a work situation where someone's mad at the boss and they're trying to get you on their side about that, or they've had a conflict with a friend and they're trying to get you on their side. Think about high school, like mean girls kind of thing, where if one girl gets mad at you, they get every girl mad at you, that kind of thing. It's like they're manipulating you to feed into their feelings, their story, their narrative about whatever problem it is that they're facing. Watch out for that one, because that one probably sneaks in on you more than you realize now. Now that one brings us to our next one, which is another reason why people get stuck in these manipulative, toxic behaviors, is that they're needing to control you, what you think, what you feel, and what you do in order to manage their own anxieties. A lot of times, really anxious people can be very manipulative because they're so filled with fear and worry and catastrophe, thinking that they need you somehow to help regulate them. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean. You may have a person in your life that needs constant reassurance, and so you're constantly having to sort of give them, it's going to be all right, or look at the bright side or no, that's not going to Happen. I mean, we all do this for our friends, right? We all need to hear everything is going to be all right sometimes. But I'm talking about when someone is like pathologically, like constantly coming at you all the time for reassurance to the point that it's exhausting. In fact, sometimes people can get caught in a real life obsessive compulsive cycle of needing certain kinds of reassurances from certain people. Another way that this type of manipulation shows itself is if you're in a romantic relationship with someone and they have this constant fear of losing you, they may be trying to manipulate you into going certain places, not going certain places, looking a certain way, not looking a certain way, because they have this constant anxiety about losing the relationship. So they control the different aspects of you to try to manage their own anxiety about that. Now that can get pretty unhealthy and toxic quickly. Now that one leads us to our next one, which is sort of like that one, only deeper and bigger. This is when another person needs to manipulate people to control their emotions in general. Like. Like. There's an example I give a lot of times to families of people struggling with addiction that I talk about where someone with an addiction, like an addict or an alcoholic, they will start a fight with you in order to walk out the door and feel justified about making a bad decision. So sometimes people want reassurance from you, but sometimes people want you to be angry for certain reasons. Sometimes people will blame you for problems in their life or accuse you of doing things that didn't even happen. And it's all about helping them regulate their own emotions. Now, like I said before, of course, we all have a need to rely on the other people in our life sometimes to help us feel better or feel certain ways. That's normal. But when someone has very, very little ability to regulate their own emotions and they're putting all of that pressure on you, you're going to feel that. It's going to feel like a heavy burden. You're going to feel like you're on this roller coaster constantly, which is how you're going to know you're in that type of situation. Now that you realize that you may have some of this going on in a relationship you have, you probably wondering what in the world you should do about it. Well, I'm going to give you two options. The first thing you can do is watch this video. I'm going to put it right up here, and it will explain to you exactly about how to respond to manipulative behaviors. If you're in a really difficult, delicate kind of situation and you're unsure how to get better boundaries there, then you may want to consider talking to one of our family recovery specialists. So I'm going to put the link in the description below so you can get some more information on that.