Manipulation is An Ugly Game of Self-Destructive Behavior

Manipulation: to control or play-upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one's own advantage; to force change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose.

Every codependent is familiar with manipulation. We have all engaged in manipulative behavior for the express purpose of getting from others what we were not willing to give to ourselves—namely love.

In fact, for the non-recovering codependent or addict, manipulation becomes a way of life, a survival skill. We need to be needed or loved and so we engage in manipulative behaviors, like people-pleasing and caretaking. We falsify how we really feel about this or that in order to please (manipulate) someone into loving us. We bend over backwards to meet the needs of another person, not because we truly love and care about him/her, but because we want to manipulate him/her into appreciating us and making us feel good about ourselves.

But there are other forms of manipulation that we, and other addicts, use; and those forms of manipulation involve shame and guilt. Caretakers are especially good at shaming or guilting their victims. Sometimes our initial caretaking (manipulative) behavior doesn’t produce the desired results.

For example, we have been quick to volunteer to take someone to their doctor’s appointment when their car was in the shop, to water their plants for them when they are out of town, to listen to their every drama for hours on end, and yet, when we want them to do something for us in return, they balk. Immediately, we are angry and we go into attack mode. Our weapons of mass-emotional destruction are shame and guilt.

Shaming words come rolling off our lips like machine gun bullets: “After all I’ve done for you?!!! And you won’t even do this one little thing for me? What kind of friend are you? Not a very good one, I guess!!!”

Of course, these same shaming and guilting words can be used against us by other addicts. We may have friends or relatives who are engulfed in addictive behaviors and who are always expecting us to rescue them. A recovering person knows that he or she cannot rescue anyone but themselves. To try and rescue another person is to enable them to remain irresponsible for the own behavior and the consequences of that behavior.

For example, we may have a sister who is a gambling addict. She has developed a pattern of behavior that goes like this: She is anxiously uncomfortable with herself, can’t take the difficult feelings any longer and so runs off to the casino. She gets an immediate reprieve from those heavy difficult feelings by simply driving toward the casino. All she has to do is anticipate walking up to the gambling tables and rolling those dice to feel better. Once she arrives at the casino, she rides the rollercoaster of winning and losing. She gets a further high from the exhilaration of winning, and she continues that exhilaration through the denial of losing. She’s just sure that this next roll of the dice will hit the jackpot. And if it doesn’t, she knows that she has YOU to fall back on.

Oh, yes. She has that good old brother or sister who has become her personal banker. She knows that if she racks up a big debt, she can come to you, whine and act pitiful and you will give her the money she needs to pay-off her debt (one more time). If her whining doesn’t work, then she, too, has her big guns to use on you: shame and guilt.

Put on your armor and allow her to shoot. Allow her to shame and guilt you in every way possible, while understanding that it is her sick, twisted addictive personality that is insulting you. Feel sorry for her, feel empathy, offer her love and prayerful support. But give her no more money.

She is responsible for her behavior, and as long as you are willing to be responsible for her behavior, she never will be. As long as you are there to bail her out, she has no reason to change or help herself.

This is why it’s so important to understand the trappings of addictive manipulation. Once you understand that you are being “played-upon” in “insidious” ways for the sole purpose of ensuring that someone else gets what they want from you, you can stand-up to it. You can realize that all of the other person’s ugly words are about them and not about you.

Once you make the choice to stop enabling another person’s bad behavior, you will make a tremendously important change inside yourself. And once the other person realizes that you will no longer rescue them from their own self-defeating behavior, they will be forced to change as well—hopefully for the better.

Manipulation is a very ugly game. If you are engaged in it in any way, learn how to stop engaging in it. Healthy relationships do not involve manipulation.