Interesting Psychology Team
8. Limiting the Amount of Time to Decide
One technique that can be really useful for a manipulator is to limit the amount of time that the other person gets to make a decision. When the victim feels like they are limited on time, they are more likely to go along with what the manipulator wants, even though they arenβt sure about the decision and they werenβt given the right time to think it all throughβand this is exactly what the manipulator wants to see to happen.
The idea of giving the victim little time to decide on things is a common negotiation and sales tactic. This is where the manipulator is going to put some pressure on the other person to make up their decision, often before the victim is ready to make that decision. When you apply the tension and the control over the other person, the hope is that they are going to crack and then they will give in to the demands of the aggressor.
9. Poking at Your Weaknesses
Some manipulators are fond of making critical remarks, but then will disguise these remarks as sarcasm and humor. They can do this to make their victim feel inferior and less secure, but the humor helps the manipulator to save face and look better when the victim starts to get offended. In the process, they are able to make the victim seem less secure and inferior.
There are a lot of examples that come to mind with this one. The manipulator can have comments that will range from your personal belongings, your credentials and background, your appearance, and the fact that you came into the office just a few minutes late and seemed to be out of breath. The manipulator likes to point out the things that you did wrong so that they can impose their own psychological superiority over the victim.
10. Criticism and Judgment Against You
This behavior is going to be distinct from some of the other behaviors that we have talked about. In those, humor was a kind of cover that the manipulator could use in order to say what they want, and then turn it back against the victim. However, with this one, the manipulator is doing away with the joking and is outright just picking on their victim.
By constantly marginalizing, ridiculing, and dismissing their victim, the manipulator is able to keep their victim off balance, while also making sure that they, the manipulator, is able to maintain their own superiority. The aggressor would use this tactic in order to deliberately foster the impression that there is tries, they are going to be inadequate and never good enough to meet the standards of the manipulator.
The thing here is that the manipulator only wants to focus on the negative and the bad things that go on. With regular criticism, there may be some bad things that come up in the discussion, but the other person is going to provide some feedback and some solutions that the victim can work on.
With manipulation, the manipulator is just going to focus on the negative without providing any constructive or genuine solutions, and they never offer any meaningful ways to help the other person. They just like to say and do things that will make the other person feel bad.
11. Using the Silent Treatment
We are all guilty of using this one at some point. We will get mad at someone, or feel that they slighted us in some manner, and we will stop talking to them. We think that we are making them suffer some when we donβt give them our attention all the time and that by making them sweat it out for a bit, we are more likely to get what we would like.
Many manipulators are going to use this tactic as well. By deliberately not responding to the reasonable emails, text messages, calls and other communications from the victim, the manipulator is going to presume the power.
They are making the victim do all of the work, and this can place some uncertainty and doubt into the mind of the other person. The silent game is really a head game, where silence can be used by the manipulator as a form of leverage against the victim.
