The Ultimate List of Emotional Manipulation Tactics (Updated)

Emotional manipulation is a form of psychological control that involves using someone’s emotions to influence their behavior. Manipulators use a variety of tactics to achieve their goals, including guilt-tripping, gaslighting, and love bombing.

Emotional manipulation can be subtle and difficult to detect, but it can have a devastating impact on the victim’s mental and emotional health. Victims of emotional manipulation may experience feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. They may also feel isolated and alone.

In this article, we will discuss the different types of emotional manipulation tactics and how to identify them. We will also provide tips on how to protect yourself from emotional manipulation.

Key Takeaways

Emotional manipulation is the use of emotions to persuade someone to do something that is not in their best interests but is in the manipulator’s best interests.
Some emotional manipulation tactics are gaslighting, love-bombing, triangulation, and shaming.
When you are certain that someone is attempting to manipulate you, never respond to them on the spot, maintain a neutral demeanor, speak calmly, and appear uninterested in their game.

What Is Emotional Manipulation?

Emotional manipulation is the use of emotions to persuade someone to do something that is not in their best interests but is in the manipulator’s best interests. Compliance is the purpose of emotional manipulation. The manipulator wants the victim to do what they want. They have no regard for the victim’s wants. While manipulative behavior can occur in everyday situations, displaying a pattern of manipulation tactics is an indication of abuse. It could imply that the abuser suffers from a severe mental illness, such as narcissistic personality disorder.

List of Emotional Manipulation Tactics

Manipulators employ several means and tactics to manipulate their victims. They could use one or more of these tactics when trying to manipulate you, and that is why I have compiled a long list of tactics that emotional manipulators could use to help you better understand their ploys. These tactics include

Gaslighting

Manipulators will gaslight you to take control. They make the victim question their subjective reality and sanity in this situation. It is characterized by the victim’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences being denied or minimized. It also aids in instilling uncertainty in the victims’ minds, causing them to over-rely on the manipulator’s version of reality.

Guilt-tripping

This has to be topping the list of emotional manipulation tactics used by manipulators. Or maybe not. But guilt-tripping is a powerful emotional strategy used by manipulators. Guilt-tripping occurs when someone attempts to make you feel responsible or guilty for acts or decisions you have made, that you should not feel guilty about. The manipulator’s long-term purpose in guilt-tripping you is to convince you not to do that thing again in the future without first addressing it with them.

Love-bombing

People frequently employ love-bombing as a method of manipulation. Many violent relationships begin with love-bombing, which is typically used by many narcissists. It is showering someone with love, attention, presents, and compliments during the start of a relationship to make them emotionally dependent on you and then removing this attention once they realize you have fallen for them.

Passive-aggression

When someone says or signals something without saying what they mean, this is known as passive-aggressive communication. Sarcasm, pouting, or backhanded compliments are all examples of this. Passive aggression is hidden hostility in which the victim is harmed without being noticed.

Projection

In this case, the person deals with their troubles indirectly by using the other person as a sort of projector screen. A manipulator, for example, may feel bad about what they’re doing. Instead of confronting their guilt, they may transfer it onto the victim by accusing them of being manipulative. Projecting assists a manipulator in avoiding accountability for their actions and avoiding modifying their behavior.

Triangulation

Involving a third party in a conflict between two people is referred to as triangulation. In this situation, a manipulator utilizes triangulation strategically to guarantee that their side wins the argument, which can include selecting a third person they know would agree with them or frontloading the facts to benefit their side.

Silent Treatment

This is a common tactic of emotional manipulation and abuse and should definitely not be missing from the list. Silent treatment frequently entails withholding all forms of communication from a person in order to punish them. It is quite harmful. The purpose is to make the victim feel powerless to change the situation and to instill sentiments of abandonment or rejection.

Lying

A lie is a false assertion that is purposefully presented as the truth. Manipulators will say anything to get their way. People with manipulative tendencies frequently lie in order to influence or compel others and avoid blame or consequences for their conduct.

Emotional Rejection

The disregard of a person’s feelings is known as emotional invalidation. It’s expressing that anything you’re feeling or thinking right now is unimportant. When our feelings are dismissed, we feel as if we are unimportant or that our opinions are unimportant. We have the impression that we are not permitted to feel in a certain manner.

Objectification

Objectification is the act of viewing and/or treating a person as if they were an object, devoid of mind or feeling. The purpose here is to reduce the victim to the level of an object, as though there is no reason to be concerned with the victim’s feelings or experiences.

Shaming

Living with shame, regardless of its origins, may be isolating and disheartening. Shaming happens when the manipulator humiliates their victim with displays of disdain, scorn, disappointment, and so on, typically in front of others. Victims may develop inferiority complexes and low self-esteem as a result of this.

Threat

Emotional manipulation occurs whenever someone uses threats to coerce or convince you to do something. Manipulators frequently threaten to harm themselves if you do not do what they say. They prey on your empathy or emotional engagement with them and use threats to compel you into doing whatever they want. While such threats should not be taken lightly, they should also not be ignored. Inform a loved one or a professional about it and get help.

Infantilizing

A manipulator “infantilizes” their target by treating them as if they are younger or less capable, or by treating them as if they are a child. This can manifest as talking down to someone as though they are less intellectual, stepping in and taking over in the middle of a task that the person is capable of accomplishing on their own, or physically treating them as if they are incapable of particular duties. The purpose of infantilizing is frequently to reduce a person to the status of an infant or kid, decreasing their social status and robbing them of the ability to make decisions, both from the victim’s perspective and the manipulator’s.

Blaming

A manipulator will almost certainly hold you responsible for everything even when they are guilty. Blaming is an effective method for instilling guilt. This would frequently cause the victim to question their own sanity.

Acting the victim

Manipulators frequently play the victim because they feel that portraying themselves as the aggrieved party will benefit them in a certain situation or in life in general.

Shifting the goalposts

This is when someone modifies the rules of a scenario in the middle of it in order to prevent the other person from succeeding. A manipulator uses this approach to keep the other person always chasing their approval. Someone who shifts the goalposts can lead to irritation and tiredness.

Flattery

Certain compliments should be avoided particularly when they come from a purported compliment given to truly point out something positive without expecting anything in return. However, flattery is frequently employed deceptively to obtain emotional leverage. There is often an anticipation of receiving anything in return when someone flatters you.

Brainwashing

A manipulator may brainwash you into thinking things from their point of view. They usually accomplish this through excessive pressure, badmouthing, and so forth.

Hurt and Rescue

If you’ve ever been with a manipulator, there’s a good chance they’ve exposed you to this type of emotional abuse once or twice. This is an instance where they purposefully hurt you and then come up with “solutions” to your sentiments. The goal is frequently to convince their victims to trust them and view them for what they are not: angels. Most of the time, their victims become dependent on them and are thus vulnerable to more brutal forms of emotional manipulation.

Who Manipulates?

While manipulation is most commonly associated with romantic relationships, keep in mind that any relationship can become emotionally manipulative or abusive. This includes toxic or abusive parents (for example, a toxic mother or narcissistic parent, as well as overbearing or narcissistic in-laws, bosses, roommates, neighbors, friends, or partners). While it is rare that you will be subjected to emotional manipulation in all of these settings, knowing the warning signs and how to respond can be beneficial.

How Can You Outsmart a Manipulative Person?

When someone employs a manipulative method on you and gets what they want, they are likely to repeat the approach on you again and again in the future. This means you must learn to outwit a manipulator, or they will continue to employ their manipulative nature on you. Knowing for sure if someone is manipulative can be tough, which is why, in addition to looking for clues, you should first trust your gut instinct.

When you are certain that someone is attempting to manipulate you, you could do the following to outsmart them:

Never respond to them on the spot. Always take some time to think and reflect

Don’t show anger, fear, anxiousness, impatience, hope, or excitement. Maintain a neutral demeanor, speak calmly, and appear uninterested in their game.

Learn how to say ‘no’. The more you practice it, the easier it will become.

Learn to set and enforce appropriate boundaries.

Just as John Smith said: “The best way to manipulate a manipulator is to make him think he’s manipulating you.”

Why Do People Try to Manipulate Others?

People manipulate people for many reasons, including:

Control: People who manipulate may be motivated by a desire for control or possess controlling tendencies, which may feel exciting.

Low self-esteem: Manipulation can make a way for a person to avoid feeling bad about themselves. People manipulate largely because of a lack of confidence or self-esteem. They may not believe they can achieve their goals on their own.

Ego: A prevalent reason among narcissistic people, someone who manipulates may believe that they are the brightest and most capable person around, and may use manipulation to satisfy their ego by outwitting others and profiting from their efforts.

Personal gain: A manipulative person might use these tactics to get whatever they desire, such as money, power, or attention.

Avoidance: Manipulation may provide a mechanism for people to escape taking responsibility for their actions.

How Do You Tell Someone Is Emotionally Manipulating You?

It might be difficult to tell whether someone is attempting to manipulate you since they excel at emotionally involving people in their narratives and stories. Trusting your intuition is the first step in determining if someone is manipulating you. Believe that voice that says something is wrong.

Then, keep an eye out for the indicators listed above in the list of emotional manipulation tactics. If your discoveries or observations match these telling signs, you may have a manipulator.

Signs That You Are Being Manipulated

Feeling puzzled is the first clue that you are being influenced. You will rarely, if ever, be confused by someone who has nothing but pure, good, loving intentions for you,” .
Alexandra Rickeman,

Many manipulators are quite good at convincing you that they are doing nothing wrong. If you suspect you are being controlled, consider how that individual makes you feel following an interaction.
Remember that manipulation is often subtle, and you may doubt your perspective of the issue rather than the other person’s actions or motives.
Here are several obvious indicators that you are being emotionally misled.

They make you feel bad for sharing your worries.

They downplay your issues while exaggerating their own; they invalidate your emotions.

Critical remarks might be camouflaged as sarcasm or humor.

They say, “I did it only because I love you so much.”
They find a way to steal the spotlight from you.

They exploit your insecurities.

They are passive-aggressive.

How Do I Know if I Am Manipulative?

You may be manipulative without realizing it at times. Take this quick quiz to determine whether you are manipulative.

Do you struggle with not getting your way?

Do you project your emotions onto others?

Do you lie frequently, even about things you don’t need to?

Do you frequently guilt-trip people?

Do you resort to passive-aggressive behavior when you don’t get your way?

Are you overly convincing?

Do you frequently use the victim card to avoid taking responsibility for your actions?

You might be a manipulative person if you have at least four “yes” to these questions.

Conclusion

You should be aware that if you are not cautious, a person can manipulate you in a variety of ways. The list of emotional manipulation tactics is seemingly endless. Most manipulators, however, will use one or more of the manipulative tactics outlined in this article. Remember, whenever your gut feeling tells you that you are being manipulated, do not ignore it and carefully study the energy you are getting.