If You Recognize These 10 Behaviors, You’re Dealing with a High-Level Manipulator
Manipulation is a subtle yet powerful tool of control or influence by one against another for personal gain. High-level manipulators use a plethora of tactics that are oftentimes well camouflaged and usually leave the poor victim blind to what exactly is happening. Being able to recognize these behaviors will help you identify manipulation and protect yourself from emotional or psychological harm. Following are ten signs that indicate you may be dealing with a high-level manipulator.
1. Excessive Flattery
Behavior: Manipulators often use charm and flattery to win people over, which makes one feel special or important. They may compliment one too much in order to build confidence and make one get used to them.
Impact: It will fog up your judgment and make you more susceptible to their requests or demands.
2. Gaslighting
Behavior: Gaslighting means the denial of your reality or making you doubt your perceptions and your memories. A manipulator may insist you are overreacting, or the events did not take place as you remember them.
Impact: This might lead to confusion, self-doubt, and reduced self-esteem.
3. Playing the Victim
Behavior: Manipulators will often play the victim to garner sympathy and never take responsibility for their actions. They may frequently tell sad stories or minimize their contributions to a conflict.
Impact: You will feel guilty standing up for yourself or setting boundaries with them because they are victims.
4. Guilt-Tripping
Behavior: Guilt is used as a weapon by high-level manipulators. They remind you of favors or sacrifices and then guilt you into doing something that makes you uncomfortable.
Impact: This will increase feelings of obligation, difficulty, and resistance to saying no.
5. Inconsistent Behavior
Behavior: Manipulators are unpredictable in their behaviors and emotions, which can swing from kindness to hostility. Such unpredictability will always catch you off guard and maintain a state of uncertainty.
This makes it instill a feeling of instability that may make you doubt your perceptions and decisions.
6. Withholding Information
Behaviour: A manipulator will deliberately keep you in the dark on important matters or relevant details to maintain control over a situation. And they may also come across as if they know more about something than you are, and since they do not know that, they should be made the authority.
Impact: The result of this behaviour would be reducing your capability for informed decisions and increasing your dependence on them .
7. Boundary Violations
Behavioral Description: High-level manipulators refuse to respect your personal boundaries that may be digital, physical, or emotional; hence, they pressurize for private information which one does not want to tell them, or they enter the personal area without permission.
Due to this, one will feel uncomfortable, lost in control over his life.
8. Triangulation
Behaviour: Manipulators will at times involve a third party in conflicts or discussions and use them in reinforcing their story or to validate certain actions. This can sow confusion and division among people.
Impact: It might undermine trust and make it hard for you to address the manipulator directly.
9. Minimising or Maximising Issues
Behavior: They magnify trivial problems or de-emphasize significant ones, all for the sake of controlling the situation. They may fabricate stories or distort realities.
Impact: The inconsistency can confuse you and leave you with no direction to act in.
10. Silent Treatment
Behavior: The silent treatment is a form of emotional manipulation where a person refuses to speak to you, serving as punishment or to anger you. It is used as a means of maintaining control over the engagement within relationships.
Impact: You feel anxious and desperate for reconciliation, with a compromised need to give in to keep the peace.