There are people who will casually walk up to you and smile as they take your hand and warmly greet you. They will act as if they love you and pretend to be your loving family or best friend. But in truth, they have bad intentions concerning you and their friendly act is just that — An act.

If you are educated on the signs and patterns of narcissism and in touch with your intuition, you will pick up on the cues of deception and see them for what they are — manipulation tactics. Manipulation is a form of emotional blackmail. Manipulators covertly use certain behaviors to influence how you perceive them. They also use these tactics to influence how you think, feel and act.

For example, they may act frail and sickly in order to paint themselves as vulnerable and innocent. Meanwhile, when you’re not looking they are wreaking havoc on your mental and emotional well being. You may be running around at their beck and call, helping them as they play the “I am helpless” act.

When your gut instinct alerts you and shows you that someone has the wrong intentions, take action to protect yourself. You have no control over how people behave or whether they like you or not. They will plot and scheme and conspire if that is what they want to do. You get to decide whether you allow it, or not.

Look for signs of manipulation and when you spot them being used against you, call them out or remove yourself from the situation.

The reason why manipulators use these tactics is because they work! But, manipulation only works if the other person is unaware that they are being manipulated. The moment you cotton on, the manipulator loses control over you.

“Knowledge is power.”

Long-term or short-term, manipulative relationships are abusive and traumatizing. Unfortunately, victims of this type of abuse are blind to the manipulation. You never stop to consider that the people who claim to love and cherish you don’t actually have your best interests at heart. Instead, they are using forms of psychological control to undermine your happiness and success.

No matter who the manipulator is, if you are in an abusive relationship you have to get yourself to safety. The hard truth is that narcissists, manipulators and abusers don’t change. They have bad characters and personality disorders. Their behavior is showing you the truth of who they really are. The best option is to walk away.

However, if the manipulator, narcissist or abuser is your spouse, parent, child, or other significant figure in your life, you may not be able to go fully no-contact. Your best option is low-contact, whereby you put firm boundaries in place and limit the time you spend with them. Instead of reacting, respond in a neutral, empowered way. By seeing through the manipulation, you can protect yourself from harm.

Here are 12 manipulation strategies that narcissists use to control you.

1. CHARM OFFENSIVE

Manipulators will gush and flatter you, or shower you with gifts and attention. They squeal with delight and pretend to be so happy to see you. Meanwhile they are planning your downfall.

Manipulators are sweet talkers. They will use flattery to try and win you over. They do this in order to butter you up and make you feel indebted to them.

They may buy you a small gift like a shower gel and make a huge public display of presenting it to you. They want everyone to see how much they “love” and “care” for you. Then, as soon as your back is turned, they start lobbing darts at you. They look so loving and caring while they’re doing it. It’s incredibly confusing because you can’t see past the charm of the seduction. You figure you must be imagining the niggling feelings of something being off.

Manipulators have a way of making you feel seen and understood. This builds a fake feeling of intimacy. If they are a dodgy salesman or estate agent, they will tell you exactly what you want to hear instead of the truth.

Don’t be fooled by charm! In fact, be highly suspicious of it. When I was super codependent and nice all the time, I couldn’t understand why some people acted suspicious of me. I now know why — whether niceness is coming from a manipulative narcissist or from a people-pleasing codependent — overly nice behavior is actually a huge red flag. As a people-pleaser you have no nefarious intentions but your niceness and overly accommodating behavior comes across as inauthentic. It’s best to be real — even if that means saying no and not being so nice all the time!

2. THEY WEAVE A WEB OF ENMESHMENT

Individuals with a strong sense of self are a huge threat to a manipulator. Manipulators like weak people with even weaker boundaries. People-pleasing codependents with a low sense of self-worth are a manipulator’s dream come true. They have weak boundaries and the manipulator knows they will not be called out. People-pleasers are afraid of offending people. To avoid conflict, they put up with toxic behaviors that others would not.

A lack of boundaries and a fear of conflict are the perfect ingredients for an enmeshed relationship. Enmeshed relationships occur in families where there are no boundaries. Everyone bleeds into everyone else. In enmeshed relationships there is no respect for you as an individual with your own feelings, thoughts and needs. Rather, there is a dynamic of group think and everyone is manipulated to serve the needs of the narcissist.

If the narcissist is in a bad mood, the entire household is in a mood. If the narcissist is happy, everyone relaxes and feels happy. There is no space for you to be you.

3. THEY TREAT YOU LIKE A BABY

Narcissists in particular infantilize you. They see themselves as superior and you as weaker. To manipulate you they will emphasize your age, lack of skills or experience and make you feel like a child. They may even use “baby talk” when addressing you in public which puts you in a subservient position. They may also define the meaning of words or over-explain certain concepts as if you are stupid.

One of my spiritual teachers used to do this all the time while she was teaching. When I noticed it, I saw it as a huge red flag. While addressing huge audiences of mature, professional, adult women, she would patronize us by constantly defining basic English words. It is as if she were teaching a class of eight year olds who would not understand “big words”. The trouble is, the words she was defining for us, a six year old would understand!

This placed her in a position of authority and gave her a sense of power and control. Manipulators do the same — they make you smaller so that they appear bigger.

4. THEY ARE FAULT FINDERS

Remember, narcissists and manipulators need you weak, on edge and unsure of yourself. To make sure they have you right where they need you, they will constantly criticize and undermine you. They play up your faults and failures and down play or ignore your positive traits and successes. They always have to knock you down a peg or two just in case you become too sure of yourself.

This fault-finding stage follows the ‘Charm Offensive’ or Love-bombing stage as they begin to devalue you.

Another powerful manipulation tactic is using shame against you. By humiliating you they know they can hurt you. When you are in pain, you are weak. Once again, just where they want you. The goal of their fault-finding and shaming is to create feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy within you. In this vulnerable state you can more easily be subdued into submission. This creates a dangerous cycle of abuse. You risk being trapped in a downward spiral of negative thought patterns and feelings.

Ask yourself, how many days of the week do I feel good in this relationship? If your answer is anything less than 7, that is a red flag.

To further demean and weaken you, manipulators will look for ways to use your emotions against you. For example, they will say something nasty and when you get upset and call them out, they will tell you that,

“You are too sensitive and don’t know how to take a joke.”

This tactic puts you on the defensive and redirects blame away from them. The manipulator falsely accuses you of being in the wrong in response to you addressing their abusive behavior.

They deliberately trigger you and then innocently ask,

“What’s your problem? You always get so uppity.”

Or, you set a boundary or state a need and instead of honoring your boundary or need, they snarl at you that you are “being difficult”.

You might recognize this as gaslighting. You will end up questioning your sanity.

The goal of fault-finding and vilification is to destabilize you and to put you in the wrong. Over time, you become trained by the manipulator to keep quiet and suppress your feelings of hurt or anger. This enables the narcissist to treat you as they like without any risk of blame or losing control.

In the meantime you internalize your rage, your hurt and your anger which eventually starts to make you sick. Your suppressed emotions can manifest as autoimmune and thyroid disease, migraines, gut issues and ultimately, cancer. These are just a few health conditions that show up consistently in people living with energy vampires.

5. DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Manipulators use the sneaky tactic of triangulation in order to keep people apart. The manipulator purposely fails to communicate with you, and then goes behind your back and turns the other members of the group against you. This is bullying at its finest as they pit others against you.

What makes this so damaging is that you will have no idea that this is going on. You will subtly notice that people treat you differently or avoid you and you will have no idea why. Once again, the manipulator has you right where they want you: Isolated from your support system and in control.

6. THEY REFUSE TO GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED

Narcissists avoid taking responsibility for their actions at all costs. To hide their deception they use the manipulation tactic of withholding. For example, they won’t answer direct questions. Instead, they will throw a tantrum, shout or threaten you to get you off the scent.

They will skillfully divert and deflect the conversation away from what you need and willfully evade your questions. They will withhold information, approval, validation, finances, affection and assistance in order to keep you off balance. If they are forced to do a job, they will do it badly. If they are forced to answer you, they will respond with gibberish or something unrelated, vague, or meaningless. The manipulator’s intention is to confuse and redirect attention away from their lies and deceit.

When forced to confront their behavior, a manipulator or narcissist will do everything in their power to rationalize it. They will justify their actions and feel entitled to do as they please. They can be so convincing that you may even fall for their justifications and excuses.

Narcissists also use the silent treatment to manipulate you. They will ignore you and play hard to get. To belittle you, they will acknowledge everyone in the room, except you. When you try to connect with them, they act bored or disinterested. They leave the room when you enter, or purposely look away whenever you speak to them.

In an attempt to make me feel worthless, my ex would just get up and walk out the room while I was mid-sentence. Luckily, I had cottoned on by this stage of the game and I knew exactly what he was up to. It was interesting observing the manipulator in action without them knowing I knew.

To further withhold from you, manipulators will ghost you or deliberately not respond to any of your messages, questions, emails, phone calls or comments. To devalue you they refuse to acknowledge your very existence. What I have learned to do when I see this type of behavior is I say out loud to myself,

“MESSAGE RECEIVED!”

I then proceed to mirror their behavior back to them. They ignore me, I ignore them. They take one step back, I take ten steps back. In some rare cases, I will speak to the elephant in the room. I directly call them out on their behavior and ask if there is a problem. But mostly, I disengage and move on.

7. THEY ARE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE

Let me start by saying there is nothing passive about passive aggression. It is just as violent as overt aggression. Narcissists and manipulators love doing everything under cover. It gives them such a thrill to operate in the shadows. They think they are so clever and special because they can dupe people in this way. It is actually so cowardly.

They will deliberately prod, poke and trigger you. They will dishonor your boundaries just for the thrill of seeing how you will respond. They will frame insults as ‘constructive criticism’ and give advice when none was requested. Once again, the goal is to belittle, demean and devalue you while covering up their tracks.

8. THEY FEED OFF YOUR PAIN

Narcissists and manipulators maintain control by positioning themselves in the power seat. But they are weak characters with no substance. Therefore, the only way they can feel powerful is at the expense of others’ pain and suffering. They lie, cheat and manipulate to get what they want. Your pain is their pleasure.

You cannot win with a narcissist intent on manipulating you. They set you up for failure from the get-go. They literally booby-trap you and they do it in such a way that you look like the baddie when you call them out and speak up. The manipulation tactic of sabotage is done covertly to deliberately undermine you and your efforts in every way. They need you weak, hurting, frustrated and in agony in order to feel powerful and in control.

9. THEY PLAY THE VICTIM CARD

“Woe is me!”

Manipulators and narcissists love to mine your empathy and compassion to get what they want. Playing the victim is their favorite game. They will complain, and moan and go on and on about how much they are suffering. They use dramatic language like “I had no other choice.” They guilt you into lending them money or letting them off the hook.

Positioning oneself as a victim is disempowering and unhelpful. We have all experienced betrayal, trauma, bad luck, misfortune and heartache. We’ve all had to do things that were hard or that we did not like. We’ve all had to push ourselves past our limits and suffer through injustices. So boo hoo! What are you going to do about it?

10. EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION

Narcissists and manipulators use your own emotions against you. They do this by triggering or evoking an emotional response from you. They then shame you for your response. They’ll defend their behavior by saying they were ‘only joking’ or ‘having a laugh’ and then add insult to injury by telling you that you’re being ‘overly emotional’ or ‘too sensitive’.

Other ways they manipulate you is they’ll tell you they love you to get sex. Or They will try to make you angry or sad or jealous, anything to get what they want. Manipulators know that if they can make you FEEL something, they can make you DO something.

Don’t let anyone manipulate you into doing something you don’t want to. Your decisions should be based upon a combination of your intuition and logic. If you don’t want to do something, you have every right to say no. If it doesn’t feel good or right, it’s definitely a no.

11. THEY MAKE LIFE DIFFICULT

Ease and flow will put you at rest and make you feel empowered. This is a narcissist and a manipulator’s worst nightmare! To get you back where they want you they will disrupt your peace and counter everything you do and say.

The more agreeable you are, the more disagreeable they become. The nicer you are, the nastier they are. If you need help, they are unavailable. If you need affection, they will withhold it. If you say it’s red, they will insist it is orange. If you say left, they will go right. They deliberately undermine and invalidate everything you say and do.

A frustrated, angry and exhausted victim is what they require. They will do whatever it takes to put you where they want you. Notice when you are being countered and simply disengage.

12. THEY PRESSURE YOU INTO MAKING RASH DECISIONS

The moment you feel under pressure to do something you are making a decision from a fear-based mindset: fear of running out of time, fear of losing out, fear of a missed opportunity.

Remember the adage,

“What’s meant for you won’t pass you by.”

Unless it is a genuine emergency or a matter of life and death, there’s always time to sleep on it and think things through. Some of my biggest regrets in life have come from hasty decision-making when under pressure from a manipulator.

Be especially cautious when people pressure you for money. This is an old sales tactic. The manipulator puts pressure on you to make a decision before you’re ready. They hook you in as quickly as possible before you can change your mind. Notice when this is happening and say,

“I’ll get back to you when I’ve had time to think about it.”

CONCLUSION

Narcissists and manipulators are everywhere! The key is to recognize when you are being played. Notice when you are in an unhealthy dynamic with a manipulative person by identifying these patterns of behavior. If someone uses these manipulation tactics once or twice, don’t give them another chance to wound you.

Covert manipulation is tricky to spot but by educating yourself, you will more easily be able to notice when it is happening to you. The secret is not to make excuses for the other person’s bad behavior!

People with integrity don’t manipulate others for personal gain. If you have a history of abuse or consider yourself a people-pleaser, then knowing these strategies is especially important. Manipulation can only work in the shadows. By enlightening yourself you are empowering yourself. Being able to name these manipulation strategies will help you to identify toxic behavior and make you much more difficult to manipulate.

Learn to set boundaries. be assertive. Above all, trust your gut and listen to the small, still voice within.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Character Disturbance: the phenomenon of our age by George K. Simon Ph.D.

Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren’t by Henry Cloud, John Townsend

Narcissistic Abuse: A to Z Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder Encyclopedia: The Narcissism Bible by Sam Vaknin