Manipulative people, such as narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, lurk around every corner. These people defy any logic. Societal values and rules don’t apply to them. Instead, they develop a set of manipulation tactics and crazy skills that have the power to distort your perception of reality and make you doubt your logic and even sanity.
The problem with these people is that no matter how much you try to understand their world of manipulations and lies and how their twisted mind functions so as to control them, you’ll always end up manipulated yourself.
So, in order to protect yourself from the negativity and sick mind games of manipulative people, make sure you watch out for the following 8 diversion methods these people use to defeat you and shut you up:
1. Patronizing
Manipulative people speak to you and treat you as if you’re stupid or completely unimportant. This is their way of gaining control of you as well as shaming you, both when they’re alone with you and in public.
They speak to you in a patronizing way so as to shut you up, demean you, and weaken your confidence. And the less confident they make you feel, the easier it becomes for them to make you say or do things that suit their needs.
2. Gaslighting
Manipulative people are masters at twisting your sense of reality. To make you depend on them and deprive you of your ability to form an independent, objective judgment, they use a plethora of manipulation tactics to make you doubt yourself to the point of questioning your own logic and perceptions.
By making you feel insecure, weak and vulnerable, manipulative people get closer and closer to achieving their desired goal.
3. Diversion
To prevent you from winning an argument or complaining about something bad they said or did to you, manipulative people change the subject as a way to divert your attention away from the conversation and avoid taking responsibility for their bad actions.
A manipulative person will do everything in their power to prevent you from calling them out on their bullsh*t. Regardless of how badly they treated you or hurt your feelings, they’ll never admit it and apologize to you for it.
4. Projection
Projection is the most effective technique that manipulative people use to skillfully displace responsibility of their own negative traits and bad behavior by attributing them to someone else.
For example, a girlfriend or a boyfriend might be cheating on her/his partner, yet, instead of confessing to having an affair and apologizing to their partner, they may call up their partner’s sensitivity and clinginess as the reason for their infidelity.
5. Negative Criticism
Manipulative individuals don’t like it when other people are more successful than them. So, if you have a successful career, they’ll make sure they make all your successes appear like they were achieved by mere luck. They’ll always find something about your career, relationships, and even physical appearance to be dissatisfied with and criticize you for.
With manipulative people is simple – nothing you do will be ever good enough.
6. Sarcasm And Derogatory Comments
They’ll make sarcastic, hostile comments about your appearance, your intellect, your career, and even your loved ones, and then just tell you: “Oh, come on- don’t be mad, I was just joking.”
This is their way of belittling you so as to make you feel insecure and vulnerable – the way they always feel themselves.
7. Devaluation
A manipulative person will be kind to you and shower you with compliments and affection one moment and then devalue you and make fun of you for all the things they praised you for in the first place the next.
And if you try to complain to them about the way they treat you, they’ll be quick to tell you that you’re just making things up and that you’re being too sensitive, or even ‘paranoid.’
When you’re around a manipulative person, you never know which version of them you’re getting.
8. Triangulation
Well, bringing in the perspective of another person into the mix is most likely the dirtiest trick up their sleeve.
Manipulative individuals use people that are close to them so as to validate their bad behavior and convince the victim that they’re really guilty of something. In this way, they put the victim in a submissive position in which the latter desperately tries to defend themselves – of course, in vain.
Should you have any questions regarding this topic or one of your own interest, feel free to email me at [email protected]
