When they say, "I'm doing this for your own good," only we know that we want to die.
This is called "emotional blackmail" in psychology.
For example, after two lovers break up, one party threatens to kill the other and refuses to break up; Divorced couples, one party threatens the child to achieve the purpose of controlling the other party; Strong parents threaten their children by breaking off relationships.
It can be seen that emotional blackmail mostly occurs on both sides of close relationship. Blackmailers use various means to emotionally blackmail their victims, threatening to suffer if they don't do what they ask.
They usually threaten and intimidate their victims, and if they don't obey, they will be labeled as selfish/incompetent.
Emotional blackmail is a classic psychological book, which has been selling well all over the world for 20 years. The author, Dr. Susan Forward, is a senior American psychotherapist and a best-selling author in The New York Times.
In the book, the author uses a large number of cases from family and workplace to accurately analyze the motives and routines of emotional blackmailers, from identifying and diagnosing to coping with self-help, teaching you to stop loss, rebuilding confidence, breaking the game in the name of love and ending the vicious circle of repeated concessions.
In my opinion, emotional blackmailers succeed because the victims worry too much, and blackmailers just seize our "dead hole" and "soft spot" and force us to yield. This is the so-called barefoot who is not afraid of wearing shoes. To get rid of emotional blackmail, you must take off your shoes and be fearless.
Emotional blackmail is a kind of control, and it is the most powerful form of control action.
Dr. Susan Forward pointed out in the book Emotional Blackmail that no matter what kind of emotional blackmail, it has such characteristics:
Try to control you, ignore your protests, suppress you with personality and motivation advantages, and avoid the real problems between you.
Emotional blackmailers know where the victim's weakness lies. They will use the fear, sense of responsibility and guilt in the victim's heart to force the victim to do something according to his own requirements through threats and intimidation.
In fact, everyone has three kinds of bad emotions, fear, responsibility and guilt, but the blackmailer will magnify them, like fog, making the victim lack determination and confused and unable to see the blackmailer's behavior clearly.
The victim clearly knew that he would feel uncomfortable agreeing to the blackmailer's request, but he had to agree under some pressure, and finally the intimate relationship ceased to exist.
Emotional blackmail usually goes through six stages-demand, resistance, pressure, threat, submission and restart.
Requirements: Emotional blackmailers put forward non-negotiable and unchangeable requirements for their victims in order to achieve their own goals.
Resistance: the victim will know his own needs and feel uncomfortable inside, and refuse the demands of the emotional blackmailer.
Pressure: After being rejected, the emotional blackmailer will not consider the feelings of the victim, but will continue to exert pressure to force the victim to accept the request.
Threats: Emotional blackmailers may threaten to make the victims miserable and unhappy, because the victims make them very miserable.
Yield: The victim finally gave in for some reason, although he was unhappy.
Restart: The blackmailer puts pressure on the victim, and the victim feels fear/responsibility/guilt. In order to end the blackmailer's persecution as soon as possible, the victim can only give in. Finally, the two sides formed such a mode of getting along: one side pressed and the other side gave in.
There are four ways for emotional blackmailers to create fog: dichotomy, morbid method, United front method and negative comparison method.
They use one or several methods to "demand-pressure" the victims, and finally make the victims yield, so that this mode of getting along goes round and round.
Through these methods, blackmailers make their unreasonable behavior look more acceptable and excusable.
The political method of dividing good from bad is called "dichotomy".
Emotional blackmailers are experts in dichotomy. They will whitewash their personality traits and behaviors, and at the same time describe the victims negatively, labeling them selfish, reserved, naive, ignorant, ungrateful and fragile.
These labels will shake our self-evaluation, internalize the labels imposed on us by emotional blackmailers, and gradually agree with the evaluation of our observation, personality and values by emotional blackmailers. When we agree with the evaluation of emotional blackmailers, our real needs are distorted into personality defects.
In order to pull the victim back to the position of blackmail, emotional blackmailers usually threaten the person who tells the truth, which greatly arouses the fear of the victim.
In a family with domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism and other problems, family members usually keep silent tacitly. Once someone exposes his family's dirty laundry and breaks the unspoken rule of maintaining family stability by denying and keeping secrets, the person who tells the truth will often be banned by other family members and labeled as "crazy", "saboteur" and "unforgivable".
Susan Forward mentioned in her book that pathological changes, like dichotomy, make us doubt our memory, IQ and personality. Lesions are more harmful and make us distrust our mental state.
What this emotional blackmailer says in front of different family members is inconsistent. On the one hand, it does not recognize the contribution made by the victim and threatens the victim to abandon, expel, punish or retaliate against the victim who tells the truth; On the other hand, he plays a "sad man" in front of other family members who don't know the truth, accusing the victims and distorting their behavior, so as to win them over and let them blackmail the victims with themselves.
In addition, they will win over other friends and people that the victims care about and respect, so that emotional blackmailers can overwhelm the victims in number and make them feel lonely and depressed.
A common saying of emotional blackmailers with negative comparison is "Look at others". We are usually hurt by "other people's children", which comes from the negative comparison of parents. They will bring another person to the perfect standard. Compared with them, we are full of shortcomings.
In their opinion, why can others do it and you can't?
The author points out in the book that under this negative comparison, we will have the idea that we are not good enough, loyal enough and competent enough, which will lead to anxiety and guilt.
Under such psychological pressure, we will give in and let the emotional blackmailers get what they want, so as to prove that we are not as bad as they say.
The success of blackmailers is related to the characteristics of the victims.
The author points out in the book that people with the following personality characteristics are easily controlled by emotional blackmail:
Excessive need for others' approval, excessive fear of others' anger, maintaining peace at all costs, easy to assume more responsibilities for others, and often self-doubt.
Ah Zi in Tian Ba Long Bu is a natural emotional blackmailer. She is very dependent on her brother-in-law Qiao Feng. Once Qiao Feng's performance is not as good as her wish, she will come up with a killer weapon-"You promised Sister Zhu to take good care of me", so as to make Qiao Feng feel guilty and responsible, and achieve the purpose of controlling and emotionally blackmailing him.
She mistook this control of Qiao Feng for love, ignoring the real problem-Qiao Feng will never love her.
However, once emotional blackmail is formed, there is no balance of power. A Zi seems to have achieved her goal. When Qiao Feng takes care of her, their relationship seems to be quite harmonious. But she knows in her heart that this is not the love she wants at all. Because Qiao Feng's concern for her is to fulfill her dying promise to Arjun, not Qiao Feng's love and respect for Arjun.
In fact, the real initiative lies in Qiao Feng.
A Zi and Qiao Feng are like this, why not A Zi?
In order to please A Zi, you Tan Can did everything for her, even gouged out her eyes.
In these two relationships, A Zi has always been an emotional blackmailer, and she used He You.
There are nerve bundles in our body that promote the formation of emotions. These nerve bundles store various emotions, including happiness, anger, guilt, anxiety and vulnerability. These emotions are formed by our personality characteristics and childhood experiences.
These emotions reflect how others treat us, how we see ourselves, and the influence of past experiences on us.
The occurrence of something in life will arouse our emotional memory, which controls our logic and thinking ability and forms a fixed reaction mode.
Usually, emotions will expose our weaknesses. Emotional blackmailers are well aware of our weaknesses, abandon sympathy when they are afraid of losing, and use our weaknesses to meet their own needs.
The author also points out that it is the victims who provide emotional blackmailers with opportunities to hurt us step by step, and we cultivate emotional blackmailers ourselves.
As long as there is no direct opposition, every little emotional blackmail encourages and strengthens the blackmailer to continue to violate our dignity and integrity.
In emotional blackmail, the two sides are unequal. In essence, one side controls and the other side compromises, thus losing its complete self and dignity.
So, how to get rid of emotional blackmail?
Susan Forward gave this method in her book Emotional Blackmail.
When emotional blackmailers make demands on us, our hearts are more or less uncomfortable. This is the voice from our hearts, and we should follow its guidance.
When you are under pressure from emotional blackmailers, when you feel afraid, angry or timid about emotional blackmailers, when you feel that you can't stand the anger, crying and anger of the other party and emphasize how much you owe them, please take a deep breath and say "I can stand it" to yourself 10 times in a row.
Try to describe your past behavior in the opposite way. For example:
Change "My idea is wrong" to "I want what I want, even if it annoys the emotional blackmailer".
Change "it's not worth arguing about" to "I let the other side know my thoughts and bottom line".
Change "I will please others, but I don't know what I want" to "I do things for my own happiness. Like others, I know exactly what I want".
When you are overwhelmed by the pressure of emotional blackmailers, use SOS strategy. That is, stop, observe calmly and make a strategy.
When the emotional blackmailer puts pressure on you to answer immediately, you should stop and tell yourself that you can't make a decision immediately. Things are often not as urgent as emotional blackmailers say, so you must give yourself enough time to think. If the emotional blackmailer keeps putting pressure on you, you can say "I can stand it" and reiterate your position to them-I just need more time to consider your request.
Rethink their words and reactions from the perspective of onlookers, including facial expressions, emotions and body movements, as well as their habitual thoughts and reactions.
For example, our physical reaction is to tighten our backs? Neck cramp? Rapid heartbeat? Or are your cheeks burning?
Find out our emotional tipping point. The words, speech speed, intonation, body language and even taste used by emotional blackmailers will cause special repercussions in our hearts in various ways. They will activate our inner beliefs and systems and make us make concessions.
Our anxiety, sadness, guilt and sense of responsibility when we are subjected to emotional blackmail all stem from our profound misunderstanding of ourselves. In order to change this pattern that I belittle, we must first change our beliefs.
Develop strategies according to different needs.
Needs are usually divided into three categories: unimportant needs, needs that involve some important issues and have affected your self-integrity, and needs for major decisions.
Different types of requests require different decisions and responses.
We made a conscious concession and agreed conditionally. This skillful refusal can help you achieve a "win-win compromise".
This kind of request will obviously make us feel uncomfortable inside. If you promise the other party, you may obviously violate your own standards, right and wrong concepts, and even self-esteem.
If relatives and friends borrow money from you, the amount is beyond your ability or will seriously affect your quality of life; Violation of professional ethics requirements; Your partner asks for intimacy when you are in a bad mood or in poor health, and so on.
At this time, we can ask ourselves, "If we promise, will it hurt me or others?" You can easily judge whether the demands of emotional blackmailers are reasonable or not.
A major decision usually needs more time to consider, because it is related to:
> the future of intimate relationships
> the trend of relationship with parents or relatives and friends
> whether to stay in an unpleasant working environment?
> huge investment and expenditure
In this case, what you need to do is to eliminate those elements that you can't accept and re-inject the concept of "fair pay and accept" that emotional blackmailers lack into your relationship.
However, if the other party violates the law, drinks, takes drugs, gambles, refuses to pay back the debt, refuses to admit it or fails to pay back the debt; Abuse your body and threaten your situation, you need to make a decisive decision and take action.
After correctly distinguishing the types of requirements, we can get rid of emotional blackmail by using non-defensive communication, turning enemies into friends, exchanging conditions and using humor.
Emotional blackmailers like to achieve their goals by shouting, sulking, pretending to be victims, threatening or accusing.
Victims always try their best to build an invisible high wall to isolate their fear, sense of responsibility and guilt.
But no matter what we say, it seems to add fuel to the fire and make the blackmailer worse.
At this time, we can try to say "I can understand your feelings" and "you are absolutely right" to the blackmailer, so that the blackmailer can become a passive audience and let you express your decision in a non-defensive way.
When emotional blackmail is deadlocked, we might as well invite each other to solve the problem together to change the subject.
When you want the other person to change, you have to change yourself.
In a basically good relationship, we usually play harmless jokes on each other to express our feelings.
Using humor can lower blood pressure, prevent violent conflicts and greatly reduce your fears.
Emotional blackmailers will use our fear, sense of responsibility and guilt to blackmail us into submission and fall into a vicious circle of "blackmail-submission".
Those so-called "for your own good", only we know, life is worse than death.
To break this state, we must break the old thinking and coping mode and constantly affirm ourselves.
When you encounter emotional blackmail, you should stop, calmly observe and think, formulate coping strategies, and use non-defensive communication to turn enemies into friends and exchange conditions, so that you can express your thoughts and decisions with humor. Thus breaking the vicious circle of blackmail and submission.