There are no two kinds
of manipulators, only one kind – the kind who plays the victim. It is incredibly
hard to spot them, because they appear so much like real victims.
At times even
they are unaware about their poisonous skills, but they take pride in achieving
their goals. They always work with the end in mind - one of Stephen Covey’s seven effective habits.
Every little action, often done slowly and steadily takes them closer to their ultimate
goal– to extract something from someone.
"Playing the victim" type of
manipulation involves the manipulator telling the actual victim that he feels
guilty about the bad things he did, although he will continue to do the
bad thing, and constantly crib and repeat how guilty he feels for doing
that.
For eg: He will tell you that he had a poor
upbringing, bad relatives and a difficult life all along- the reason why he is taking drugs or the reason why he did that terrible thing to a friend.You get hooked
because his troubles are much worse than yours.
You feel bad for him, nothing
wrong, it is only human nature to feel bad and sympathize when you hear a sad
story. But often their stories are not true, or they are embellished versions of a small incident, or a stroy borrowed from a real sufferer.
In reality the
manipulator feels very little to zero guilt, but the actual victim feels sorry
for the manipulator, thinking that the manipulator is the victim. The actual victim slowly falls for the whims of the manipulator, the web of the manipulator grows slowly and steadily. He will take things slowly, never
rush you into things, and probably behave in an admirable way at unexpected situations.
That way he builds a sense of awe and in turn develop the most important trait of a manipulator - credibility. Rarely do we associate credibility with a manipulator, as a converse
anyone with credibility has even fewer association with manipulator. That's the strength of a master manipulator, and that makes him very difficult to spot.
Once the credibility is
achieved, he will begin his manipulation with a renewed vigor, by this time the victim has reached a level of hypnosis - the inertia moves the victim forward.
As with Newton's First law, without an external force - a third person or an awareness about such manipulators, the victim continues to remain in the grips of the manipulator. The only exception is the completion of the goals of the manipulator.
At that instant, the victim is unceremoniously dropped out , and often ostracized by the manipulator. The victim continues to be in dark about what had happened.
This is from one of
the case studies
This is about a man
who had actively participated with two others in the vicious bludgeoning of his
victim. When questioned about the motivation for his act, he complained
that he had no idea how the vivid memories of the event had haunted him and
that he would probably have to live with them for the rest of his life.
All of a sudden, don't you feel tempted to feel somewhat sorry for him. Here
he was, a vicious killer with a long history of cruelty to others, and he was
beginning to appear as a victim of post-traumatic stress.
That's playing victim.
Only a very experienced manipulator can pull it off. And some of us might have even played it at a very innocent level.
When the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other person to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim.
Have you met anyone
like that?
Case study reference:
