The Psychological Disorientation of Manipulation: Strategies to Recover from the Drama – Alan Godwin

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He’s in my head. She sucks all the air out of the room. I’m so tired of the drama. These are common ways of expressing the all-consuming intrusiveness of being emotionally manipulated. The manipulators might be relationship partners, neighbors, co-workers, family members, or “friends”, and they occupy psychological space so pervasively that many clients present with complaints of confusion, exhaustion, and the struggle to even know what’s real.

Dr. Godwin focuses on the psychological effects of manipulation and how therapists can help clients recover from this deeply damaging emotional abuse. Discover how manipulators succeed at getting inside people’s heads, how they wreak havoc in all aspects of a person’s life, the best treatment interventions to assist your clients in their recovery, and strategies to avoid being manipulated. You’ll walk away with practical tools to help clients overcome the negative psychological impact of manipulation.

1. Examine the manipulation process and common manipulative behaviors in clients
2. Analyze the relationship between reasoning deficiencies and emotionally manipulative behavior as it relates to case conceptualization
3. Describe behavioral patterns characteristic of people who tend to be most susceptible to emotional manipulation for the purposes of client psychoeducation
4. Explain common responses to and risks of emotionally manipulative behavior in clients
5. Compare strategies clients can use to effectively counter manipulation in a variety of contexts
6. Identify common limitations of manipulative relationships for the purposes of client psychoeducation

HOW MANIPULATORS EXPLOIT

• Public-private incongruence
• Consistent inconsistency
• Projective identification
• False moral equivalence
• Incremental acclamation
• Exploitation of naiveté
• Identity under-development
• Deficient moral reasoning
• Cognitive dissonance
• Information glut
• Demagoguery

HOW MANIPULATORS WREAK HAVOC

• Mood alterations
• Value alteration
• Self-deprecation
• Lingering bewilderment
• Foreclosed thinking
• Follower corruption
• Groupthink
• Tribalism
• Societal contentiousness

TREATMENT STRATEGIES

• Know the tactics
• Value your signals
• Trust in increments
• Seek external validation
• Limit the re-telling
• Avoid future ensnarements
• Develop ambiguity tolerance
• Cultivate independent critical thinking
• Allow for conflicting opinions
• Resist the tribal temptation
• Seek common ground

CASE EXAMPLES