Toll free (NT only): 1800 193 123 www.easa.org.au Assisting Territorians since 1982

October 2016

In this issue… Signs of Psychological & Emotional Manipulation

Long Term Effects of Weak Boundaries

Upcoming CORP Public Workshops...

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Long Term Effects of Weak Boundaries Stefanie Flores, MA, LCADC

Setting healthy boundaries is one of the most popular and important topics that clients ask about. We know boundaries are important, but why do we need strong boundaries? What happens when you don’t establish boundaries? Let’s explore the long-term consequences of weak or inconsistent boundaries.

As a therapist who has worked with recovering addicts, the prison population, juveniles, and abuse survivors, I’ve learned there is one topic that we all struggle with – learning healthy boundaries.

Understanding our boundaries, or the imaginary fences around our lives, is a concept that isn’t regularly taught. Yet it’s so necessary for our survival.

In short, healthy boundaries are the limits we set for ourselves. They are the rules that govern our lives and tell others what’s not acceptable in our life. Parents teach personal boundaries when they discuss “stranger danger” and “appropriate touching.”

Unhealthy boundaries include, but are not limited to:

Telling too much of your personal business.

Saying yes when you mean to say no. Going against your personal values to

please others. Giving to others in order to feel

appreciated or valued. Falling in love quickly with anyone who

helps you or pays attention to you. Jumping in and out of relationships

quickly. Refusing to speak up about other people’s

poor boundaries to avoid confrontations.

What are the long-term effects of weak boundaries?

1. Getting taken advantage of – This can range from your boss, spouse, love interest, roommate, siblings or family members. If you have trouble saying NO, needy people will gravitate towards you. This can lead to resentment in your workplace or your home. In reality, if people are only being nice to you in order to use you, is that relationship genuine?

2. Multiple unhealthy relationships – Our intimate relationships are some of the most precious and time-consuming relationships in our lives. Unhealthy relationships can lead to damaged finances, damaged familial ties, damaged reputation and even worse,

14 Signs of Psychological & Emotional

Manipulation By Preston Ni, M.S.B.A.

Psychological manipulation can be defined as the exercise of undue influence through mental distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention to seize power, control, benefits and/or privileges at the victim’s expense.

It is important to distinguish healthy social influence from psychological manipulation. Healthy influence occurs between most people and is part of the give and take of constructive relationships. In psychological manipulation, one person is used for the benefit of another. The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance of power and exploits the victim to serve an agenda.

Below are fourteen tricks manipulative people often use to coerce others into a position of disadvantage – it is not an exhaustive list, but contains subtle and strident examples of coercion. People who act in the following manners might not be deliberately trying to manipulate you – they may simply have poor habits. Regardless, it’s important to recognise these behaviours in situations where your rights, interests and safety are at stake.

1. Home Court Advantage

A manipulative individual may insist that you meet and interact in a physical space where they can exercise more dominance and control, e.g. their office, home, car, or other spaces of ownership and familiarity.

2. Let You Speak First to Establish Your Baseline and Look for Weaknesses

Like a salesperson, they’ll ask general and probing questions to establish a baseline about your thinking and behaviour, which they then evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. This hidden agenda questioning occurs at the workplace or in personal relationships.

3. Manipulation of Facts, for example:

Lying. Excuses. Two-faced. Blaming the victim for causing their own victimization. Distorting the truth. Strategic disclosure. Withholding key information. Exaggeration. Understatement. Black/white thinking.

4. Overwhelm You with Facts and Statistics

Some individuals enjoy intellectual bullying by presuming to be the expert in certain areas, taking advantage by imposing alleged facts, statistics, and information you may know little about. This can apply to sales and finance negotiations, professional discussions, social and relational arguments. By presuming expertise, the manipulator pushes through their agenda more convincingly, sometimes using this technique for no other reason than to feel intellectually superior.

5. Overwhelm You with Procedures and Red Tape

Some use bureaucracy – paperwork, procedures, laws and rules, committees, and other roadblocks to maintain position and power, while making your life more difficult. This technique can be used to delay fact-finding and truth-seeking, hide flaws and weaknesses, and evade scrutiny.

6. Raising Their Voice and Displaying Negative Emotions

Raising their voice during discussions is a form of aggressive manipulation. The assumption is, if they project their voice loudly enough, or display negative emotions, you’ll back down and submit to their coercion. The aggressive voice is frequently combined with strong body language such as standing or gesticulating to increase impact.

7. Negative Surprises

Negative surprises used to put you off-balance for a psychological advantage can range from under-cutting in negotiations to a sudden outburst that they are unable to deliver in some way. Typically, it comes without warning, permitting little time to prepare to counter their move. The manipulator may expect additional concessions in order to continue working with you.

8. Giving You Little or No Time to Decide

A common sales and negotiation tactic, where the manipulator pressures you to make a decision before you’re ready. By applying tension, they hope you will cave in to the aggressor’s demands.

9. Negative Humour to Poke at Weaknesses and Disempower You

Critical remarks, often disguised as humour or sarcasm, to make you feel inferior and less secure. Such as comments on your appearance, your old-model smart phone, your background and qualifications, the fact that you walked in two minutes late and out of breath. Making you look bad or feel bad enables the aggressor to declare themselves psychological superior.

10. Consistently Judge and Criticize You to Make You Feel Inadequate

Here, the manipulator outright picks on you -- by marginalizing, ridiculing and dismissing you, they keep you off-balance to maintain their superiority. They deliberately foster the impression there’s something wrong with you and, despite your efforts, you are inadequate and never good enough. Significantly, the focus is on the negative with no genuine or constructive advice, or offer of meaningful solutions.

11. The Silent Treatment

By deliberately not responding to reasonable calls, messages, emails, or other contact, the manipulator makes you wait, intending to fuel doubt and uncertainty in your mind. Silent treatment is a mind-game where silence is used as leverage.

12. Pretend Ignorance

A classic playing dumb tactic –pretending they don’t understand what you want, the manipulator (passive-aggressive) makes you take on their responsibility. Children often use this tactic to avoid, delay and manipulate adults into doing what they don’t want to do. Adults too use this tactic when they have something to hide or obligation they wish to avoid.

13. Guilt-Baiting, for example:

Unreasonable blaming. Targeting recipient’s soft spot. Holding you responsible for the manipulator’s happiness and success, or unhappiness and failures. By targeting an emotional weakness or vulnerability, the manipulator coerces the victim into ceding to unreasonable requests or demands.

14. Victimhood, for example:

Exaggerated and imagined personal issues or health issues. Dependency. Co-dependency. Deliberate frailty to elicit sympathy or favour. Playing weak, powerless, or the martyr. The purpose of manipulative victimhood is to exploit the recipient’s good will, conscience, sense of duty and obligation, or protective and nurturing instinct to extract personal benefits and concessions.

www.psychologytoday.com

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violence and addiction. When we have firm and healthy boundaries, we govern the rules for our life, our finances, how we interact with family and our work ethic. If you have children, you hold a sacred key as the gatekeeper of their safety. If someone in your life is not healthy for you, it places your children at risk for witnessing similar unhealthy patterns. Give yourself time in between relationships to assess yourself, lick your wounds and reset your boundaries.

3. Inability to trust others – If a person continues to be taken advantage of by others (boss, partner, family), they will eventually question who they can trust. Healthy boundaries mean you can trust yourself, your decisions and trust that you will be resilient during tough times. The inability to trust others can lead to isolation, burn out and being less willing to ask for help. If your connections to others become weakened, your level of resilience may weaken as well.

Boundaries are not meant to be all or nothing. Our imaginary fences move up and down based on our circumstances. Naturally, people have higher fences after they’ve been hurt. But if our fences remain weak, the long-term effects could be damaging. Therapy, spiritual support, support groups, and/or co-dependency groups can help you gain the confidence to keep those boundaries strong!

Stefanie Flores is a Licensed Clinical Drug and Alcohol Counsellor in Nevada, US. blogs.psychcentral.com

“...people will forget

what you said,

people will forget what

you did, but people will

never forget how you

made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

1928—2014

Page 4 Take it E.A.S.y

2016 Public Workshop Calendar

Darwin | Alice Springs | Katherine

DARWIN Key Communication Skills:

Getting Your Message Across (Full Day Workshop) Tuesday, 4 October

Basic Counselling Skills (Half Day Workshop)

Wednesday, 12 October

Mediation Skills for Managers (Full Day Workshop)

Wednesday, 19 October

Anxiety & Coping with Negative Emotions

(CORP Talk) Thursday, 27 October

www.corp.org.au

DONT MISS OUT ON THIS GREAT OFFER!

Book your place in any OCTOBER 2016 CORP Public Workshop

by 10 October 2016 and receive a >>>

Note: offer does not apply to CORP Talks $50

DISCOUNT

Darwin (Head Office) P. (08) 8941 5661 F. (08) 8941 0746 corp@corp.org.au www.corp.org.au

Alice Springs (08) 8953 4225

Katherine (08) 8941 5661 corp@corp.org.au

Full Day Workshops 8.30am – 4pm $265* per person Lunch & Refreshments included

Half Day Workshops 8.30am – 12noon $140* per person Refreshments included

CORP Talks $39* per person

ONLY 16* PLACES AVAILABLE FOR EACH WORKSHOP — get your registration in early!

Workshop Locations Darwin Level 2 Highway Arcade, 47 Stuart Highway Stuart Park NT

Alice Springs Locations in town centre: confirmed upon booking

Katherine Regional Training Centre 19 Second Street

*Katherine conditions: $285pp for full day $175pp for half day $45pp for CORP Talks Maximum 10 participants

ALICE SPRINGS Key Communication Skills:

Getting Your Message Across (Full Day Workshop) Tuesday, 18 October

KATHERINE Increasing Your Tolerance

(CORP Talk) Wednesday, 19 October