If you are the target of guilt bombs being hurled at you, needlessly, you can defend yourself from the mental assault. Manipulators are skilled in the craft of making others fall under their spell. But a simple step can leave the assailant helpless, instead of you.
The subtle emotional abuse can come from many actors. Exploiters exist in family, community, job-environment, commerce, religion, and politics. Constant vigilance against devious intruders is necessary to detect schemers’ attempts to control of your senses.
You and I have seen someone preying on our weaknesses, or playing victim, to engage us into submission. The fear card is often dealt by parents unto children when kids don’t abide by parental orders. Being threatened with punishment is a common sign of control maneuvers in action.
There are various forms of manipulative behavior to guard against. Among the types are lying, denying, contempt, gaslighting, silent-treatment, verbal-abuse, cyber-bullying, and others. The effect of most malevolent acts is mentally devastating to most people. Confusion, depression and helplessness are symptoms when subject to such trickery.
One must ask, “Where and when did the cunning tendencies originate?” The place-and -time is found by traveling back to many generations ago and into ancient times.
Survival of social unit was essential against the backdrop of violence and subjugation from outside forces. To have a cohesive defense against enemies, all members of community, whether willing, or unwilling, had to contribute to the fight. Those reluctant to involve were justifiably shamed into action.
The same ancestral controlling maneuvers are applied today for individual gains, however.
Why is this background important? It is essential to realize that mental games often played on someone are learned from previous generational examples. Role models indoctrinate youth subliminally. From one family to the next, the cycle repeats itself while occurring under the radar. Ignoring the problem only enables the usurper to become more deceptive.
Bottom line, eventual victims of intimidation, bullying, or other connivance must be on guard. At first sign of being baited into submission, the likely subjects must remove themselves from the line of fire. They need to walk away from and ignore the assailant. This move will render the tormentor impotent knowing his/her control has evaporated. A conscious effort to preempt the manipulator’s power is the first step to foil the modern victimizer and put an end to the vicious cycle.