Are You the Target Of Emotional Blackmail?
Have you ever done something you didn’t want to do?
“I have.”
It’s an all too familiar scenario that plays out something like this:
I’m listening to a request from someone I care about that is important to me. I sense as they plead their case trying to convince me to follow their lead like, ‘I only want the best for us.’ Looking into their face; my stomach churns, my neck tightens, my shoulders hunch up as they target me jeopardizing our relationship, ‘You have to do this.’ Some unexplainable guilty fear overtakes me and I comply , ‘Yes’ in spite of my deepest emotion to do the opposite. I want to say ‘NO’ but I don’t!
I have just joined the “EBC”
Emotionally Blackmailed Club
If YOU can identify, this might be for you!
I’m not referring to the PM news stories of cases where cash is demanded for the safe return of a wife or child. I’m not siting exciting tales of spies who intimate world leaders to obtain high risk documents of warfare.
I am talking about the people in your life that have emotionally blackmailed you. They include: spouses, lovers, friends, children, co-workers, and bosses who use two powerful emotions, fear and guilt, to make YOU feel that YOU are the problem.
Six Methods that blackmailers use to target you:
- Threaten to make things difficult if you don’t go along or break up.
- Make it known that the problem is the effect of your noncompliance.
- Make big promises that never happen.
- Ignore or discount your thoughts or feelings.
- Tell you that you are bad if you don’t give in.
- Use money or affection as a pawn to be given or withdrawn depending on whether you do what they ask.
The Effects of Emotional Blackmailing:
Blackmailing leads to relationship that has no fun, good will, and intimacy.
What is left?
There only remains a shell without trust or caring. The couple creates a life of avoidance walking around certain topics as if the floor is made only of eggshells.
The dance of love is lost and the people hide more and more masking their true selves without caring or closeness.
MOST IMPORTANTLY:
The more you become what the blackmailer wants, the more we lose sight of who we are.
Today’s Mantra:
“Today, I will not open any blackmail.”
So it is!
