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Don't let others manipulate you by making you feel uncomfortable
Monday, 27 February 2006
We all want others to do things our way. If we can persuade those around us to somehow bend to our will, we feel that life's riches will be provided as a reward. So people can become very sneaky when it comes to trying to manipulate others. One of their most cunning tricks is to create uncomfortable situations that they hope you will be desperate to get out of.
Let's look at an example. Say someone you don't know very well wants to borrow your car. He could just ask for it, but he knows you'll probably say "no".
So instead, what he can do is try to make good friends with you. He could try quickly try to establish feelings of loyalty and mutual obligation by saying things like: "If you're ever in need, I'm the first person you should call".
If, being a polite person, you agree that such loyalty is indeed a good thing. He'll probably wait a bit, keeping up the friendly banter, before hitting you with: "Oh yeah, I forgot to ask. My sister is in town this weekend and I'd love to show her around. She doesn't have a lot of money and she doesn't get the chance to go on holiday much. Would you be a great friend and lend me your car."
The first thing he'll do after dropping this bombshell is shut up. An uncomfortable silence will be created and the air in the room will feel heavy and tense.
Our culprit has used an old trick of manipulation. He's deliberately created an uncomfortable situation, and he's leaving the burden of resolving it to you.
Almost everyone hates unresolved situations. Fiction writers use this to suck in their audiences. They create a situation that clearly needs resolving, in the hope that their readers will hang around long enough to find out how.
Who murdered the kindly grandmother? How will the hero get revenge after being so brutally cheated out of his life's savings? How will the will the wife react now that she's found out her husband has been committing adultery for years?
When we're thrown off balance by being put in (or witnessing, in the case of fiction) uncomfortable situations, we feel stressed and desperate to escape. We'll do almost anything to resolve things just so we can feel balanced and normal again.
Or so the creators of such situations hope.
So what do you do when confronted with such a situation, as you certainly will be many times in your life?
The first step is realizing what's going on. Someone is deliberately trying to put you off balance in order to get you to behave in the way they want. They are hoping to put you in an emotional state that will cloud your judgement. Don't let them do it!
Instead, let them see that you are perfectly comfortable with being in such a situation. Attempts to make you feel guilty, or angry, or disloyal, or any other prickly emotional state are a complete waste of time. You are unaffected by such transparent manipulations and they won't work.
Those who attempt such cheap tricks will soon catch onto the fact that they're dealing with a more experienced emotional opponent than they had originally thought.
"Sorry champ, but I don't lend my car to anyone for any reason. Say, hasn't the weather been pleasant lately?"
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