Actually, It Can Happen To You. It Might Already Have.

In the last few years, media attention of narcissism, manipulation and abuse has gone up.

This is partly driven by news covering the range of human reactions and behaviours provoked by the behaviours of extreme personalities like Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Ravi Zacharias etc. This has also been fuelled by interest in true crime and true corporate crime as a TV genre. We've seen corporate hucksters like Adam Newman of WeWork ("WeCrashed") and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos ("The Dropout") get equal media attention as cult leader creeps like Keith Raniere of NXIVM (The Vow) and serial swindlers ("Dirty John", "The Tinder Swindler").

When we consume such content at voyeuristic arm's length and just pay attention to the salacious details rather than study the strategies and patterns of the behaviour, we might be tempted to think: "Gosh, I would never be that dumb. How can anyone sane have believed what that (narcissist/abuser/swindler/creep/cult leader) said? How could anyone have stayed that long in that (cult/relationship/organisation/group)?"

What all the cult deprogrammers, therapists specialising in abuse recovery and survivors say is this: actually, it can happen to you. It might already have.

Mark Vicente, a former member of NXVIM turned whistle-blower and top critic, explained with great frustration in The Vow, “We didn’t join a cult. Nobody joins a cult. They join a good thing. And then they realize they were fucked.”

Vincente's point echoes the point made by many other survivors of abuse and manipulation: I wanted good things from what I thought was a good person. They gave it long enough to hook me in. And once I was in, they pulled the rug from under me.

Our vulnerability is the Good things that we want: Friendship. Love. Belonging. Mission. Warmth. Affection. Affirmation. Opportunities. Ideals etc. What went wrong is the person(s) that we wanted these things from turned out to have secret bad intentions.

The sobering thing to realise is that when we start thinking "it can't happen to me", you're likely to be part of the problem or be so steeped in the problem that you cannot see what's happening.

You could be the enabler. You could be the unwitting proxy and flying monkey of the abuser. You could be the hands-off bystander. You might be a current unwitting victim. You might even be the next victim.

The first time I came across manipulation was as a teenager. The manipulator was another teenage girl. We were acquaintances. For some reason I did not understand, she asked me to accompany her on a date with her then-boyfriend who did not speak English. I went along because that's the kind of dumb situations you find yourself in as a dumb teenager. On this very awkward lunch date, she explained casually to me in English how naive and in love he was and how she could twist him around her finger if she wished. I still remember she even held up her finger to emphasise her point. All this while the innocent boy just sat there eating his lunch, smiling at her and me. I did not have the vocabulary, the life experience, the skills to process what on earth this was about. I just knew this was not right, this was too wierd and I needed to get out of this lunch - and this bizarre acquaintance-ship. I didn't know how to tell this boy (who was a stranger to me) what a sociopath he was dating. I wish I could. I wish I did. I didn't know the word sociopath back then. I could not grasp then why a person might want to do this to another person, let alone have a deep need to drag someone else in to bear witness to their trickery. I don't know what happened to him - or her for that matter.

Another time I crossed paths with manipulation was in a work meeting with a leader. What I could not understand was why as I was talking with this leader, the second-in-command was sitting at the other end of the meeting room with some other members of staff, having their private conversations throughout the meeting with side glances and private laughter. It was so weird watching the leader get undermined in front of me (an external consultant) by their own second-in-command. The leader would occasionally ask for opinions from this second-in-command and the second gave comments back that were quite disrespectful of the leader. It was painful to watch and I did not understand why the leader tolerated it. At that time, I was quite young and less experienced in my work in organisational consultancy and was unsure of whether it was my place to let a client know what I felt. Later when I carried out a training session attached to this project, I shared a personal story of how I teach empathy in hospital settings because I encountered the pain of having an unempathetic doctor butcher the announcement of my father's terminal cancer diagnosis. This second-in-command took the trouble to come up to me after the event to say with a smile on her face, "Just so you know, I don't think the doctor did anything wrong. I think you're over sensitive. :)" And then she walked away as if she had won. Till this day, I have no idea what that was about. I hate knowing that this second-in-command might be a first-in-command somewhere out there by now. I wish I said something. I wish I knew what I was looking at was not to be just brushed off as weird behaviour. It was wrong.

Fast forward a decade or two later, after encountering one too many painful instances of "I don't know what this is but there's something very wrong here" behaviour along the way in professional and even church settings, I finally wisened up and started studying what abuse and manipulation was.

I needed to know what I was dealing with - and once I know, I cannot un-know.

The more I hear other people's experiences with manipulation in their personal and professional lives, the more disgusted I am that we did not receive an early education in how to guard against these tactics. This is why I write or repost content of this nature, it is my small act of public education so people don't have to suffer from manipulation as survivors or perpetuate manipulation as unwitting enablers.

The next time you hear of terrible things done by terrible people, don't seek out the salacious details. Salacious details are a distraction. What we must learn to pay attention to are the strategies. The salacious details change. The strategies stay the same.

I just came across this excellent summary of manipulative tactics in the workplace "Are You Being influenced or Manipulated?" by Harvard Business Review.

Manipulation is defined by the article as any tactics that someone uses

• to change your perceptions of them and their behaviour
• or to get you to do things that may not be in your best interest.

I am reproducing the list they used here. I thought their simple examples really bring it home that someone might have used it on you before and you didn't even know it was manipulation:

1. Casting Self-Doubt

• Your manager overtly nags you, criticizes you, or verbally abuses you for not doing something. (Why can’t you ever get things right?)
• It can also take the form of gaslighting, where they make you question your own beliefs about yourself negatively.
• It can also manifest as passive-aggressiveness, microaggressions, or silent treatment (ignoring and avoiding you) targeted at making you feel guilty and casting self-doubt about your skills to make you do things differently. (You really think you made a decision that was in our best interest, Jen?)

2. Superficial Charm

• Your manager might use praise, compliments, small favors, and excessive public recognition to get you to accept responsibilities beyond your role. Often requests to do additional work can follow the public praise and glory. (Wan exemplified leadership with their work on the XYZ project, and I’m hoping they will make the ABC project as successful by taking it up.)
• This can lead you to feeling obligated to reciprocate with a “yes” even if saying yes is not conducive to your work-life balance or mental health.

3. Social Comparisons

• Your manager might constantly talk about the strengths of others in front of you (You should role model after Dave. He really knows how to get his ideas approved) or discuss some form of an ideal employee (Great team players check their ego at the door) to indicate to you the role model you should be emulating.
• This subtle approach is designed to make you feel inadequate and push you to do things their way.

4. Misinformation

• This is when your manager feeds you with misinformation about others in your workplace to make you develop negative perceptions of them. They may criticize others (Ira’s ideas are never action-worthy) and repeatedly provide you with alternative facts in ways that you cannot verify. (I think Ji-Woo may have presented the idea as theirs because the credits were not in any particular order.)
• The more they repeat the misinformation, the more that information feels authentic to you. This is one way for the manipulator to build trust with you and make you feel fortunate that you are working for them and not those other people they tell you about."

______________

What I appreciated about the article is that it emphasises how it is impossible to completely innoculate yourself from manipulation.

"What is unfortunate is that manipulation is most likely to occur in relationships where the person knows you well. Research shows that close relationships are more susceptible to manipulation because the parties involved know each other’s vulnerabilities, desires, needs, and weaknesses. But it would be a lonely world if we distanced ourselves from everyone because we feared being manipulated.

So what do you do? The best idea is to learn some techniques to lower your susceptibility and boost your cognitive immunity to manipulation."

The article also gives a quick list of what might make you extra susceptible to manipulation. I put them in bullet points and added 1-2 more.

• a high need to please others, excessive fear of displeasing others
• over concern about what others think and feel about you
• excessive seeking of approval and acceptance of particular individuals more than others
• general difficulty in saying no
• love of gossip and being "in the know"
• constantly justifying the motives and putting a positive spin on a person’s actions out of loyalty: Denying their ill motives and giving them more benefit of the doubt by coming up with a logical reason for their manipulative behaviors.
• extraordinary sense of commitment to relationships at expense of your own well being or reputation: sustaining and protecting people even when they hurt you or hurt others

What I have learnt the hard way over time, more than once, is this:

Anyone who is using clever words, intimidation, charisma, slyness, their powerful connections, their loyal followers, their gossipy network of whisperers to convince you "there's something wrong with you and you are the problem" might be casting their spell to convince you to look away from what is the wrong thing that they are doing and that they are the real problem.

Anyone who is using clever words, intimidation, charisma, slyness, their powerful connections, their loyal followers, their gossipy network of whisperers to convince you "there's something wrong with (Person X) and (Person X) is the problem" might be casting their spell to convince you to look away from what is the wrong thing that they are doing to Person X. Don't fall for that trick either.

If something feels confusing and wrong, it IS confusing and wrong.

If someone is sharing or saying or asking something of you that feels weird and wrong, it IS weird and wrong.

If someone is oversharing things with you about other people that feels like too much information, it IS too much information.

You are likely dealing with a manipulator. And it's ok to call it out. Their greatest weapon is our confusion about whether there's something wrong with us - not them.

Know your values. Trust your self. And don't be afraid to walk away from people and situations that are confusing, weird, "too much" and just wrong.

They are not for you and they are not your people.