Roopa's Fangs

- Emotional Manipulators: the vampires that suck you dry.

Let's take this person say Roopa. You know her very well. She is in your circle of friends or you work with her or maybe she is a family member. Now let us try answering some questions about her.

• Do you feel exhausted emotionally after every time you interact with her?
  
• Do you feel that if you had a choice you would never want to meet with her?
  
• When she made that quick phone call, did you want to say No but ended up saying Yes?
  
• Do you remember details about the favors she has done for you but nothing about the ones you have done for her?
  
• Do you usually realize all this 'after' your interaction with her? Sometimes even days.

More number of 'Yes's to these questions, it is more likely Roopa is an emotional manipulator and you are one of her victims.

Yes. Emotional Manipulation is our subject today. It is about the people who suck our emotional energy and leave us exhausted, dazed and irritated. They are also called 'Emotional Vampires' - a metaphor little harsh but perfectly apt. But before we get in, I want to make myself clear on what my goal is in writing this.

What is this about?
Most of the materials out there on emotional manipulation (books, online articles etc.) talk mainly about two things: 1. How to spot people like Roopa and 2. What are the best ways to deal with them? And for some reason (at least to the extent I digged in) none of the authors seem to talk about what causes this behavior or how the whole thing works. Here are some examples: Article1, Article2, Article3, Book1 and Book2.

The main problem I have with this identify-and-deal approach is that it creates a 'YOU vs.THEM' scenario. When you finish the article or the book, you are left with a feeling that there are vampires around you, they are always out to get you and you are always the victim; which is far from how it is in reality. So there are two main points I want to stress on - which of course, are also the ones I see the authors repeatedly miss.

1. It is as important to try and understand emotional vampirism as it is to spot it and to know the best ways to deal with it.

2. Emotional vampires and victims of emotional manipulation are not two discrete groups of people. We all are vampires of different degrees and we are all victims at other times.

That being said, please note that this is not about blaming somebody or justifying somebody's behavior but is about understanding a part of us as human beings. Also note that both Roopa and You are metaphors created for the sake of argument. Roopa is on one end of the vampire spectrum and you are on the other. But in reality the grey area between the two is huge.

Okay now let’s get to it.. Who is this person Roopa?
Going about trying to understand Roopa and thus emotional vampirism, let us try and answer these 4 questions:

Q1. Who is she? - what characterizes her?

Q2. What does she want? - what are her goals?

Q3. How does she get the things she wants? - what means does she use to achieve her goals?

Q4. Why does she do it that way? - what are the reasons she ends up using those means?

Q1.Who is she? (there could be different versions of Roopa but the following are the most common forms)

• She is socially popular and you can't really figure why she is so popular.
  
• She has low self-esteem, suffers from depression.
  
• She will always make it look like she gets dumped with more work and responsibilities than she could handle.
  
• She looks like she is always busy and into doing something.
  
• She talks a lot. And is a very bad listener.
  
• She hates checklists or organizing to-do items especially when it is 'her' list of things to do.
  
• She would be more than willing to share her rather personal information in an attempt to bond with you.
  
• She loves to gossip.
  
• She is self-centered; she cares about her needs so much that she cannot see your needs.

Q2.What does she want?

• She wants to get her things done.
  
• She does not want to do anything for you (as she is self-centered).
  
• She wants to do something about her low self-esteem and depression.

Q3.How does she get the things she wants?

• She uses other people's resources to get what she wants.
  
• She uses other people's emotional resources hoping to feel better on the low self-esteem and depression area.
• She puts emotional pressure on others which is often both unnecessary and unrelated.
  
• She resorts to techniques that make others react immediately (does not allow much time to think).
  
• She has a pretty 'flexible' morality and ethics standards which helps in exploiting others without feeling remorse.

Q4.Why does she do it that way?

• She is conditioned in such a way to think that is the way things work.
  
• She does not have the ability to look into things objectively (especially herself).
  
• Because of that inability, her morality and ethics end up to be in sub-standard levels.

More on Q3 - her techniques.
Getting somebody to do our job isn't easy especially when you don't return their favors. So what the manipulators do is resort to different techniques that get the job done. One thing that is common between these techniques is that they skew the truth and present the problem in different light or sometimes contain items that are irrelevant to the job itself. Here are some examples:

- I deserve to be helped by you because I am a victim of this terrible situation. (sympathy seeking)

- If you do not help me, you are a cold blooded, hard hearted monster. (guilt tripping)

- Whatever effort that is required of you for helping me is negligible. (downplaying effort)

- I am trying to do this and I have some questions let us look at it when we meet this weekend. (sneaking involvement)

- I would never say no to you because I am your friend. But only this time it is my terrible circumstances and my hands are tied. (saving rapport without returning favors)

- "Did I really say 'I' was going to book the tickets?" or "I was there but the counter was closed". (again, excuses for saving rapport)

And dealing with low self-esteem is a problem for all of us but the way emotional manipulators deal with it is mainly by squatting into other people's emotional territory. They would try to pull you down emotionally in an attempt to feel better themselves. So what finally happens is that you end up feeling less worthy and less happy than you actually are by spending time and energy towards making Roopa feel better. Well then if you ask, does it at least help her feel better? The answer has got to be No. She can never feel better. Here are some examples:

- I am more important than you. My life is more interesting than yours. My problems are bigger than yours. (relative self-centeredness - always fighting for the limelight)

- If I screw-up it is not a big deal given my circumstances. But if you screw-up it is the world upside down. (double-standard'ness)

- I like it when things get tough for you. (kind of like sadism but only unconscious)

- Did you know Tracy got an abortion? (gossip is a safe haven because it is entertaining enough for you to let her poach your time and it is her attempt to feel important socially)

- My husband is leaving me. Do you know what he did? (you = emotional dumping ground)

Getting to Q4 -Why does she have to do all this in this way?
My favorite theory is that Roopa is 5 years old when it comes to social interaction and she is stuck at being 5 though she is 30 today. When you look at the techniques the emotional manipulators use, though the ingredients are adult related, it is not very difficult to see that the basic strategy is of kids that are 2 to 5 years old.
So now if you go back above and review Roopa's techniques assuming she is 5, everything that is listed would seem to fit and it would also seem harmless and funny. Sympathy seeking, guilt tripping, giving excuses, self-centered'ness, double-standard'ness, sadism etc. are not very uncommon traits when it comes to kids. So let’s turn our attention to the kid and look at what goes on there. Are all kids vampires? Where do they learn to be one?

The Manipulative Kid
Firstly I want to stress on the point again that Roopa's techniques / emotional manipulation is an integral part of all of us and most of it is unconscious. It is just more evident in kids. It's source is this simple strategy any kid goes with: Remember whatever worked and forget whatever didn't. Crying = Milk, Stomach Ache = No School, Screaming = Toy, Tantrum = Almost Anything these associations that start as simple ones, get stronger and stronger with repetition and what we finally get is a con artist who would go to any lengths to turn things his way. And as the reason I would point to those repetitions that the parents allow happening: rewarding bad behavior. But shouldn't the kid think about what is right before he acts? Not necessarily. Maybe 'Need' = 'Manipulative Action' is also one of the associations in the list.

We all frame our brain circuits like this when we are kids (be it about social interaction or about any habits). And as we grow older we revisit them and rewire them based on our experiences. But though Roopa is 30, all she needs to fit into this model is growing old continuously in an environment that doesn't give her a chance to revisit those circuits. It could be a pampered up-bringing or just not enough time spent on soul searching.

Well does that mean this gives enough reason for us to forgive Roopa for being an emotional manipulator and take no action? I don't think so. Emotional Manipulation is not very different from physical violence. It causes as much harm to society and it has to be dealt with. And this was my first step towards dealing with it... trying to understand it.

So remember, every time Roopa pushes you, it is like a kid screaming his lungs off at the restaurant demanding candy and every time you budge in, it is like you giving the kid candy to calm him down.