Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
by Susan Forward
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Book Summary Information
Author: Susan ForwardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-03-04
ISBN: 0060928972
Number of pages: 252
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
Book Review: Perhaps The Best and Most Useful Self-Help Book I've Ever Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was an extremely enlightening and relevant read for me. I've recommended it to a lot of people and have already lent my copy to my sister to read. If you feel like you are being taken advantage of in your relationship, or feel you often fall into this trap, this book is the perfect read for you.
The book is laid out by first introducing the reader to the idea of emotional blackmail. Forward uses case studies from her own practice to illustrate the instances of blackmail that several of her clients have experienced. One or more of these should relate to your life, and the ones that don't are actually still relevant to the reader because they teach us what emotional blackmail is and the different forms in which they appear. Emotional blackmail is another word for manipulation, those who play on your soft feelings, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses in order to get their way. This unhealthy pattern often causes the rift in a relationship and if the manipulated party involved does not know how to spot it and protect themselves from it, they will end up ultimately unfulfilled, or worse, badly hurt by this manipulator. That is if the relationship lasts, and this dynamic most often does not help those chances.
It's important to note that this book is not about becoming hostile and defensive toward these manipulators. It does not try to have you break contact with them or see them as enemies. The approach is much more healthy and nurturing. After first identifying the instances of emotional blackmail, Forward details the different methods that manipulators use to get their way. She uses the acronym FOG, which stands for Fear, Obligation, and Guilt, to describe them. Later chapters talk about the traits and disposition of the victims of manipulation and gives you reasons not to fall prey to those styles of thinking. The end of the book deals with the ways in which we can break free from emotional blackmail and teaches us personal exercises we can do before approaching the blackmailers in our lives.
The book focuses on dating, family, friends, business, money, and many more topics and it is a really fascinating and compelling read. I honestly was very deeply engrossed in the book and internalized it as much as I could. I've used these techniques already and they've helped tremendously, and I intend to continue referencing this book whenever I find myself slipping from my objective and giving in to others too much.
I'm really interested in this subject matter and for anyone who is also interested, I recommend reading P.M. Forni's "The Civility Solution: What to Do When People are Rude" as an accompaniment to this book. Forni's book details a multitude of common situations in which people act rude and provides the reader with helpful, civil responses for handling them. While Forward's book is the best because it goes in much more depth and is much more psychologically pressing, Forni's book is a practical guide that will also prove to be beneficial.
I really appreciate Susan Forward for writing this book. It really can help people who have this sort of problem and it is a problem that many people have in one form or another. The book made me realize the pervasive role manipulation plays in relationships or dealings with people, and how I've overlooked so much of the blackmail in my own experiences and have let people do their tricks on me. Forward reminds us that the blackmailers may not even see what they're doing as blackmail, and so neither will we. The information here is really so interesting, and I urge you to read it as soon as possible.
More Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You reviews:
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Summary of Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You
"If you really loved me...""After all I've done for you..."
"How can you be so selfish..."
Do any of the above sound familiar? They're all examples of emotional blackmail, a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationships with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They are our mothers, our partners, our bosses and coworkers, our friends and our lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to give themselves the payoff they want: our compliance.
Susan Forward knows what pushes our hot buttons. Just as John Gray illuminates the communications gap between the sexes in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Harriet Lerner describes an intricate dynamic in The Dance of Anger, so Susan Forward presents the anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation, and gives readers an arsenal of tools to fight back. In her clear, no-nonsense style, Forward provides powerful, practical strategies for blackmail targets, including checklists, practice scenarios and concrete communications techniques that will strengthen relationships and break the blackmail cycle for good.
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