Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
How Manipulative Personalities Isolate People
How Manipulative Personalities Isolate People
As often discussed here on TPM, the difference between a useless platitude and helpful advice resides in the specificity of the information.
So, here is some very specific information on how manipulative personalities isolate people.
This is a stub post. Open to new ideas and items being added.
Who Do They Isolate?
The first important point is that manipulators are (usually) conscious in their isolation process, and that they do not isolate everyone, but only specific people in their lives.
Namely, they mostly tend to isolate people who have strong bonds with them and who are useful to them.
The reason why ties into their personality, into their façade or mask, and into effectiveness considerations.
Manipulators know that, if they behaved abusively to everyone, they would only show to the world that they are manipulative.
They care the most about their public image, precisely because they know that they are not good people.
Isolating one specific person who is strongly emotionally or legally tied to them (eg a spouse, a business partner) has the most chance of working (because the emotional or legal bond will make it difficult for the mark to leave), and allows them to hide behind their public façade if the mark should begin to suspect anything and should decide to tell the truth to the public.
Since the manipulator has mostly behaved charmingly and politely with everyone else, and abusively only with his mark, the mark will most likely not be believed.
Why Do They Isolate?
Imagine, if you will, a person who knows he or she is bad, evil, manipulative, lying, angry, hateful, spiteful, vengeful, envious, jealous. No positive emotions whatsoever.
Now imagine that this person believes that these traits are actually helpful in living, because they make him or her superior to everyone else.
And imagine this person understands, though, that openly showcasing these traits to the world will lead them to being shunned by the rest of humanity.
They thus adopt a mask, a public façade, where they fake behaving pro-socially and politely all the time. In most social situations, they are actually likely to behave more politely than a normal person, precisely because they know they are evil, and need to avoid giving even the slightest hint of such evil nature.
Also imagine, in addition to the above, that they know that, in personal “relationships”, these people are aware they will not be able to keep their mark on all the time. Faking being “good” is very tiring.
They know they will behave badly, in accordance with their true nature, in close “relationships”. They therefore know the mark will most likely, even if unconsciously, try to leave them.
They also know they will have a very hard time finding, and grooming, another mark to manipulate.
One of their utmost preoccupations is thus keeping their “victim” from leaving them.
One of the main ways in which they do this is by isolating the victim.
Techniques to isolate the mark
Here is a list of techniques by which manipulators try to isolate the mark.
- Being themselves
Just by being themselves, in close relationships with people who are emotionally or legally tied to them, manipulators do isolate their victims.
This is because the “close person”, by definition, does not understand they are being manipulated, and thus start from an internal position where they think the manipulator is “just a normal person”.
This means that, by just behaving manipulatively and abusively, the manipulator is inherently painting a bleak social world to the victim.
The victim will likely think that everyone else is like her boyfriend, his mom, her business partner, and so on.
Since this person, who the victim loves or is legally tied to, behaves so badly, what’s the point of meeting and entering into new relationships with new people? None.
This is the reason why children in abusive families often resolve to never marry, or to never have children.
- Gaslighting
In addition to being themselves, manipulators do gaslight the victim into thinking that everyone else is like them, or worse than them.
Every manipulated person has heard these phrases:
You’re lucky that we, as parents, never physically hurt you. There are parents out there who harm their children!
You’re lucky to have a job. You know how many people are on the streets?
Do you think anybody will love you as much as I do love you?
These are blatantly false, of course. There are workplaces where employees are not mobbed every day.
There are parents who do love their children.
But someone who is being manipulated will likely have a hard time believing it.
- Behaving oddly or abusively every time they are in the presence of their mark and one of his or her friends or even acquaintances
Imagine this scene.
A young child brings a school friend home for the first time.
They are in the child’s room, playing.
Suddenly, the manipulative father slams the door open and enters the room, dressed just in underwear.
He starts shouting:
YOU NEED TO BE QUIET!!! YOU ARE MAKING A BIG NOISE AND YOU WOKE ME UP!!! I WAS TRYING TO SLEEP HERE!!!! IF YOU CAN’T BEHAVE, NO MORE MEETING WITH FRIENDS!!!!
The thing to understand here is that the “incident” is totally manufactured. The manipulator does not care about the noise, or about being woken up.
The manipulator only cares about getting sure that his child will never invite friends home again, and that any friends that get invited home are so frightened by the family that they never accept another invite.
Now swap the above for any boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse or business partner who seemed to behave like crazy for no reason in the presence of new friends of his or her victim.
Another example:
A son asks his father to accompany him and a friend to a place with the father's car.
Immediately after the son and the friend enter the car, the father starts to drive crazily and very fast.
The effect: the friend will never again go with the son somewhere.
- Gaslighting the mark into believing he is “antisocial”, ie criticizing the mark for the results of the abuse
Once the child in the above example starts being alone all days in his room, what do you think the father will say to him?
Exactly:
You are so weird. You must be incapable of having friends. You are antisocial. I’d so like it if you had friends.
Now the manipulator is both covering for past abuse, and twisting the mind of the mark into believing the mark is the person responsible for his or her isolation.
- Manufacturing arguments and then repeating over and over to the mark that he will remain alone, under the pretense of being “angry” for something
What do average normal people do when angry?
They may try to hurt the person they are angry at by hurling some insults or “bad things”.
Manipulators exploit this dynamic by doing the following:
- they first provoke the mark, by manufacturing a reason to be angry
- they then hurl very specific “angry phrases” at the mark.
These “angry phrases” are not really motivated by anger, but by control.
They contain embedded commands.
Example:
You’re so bad! Nobody will like you if you continue being this bad! No woman or friend will want you and you’ll stay alone!
There is a famous experiment, the Asch conformity experiment (see here) which demonstrated that people do unconsciously associate “truth” with the fact that many other different people say the same thing.
Now here is where it gets interesting: the effect of one person repeating the same thing thrice is almost the same (as to the effect of making the listener associate “truth” to the false statement) than if the listener heard the same thing from three different people.
In other words, by having these kind of things repeated over and over and over, the mark will, willingly or unwillingly, internalize these things as unconscious “truths”. They will self-cement.
This is why the common advice for people in this kind of situations (manufactured arguments) is just to leave. There are only downsides to remaining into manufactured argument.
Note that the pretense of “being in an argument” gives to the manipulator plausible deniability if the mark should later become aware of what transpired:
What are you talking about? I was just angry, that’s why I said those things. You never said anything over the top while angry?
- Asking the mark to contact one of his acquaintances for an important thing, and then reneging on the need for contact
The manipulator (eg a boss) tells the mark that he needs an expert at something, or an engineering quote, or whatever.
Doesn’t the mark know a friend who does that?
The mark then calls his friend and asks for help.
After the quote has been received, or the help has been asked, the manipulative boss suddenly reneges on his need for the help.
Oh no, I dealt with it already. But thank you for asking your friend.
This has the effect of destroying the personal connections of the mark with his acquaintances and friends.
- Criticizing the mark to his friends or contacts, or criticizing the friends or contacts to the mark
This can be done both in presence of the party that is criticized, and out of his or her presence.
Are you sure you want to marry my son?
I think you should be wary of your friend Jane. She doesn’t have your interests at heart.
Guys, thank you for your support. My wife does have some problems with drinking, but you being here is all I need now. I know you have her back as well.
Of course lying ties nicely into this. Manipulators have no qualms about lying, either subtly or blatantly.
- Triangulating
Triangulating means referring to the mark something bad that a third party said about him. Or, referring to a third party something bad that the mark said about her.
As you can imagine, the manipulator keeps his hands clean under the pretense of being “just a messenger”.
The manipulator destroys the relationship between the mark and the third party by either lying, or by provoking one of the parties to say something bad about the other and then triangulating.
- Convincing the mark with underhanded unconscious means to adopt odd social behaviors
Let’s say that a manipulative mother has an adolescent child.
She will buy clothes for him that are totally unfitting and “odd”.
She then will gaslight the child into believing that the clothes do fit him properly, and that everyone wears these kind of clothes.
The fact that the son is dressed badly will mean that almost nobody else will want to get near.
The exception is other manipulative people, who will see what’s going on and target the mark for their manipulation.
Another example: the first manipulative boss of a manipulated employee only sends in copy to his employee emails (that the boss wrote) to clients he (the boss) wants to lose.
In these emails, the boss never says "thanks", never thanks back, is curt, impolite, brusque, tasking, dominant.
The boss also has other emails he wrote, more polite and respectful, to good clients.
However, what will unconsciously happen is that the employee will think that the emails he reads in copy are how a good practitioner in that field should write.
The employee will start writing in that tone to everyone, and alienate any possible good contact.
Only (others) manipulators may undertsand what’s going on, and they will then likely target the employee for their manipulation.
- Encouraging relations between the mark and other manipulators, and discouraging relations of the mark with good people
To a manipulative mother, her son marrying is generally a bad thing. Better for him to remain alone.
But, if the son must marry, better for the son to marry a manipulative woman.
No chance that her son will experience real love that way.
No chance that her son will see that there was something wrong in his mother.
The same as concerns a son being hired in a toxic workplace: it’s the “least worse” outcome for the manipulator.
Conversely, a decision of a daughter to leave a toxic workplace will be strongly discouraged by a manipulative father for the exact same reason.
Enter, a father not speaking to his daughter for three months after the daughter finally leaves a very toxic workplace to save her mental sanity.
Additional items:
11. Exaggerated compliments to third parties about the mark, or exaggerated compliments to the mark about third parties
As originally explained by Lucio.
This has the effect of creating envy or jealousy, and thus discourages relationships between the mark and the third parties in question.
12. Trauma bonding
The repetition of abusive behaviors on the mark, and the intermittent "love-bombing" positive "making up" behaviors manipulators tend to adopt in between, create a very specific type of emotional bonding known as "trauma bonding" or "Stockholm syndrome".
The continuous emotional traumas experienced by the mark create a tendency of the mark to rely on the very abuser for emotional soothing.
This in turn renders any meaningful relations of the mark with third parties impossible.
13. Keeping the mark busy
This is usually done by manufacturing drama, things to do, or just plain nagging.
If the victim is constantly kept busy, he or she won't have time to reflect on what is going on.
Being drowned in fake emergencies at work is basically the same thing, and done for the same reason.
Note that any "assertive moments" where the mark may specifically tell the manipulator of "needing some quiet time" will be chosen by the manipulator as the most important moments to apply this technique.
14. Depriving the mark of sleep
This is a favorite of manipulative personalities.
It is usually combined with gaslighting, ie making the mark think that he or she is the one who is depriving the manipulator of sleep.
Enter frequent 2 a.m. discussions about "noises" made by the mark that "woke up" the manipulator.
Or manufactured night emergencies.
The effect is that the mark will start losing mental sanity more and more, and any daytime focus - and capability to significantly connect with others - will dissipate.
15. Manipulative ganging up, ostracizing, and plain social climbing
Enough said. The effect of all this is to render the mark a pariah in any common group.
Some manipulators have developed this into a science, and have a process for this.
One example.
The manipulator will start to speak with everybody in the group, separately from the mark, and start planting the seed that the mark is deranged and is paranoic, and has spoken about people having threatened him.
The manipulator then will go to the mark and threaten him.
If the mark does not know the technique, he will likely go to all the others and tell them that the manipulator has threatened him.
But the others have been "warned" by the manipulator about the mark being crazy, and thinking "everyone is threatening him".
Result?
Ostracization.
16. Ruining any special or personal moment for the mark
The manipulator creates big fuss or drama every time the mark is having his birthday party, or anniversary, or something.
The effect is to alienate friends of the mark so that they do not go there any more.
And to make the mark not want to do anything.
17. Behaving abusively while playing social games under the pretense of "the mark being an idiot at playing", or the manipulator being a "sore loser"
For example, angrily "teaching the mark how to not be such an idiot at playing cards".
Or getting very angry any time the manipulator loses a hand.
This has the effect of making the mark associate "social games" with pain, and thus isolate him from playing such games with third parties.
18. Negative reinforcement (eg by raging) used when the mark is having or is about to have "social moments"
A teenage son goes to a New Year's Eve party with friends for the first time.
One hour before the son goes out, the manipulative father will create a big angry fuss about the son being an idiot for not having prepared decent food to bring to the party.
Or some other irrelevant thing.
The raging is meant to have the mark associate pain with "being social".
19. Disappearing from the mark's life, or being unhelpful, anytime the mark is in a serious emergency
Enter here people who dump their significant other any time he is undergoing serious surgery.
Or fathers who economically supported their son for months, and withdraw their support under some excuse precisely when the son is going bankrupt.
The dynamic is meant (among other aims) to reinforce the mark's unconscious fear that "nobody will really be there for him".
20. Encouraging the mark to obtain help from (or do something with, or just interact with) someone with whom the manipulator has already destroyed any relationship
This is a staple of manipulative personalities.
After alienating all friends of the mark:
No, I won't come. You should go with your friends.
After making sure a brother doesn't speak with the other brother:
You should speak about this directly with your brother.
After putting one employee against the other:
You should behave politely with Mark. It's not worth ruining a friendhship over this.
This move has the triple effect of covering past abuse, gaslighting the mark into believing he was responsibile for "ruining the relationship", and appearing pro-social toward third parties.
21. Stalking the mark
Stalking (in the sense of bombarding with messages, emails, showing up, etc.) is mainly meant to impede the victim from meeting and having meaningful relationships with anyone else.
The time, and most importantly the mind, of the mark will be focused on the "imminent threat".
22. Smearing the mark
This is usually done both during, and after the relationship ends. It is done both overtly, and covertly.
One covert way of doing it.
After the mark goes away after some blatant escalation of abuse, the manipulator will continue to invite the mark to birthdays, social events, etc.
If the mark does not see what is happening, out of politeness he or she will respond "no, I won't come".
After seven or ten invites, the manipulator will say "I understand", and stop inviting the mark.
Now the story for the manipulator becomes that the mark "for no reason is not coming anymore to my invites", rather than "I abused him and he told me off".
And it is the manipulator who decided to "not invite anymore".
And now some less obvious means:
23. Using inverse psychology
Manipulative personalities sometimes get to understand that their mark has become defiantly oppositional (to them and their manipulations).
The more cunning use inverse psychology to cover their isolation process and still try to obtain the isolation of the mark.
An example is the manipulative parent of a woman, who knows his daughter has become unconsciously defiantly oppositional to him, nagging her to remain with a boyfriend, or just “not to argue” with her boyfriend.
The parent knows that this nagging may have the effect of triggering the opposite response in his daughter, and thus lead her to consider leaving her boyfriend.
Sometimes this may work with the external acquaintance as well.
Enter, a parent bombarding his daughter’s boyfriend with apparent manifestations of interest, happiness, involvement, to a stalking extent, to in reality frighten the boyfriend into leaving the woman and her “creepy family”.
24. Discouraging the mark from getting in shape
This can be done by many means.
One example is cooking a lot and putting things to eat in front of the mark, especially when he or she is trying to diet or to get in shape.
Very effective when the mark is a child in a manipulative family, and he is encouraged and forced to eat.
Another way is the manipulator repeating over and over that the mark looks best “as he/she is”, and/or that he/she wouldn’t look good if “any skinnier”.
The mark being out of physical shape is an obvious way for the manipulator to encourage social isolation.
25. Encouraging third parties to abuse the mark (aka flying monkeys)
This can be done by many means, for example by spreading false rumors about supposed bad things the mark said about a third party or just “did”, and then fanning the flames of any anger arising in the third party.
26. Encouraging the mark to abuse third parties
This can be done without the mark knowing that the favor he is doing to the manipulator is, in reality, “abuse enforcement”.
All the manipulator needs to do is omit any prior information of bad conduct vis-a-vis the third party on his side, and then ask the mark to contact the third party and say or ask something.
27. Abusing the mark
Emotional and psychological abuse, if unrecognized and not stopped (by leaving), makes the mark become socially emotionless, freezing, fawning, fleeing at the first conflict or always angry, scrunched in posture, submissive, inexpressive.
This triggers automatic isolation in the mark, who is already emotionally wounded and therefore unlikely to make new acquaintances.
Other social predators and manipulative personalities, in turn, easily recognize the signs of abuse in the mark, and choose him or her for further abuse.
28. Other good people won’t be around for long
Independently of any specific technique, good high-quality people won’t be around the mark and his manipulative “close person” for long.
Most will choose to disengage completely once they begin to see what’s going on or once they themselves start to be manipulated.
29. Subcommunicating contempt or disinterest for friends (or prospects) of the mark
A big potential client came to me, and I asked my former boss (whom I was being manipulated by at the time) to meet the client together.
During the meeting, my former boss - unbeknownst to me - dismissed the worries of the client for his big case as if they were baseless, and was also somewhat contemptuous of my potential client.
Later, the client chose to go elsewhere, and made it known to me that the decision was motivated by my former boss being “disinterested in the case” during the meeting.
This is awesome, Bel.
I'd like to turn it into an actual article where it can get a lot more readers adn reach out a lot more people who may need this.
If you wanna do the honors with your username, just let me know (of course I'll make it easier for you and since it'd be your first article I'll do the heavy lifting in any case).
If not I'll proceed later on.
Some possible addition:
30. "Manipulative bubble frames"
As in:
- Special: You and I are in a category of our own (so let's not keep in touch with all those normies)
- Versus: You and I against the world (can be on top of making up enemies and finding faults in the family/friends)
- Self-sufficient: You and I don't need anyone else (why would you even waste time with everyone else?)
- Different: You and I are different than everyone else (we can only understand each other, all those others can't)
- Fuck all: Fuck everyone else, it's only you and us in the world (this one can make asocial and socially unsuccessful marks feel vindicated for struggling socially)
- Manipulator preference: I only want to be with you
The (initial) frame here can be positive, even romantic.
31. Faking having been abused by a third party
A manipulator will speak of his interactions with third parties (with whom the mark is not acquainted) as if they have social climbed on him, abused him, conned him, disrespected him, and even worse.
In reality, it may be likely that it is the manipulator who has done these things to the third party, but in retelling the story he will lie and paint the third party as having done to him what he has done to the third party.
This will obtain several effects at once:
- it will unconsciously make the mark associate “new people” with “bad behavior” and “abuse”, while the reality is that most people are normal empathetic people;
- it will trigger the “justice/help/fairness mechanism” in the mark, who will feel compelled to “help” the manipulator;
- it will pre-frame any future common interactions with third parties as “we are unite against this bad person”, in other words it will set up a joint competitive frame and make the mark fall into the frame of abusing the third party for the manipulator (ie being a flying monkey);
- it will cover the abuse of the manipulator against the third party and smear the third party to the mark, by preframing the third party as “bad/not worthy of a relationship”.
A very close relative of mine was a master of this move.
He would interact with new people and instantly provoke them with countless power moves. Sometimes they would react and check these moves.
He would then come to me and tell me the story, entirely omitting the part where he provoked them, and only tell me of their strange reactions as if they were narcissistic/crazy.
Sometimes, he would even fake they had “provoked him”.
Examples:
- once, he told me he was speaking with an old lady who immediately told him “My name is X, not Y!” as if she were fixated on small things. Then I remembered the countless times he would intentionally mispronounce my name to irritate me. No doubt he omitted that part in the story. When I talked with the lady, she was kind and gentle.
- another time, he spoke of a person provoking him more and more, and him finally “responding by raging”. No doubt the “being provoked” part was entirely faked.
The same effect can be obtained by means of triangular guilt tripping, which can be faked, ie done without the third party having done anything bad.
32. Triangular raging on third parties whenever in company of the mark
Every time the mark is out in company of the manipulator, the manipulator finds an excuse to use triangular raging on people.
These can be other drivers while in a car, store clerks while in stores, employees or professionals at work or while at a professional, people in lines, or even just other people on the street.
This has the effect of making the mark associate submission, anger and stress with “meeting new people”, and again was a very frequent move of one close relative of mine.
33. Obtaining obvious favors from third parties in front of the mark, who is instead treated normally by the third party
For example, convincing the mark to go on vacation together at a hotel.
Then, at checkout, obtaining a big discount due to some prior work the manipulator has done for the hotel, and flaunting it in front of the third party, who is instead treated normally by the hotel owner.
This has the effect of discouraging any relations between the mark and the hotel owner.
34. Controlling communications of the mark with third parties, and discouraging autonomous communications of the mark with third parties
This can be done in lots of ways.
Enter, manipulative employers who micromanage and say “everything must pass through me. I need to know everything”.
It can also be done by provoking conflict between the mark and the third party, for example by triangulating them.
The effect is that the manipulator can distort the communications to his benefit and further isolate the mark.
Lots of awesome new entries.
And I gotta admit that #31, made me smile at how far some people can go and how much they invest and waste their own energies... Just to be assholes.
Wanted to make a quick note about this (and potentially some others):
Quote from Bel on July 31, 2023, 1:54 pm33. Obtaining obvious favors from third parties in front of the mark, who is instead treated normally by the third party
For example, convincing the mark to go on vacation together at a hotel.
Then, at checkout, obtaining a big discount due to some prior work the manipulator has done for the hotel, and flaunting it in front of the third party, who is instead treated normally by the hotel owner.
This has the effect of discouraging any relations between the mark and the hotel owner.
I'm not sure I would classify these as "isolating power moves".
Sure, they may contribute somehow.
But it feels a lot more tangential to me,
That was a power move for sure, but more of a "I'm better than you / you're below me" type of power move.
Or even "up yours" as in "I'm getting a big discount and not lifting a finger to extend the same to you".
But I wouldn't consider it an isolating one.
One may dislike the hotelier after that power move.
But even like him just because he offered a discount to a family member and didn't forget about the past interaction.
Also, the relationship is briefer there, chances were very slim you'd have grown close to the hotel clerk (or that you would not get close to him just because he extended a discount).
Just making a note here to help keep relevancy on a next-level type of thread (and potentially future article).
Thank you for the kind words, Lucio.
I agree.
Let’s substitute #33 for this, that I just realized:
33. Trying to repeatedly contact the mark when the mark is having important interactions with third parties, to sabotage them
Two examples:
- manipulative mother, who never worked herself, knows her daughter is having a job interview.
She waits 30 min from the start of the interview and then she starts repeatedly calling her daughter on the phone.
When the daughter comes out of the interview, and complains, the mother will gaslight her daughter that she (the mother) was just in anxiety for not knowing what was going on, and for that reason she tried to contact her daughter.
In reality, the manipulation is meant to isolate the daughter by sabotaging her job interview.
- same manipulative mother, now repeatedly calling her daughter while she is on a date with a man.
