Blackmail and coercion: two enemies of healthy relationships

Unfortunately, human relationships are plagued by manipulations . Most of them occur unconsciously.. We learn them without realizing it and we reproduce them in the same way. Two of these manipulative mechanisms, which severely damage personal ties, are blackmail and coercion.

Manipulation, in psychological terms, is defined as a mechanism through which one person gets another person to say or do something, using traps, tricks or deception. Identify situations in which others are used, or turned into an instrument to achieve a personal goal. On many occasions it is deliberately manipulated, such as when a politician falsifies his intentions to get people to vote for him. In others, especially in private life, the manipulation is semiconscious or unconscious.

How do you exercise blackmail or coercion without realizing it? When you adopt a victim position For example. This way you get the other to act based on guilt and not on their free conscience. It also occurs when you devalue someone so that they continue to depend on you. Or when you take advantage of another’s weakness to put them at your service in some way.

Psychological blackmail: an emotional burden

Psychological or emotional blackmail is a form of manipulation and, therefore, an act violent. It is implemented to achieve control over another person’s behavior and also over their feelings. Like all blackmail, it involves a scheme in which the other is dissuaded from doing or not doing something, based on a negative consequence. It’s something like “Do it, but you will suffer for it,” or “Don’t do it, but the consequence may be disastrous.”

Psychological blackmail prevents a person from acting autonomously and freedom. The blackmailer takes care of that. It will be very aware of everything that assuming or not assuming a certain behavior will entail for the other person. He wants his victim to act as he wants, not as the other’s personal convictions dictate.

There are two pillars on which most emotional blackmail rests. One is guilt and the other is insecurity. The intention is to make the other believe that his free actions or decisions are, in reality, proof of his evil. Or that they will cause serious damage. This is how others are made to behave as the blackmailer wants. “Go to your party… One day I will no longer be in this world and then you will regret not having spent more time with me.”

Insecurity is a trait that makes anyone quite manipulable.. It is enough for the blackmailer to emphasize the errors, defects or risks that the other person runs, for the latter to act like a meek little lamb. “When you realize that you have no idea about that, you look for me and I will help you solve it.”

Coercion, between the crude and the subtle

In coercion, methods are not only implemented to make a person do what another wants, but in this case it is sought to make them do something that goes against what they want. Coercion involves more violent behavior than blackmail, although it also has subtle facets.. In any case, coercion implies a relationship of power and abuse.

In coercion there are direct or veiled threats. He uses the fear of others, or their condition of vulnerability to something. It is frequently used by figures of power to manage those under their sphere of influence. In this case the victim is aware that she is being manipulated, but feels prevented from reacting. It may be because the other is stronger and threatens physical violence, or because he has higher status and can cause serious harm.

While in emotional blackmail the usual thing is that the person who exercises it is someone loved, in coercion this is not necessarily the case. It comes not so much from a loved one, but from a feared being. The victim does not realize that he or she has the resources to resist this form of manipulation.but rather allows himself to be placed in the position of someone defenseless against arbitrariness.

Both blackmail and coercion are true cancers of interpersonal relationships. The only thing they achieve is to falsify feelings or cancel people out. The perpetrator may get away with it temporarily, but sooner or later he will be subject to the boomerang effect. Manipulators often end up trapped in their own web.

Images courtesy of Benjamin Lacombe.

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