Emotional Blackmail

Emotional blackmail is a very powerful concept, and unfortunately it’s a reality that a lot of people deal with, so I’m going to explore the concept. What is emotional blackmail, and why does it happen? Follow along to see if you or someone you know has fallen victim to this and how to protect yourself from emotional blackmail. You may be asking yourself, what is emotional blackmail?

This is when someone else makes you responsible for their feelings and if you don’t do what they want, they use obligation, guilt and fear to pressure you into doing it.

Why it is bad

They may threaten you “do what I say or else…” or “make me feel good or else I’ll make you feel bad” for example if you don’t do what a parent or a friend or partner says they may refuse to talk to you until you do what they want, they’re letting you know that if you don’t take responsibility for their feelings and make them feel good, they are going to make you feel bad about it. They may threaten to harm themselves, stop eating, stop working, even pretend to be sick or get depressed, and they’ll make you feel at fault for that. Likewise, they make themselves feel bad and claim you're the reason why, they hold your feelings hostage, and they use your empathy and compassion against you.

How it happens

Why would someone choose to blackmail someone else? Why would someone allow themselves to be blackmailed in this way?

The blackmailer is entitled, they believe that others are responsible for their feelings, they believe others must act in a way that makes them feel good rather than taking responsibility for their own feelings. The blackmailed is the exact opposite, they take responsibility for feelings that aren’t their own, while the blackmailer wants everyone around them to act a certain way the blackmailed wants everyone to feel a certain way, while the blackmailer feels entitled the blackmailed feels like they owe a debt, while the blackmailer passes judgments, blackmailed is always looking to be positively judged, they take the judgments of other people very seriously and if someone says to them

“you’re a very selfish person!”,

they believe it immediately. They think to themselves

“am i selfish? I must be selfish why would someone say that if i wasn’t, oh God! i’m such a bad person, i need to fix this right now”

While the blackmailer wants everyone to serve them, the blackmailed wants to serve everyone, they want to be liked and approved by everyone, and they’ll do just about anything to get it. While the blackmailer believes what they say is the truth, the blackmailed believes that what others say about them is the truth and while the blackmailer’s mind is dominated by taking, the blackmailed’s mind is dominated by giving.

Where things go wrong

A relationship like that is based purely on power not love, it’s mutual slavery governed by domination and submission, and when a relationship is based on power there’s no intimacy. Intimacy arises when two people understand each other and are free to express their desires and mutually satisfy one another, but a relationship dominated by emotional blackmail is always one-sided, one person’s desires are always subservient to the other’s and there are side effects to each party. The blackmailer becomes more and more delusional about their own entitlement, and they pin their entire happiness on the actions of someone else because they consider others to be responsible for their feelings, they’re never in control of their own feelings, meanwhile the blackmailed becomes more and more hollow as a person as they sacrifice their own desires for someone else, they start to lose themselves, they don’t even know who they are anymore, apart from the person they serve. Ultimately, the blackmailer is a slave to the actions of others and the blackmailed is a slave to the feelings of others, both parties aren’t free.

The Solution

There’s another type of relationship, one based on love and not power. People succumb to emotional blackmail because they’re not sovereign, the sovereign person realizes that they’re responsible for their own feelings and desires, no one else can have ownership over their feelings, their desires, thoughts, speech and their actions, they’re the sole proprietors, the only owners of their own bodies. It’s their natural birthright, and they recognize that their body is a kingdom that they are the only ones to manage and not someone else. When you bring two sovereign persons together, they can make the conscious choice to help each other meet their desires, they can create an alliance and not a subservience. Through truthful speech, they can open up to each other about what they want and deeply understand one another, and they can help each other get what they want, that's a relationship built on the foundation of love not power.

Thanks for reading!

Check out my blog for more articles, realjema.com

References

Freedom in Thought channel