Manipulative Behavior (cont.)

The parallel between conversation and dance has been often used. There’s rhythm, spacing, and all sorts of subtle cues, verbal and nonverbal. And as people within a certain culture we get used to a certain set of spacing, etc., and when someone doesn’t follow it, it feels a little weird and unnerving.

Manipulative Behavior

By coincidence, I have just come out of a meeting on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and there was a little rustling of feathers around the idea of the therapist focusing on getting the client’s commitment to therapy and to stay safe, and its resemblence to manipulation. It appears that, not only do we not like being manipulated, we don’t like the thought of being manipulative ourselves.

There are some parts to manipulative behavior that I’m seeing as I think about these questions.

Blog Stats – “Manipulative”

I noticed on my blog stats page that most recent search words that are bringing people here are variations on the word manipulation (eg how to deal with manipulative behavior). It is striking that it is such a “popular” idea. I think this has to do with its being fuzzy and undefined, yet bothersome. Anyway, I thought that, sometime in the near future, I’d write more on the topic with the search engine queries in mind.

“Manipulative” – Defining – Idiosyncracy

I recall, a while ago I was having some thoughts around how “sadism”, “oppression”, “authoritative”, “authoritarian” and “nurturing discipline” could subtly and maybe even insidiously be actually the same thing. Basically what we see them as depends on our particular point of view, and they are relative (which I reckon many of us wouldn’t want to admit, especially if we are sure we stand in one of the situations or another).

Possibly due to some thinking on Nonviolent Communication, I had another experience of realizing that some arguments and statements my wife was making could be considered violent. (They served no purpose other than to make me feel bad with no option of reconciliation or amelioration, and to give herself the experience of the power of having such an effect.) Of course I initially doubted this line of thinking, wondering if I was simply wanting to escape blame etc. However, such a realization really flipped things around in my head and opened up other possibilities of thinking, feeling, and acting for me.

Recently, my counseling classmates and I were having a discussion on manipulation or manipulative behavior. Of course the word, “manipulative” has a negative connotation, and this whole topic could quickly be resolved on a practical level by using different words, such as “influence” or “persuasive”.