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Seven Strategies for Escaping Traps Set by Emotionally Manipulative People

Occasionally, we have all found ourselves in situations wherein we felt manipulated. It may have been a request, an expectation, an insinuation, or something else that left us feeling confused or uncomfortable. Regardless of the specifics, it was generally not a good feeling.

Some manipulation is the result of happenstance and is not intentional. At other times, we might bring the situation on ourselves by failing to be clear or feeling obligated to cooperate. Fortunately, most people do not attempt to manipulate others as their primary approach to relationships.

Yet, there are certainly people who rely on manipulation as a go-to behavior to get what they want. They may be a colleague, student, friend, or even a family member. They reveal themselves through their frequent reliance of any, some, or all the following behaviors:

Guilting—Making us feel guilty for not cooperating with or volunteering to carry out their wishes or taking responsibility for their emotions.
Playing the victim—Seeking sympathy and claiming that others are responsible for their problems and feelings.
Blame-shifting—Claiming that everything bad is someone else’s fault, even when the fault clearly lies with them.
Lying—Refusing to admit falsehoods even when the evidence is obvious.
Gaslighting—Raising suspicions about what we know or have experienced, leading us to question our reality.
Intimidating—Making subtle threats, threatening to exert power, or hinting at consequences if cooperation is not forthcoming.

Unfortunately, regular engagement with emotionally manipulative people can take a significant mental, emotional, and physical toll on us. We can experience depression and anxiety, feel helpless and lack of confidence, and suffer from guilt and shame. We may even engage in unhealthy coping behaviors and suffer from exhaustion.

The good news is that there are several useful strategies we can tap to protect our well-being and manage manipulators and their behavior. Here are seven approaches to help you gain control and remain sane.

Set and enforce emotional boundaries. Be ready for the manipulator to press and test your boundaries. Expect attempts to ridicule and guilt you for not prioritizing the manipulator’s interests and priorities. If pushed, refuse to engage; instead, respond by stating your commitment to prioritizing your well-being.

Refuse to take responsibility for the manipulator’s emotions. Don’t take what the manipulator says personally. Your guilt, shame, and vulnerability are what they crave to be successful. When you break that link, you diminish their power. Their feelings and behavior are their choice, not your responsibility.

Remain calm. When the manipulator attempts to pull you in, refuse to react. Detach emotionally from what the manipulator is saying or doing. When manipulators do not receive the reaction they expect, they often lose interest. If the manipulator persists, you may need to create physical space, including walking away or ending the relationship.

Avoid power struggles. Manipulative people excel at power competition and advantages. They have lots of strategies and are not reluctant to use them, no matter how they may impact you. Resist debating, forget trying to win, and detach from determining who is right or wrong. The manipulator is trying to escalate the situation to achieve an advantage. Don’t take the bait.

Be clear about your needs and expectations. State what you mean in direct terms. Resist sending open-ended messages, invitations, or requests. Vagueness and mixed signals are the manipulator’s playground. They will reinterpret what you said or meant and leave you feeling guilty, regretful, and bewildered. Meanwhile, expect vagueness and mixed signals from the manipulator, often followed by an interpretation that favors what the manipulator wants or expects.

Listen to your intuition. Manipulators can be difficult to spot. They are often friendly, even seemingly genuinely helpful, when it fits their purpose. They may compliment and smother with kindness when they want something. If you find yourself second-guessing your interpretation or feeling “icky” following a conversation or experience, manipulation may have been at play. If something feels manipulative, it probably is.

Tap sources of support. Manipulators often attempt to isolate those whom they are trying to manipulate. Their tactics work best when their intended victims are not testing their experiences against reality or others’ perceptions. Talk to friends, colleagues, or family members about what is happening and get their reactions. If they have experience with the manipulator, they may be able to validate your experience and offer advice. Consider seeking professional help if the situation is becoming serious and you are having difficulty finding a path forward.

Of course, the “through line” for each of these strategies is that we need to take care of ourselves. Self-care is a critical element in successfully countering an emotional manipulator. They depend on others’ emotional and physical exhaustion for their success. But we are not powerless, and we can prevail. Own your own!

Five Student Questions to Answer Before Beginning a New Unit of Study

In Your Corner, Student Learning

January 23, 2025

Five Student Questions to Answer Before Beginning a New Unit of Study

We spend significant time thinking, exploring, planning, and preparing before we begin a new unit of study with our students. During this time, we identify key learning goals and objectives, determine key concepts to present, choose strategies for engaging students and building new skills, select resources and arrange for necessary equipment, decide how we will assess learning, and address other elements that will be key to our instruction and our students’ learning success. However, all this preparation typically happens away from the view and experience of our students.

As professionals, we have a good grasp of what we want to accomplish in any given learning cycle, but our students are largely unaware of what lies ahead until we introduce the unit. Meanwhile, the success of our instruction and the learning of our students depend heavily on their engagement in and commitment to the learning we have planned. If we want our students to be interested and ready to learn, we need to prepare them.

We can start by thinking about what students will want and need to know. They will likely have several questions about what they will be learning, and our responses will likely influence the level of learning engagement and commitment our students will demonstrate as we begin the new teaching and learning cycle. Here are five of the most likely questions our students want us to address.

What are we going to learn—and why is it important, valuable, or useful? Understanding the purpose and utility of what they will be learning can be a significant motivator for students to engage in what lies ahead. Sharing learning goals and objectives can offer clarity and reassurance for students, but, when possible, we also need to connect new learning with non-school-related, “real world” applications. The connection might be with interesting and attractive career possibilities, applications for hobbies and areas of current interest, something they have enjoyed learning in the past, or preparation for an important future challenge, such as state assessments or college entrance exams. The key is to make any connections real and relevant to our learners. Of course, there will be times when sharing a compelling connection or important application may be a stretch. When we face this challenge, we might consider ways to “gamify” the learning or consider other inviting or interesting ways to introduce and engage students that make the experience more enjoyable. Mary Poppins’ advice that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” might apply in these circumstances.

What past learning and skills will be important to our success? Now is a good time to help students connect their past learning with future learning. When what we want students to learn next builds on what they have already learned, we may be able to get by with a quick reference and conducting a quick review. However, if significant time has passed, we will likely need to lead a more in-depth review or even do some reteaching to be certain that students are prepared to engage with what comes next.

What activities and strategies will you use to help us be successful? We might preview for students some of the activities we have planned, highlight learning strategies we will teach or reinforce, and review other learning resources available to help students find success. We might discuss the mix of individual and group work we have planned and how these strategies will contribute to what students will be learning. Now also is an opportune time to share our confidence that students will succeed and assure them that we will be ready throughout the teaching and learning cycle to provide support and offer additional tools and options. Our confidence in students and our commitment to have them succeed can provide important reassurance, especially if students anticipate that the learning will be especially challenging.

What have past students found helpful or challenging with what we are going to learn? Students can feel more confident when they learn that previous students, especially students like them, have found success with the new content and skills. We might share stories about the various approaches students found helpful, strategies they employed, and learning paths they found useful. We might also show the work of previous students as exemplars. However, we need to be sure to share multiple artifacts to avoid having students focus too narrowly on a single student’s approach or product. Our goal in responding to this question is to provide reassurance that success is within reach while also reinforcing key criteria and crucial elements to show evidence of learning.

How will my learning be assessed? Students of all ages often find it reassuring to know what type of assessment we plan to use to document their learning. If students know that their learning will be assessed through a demonstration, they are likely to approach their learning differently than if they expect a multi-question, short-answer assessment. Of course, our choice of assessment tool also needs to be guided by the nature of the learning in which students will be engaged. For example, a project-based learning activity may lend itself to a presentation or defense, while learning a set of established processes and procedures might be better assessed by analysis of a case study or demonstration of the best procedure for solving a problem or process for arriving at a solution. We might also discuss grading criteria or rubrics that we plan to apply. While we need to avoid having students focus too heavily on grades, it can be helpful for students to understand what will evaluated and how success will be judged.

We invest considerable time and energy in planning the learning we intend for our students. However, success—for our students and us—is heavily dependent on the investment and commitment of our students. Spending time at the beginning of the teaching and learning cycle to enlist the interest and grow confidence for learning in our students can pay rich dividends.

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