DAY 19 – Emotional blackmail | 100 Day Self-Attunement Journey

“Stay away from people who make you feel like you are hard to love.” -Unknown 

Hi everyone and welcome to day 19. Today I did a short meditation where I visualized my future and grounded myself in the goals ahead. Today, I will talk about another emotionally abusive behavior in the form of emotional blackmail. 

Emotional blackmail encompasses a variety of different behaviors that are all manipulative and psychologically devastating for the victim. Has your partner ever threatened to end the relationship if you don’t do what they want or if you don’t concede your own feelings about a particular topic or matter? Emotional blackmail is especially damaging because it leaves the victim living in almost-constant fear and insecurity. Rejection, the silent treatment, emotional withdrawal (withdrawing love and affection), and emotional raging are forms of emotional blackmail because they all evoke a sense of fear and insecurity within the victim, which can flood the victim’s thoughts and actions and affect their level of concentration, focus, and joy. Emotional blackmail subconsciously activates a person’s fear of abandonment. This is why the victim concedes, because if they haven’t worked through their childhood wounds, their fear of abandonment becomes overwhelming to the point that the victim begins to ignore their own needs and concerns, just to stop the pain the fear evokes. The scary part here is that both partners are usually aware of each other’s fears and insecurities and the emotionally abusive partner uses their partner’s fears and emotions against them to gain leverage and to reinstate their power and control. The victim concedes to avoid negative interactions and to ease their subconscious fears of abandonment. But although the victim concedes, the issue isn’t resolved; the victim’s concern has only been ignored and invalidated.

Essentially, an emotional blackmailer carries the attitude that their partner should do as he/she says or wants otherwise the victim will be punished and will suffer. The punishment is not physical in nature, rather it is designed to make you feel invalidated, rejected, unwanted, and emotionally and/or physically abandoned. This is why silence is so destructive to a relationship. It disconnects the partners further and does not allow for any resolution to the conflict. One person’s concerns and needs are perpetually unheard and unaddressed, leaving that person to retreat and internalize feelings of unworthiness, contempt, and neglect. Emotional blackmail is designed to keep the victim off-balance, in fear, and doubting their own needs and feelings, so that they shift towards what the perpetrator wants and demands, at the expense of their own valid concerns. Over time, this moves the victim further away from their true sense of self and continues to corrode their self-trust and self-concept.

A healthy and mature conversation involves both people being vulnerable and expressing their needs and feelings. This cannot take place when one person is sulking, pouting, unable to hear the other person, doesn’t care about the other person’s feelings or perspective, villainizes their partner, needs to be “right,” can’t be or refuses to be compassionate, understanding, and vulnerable, acts in a condescending or contemptuous manner, and withdraws love and affection.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow for day 20.