1. The fear of judgment.

When one of the two partners (often it is the woman, but not only) is no longer well in the couple, she owes it to the fact of "feeling" constantly judged.

One of the 2 members of the couple (the manipulator) adopts the strategies listed above to make the victim feel at fault and under constant observation.

The fear of judgment is often manifested by those who experience it with a strong desire to close in on themselves and there is an ever less complicity and desire to dialogue between the two.

2. The lack of play.

In a situation of psychological violence within the home, there is less and less chance and desire to have fun and play with your partner. We move further and further away, and all occasions become too serious and tense. We don't exchange jokes anymore and we no longer use the playful tone that we used to use before.

3. Search for refuge elsewhere.

The partner "victim" of mental manipulation tries to take refuge in other activities that can make him forget the couple's situation and otherwise satisfy him.

It is not uncommon for a member of the couple to throw themselves headlong into work or a hobby to be able to stay away from home and do other things. Unconsciously,people are already trying to escape the situation.

4. The lies.

To mask reality and what it feels like, both partners start to lie. The one uses lies to manipulate his partner and the latter, especially in the early stages, to deny those who are close to them but also to themselves their condition of unhappiness.

5. Anger.

In a mentally manipulated situation, the feeling of anger and frustration grows considerably.

The people involved shoot for minimal problems even in contexts outside the home.It is perceived that, although psychological violence maintains a balance (albeit sick), the relationship is precarious within.

If you recognize any of these signs, don't wait any longer. The situation could escalate. Instead, look for a way to "detach yourself" from your executioner as soon as possible.

If it is difficult for you, compare yourself with friends and loved ones outside the couple. They will be able to give you the help you deserve and that you need.

And, if it seems appropriate, do not be ashamed to seek the help of an expert. It is aright, and also a duty towards yourself.

Recognizing the manipulative behavior of others is fundamental for our well-being and for the effects on our self-esteem. If we know how to recognize it, we can draw on resources to escape manipulation.

But what is manipulative behavior?

It is a behavior that some people in certain contexts assume with others, relying on their sensitivity and their values, in order to influence their choices without taking into account their rights, their well-being and their balance.

As you can see, the elements that characterize the manipulative behavior are two:

1. Attempt to influence the choices of others regardless of their well being,

2. The attempt is expressed in a "hidden", not explicit way, leveraging certain sensitivities of others.

For example, it is not manipulative behavior to explicitly declare one's goal and try to convince someone to support it.

While it is manipulative behavior to hide one's goals, prompting the other person to behave in a certain way that favors the hidden goal.

Manipulative behavior is therefore potentially very disturbing and dangerous.To defend yourself from manipulative behavior, you must first recognize it.

1. Detect contradictions or inconsistencies between what the other says and what they really do.

2. Feeling "forced" or "pressed" to do something or behave in a certain way without there being obvious elements of objective constraint.

3. Be the object of observations that upset or hurt us.

These signals all depend on a modality that is always present in manipulative behaviors: the presence of more or less masked criticisms, addressed not to specific behaviors or opinions, but to others as persons.

This type of criticism is called manipulative criticism and consists of summary judgments about others as unsuitable, wrong, different, unhealthy, bad, unreliable,incapable, unlovable people, etc.

One of the most subtle criticisms of manipulators is to attribute to others their own aims and style. For example, saying "you are a person in total bad faith" can be a way to hurt the other by attributing exactly your own behaviors.

Other examples of manipulative criticism are: "You are an unreliable person", "You are not very serious", "Other men (or other women) do not do this ...", "You completely miss any form of self-love".

Manipulative criticisms, therefore criticisms of the person as such, can also be subtle.

For example: "I did not expect such behavior from you" is not a criticism of the behavior but is a subtle criticism of the person. In fact, the manipulator is telling us that his opinion of us as people is seriously compromised as a result of our behavior.

Once the manipulative behavior has been recognized, we need to run for cover.

The typical errors of response to manipulative behavior consist either in indulging the manipulator's pressure, or in discussing or arguing about the criticisms that have been addressed to us.

The best response to manipulative behavior is, instead, an assertive behavior, that is to say to reaffirm one's opinion clearly without taking into consideration the criticisms of the person.

Purposeful manipulation and deception are widespread in the animal world and inhuman societies. But upstream of the tricks and strategies, it is useful to have clear ideas on relational processes - biologically predisposed - which can transform a normal relationship into a highly effective manipulative dynamic.

All this, however, leads to an obvious question: how to defend ourselves from the manipulative tricks of other subjects?

A distinguished gentleman enters a jewelry store and chooses some awfully expensive jewelry. With the permission of the owner of the shop, he puts them away in a case closed by a zipper, because, he explains, he will come back later to buy them, but he would like to stop them. The customer then delivers the closed case to the shop owner,asking him to close it in the safe, which is promptly carried out.

The customer leaves. As shown by the recording made by the camera, now studied in the police schools, the case delivered in the hands of the jeweler, however, is not the one with the precious, but another, cleverly replaced by the thief-magician.

In this case it would have been enough for the robbed person to check the contents of the case, but this operation was inhibited by the instinctive urgency of putting the gems"safe", after having seen them touch and manipulate by the customer.

Furthermore, in the jeweler's mind, the precious stones had already been "sold":one more reason to protect them with a supplement of caution. Caution that turned out to be catastrophic.

If in our culture there is a top ten of indefensible concepts, that of manipulation is very likely to be part of it. Manipulating is usually synonymous with deceiving, entangling,misleading in view of objectives that often damage the manipulated.

The word itself derives from the medieval pharmaceutical Latin, where "manipulus"defined the handful of medicinal herbs to be mixed to obtain who knows what poultice. In reality it is not so true that manipulation must always be ethically unacceptable. In fact, it is easy to think of situations in which a manipulative strategy is implemented in the interest of the other or in any case without the deliberate will to harm: in medicine for example, but also in the relationship between parents and children, in psychotherapy, in marketing and even in teaching.

Just as it is a fact that there are situations in which a manipulative activity against someone is put in place for a superior or more general advantage for the benefit of many: in negotiation, in the economy, in the management of particular emergencies.

In pragmatic terms, manipulation is a subcategory of communication.

If communicating is synonymous with influencing, manipulating is synonymous with influencing by taking advantage of the "sensitive points" of the manipulating.Therefore, in order for there to be manipulation, a substantial asymmetry is required in the relationship between who acts and who is acted. If this is the premise, a clear distinction must be made between one-many manipulation (such as that of advertising, mass media,certain religions, group cultures) and one-one, as in the example given at the beginning.

It is quite evident that in mass manipulation, rather than art, it is a question of a mix of consolidated techniques and power. Here the context is under control and the chances of counterattack by the manipulated are practically nil. What gives effectiveness to the mass manipulation strategy is the unchallenged pressure capability regarding contextual conditions and the passing of information, rather than technical refinement.

Other discourse instead in the one-one interaction. In human relationships,manipulation strategies are actually very common, and the person implementing them is usually a psychologically disturbed individual in need of people to be controlled in someway. It is obvious, however, that these are not the most suitable individuals to become experts in manipulation.

As an ancient Chinese story says, being masters in something implies being able not only to do it, but also not to do it. In a context of professional manipulation, however, there is one of the two participants who deliberately implements techniques and strategies in view of objectives that the other is not able to suppose. In more detail, if we go to consider the elements that contribute to configuring a manipulative strategy, we see that they are more than you usually think.

In addition to the manipulator and the manipulated, there are the respective objectives and expectations, the target groups and the context. Here it is true that the manipulator has the advantage of the factors set out above, however the manipulator can always notice something and react accordingly. Try to control the context, or even - more simply – do not let yourself be "guided" by the other.

That is, do not enter into that state of trust or psychological-emotional subjection, which is the fundamental prerequisite of any manipulation sequence. In other words, if it is important to focus on the manipulator's"tricks", even more, so is the fact that these techniques, can only work from the moment when he is able to create a particular type of relationship in which he is the guide.