Navigating the Red Flags of Manipulative Behaviour
“Everyone deserves good love.” - Denene Millner, author, editor, journalist and media personality
Feeling Unheard Or Confused Around Someone?
You’re not imagining it. Manipulation can be subtle or overt, intended to control your feelings, your actions and even your reality. Think of scenarios like refusing to communicate, rejecting accountability or twisting your words to serve their agenda.
Maybe you’ve noticed silent treatments, guilt-tripping, making you feel insecure or crazy or even blaming your past for their choices. These aren’t isolated incidents, they’re pieces of a pattern. Experts point out that these behaviours, guilt, obligation, fear and gaslighting, alter your emotional landscape and chip away at your well-being.
People pleasers and approval-seekers can be especially vulnerable. Manipulators exploit these traits with tactics like positive charm, passive-aggression, emotional blackmail, intermittent reinforcement and gaslighting, creating an emotional roller-coaster designed to hook you in.
Stay Safe and Fortify Yourself
Start with these five empowering practices:
1. Listen to Your Gut
If something feels off, like your needs aren’t valued or you're walking on eggshells, trust that intuition. Your emotions matter. Recognising discomfort is your first shield against manipulation.
2. Name the Tactics
When they refuse to communicate, ignore your feelings, twist your words or revert to guilt trips, call it what it is: manipulation. Naming it reduces its power and reaffirms your clarity.
3. Set & Enforce Boundaries
Decide what you won’t accept, whether it’s silent treatment, bullying or mind games. Don’t debate or justify; stay calm, use phrases like “Let me know when you’re ready to talk” and walk away.
4. Document & Deconstruct
Write down specific incidents, what was said, how you felt, how they stopped responding or changed tone. This factual log helps you see the patterns clearly, strengthens self-trust and counters gaslighting.
5. Activate External Support
Reach out to someone safe, phone a friend, post here or text a supportive family member, especially after a manipulative interaction. Sharing resets your perspective, breaks isolation and reminds you: you’re not alone.
Choose one exercise to try today. Maybe you’ll send a boundary-setting text, record the last time you felt gas lit or reach out for validation right after an upsetting interaction.
Keep it simple, consistent actions spark change.
When You Know Better, You Break Free
“Love is to be nurtured, protected, and respected and entered into with a clear mind and a sound heart."- Denene Millner
Manipulation isn’t always loud or obvious. It often creeps in quietly. Through subtle put-downs, shifting blame, silent treatments or guilt-laden affection. Ladies, here's the truth most people miss. Repeated exposure to manipulation doesn’t just bruise your emotions, it changes the way your brain works.
Neuroscience research on emotional abuse, including findings published by Psychology Today and Psychology News, reveals that chronic manipulation activates your brain’s amygdala, the centre for fear and survival instincts.
This keeps you locked in a loop of hyper-vigilance, self-doubt and emotional exhaustion. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational thinking and self-control gets overridden by anxiety and second-guessing. Over time, this damages your confidence, shrinks your belief in your own instincts and keeps you emotionally tethered to unhealthy patterns.
Dr. Cortney Warren, a clinical psychologist specialising in self-deception, notes that "people stay in manipulative relationships because they’ve been conditioned to doubt their own reality." You begin to normalise disrespect, minimise the red flags and internalise blame for someone else’s toxic behaviour. Psychology research confirms this. The longer you stay exposed to manipulation, the harder it becomes to recognise abuse for what it is and the easier it is to fall back into silence and survival mode.
But there is a way out and it starts with conscious action. Neuroplasticity means your brain can change. Every time you speak your truth, set a boundary or document a manipulative moment, you begin rewiring your neural pathways. You teach your brain that safety comes from self-respect, not self-sacrifice.
The reward?
Emotional freedom. Clarity. A heightened ability to trust yourself, which forms the bedrock of stronger relationships, better leadership and a life driven by purpose, not fear.
Yes, the discomfort is real because growth always feels unfamiliar at first. But discomfort is not a signal to stop, it’s a sign you’re breaking old patterns that no longer serve you. This is how you dismantle weak thinking, override toxic habits and reclaim your dignity.
The pain of facing manipulation is temporary. The reward of rising above it is permanent.
If this message struck a nerve or opened your eyes, don’t let it pass by. Take a moment now. share your insight, your first bold step or your encouragement for someone who may be caught in the same struggle. Every action you take sends a message to yourself and others.
You were never born to settle for survival. You were born to live. free, bold and with a mind unshackled by fear or control. Your extraordinary life begins the moment you decide you deserve more so act like it.
