Why manipulators lie

Your parents offer to pay half, as long as you do promise to help out with some projects around the house over spring break.

You eagerly agree, and you spend your break doing practically everything around the house without any reminders. You must not be studying. College is expensive enough. Why should we pay for you to go party in another country? Dealing with family manipulation and other toxic behaviors can be stressful, to say the least. When you feel uncertain about how to handle the situation, you might avoid responding at all. This may help you avoid conflict , but it also allows the manipulation to continue.

Try grounding yourself or using breathing exercises to cool down and relax. This means expressing your own feelings and thoughts, rather than simply making accusations about the other person. Others can then choose to respect your boundaries and continue interacting in a way that works for you.

You can set boundaries for yourself, too. These might help you limit involvement with a manipulative person, such as choosing to leave when they use a certain tactic, or deciding to see them only when others are present. Boundaries can also help you curb how much you offer someone emotionally.

This might mean you avoid sharing details about your personal life with that person. It can be a huge relief when even one other person understands and offers support.

Avoiding some family members entirely can be difficult. Instead, you might try to prioritize connections with the ones who treat you with sincerity and offer unconditional love and kindness. It can also damage your self-esteem and affect your ability to develop healthy relationships as an adult. It can even show up in your own parenting. A family counselor or any therapist who specializes in family relationship dynamics can help you and your family address problematic behaviors and prevent these long-term effects.

In therapy, you can get help for depression , anxiety , and other mental health symptoms often associated with toxic family dynamics. A therapist can also help you explore strategies for getting to know people if you find it difficult to open up. Addressing problematic behaviors with a manipulative family member sometimes improves the situation.

You might feel a sense of duty toward your family — but in the end, you have to put your own well-being first. Someone needs to help them break out of that assumption.

For other forms of manipulation, Stines suggests trying to not allow the manipulative behavior to affect you personally. Often, establishing boundaries can play an important role in keeping manipulation at bay.

Manipulators often have either boundaries that are too rigid or enmeshed boundaries. In a manipulative situation, it can also help to delay your response, according to Olson. Contact us at letters time. By Cassie Shortsleeve. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. Need help? At RMS, one of the miracles of healing takes place when our students regain their dignity and become honored and trusted again by those whom they love. When a loved one is in a relationship with such a person, they know very well the emptiness that comes from being manipulated and betrayed.

However, no matter how many times they have been lied to, they may feel it is impossible to halt the cycle. Working off of a genuine sense of compassion or misplaced guilt, family and friends will do almost anything to help, but they are not educated in what it takes to really be of assistance.

This emotional response only provides the opportunity for continued manipulation and lies. To the person with the problem, avoiding responsibility becomes his or her highest priority. The resulting chaos stemming from their lies can be so overwhelming that he or she will do just about anything to continue lying and avoid responsibility.

At Red Mountain Sedona, we work with both the student and his or her loved ones to heal the wounds and build a new foundation of hope. The first step toward healing begins with realizing that the lying and manipulation are not a sign of moral decay, even though it seems that way.

While you may have once had a strong sense of right and wrong, that was quickly overwhelmed by your poor decisions and habits. At Red Mountain, we specialize in helping to reverse this destructive cycle.

Of course, most people feel bad about lying and manipulating, but that alone is not enough to stop the abuse. Family and other loved ones must see that healing is possible, and the student must make amends that are meaningful and lasting.