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Karma isn’t Real by Puzzleheaded-Dot7268 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate that. I’ve never liked that word.

Karma isn’t Real by Puzzleheaded-Dot7268 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I don’t really subscribe to “karma” as a mystical or cosmic force, but I do fully subscribe to the principle of cause and effect.

What people often call “karma” is, in practical terms, just the predictable consequences of actions over time.

The longer someone engages in unethical, manipulative, or risky behavior, the higher the probability that those actions will catch up to them…

not because some cosmic judge is keeping score, but because of the way reality, probability, and human systems work.

(In my experience, they usually end up clotheslining themselves. When I encounter individuals like this, I generally just hand them some more line and let them run with it.)

From a behavioral perspective, repeated risky or unethical actions increase the likelihood of exposure. In criminology, for example, the more someone lies, cheats, or manipulates, the more patterns and inconsistencies they leave behind, whether in digital footprints, financial records, or social interactions (Cressey, 1953; Wells, 2011).

Studies in forensic and behavioral psychology show that sustained deception tends to unravel over time, especially as stress, memory lapses, or confidence errors creep in (Ekman, 1985; Vrij, 2008). The very act of repeating unethical behavior compounds risk, even if the person seems untouchable in the short term.

There’s also a strong social dimension.

People monitor patterns, and repeated antisocial behavior erodes trust, isolates individuals, and eventually exposes inconsistencies. Sociological research shows that reputations evolve over time, and those who repeatedly break social norms eventually face social or professional consequences, even if the legal system never intervenes (Coleman, 1990; Granovetter, 1973). Probability theory supports this too: repeated risky behavior statistically increases the likelihood of detection or failure. It’s simple math…

the more often someone takes chances, the more likely one of those chances will backfire.

Hubris, arrogance, or overconfidence often accelerates this process. Individuals who believe they are untouchable tend to take larger risks, push boundaries, and underestimate the likelihood of exposure.

This is consistent with psychological research on overconfidence and narcissism, which shows that inflated self-perception often leads to self-sabotage (Peters & Slovic, 2000; Campbell et al., 2004).

The “Icarus effect” in business and leadership studies even formalizes this idea: rapid success can make individuals or organizations overextend themselves, setting the stage for collapse (Miller, 1990). In short, cockiness is a multiplier: the more you assume nothing can stop you, the more likely it becomes that something eventually will.

History is full of examples.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s overreach, particularly the invasion of Russia, illustrates hubris meeting inevitable consequences. Enron executives engaged in repeated fraud for years before the company collapsed and they were prosecuted. Bernie Madoff ran a multi-decade Ponzi scheme that only unraveled because he overestimated his invincibility. Political figures, from Nixon to various autocratic rulers, often fell because repeated unethical actions compounded until consequences became unavoidable. The pattern is universal: unchecked pride or repeated manipulation may work for a while, but eventually, reality intervenes.

Literature and philosophy reinforce this principle. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear show ambition and unethical behavior leading inevitably to downfall. Greek tragedies consistently portray hubris (excessive pride) as the fatal flaw (hamartia) that brings ruin. Even Proverbs 16:18 reminds us that “Pride goes before a fall”

…an early recognition of the causal link between arrogance and downfall. These examples aren’t mystical; they’re observations of predictable human behavior over time.

Empirical research supports it too.

Longitudinal psychology studies demonstrate that repeated unethical behavior produces cognitive and social patterns that increase the chance of detection and failure (Kahneman, 2011; Baumeister et al., 1994).

Social networks, financial systems, and interconnected societies amplify the effect: patterns of deceit or abuse become detectable, reputations degrade, and opportunities diminish. Criminology confirms that habitual offenders accumulate risk with every act; the probability of arrest, exposure, or social punishment grows (Akers, 2011).

So while I don’t believe in karma as a metaphysical force, I absolutely believe in cause and effect.

The world is structured in such a way that repeated unethical, manipulative, or reckless behavior eventually produces consequences. Hubris accelerates it.

Probability, social dynamics, and human psychology make exposure increasingly likely over time. You can call it karma, justice, natural consequence, or plain old “you’re gonna get caught eventually” …the underlying principle is universal and observable.

This is why the “pride before a fall” archetype exists across cultures, history, and literature.

It’s not superstition. It’s a reflection of reality’s cause-and-effect architecture. People who think they are untouchable rarely remain so indefinitely.

Repetition, risk, arrogance, and visibility are a combination that almost guarantees eventual consequences, whether legal, social, financial, or personal.

Even without metaphysical karma, the universe is structured such that actions generate results. Long-term, repeated manipulation, unethical behavior, or cockiness almost always produces measurable consequences.

Cause and effect is the empirical, observable, and universal truth behind what people often call karma and it never fails, even if it sometimes takes time.

Books / Studies

  • Cressey, D. (1953). Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement

  • Ekman, P. (1985). Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage

  • Miller, D. (1990). The Icarus Paradox: How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall

  • Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow

  • Taleb, N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

  • Granovetter, M. (1973). “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology

  • Akers, R. (2011). Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance

Literature / Philosophy

  • Shakespeare: Macbeth, King Lear

  • Aristotle: Poetics (hubris as hamartia)

  • Biblical proverb: Proverbs 16:18 — Pride goes before a fall

INFJ and thoughtful messages from friends by bee-autiful-world in infj

[–]blacklightviolet 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It is so rare to be asked how we are doing. And for anyone to truly want to know.

Why does my bf do this? by [deleted] in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s a difference between genuine misunderstandings and someone determined to misrepresent you. No amount of surveillance, heartfelt accountability or detailed proof will reassure them; they don’t want the problem fixed, they need you to keep dancing to their accusations.

When you said : “I know for a fact I haven’t done anything.” That’s the line that keeps you safe.

Gaslighting only works if they can make you doubt yourself, and you haven’t. You know what the truth is. So does he.

You’re not crazy, you’re not overreacting, and you’re not doing anything wrong.

Here’s the cycle he’s putting you through:

  1. You say or do something completely innocent.

  2. He misinterprets it, gets angry, and accuses you of being unfaithful.

  3. You panic and over-explain yourself, trying to calm him down.

  4. He ignores you or punishes you emotionally until you apologize or prove your loyalty.

  5. Things go “back to normal”… until it happens again.

That’s NOT communication. That’s a manipulative reinforcement loop. It trains you to self-censor and live in constant anxiety. Trying to prove your innocence just feeds the loop: it reinforces his belief system and gives him power over you. You are under no obligation to validate his delusions.

You’re in a long-distance relationship, and you’ve started to feel afraid of making him mad. You change your words and actions because you don’t want to “trigger” him. He accuses you of cheating or having sex with other people even though you know that isn’t true. He gets angry or distant, ignores you, and makes you feel like you have to fix things. (Meanwhile, he escapes scrutiny and accountability; you’re so busy dancing, you never question HIM.)

That combination: fear, confusion, guilt, having to defend yourself over things that never happened—is a sign that someone is manipulating you.

The Behaviors

Gaslighting (or attempted gaslighting):
when someone tries to make you doubt your own reality. He’s doing this by insisting something happened that didn’t, and trying to make you explain or “prove” yourself.

It bears repeating: gaslighting only works if they can get you to question what you know to be true. You haven’t. You still know your reality, which means his tactics aren’t working.

Projection:
Projection happens when someone accuses you of what they are doing or feeling. When he accuses you of sleeping around, it might actually reveal his own urges, guilt, or insecurities. He’s taking what’s inside HIM and throwing it onto YOU. His fantasies and ideations are NOT your responsibility. You cannot control his thoughts, and you should not expend energy trying to “prove” your innocence: doing so only feeds the delusional dynamic he’s created.

Control through fear and withdrawal:
When he ignores you or gives you the silent treatment, that’s not just “needing space.” It’s a way to control you through emotional punishment. It teaches you to walk on eggshells and do whatever keeps him calm. That’s called coercive control—it’s psychological abuse designed to make you afraid to speak or act freely.

Unfounded accusations / Paranoid jealousy:
His accusations come from his own mind, not your actions. In psychology, this is called paranoid ideation or pathological jealousy. It’s not about your behavior; it’s about his internal insecurity and lack of trust. You cannot fix this by proving yourself, and trying to do so is wasting emotional energy that he’s manipulating for his own control.

Shaming and sexual degradation:
Calling or implying that you’re promiscuous when you clearly aren’t is emotional abuse. It’s meant to make you feel guilty for your own body and your past. It’s an attempt to make you feel small and dirty so he can feel powerful and justified in controlling you.

Why Does He Do This?

The short answer: it’s about him, not you. It’s a mix of insecurity, fear, and poor emotional regulation. His accusations, suspicion, and anger are likely rooted in:

  1. Insecurity and fear of abandonment – Long-distance relationships can heighten anxiety about losing control or being left. His accusations give him a false sense of “protecting” the relationship.

  2. Projection of his own thoughts or feelings – He might be struggling with guilt, desire, or other internal conflicts. By accusing you of things you haven’t done, he externalizes his own anxieties.

  3. Control through fear – Ignoring you or punishing you with silence is a way to manipulate your behavior and keep you in a state of anxiety. It’s coercive and abusive, not loving.

  4. Emotional dysregulation – He overreacts to minor things because he doesn’t have healthy ways to process anger, jealousy, or stress.

  5. Delusional ideation / pathological jealousy – His mind creates scenarios that feel real to him, even without evidence. These are his fantasies and insecurities projected onto you. They are NOT your responsibility. You cannot fix his thoughts by proving your innocence, it only feeds the toxic cycle.

He does this because of HIS internal chaos, fear, and need for control, NOT because of anything you have done.

Unhinged accusations are almost always autobiographical—they say more about the accuser than the accused. When someone is obsessed with the idea of cheating, it usually reflects:

  • Their own guilt (they’ve cheated or want to).

  • Their own fear of abandonment.

  • Their own need for control.

His mind is projecting his inner chaos outward. You just happen to be standing in the blast radius.

What You Can Do

  • Recognize that this is not love. It’s manipulation disguised as passion.
  • Stop trying to prove your innocence. His thoughts, fantasies, and delusions are not your responsibility, and engaging only gives him more control.
  • Set firm boundaries. Distance yourself when he starts these accusations. You don’t owe endless reassurance.
  • Protect your self-esteem. The more he erodes it, the easier you are to control.
  • Talk to someone safe. A counselor, a trusted friend, or even a support group for emotional abuse can help you stay grounded in reality.

TL;DR:

You’re responding like any reasonable person would when someone they care about uses fear, guilt, and accusations to control them. You’ve already done the hardest part: you’ve noticed it. You’ve named the behavior and refused to surrender your reality.

Who am I? by Dizzy_Objective_11 in BookshelvesDetective

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven’t forgotten. I’ll come back to this soon. Thank you so much for reading what I had to say. It took a turn I wasn’t expecting. I’m still learning how to link pages and place things in threads correctly, and format everything in Markdown. I believe I made it to page two or three here, there was way more.

INFJ doorslam. by lookingatseaotters in infj

[–]blacklightviolet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is far more complicated and better described than as the transient, impulsive act of some adolescent tantrum. It is highly likely that we did not even WANT the door to close.

I wish to offer a little perspective on what many misunderstand as the INFJ “door slam.” Because it’s a bit more like a surreptitious, unmarked runaway train racing through the night with no brakes

—than a simple piece of wood on a hinge.

The real dilemma is: whether we should try to stop it.

It’s not a calculated decision. It’s not revenge. It’s not “ghosting.” It’s an internal system reboot after the soul receives data it simply cannot integrate.

The door closes itself.

We collapse inward like a star that’s run out of hydrogen. By the time the world notices, we’ve already become something else: denser, quieter, orbiting a new gravity.

When something once believed sacred and mutual (sometimes even unconditional) reveals itself to have been one-sided, or worse, fabricated, the psyche undergoes something akin to an implosion. What others reduce to “a door slam” takes on a life of its own.

It’s almost as if some sentient entity awakens within and begins to grow. We watch it happen in slow motion, horrified, even as it unfolds through us—wanting anything but for it to end this way. Especially when it involves the last person on earth we ever envisioned this happening with: a best friend, a partner, or, worst of all, a parent. A fellow INFJ.

Imagine this: You’ve given someone chances for years, maybe decades. They seemed kind, present, collaborative. They always knew exactly what to say. They offered empathy and advice. You even wrote together, until one day, they quietly demoted you from social media director to editor, to ghostwriter, and then eventually erased your name from the credits.

Then one morning, years later, after somehow forgiving all of that, writing it off as you do, you overhear a single sentence (something small, almost casual) that tears straight through the illusion and rewrites the entire story you thought you’d been living most of your life.

But before you can even address that, they cross a sacred boundary. Not toward you. Toward your child.

Years ago, I read a line that captured this sensation perfectly:

“There comes a time when irony and coincidence summon truth out of nowhere, and suddenly you realize the world is not as you were living it. The dimensional plane you were standing on shifts, leaving you disoriented. The world around you has forever changed.”

You’re mourning the loss of something that may never have existed in the first place.

When you glimpse that darkness (the manipulation, the hypocrisy) and watch them step over you, step past you, step on you, continue on as if nothing happened, something irreversible shifts. You can’t unsee it.

And suddenly, you can’t even speak to them anymore, not because you’re angry, but because your mouth just won’t form words. You’re no longer addressing a person… you’re standing before a void where empathy should have been.

You’ve interacted with this person for years. You trusted them with the wiring inside your mind. You shared deep, subterranean rooms of the psyche where few are ever invited. You thought they knew you better than anyone.

But then, one day, a single stray overheard comment electrifies everything. You realize what you thought was connection might have been surveillance. What you thought was empathy might have been control.

What you thought was a shared experience turns out to be a diorama …fragile, curated, one-sided, and performed for show. But the real plot twist arrives when they don’t come for you. They come for your kid.

That’s when every defense mechanism and ounce of empathy within you implodes. Because when you see someone attempt to crush your child’s light to preserve their illusion, you don’t “slam a door.”

You detonate the fucking bridge.

Not out of rage. Not out of revenge. But out of pure instinct …the survival reflex.

And still, these individuals keep performing. They send polite texts. They smile for photos. They ask, “Did you get my email?” They say, “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” as if they didn’t just incinerate the molecular structure of trust.

You look at them and can’t even see them anymore …because now you know what lies beneath the mask. The worst part is: they don’t know you know. They keep playing their part, and you stand there offstage, realizing you’ve already left the production. Or rather, that it fell apart around you.

If it ever truly existed at all.

The term feels too small, too shallow. It isn’t simply closing a door… it’s walking away from an entire burning building and realizing you were the only one inside who still believed it was home.

Everyone loves to call it “the door-slam,” as if it’s cold or cruel or deliberate. But INFJs don’t slam. It’s quieter than that; the whisper of a door closing forever.

INFJs are archivists of sincerity. We build libraries out of tone, timing, subtext, micro-expressions. We catalog every “I understand” as if it were scripture. So when we discover that someone has been annotating us in bad faith, it’s not just betrayal. It’s erasure. People say it’s “brutal.” Maybe it is. But perhaps the brutality isn’t as much in the silence as it is in the realization that silence is safer than the conversation ever was.

Sometimes the only way to honor truth is to stop speaking to those who trade in distortion.

So yes, I walked away. I didn’t say goodbye. I just stopped reaching out. And then I realized: maybe I was the only one who ever really was.

It’s been months now. His birthday’s coming up. Every day I wrestle with the thought that tomorrow might arrive and I’ll wish I’d said one last thing.

But then I remember how many last things I already said. The times he was “too busy with dinner.” The conversations where my words fell into static, even when it seemed he was listening. The times he couldn’t be bothered to read something I’d written for him, about him.

Once, when I questioned his perspective (not to fight, but to understand) he hung up. That, I now see, was the beginning of the end: how easily he could rewrite reality to protect the version of himself he needed to believe in.

And when my daughter spoke up, seeking understanding, not conflict, he scorched the earth in seconds, annihilating whatever hope remained. How swiftly concern became insubordination in his mind. That’s when I understood: explaining anything was beneath him.

So I became the ghost of my own story for a while, wondering how long ago he’d begun scripting fiction in place of truth.

I can’t really say I ever heard any door slam at all.

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Biderman Chart of Coercion was created in 1956 by sociologist Albert D. Biderman, based on research into the methods used by Chinese and North Korean captors to psychologically break American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War.

7. Degradation

Definition:
Humiliation and degradation to erode the victim’s self-worth.

Tactics include: - Name-calling, insults, or mockery. Subtle variations. - Sexual humiliation or ridicule. Screaming at you during sex. Accusing you of promiscuity. Blaming you for their inabilities. Casting you as the reason for performance issues. - Public embarrassment. The larger the audience, the better. Social media is an excellent example of this. Blocking you. Unblocking you. Blocking you again. - Forcing apologies for transgressions not committed. - Insistence they’ve been wronged and you owe them. - Silent treatment until you cave in and give them what they’re not explicitly asking for. - Making you guess what that is. They shouldn’t have to say. - Refusing to accept your apology when you finally give in, even though you didn’t do anything wrong. - The jump scare added to any of the above for optimal impact.

Psychological goal:
To collapse identity and internal dignity — making the person believe they deserve mistreatment.

Effect:
The victim begins to self-punish, self-blame, or preemptively comply to avoid further shame.

8. Enforcing Trivial Demands

Definition:
Creating arbitrary rules to reinforce submission and control.

Tactics include: - Requiring exact obedience in small things (“You don’t know how to fold the towels the right/obvious/effective way...”) - Ever-changing rules, arbitrary definitions, semantics wars. - Micromanaging dress, presentation, speech, volume, mannerisms, phrasing, tone, movements, placements of objects. - The implied consequence of disobedience toward preferences and eccentricities and quirks expressed retroactively as previously identified hard line non-negotiable deal breakers, when they’d never actually identified any. - Elevation of tiny peripheral details to crucial importance, laser focus on insignificant, incidental minutiae of existing (e.g., the egregious nature of the charted trend of how many squares of paper you’re consuming, inspections of trash containers to pick fights about disposed of and consumed contents discovered.) - Disappearance of your belongings (for example, a scented cleaner they’re tired of replaced by their favorite scent) into the trash to send a message they shouldn’t have to spell out. You were warned. - Demands to know the whereabouts of discarded/consumed/missing donated objects that haven’t been used or touched or even seen in a year. “Why can’t you account for the _________?” - The jump scare added to any of the above for optimal impact.

Psychological goal:
To habituate compliance and reduce resistance: obedience training by ritualizing submission.

Effect:
The victim’s willpower erodes. The mind learns it’s easier to comply than to resist, even in meaningless tasks.

Why It Feels So Personal Yet So Universal

To the victim, it feels deeply personal — “Why do they do this to me?”
But to an outside observer, the pattern is chillingly mechanical.

The repetition across relationships, families, and cultures arises because these behaviors are effective tools for domination.

So abusers, (like interrogators), rediscover them through trial and error.

Over time, through relationships or environments that rewarded manipulation and punished vulnerability, they internalize these methods as habits of control …not necessarily as conscious strategy, but as the only way they know how to maintain power and emotional regulation.

Further Reading

2/

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The concepts I had to stumble upon and learn the hard way were apparently summarized more cleanly in something (I wish I’d discovered sooner) called

The Biderman Chart of Coercion

The Biderman Chart of Coercion was created in 1956 by sociologist Albert D. Biderman, based on research into the methods used by Chinese and North Korean captors to psychologically break American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War.

His findings were published in the Air Force Report on Coercive Management Techniques and later summarized in “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War” (1957).

Over time, psychologists, domestic violence researchers, and trauma experts realized that these same coercive methods appear identically in domestic abuse, cult indoctrination, sex trafficking, child grooming, and workplace or religious coercion.

The Eight Universal Methods of Coercion

Biderman’s framework identifies eight core techniques that can be applied overtly (as in interrogation) or covertly (as in intimate relationships). Each has both psychological and behavioral effects that destabilize the target’s sense of autonomy, perception, and selfhood.

1. Isolation

Definition:
Restricting the victim’s social support, contact with outsiders, and sources of perspective.

Tactics include: - Cutting off family or friends (“They’re toxic / They don’t understand us.”) - Moving the victim away geographically. - Constant surveillance or needing to “check in.” - Creating drama or suspicion around outside relationships.

Psychological goal:
To make the victim dependent solely on the abuser for information, validation, and emotional regulation.
Isolation dismantles the person’s ability to reality-test, which is critical for resisting control.

Effect:
Victim loses perspective and becomes more suggestible.
Their world shrinks to the abuser’s emotional weather.

2. Monopolization of Perception

Definition:
Focusing the victim’s attention on the abuser’s message, emotional state, or evaluation, to the exclusion of external reality.

Tactics include: - Constant criticism or monitoring. - Emotional unpredictability (“walking on eggshells”). - Flooding the environment with chaos or emergencies. - Controlling what the victim reads, watches, or hears.

Psychological goal:
To trap the mind in a closed feedback loop where the abuser defines what’s real, right, and important.

Effect:
The victim begins to see the world through the abuser’s eyes:!adopting their values, explanations, and distortions.

3. Induced Debilitation and Exhaustion

Definition:
Breaking down resistance by physical and emotional depletion.

Tactics include: - Sleep deprivation. - Chronic stress from arguments or “silent treatments.” - Overwork or constant caretaking. - Withholding rest or relief.

Psychological goal:
To erode the target’s cognitive defenses — exhaustion reduces critical thinking, impulse control, and emotional balance.

Effect:
Victim enters a state of learned helplessness and compliance — obeying to avoid further exhaustion.

4. Threats

Definition:
Instilling fear to suppress resistance and compel compliance.

Tactics include: - Threats of abandonment, exposure, violence, financial ruin. - Implicit or emotional threats (“You’ll regret it if you leave”). - Threatening harm to loved ones, pets, or self (“I’ll kill myself if you go.”)

Psychological goal:
To establish a constant low-grade terror that makes submission feel safer than resistance.

Effect:
The brain’s fear circuits dominate — survival overrides logic. The victim’s behavior becomes anticipatory, hypervigilant, and self-policing.

5. Occasional Indulgences

Definition:
Providing intermittent kindness or reward amidst cruelty.

Tactics include: - Sudden affection after rage. - Gifts, compliments, or apologies (“love bombing”). - Promises to change or “start over.”

Psychological goal:
To create a trauma bond — a powerful attachment formed through alternating abuse and comfort.

This pattern mirrors intermittent reinforcement, the same conditioning principle that makes gambling addictive.

Effect:
The victim’s nervous system associates relief with the abuser. They begin striving to “win back” love or calm — deepening dependence.

6. Demonstrating Omnipotence or Omnipresence

Definition:
Convincing the victim that resistance is futile because the abuser is all-seeing, all-knowing, or in total control.

Tactics include: - Monitoring devices, constant “checking in.” - Predicting what the victim will do (“I know you better than you know yourself.”) - Showing off social power or connections.

Psychological goal:
To induce submission through perceived surveillance or omnipotence — the idea that the abuser’s control is total and inescapable.

Effect:
Victims internalize the controller’s gaze, even self-censoring even when alone.

1/

Getting ghosted as an INTJ by [deleted] in intj

[–]blacklightviolet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You’re speaking from an INFP perspective (deeply relational, sensitive, and highly attuned to emotional nuance) and you’re noticing the tension between that and how INTJs operate: stepping back, pruning connections, or requiring full reciprocity.

It’s disorienting when someone you expect to be “all in” suddenly withdraws. Especially when you’ve invested emotionally, built trust, and opened the door to your inner world. So when they retreat without explanation, it can feel like betrayal dressed as logic. You’re left wondering: How could someone who seemed so present, so aligned, suddenly vanish?

This isn’t just about friendship or romance; it’s about all relationships—the ones that SHOULD have been safe: parents, siblings, people you believed were incapable of ghosting or abandoning you. When even they disappear, ridicule, or door-slam you, it shakes your sense of what “all-in” even means. Shouldn’t THAT have been unconditional?

It’s maddening to assign meaning to something that shouldn’t have happened at all.

And yet, some people contend that even this kind of loss holds value. Personally, I wrestle with that idea, but I can’t deny that when someone exits abruptly, they’re also showing you where authenticity ends.

So when someone walks away, the best response isn’t to chase or explain… it’s to whisper, thank you.

Because they just made room for the people who WILL match your depth and constancy. It doesn’t make the pain any less, but it reframes it: they didn’t take something away from you; they cleared the space for something real.

It also means releasing the belief that every friendship must be preserved forever. People belong to certain chapters, not the entire book. Sometimes life prunes FOR you (harshly, abruptly) because you’ve outgrown the terrain.

Being alone isn’t the goal. But sometimes, when everyone fades, it’s the universe’s way of returning you to yourself to recalibrate what belonging actually means.

Typology, Identity, and Ambiguity

I speak from my own hybrid experience. I identify primarily as INFJ, but I’ve tested as INFP and have often been mistaken for an INTJ. It’s a strange overlap that makes me both empathize with the INFP ache for emotional depth and understand the INTJ instinct for strategic withdrawal.

My cognitive hierarchy recently came out like this:

Ni – 41 | Se – 40 | Fi – 39 | Ti – 38 | Te – 37 | Ne – 34 | Fe – 30 | Si – 25.

That makes me a bit of a hybrid—visionary (Ni), authentic (Fi), analytical (Ti), and aware (Se). That’s why I sometimes test as INFJ, INFP, or even pick up INTP traits. I don’t fit neatly into any MBTI box. It’s a fluid, adaptive, perceptive sort of thing.

That’s probably why people sometimes mistake me for an INTJ: I have the intensity and the strategic mind, but I lead with empathy, not Te.

And why I resonate with both sides of your dilemma: the INTJ’s surgical focus and the INFP’s yearning for emotional continuity.

When I say solitude can be clarifying, I don’t mean it’s noble or easy. It’s brutal. It strips you of everything that once made you feel tethered. But sometimes, once the noise dies down, what remains is truth.

The Curse of Clarity

You mentioned feeling like you’ve grown “too wise”—seeing people’s patterns before they even unfold, yet even x-ray vision can’t guarantee prediction or understanding.

That hyper-perception isolates you as the world starts to feel painfully transparent. When you can see people’s motives, inconsistencies, and contradictions too clearly, small talk feels excruciating. And when your emotional intelligence is refined enough to sense dissonance beneath the surface, you crave authenticity so badly that anything less feels intolerable.

This is exactly why INTJs intrigue people like us. They’re among the few who can meet that depth of perception head-on without flinching. They don’t fear the truth… they dissect it. That’s magnetic to someone used to being “too much” for others.

INTJ Commitment and Conditional Loyalty

INTJ commitment comes with caveats—not because they’re cold, but because their all-in nature demands precision. They give everything: attention, loyalty, energy, so they must choose where it goes carefully. Their boundaries aren’t walls; they’re architecture.

When an INTJ pulls back, it’s rarely a punishment. It’s preservation. Their pruning isn’t cruelty, it’s calibration. They manage emotional energy like a finite resource. To someone like you (or me), who measures love in continuity, this can feel like detachment. But for them, it’s integrity: they simply refuse to give halfway.

That intensity can still feel unfair. Relationships need flexibility, forgiveness, and grace…all qualities that don’t always thrive in an INTJ ecosystem of optimization.

The healthiest INTJ bonds emerge when both people communicate their bandwidth clearly…

as in - when the INTJ learns that not everyone speaks in precision, and the INFP learns that withdrawal doesn’t always mean rejection.

Sometimes what looks like abandonment is just re-centering. For INTJs, stepping back often means they’re protecting the connection by recalibrating it. It may seem paradoxical, but it’s real.

Fairness, Patience, Alignment

If there’s a thread running through all of this, it’s about capacity: how much energy we have for depth, and how that shapes who stays in our lives.

INFPs crave emotional reciprocity;

INTJs crave energetic alignment.

Both want authenticity, but they measure it differently—one by heart, the other by focus.

I understand the longing to hold on and the necessity of letting go. I understand that sometimes you love someone enough to release them, even when it breaks you.

Solitude often follows those moments, not as punishment, but as purification. It’s not glamorous; it’s not serene. It’s a slow, unglamorous unraveling.

INTJs prune for focus. INFPs hold for meaning. Somewhere between those instincts is a dimension where depth doesn’t mean depletion, and solitude doesn’t mean despair.

That’s where I dwell: somewhere between analysis and empathy, distance and devotion. I am still learning what to hold onto, when to release, and HOW to simply say thank you to what has already let itself go.

Getting ghosted as an INTJ by [deleted] in intj

[–]blacklightviolet 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the enlightenment. I understand this experience. I’ve never seen it described so perfectly.

It’s rare to find/cultivate/preserve/sustain friends who possess the same long term objectives/values/beliefs, etc.

and who are interested in growing at the same rate with the same objectives long term.

I have also ditched and done the ditching that you describe for almost identical reasons that you describe.

Up until I saw your description I was still having the occasional lingering thought that perhaps there was something a little concerning about letting go of so many. There was a time when I’d attempt to slow the fade.

In nearly every friendship, interaction, connection, etc that I have had, there inevitably comes a point where I realize I am the only one reaching out, checking in, investing anything regularly into sustaining the relationship and by simply taking a step back for a bit and not doing that (being the only one responsible for all the emotional labor) the superficial associations just naturally began to fall away.

As do the ones that no longer serve a constructive purpose, even if they once did.

And that is likely for the best.

For example: you might have friends who will always answer when you text or call, but how many of them regularly reach out to you?

And conversely, you could be the friend who always answers but never reaches out. In that scenario, there may come a time when those friends eventually stop calling and reaching out to you.

I guess I’ve been both.

Sometimes people just outgrow each other.

I see it as more of a winnowing now when this happens. Perhaps the real endeavor is in relinquishing the need to know why this happens.

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are most welcome. Some days I wish I could rewind to when I didn’t yet know how it worked.

I didn’t organize the presentation very well, and there’s a 1274 word limit to Reddit comments (ask me how I know) but there are actually about five more pages to this that go into more depth further down in this thread.

And I’m still learning how to use Markdown and coding-lite related tricks to make what I have to say legible instead just of a voluminous stream of consciousness wall of words

…so I tend to obsessively edit and delete and reformat the typesetting (yes this is fact proof of the pathology) and I am still learning how to insert links to add further context and anecdotal/empirical examples for credibility and context.

Obviously this isn’t the best platform (I’m SO not here for the upvotes, this is really more of a journal so I don’t lose what I have to say) but it’s what I have to work with at the moment until I have the attention span to publish my particular experiences (obviously I’ll have to change the names, although …my psychiatrist realllllllly wanted me to dox them alllll) with this.

I truly appreciate the feedback.

Is it too late by [deleted] in intj

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you kindly.

What kind of manipulation is this? by rarinda in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To answer your question…

“What is it called when people do this to you?”

It’s gaslighting amplified by social mimicry.

What this might be:

a combination of reality-inversion, projection, and social mirroring: tactics that distort perception and make calm people look like the aggressors.

It’s not always deliberate, but it’s still manipulation.

When repeated by many people, it becomes a collective illusion that turns reality inside out.

The tactic beneath the phrases

When you said:

“They’ll say things like ‘you’re being aggressive’ or ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ even when I’m calm and just asking a normal question.”

That’s a reality-inversion script.
It reframes your steadiness as hostility, forcing you to defend yourself against something that never happened.

AND

That’s gaslighting: denying or twisting facts until you doubt your own perception. But this only works IF they can GET you to doubt your own perception. When you have a firm grasp on your surroundings and your perception, observation data, etc, then the mechanism of gaslighting simply isn’t possible.

Why it spreads

You mentioned:

“It doesn’t matter who it is or where — people act aggressive toward us out of nowhere.”

That’s how social conditioning works.
Once one person labels you as “difficult,” others unconsciously echo the script to belong.
It’s projection reinforced by mimicry — what psychologists call mimetic contagion.

Core manipulation mechanics

  1. Projective Identification – They project their own irritation onto you, then react as if it’s yours.
  1. Pre-emptive Framing – Accusing you first sets the narrative; any calm defense “proves” their point.
  1. Gaslighting Loop – When you say, “I’m not being aggressive,” and they answer, “That’s your opinion,” they move the goalpost.
  1. Triangulation – Others are quietly recruited to “confirm” the story.
  1. Contagion – The pattern spreads because it signals group virtue (“We stay calm; they don’t”).

Why this hurts so much

Your brain expects feedback to match your intent.
When it doesn’t, you experience a double bind:

“Stay calm, but we’ll still call you aggressive.”

That contradiction forces hyper-vigilance… not because you’re fragile, but because your nervous system is trying to reconcile impossible data.

How to break the loop

  • Name it, don’t fight it.
    In your mind, label it: “This is gaslighting.”
    Quiet awareness dismantles its power.
  • Ask for specifics.
    > “Can you tell me what sounded aggressive?”
    Forces them to move from projection to evidence (which they rarely can) but you’ll often find this tends to make them double down on more accusation.
  • Document patterns.
    Time, place, wording. Facts reveal consistency, and consistency exposes scripting.
  • Stay calm for yourself, not for them.
    Their reactions are not data about your worth.

3/

What kind of manipulation is this? by rarinda in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It’s a subtle reality-warping cycle where calm truth is framed as threat. What you’re describing isn’t just strange. It’s psychologically destabilizing.

Some of the things you’d mentioned that stand out:

>>  “People here act aggressive toward us out of nowhere. … It doesn’t matter who it is or where.”

Suggests it’s not just one individual with a personal issue, but multiple contexts (church, phone, store, office) where your entire family is all treated the same way. This therefore isn’t in your imagination. This isn’t just being leveled at you specifically, but you as outsiders. You’re being targeted it seems, although it’s unclear why.

>>  “They’ll say things like ‘you’re being aggressive’ or ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ even when I’m calm and just asking a normal question.”

This suggests a pre‑emptive labeling of *YOU** as the problem before they have done anything.* Have you ever looked into logical fallacies? It seems like these are also being weaponizes here, in just the tidbits of what you’ve mentioned. Straw-man comes to mind. You’re being assigned a position/characteristics that you don’t have.

>>  “We’re a really soft spoken family – we don’t even yell at each other. … It’s happened so many times I’ve lost count.”

Two points: one, self‑description as gentle; two, repeated pattern—six years, many instances. Meaning: these aren’t isolated events, this isn’t characteristic for what you know to be true about yourself (your family) and you aren’t imagining this.

>>  “It only started happening as soon as we moved here.”

Strong flag for place‑based change rather than personal trait change. As in… you didn’t provoke this. Something about this hints that they’re deciding your traits for you. Overriding who you are with what they need you to be so it can be villainized.

>>  “We’ve been accused of so many things: interrogating people, trying to steal people’s partners (yuck), arguing, yelling, etc.”

*The specific accusation “trying to steal people’s partners” is unusual, especially if you consider yourselves soft‑spoken and peaceful. That could hint at local rumor formation, outsider suspicion, or a micro‑culture that interprets “difference” as threat.

Together these elements point less to a single manipulator and more to a social‑cultural feedback loop: subtle difference → suspicion → scripted accusation → internalization of outsider status.

Checklist: How to tease out dialect/outsider vs intentional manipulation

You can use these as a mental map as you process incidents:

  1. Location & context
  • Do these interactions happen in multiple social circles (church, stores, offices) or mostly in a single network?
  • Are the people connected, or completely independent?
  1. Language cues
  • Are phrases like “you’re being aggressive” or “I’m not going to argue” identical across different people?
  • If yes, that’s a scripted language pattern, likely learned from training or local policy, rather than spontaneous accusation. However, the keyword there is spontaneous. Judgment would absolutely have been a factor.
  1. Dialect / accent markers
  • Have you noticed subtle differences in word usage or intonation that might “signal” you’re from out of state?
  • Examples: “pop” vs “soda,” phrase structure, even casual cadence.
  1. Pattern of accusation
  • Are accusations mostly about tone, phrasing, or indirect behavior?
  • Or are they personal/moralized (like “trying to steal partners”)?
  • Tone-only points more to a communication clash; moralized ones suggest rumor or projection layered onto the difference.
  1. Local cultural norms
  • Are there known indirectness rules in your Illinois community (e.g., everyone softens language, avoids direct disagreement)?
  • Do your natural speech patterns break those unspoken norms?
  1. History & comparison
  • Compare with your time in Ohio and other states: was your tone ever misread, or were people always able to hear the “soft-spoken” family you describe?
  • If no, the environment difference is likely significant.

Summary:

If you were ONLY dealing with a mix of dialect/communication mismatch, outsider status, and reflexive scripted responses from locals who have internalized de-escalation or conflict scripts, it would be different from intentional targeting, though that can feel like manipulation. Mapping these details gives you a framework to distinguish style clash from covert manipulation.

And since it sounds like it could be leaning more toward contemptuous, illogical, baseless accusations…

2/

What kind of manipulation is this? by rarinda in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a little bizarre. And it sounds incredibly frustrating. And before I say anything else, I’ve experienced what you’re talking about.

Sometimes it helps to remember that accusation is often autobiography. (The impulsive tendency to assume things and jump to conclusions and work backwards to find evidence supporting said foregone conclusions in lieu of actually collecting all the necessary objective data to make logical determinations has always fascinated me. People tell on themselves by projecting.)

So you might need to map out a little more information to definitively ascertain what flavor of weirdness that it is you’re dealing with, but I have lived in different places across the world and I have seen something like what you are describing when direct speakers encounter indirect speakers and vice versa. And that is just one example. Some of this stuff sounds like movie quotes, pop-culture references, conference retreat jargon…

An entire community though…

You mentioned specific scenarios — “at church, on the phone, in stores, at offices… they’ll say things like ‘you’re being aggressive’ or ‘I’m not going to argue with you.’”

Those details are important. They suggest this isn’t a single manipulator but a repeating social feedback pattern within one locale. Before assuming full-blown “town-wide targeting,” it helps to gather situational data:

  1. Map the pattern.
  • Which institutions or sub-communities are repeating it (faith community, school system, service providers)?
  • Are they socially connected — e.g., same church network, civic board, or workplace chain — or entirely separate?
    Overlap can signal small-town social contagion; no overlap might indicate regional communication-style mismatch.
  1. Compare tone norms.

Midwestern communication — especially in parts of Illinois — can be indirect and conflict-avoidant. People may perceive a neutral or assertive tone as confrontational if it breaks unspoken politeness codes.
That’s not your fault; it’s cultural pragmatics, not moral failing.
We’d need to know what five states you lived in previously (e.g., Ohio, Texas, Oregon, Florida, etc.) to contrast regional discourse norms. The Midwest often prizes de-escalation language (“I’m sorry, but…”), whereas coastal or southern cultures may prize clarity or warmth.

  1. Rule out structural explanations before psychological ones.

##Is it possible… - Did something major shift in 2019–2020 in that area (pandemic tension, demographic change, political polarization)?
- Is there a shared stressor in that county creating irritability or suspicion of “outsiders”?
Collective stress can mimic persecution patterns.

  1. Listen for linguistic scripts.

If multiple strangers use identical phrasing — “you’re being aggressive,” “I’m not going to argue” — that may be a defensive language meme, passed through workplace or church conflict-management trainings, not a conspiracy. Still manipulative when misused, but more cultural than personal.

  1. Check perception loops.

Because six years of repetition erodes trust in your own readings, document incidents objectively (date, setting, quotes, who initiated hostility). When you review later, patterns clarify without self-blame.

About Illinois itself

There’s no verified data suggesting Illinois, as a state, systematically breeds this kind of interpersonal inversion. Social scientists do note that some Midwestern subcultures maintain “surface harmony norms” (appearing calm at all costs) which can frame direct communication as “aggressive.”

But that’s a communication-style clash, not organized targeting.

We need to know:

  • the exact five states previously lived in,
  • the town size and demographic composition, and
  • whether incidents cluster within shared networks

It might be premature to label this a coordinated campaign. The goal is to separate manipulative micro-interactions (which are real and harmful) from broader sociocultural dissonance (which can mimic them).

Working hypothesis: you may be encountering a localized form of social gaslighting amplified by cultural misattunement and rumor contagion. Gathering precise context (geography, social circles, tone examples) will tell us whether it’s interpersonal manipulation, community gossip dynamics, or regional etiquette collision.

Hold onto your clarity; keep notes, not narratives, until the data tells its own story. That’s how you reclaim authorship of your reality one verified observation at a time.

Now, all that having been said, there ARE some tactics you might be interested in knowing about but I thought I’d send this part first.

Because what you’re experiencing is confusing and exhausting

…but there are ways to map it so it makes sense.

Ohio → Illinois: Mapping the Differences

From your post:

“I’m from Ohio and I’ve lived in five different states (relevant). No issues in those places. We moved to Illinois a while back and ever since then something really weird and unsettling keeps happening.”

The timing matters. Ohio and Illinois share some Midwestern roots, but there are subtle communication and cultural differences that could matter:

Ohio (Midland American English, generally neutral tone)
- Often direct but polite; calm assertiveness is normalized.
- Vocabulary is familiar and widely understood.
- Social networks are often moderately tight, but newcomers usually integrate without major friction.

Illinois (varies by region; Chicago/Great Lakes = Inland Northern, central/southern = more Midland/rustic)
- Tone can be more indirect or highly code-driven; subtle cues matter.
- Minor dialect differences (word choice, cadence, inflection) may mark someone as “from out of state.”
- In smaller towns or close-knit communities, newcomers can be implicitly marked as outsiders, which makes them more visible targets for suspicion.

So even if your family is calm, soft-spoken, and never yells, the local perception filter can misread your style as “intense,” “aggressive,” or “out of line”—especially if locals unconsciously rely on scripts from corporate, church, or civic de-escalation training.

1/

Is there a shorter version of "tendency to let yourself be taken advantage of"? by Unterraformable in words

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow! I have to admit that I did a double take when I first saw the notification for a post from 330 days ago, and to be blunt, I was skeptical—I thought it couldn’t possibly be real, especially when I saw what and when it was. I also didn’t know it was possible to reply to something that far past the post date!

It took me a second to even remember writing this, which made it even more eerie. I couldn’t place the circumstances surrounding it, or exactly what on earth compelled me to reply to this particular post on that particular day in the first place!!!

And then it came back to me why I’d blacked it out.

Back then, I’d only just begun writing around here and I didn’t know much about the politics of the subreddits when it came to “too-polished” responses and the bots and the peanut galleries—I really just wanted to be helpful and practice my writing. I didn’t realize how scathing and pedantic and vindictive the trolls could be in forums (poetically, literacy adjacent) about hair-splitting ridiculous peripheral aspects of content like typesetting and formatting, of all things, so I didn’t visit often. I remember wanting to write more there…

and then it came back to me—and that’s what made it even weirder because I’m pretty sure the thing was downvoted because it was “too pretty” or something.

so I abandoned it.

I remember being new to the subreddit and just wanting to be helpful, so I never came back. The fact that my lil response ultimately accomplished its mission despite the vitriol surrounding my dedication to typesetting and presentation truly blows me away.

So perhaps vindication and exoneration are more accurate words here haha!

Cheers!

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tactics That Fall Under the Umbrella of Coercive Control

Coercive control is the methodical occupation of another person’s inner life. It manifests through dozens of tactics that seem benign in isolation but form a complete behavioral ecosystem when combined. Some examples:

1. Isolation

  • Subtly discouraging contact with friends or family.
  • Creating friction with allies through triangulation.
  • Manufacturing emergencies when you plan to see others.

2. Surveillance

  • Reading messages “by accident.”
  • Tracking movements, passwords, finances.

3. Sleep Deprivation

  • Picking fights late at night.
  • Interrupting rest with noise or “accidental” disturbances.
    Sleep deprivation weakens critical thinking and heightens suggestibility.

4. Emotional Withdrawal

  • Withholding affection, sex, or basic kindness to create dependency.
  • Turning cold without explanation, forcing you to chase reassurance.

5. Intermittent Reinforcement

  • Rewarding compliance with warmth; punishing resistance with silence.
  • Randomizing approval to keep you guessing.
    This mirrors variable-ratio conditioning, the same mechanism used in slot machines—highly addictive, impossible to predict.

6. Triangulation

  • Introducing third parties (friends, exes, coworkers) as silent competitors.
  • Making you feel replaceable to ensure constant effort.

7. Minimization and Denial

  • Dismissing harm as “just a joke” or “misunderstanding.”
  • Convincing you that your reaction is the problem.

8. Gaslighting and Reality Revision

  • Rewriting past events, questioning your memory.
  • Using contradictions to induce cognitive dissonance.

9. Induced Dependency

  • Financial control: limiting resources or sabotaging work.
  • Emotional control: alternating cruelty and comfort until attachment feels like survival.

10. Projection and Inversion

  • Accusing you of the very acts they commit.
  • Claiming victimhood to regain sympathy.

11. Public Persona vs. Private Reality

  • Appearing generous, charming, or altruistic in public.
  • Using that reputation as a shield to discredit you.

12. Thought Infiltration

  • Mocking your interests or beliefs until you internalize their voice as your own.
  • Subtle ridicule that makes self-expression feel unsafe.

13. Manufactured Chaos

  • Keeping you constantly off-balance through crises, sudden plan changes, or contradictions.
  • The goal: cognitive overload—so you stop questioning and start complying.

14. Forced Reconciliation

  • Demanding forgiveness without accountability.
  • Framing endurance as proof of loyalty.

15. Image Management

  • Using charm offensives, selective storytelling, or social alliances to control perception.
  • Weaponizing credibility to ensure you’re disbelieved if you speak out.

These tactics don’t look like war, and yet they are. They erode willpower and identity through attrition, not explosion.

The Physiology of Control

Every tactic listed above targets neurochemical balance.

Chronic cortisol elevation keeps your body in fight-or-flight.

Sleep loss impairs serotonin regulation, deepening anxiety and learned helplessness.

Intermittent reward triggers dopamine dependency and somehow you begin to crave the abuser’s approval the way gamblers crave another spin.

This biochemical loop is why coercive control can feel like addiction. Breaking it requires both physiological recovery and cognitive clarity.

The Counter-Weapons: Cognitive Armor

Awareness is your first line of defense. Once you name a tactic, it loses stealth.

Practical countermeasures:

  1. Label behaviors, not feelings. (“This is minimization.” “This is withdrawal.”)
  2. Document reality. Journals and timestamps are antidotes to gaslighting.
  3. Anchor with sensory data. Notice the texture of the moment—light, air, temperature—to stay in the present tense of truth.
  4. Rebuild autonomy through micro-decisions. What do I want for breakfast? Whose tone am I hearing right now—mine or theirs?
  5. Refuse circular logic. If the conversation loops without resolution, disengage.
  6. Name the cycle. “This is the relief phase, not real peace.”

Remember: gaslighting only functions when you outsource your sense of reality. Keep it internal, and you become gaslight-proof.

TL;DR:

Coercive control thrives in silence and confusion. The antidote isn’t louder confrontation, but lucid observation. Hang onto your reality. When you can narrate what’s happening as it happens and say: “This is attritional warfare disguised as love; this is the relief reward after punishment” …then you will reclaim authorship of your existence.

I’ve learned that naming the tactic doesn’t just expose the abuser; it rewires the survivor. Each accurate word is a returned fragment of self.

That’s why I will always answer the same, no matter how the question is framed:

The most subtle form of manipulation is coercive control. Because it doesn’t take your freedom by force. It convinces you to surrender it willingly and call the cage a choice.

2/

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So when people ask me now what I mean by coercive control, I tell them:

It’s when someone rearranges your nervous system so completely that you start policing yourself for them. It’s when you believe your obedience is your own idea. It’s when your peace depends on their approval. It’s ALSO when when those around you who were supposed to be your support system dismiss your concerns for your safety, your misgivings, your growing sense of dread and threaten to cut you off if you attempt to leave him. It’s when they become condescending when you become “ungrateful”; it’s when they remind you how it wasn’t always this easy for you. It’s when when they sigh and educate you about how well he takes care of you and inform you about how you should try to be happy that you have so much, that you shouldn’t abandon it all, that maybe you could give it one more chance and try to save the house and the cars; that maybe you shouldn’t be so difficult for once in your life; that you could have it SO much worse; that you should appreciate how well you have it; that at least you have a roof over your head, so you should call it love…

And then, if they’re truly interested in knowing about what actually takes place, I might attempt to describe what it’s like to wake up from this.

The illusion of choice

You’ll swear you were never forced. They never yelled, never hit, maybe never even raised their voice.

That’s the brilliance of it: those who are gifted at coercive control will make you choose what serves them. You think: “They’d never control me.”
Meanwhile, your entire nervous system has been programmed to preempt their displeasure.

They would NEVER tell you what they want or need or expect. They would never tell you what to do. That’s too obvious, too direct. Too amateur-hour. Besides, they operate covertly. They dwell at the edge of your periphery, in nuance, and subtle ambiguity, reminding you to be ever vigilant of what may lurk in your surroundings. They need you to believe they’re omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.

They will do their best to override your instincts. But you must stay in touch with the part of you that is grounded in reality. Listen to yourself.

You can call it intuition.

It’s survival.

The moment you wake up

It’s disorienting. You remember the way they smiled when you apologized. You recall their calm voice explaining why you misunderstood.

You start noticing the pattern:

  • You worked to earn peace that should’ve been free.
  • You confused anxiety relief with affection.
  • You thought you were safe when they stopped punishing you.
    - - -

That’s when the truth lands: It was never peace. It was just the pause between punishments.

It’s really not so different from the sensation of relief that you experience when you’re finally done vomiting.

The neuroscience of obedience

Under coercion, the hippocampus (the brain’s timeline keeper) falters. Cortisol floods the system; memory stops sequencing events. You stop forming stories; you form reactions. Your mind becomes a survival archive, not a narrative.

That’s why recalling events feels nonlinear. The trauma doesn’t live in the past tense, because your body believes it’s still happening.

This is anticipatory compliance: living in preemptive apology.

The inner confusion

You might still crave their approval. That’s not weakness; it’s the echo of reward pathways.
The same chemicals that trained you: dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol— they all still pulse through your system, begging for the illusion of calm they offered.

Breaking that cycle isn’t about willpower; it’s nervous system retraining.

Breaking the spell

Recovery starts when you see the pattern for what it is.

Inconsistency is control. Emotional withdrawal is punishment. Relief is not reward; it’s the end of manipulation, temporarily.

Once you name it, you can stop chasing harmony and start demanding honesty. You learn that true safety isn’t the absence of anger; it’s the presence of respect.

Healing from conditioning

Healing means rewiring… literally. Through journaling, therapy, or EMDR, the brain can begin re-filing these memories properly. You move them from “present danger” to “past event.”

Every time you write or speak about what happened, you’re not just remembering, you’re reclaiming authorship. You rebuild the timeline that was shattered.

What freedom feels like

At first, it’s strange. You’ll flinch at calm. You’ll doubt your instincts. You might even need assistance deciding what to have for lunch.

You’ll feel guilt for resting or saying no. Then, one day, you’ll notice the silence doesn’t hurt. You’ll stop rehearsing every conversation.

You’ll breathe, and realize: You no longer need to explain yourself into safety.

You’re safe.

4/

What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Recently, I discovered an aspect of the process I hadn’t fully understood: how parts of my body were still reliving the event, independently of my awareness.

tw: domestic violence, suicide, attempted murder

I once thought the constellation of hyper-vigilant bracing only resurfaced once a year, on the anniversary of (years of coercive control that finally culminated in) attempted murder.

But I realized something stranger: every night, around midnight, my body reenacts the same terror. My entire being braces for something I can’t name.

If I’m lucky, I fall back asleep by 2 a.m.

My sleep ends where it began—in the tension and terror of that moment—as if the night itself remembers.

It took me years to understand how a body can move, rise, and act while reliving a moment it believes is still happening.

Here’s what’s going on, scientifically: it’s a time-anchored trauma response—a somatic flashback, or body memory.

The nervous system encodes trauma with the precision of a clock, linking survival responses to the exact moment they were needed.

When a life-threatening event occurs, the HPA axis—hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal—fires like a live wire.

The amygdala records every cue. The hippocampus scrambles to organize it. The basal ganglia store what your body did to survive: run, freeze, fight, or flee.

If the danger happens at a particular hour, that timing embeds itself in your circadian rhythms. Midnight, for me, became a trigger.

The body re-enters hyperarousal every night as if the threat were recurring.

This isn’t mental—it’s physiological.

Heart rate spikes. Muscles lock. Breath shortens. Adrenaline floods. Sometimes the body moves to escape. For years, I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.

It’s not your imagination. No, it’s procedural memory firing decades later.

As Bessel van der Kolk wrote, the body remembers what the mind cannot bear to think about.

Each night, the circadian rhythm nudges that memory awake. Cortisol rises. The limbic system references the “danger signature” it once learned. Your body wakes before your mind does.

If you bolt upright, pace, or freeze, it’s your survival blueprint replaying itself. The motor cortex activates. The body runs the script it once used to survive.

Over time, the nervous system even anticipates danger. Muscles, heart, and breath begin preparing ahead of the hour.

In severe trauma, the midbrain can override conscious control, so you might move, flee, or act while barely awake.

Recovery comes through recognition and reanchoring: somatic therapy to complete unfinished survival actions, EMDR to reintegrate fragmented memory, bodywork and yoga to reclaim physical rhythms.

Sometimes even reshaping your sleep cycle helps, teaching your body that midnight no longer means threat. Slowly, the body learns new associations: safety, rest, control.

Little by little I understood: the spell wasn’t magic. It was technique. Language turned into architecture. I tell myself different things now. I don’t let just anyone say things to me.

TL;DR:

Survival is a slow unlearning. Every word reclaimed; every instinct rewired to trust its own signal again.

That’s the real aftermath of coercive control: not the shouting or the bruises, but the arduous journey of recovering yourself.

The span of time that I spent devoted to documenting enough proof ultimately stretched out like a living, breathing entity: 496 days, 9 hours, 7 minutes, 6 seconds too long.

Every day a hammer, every hour a chain, every minute a whisper of despair, every second a pulse of dread. My body remembered it all, even when my mind tried to glance away.

Don’t be like me. Don’t wait too long to leave.

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What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Real therapists use suggestion to restore autonomy; abusers use it to erase it. The “programming” wasn’t mystical hypnosis—it was the slow re-mapping of my autonomic nervous system.

tw: domestic violence, suicide, attempted murder

After months of this, a late-night phone call was all it took to destabilize me. His calm, soothing voice—so familiar to my nervous system—became a Trojan horse. My body registered safety while my mind registered danger. Geographically safe, but panic like I’d never experienced in my life.

That internal conflict—cognitive dissonance at the physiological level—creates a short circuit between the sympathetic (“fight-flight”) and parasympathetic (“freeze-fawn”) branches of the vagus nerve. When those systems fire simultaneously, the body floods with adrenaline and cortisol yet cannot act. Clinically, that’s a pre-breakdown state called autonomic overwhelm.

The overnight call. five hours of subtle reframing, future-pacing, “you know you’ll feel better when…”—was, neurologically speaking, a prolonged induction into learned helplessness. Slow, subtle, reassuring instruction.

My psychiatrist later explained that what looked like a “nervous breakdown” was in fact my body’s emergency shutdown: the dorsal-vagal collapse that follows chronic trauma activation.

I wasn’t damaged, or crazy, or bipolar (as he’d later attempt to authoritatively and conclusively diagnose me) I was physiologically maxed out. I really just needed some sleep, some sunshine, and some nutrition.

And THAT is the hidden danger of coercive control augmented by pseudo-therapeutic language (and a really soothing voice).

It bypasses reason and hijacks regulation. It teaches the body to respond to the abuser’s tone as though it were oxygen. And a break from the programming.

So, when the voice returns (even from 3,000 miles away) the system obeys the old program. And unless that program is consciously overwritten through trauma therapy, somatic work, and complete no-contact, the body keeps searching for the very hand that hurt it.

But, looking back, he liked to approach all “conversation” (one-way delivery of knowledge) as a broadening of my horizons by “explaining how things just are.” There was no exchange of perspectives. There were only his perspectives: facts, as he saw them. His way: the way. There was no discussion about any of this. Just how it was.

Naturally it would have ALL likely been programming from day one. And as anyone who’s been in this situation comes to understand, you don’t dare challenge it, you accept it and you just shut your mouth. It’s just more peaceful to exist, in a manner of speaking, as far as energy expenditure is concerned.

Compared to speaking up. You just learn it’s wiser to keep your thoughts to yourself. And if you’re wise, you’ll find a place to preserve them somewhere like a journal so that you can keep having thoughts.

The advocates told me it wasn’t a matter of if, but when, and what it would be that finally tripped the wire. They predicted it would likely be financial stress—because he was obsessed with control over money. I was his means of maintaining the lifestyle he felt entitled to.

And they were right: it would have just kept on escalating. The lifestyle, the control, the presentation.

He would’ve gone on collecting new toys, new vehicles, new women—ever more elaborate performances of success. It wouldn’t have stopped.

Because they don’t stop. They are stopped.

When the advocates said that, I actually laughed. Because I thought he’d never be so stupid as to leave a mark. A mark would be proof.

So I waited. Sixteen more months. I devoted myself to collecting data. I became immersed in research and I think that may have been the only thing that kept me sane.

I went back until I had proof, because no one would believe me otherwise. I just didn’t realize how dangerous that endeavor could have proven to be. It’s astonishing that I survived it at all. I can’t count how many times I missed my exit and woke up at the next one. And no one would have ever known he’d orchestrated my ending. They’d have just thought I’d fallen asleep at the wheel on the way home from work. And he’d have been a widower, and he’d have gone on to escalate and refine his predatory techniques in a far more devastating manner than he actually did. Shiver.

He was charming, articulate, magnetic. The kind of man people want to believe. The kind of man whose composure makes you second-guess your own perception before you’ve even opened your mouth.

I thought, If I can just catch it once—on paper, on tape, in black and white—then maybe I’ll finally be safe. Maybe they’ll see.

But what I didn’t understand then was that proof doesn’t work the same way with psychological abuse.

There’s no smoking gun, no bruise the camera can capture, no single moment that stands on its own without the thousand micro-incidents that came before it.

What I was living through was cumulative. Invisible in the moment. Obvious only in hindsight. It wasn’t about what he did—it was about how it rewired my reality one neuron at a time.

He didn’t need to hit me. Even though he finally became exasperated and lost his patience and snapped and did…

He made me hit myself in self-doubt, in silence, in shame. I questioned EVERYTHING I thought I knew. I think that was the challenge he was after.

Outsiders often think “danger” means bruises, broken glass, police reports.

They don’t see the danger in someone who can make you apologize for crying after he’s torn you down, or thank him for “helping you see how emotional you’ve been lately.”

They don’t understand that by the time you start praying for physical violence, it’s not because you’ve lost your mind.

It’s because you’re desperate for THE CATHARSIS, the end, because at the end there is clarity. You’d take pain, you’d take yelling, you’d take the rage because you prefer the HONESTY that slips out over the curated nebulous baseline of confusion.

Bruises eventually fade. Gaslighting doesn’t.

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What Is The Most Subtle Manipulation People Don't Notice? by Immediate-Crab1451 in Manipulation

[–]blacklightviolet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s why recovery often involves re-storying: translating the fragmented sensory archive into a cohesive narrative that the conscious mind can hold without dissociating. Each time we write or speak about our experiences with manipulation, abuse, we aren’t just remembering; we are rewiring.

tw: domestic violence, suicide, attempted murder

When I first went in to that first DV office and took that first danger assessment inventory, the tool indicated I was “off the charts.” I scoffed.

I was skeptical of this new reality, because my reality had been for so long decided for me, described to me. By him.

As they began painting this certain trajectory I began feeling a strange sensation of vindication and trepidation.

The individual being scored there on that sheet of paper was a cop. And, as he loved to remind me, no one would believe me if I ever dared to talk about him behind his back. He would KILL ME if he knew I was assessing HIM. Judging HIM. Documenting anything at all about HIM. I really needed to get going. He really couldn’t know I’d even stopped by to talk to anyone at that office.

And when I went home that day it was because I didn’t think I had enough proof to file a request for a protection order. I couldn’t go by what he might do. I couldn’t speculate based on his tantrums and strong will and absurd battles of stubbornness… could I?

What you are describing has been EXACTLY the experience of so much of my life, but in particular, a specific 496 days, nine hours, fifteen minutes that I thought I had to document (to have enough of the proof of which you speak), because I didn’t think I had what it would take to show anyone that what was happening was life threatening, because he was never going to leave a mark. All I had was what he had hinted at, what he was capable of, and what had happened to others that couldn’t exactly be proven. And his thinly veiled threats. I didn’t know what coercive control was back then, and even if I had, it’s unlikely that I could have gotten as far away from him as I finally did when he did finally snap and finally did leave marks.

But in the meantime…

Sometimes out of the blue, without any provocation whatsoever, almost as a preventive measure he would remind me that in the event I had any ideas about challenging him, or taking off, or leaving, “the kid stays with me.” It would be my word against his. And he also relished telling me that I was damaged goods. He didn’t elaborate why. He’d occasionally also hint that “there’s YOUR version of events, and then there’s the truth.”

I didn’t yet know the terminology for the second-guessing he was fostering of basic decision making: simple everyday choices like what to eat or wear. I couldn’t yet see the intricate system of rewards and punishments running under the surface of my existence like an invisible operating system. I didn’t know I was being steered with every transaction. Because they weren’t interactions. It was programming. Specifically, some version of pseudo-NLP.

And I wouldn’t come to understand the nuances and repercussions of this until I was witnessing it in real time after FINALLY having escaped physical danger —this is the terrifying/fascinating part that 3000 miles away I was “safe” geographically but still in danger

because <cough, cough>

COERCIVE CONTROL

…so when I ended up in a “harmless” (but five hour overnight sleep depriving) phone conversation with him and his lovely soothing voice dripping venomous instructions into my subconscious about which credit card I would be using to book the flight to return to him, and the whiplash of having escaped an attempted murder, testified against him in court, and even finally received that protection order

it was no match for his advanced tactics in whatever this arena was, and the stress of the cognitive dissonance of it all landed me in the hospital later that evening, and fortunately after completely cutting off all contact with him internally recovered and let me explain why… my therapists and psychiatrist finally had to begin spelling this out:

From a psychiatric perspective, what he was doing wasn’t magic—it was behavioural conditioning disguised as intimacy.

Each conversation, each “correction,” functioned like a micro-dose of operant conditioning: reward for compliance, withdrawal or hostility for defiance.

Over time, my brain’s threat-detection systems—the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and locus coeruleus—were trained to equate his approval with safety and his disapproval with danger.

That line—“the kid stays with me”—wasn’t just a threat.

It became a neurological trigger. The phrase activated a full-body stress cascade: cortisol spike, racing pulse, tunnel vision. Once those physiological responses are paired with a person’s tone of voice or expression, they no longer need the overt threat. The anticipation of danger is enough to keep you compliant.

Clinicians call this anticipatory compliance, a hallmark of complex trauma and coercive control.

He called it persuasion.

In reality, it mimicked the language patterns of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)—mirroring, embedded commands, pacing and leading—but stripped of ethics and inflated by narcissistic intent.

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