manipulation and bullshit apologies.
alright tumblr, your local therapist is here to talk about manipulative behaviours, and what you need to look out for. i wanna say that this is specifically aimed at all you who get called out for legitimate reasons and make terrible apologies / posts about it, hopefully so you can see why people won’t accept them. here’s some traits manipulative people display:
1. a lack of understanding of how they create situations. those who are manipulative often will try to blame outside factors for what they have done to land themselves in this situation ( i.e. i couldn’t help using that problematic faceclaim, it’s because no one told me ) this shifts the blame away from themselves and makes it look as if it is another person job to educate them / stop them doing the problematic thing.
2. a lack of understanding of boundaries. manipulative people will often fail to see where a line is drawn between them and another, they feel entitled to keep a conversation going, even when it is abundantly clear that another person doesn’t want to speak. ( i.e. logging onto another account / switching to anonymous to reach someone who has blocked you. ) this makes the person they are speaking to look bad for not wishing to respond, therefore shifting the gaze to another being uncommunicative.
3. avoidance of responsibility for their own actions. a manipulative person may understand responsibility, but they will often fail to see that it is on their shoulders. ( i.e. claiming that another should have educated them, that they couldn’t possibly have looked it up alone. ) this makes another person look like it is their role, and their fault the problematic behaviour has happened.
4. playing on the emotions of another. a manipulative person may play on the emotional sensibilities of another person. ( i.e. i know i did this, but you talking to me about it has spiked my depression / anxiety. / claiming that a situation has upset your mental health as a way to get out of it ) this shifts the feeling to one that they are being attacked by the “nasty” person doing the calling out, or having the conversation with them. this is, in part, playing the victim in the situation.
5. acting two-faced. they might be acting as if they are the ‘saintly’ one on the dash, when their words away from it are different. ( i.e. “i don’t understand why they’re coming for me” vs. angry ims being sent between people. ) this is another way in which they will play the victim card when it suits.
6. minimising the effect that their actions have had. they may pretend that they have upset a few “SJWs” rather than accepting that they have done / said something wrong towards an entire race / religion / sexuality e.t.c. ( i.e. acting as if it’s just a small bunch of people being upset rather than admitting that they actually did something wrong ) this is meant to make it a bit of a joke and make it seem like it’s an overreaction.
of course, these aren’t all the traits i’ve seen, but they are a good portion of the way in which people aren’t actually apologising and are instead trying to worm their way out of a situation and i wanted to look at them and why they are manipulative so hopefully people can understand.