He’s in my head. She sucks all the air out of the room. I’m so tired of the drama. These are common ways of expressing the all-consuming intrusiveness of being emotionally manipulated. The manipulators might be relationship partners, neighbors, co-workers, family members, or “friends”, and they occupy psychological space so pervasively that many clients present with complaints of confusion, exhaustion, and the struggle to even know what’s real.

In his original seminar on manipulation, Dr. Godwin discussed the dramas staged by manipulators and how therapists help clients with drama non-participation. In this follow-up seminar, the focus shifts to the psychological effects of manipulation and how therapists can help clients recover from this deeply damaging emotional abuse. Discover how manipulators succeed at getting inside people’s heads, how they wreak havoc in all aspects of a person’s life, the best treatment interventions to assist your clients in their recovery, and strategies to avoid being manipulated. You’ll walk away with practical tools to help clients overcome the negative psychological impact of manipulation.

Course Content

HOW MANIPULATORS EXPLOIT

• Public-private incongruence
• Consistent inconsistency
• Projective identification
• False moral equivalence
• Incremental acclamation
• Exploitation of naiveté
• Identity under-development
• Deficient moral reasoning
• Cognitive dissonance
• Information glut
• Demagoguery

HOW MANIPULATORS WREAK HAVOC

• Mood alterations
  • Clinical presentations
• Value alteration
• Self-deprecation
• Lingering bewilderment
• Foreclosed thinking
• Follower corruption
• Groupthink
• Tribalism
• Societal contentiousness

TREATMENT STRATEGIES

• Know the tactics
• Value your signals
• Trust in increments
• Seek external validation
• Limit the re-telling
• Avoid future ensnarements
• Develop ambiguity tolerance
• Cultivate independent critical thinking
• Allow for conflicting opinions
• Resist the tribal temptation
• Seek common ground

CASE EXAMPLES