ISOLATION: How it Happens, and Why Your loved one thinks they are not intentionally abandoning you

IMAGINE THIS: your loved one is caught in a water whirlpool vortex and being sucked far away and you have moments left that you can reach them. They are in danger, but there is a viper wrapped around both of their hands. They don’t know they can grab onto you, but that you can’t grab them. If you grab with the vipers in place, you won’t have a grip; they, and you, will be injured by the attempt. They aren’t intentionally abandoning you. If they survive, when you reconnect, the horror of having watched them in danger may make you furious that they didn’t help themselves; and they, on the other hand -exceptionally wounded by the experience- will wonder why you didn’t do anything to rescue them. So…what do you do? You are the connection to who they are, or were when they entered the vortex.

WHEN:

There are 3 stages to emotional manipulation Isolation is at and part of the beginning of the Devaluation, Emotional Invalidation, stage.

• Idealization/ Love Bombing ( to win your loved one)
• Devaluation, Emotional Invalidation,or Training ( to keep them)
• Discard ( when your loved one is no longer the strong, independent person they met)

Because You won’t stand for the devaluation, or invalidation, of someone you love, the manipulator can’t have you around during this ” training” stage. The only people who be in your loved one’s life are the people who are fans of the manipulator, who have not yet seen, or choose not to speak up against, the devaluation or changes in your loved one. These will be the manipulator’s friend(s), family or strangers, and acquaintances.

SPECIFICALLY HOW:

Manipulators isolate the loved one from their friends and family in two ways:

• forcing the manipulator’s negative view of friends, family, into the loved one’s subconscious by questions, critique, accusations, and belittlement.
• interrogation, accusations, belittlement, and hostile, emotionally charged confrontational, and sometimes violent, outbursts to provoke the people they want the loved one isolated from.
• USING THESE PREDICTABLE CONCEPTS: Manipulation is not smart. It is predictable. The idea will revolve around the following swirling concepts heard from the 3 faces of the manipulator: MASTER, SAVIOR, and VICTIM

I met a man that said these exact words while pointing to his wife:” I rescued her from her family, they had her under their thumb. He said this in front of his wife. Do you see how those words were hostile towards her, even though he said them to me? I saw the look on her timid face as she gazed downward as he said them; obviously still promoting the fact that she was “nothing” before him and he was a Savior. The statement he made immediately prior was as a Victim:”…my second wife turned my children away from me“.

HOW The VICTIM FACE manipulates the loved one to isolate by : 1) pushing people away, 2) putting people in their place, 3) defending the manipulator. The VICTIM FACE, if necessary, will first apologize and then degrade themselves in order to manipulate the loved one into negating it, and give THE VICTIM FACE their support.

Interestingly the loved one doesn’t notice the manipulator does not really open up or share their hopes, or dreams. They are rarely privy to actual vulnerability or have emotional intimacy with the manipulator. Only the VICTIM FACE serves to fill in the gap for emotional closeness while serving the manipulation.

TRIANGULATION AS A STRATEGY TO ISOLATE: In this strategy, the manipulator’s words are directed at the family or friends. The manipulator will launch an accusatory attack ( triangulated) against family and friends. The accusations will be a fabrication of accusations- in realty a projection of the abusive or controlling behavior that the manipulator is actually employing against the loved one. While spoken to friends and family, the words are really aimed at the loved one. The loved one is the target. Friends and family are not the targets. They only are being used as a tool. The manipulator is trying to get the family, friends to take their hands off the loved one, to be angry, and walk away. During the attack, They may even ask are you angry” if family and friends are poker-faced and don’t respond because they need the reaction to feed them. Here’s another tip: They will not like the idea that family and friends want to step away and reflect on what was said rather than immediately react. The manipulator might even tell them it’s wrong to “ponder” what was said.

WHAT they say to friends and family will sound something like: you hurt your loved one, you have them under your thumb, you controlled them, they told me this or that and here is *proof, you only care about yourself, no one likes you. These words, especially if triangulated, will put your loved one in the middle and cause the loved one to doubt their friends and family. The manipulator will then stonewall, or use avoidance tactics-leaving the loved one in the middle wondering what is wrong and not knowing what to do. Attempts to connect with friends and family will be strained as the trust of your loved one has also been damaged when they stayed silent during the attack, and the loved one is still holding onto the manipulator.



What the loved one doesn’t understand is they are now isolated. The loved one will experience cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. As the friend and family are powerless to intervene and everyone is advising them, “eventually they’ll figure it out and there is nothing you can do, you have to leave them alone for them to see, and be there as a safe place when they do, anything you say will be used against you and your loved one”. People leave 7 times before leaving for good.” Here is what happens next, the problem, and why that’s bad.

WHY IT WORKS :

• Forcing a negative view of family and friends onto the loved one caused the loved one: 1) to doubt the friend/ family; 2) anxiety to keep the peace between the friend/ family and the manipulator. In a backward way, the loved one is protecting the friend/ family from the manipulator while supporting being isolated. The loved one may enable the manipulator’s isolate tactics by: supporting the manipulator’s agenda and leaving friends and family to forge a relationship with the manipulator
• The friend/ family seeing what is happening will decide they don’t need the abuse and will ask their loved to ” make a decision”- usually believing that the person will be supportive of the loved one and bring about restoration between everyone again. When this doesn’t happen trust is further broken, the loved one is simultaneously being manipulated by the manipulator to choose them. Understand love bombing, trauma bonding, with a bit of dismissiveness and stonewalling has already occurred between the manipulator and the loved one) so they are willing to first save the manipulative relationship, with a ” wait and see” attitude. They believe that the friend and their family will not abandon them.

HOW: Manipulators isolate the loved ones from their friends and family by 1) forcing their negative view of friends, family onto your loved one, and 2) a)interrogation, b) accusations, c) belittlement, and d) confrontational/ emotionally charged, and sometimes violent outbursts directed at the people they want your loved one isolated from.The words the manipulator says to the loved one will be aimed to illicit:

• the fears, concerns, and insecurities of your loved one (what they are afraid of being, what they have failed at, what they want to succeed at)
• and reflective negative reconstruction of your support of those things.
  
  It’s true that during the idealization stage they supported your loved one by telling them they could conquer and accomplish anything.
  
  But during this isolation/devaluing/ invalidation stage, they will not rein in your loved one’s fears but instead will sit as if on the sidelines silently supporting your loved one’s fears and insecurities with ” proof” that their past failings and inability to have the future they want is the friend or family’s fault. The manipulator will use and put a twist onto every misunderstanding or unresolved conflict that the friend and family had with the loved one.

“One of the key methods of emotional abuse is the generalized concept called cognitive dissonance. This tactic creates a sense of unreality, confusion, and a mindset of not trusting their own perception of the situation. Leon Festinger (1957) was one researcher who studied the theory of cognitive dissonance: a state of holding two or more contradictory thoughts or beliefs in their cognition at one time. The result is a state of anxious confusion and a desire to reduce the resultant overwhelm and unbalanced perception.”

An example: A manipulative spouse triangulates the relationship with a loved one’s family. Verbally attacks the mother and the loved one has no idea why it is happening. The loved one feels they have done something wrong, but don’t know what or why it’s happening. Cognitive dissonance will cause them to “explaining things away”, or reject new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs, and even to dismiss the attack as something else rather than hold to the belief that rudeness is manipulation and their spouse is wrong. Because the loved one wants to keep their family close, and be committed and supportive to their manipulative spouse also.

During Confirmation Bias (which impacts how we gather information and influences how we interpret and recall information) the loved one is trying to understand how the two opposing thoughts fit together in order to work things out for a suitable resolution. For example, people who support or oppose a particular issue will not only seek information to support it, they will also interpret information in a way that upholds their existing ideas, or the idea that is most emotionally rewarding such as will bring joy, or alleviate or minimizing the fear of loss. In the above example, chances are the loved one will abandon the mother; especially if there have been several lesser instances of verbal rudeness that were ” tests” of the manipulator and the loved one ” passed” by remaining silent or agreeing.

Even if the mother and daughter didn’t fully realize what they were agreeing to, as long as the mother had a significant emotional response to the lesser ” tests” and the loved one stayed silent or agreed by “explaining things away”, or rejecting new information that conflicted with the loved one’s existing beliefs to dismiss the attack as something else, the manipulator will proceed towards the big isolation first by provoking the mother, so she leaves on her own, or inciting her through the avoidance tactics including stonewalling until she pushes back and the manipulator can use its Victim Face to manipulate the loved one to push the mother away.

See what I meant by viper around the hands?

Emotional Manipulation is not one big event- each minor play can not be glossed over with an excuse. And the loved one will make excuses. It is less damaging to their mental and emotional well-being than to accept the fact that someone they care for is intentionally harming them, with minor infractions that are dismissed by the manipulator. Find information on emotional invalidation and the different types of gaslighting to understand how the smart loved one will be played. As they proceed through each day without friends and family they will also experience the tactic of avoidance. Truth be told, they have already experienced it before the isolation.
Friends and family will feel the impact of the isolation to a great degree, being helpless to grab onto their loved one. They too have probably experienced devaluation through avoidance from the manipulator- loved one couple prior to the final isolation. Emotional invalidation comes in many forms. When the manipulator- loved one couple insist on keeping in contact with you, it will come with suitable conditions that ” protect” your loved one and their relationship with the manipulator. You may find that they remain kind to you by picking up your mail or mowing your yard- but only come when you aren’t there. It will seem cruel to friends and family, not kind, as they will understand the invalidation. But to the loved one, who is experiencing a cascade of neurological disruptions, these acts as “a kindness” make perfect sense. The loved one can not see that friends and family are experiencing it as a cruel rejection of who they are, a betrayal to the relationship they have, and effectively saying to they are not worthy. Nor do they understand friends and family’s horror at having to stand on the sidelines helplessly as they watch the loved one be destroyed and taken from them in the vortex. The manipulator, however, does understand the effect it has on friends and family, and this is why they allow the ” kindness”. They are counting on friends and family to push back, to prove it is they who are hateful and rejecting the loved one. The manipulator is able to point to the kindness as proof of how much they support friends and family and the loved one’s relationship with them. And how they do want the loved one to ” work things out”, that they are not the cause, or manipulating… but just concerned for all involved.

THE LOVED ONE THINKS THIS IS A NORMAL RELATIONSHIP: The loved one completely believes they are involved in a normal, though challenging, relationship. And because they are committed and loyal and loving, their subconscious empathetic processing is going to tie them up trying to figure out how to do the relationship better. The cyclical pattern shifts between those 3 faces: Master, Savior, Victim; so the pattern will take a while to be realized. The problem is that by the time the loved one starts to see the pattern, they will have lost their prior ability to self actualize their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs; but instead have focused so long and hard on the manipulator that they are conditioned to feel and think what they are told. It will appear as a type of addiction.

Friends and family come to understand how their loved one is so cognitively at a disadvantage. For them it is even more terrifying to know that their loved one can save themselves and yet, they don’t know it. Manipulation is subtle ( so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe; delicately complex or understated).

The isolation has created a climate where THE ONE THAT HARMS also COMFORTS. This is the addiction. When harmed by the manipulator, the loved one seeks comfort from them.

Several researchers have argued that victims experience greater trauma from ongoing, severe psychological abuse than from experiencing infrequent physical assault (Davis and Frieze 2002; Duncan 1999, 45-55; Guthrie 2001; Hildyard and Wolfe 2002, 679; Martin and Mohr 2002, 472-495; Sackett and Saunders 1999, 105).

HOW TO RECOGNIZE IF SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS BEING EMOTIONAL MANIPULATED: “Effects-based approaches tend to identify the range of harm experienced by victims ranging from low self-esteem, self-harming behaviours, anxiety, chronic stress, phobias, insomnia and nightmares, to post traumatic stress, depression and suicidal thoughts. Service providers using effects-based models are more likely to recognize a victim of psychological abuse by the harm the abuse has triggered, than by the behaviour of the abuser that caused the harm. Behaviour-based approaches identify tactics or “red flag” behaviours of abusers. To label behaviours as psychologically abusive, intervenors must watch for intentional, sustained and repeated patterns of behaviours and responses.“
“On the other hand, the consequences of psychological abuse are not always evident; even the victim may not immediately recognize the mental or emotional harm caused by the psychologically abusive tactics. As a result, there tends to be a dichotomy in terms of responses, treatment and practices relating to psychological abuse (Champagne 2004; Gondolf 1998).”

The most common forms of emotional abuse are:

• Rejection and Invalidation: Constantly rejecting the loved ones thoughts, ideas, and opinions.

• Gaslighting: Making them doubt their own feelings and thoughts, and even their sanity, by manipulating the truth. The manipulator will have them believing they are acting badly towards the manipulator by (falsely) labeling their actions as hostile or selfish. This Victim Face will be followed by the Master telling them how to behave properly towards them and others, and forcing their views of the loved one as superior by dismissing their thoughts, feelings, values, and actions as wrong ( with flimsy ” proof”), or inferior, in some way. This is the purpose of isolating them from all family and friends, except those that are great fans of the manipulator. Make no mistake, even the fan will be tossed aside at some point once the manipulator has no need for them or they are inconvenient. It also, will be a slow process and started by the same tactics as the first people the loved one was isolated from.