Deceit & Manipulation

By Joel Akande

No one likes to be manipulated. It belittles us all and make a mockery of our intelligence. Besides, being deceived and manipulated breaches the trust we may have in individuals. In addition, being deceived implies that we are being fooled and could considerably affect our individual confidence.

What is Manipulation?

To be manipulated implies that truth and lies are being mixed together all at once or interchanged and presented as the whole truth.  A manipulator's  aim is to control the victim. That is to say, a person tells you lies and package the lie as the truth, present the lie to you to make you believe in the fabrication. Unaware, you are taken in: You accepted untruths as authentic. Manipulation can also be a situation whereby the victims are misdirected or simply twists facts in a "mix and match" of lies and truth. Manipulation is not the same as "negotiation" or "agreement".

Why Does Manipulation and Deceiving Occur?

The objective of a manipulator is to control the victim and the manipulator may go to any extent inculding using the Police, Courts and the Law, and any means to control the victim.  All said, the victim of manipulation are almost always in one form of relationship or another with the perpetrator. Also, manipulation occurs and it assumes that the victim is not capable of finding out the truth about the matter(s). Thus, from the victim's position, manipulation may occur when the victim and perpetrator:

1. May be in position of trust such as children trusting adults or their peers. Adults may deceive or  "mis-educate" and manipulate or misdirect  the children so that the perpetrator is able  to gain different forms of  advantages such as affection, attention, being kept in company and so forth.

2. It may occur whereby the victim and perpetrator are in intimate relationships such as husband and wife situation. Clearly, one party may trust the other or the two individuals may actually actively manipulate each other.

3. Politicians, may deliberately manipulate facts to suit an existing situation. So the followers and the public are the victims of  lies and deceits.

4. Employees of companies, business partners,  students and anyone under authority of another may be a victim of manipulation.

The Perpetrator.

The perpetrator of manipulation:

a. Fears the truth as some Countries and politicians do. In the same way marital partner who fears that his or her sexual adventures may be discovered may start to manipulate the other unwary partner.

b. The perpetrator may be apprehensive that telling the truth  as in politics and businesses, may lead to loss of revenue, income, loss of political position and self-esteem (Please read here: How to Deal With False Accusations)

c. Perpetrator of manipulation may want to keep a state of duress and fear upon the victim to that the victim is always in submission to the authority of the perpetrator. This is common in political settings in authoritarian countries and autocratic states.

This may also happen between a vulnerable partner in a relationship, between children and adults and the other over-lording partner who wants to maintain a condition to continually exploiting  the other in the relationship.

d. Manipulation by the perpetrator may be as a result of mental illness such as grandiose delusions of hypomanics or in mania or personality disorders. On the other hand, manipulator may simply be sane but criminally minded persons.

e. Manipulation may also occur as a result of drugs such as cannabis misuse leading to weird claims of paranoia.

f. Manipulation does occur in religious situations of "the bad or evil" attempting to manipulate the truth or the good people.

Signs and Symptoms That You Are Being Manipulated
a. The manipulator fails to back up the claims with factual evidence
b. Manipulator prevents you from wanting to establish the evidence. You may be asked to "act now" which is in fact a false sense of urgency. Warning: Do not so act.
c. You feel under duress and uncomfortable.
d. You may be threatened with severe consequences. This may be the case when children are manipulated. They may be asked to respond to inquiries from outsiders in certain ways or not answer at all.
e.The story of the manipulator keep changing facts and scenes. No consistency.
f. The storyline may just be too strange to believe.
g. Manipulator present as if they are on your side. They tell you what you want to hear while they have different intention
h. If manipulator is questioned intensely, his or her defences will collapse

How Does Manipulation Occur?

a. Deceiving another person is always a pretense by presenting a false facts as the truth. A weird story may be told to cover the truth.  False accidents may said to have occurred where there is none.

b.Manipulators are good at double dealings. They may tell one story now to Mr. A and then for the same alleged event, tell another story to Mr C, all in the hope that Mr A and C will not find out the truth.

Letting go and moving forward

By Karim Hajee

Let's face it. Many of us choose to hang on to things that at some point have hurt us, angered us, made us feel sad, or depressed us. If we choose to hang on to them, we will never move forward and we could even create physical or medical damage to our bodies. To prevent this from happening we need to let go but no one really tells you how to let go and move forward. Sure it's easy to say: "Just let go, move forward, forget about it, just let go." But that really doesn’t work. I’m about to show you how to let go and start moving forward.

Why You Need to Let Go and Move Forward.

Throughout our lives we go through different experiences, some are positive and some we see as negative and unpleasant. When you hang on to a negative or unpleasant experience you are constantly thinking about it. And when you constantly think about that negative event you prevent yourself from healing. How many pleasant memories do you recall everyday? Chances are you're like most people and you have a number of unpleasant experiences that you're holding on to, which is preventing you from moving forward.

The more you carry the worse life gets. Why? Because you've filled your mind up with negative experiences, because you continually hang on to something that doesn't allow you to move forward, in short, you're carrying useless baggage that's really slowing you down.

Think of it this way: you're on a hiking trip and along the way you keep picking up heavy objects, things that really don't serve you. After a while, these objects begin to slow you down and unless you get rid of them, you'll never complete your trip.

To let go you have to get your mind to focus on different goals and different objectives. It's not about saying: I let go of the pain from my fight with ---- and move on. That will help, but if you really want to start moving on, then you have to get your mind to focus on new things, in the process you automatically let go of the things that have been slowing you down.

How to Let Go and Move Forward

Researchers believe that that if you hold on to negative feelings, sad emotions or depressing memories there is a possibility that you could reshape the human cell to the point where your thoughts of the past have a negative effect on your cells and your physical health.

Hanging on to negative past events is a process that can destroy your life in ways you're not even aware of. Ask yourself these questions: Do the negative things you hang on to serve you any purpose? Do they help you move forward? Do they work in your favor in any way? If you said no to any or all of the above then tell yourself this: This emotion/feeling doesn't help me so I'm letting it go and focusing on what is important. Then begin focusing on what you want next, focus on what is important and what can improve your life. This is a simple process that gets the mind moving in a new direction and you stop building negative energy created from the negative events/emotions, which only attracts more negative situations. When you begin focusing on more positive things you begin attracting positive situations.

The next step is to create an action plan, the past is over. Where do you want to go now and how do you plan to get there? You may not have the answers but merely thinking about the options forces your mind to go in a new direction and you automatically let go of unwanted feelings and emotions.

The key to your success is to train your mind to move in a new direction so you send new messages to your subconscious mind, which then brings you the opportunities to move forward.

The final step is to live in the present moment, to start living in the now. Living in the now is different than living for the moment. Living in the now is the process of enjoying everything that is going on at this present moment. Take a look around you and appreciate those things that you once thought were trivial. When you are here now you can be nowhere else. You are not hanging on to something, you are here now. I know some of you may say the following: "But Karim, where I am right now really sucks, I don't want to think about it." It only sucks because you're looking at all the negative things going on. Focus on a few of the positive things anything from nature to the wonderful family you may have. This forces your mind to look at things differently and tells your subconscious mind that you're ready for new possibilities, then you’ll begin to let go and move forward.