Many abusers maintain control over their victims with a combination of three manipulations. First, they blame the victim, trying to convince them it is their fault the abuser gets angry. Second, they make the victim feel incompetent and incapable so that the victim feels they can never escape. Third, they offer the occasional act of love and kindness so the victim keeps coming back chasing after those moments of relief. These three manipulations are all questions of degree, like volume knobs turned up and down to maintain control.

Why does the abuser do this? It’s all about maintaining control. Because they have extreme attachment thinking their happiness depends upon what the other person does, they feel they need to control their victim to get them to do the “right” things. It is sometimes even motivated by confused form of caring. The abuser cannot bear those they love suffering, so they get mad at them to prevent their victim from doing things that the abuser thinks could cause them suffering. For example, a child gets hurt on the playground and a parent beats them for having played recklessly. 

Virtually all dysfunctional relationships have similitudes of such abusive manipulations. Often victims of abuse turn into abusers themselves despite vowing to never do so.

If we find ourselves a manipulator of others, check and see if we are doing these three things and ask ourselves why. Realize your happiness does not depend upon what other people do, but depends upon the inner conditions of your own mind. If your mind is happy, you will be happy regardless of what others do. If your mind is unhappy, you will be unhappy, again, regardless of what others do. Blaming others for your unhappiness doesn’t help you because you spend your time and energy controlling others instead of healing your own mind. And you create a tremendous amount of negative karma in the process, which will one day come back to bite you. Also, learn to accept those around you will suffer, and there is often little to nothing you can do about it. Their suffering is an opportunity for you to care for others and improve your qualities of love and compassion. Accept each person must learn to travel their own path in their own way, and sometimes the best way to learn lessons is to have life teach them.

If we find ourselves the victim of these three forms of manipulation, we need to train in learning to disarm them. To disarm any of them, we first need to realize clearly how they are harmful to both ourselves and to the person using them. Then we need a method for actually disarming them.

Disarming others blaming us for their unhappiness: When others get mad at us, they are blaming us for their unhappiness, saying it is our fault they are angry or miserable. If we assent to their view, thinking they are right, we can quickly develop self-hatred thinking how awful we are. We also then think it is our responsibility to change ourselves or manage all of the external conditions around the angry person so that they don’t get angry. We become terrified of them getting angry, and exhaust ourselves trying to arrange everything to avoid their wrath. This doesn’t help the angry person, rather it just encourages them to continue to get angry as a means of getting what they want; and, more deeply, it wrongly confirms their mistaken belief that their happiness depends upon what we do. Further, it doesn’t help them because our assenting to their view that we are to blame enables them to continue to create all sorts of terrible negative karma for themselves by continuing to abuse us. To disarm this, we need to remember each person is responsible for what happens in their own mind and their own experience of life. This is true for the abuser and it is true for us, and it is true for everyone. We need to be crystal clear about this and internally categorically refuse to assent to their assignment of blame. Just because they blame us for their unhappiness doesn’t mean they are right.

Disarming others making us feel incompetent: The abuser is often largely motivated by attachment thinking that the other person’s actions are an essential condition of their own happiness. They actually fear us leaving, so they have to prevent our escape, even if they are doing so only sub-consciously. One of the most effective ways of them preventing our escape is convincing us that we are incapable of doing so. They tell us we are weak, we are stupid, we are incompetent, we are worthless, and we are powerless so that we convince ourselves we can’t get out and we resign ourselves to our fate. Once we assent to this, we are “broken,” like a horse who submits to its master. To disarm this, we need to once again not assent to their view of us. Just as we are not to blame for their experience of life despite them vividly thinking we are, so too we are not the enfeebled person they make us out to be. Here we need to make a clear distinction between ourselves and our delusions. Our true self is our pure potential that one day will ripen in our full enlightenment. While this may seem impossibly far off in the future, it is nonetheless the destiny of all of us. The only question is when it happens. When it happens depends upon us choosing to embark upon the path of ripening that potential. Our delusions are like clouds, and our true self is like the sky. No matter how violent the storm, the sky itself is never tarnished by what passes through it. The same is true with our true selves. The laws of karma are definite, so if we start to create new karmic causes and we make effort to purify our negative karma, it is 100% guaranteed we will eventually succeed in changing our karma and dispelling the clouds of negativity from the sky of our mind. All we need is perseverance and correct spiritual methods for purifying our mind. Simply recognizing that the other person is making us feel incapable of escape as a method of control helps break the spell – we see what is going on, so its power over us is broken. We should awaken the inner French person in us and set out to prove wrong those who say we can’t escape.

Disarming being duped by occasional acts of kindness: When the victim of abuse has had enough and is starting to make the decision to leave, the abuser will often then say things like, “I’m sorry, I’ll change, I promise.” They will then be kind and offer some love. Because we have been so hollowed out by their previous abuse, their kindness and love comes as this huge relief to our inner pain, and we go running back. These acts of occasional kindness are like drugs which give us the occasional relief, or even feelings of ecstasy, which we then start chasing after. We seek their validation that we are not so awful, not so incompetent, and that we are worthy of love. We think, maybe the person is redeemable and I can help them. I can save them. So out of “compassion,” I need to keep going back. They need me. To disarm this manipulation, we need to identify clearly how every time we go back, things almost immediately start to return to the past patterns and the abusive behavior starts up again. These occasional acts of kindness are part of the cycle of abuse, and should be viewed as such. They do not exist outside of the abuse, they are part of it. When we see it as part of the cycle, we are much less likely to be fooled. It’s just like spam. When we first receive the email from the Nigerian princess who wants to transfer us money for safe keeping if only we give her our bank account numbers, we might be tempted; but once we see it for the scam that it is, even though it might still show up in our inbox, we will no longer be fooled by it. Likewise, we need to realize we can never fill the void we feel within through external validation. Quite the opposite actually, the more we chase external validation and love, the more we amplify the void within. The only way to fill the void within is to ripen our own pure potential and realize we actually lack nothing. As Buddha said, do not seek enlightenment outside of your own mind. We need to be kind to our true selves by escaping from these three manipulations.

Escaping from abusive relationships is never easy. It always seems easier to go back. We know as soon as we try to start to get out, they can harm us in so many ways and we fear that, so we remain trapped in fear. It is true, if we try escape, they will throw everything they have at us and it will hurt. But the short-term pain of getting out is much less than the long-term misery of forever remaining trapped. It is no different than somebody who is addicted to drugs. Breaking addictions is hard, but those who succeed in doing so never regret having broken free. The same is true for escaping abusive relationships. Breaking free begins with deciding to do so. It ends with disarming completely these three forms of manipulation.

Once we have made the decision to break free, our problems become largely material in nature. We may lack the material means to be self-sufficient where we are not dependent upon our abuser for our basic survival. This is particularly true for children, or for wives who have no means of supporting themselves financially. Overcoming this obstacle can be difficult. The solution is often some combination of (1) learning to need less, (2) becoming humble enough to ask for help, (3) gradually developing means of self-sufficiency, and (4) praying conditions arrange for us to escape.

None of this is easy, and all of this takes time. But escape is possible. As they say, “it does get better.” We just need to believe while we may be trapped now, one day we will escape. Then we work to build the outer and inner conditions necessary for us to do so.

I pray that all those who read this find release.