Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / When Does Survival Become Manipulation? Who Gets Blamed for the Damage? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: When does survival become manipulation? And who gets blamed for the damage? Sometimes people lie because they're afraid, afraid of punishment, afraid of abandonment, afraid of losing safety, losing connection, losing a community, and sometimes lying stops being about surviving the moment, and it starts becoming about controlling how someone else experiences reality. The hardest part? The person being harmed can end up questioning themselves instead. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I am too sensitive, maybe I remembered it wrong, maybe I am the problem. That's what makes this conversation so complicated because sometimes the person causing harm is hurting too. They may be carrying trauma, fear, shame, survival behaviors they learned long before you ever entered their life. Pain does not automatically make the behavior healthy. a survival response can still cause damage. what's the difference between someone lying because honesty doesn't feel safe and someone disorienting reality because accountability feels threatening? Because those aren't always the same thing from the outside and especially from the perspective of the person being hurt, they can start looking very similar. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we go any further, a quick note this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to offer a framework to help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. Gaslighting is often defined as a form of psychological manipulation where a person or group causes someone to doubt their own reality, memory or perception. When people hear the word gaslighting, they often imagine one big obvious lie. Most of the time it's layered. It can be confusing, contradictory, rewriting, minimizing, deflecting. being told what you saw wasn't real. Being told your feelings are actually the problem. It can look like catching someone in a betrayal and somehow ending up comforting them instead. It can sound like I did my best. When you try to explain that their behavior is still hurting you, the conversation suddenly becomes how impossible you are to please. I can't do anything right. you always think the worst of me. You're too sensitive. somehow you're comforting the person who hurt you. that's the part that makes emotional manipulation so confusing. Because sometimes A person causing harm really does feel hurt. They may have trauma, fear, shame, emotional immaturity. or survival behaviors they learned long before they understood what those behaviors were doing to other people. This is where I think we have to slow down because survival behavior is complicated. Our minds adapt in our environments, especially in environments where honesty didn't feel safe. Sometimes survival looks like becoming hyper independent. Sometimes it looks like people pleasing. Sometimes it looks like shutting down emotionally. Sometimes it looks like lying. not necessarily to control someone, but to avoid punishment. Conflict, abandonment, humiliation, fear. A child learns very quickly what keeps them safe. Maybe you learned that rest was dangerous. That if you sat down too long, someone will call you lazy. Maybe you became helpful not because you freely wanted to help. Because saying no came with emotional consequences. You learned to anticipate needs before anyone asked. You became easy, useful, responsible, hyper aware. Everyone praised you for it without realizing that maybe it never actually felt like a choice. Sometimes survival can even look like lying about being sick. Because your body simply can't handle being around someone anymore. Eventually the stress may become physical anyway. Anxiety, exhaustion, stomach issues, panic attacks, burnout. Your body starts communicating what your mind has been trying not to acknowledge. Sometimes the deepest confusion comes from contradictions. Being told I want you alongside hearing I only had you so I could get my tubes tied, being loved and emotionally harmed at the same time, being cared for and controlled at the same time, being needed, but not fully seen. That kind of contradiction can follow people for years because humans struggle with the idea that someone can love you and still deeply hurt you. This is where the distinction becomes important. There is a difference between someone developing survival behaviors in an unsafe environment and someone repeatedly refusing accountability while disorienting another person's reality to protect themselves. One is adaptation, the other can become control. Sometimes people move between both without even realizing it, and that's what makes this conversation so complicated. you can understand why someone becomes the way they are and still acknowledge the damage their behavior caused. I think this is part of why there can be such a divide between parents, children, therapists, educators, and support systems, because some parents are genuinely struggling. They love their child, they're overwhelmed, confused, trying to understand behaviors. They were never taught how to navigate. Sometimes they seek out diagnose or support because they want tools, resources, language. A way to help their child feel understood. And I think that matters. Sometimes labels become shields instead of support. I wasn't neglectful. You were just a difficult child. I wasn't controlling. You were lazy. I didn't emotionally harm you. You were spoiled, entitled, sensitive. My goodness, this is what you gave me to work with. now the conversation isn't about what happened. it becomes a debate who is allowed to define what happened. Because people who understand power often understand presentation too. They know how to behave in public. They know when to stay calm, when to sound reasonable, when to appear composed and caring, especially when documentation exists, when things are recorded, written down, legally traceable. Sometimes the goal isn't necessarily to create an elaborate lie. Sometimes it's simply to protect an image because accountability can threaten the identity someone has built around themselves. Family system can become very protective of that identity. Working in the field, I've seen versions of this professionally. I've also lived close enough to see dynamics to recognize how confusing they can be. especially for children, because children are often expected to survive environments they do not have the power to escape. Sometimes survival inside the family means adapting to instability instead of questioning it. You learn who is safe, who is angry, who needs to be managed, What can I say? When should I stay quiet? When should I intervene? When should I disappear? And sometimes you don't even realize you're learning these things. You're just good at them. It can look like one parent protecting a child from harsher punishment while still participating in the system causing harm. Hiding the belt or the paddle, softening the blow afterwards, saying, I'm trying to help you while still reporting the child's behavior to the more explosive parent. The child grows up confused, who is safe? Who is protecting me? Who is hurting me? sometimes the answer isn't simple. Sometimes someone can protect you from one kind of harm. While still participating in another. Sometimes someone can love you and still contribute to the environment that hurts you. That is a difficult thing for a child to understand because children don't have the power to step outside the system and analyze it. They have to survive inside of it. They adapt, they watch, they monitor, they learn people's moods, they learn what gets rewarded, they learn what gets punished, and eventually they learn what role they need to play. Maybe you're the caretaker, the peacemaker, the invisible child, the responsible one, the difficult one, the scapegoat, the one who keeps everyone calm, chill and collective. Sometimes those roles become so familiar that we carry them into adulthood without realizing they're still running the show. Here's where it gets more complicated. sometimes The people surviving inside the systems start participating in the system. An older sibling might become an extension of authority, monitoring, correcting, punishing, keeping the younger sibling in line, sometimes distracting the sibling, trying not to repeat the harm. Not necessarily because they're cruel. Sometimes because they've learned the proximity of power feels safer than vulnerability. Sometimes because they're trying to avoid becoming the next target, Sometimes they're trying to protect their sibling from worse harm. Sometimes they genuinely believe they're doing what they're supposed to. That doesn't erase the harm. It helps explain how these patterns continue because unhealthy systems don't always survive because one person is controlling everyone. Sometimes they survive because everyone has learned what they had to do to belong. Someone stays quiet, someone keeps the peace, someone enforces the rules, maybe the scapegoat, maybe the messenger, maybe using their mental health or addiction to hide from the abuse. Someone becomes a person who knows everything that happens. Everyone is adapting. Adaption doesn't mean there isn't harm. Understanding how someone survived doesn't require us to pretend they didn't hurt anyone. That's the uncomfortable part. Sometimes you can be harmed by a system and still participate in keeping that system running. Sometimes you can be protecting yourself while unintentionally hurting someone else. Sometimes you don't realize any of this until much later. Because when you're a child trying to survive, you're not thinking I'm participating in a dysfunctional family system that's abusive and harmful. You're thinking, how do I get through the day? And that question can shape a person for a long time. Back to the question, When does survival become manipulation? And who gets blamed for the damage? Maybe the answer isn't always as simple as we want it to be. Sometimes survival looks like lying because honesty doesn't feel safe. Sometimes it looks like shutting down, fawning, avoiding conflict, or trying to keep the peace. Sometimes those same survival strategies begin to hurt other people. That doesn't automatically make someone manipulative. It also doesn't mean the damage doesn't matter. Maybe what matters is whether we're willing to look at what our survival is doing to the people around us. Are we willing to listen to someone who tells us that we've hurt them? Are we willing to question the stories we tell ourselves to avoid accountability? Are we willing to recognize when protecting ourselves can turn into controlling someone's reality? Because underneath the wall. Why we behave the way we do isn't the same thing as excusing the behavior. I think that's the uncomfortable part. you can have empathy for someone's survival and still have boundaries around the damage it causes. You can understand where a behavior came from without agreeing to keep living inside of it. You can recognize your own survival responses without making shame the answer. You don't have to have it all figured out immediately. You can start by noticing, by asking yourself, what am I doing to feel safe? Who is affected by the way I'm trying to feel safe? Maybe most importantly, am I protecting myself or am I asking someone else to abandon their reality so I don't have to face mine? Whether you leave me a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with these questions yourself. I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, your survival deserves understanding. Understanding doesn't erase impact. You don't have to abandon your reality to have empathy for someone else. I'll see you in the next episode.