Thailand Investigations Blog
Do You Want to Know the Truth?

In a few weeks ago, we talked about being able to detect when a person is lying. But when you look at a bigger picture, lying is just a part of a greater ill – which many of you have been a victim of: MANIPULATION.

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It is an unfortunate fact we will come across at least one manipulative person during the course of our lives. Sometimes we are lucky enough to catch and detect him or her while it is still early and thus spare ourselves the agony of facing betrayal in the future. But as it is the very nature of a manipulator to divert attention from himself / herself and remain undetected, more often than not, most people only find out too late.

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Manipulators are crafty people. They are intelligent – not necessarily academically, but they are very in tune with the feelings of other people which is why they always know what to do and say.

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The best way to counter being manipulated is to understand how manipulators think, and know the techniques they use – consciously or unconsciously – to make you feel the way they want you to feel.

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And because I plan to discuss this at length, which I hope will enlighten all you readers out there, this series on manipulation will continue for awhile as we delve into the physics and the kind of mindset of these manipulators and their behavior towards others. Who knows, you might just be one of the victims, and you just don’t know it.

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It’s never about him, it’s all about you.

At first this might seem like a good thing, but trust us, it isn’t. This is the basic principle that lies in the heart of every manipulator’s technique – he or she makes you focus on yourself, most especially on your faults so that you don’t see where he or she is wrong. Manipulators capitalize on your tendency to trust and give the benefit of the doubt so that you end up questioning yourself rather than him or her. And while this principle is not so bad in general terms – who doesn’t commit mistakes, anyway – manipulators abuse this to achieve their own ends. Introspection is not a bad thing to do, but what manipulators do is make you do that ALL THE TIME.

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Passive aggression and open aggression.

Manipulators are always on the offensive. Sometimes you feel it, and sometimes you don’t, but the basic point is that they never truly give in. There are the two types of aggression that they use – one is a passive approach while another is open aggression. Each has its own functions and uses. Open aggression is easy enough to distinguish, but passive aggression is much harder to distinguish. Oftentimes manipulators divert the conversation to focus on your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Usually they disguise this aggression by pretending to be hurt or by giving subtle suggestions. The effect is that you don’t see you are being abused, and thus fall into their trap.

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