Maniupulation

[Data]

I have been thinking recently about manipulation. This is further to a topic of mine back in February: Emotional Games. I define as a covert attempt to invoke emotions in another person for some sort of psychological pay-off in yourself.

Examples of manipulating include:

• Storming out of a room to try and make people feel guilty because you weren't given enough attention.

• "Fishing for sympathy". People sometimes exaggerate their own difficulties because they want others attention/sympathy etc.

• Upsetting people because you are jealous of them.

I have read on some of the BPDWORLD websites that it is a misconception that people with personality disorders are manipulative. I disagree. In my opinion everyone does these things to a certain extent but they are more common in some people with personality disorders.

I believe it is a learned behaviour from childhood. In my case, my mother was very naive and as a child I would manipulate her for attention, sympathy etc and she was unable to see through it. So I grew up learning thats the way you interact with people.

I think that people maniupulate do deal with their own internal issues and they don't always realise that they are doing it. Its sometimes a subconscious thing. There are positive ways of coping with anger, rejection, sadness etc that don't involve manipulating people, such as distracting yourself or just being honest with people about how you feel. I have tried to get myself to use these positive strategies, and have mostly been successful.

Some people assume that when you accuse people of being manipulative that it is automatically judgemental. This is a fallacy; it is a statement of fact. I have done these things in the past and I am no better or worse a person than anyone else on this site. We all have our motivations and I think its important to understand them rather than denying the truth just because it is unpleasant. Admitting to any mistake could invoke people's moral judgement, but you can't use that as an excuse to pretend you are perfect!

I have also heard that manipulation is just people's way of expressing their pain. That another cop-out. There are constructive ways of expressing your pain. The key feature of emotional manipulation is that you are spreading that pain around, rather than expressing it.

Well thats my thoughts on the matter. I am always looking for faults in myself and trying to correct them, some would say I do too much of this! The other problem is that, now I understand that I am prone to this behaviour, I am always looking for it in other people. Sometimes I see through it, other times I only notice it after it has happened.

And, sometimes I end up looking for ulterior motives in people and they are in fact not there, they're just being straightforward.

Perhaps after I have some psychotherapy I will understand these things better.

[drew]

i can be maniuplate

sometimes i feel guilty about it and sometimes i dont

sometimes i do it know i am doing it but dont want to be doing it but still do it

[successful_workthru]

bullys who play a convincing victim role, and I fall for it.

Twice struck, first with the victimization, then again, when I try to confront the bully, who then goes into acting mode and plays victim.

[Sammy]

Manipulation was often talked about when I was a child. In fact every time I was crying about something I was accused of manipulation. Had many a long conversation about manipulation tactics.

Funny thing is now I can look back and see I was manipulated my entire life by parents and step parents.

Now I find it so hard to talk to Martin when I am in crisis, for fear that I might be trying to manipulate him for attention or to stop him ever leaving me, so I hold it back.

If I do ever tell him, I tell him after the event. Like I'll say yesterday I had such a bad day, I felt really bad because......

He always says why didn't you tell me? And I'll tell him I didn't want to worry him. He always says I should have told him so he could have tried to help me.

For this reason, I get very very angry when I believe someone else is manipulating me or trying to. I'm also like you meme always looking out for it and very aware of it when it happens.

[Ruth24]

This is a very debatable topic. People with BPD (and other mental illnesses) can be seen as manipulative. When i do it I don't realise I am doing it. I am convinved what I am doing is right. Its only afterward when you can see it from another perspective it can be viewed as manipulative behaviour. Viewed as manipulative is different to being manipulative. I'm sure people could easily view me as manipulative, but when i do these things i don't realise i am doing them. thefore i don't see myself as manipulative. I just do what could be viewed as manipulative behaviour

If that made any sense at all...

Some people are manipulative and they know it and they do it to hurt and put people down. I don't like people who do that at all because they can stop themselves are are just bullies

[Ocean Wolf]

I hate being called manipulative when I haven't been. On the other hand, I used to threaten to kill myself so my boyfriend would spend the night with me. Didn't realize I was doing it at the time. Now I wonder why I didn't jsut ask...

[confusseddotcom]

I can come across as manipulative and controlling yet not always in a negative way. I take after my mother whom i belive is a psychopath and never sown any emotion towards me and acted in a manipulative and controlling way, not always good.

[amybluemoon]

I definately am manipulative, i don't mean to be and i'm never malicious with it - i don't think.

A friend recently fell out with me and to try and get some sympathy i asked her if she would attend my funeral (insinuating that i was going to commit suicide) this was my way of getting sympathy by being manipulative. It's only looking back that i realise how rediculous this is.

I believe it's learnt reactions and emotions, it's a way of dealing with things and getting things our way, not necessarily our fault. It can be re learnt, through practice you can learn to deal with things efficiently without affecting other people.

Blue x

[Marchmadness]

meme -

The first step in recovery is being able to see the behaviors that are not healthy,

and take responsibility for them, then work on changing them. Now that you

see what you are doing, how are you going to change it?

OCEAN WOLF You hit it on the head.................you could have just asked. Do

you know how insightful that is? Well done!

March

[Data]

The first step in recovery is being able to see the behaviors that are not healthy,

and take responsibility for them, then work on changing them. Now that you

see what you are doing, how are you going to change it?

I am most prone to manipulating people when I am angry, so I need to double-check my motivation behind my actions.

A bigger problem is recognising when other people are manipulting me.

[Ruth24]

Ok. I' m wrong, as always. I need to stop and see i am being manipulating. Its all part of the process. Sorry for my previous post. i was wrong. it is my fault and i do need to take responsibility for hurting others

[Ocean Wolf]

*reads other post* No, I think that's a good point. I mean, I still believe one can be manipulative without realizing it. But knowing one is being manipulative and using it knowingly to hurt other people is worse. At least if you don't know, you can change the behavior when you do.

lol March, it's one of those things that should be common sense.

[Data]

Ok. I' m wrong, as always. I need to stop and see i am being manipulating. Its all part of the process. Sorry for my previous post. i was wrong. it is my fault and i do need to take responsibility for hurting others

Thats a very brave thing to do .

And, I doubt you are always wrong. We are all right some of the time, even me .

[lucy]

OCEAN WOLF You hit it on the head.................you could have just asked. Do

you know how insightful that is? Well done!

March

That made me smile, just like i want to run up to oc and give her a hug !!

[Sammy]

It takes time to work out how to change and put it in practice. I know it's not manipulation, but I can be very defensive, feeling I must always justify myself to people for my actions. I know I'm doing it but can't help myself. I know I need to stop. Sometimes, occasionally I do manage to stop myself, but the majority of the time I just feel I can't.

Recognising the behaviour may be the first step, but it doesn't always mean it's going to be easy riding thereonin.

[Sammy]

I also think it is important to be mindful of areas we know we have problems with, but without over analysing as this can lead to lots of self doubt and snowball into futher problems for ourselves. Balance and perspective is vitally important. Watching our every step can make us just as ill as not doing anything about our problems.

[toaster]

I admire your honesty, meme.

I was talkng to a friend on Skype yesterday and I was talking about what going to the t group had done to me - that it had made me look at myself and look at my 'faults'. perhaps manipulation in itself isn't the fault, it's for what purposes its used for. I said this my friend and she was all 'ur not manipulative' (was she manipulating me so i would like her more?! haha). Er, helloooooooo????!!!

I grew up in a world of secrets and lies. i watched my foster mother manipulate the system into believing she was a truly loving person, not the evil, twisted, cruel maniac she actually is. I learnt my skills form the best. I am the 'princess' of manipulation, my foster mother being the queen.

I have spent my life deceving ppl through my powers of manipulation. I no longer want to be this person. I am trying. Which is what matters.

[roxy222]

i compleately agree that manipulation is a trait of bpd, and other m/h, but the question shouldnt be whether or not it is but why. i am allways disgusted when people refer to children as manipulative, and they are most definately, but there seems to be alot of judgemnet in the term which is unfair. when anybody feels powerless they try to gain some sence of control over their world. the question to be considered is why generation after generation are growing up to feel powerless. regardless of the actual reality how people feel becomes their reality and these feelings are often their due to the situations they grew up with. someone who grew up as an undervalued child and allways made to feel their lack of power will go out to replay this within their adult lives (repituion compulsion) rather than seek out lives where they can feel autonomous. to cope with living a life out of control they will manipulate, often unconciousnessly. this is a human reaction. there are absolutely many things that cannot be controled within this world but if we take seriously the truama of disregarding children, the truama this caused us, then we will be free to let go of the need to replay the situation of being powerless and nolonger need to rely of manipulation to cope with this

[catspiracy]

I've been told that I'm manipulative, but as many of you relate, I was unconscious of it at the time. It was still entirely a coping mechanism that I relied on for my very survival. My experience was of drowning in an ocean of need, flailing around and screaming for help from a lifeboat full of people with crossed arms and turned-away faces. Drowning, I would do anything to be thrown any kind of life preserver!

I remember vividly when my mother calmly and without judgement told me, "well, you know, you're highly manipulative, too." My jaw dropped. If I were so skilled at manipulation, why did I feel so absolutely bereft? Nothing in my life felt under my power, least of all other people.

I've been labeled the Acting Out Child in my alcoholic family. I was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease, the scapegoat, the sin-eater. I see how my symptoms escalate when needs go unmet--forcing confrontation with my zoned-out hubby. I can't accuse him of anything, I have to contort myself around into a charade that he'll somehow figure out and respond the way I want. Right!!!!!

I read this last year and it was the pivotal moment in my Transformation:

Don't Defeat Yourself With Emotional Manipulation

By Bob Lancer

When you use feelings of disappointment to manipulate someone into giving you your way, you program yourself to relate with your experience as a defeat. This costs you your freedom.

There is really nothing wrong with your situation. The present offers you every opportunity. But you bind yourself to disappointment when you express yourself as a victim of your circumstances.

You imagine your condition as a loss when you engage the sorrow of sacrifice and martyrdom. In the act of trying to convince another that he or she is taking unfair advantage of your kindness and generosity, you convince yourself right out of the total freedom offered to you in the now.

It is tempting to use pitiful feelings of disappointment and victimization to subtly coerce others into making more of a sacrifice for us. If we can make them feel guilty enough, they may just realize that they can take no pleasure in denying us of what we want, and that may cause them to surrender their free will for our happiness.

The price we pay for this may be too subtle for us to recognize, even though it takes such a heavy toll on the quality of our lives and relationships. Only by practicing the act of looking within to examine your thoughts and feelings do you gradually awaken to such subtle manipulation games that cost you your integrity, your self-respect, your happiness, your mutually supportive relationships.

You use negative emotion to manipulate others when you express disappointment, disapproval, dissatisfaction over the choices they make. You use your unhappiness as a weapon. The closer they are to you, the more disturbing your unhappiness feels to them. You know this unconsciously until you wake up to what you are up to within. You use the disturbing influence of your unhappiness to prod them into acting on your behalf.

Paying attention to your thoughts and feelings reveals that your feelings attune you to your perspectives. Thus, living in feelings of gratitude begins to reveal all that you have to feel grateful for. Practice feeling gratitude long enough and you see no reason not to feel grateful for everything.

When you express feelings of disappointment, those feelings attune you to a perspective that reveals only the costs, the losses that you must suffer. In every situation you have gains and losses. Disappointment tunes you into the losses and gratitude tunes you into the gains. Both perspectives are true, but you get to live in the truth you choose.

Negative feelings deprive you of inspiring, empowering points of view. You live in your view. You experience what you are aware of. Feelings of disappointment lead you into a sorry reality. The longer you live in disappointment, the stronger and deeper it grows. As that occurs, you experience more and more loss in your life.

Feelings are contagious. The stronger your feeling of disappointment the more it draws everyone around you into similarly negative feeling states. Individuals who want to feel happy, who want to experience success and abundance and freedom, will avoid you or leave you alone. Those who remain with you will increasingly resent you as they feel themselves being sucked into a reality, a life, a world that fails them.

Using feelings of disapproval and dissatisfaction to manipulate others works just like disappointment. In disapproval, all you can see and feel is wrong. In feelings of dissatisfaction all you can see and feel is displeasing. You cut yourself off from the infinite good ever-present in the now by dwelling on anxious feelings of dread as well, and using that to get your way.

When you feel disturbed in any way, let that feeling be. Don't hold onto it. Don't use it to get your way. It will naturally pass on its own into peace if you let it go. Do not resist it. And definitely do not identify it as the way you truly feel, as the only reasonable or right way to feel, or as a necessary way to feel.

Take deep, relaxing breaths. Gently ease yourself into peace, into truly peaceful acceptance of and trust in whatever is. Stop telling yourself what is wrong with what is happening and just open your mind and heart to experience the good available to your right now. The good begins with a feeling; it is your natural way of feeling when you do not impose unhappiness upon yourself.

That's right, you impose unhappiness upon yourself whenever you feel unhappy. You are naturally happy, loving, kind, trusting. You are naturally in a state of harmony. You don't have to make yourself feel in harmony. You just have to observe how you make yourself feel distressed. When you see how you do that, you can stop it. So the real key to inner freedom is the practice of directing your awareness within, to see how you treat yourself.

Growing self-awareness automatically leads you into healing feelings of peace. Your inner peace grows by small degrees the more you allow yourself to live in it. The more you choose it. In feelings peace, feelings of love, gratitude, faith, success and fulfillment grow, and these you attune you to realities that reinforce, nurture and expand these healthy and contented feeling states. You will soon see every reason to feel this good and no more reason to feel worse. You will discover more and more things going your way, more of what you want coming your way, including the support, assistance, understanding, sensitivity, care, and cooperation you used to futilely rely on negative manipulation tactics to bring you.

[catspiracy]

"both perspectives are true, but you get to live the truth you choose"

That is power.

Dear Ruth,

I wanted to say that I appreciate your distinction between the sort of manipulation that is justly viewed with moral reprehension--purposeful use of other people like puppets. That is certainly a different situation than what we are describing. Although I think the difference is in consciousness and motive rather than in tactics or outward appearance. It hurts me deeply when people equate my flailing search for love to cold, calculating cruelty! Thanks for mentioning this important distinction.

anyways, i've gone on long enough.

love

cat

[Gillfawley]

I've been told that I'm manipulative, but as many of you relate, I was unconscious of it at the time. It was still entirely a coping mechanism that I relied on for my very survival. My experience was of drowning in an ocean of need, flailing around and screaming for help from a lifeboat full of people with crossed arms and turned-away faces. Drowning, I would do anything to be thrown any kind of life preserver!

I remember vividly when my mother calmly and without judgement told me, "well, you know, you're highly manipulative, too." My jaw dropped. If I were so skilled at manipulation, why did I feel so absolutely bereft? Nothing in my life felt under my power, least of all other people.

I've been labeled the Acting Out Child in my alcoholic family. I was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease, the scapegoat, the sin-eater. I see how my symptoms escalate when needs go unmet--forcing confrontation with my zoned-out hubby. I can't accuse him of anything, I have to contort myself around into a charade that he'll somehow figure out and respond the way I want. Right!!!!!

I read this last year and it was the pivotal moment in my Transformation:

Don't Defeat Yourself With Emotional Manipulation

By Bob Lancer

When you use feelings of disappointment to manipulate someone into giving you your way, you program yourself to relate with your experience as a defeat. This costs you your freedom.

There is really nothing wrong with your situation. The present offers you every opportunity. But you bind yourself to disappointment when you express yourself as a victim of your circumstances.

You imagine your condition as a loss when you engage the sorrow of sacrifice and martyrdom. In the act of trying to convince another that he or she is taking unfair advantage of your kindness and generosity, you convince yourself right out of the total freedom offered to you in the now.

It is tempting to use pitiful feelings of disappointment and victimization to subtly coerce others into making more of a sacrifice for us. If we can make them feel guilty enough, they may just realize that they can take no pleasure in denying us of what we want, and that may cause them to surrender their free will for our happiness.

The price we pay for this may be too subtle for us to recognize, even though it takes such a heavy toll on the quality of our lives and relationships. Only by practicing the act of looking within to examine your thoughts and feelings do you gradually awaken to such subtle manipulation games that cost you your integrity, your self-respect, your happiness, your mutually supportive relationships.

You use negative emotion to manipulate others when you express disappointment, disapproval, dissatisfaction over the choices they make. You use your unhappiness as a weapon. The closer they are to you, the more disturbing your unhappiness feels to them. You know this unconsciously until you wake up to what you are up to within. You use the disturbing influence of your unhappiness to prod them into acting on your behalf.

Paying attention to your thoughts and feelings reveals that your feelings attune you to your perspectives. Thus, living in feelings of gratitude begins to reveal all that you have to feel grateful for. Practice feeling gratitude long enough and you see no reason not to feel grateful for everything.

When you express feelings of disappointment, those feelings attune you to a perspective that reveals only the costs, the losses that you must suffer. In every situation you have gains and losses. Disappointment tunes you into the losses and gratitude tunes you into the gains. Both perspectives are true, but you get to live in the truth you choose.

Negative feelings deprive you of inspiring, empowering points of view. You live in your view. You experience what you are aware of. Feelings of disappointment lead you into a sorry reality. The longer you live in disappointment, the stronger and deeper it grows. As that occurs, you experience more and more loss in your life.

Feelings are contagious. The stronger your feeling of disappointment the more it draws everyone around you into similarly negative feeling states. Individuals who want to feel happy, who want to experience success and abundance and freedom, will avoid you or leave you alone. Those who remain with you will increasingly resent you as they feel themselves being sucked into a reality, a life, a world that fails them.

Using feelings of disapproval and dissatisfaction to manipulate others works just like disappointment. In disapproval, all you can see and feel is wrong. In feelings of dissatisfaction all you can see and feel is displeasing. You cut yourself off from the infinite good ever-present in the now by dwelling on anxious feelings of dread as well, and using that to get your way.

When you feel disturbed in any way, let that feeling be. Don't hold onto it. Don't use it to get your way. It will naturally pass on its own into peace if you let it go. Do not resist it. And definitely do not identify it as the way you truly feel, as the only reasonable or right way to feel, or as a necessary way to feel.

Take deep, relaxing breaths. Gently ease yourself into peace, into truly peaceful acceptance of and trust in whatever is. Stop telling yourself what is wrong with what is happening and just open your mind and heart to experience the good available to your right now. The good begins with a feeling; it is your natural way of feeling when you do not impose unhappiness upon yourself.

That's right, you impose unhappiness upon yourself whenever you feel unhappy. You are naturally happy, loving, kind, trusting. You are naturally in a state of harmony. You don't have to make yourself feel in harmony. You just have to observe how you make yourself feel distressed. When you see how you do that, you can stop it. So the real key to inner freedom is the practice of directing your awareness within, to see how you treat yourself.

Growing self-awareness automatically leads you into healing feelings of peace. Your inner peace grows by small degrees the more you allow yourself to live in it. The more you choose it. In feelings peace, feelings of love, gratitude, faith, success and fulfillment grow, and these you attune you to realities that reinforce, nurture and expand these healthy and contented feeling states. You will soon see every reason to feel this good and no more reason to feel worse. You will discover more and more things going your way, more of what you want coming your way, including the support, assistance, understanding, sensitivity, care, and cooperation you used to futilely rely on negative manipulation tactics to bring you.

Can I have that laminated please?!?!

I have a very very kind bf who is struggling to understand my inability to cope with disappointments and my resulting manipulations. I perceive my demands as emotional neediness, driven by a desire for something from him to prop up my own pitiful self worth...love, affection, time, whatever...but I guess that is a form of manipulation. Maybe I chose not to see it for what it is all these years...until now.

I'm trying to remind myself it's just a fact and its not my fault. But now I know, to ignore it would be plain stupid. Does that make sense?

I'm working hard to change the 'truth' in which i live to on more peaceful for myself and those around me - trying to find the good side of everything which I guess is what this article is saying - but it's such hard work. I have good days and bad days when I fall off the 'sensible wagon'

Feels like three steps forward two steps back and every day I hope and pray I don't mess up again and that he doesn't hold my past lapses against me

[sundries]

I think it is difficult because often times people who are afraid they are going to be manipulated tend to assume that any behaviour on the part of anoother person that they respond to with a negative feeling, was intended to manipulate them.

For instance someone might have just had a miscarriage, they cry, the person who sees them crying could well look at the crying and say 'oh this makes me feel sad, I ought to offer sympathy, (trigger) I must be being controlled, this person is being manipulative'. the sense of manipulation stems from the second persons own 'shoulds/oughts/obligations'

I think very often people who feel manipulated are people who are terrified of being controlled, get 'triggered' and then ascribe thier own reactions and panic to the intentions of another person.

If someone is 'fishing' for sympathy they may wish for it, but that doesnt place any obligation of the person who is being 'fished' than if the first person said 'hey i need some sympathy' in both instances a request is being made and can be declined. In fact I think asking directly for sympathy could well be seen as the more domineering approach, wheras fishing leaves it open for the other to decline without being put on the spot and made to look uncaring. Asking indirectly is often the appropriate social skill.

I hope that makes sense.

I think mental health professionals are particularly prone to viewing things as manipulation. I suspect as children thier parents would be sad or angry or whatever. hte parents may well not have had any expectation that the child 'take responsibility' for this (though im sure some parents do) but children do have a tendency to pick up on a feeling, worry about it, unconsciously worry about being abandoned, feel guilty, feel they ought to do something about it.

I think as a result they develop a 'caring' self as a protection against these fears and unconscious rsentment that results.

Then When thier patients are in distress on some level they panic, feel overly obligated, blame the patient for 'making' them feel that way and come to the conclusion they are being manipulated. When actually the patients behaviour may have very little intention to evoke ractions in them whatso ever and are simply expressions of pain (or whatever) like crying.

[sundries]

it is natural to feel negative/sad feelings in response to certain events. Even when someone says 'no' it is natural to feel disappinted...you are hardly going to feel happy!! And yet I think some people are so easily triggered into feelings of being manipulated that they interpret these utterly natural (and frankly healthy) responses as manipulation. They feel (unreasonably) guilty about something and then attribute it to a guilt trip!

Sometimes a feeling of being manipulated can be used to deny others their disappointment or sadness or anger. it amounts to saying their feelings are invalid and wrong merely because you feel uncomfortable with them. It is very close to the scenario of the person who cant say no because they to easily feel guilty...but then of course resent and feel taken advantage of.

In fact complaining of being manipulated and therefore implying the other should stop their behaviour/change or not express thier feelings (however htey are expressed) to relieve your feeling of being controlled/feling anxious and powerless............could be seen as manipulative!!!!!!

I use express rather than communicated because yes there are much healthier and better ways of communicating, but expressing is simply a show of how you are feeling and realy has very little to do with anyone else....like crying or even self harming.

however, while crying or something may well not be a sneaky 'demand' for a sympathy or whatever it does not follow that sympathy is the wrong response. Simply that people are free or not to offer sympathy. And people who feel they ought to be more caring than they are then feel guilty because their lack of the extent of caring they feel they should have contradicts thier self image...so they have to find a reason why lack of care is a justified response.

Of course people in teh caring professions are likely to be more invested in thier image of themselves as all caring, and i suggest that as result they are even more prone to needing this justification and labelling people manipulative.

[Gillfawley]

My bf does seem to worry I'm trying the manipulate him. He's said many times that he dislikes feeling 'obligated' as he puts it -by family, friends so maybe he is sensitive to that. That perhaps filters his view of my emotional needs and he feels threatened. The result is he withdraws even further, my emotional needs go unfulfilled (rejected even - if I'm in a sensitive mood), I get more needy, he withdraws further, etc, and the downward spiral continues.

He's trying to be supportive but finds it very difficult to provide the affection I'd like - particularly when we're apart during the week. When we're together it's good but he's shy/reserved/detached when we're apart. This feeds my insecurity and I get in a mind fug and question his feelings for me. Which he finds hurtful. Thinks I should have more confidence in his love for me, that it's 'implicit' in our relationship and hates feeling pressured to contantly reassure me.

I'm trying so hard to be more philosophical about our relationship, trying to see his point of view, trying to trust him. But sometimes at my worst times I have to ask him for some love/affection/reassurance yet he believes he should be left to show his love spontaneously rather than 'on demand'. But he rarely sends me any affectionate texts, or even says 'I love you' spontaneously. I am trying to be patient and lower my expectations but he can be so distant I wonder if I'm the one trying to do all the 'changing' and if he will ever step outside HIS comfort zone.

Sorry - this has turned into a bit of a whinge hasn't it - but I find myself so scared to ask for affection in case he refuses (as I know that will end up in my tears and pain) and at the same time scared of living a life devoid of affection just to keep him ? I'm so afraid of being alone, of losing him. We split last year for a month and I barely made it through - I'm only here because he agreed to give things another go. Which has simply made my insecurity ten times worse and put my self esteem on the floor

Magic wand anyone?

[Ruth24]

If someone is 'fishing' for sympathy they may wish for it, but that doesnt place any obligation of the person who is being 'fished' than if the first person said 'hey i need some sympathy' in both instances a request is being made and can be declined. In fact I think asking directly for sympathy could well be seen as the more domineering approach, wheras fishing leaves it open for the other to decline without being put on the spot and made to look uncaring. Asking indirectly is often the appropriate social skill.

I hope that makes sense-Sundries

I find it hard to ask for sympathy, in that i mean telling somebody I need a hug. So sometimes i need to show how upset i am, by crying, for example as a was of getting that sympathy.

However, at times i cry without wanting sympathy and it is given anyway. Even if i say, 'no I don't need a hug, i'm ok' If the person offers sympathy anyway, is that them manipulating me and making me feel weaker than I am?