Manipulation; what does it actually mean? The dictionary says something about it, which, at the moment, I cannot reveal due to reasons of laziness and a very comfortable present posture. But this is how I see manipulation: it is the art (yes ‘art’) of getting someone else do something for you without the other person’s exact approval. Well, it goes something like this: A gets B to do some random C even though B thinks doing C is not such a great idea.
Who are manipulators? Quite obviously, the ones who manipulate other people. Come to think of it, it's not such a free world with manipulators, after all. But then, in their defense, they just asked you to do it, you wanted to do it yourself. So you could say it is the ones being manipulated who are to be blamed.
Guilt trips are unavoidable when speaking about manipulations. Guilt trips are usually pangs of guilt you feel because someone tells you things like “Do this for me, if you’re a good friend” or something on those lines; basically they are exactly the kind of corny dialogs out of melodramas. And usually the one sending you on guilt trips are pretty close to you, because only then will you think so many times to say “No” even though you know the answer has to be it. And for people like me out there, I’ve almost never been able to say “No” in any of these situations. I say “Okay” do it and then resent it for the rest of my life.
So, like any other average normal human, I hate manipulators even though it was me who should’ve said a firm “No” to all their emotional arrows and successfully did what I really wanted to do. Instead, every time I end up doing the exact opposite thing and then end up apologizing to several about this for days to come and generally feel a lot down for a whole lot of time to come. The best gift to me, right now, would be either of the two: a book that’s on the lines of “How to escape guilt trip manipulations and make the right choice” or a book on the lines of “How to manipulate your loved ones using guilt trip”, like they said, if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em!
