Often times I scroll through the depression and suicide watch subreddits, searching for advice for specific situations. A lot of posts go unacknowledged, no engagement whatsoever, which, fair enough, most of the time I don't know what to say either and I assume most people posting or lurking are in the same boat. Sometimes posts like this will pop up in other not strictly mental health related subreddits where they get more engagement. It doesn't take long before someone in the comment section brings up how unfair it would be towards their loved ones if they ended their life, how they should live for the sake of other people.
Maybe I find this problematic because guilt tripping like this was also a huge part of my trauma.
When my abusive father divorced my mother, his extended family welcomed him back with open arms, but while my mother's side rejected us entirely. I think I might have developed a learning dissability because of all the abuse and emotional neglect because I was developmentally behind my classmates. This led to me being bullied and made fun of a lot. My grades were low too. Try as I might, I couldn't wrap my head around most of the school curriculum.
I remember my grandmother pulling me aside one day to tell me that I was the reason my father cheated on my mother, that because of my poor school performance and because I was such high maintenance he left the family, that I was the source of my mother's suffering, I guess in an attempt to convince me to do better in school. I had a hard time memorising and understanding the school work, as such I also had trouble doing my homework, because I didn't understand what I was supposed to do. I was bullied all the time, my grades weren't improving, I was constantly reminded what a disappointment I was. I wanted to run away or kill myself by jumping, but I could never go through with it because I knew my mother would be heartbroken and I knew i couldn't trust her relatives to look after her if I was gone. So I powered through, trying to make myself as invisible as possible, putting my needs last. This continued throughout high school as well. During this time, my mother started dating and found a man she meshed well with, but her family sabotaged the relationship, claiming that he was too embarrassing for the family (he was an ok dude, not the brightest but certainly a decent human being, unlike my lazy, drop out, freeloader of a sperm doner who was a-ok apparently). Fast forward to my 18th birthd
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**edit, the honeymoon is NOT the issue here. We have booked our own. It was just an example of the crazy behaviour she throws our way. The issue was how to we break the continuous cycle of her barging her way in without having to keep my DS grandparent and DHs mum out of their lives.
Sorry this is long , needed to vent. So my MIL has always and will always be a giant pain in my ass. She is obsessive, overly needy and demands to be very involved in our lives. She's the type of person who has no empathy and only thinks of herself, and the whole world is against her. She undermines every parenting decision we make and has no respect for boundaries.
Anyway, We got married 3 weeks ago and she asked what we we're doing for a honeymoon. We lost our abroad wedding due to covid and had to cut our losses and plan a whole new wedding in 6 months so we hadn't even considered a honeymoon. MIL decides she will pay for our honeymoon as her contribution to the wedding. Which is very generous... but there's a catch. She announced aftewards that she would be coming along (give me strength). Safe to say the honeymoon is not happening, as we have rebooked our own but we have this trip now as a family that I'd really rather not be on.
Our wedding was amazing but over the weekend MIL had negative opinions on everything. She asked about 4000 times on the day what we were doing for Xmas. We told her we were weren't sure yet, could we get the wedding out the way before thinking about xmas.
So a week after the wedding we decided we had best invite her for xmas as she's alone and lives 4 or so hours away from anyone. We got shot down in flames. We had apparently made it very clear we didn't want her there and she has made other plans. Good, didn't want you there anyway. This has opened a can of worms. We are getting constantly berated for leaving an old woman alone. Nobody wants to spend time with her, we never invite her to stay etc. She's telling other family members that we are always rude to her (because we don't listen to her patenting advice) and that I'm keeping her away from her only son. DH feels guilty about it, but I know she will come. She wants us to apologise and beg which is not happening.
The last time she stayed, we told her 4 days (she ALWAYS overstays her welcome) so she booked a hotel for a further 3 nights and was in our house all day anyway. I'm just so sick of the emotional blackmail. It's not DHs or my fault she is alone, that is down to her toxic person
... keep reading on reddit ➡I've hung out with Christians on another board. I agree with them the vaxx is a "mark of the beast", I am an ex-fundamentalist Christian. I got tired of being beaten down, being told I was a worm and being told it was "my fault" when "bad stuff happened". Toxic religion has so many gaslighting and toxic techniques, it's not funny and I believe IT IS USED BY THE ELITE and not just Christianity. It's all about being told 'obey' and 'you don't measure up". One reason I left fundamentalist Christianity in the first place, is God became this being that just 'hurt me' over and over, as bad things happened [severe illness, bad things and illness happening to others, poverty, people dying young] and I was told to pray to God but nothing happened. The churches when I talked about this told me it was "my fault" and I notice when discussing things with the Christians, they go back into that mode, it's "my sin", I "did something wrong".
I broke away from extreme abusers [narcissistic family] that taught me everything was my fault, I was the "bad one". I do believe self examination is important etc and when I prayed did not seek after materialism. Nothing was ever good enough and there was always a new hoop to jump through and a carrot on the stick. I also was told I was supposed to love this Being that just seemed intent on hurting me. I sometimes wonder at times if Orwell meant God when he referred to "Big Brother" in the book 1984, where we are told to love God even as it hurts us.
I have not given up on the idea of a divine loving Source or God but I feel like religion took me for a ride, and it was all about control. It controls people and beats them down. It pushes this authoritarianism that keeps the most evil in charge. It allows the sociopaths and malignant narcissists to have full reign over us all, as humanity is told they are to live in extreme guilt, pain and suffering and "it is all their fault". What gets me too in the most traditional churches too, there's always the threat of hell, to make you afraid and scared and beaten down too. So instead of a relationship with a God that is a friend or nurturer, you have an abusive father who wants to get a stick out on you and beat you or throw you into a burning furnace.
I even wonder at times if Revelation is a script the elites are FOLLOWING, as they do their AI crap and trying to gain control over human bodies from within. They have put Revelation 13 into operation. However Jesus did warn us in other Bibl
... keep reading on reddit ➡I went NC with my n-parents over a year ago, in June 2020. This holiday season my mom popped up out of nowhere with a fresh smear campaign that has been deeply effective. She convinced my aunt that I've been lying about the history of abuse I've been working hard to recover from, and that I am not talking to her out of pure cruelty.
One by one, mutual relatives have either stopped talking to me or reached out to me with stern and contemptuous messages about how rotten it is that I'm not talking to my mom.
The person I treasure most in my family is my grandmother, who is 85 and is quite vulnerable to emotional manipulation (in part because of her poor memory). This morning, she sent me an email recommending we cancel our upcoming visit because she's unhappy about how I "won't talk to anyone" in the family.
I'm gutted. I feel so alone in dealing with this, as mutual friends and the usual support structures I rely on all kind of fail when it comes to talking about abusive family stuff. A ton of the narcissistic abuse I grew up with centered on scapegoating, ostracism, shunning, abandonment... so this is very triggering.
I need someone to recognize what's happening and tell me I'm not crazy. Folks in my IRL circles just don't seem to be capable. I do thankfully have a therapist, and will talk to her about this in our weekly appt.
I’ve done some horrible things such as emotional blackmail in my relationship. They came after he technically cheated on me and blamed it on me and the time he cheated again and got his other person to dump me. I was really codependent on him. I felt so guilty for what had happened and I clung onto him because I just wanted to make things right. And the other time, I just needed to hear it from him to show he at least cared. I needed the closure. I know I deserved that but the way I went about it was so so wrong. No matter the justifications I have for it, it will always be wrong what I said as it was plain manipulative. It makes me feel so bad as I knew it would be wrong at the time. I don’t want to be that bad person so I am getting help. I was as bad as him during those times. I was just wondering if this is something that might be common. And that’s not me trying to absolve myself off of my guilt, I was just wondering if this has happened in other cases.
Hi folks, I just wanted to vent with folks who get it. I had covid in October 2020 and am glad this community was here to help. I've been vaxxed+boosted and got myself some KN95 masks.
I ended up agreeing to a family NYE trip because the emotional blackmail was becoming too harsh. Since I currently live with them it's nearly impossible to get away from their harassment.
I've talked a bit about the verbal abuse I've received in other subreddits, but it's becoming clear that as this pandemic continues we need mental health support for folks who deal with emotional blackmail and verbal abuse from anti-vaxxers and people in our lives who are not only ignoring precautions, but putting people in vulnerable psychological situations.
I'm hoping to raise enough $ to move out of the house soon and then institute my own rules. I'm taking all sorts of supplies with me to withstand a long drive, but I'm so angry about the way the lack of clear messaging around this pandemic is also creating interpersonal rifts that will take years to resolve for all of us.
Apparently my feelings are invalid and I exist only to serve other people.
Wish me luck.
Edit: sat in the corner for 2 hours saying nothing feeling out of place while wishing I was at home. Now I’m just depressed and in such a bad mood.
As the title states, "How do you respond to students that attempt emotional blackmail?".
I find every semester I get a bit more jaded and my answers are a bit harsher.
I had a student this week tell me they need to pass and if I could find it in my heart to fix their scores from a presentation they did last week. Naturally, I just responded 'No. Please leave now'. Then I just left the MS Teams meeting. (it's much cooler to do these things in an office, but we're still teaching online).
Edit: Thanks for these replies! It's really appreciated and now I've got a few more tools to take with me next time this happens (sure I won't need to wait long, haha).
So my parents have had financial issues for a long time. They are very bad with money and ask for loans everywhere. Me and my brother already have debt we have taken in their names and it's almost imposible to keep up.
Today they asked me to take out another loan from them and I said no (I have been working with my therapist on setting boundaries). Then my mom told me she had been crying for days and started saying awful things like she wants to die and I felt so guilty but still can't give them what they ask for.
This issue has been going on for almost 10 years and every time me or my brother say no to them they pull out a "tantrum" like that. Even making us feel like we owe them everything they paid for us when growing up (education, food, health, vacation, etc. )
It has been too long and now I can't sleep and have been crying the whole afternoon feeling the guilt and fear that my mom might hurt herself or something now.
I just needed to vent and a virtual hug.
Hugs to all of you guys, too!
Sending my heart to anyone else who is dealing with difficult emotions during this holiday season. Here's where I am this week...
When I was a teenager, I became estranged from my parents for a few years (they essentially disowned me for a bit after I threatened to call the cops/CPS after discovering they were dealing drugs). I spent one holiday alone at a Cracker Barrel before a therapist encouraged me to find a "chosen family." Then, I started spending holidays with my best friend's family and later, with my in-laws. These people supported me through the most toxic and traumatic situations in my life, and I've been spending holidays with them ever since. Well, now that I am married and my spouse and I are creating our own family unit and holiday traditions, my family are deeply threatened. They've been jealous of our relationship with my in-laws for a while and have resorted to emotional blackmail during the holiday this week. Comments that I should spend more time with my own family, that my family believe I don’t care about them and when I spend time with my in-laws they feel like I am disowning them. They refuse to come visit us for the holidays, and when we try to visit them, they cancel plans the day of. They wouldn't even return calls or texts on the holiday. One aunt waited 48hrs before responding, claiming she was "too busy" (I found out from a different relative that she had hosted her own party with my entire family in attendance). When she finally did text me, she told me I should “free up a few minutes“ from spending time with my in-laws to call her today. She did the same thing during the holidays last year. She’s also stood me up on plans the day of, so many times that I no longer agree to travel to visit her. Because she also refuses to visit anyone in the family, this means we just don't see each other at all anymore - which fuels even more anger towards me.
It feels like I am being “punished” because my family are threatened by my close-knit, healthy relationship with my in-laws. This behavior just feels immature and emotionally manipulative. They are playing the same sort of cold shoulder antics that teenagers play with their parents, and I do not have patience for drama triangles. How do I maintain an adult to adult relationship with loved ones who behave this way?
If intrigued, see Emotional Blackmail & the FOG of Fear, Obligation & Guilt.
I have been NC with most of my immediate and extended family for up to 8 years now.
My family is super into manipulation. I always feel like I am being managed.
One of the worst manipulators is my cousin Pam. She is about ten years older than me. She loved to point out all my flaws and was constantly criticizing me. She treated me the same as she did when I was five.
Pam is apparently dying from cancer. I figure it’s probably legit since she has been trying to control the narrative about her illness.
Pam reached out through a third party and wants to “put her house in order” before she dies.
I have some pretty strong feelings about this.
First, when I attempted to talk to her about the way she had been treating me, she refused to have a conversation. But now that’s she is dying, I am supposed to put aside that she ignored me because it’s urgent for her to deal with it now? I have to assume that if she wasn’t dying, she wouldn’t care.
Second, it feels like more manipulation and emotional blackmail. I think there is going to be a push for me to absolve her of any wrong doing. This is pretty fucked up because if I choose not to, then I am an ass. Also, I want the air cleared but of course, cough cough she’ll be too sick to give me the satisfaction.
I have decided not to participate.
This is the text I got from my dad this morning:
“Pagsamba ngayon [it’s the worship service tonight], hope to see you in the worship service and please do not betray us and our Father in heaven.
Sana kahit katiting na pag ibig at pagtingin sa iyong mga magulang, kahit kapiraso lang ng ibinibigay mo sa aso mo.”
[We hope that even if only a little you could show us, your parents, your love and hold us in a high regard - even if only just a little bit of what you give to your dog]
So my MIL is a very mild JN, at least I think so compared to some of these other stories I’ve read. My assessment is that she is just used to being the center of everything and now that DH and I have a LO together, she feels like she’s on the outside looking in. DH is also an only child and she was a single mom for most of his upbringing with the help of her parents. She remarried decades ago but has always remained close with my DH.
She also needs to make sure she does better gift wise than anyone else, this goes for DH and I’s gifts too. We’ve had to set boundaries with our son already - you may see that story in one of my previous posts about the piggy bank she got LO, which is in the basement since it’s customized…otherwise it would have been donated.
The recent situation was my birthday on Friday. My husband and I took the day off and he had a surprise day planned for me. Since we have no family in town, our dates have to done while LO is in daycare, which is fine, just pointed that out for context. It was a great day and she venmo’d me a generous gift (after learning his dad sent me a check for a lesser amount of course) so I got to go out shopping for a new bag (yay for this new mom!). Brushed off the obvious one-up move because whatever.
The kicker is that she sent DH this super sappy email that night (yes still my birthday) titled “Today” explaining how she is just so very proud of him, she did the best she could raising him but knows it wasn’t easy, was smiling all day knowing he planned such a special day for me, he was always a great kid, still her whole world, and to remember to do things like this always because that’s what a woman likes and so on…
In all fairness, she sent me a pretty sappy card for my birthday too. However, the next day she was texting all day about doing things with LO when she’s out here. She was just out with his dad which was weird because they’re divorced so I’m assuming she now wants to make sure she gets her alone time with us and LO, even though we also have a family vacation planned with her and my side of the family for September as well.
I’m just getting all of these overbearing vibes from this. I do love that she wants to be involved, I don’t have very involved parents so I’m happy LO will have her but I had to just stop responding. She was asking if we needed diapers, took LO’s milestone pictures yet etc. It was more than usual this past weekend.
DH called her today to thank her for the email
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I recently moved out and my Asian parents have been manipulating and emotionally blackmailing me every day. They are physically and emotionally abusive and Being around them makes me depressed. They send me pictures of them crying, of my little siblings and almost begging me to come back home. I don’t know how to feel the guilt is killing me.
They tell me they’re going to kill themselves if I don’t move back in. I’m so scared and mentally exhausted. I blocked their number but they keep sending me emails. I knew moving out wouldn’t be easy but at times I feel like the abuse was easier to deal with compared to this mental pain they cause me on daily.
Does anyone know how to deal with emotional blackmailing and stop feeling guilty?
This is a new genre: the documentary as emotional blackmail. Dylan Farrow deserves sympathy. She does not deserve unconditional belief. In a saner climate, the only filmmakers “disgraced” by this documentary would be the ones who made it.
So I'm trying my best in school (I'm 13) and my parents can't seem to understand that no matter how many times I tell them. Recently, they threatened to cancel my voice lessons, which are my whole world, if I score below 75%. The requirements for my course is only 60%. I'm not exaggerating when I say singing is my whole world. It's the only thing that can calm me down when I'm sad and it's the only thing that can keep me going. I get suicidal thoughts sometimes and I can only stop myself by thinking about my next voice lesson and telling myself to hang in there until then. I'm not sure if this is the right community to ask this, but is what my parents are doing considered emotional blackmailing?
In order to maintain sanity, my wife and I have eliminated contact with her sister for the past few years. There has been bad blood between her and my wife for years, which spilled over to me when I lost my job and we decided jointly that I should be a stay at home dad until our children started high school. They started school and I went back to work full time. There were several comments made (with alcohol involved) on my masculinity and lack of work ethic which escalated one gathering with my MIL and SIL shouting at my wife, my kids in tears, and me saying I've had enough and I left and sat in the car (my family came out a few minutes later). Later MIL and SIL decided the argument was my fault and that I should apologize to every one there.
I refused and since then it has been a constant barrage of tears and emotional blackmail from my MIL on how I'm tearing the family apart. I have never said my wife and kids cannot attend family events with the SIL, I just choose not to do so. To be fair, I'm not a saint and have made a few snide comments of my own, but they have always been in response to digs.
So this year MIL issued an ultimatum. Either all of us (myself included) attend her "family" Christmas gathering, or my wife and kids are not invited. This is common of the emotional blackmail that's been played over the course of our marriage. My wife has always asked me to be the better person for the sake of our kids, but I'm really over it.
So, if I refuse to attend, and thus ensure my wife and kids are not welcome, am I the asshole?
This thought crossed my mind as I was mentally waking up, I came to realise that I had known so many people, including my uncle, who had all “come back to the truth” because they missed their family. Guess what happened the moment they were reinstated? Bam! Out of there faster than a rat up a drainpipe.
It is blatant manipulation and emotional blackmail rebranded and disguised as “Jehovah’s perfect discipline”. We all know the real reasons the disfellowshipping arrangement is in place.
Isn’t it funny, that for a doctrine so weighty and important, it took Jehovah 33 years after 1919 to finally get around to telling his henchmen faithful slaves: “Hey guys, this is actually how you need to treat wrongdoers. Never mind that 5 years ago I told you to write an awake article condemning the “pagan” practice of shunning, I was in a rather topsy-turvy mood that day”.
Wouldn’t this be like one of the first things you would pump out of your office on a Monday morning and send echoing down to the branch managers ASAP? It’s followed by another 30 years to implement the same policy on disassociates. Is the celestial chariot in a race with a snail, or have the wheels fallen off altogether? Commandeered by old grumpy men holding a glass of Macallan in one hand, and a chastising whip in the other?
When God was dishing out laws and commands to the Israelites, it was all instantaneous, from the very get go. None of this slow-dripping orders and policies over decades and centuries. Did God forget how to God?
The “light shining brighter and brighter” is not that at all. It is a strobe light. You could almost dance to it. It is a flickering neon light bulb with a faulty starter in it, haphazardly turning on and off.
Christians want you to accept miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus at face value, and the Bible make complete sense once accept them to be real.
But let's assume that resurrections aren't real and were made up as pious fiction, and then look at Paul's verses in Corinthians 15:
>12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Pretty logically, I must say. Sounds like BS.
>13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
Yes, indeed. He most probably wasn't.
>14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
Yes, very observant of you. Sounds like it's time to update your beliefs.
>15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
Very true. You are indeed lying and misrepresenting God, if one really exists.
>16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
Yeah, you've just said that?
>17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Ah, you are repeating yourself for a rhetorical purpose. If only repeating things had made them true.
>18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
They most probably did :(
>19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
That's pretty harsh, though it's never too late to admit that you were wrong :)
Did you see what Paul the religious engineer did? He built an argument that exploits the sunk cost fallacy. He says if you don't believe in resurrection, then your whole investment in this cause is in vain.
Moreover, it means that you will not be resurrected, and your life on this earth is the only one you got. So if you want to believe that you'll have a second go at life, you better believe that Jesus was resurrected too.
This is emotional blackmail which exploits the fear of death and lack of an afterlife.
On the one hand, I'm incredibly delighted that LGBTQ+ people have gained rights and that there is movement in the right direction with regards to equality.
As a woman, I know that the struggle for equality for us is still ongoing and is a long way from 'complete'. I know that the same is the case for LGBTQ+ and even for some marginalized groups within even that.
This rant comes from both myself as a straight woman who remembers well how I have been treated as lesser because of being a woman, and because of being autistic, etc.
I'll try to make this coherent, because I'm pretty angry about it and I'm likely to be all over the place. I have yet again been confronted by another woman telling me to stop being straight and to be a lesbian. And that since I haven't TRIED having sex with a woman, I cannot know if I'm straight. This has been happening with increasing frequency, and these girls are VERY pushy about it. One might even say forceful.
It makes me really, really angry. Why? Because I remember a man from a nearby town being murdered when I was a child, because he was gay. This helped me to understand that being gay couldn't possibly have been a "choice".
Also, me being straight DESPITE the fact that I had been harmed so MUCH by men that I wanted nothing more than to be lesbian... also made me feel immense compassion for gay people. It really helped me stand staunchly in the corner of "It's NOT a choice". I rallied, I was screamed at, hit, kicked, reviled... I mean, I went through a lot for a cause that I believe in, even though I'm only tangentially a part of it and didn't even know that then (demisexual).
So when someone demands that I just CHOOSE to be a lesbian, it really, really, really incenses me. First off, after everything I've been through, if I could be a 'lesbian', I'd have been one for decades! Secondly, if it's a CHOICE, then I guess the christians are right, and you're just being one because you WANT TO BE and not because of biology.
I was wrong all along? Is that what you're trying to tell me? I stood in the rain and got pneumonia to picket because "it's NOT a choice" to stand up for your right to be who you are openly and without fear or shame... and I was wrong?
Every time I get treated like utter garbage because I happen to be sexually attracted to men, it makes me feel betrayed, frankly. Being told to "just be a lesbian, it's great" like I have 'options' really makes me want to scream in frustration.
Then I'm told that I have
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