Games People Play: Exposing manipulation tactics, covert control, and emotional warfare
This glossary is for empaths, intuitives, and sensitive souls learning to spot—and stop—the subtle and overt games that drain your life force. These definitions aren’t just academic—they’re survival tools. Read slowly. Let it land. Reclaim your clarity.
Everyday Psychological Tactics
Advice That Wasn’t Asked For
Masked criticism or projection. Often, the speaker is addressing a younger version of themselves—not you.
“So much pain and conflict exists in our world today because the ego holds personal opinions as universal truths.”
Anger as Manipulation
Used to scare you into compliance. Not all anger is abusive—but it can be weaponized.
Approval Trap
They outwardly support your decision, then punish or guilt you for it afterward.
Apology Without Change
A manipulative non-apology used to end the conversation. If behavior doesn’t change, the apology is gaslighting.
Assigning Malintent
They declare what your intention was, twisting your motives to fit their narrative.
Blame Shifting
Redirecting fault onto you or external factors to avoid accountability for their own actions.
Benevolent Dictatorship
Controlling behavior disguised as care: “I’m doing this for your own good.”
Boiling the Frog / Incremental Erosion
Gradual increase in control or harm. By the time you notice, you’ve already adapted to the dysfunction.
Boundary Pushing
Treating your boundaries as withholding love or a negotiation instead of a firm no.
Breadcrumbing
Offering inconsistent attention or affection to keep you invested without committing.
Crazy-Making
Systematically making you question your memory, perception, or sanity—while pretending to care.
Criticism as Control
Criticism masked as concern, often driven by their fear that you’ll outgrow or leave them behind.
Charm as a Tactic
Charm is not a personality trait—it’s a strategic, often manipulative skill used to disarm and influence.
Confirmation Bias
They seek out only the evidence that supports their narrative, ignoring anything that challenges it.
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)
They deny wrongdoing, attack your credibility, and recast themselves as the victim.
Deflecting
Avoiding accountability by changing the subject or shifting focus away from the issue at hand.
Defensiveness
A protective reaction to perceived criticism. While sometimes valid, extreme defensiveness often signals that the accusation hit a nerve—because it's true.
Denial
Flat-out refusal to acknowledge reality, truth, or responsibility—even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Destruction of Property
A manipulative tactic used to intimidate or threaten by damaging meaningful or shared belongings.
Double Binds
Situations where you’re wrong no matter what you do. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Economic Abuse
Controlling your access to money, employment, or resources to limit your independence or trap you in the relationship.
Emotional Blackmail
Threatening to withhold love, support, or even safety unless you comply with their demands.
Expecting You to Read Their Mind
Punishing you for not intuiting their needs. Passive-aggressive, indirect, and deeply manipulative.
Feigned Concern Gaslighting
Acting worried about your mental health while simultaneously undermining your reality. A more insidious form of gaslighting.
Flying Monkeys
Recruiting others to do their bidding, spread their narrative, or attack you on their behalf. Often used to isolate and discredit you.
Future Faking / False Promises
Making grand declarations about a shared future or positive change—with no intention of following through.
Gaslighting
Deliberately distorting your perception of reality to make you doubt your own mind, memory, or instincts.
Guilt-Driven Niceness
Excessive kindness offered not from love, but to alleviate their own guilt or distract from wrongdoing.
Guilt Tripping
Using guilt to control your choices, create obligation, or manipulate your emotional state.
Honeymoon Phase
After abuse, they shower you with affection, gifts, and apologies—pulling you back into the cycle through false hope and trauma bonding.
Hoovering
Attempts to “suck” you back in after pushing you away—often using charm, pity, false promises, or guilt to regain control.
Intimidation
Implied or direct threats, aggressive body language, or imposing energy meant to silence or scare you into submission.
Intermittent Reinforcement
Random and unpredictable affection or kindness, strategically mixed with cruelty or neglect. Highly addictive and disorienting.
Invalidation of Feelings
Dismissing your emotions because they don’t match theirs. “I don’t feel that way, so you must be overreacting.”
Isolation
Deliberately cutting you off from friends, family, or external input to increase control and dependency.
Leading the Witness
Framing conversations in a way that pushes you toward a specific (manipulative) conclusion, without them ever having to say it outright.
Loan Sharking
Giving favors with strings attached—unspoken expectations of loyalty, repayment, or submission later on.
Love Bombing
Overwhelming someone with affection, compliments, gifts, or intense declarations early on to create fast emotional dependency.
Malicious Compliance
Following instructions to the letter with the intent of causing harm, proving a point, or exposing flaws.
Manufactured Crisis
Creating or exaggerating a crisis to divert attention, force others into urgency, or center themselves in chaos.
Minimizing
Downplaying the harm they've caused or the feelings you've expressed. “It wasn’t that bad.” “You’re too sensitive.”
Obfuscation
Using vague, convoluted, or overly complex language to avoid clarity, responsibility, or direct answers.
Playing the Martyr
Exaggerating suffering or sacrifice to induce guilt, extract sympathy, or paint themselves as the victim.
Projection
Accusing you of what they’re actually doing. They’re cheating—but call you unfaithful. They’re lying—but call you dishonest.
Protest Behavior
Dramatic, irrational, or extreme responses triggered by perceived abandonment or loss of control.
Re-enactment / Repetition Compulsion
Reliving their own trauma by flipping roles—now they are the perpetrator, and you are the victim.
Seduction
Using attraction, flattery, or charm to manipulate someone into compliance, service, or surrender.
Shifting the Goalposts
Just as you meet their expectations, they change them. Success or resolution is always out of reach.
Silent Treatment
Withdrawing communication to punish, control, or provoke a reaction. Meant to make you feel invisible or desperate.
Stonewalling
Emotionally shutting down and refusing to engage—often due to overwhelm, but still deeply disruptive and distancing.
Strategic Cycling of Tactics / The Persuasion Gauntlet
Switching manipulation styles rapidly—charm, guilt, pity, intimidation, gaslighting—until one “works.” Designed to wear you down through confusion and emotional exhaustion.
State Transference
Matching your emotional state to sync with you, then subtly shifting to a new emotion—leading you to follow them into it unconsciously.
Threats and Forced Compliance
Using intimidation or the threat of negative consequences to force obedience or suppress autonomy.
Trickle Truthing
Revealing the truth in tiny, controlled fragments to manage your reaction, rather than being honest upfront.
Triangulation
Bringing a third party into a two-person conflict to create jealousy, confusion, or division—or to control the narrative.
Undermining
Subtly discrediting your abilities, confidence, or relationships to erode your self-trust and increase dependence.
Unspoken Demands
Expecting you to intuit their needs and punishing you when you don’t. A passive-aggressive refusal to communicate openly.
Manipulation in Faith-Based Systems
Authoritarian Leadership / Cult of Personality
Obedience is demanded of a charismatic leader whose authority is presented as divine, infallible, or unquestionable. Often trauma-based and codependent in structure, with strict control over members’ behavior and beliefs.
Behavior Control (Hassan’s BITE Model)
Regulates every aspect of a member’s physical reality: where they live, what they wear, eat, who they associate with, how they spend time and money. Dependency is enforced through “spiritual” rules that demand conformity and obedience.
Information Control / Isolation from External Reality
Members are cut off from outside input. Independent thought is discouraged. External voices are labeled dangerous or sinful. The group creates an “information bubble” where only its narrative is valid.
Thought Control / Coercive Persuasion
Individual thinking is suppressed through black-and-white logic, repeated mantras, fear of questioning, and indoctrination. “God’s love depends on your behavior.” “Don’t ask tough questions.” Critical thinking is reframed as disobedience or sin.
Emotional Control / Guilt & Shame Induction
Only certain emotions are allowed. Fear, guilt, and unworthiness are constant. Members are emotionally manipulated into staying small, compliant, and in service to the group. “Perpetual cheerfulness” becomes an unspoken requirement.
Exploitation of Resources / Avarice
Demands for tithing, unpaid labor, and time are disguised as spiritual service. The needs of the organization outweigh the wellbeing of the individual. Financial and energetic extraction is normalized.
Suppression of Individuality / The Conformity Mold
You are expected to abandon your unique self to fit group norms. Personal expression is demonized. Authenticity is sacrificed for acceptance.
Dual Identity (Hassan)
Members split into a Cult Self (performing the expected beliefs/behaviors) and an Authentic Self (repressed, hidden, unsafe to express). The cult self is rewarded. The authentic self is shamed or erased.
Dysfunctional Roles Within the System (Arterburn)
Persecutor: The dominant enforcer, often the leader.
Co-Conspirator: Gains worth through loyalty and control.
Enabler: Ignores harm to maintain peace or avoid punishment.
These roles keep the toxic system in place.
Religion as Addiction (Arterburn)
Faith becomes a fix. Rather than a source of healing, it becomes a way to avoid reality, self-responsibility, or pain. The system provides emotional highs and suppresses transformation.
Dictatorship Dynamics
Controlling What’s True (via Media)
State-controlled media pushes repeated lies until they become accepted as fact. Truth is whatever the regime says it is.
Making You Doubt Everything
Flooding the public with contradictions, false data, or trick questions to create confusion. You start to mistrust even your own thoughts.
Breaking Down Trust (in Independent Institutions)
Media and education are weaponized to discredit judges, journalists, and election workers. The regime positions itself as the only trustworthy source.
Turning People Against Each Other
Propaganda exaggerates differences—race, religion, class—to sow division and prevent collective resistance.
Making Bad Things Seem Normal
Extreme laws or policies are slowly introduced and repeated until they feel necessary or even patriotic.
Changing History
State rewrites history books and erases inconvenient facts. What’s remembered is only what serves the current power.
Making the Leader a Godlike Figure
Beyond authority, the leader becomes a myth—perfect, eternal, untouchable. Dissent is framed as heresy.
Watching Everyone
Surveillance is normalized. People are encouraged to report one another. Fear replaces connection. Silence becomes safety.
Making Poverty Seem Noble
Sacrifice is glorified. People are told that suffering is patriotic and necessary—while the elite remain untouched.
Teaching Kids to Obey
Education becomes indoctrination. Children are taught compliance, loyalty, and hero worship. Independent thought is stripped at the root.
Making People Agree (Even If They Don’t)
The illusion of consensus is fabricated. State-controlled media portrays total public support—even when widespread dissent exists in silence.
Awareness is the first step in reclaiming your energy—and your life. Naming these manipulation tactics isn’t about staying stuck in fear or hyper-vigilance; it’s about waking up to what’s been operating in the shadows. Whether these behaviors come from individuals, institutions, or ideologies, your clarity dissolves their power. You don’t need to fix or rescue anyone. You don’t need to win the game. You get to leave the arena entirely and build a life rooted in truth, sovereignty, and self-trust. Let this glossary be a mirror, a shield, and a map back to yourself.
