Addict and Alcoholic Manipuation - Part 2
How do their marionette strings control you?
In part one, I described the “why” behind addict and alcoholic manipulation of their loved ones. In this essay, I will describe how their manipulation works. I will use the term “addict-alcoholic” as a general term for anyone abusing substances.
You are going to see the word “tolerate” a lot, so let’s define it. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
“Tolerate: to allow to be or to be done without prohibition, hindrance, or contradiction”
Tolerating behavior does not mean you agree with the behavior, or that you do not express dissatisfaction; it means you do not deliver sufficient consequence to prevent the behavior from happening again.
If you say to your addict-alcoholic: “I am not going to tolerate this behavior”, and it happens again, then what? Maybe you don’t talk to them for a few days? Maybe you hold on to your anger for a week and make life unpleasant for them?
Addict-alcoholics push the boundaries of acceptable behavior to the extreme. Frequently, anything short of “ultimatum” level consequences will not prevent them from again doing what they always do.
I have heard a quote which describes your role in this relationship with an addicted-loved one perfectly:
“What you tolerate, you encourage.”
When you tolerate unacceptable behavior, you will find yourself in the same situations with them over and over: leaving you feeling resentful, hopeless, angry, worried, lonely, and depressed once again.
How manipulation controls you
1) Manipulation makes you question yourself.
Have you ever spoken up to the addict-alcoholic in your life about their using and their response created some doubt in your mind?
Have they ever said something like “it’s not what you think it is” and made you question what you saw, heard, or smelled?
Did your gut instinct ever tell you something wasn’t right, and they came up with some excuse that made you feel like maybe your gut feeling was wrong?
If the addict-alcoholic can mentally and emotionally knock you off balance, you will begin to question your own observations and intuition.
Mentally, one way addict-alcoholics can cause you to question yourself is to directly deny your observations. Your addict-alcoholic, a person you love, want to trust, and want to believe in, feeds you misinformation. Your loved one is lying to you, and it breaks your heart to believe it. So, you try not to believe it but that conflicts with what your eyes and ears are telling you. You end up confused. When you become confused, they can control you.
Emotionally, when the addict-alcoholic knocks you off balance, you feel insecure and doubt yourself. The insecurity and self-doubt then take away your courage, fortitude, and energy to confront them. Addict-alcoholics can create emotional insecurity by evoking sympathy through guilt trips or making you feel bad about yourself.
It does not take much for the addict-alcoholic to make you question yourself. In the court of law, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” to be convicted. In the “emotional court of the household” your addict-alcoholic is their own defense lawyer and all they need to do is plant the tiniest seed of doubt for you to question yourself.
When they do this over the course of months or years, your ability to accurately assess a situation based on facts and intuition becomes impaired. You end up tolerating more and more unacceptable behavior.
2) Manipulation influences and controls your perception of reality (gaslighting).
Did you ever catch the addict-alcoholic drunk or high and their response downplayed or minimized the situation?
Have they ever tried to make you think an incident was not what you thought it was, or as bad as you thought, and that you over-reacted?
When the addict-alcoholic can influence your perception, they can control your assessments and opinions of any situation which involves them. This helps them avoid getting in trouble, being called out for their behavior or at the very least gets you to tolerate their behavior.
Here are a few ways they can do this.
They can downplay situations where they got drunk or high.
They can exaggerate situations if it suits their purpose. For example, they can hype up an event ahead of time, laying the foundation to make it seem OK for them to drink or use. They can use a positive spin like: “I am so excited to see my friends again, it has been a while since we all partied together”.
Or, they can take the negative angle by saying: “It has been such a stressful time lately; I just want to go out, have some fun and relax for once.” Maybe the addict-alcoholic really isn’t that stressed out, but they coax you into perceiving that they are.
They do these things because they know that you don’t like it when they drink or use. To combat that, they influence how you perceive situations so that you will tolerate their using.
3) Manipulation keeps details and facts hidden from you.
Did you ever feel like the addict-alcoholic was hiding something from you?
Has the addict-alcoholic ever left your sight to perform a task, and it seemed to take longer than it should have?
Does the addict-alcoholic frequently tell you they need some “alone time”?
Has someone else ever revealed details concerning the addict-alcoholic which the addict-alcoholic neglected to tell you? Have you ever said to the addict-alcoholic “you never told me this”?
Have you ever gone out with the addict-alcoholic (out to eat or to a gathering), you didn’t see them drink or use that much but they still became very drunk or high?
When you are out to eat with the addict-alcoholic, do they repeatedly leave your sight such as go to the bathroom frequently or go out to the car to get something they “forgot”?
When you are with the addict-alcoholic at a gathering, do they spend much of the time out of your sight line (such as stay in a different room than you at the party)?
Addict-alcoholics will keep potentially incriminating details and facts hidden as much as possible, so any assessment you might make is based on incomplete information.
One common way they do this is to physically hide themselves from you. That way, you don’t see them drinking or using. A classic one I did myself and have heard over and over in recovery meetings is that they invent reasons to leave the room (like to go to the bathroom). When they are out of sight from you, they can then chug from a hidden bottle of alcohol or pop some pills they have in their pocket.
Keeping details and facts about their using hidden from you enables them to dispute anything you say because you don’t have hard proof.
4) Manipulation gets you to back down.
Have you ever caught the addict-alcoholic high or drunk, their excuse caught you off guard, and you didn’t know what to say so you just dropped the subject?
Has the addict-alcoholic ever become very angry when you asked them about their using and scared you off from pursuing the topic?
The addict-alcoholic doesn’t need you to believe their excuses or agree with them, they just need the confrontation to stop. Whether it’s ridiculous excuses, angry outbursts, or any other technique, they get you to back down from pursuing any discussions concerning their using.
5) Manipulation distracts you by changing the subject.
Have you ever called the addict-alcoholic out on their behavior, and at the end of the conversation the topic had totally changed?
When you call them out, do they ever respond by pointing out your shortcomings and then the conversation ends up focused on you?
Changing the subject is an age-old diversion technique. The addict-alcoholic will try to change the subject when you call them out on their behavior, their substance abuse problem, or any other incident that has to do with their using.
Their goal is to shift the discussion to a new topic long enough to distract you away from the topic of their using. Most addict-alcoholics are very good at smoothly changing the subject. They are experts at transitioning attention away from them and onto someone or something else.
6) Manipulation softens your behavioral boundary lines.
Have you ever witnessed the addict-alcoholic in your life drink too much and when you commented they responded with something like “it’s been a tough week; I just want to relax”?
The question I have for you is:
When is it OK for them to drink or use heavily?
If your answer is never, then you have a definitive black and white behavioral boundary line. The addict-alcoholic will try to soften your behavioral boundary line with emotional pleas or other manipulation techniques.
Addict-alcoholics get you to soften your behavioral boundary lines on an incident-by-incident basis. They convince you in the moment to make a “one time” exception to your code of conduct. When they soften your behavioral boundary lines, they can get you to tolerate their behavior. Remember the definition of “tolerate” at the beginning of this article? It means that you put up with their behavior, even though you still think it’s unacceptable.
7) Manipulation shifts your standards for tolerable behavior.
Have you ever been mad at yourself for what you put up with from the addict-alcoholic?
Have you ever taken a good look at what you put up with now and realized that you now tolerate behavior from the addict-alcoholic that you never would have put up with months, years or decades ago?
Have you ever looked at the mess the situation has become and asked yourself “how did I get here”?
One by one, each little manipulative incident from them persuades you to tolerate a little more. In time, situations which you never would have put up with months or years ago become regular occurrences that now carry no consequences for the addict-alcoholic.
Your behavioral boundary lines may migrate so slow that you don’t notice.
As I worked on this project of “becoming the secret decoder ring” for you, loved ones of addict-alcoholics, I sat down and talked to many loved ones of addict-alcoholics. It became clear to me that “shifting your standards for tolerable behavior” is a common occurrence for loved ones like you. Sometimes you are not consciously aware of it. Other times you are aware of it, but the change is so small it doesn’t seem like a big deal in the moment.
Final Thoughts
When you grant an exception to their behavior, any small exception whatsoever, it is a big deal. Your small exceptions now become the new behavioral boundary. Addict-alcoholics soften and shift your behavioral boundary lines one small inch at a time. They break it down into bite-sized pieces with many little incidents so you don’t notice your boundary shifting.
When the addict-alcoholic gets you to tolerate what your gut instinct says you shouldn’t, it creates inner conflict in you. This inner conflict can cause you to lose sleep, be constantly irritable, and it becomes a source of anger, frustration, and resentment for people like you.
Note: This post originally appeared in Black Bear - a Medium publication.
