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(Continuation of Part 1 Resting Manipulation; What You Need To Know)
1. Understand the Iceberg
Use an image of an iceberg to help with coming up with things to do to resist manipulation.
The ice above the surface contains your conscious mind. This is where all your thoughts and words exist. The ice below the surface holds your unconscious mind, your instinct. There are no words there, only images and patterns and rules for survival. The surface is where emotion created automatically by your instinct below the surface manipulates your thoughts and actions above the surface.
The berg below the surface reacts to the Universe by recognising patterns that were hardwired into the mind before birth or acquired through life trauma, and applying a minimal number of rules for survival.
These traumatic experiences don't have to be wars or explosions. For a child, they can be an absent parent, domestic disharmony, bullying, ridicule, a death in the family. This process creates emotion on the surface.
The conscious bit above the surface reacts to the emotion by applying an ever-increasing number of mostly logical and sensible rules learnt throughout life. These are rules for acceptance and survival; their aim is to reduce negative emotional discomfort or increase positive emotional arousal.
A takeover occurs when emotion on the surface is so strong that it switches off or distracts the conscious mind and removes its logical input. A dangerous life or death experience in the Universe will effectively trigger instinct to create a strong feeling on the surface and create stormy seas. But instinct doesn't need an actual trauma in the Universe to create strong emotion. Instinct can create a massive storm in the midst of a calm Universe, or any time it likes by manipulating the chemistry running throughout the iceberg.
When you are being manipulated, your survival instinct is poked and prodded to produce an emotional reaction.
This iceberg image might help you understand that vulnerability to manipulation lies in all of us and is a feature of being human. When instinct in the unconscious mind takes over, it is not because of weakness or ineptitude of your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is designed to be paralyzed by strong emotion. To believe that one should be strong enough to prevent strong feelings affecting you this way is to say that one should not be human.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
When our emotions are demanding attention (I want more good feelings! I want less bad feelings!), we are naturally ripe for manipulation.
2. Non Ego Sum Satis
Non Ego Sum Satis is Latin for "I Am Not Enough", and it refers to your unconscious sensitivities in the ice below the surface. Reducing your 'sensitivities' will reduce your vulnerability to manipulation by making it harder for people to get a strong emotional reaction from poking you.
Remember manipulation begins by finding a sensitivity, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, an aspect of dissatisfaction; prodding it enough to get an emotional reaction and then enticing you with things to provide emotional relief—at a cost. The more you are 'not enough'—Non Ego Sum Satis—the more sensitivities you will reveal to those seeking to manipulate you.
Attempting to hide your Non Ego Sum Satis (sensitivities) behind any kind of 'fake it' doesn't work because any mask you create is crafted in the top half of the iceberg that is effectively blind to the sensitivities hiding in the iceberg below the surface. A mask won't hide your sensitivities from others skilled in manipulation because your 'I am not enough belief' and its corroborating evidence exists in the bottom part of the iceberg, the part that is mostly unconscious to you.
Others can see your sensitivities when you cant!
One way to discover your sensitivities is by reflecting on your repeating experiences of being manipulated and pondering what sensitivities you must have to fall repeatedly to the same form of manipulation.
A more accessible and more immediate way requires you ask people you value what they think your sensitivities are. On the assumption that the people you ask are not out to manipulate you, you can end up with a list of sensitivities to work on. Others close to you will see your sensitivities more clearly than you do.
You can't see the contents of your berg below the surface. People skilled in manipulation can. They take note of and exploit the sensitivities in your iceberg.
3. Ego Satis
Ego satis is Latin for "I am enough." Once you have some awareness of your sensitivities, do what you can to lessen their emotionality. Once discovered, sensitivities don't go away, ever. The best that can happen is that you can reduce the emotional intensity they produce when prodded.
Increase your knowledge, acquire and practice new skills, improve your timing, talk to yourself, increase your exposure to having your sensitivities poked so you can practice living with the emotion that follows.
Above all, practice persistence when the surface of your Universe is stormy, that is when your emotions are distressing. You cannot achieve Ego Satis by eliminating emotion. Deadening or changing your feelings through drug taking makes life temporarily better but does not produce Ego Satis.
If anything, attempting to survive by numbing or changing your feelings feeds Non Ego Sum Satis. It reinforces the idea that "I am not enough, because I can't do it without drugs."
Stop using the idiom "Fake it till you make it!".
You can significantly ease your emotionality by stopping the futile attempt to pretend you aren't feeling it. Master manipulators can see through this in an instant. Faking it doesn't work, and you will be a lot less frustrated if you stop trying not to feel or show upset.
Trying not to be upset is like trying not to breathe.
Instead, use the idiom "Take it till you make it!"
Your sensitivities are a combination of your genetic inheritance and past life trauma and experience. You cannot undo any of this.
You can't eliminate or hide your sensitivities, but you can publically display a stubbornness and persistence in not being derailed by them. Such a public display will make you a hard target for manipulation.
It is possible to "Take it till you make it" some of the time. Being human, you won't be able to do it all of the time. Expect that on some occasions it will be too hard to take.
By the way, allow yourself occasions when it is too hard to take; to distract, to avoid, to run!!!
Dr Robert Dawson
