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18 Ways to Handle Emotional Blackmail (+ Examples & Quotes)

5 Mar 2019 by Karen Doll, Psy.D., L.P.

Karen Doll , Psy.D., L.P. is a Consulting Psychologist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has spent 20+ years of her career helping people develop through leadership assessment and coaching. She is grateful for having the opportunity to learn about people, be invited into their lives, and witness them working at becoming the best thriving, flourishing version of themselves. In her spare time, she builds resilience through raising her five teenagers.

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Emotional blackmail is a dysfunctional form of manipulation that people use to place demands and threaten victims to get what they want.
The undertone of emotional blackmail is if you don’t do what I want when I want it, you will suffer.
The term was introduced by Susan Forward, Ph.D., in her book Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You (Forward & Frazier, 1998).
She describes how emotional blackmail tactics are used by abusers to threaten in order to get what they want. In placing demands and threats, they create feelings of fear, guilt, and anger to solicit compliance from their victims. In doing so, they divert blame and responsibility to the victim for their own negative actions. Typically, this dysfunctional type of manipulation occurs in close relationships.
Emotional blackmail is a concept recently developed and one receiving increased attention. The #MeToo movement is bringing education and awareness around the dynamics of emotional abuse and its powerful negative impact. In this article, we explore the meaning behind emotional blackmail, examples of this manipulation, the damage that occurs from this emotional abuse, and ways to handle it.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.
Emotional blackmail is the process in which an individual makes demands and threats to manipulative another person to get what they want. It is a form of psychological abuse, causing damage to the victims. Their demands are often intended to control a victim’s behavior through unhealthy ways.
Emotional blackmail is a way of being manipulated by your partner. However, in these situations, it can be difficult to gauge and clearly point to whether the victim is being manipulated.
Leaders in the field, Susan Forward and Donna Frazier identify the power dynamic that occurs in such manipulation. They suggest that emotional blackmailers employ a fear – emotion – guilt tactic to get what they want.
FOG is a term named by Forward, suggesting that fear, obligation, and guilt are the dynamics in emotional blackmail between the manipulator and the victim. The acronym FOG also accurately describes the confusion and lack of clarity and thinking that can occur in these interpersonal dynamics. Emotional blackmail can create a fog and contribute to feelings of fear, obligation, guilt, and anxiety.
According to Forward, emotional blackmail occurs in close relationships. The manipulator leverages knowledge gained about the victim’s fears. Blackmailers will use the information they learn about what the victim fears to manipulate them.
Forward suggests that one of the most painful elements of emotional blackmail is that they use personal information about the victim’s vulnerabilities against them. Another trigger blackmailers will use is putting the victim’s sense of obligation to the test. They will commonly create undeserved guilt and blame to attribute their problems to the victim.
They make threats related to the victim’s emotional triggers to force compliance. For example, “ If you don’t do what I want I will…leave you, tell your secrets, not love you… ” They can also take advantage of the victim’s sense of responsibility and obligation. “ All I do is work for this family, the least you could do is… ” Blackmailers exploit the victim’s sense of guilt to create confusion and get the victim to give in to their demand.
Because the tactics can be covert, emotional blackmail may be difficult to spot, especially for those who may experience more vulnerabilities to it. According to Forward,
“Blackmailers make it nearly impossible to see how they’re manipulating us, because they lay down a thick fog that obscures their actions. All the while, if we attempt to fight back, they ensure that we literally can’t see what is happening to us.”
They can use covert techniques that create confusion by:
There are warning signs of emotional blackmail in a relationship:
When in a dysfunctional cycle of emotional blackmail, the victim may be inclined to: apologize, plead, change plans to meet the others’ needs, cry, use logic, give in, or challenge. Typically, they will find it difficult to stand up for themselves, directly address the issue, set boundaries, and communicate with the blackmailer that the behavior is inappropriate.
They do not consistently set clear boundaries indicating what is acceptable for them.
Forward and Frazier recognize four types of blackmailing, each with varying manipulation tactics.
Common in any abuse cycles, it is important to understand the progression of emotional blackmail. It usually starts as subtle or implicit comments and behaviors. The progression can be insidious, so one does not realize its impact until it has gotten severe.
A metaphor would be of the frog in boiling water. If you place a frog immediately into boiling water, its instincts will cause it to jump out because of the instant pain. However, if you place a frog in lukewarm water and slowly increase the heat, it does not recognize the pain as a danger signal at the same level of heat. The frog becomes desensitized as the water is heating up slowly.
The behaviors and impact of emotional blackmail can be similar.
There are six progressive steps identified in emotional blackmail:
In some situations, there may seem to be a fine line between indirect communication and manipulation. Emotional blackmail and indirect communication can both have passive aggressive undertones. The communication becomes manipulation and blackmail when it is used consistently to control another individual or coerce them into doing what the requestor demands.
The victim will typically feel resistance to comply, yet does it even at the cost of their own well-being.
There is also a distinction between setting healthy boundaries and emotional blackmail. In setting boundaries, the individual is asserting themselves and communicating what their needs are. Emotional blackmail involves conveying threats that will result in a punishment of the victim does not meet the request.
Someone engaging in emotional blackmail will demonstrate any or all of the following:
Victims of emotional blackmail typically feel insecure, unvalued, and unworthy. They often struggle with low self-esteem and doubt their own needs. Victims can demonstrate the following characteristics:
The stress of being in a relationship involving emotional blackmail can take a toll emotionally and physically on the victim. It compromises the victim’s sense of integrity and self-esteem . It causes victims to question their own sense of reality. It leads to negative and distorted thinking about themselves and their relationship. Victims of emotional blackmail often end up being isolated, experiencing extreme loneliness.
It impacts an overall sense of well-being and contributes to anxiety and depression.
Forward notes in the book that an important takeaway for the victim is that the behavior of an emotional blackmailer feels like it is about you but for the most part it is not. It often comes from deep insecurities inside of the blackmailer. Fear and anxiety can come out as rage and blame toward the victim. These tendencies often have to do with what has happened in the past rather than the reality of the current situation.
There is no exact prototype of emotional blackmailers, yet they can demonstrate the following characteristics:
Some of these traits may be close to the surface and observable, such as anger. However, much of the insecurities, emotional pain and fears lie deep within the psychological makeup of the blackmailer.
The scientific research on emotional blackmail, in particular, is limited. In one public health study, researchers explored personality correlates of emotional blackmail in relationships (Mazur et. al).
They utilized the five-factor personality model to assess risk factors for potential victims and individuals at risk for engaging in emotional blackmail. They discovered that neuroticism and agreeableness were risk factors for taking on the role of the victim. The factors protecting against the use of emotional blackmail in close relationships were agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Neuroticism is a key risk factor for taking on the perpetrator of emotional blackmail. Social adaptation and assertiveness can act as protective factors against being a victim of emotional blackmail. Data was gathered to inform preventive programs developed to support people in building healthy relationships. There is room for additional research to be gathered and leveraged to help with prevention of emotional abuse and blackmail.
The emotional blackmailer typically does not have any other coping or go-to methods for how to communicate and interact in a healthy manner. They fall back to stonewalling, slamming doors, threatening, and engaging in other damaging behaviors to get what they want. They typically do not have the tools available to understand how to convey their needs.
Many examples of emotional blackmail occur in romantic relationships. Any gender can engage in emotional blackmail. However, a male-female partnership is a prototypical example.
One scenario is if a man in a committed relationship is caught cheating on his partner. Rather than taking ownership and apologizing for his actions, he may twist the story. He may blame his partner for not meeting his needs or being there when he needed her, therefore, seemingly rationalizing or justifying his behavior. This can be confusing for the victim, as she may be inclined to question herself or start believing his claims.
She may wonder if she is good enough or if she could have done more in the relationship.
Other examples of demands and threats in emotional blackmail:
Emotional blackmailers commonly attempt to make the victim feel responsible for their (negative) actions.
Emotional blackmail may also occur in situations where one person is an addict. They may threaten to take the car if the victim does not pick them up from the bar.
Emotional blackmail can take place in family relationships as well. A needy mother may attempt to give her child a guilt trip for not spending enough time with her. She may make comments referencing what “good daughters” do.
Emotional blackmail can occur in friendships. A friend may ask for money and threaten to end the friendship if they do not comply.
A punishing type of blackmail can occur. For example, if a couple is going through a difficult divorce, the emotional blackmailer may threaten that if their partner files for divorce, they will keep the money or never let them see the kids. Such behavior can leave the victim feeling rage at the attempt of being controlled and not knowing how to properly respond.
Another type of emotional blackmail that is even more insidious is when we use fear, obligation, and guilt to hold ourselves hostage. We can inflict our own FOG which can control our behavior, even if it is not coming from external sources. “If I were a good son, I would visit my mother more frequently.”
There can be different levels of emotional blackmail, ranging from threats with little consequence to threats that can impact major life decisions or can be dangerous.
Here are some additional brief and damaging examples of threats associated with emotional blackmail:
If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional blackmail in a relationship, it is difficult to know where to start. In her book , Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship , Lisa Aronson Fontes provides a “Controlling Relationship Assessment.”
Taking an assessment may be a useful way to start reflecting and identifying the abusive behaviors that are occurring. Her book also provides ways to help:
In Forward’s book, there is a chapter called “It Takes Two.” She encourages the victims of emotional blackmail to take responsibility for their behavior and their previous compliance with the blackmail process.
The blackmail process does not work effectively without both parties actively participating. Forward offers this perspective not as a way for victims to beat themselves up or to place blame. Rather, she provides this point of view as an empowering approach for victims to recognize what they can change and can control. In the introduction, she states:
“Change is the scariest word in the English language. No one likes it, almost everyone is terrified of it, and most people, including me, will become exquisitely creative to avoid it. Our actions may be making us miserable, but the idea of doing anything differently is worse. Yet if there’s one thing I know with absolute certainty, both personally and professionally, it is this: Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior.”
In order to best handle emotional blackmail, the victim must bring a new mindset and approach the situation in a different way. This will require gaining insight into what is going on in the blackmail dynamics and learning to detach from their intense emotions.
It can be useful for victims to explore what demands are making them feel uncomfortable. In doing so, they can recognize what boundaries need to be put in place. They must decide what is ok and not ok with them in a relationship. Understanding the abusive impact of emotional blackmail is also important.
Appreciating how emotional abuse wears victims down can validate their experience of feeling hopeless and lacking in confidence.
Change is scary, but doing something different is the only way to get a different result. Otherwise, victims are at risk of letting their fears run and potentially ruin their lives. Awareness, insight, and educating ourselves is important, but change only comes from taking a course of different actions over a prolonged period of time. Susan Forward asserts that we all have choices about how to engage in a relationship:
No relationship is worth the cost of emotional and mental wellbeing.
Victims can learn to set boundaries and may become surprised what can happen when new limits are set. The messaging needs to become that the behavior is no longer acceptable. While victims do not feel courageous or confident after having been emotionally abused, they can take a different action. Victims must take action to change the course, rather than waiting for the other person to change.
Victims can self assess throughout the process. When you do not back down and comply with demands attached with threats, how do you feel? Strong, empowered, confident, hopeful, proud, excited, courageous, assertive, effective, capable? Breaking any behavioral pattern is challenging. Develop a clear vision of what you hope to achieve. Any change will require work, effort, and discomfort, yet this is where growth occurs.
The only way to know if the limit and boundary setting will work is to try it. Forward suggests confronting the manipulator about the behaviors. What could that sound like?
In her book, Forward suggests three exercises : a contract, a power statement, and a set of self-affirming phrases.
A contract lists a number of promises you would make to yourself. The contract identifies the basic ground rules for you to follow. Take time every day to read the contract out loud.
I, ____________, recognize myself as an adult with options and choices, and I commit myself to the process of actively getting emotional blackmail out of my relationships and out of my life. In order to reach that goal, I make the following promises:
Another way to deal with emotional blackmail is to create your own power statement. Repeating a power statement can ground you when the pressure is turned up by the manipulator. For example, “I’m not doing this.” “I won’t do this.” This power statement is succinct and impactful. It works because it directly counters the belief that moves us into compliance – that we can’t stand the pressure.
Short, impactful sentences like this are intended to challenge doubts and limiting beliefs.
If you begin to think “I can’t stand it”…that you can’t stand to hurt his feelings, hurt him, deal with your guilt or anxiety, etc. Change the mantra from “I can’t stand it” to “it’s hard but I can do it.” This involves a subtle shift to getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Changing to “I can stand it” will build your emotional strength so that you do not need to immediately back down.
By backing down and giving in, you may feel: guilt, hurt, shameful, embarrassed, anxious, angry, weak, resentful, powerless, helpless, fearful, scared, trapped, disappointed, stuck. In order to ch
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