Customer Reviews

Stop Being Manipulated: How to Neutralize the Bullies, Bosses, and Brutes in Your Life

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I owe my sanity to this book. I was (am?) somebody who was manipulated by my co-workers, family, friends and even my wife. In desperation I picked and read this book. I have since defended myself and I feel much better about myself. As a matter of a fact my wife just tried to insult and bully me before I wrote this. I have neutralized the feelings of guilt and anger I used to feel and bounced it right back to her. I feel great, unfortunately she doesn't. One of the most important things the authors say is that in any manipulation is that the manipulator is actually paying you a compliment. The manipulator feels you are superior in some way to him or her. Upon knowing this, you objectively can deal with the manipulator and you can actually choose one of the five techniques they teach you. The techniques range from ignoring the attack to a complete reversal. These techniques stop the manipulation and the feeling it evokes dead in its tracks. Once you practice them a few times you will never look at a manipulation quite the same way. I was actually enjoying myself neutralizing my wifes attack. I believe everybody who is being bullied should carry this book. (According to the authors should is a bad word, it creates guilt and is one of the weapons of the manipulator and I don't want to be that.) To rephrase, If you are bullied get the book. I would of given the book 5 stars, but parts and passages of the book are not logically laid out and have to be re-read over to understand them. What the book doesn't have in style, it makes up for it in content. Overall, I feel indebted to the authors, I would love to talk to them or write them and tell them the difference they made in my life. I thoughroughly recommend it.......if your are being manipulated. If you are a manipulator, you SHOULD feel ashamed.

The authors include stories of several individuals and refer to these situations throughout the book using a somewhat cumbersome and confusing organization. But far more troubling is the sense that the individuals included in the case studies were supposedly seeking help in dealing with the manipulators in their lives, yet I had the feeling that these individuals were such skilled manipulators themselves, they had manipulated the authors. These individuals seemed far more likely to be the perpetrators of manipulation rather than the victims, and seemed to be seeking justification for their mind-games.

For instance, the subject of one case study works as a clerk at a return desk and complains that angry customers try to manipulate him. The authors offer some suggestions for him in what he might say to an angry customer, yet these suggestions seem like a way to perpetuate mind-games and power struggles (and get himself fired). I found myself wondering what would be so wrong about addressing the customer's complaint by saying, "I'm sorry your purchase was not satisfactory, would you like an exchange or a refund?" yet this was never mentioned as an alternative.

In another situation, a grown woman went to work every day dressed "really, really cute" so that she looked like a 14-year-old, and even wore pink ribbons in her hair, and because her coworkers teased her about her appearance she felt manipulated. The authors suggest various mind-games she might play with her coworkers, but never broached the issue of going to work dressed in appropriate attire for the business environment. I couldn't help thinking that the teasing would end if the woman would simply leave the pink ribbons at home. But then again, the author thought that the woman was "really, really cute" and would have been oh so disappointed to see her "manipulated" into dressing like an adult. He would much prefer that she continue to be "really, really cute."

If you want to be an annoyance and a pain to everyone you come in contact with, and if you want to escalate every conflict in your life, the "helpful" instructions in this book can help you achieve those goals. If you want healthy interactions with other people, there are far better books available.

I like the authors' advice. Typed up the steps so I can more easily refer to them and learn them without having to sift through all those pages again.

I did get really, really tired of going over the stories of the example-people. Enough already! Just give me the facts.

The advice was good and usable, but the book didn't need to be THAT long and drawn out.

The book is worth the money. It gives you 5 levels of counterattack against a manipulator. However, I don't think these techniques will work against a determined, hardcore, Machivellian manipulator. These counterattacks can also be countered with follow through and insults, resulting in the manipulator adding insult to injury to the victim.

Coercive manipulation is at heart an appeal to the emotions. It's hard not to simply react in the face of this. Still, the book is fairly short, well laid out, and deals with keeping one's integrity in the face of guilt and intimidation.

Because manipulation is so much a part of the fabric of our society, this book is a good first step in learning how to break free of conditioned response. I'd advise the serious reader to get some books on NLP, ego-transcendence or Albert Ellis.