5 Manipulation Tactics Toxic People Use Against You + What To Do About It

I once had a business partner who would constantly say one thing, and we’d be in agreement, but then, behind my back, they kept doing the opposite. When I inquired about their inconsistencies and how they impacted the trust in our partnership, they became defensive, deflected, made threats, gaslit me, and went to other colleagues to plant falsehoods about my intentions and actions—effectively dissolving other positive partnerships for me. 

Another time, I was unknowingly friends with a con artist who faked the entire friendship with the goal of stealing from me. When I caught on to his antics, he staged an explosive fight, used things I said in vulnerability against me, lashed out, and spread lies to my community that I was the crazy one.

Master manipulators are usually people with maladaptive personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) often seen in Cluster B personality disorders1, and they operate differently in the world. They see others as objects and feel entitled and self-important. They're opportunistic, selfish, and transactional and become what you need to get what they want.

They seek to dominate and control; They're callous, impulsive, and thrill-seeking, and they want to win at all costs.  

Relationships with toxic people and master manipulators individuals cause an enormous amount of emotional, physical, and psychological damage to their victims. This abuse can cause PTSD2 because of the constant manipulation, humiliation, and devaluation. Their predatory behavior is strategic, cunning, and abusive.

From their covert disrespect and devaluing of your identity to their attempts to control and dominate you through isolation, gaslighting, and triangulation, topped with their persistent attempts to sabotage you—it is deeply traumatizing and impossible to have a healthy relationship. 

And perhaps the biggest burn? You trusted this person, maybe even loved them, and they threw you to the wolves the first moment it served them. The betrayal trauma that comes from being involved with a master manipulator takes an enormous amount of time to grapple with and heal from. 

The charming abuser pulls out all stops to get you to drop your guard and build trust early on. They will be attentive, ask intriguing questions, and always be available. Welcome to the love bomb or ideation phase—it's the foundation of grooming.

Let’s face it, it feels good to be wanted, needed, and seen. They will use this to their own advantage, manufacturing the connection through mirroring, future-faking, and focusing their attention on you. You’re often so busy being enamored with the newfound praise and validation that it will easily distract you from what they are really doing: sizing up their prey.

Intriguing questions are their way of gathering information to use against you in the future. Always being available to you serves as a setup for the devalue phase, where they disappear on purpose to create dependency and confusion through intermediate reinforcement and attention (more on that below).

They're using this phase to ask themselves, Do you comply with their subliminal clues? Are you controllable? Do you have a weakness they can easily exploit? Can you supply them with what they want?

Take things slow and always listen to your intuition. Almost every victim of narcissistic abuse reports they knew something was off from the very beginning. Rule of thumb: if it feels too good to be true, it most likely is. 

Negging is essentially an open way to put you down. It sounds like a nice compliment, but it is loaded with passive aggression. In other words, a neg is a backhanded compliment designed to inflict emotional wounding, to undermine your self-esteem, and fuel more conflict by punching at your self-confidence.

They do this so you are more susceptible to their advances. Negging doesn’t work on everyone, especially if you have respect for yourself. But the truth is, many of us still fall victim to these tactics.

Pay attention to others’ actions and words. Do they match, and do you feel safe in their company? Someone who negs may say nice things to your face, but there is an energy of sarcasm and envy, and their actions will feel disrespectful.

An abuser will punish you in many ways. Often these tactics won’t feel like abuse or punishment because you're coming from a place of wanting to repair and reconnect. But when you are involved with dark triad types, they only want control.

They may ghost you, disappear, go silent, leave you on read or unread, and attempt to regain control by pushing you away with the agenda of pulling you back in.

These passive-aggressive tactics are used to make you question your own behavior. Don’t fall for it! A healthy person may say, “I need to process what has just happened and will get back to you when I can,” but an abuser disappears to avoid taking accountability and maintain control.

If someone completely ignores what you’ve said, or they change the subject, or stays silent to something that generally requires a response, they are trying to “one-up” by controlling you with silence.

To avoid this manipulation, opt out completely. Set a boundary by explaining what you will and will not tolerate, and if the behavior continues, go no contact, move away, and surround yourself with supportive, loving people who wouldn’t dream of going silent on you because they love you too much.

If you notice that someone you’re involved with engages in abrupt hot-and-cold behavior, you can bring it up directly and ask, “Is there a reason for the sudden behavior change?” But remember, energy doesn’t lie, and if you feel that something is off, it is!

People who play these games will never be able to give you the consistency you deserve. As John Douglas, the pioneer of criminal profiling, shares, “Never forget behavior reflects personality. What you see is most likely what you’re going to get.” 

It is important to have clear standards and boundaries in all your relationships. Make sure people are consistent and their actions match their words. If they repeatedly say something to you but do something else behind your back, or they don’t follow through, pay attention.

Most predatory toxic people will purposely spread stories, lies, and gossip about you to attempt to slander your name, devalue your status, and impact your self-esteem—all to try to improve their own status and credibility. This is the smear tactic, but it only works on the people who blindly follow them. 

This is, at its core, a massive gaslighting campaign to continue to control you through a narrative they deem acceptable to protect their own public perception and ensure no one believes you.

Everyone who believes them is essentially a flying monkey, and if this happens to you, you want to move as far away from all these people as you can. Because the abuser is painting you as the abuser, those who side with the abuser are enabling more abuse and being abused themselves through manipulation and lies.

Sadly, because they have fallen victim to the abuser’s charm and tactics as well, defending yourself doesn’t do much good, as most flying monkeys have no idea they are under the spell.  

Narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths smear your name to avoid taking responsibility or accountability. If this happens to you, recognize that the preemptive strikes against you may hurt emotionally, but these people are now showing you who they really are.

As a survivor of multiple smear campaigns, I’ve learned that your power lies in sticking to the facts and not needing to defend yourself. Rise above the drama and focus on your own life.

As challenging as it may be, don’t emotionally engage or react—this is often the goal, so the abuser can deem you the “crazy” one. The less you give attention to anyone involved, and the less you care about clearing your name or worrying about what others think, the faster you will move through the chaos.

To resist getting taken advantage of by a predatory manipulator, you need to know the rules of the game so you can opt out. They all use the same tactics.

Don’t seek validation or your worth outside of yourself. Instead, focus on cultivating healthy boundaries, a solid self-care and self-love routine, and healing your inner child. Predators love to weaponize your unhealed traumas. Many of these abusers will use your desire for connection and compassion to abuse your kindness and empathy. 

And finally, make sure to surround yourself with a supportive network that ideally includes a trauma-informed therapist and/or life coach, and find groups and people who understand what you’ve been through. Most importantly, your support system should be people who are trustworthy and have your back—not people who enable or support the manipulators.

I lost a lot of people I thought were friends to the manipulator's deceit. They said they cared about me but gaslit me further by standing up for the abuser, and believed the lies spread about me. Make sure you have people you can trust and lean on moving forward.