What is Emotional Blackmail?
By: Christine Hammond, LMHC
Movies love to portray the Inner and
outer conflict that arises from being blackmailed, especially when someone’s
life hangs in the balance. There is the villain (the blackmailer), the victim
(the target), a demand (what is being asked for), and a threat (what negative
thing will happen if the victim refuses to comply). But blackmail does not have
to be a life or death threat to be real. It can be more subtle than that.
Blackmail. Here are a couple of examples in everyday
life. At school, one child says to another, “If you don’t say I’m the coolest,
then I’ll beat you up.” In a neighborhood, it is a neighbor threatening to do
property damage if turned into the homeowner’s board. At the office, a
co-worker who knows some private personal information threatens to use it
against another in exchange for a small fee. This type of blackmail has some
sort of physical or tangible harm attached.
Emotional
Blackmail. This is a bit
different. The threat is not tangible, rather it is emotional. Susan Forward
and Diane Frazier (Forward and Frazier, 1997), coined the acronym FOG (fear,
obligation, and guilt) to describe the three main emotions a blackmailer uses
against a victim. Because the threat is not tangible, the villain can easily
claim no responsibility. Their logic is that if the victim did not feel fear,
obligation, or guilt then they wouldn’t be able to blackmail them. The target
gives into the demand because they don’t want to experience the negative
emotion. This is often cyclical and can build in intensity as the threats are
effective.
Fear. In order for a blackmailer to be successful,
they must know what the target fears. This fear is often deep rooted such as fear
of abandonment, loneliness, humiliation, and failure. These fears tend to be
unique in intensity to individuals so one person may not perceive that a threat
is being made while another one is mortified. The allows the villain to have
some additional cover in their deception. A common threat is “If you don’t do
this,” the blackmailer will leave the relationship, isolate the victim from
friends, ridicule the victim in front of family, or expose some past failure.
Obligation. This is a favorite blackmail tactic of
most addicts. In order for an addict to justify their addiction, they need to
blame others. This refusal of accepting any responsibility for their behavior
translates into projecting responsibility onto others. Thus, emotional
blackmail through obligation is born. The victim, who is usually the enabler,
repeatedly falls into this trap hoping that by doing what is asked, the villain
will stop. However they don’t, it just escalates. Here are a couple of
examples. “I won’t need to look at porn if you gave me sex.” “If you kick me
out of the house, I’ll be forced further into my addiction (or some criminal
activity).” “If you don’t take the fall for me, I’ll wind up losing my job (in prison,
homeless, or dead).”
Guilt. This type of emotional blackmail is more
commonly known as “guilt-tripping.” Unlike the other two categories, this one
has a mutual negative threat attached to the villain. The threat is designed to
make the victim feel guilty for causing some negative outcome to the
blackmailer. Many times the guilt is implied and the demand is not overtly
stated. For instance, “You make me feel so angry (rejected, abandoned, or unloved),”
“Only a selfish person would do that,” or “If only my life was as easy (good)
as yours.” These backhanded remarks leave the victim feeling guilty for causing
some pain to the villain. However, the pain does not have to be real for the
blackmailer to utilize it, rather it is a projection of the pain the target might
feel.
Understanding emotional blackmail is a
critical step in eliminating its effectiveness. The next part is harder; the
target must stop being a victim. This can be done by ignoring the comments or
refusing to cave into the demands.
To schedule an
appointment with Christine Hammond, please call our office at 407-647-7005.