My Mother, My Dictator: Manipulation

ma·nip·u·late
2b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
From Merriam-Webster

My mother's favorite form of control, as with most abusers and dictators, was manipulation.  Sadly, I did not just get this treatment from my mother.  I've had situations with "friends".  I'm beginning to think this is an epidemic in society.

My mother was so clever with this one it really is hard to pin point a memory.  It was constant.  If I wasn't doing what she wanted to she find a way to make sure I did.  Mostly she would use guilt and threats.  She use to constantly tell me that I was crazy and needed to be locked up.  She used to tell me she knew what I was thinking.  I finally got to the point where I would scream at her,"You don't know! You're not me!"  If she could have set up camp in my brain to keep me from having my own thoughts, she would have.

Tears were a popular form of getting what she wanted.  "How can you do this to me?"...blah, blah, blah..."I've thought of killing myself" (That one really pissed me off, because I knew it was a lie).

"What about my feelings?" "Poor me."  are a couple of phrases I have run into with her, grade school "friends", my mother-in-law, and a few "friends" since then.  This seems to be an ultimate weapon.  "You've made me cry. You're a bad person."  Because I said "No"? No, mom, you can't have anymore of my money.  Mom, I want to move out.  No, I'm not living like this.  No, I don't feel well enough to go do this or that.  A society where people seem to be mortally wounded by the word "no".  Maybe they should have been spanked more as children, so they wouldn't act like them now.  How can you have any type of relationship with someone who throws a fit the first time you do something they don't like or want?

Towards the end of my living with her things had gotten really bad.  She was running out of ways to control my younger sister and me.  One day she threw (honest to God) a tantrum.  The full body kicking and screaming on what floor you could get to with the filth.  I had to grab her and hold her to keep her from hurting herself.  I'm the one that needed a shrink?

In today's society this behavior is not only allowed, sometimes I wonder if it's encouraged.  Fifty years ago people like this would have been locked up in an asylum or at the very least sent to a doctor.  Now they just dump pills down them, tell them they should feel sorry for themselves because of their "condition", and generally run amok.  Funny, she did move to L.A. after all.