Emotional blackmail

Understanding these dynamics is useful to anyone trying to extricate themself from the controlling behavior of another person and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others.

[1] The first documented use of "emotional blackmail" appeared in 1947 in the Journal of the National Association of Deans of Women in the article "Discipline and Group Psychology".

[2] Esther Vilar, an Argentine physician and anti-feminist writer, also used the term "emotional blackmail" in the early 1970s to describe a parenting strategy observed among some mothers with multiple children.

[7] One could fall into a pattern of letting the blackmailer control his/her decisions and behavior, lost in what Doris Lessing described as "a sort of psychological fog".

[16] Affluenza—the status insecurity derived from obsessively keeping up with the Joneses—has been linked by Oliver James to a pattern of childhood training whereby sufferers were "subjected to a form of emotional blackmail as toddlers.

"[17] Assertiveness training encourages people to not engage in fruitless back-and-forths or power struggles with the emotional blackmailer but instead to repeat a neutral statement, such as "I can see how you feel that way," or, if pressured to eat, say "No thank you, I'm not hungry."

[10] Daniel Miller objects that in popular psychology the idea of emotional blackmail has been misused as a defense against any form of fellow-feeling or consideration for others.

[24] Labeling of this dynamic with inflammatory terms such as "blackmail" and "manipulation" may not be so helpful as it is both polarizing and it implies premeditation and malicious intent which is often not the case.