00;00;08;01 - 00;00;27;29
Thais
Hi, my name is Thais Gibson, and I'm the owner and founder of the Personal Development School. This is your daily breakthrough video. And in this video, I want to talk a little bit about controlling this and manipulation in relationships. Before I start, I want to start off with a disclaimer, and this is that I am not justifying anything I would say in this video.

00;00;27;29 - 00;00;50;26
Thais
I am absolutely not justifying or suggesting that any individual stay in a toxic relationship with anybody. If there's an unhealthy relationship, you must leave. But if you understand what happened post relationship, this might be a really good video for you. So, for example, if you're coming out of a relationship and you're like, Oh my gosh, I was so control that was so manipulated.

00;00;50;29 - 00;01;20;06
Thais
Or if you happened to be in a situation where for religious reasons or, you know, I'm complex with the kids, with somebody who's slightly controlling and manipulative, which we do not condone at all, but if they are this way, but their overall a healthy person and they have this little surge of these behaviors and small doses, this specific area, and you're looking to resolve them because in reality, most human beings have some kind of version of this, at least that it's one or two out of ten.

00;01;20;06 - 00;01;45;16
Thais
And again, not condoning it, but there will be some tools in this video for how to sort of discuss and create change in these dynamics. Or if this is you and you find yourself sometimes being a little bit controlling in a certain area around the cleanliness of the home or how often your partner goes out or, you know, things like this, you know, we're going to have a conversation that's going to help you see, understand why at the root cause, recover from some of these things.

00;01;45;16 - 00;02;09;06
Thais
If you're coming out of a relationship with somebody who is very controlling, very manipulative or have healthy discussions in your relationship, if you or your partner have small versions of these behaviors around specific issues so that we can create change. So, number one, before I start as well, we are launching our personal moments. Go online like the full online version this September.

00;02;09;08 - 00;02;32;14
Thais
I have been working really hard to get all this stuff out and get it organized and record a ton of online courses that are available to everybody. And the idea of these courses is that they are here to sort of like replace me in this role. And I've tried to make them as personal as possible for people who don't want to do one on one therapy or who can't book a session within a given period of time.

00;02;32;16 - 00;02;57;13
Thais
And so these courses include everything on self-esteem through all attachment styles and the deep reprograming around them. A whole in-depth course about your needs to understand and identify your core needs, your personality needs your basic needs, and then your territory, or like moment to moment needs on courses, on self-sabotage, procrastination, how to master your emotions. People struggling with depression, anxiety, conflict, communication.

00;02;57;13 - 00;03;23;08
Thais
We have so many courses, so we're launching our first big batch and then we're having 3 to 5 come out every single month after September. So there will be this ongoing release of new content. These courses are amazing. Like the content is really in-depth, really thorough. You've got workbooks, worksheets, processes, an online community or forums that's for everybody to connect in different places in the world.

00;03;23;08 - 00;03;38;25
Thais
Or if you're having you're looking for individuals who are on the same path in your area. You'll be able to do that if you want to. And there will also be monthly webinars and biweekly webinars as well. Just to answer all of your personal questions, and I'll be going through the form as well and I'll be answer questions.

00;03;38;25 - 00;04;11;09
Thais
I'll be using questions that I see recurring as video content for the personal moments. We'll just YouTube channel videos and all of the materials come with things that involve reprograming strategies, charts, everything that's super there to support your journey in personal growth and healing. So we've also made it super affordable for people. So instead we have individual courses you can buy for $97 and we have $49 course for $10 membership for unlimited courses.

00;04;11;09 - 00;04;34;15
Thais
So you can pay for $10 per month, take whatever courses you want and literally it's ongoing, unlimited. And there's all these other cool bonuses with the membership option. So that is launching in September if we have like a crazy launch deal. So there's no initiation fee, anything like that for September itself and all the courses that you're purchasing, that's an individual course.

00;04;34;18 - 00;04;53;18
Thais
All of it is 25% off if you reserve between now and September. So if you haven't already go on the website or email which courses you want to reserve, or if you just want to reserve the membership fee with no initiation, that's perfect to connect with me online, you can literally just email ties that first personal development school on.

00;04;53;21 - 00;05;16;17
Thais
So now I'm going to get into all this exciting content. So first and foremost, I just want to remind you one more time that this is not about getting in an unhealthy relationship. This is about understanding why you might find controlling this or manipulative patterns or things that you're doing in your own life. And this can be like a very subtle dose.

00;05;16;20 - 00;05;35;10
Thais
Sometimes. I know people, people, please. We could even see people. Pleasing is a form of manipulation to try to get your needs met or to try to feel worthy and to get a connection or affirmation. We can look at a very broad spectrum of what's manipulation in a very unhealthy way and what's sort of a normal, even amount of manipulation.

00;05;35;10 - 00;05;58;00
Thais
So that should be something you're doing that you want to change and and create healing around. So for that, this video itself, I'm just going to talk about a little bit of control manipulation, sort of the same underlying root causes. So control and manipulation are both rooted in fear and they're most often associated with the fear of vulnerability.

00;05;58;02 - 00;06;23;26
Thais
The people that control or manipulate when they are not willing to express what they're feeling, what they need and why they need it. Okay. So if you can think of imagine, you think of like a mother who's a little bit controlling. Maybe she's trying to control how late you stay on at night. And she kind of thought you had this experience, like in childhood or early adulthood or your teens or something.

00;06;23;28 - 00;06;49;01
Thais
Let's say that this is your experience. You know, a lot of times, just as an analogy here, that that mother was afraid of something bad happening, was afraid of losing you, afraid of you just connecting in some way and doing drugs. Are we going around a bad path and losing a relationship with the heart Like, you know, all of if she became hyper controlling in a certain area, chances are she was really afraid of something that happened.

00;06;49;05 - 00;07;11;25
Thais
So a lot of us growing up, we have really negative associations built in to expressing our fears or vulnerabilities. We don't have a lot of positive reinforcement when we're children and we're like, Mom, I want to go play. I want to go do this. I want to stay up. So we usually mom or dad are not giving us our needs and they have to do that to a certain degree to socialize us and to take care of us.

00;07;12;01 - 00;07;31;21
Thais
We have to get punished if we run across the street without looking both ways. Because we don't get punished. We the consequences shown to us like we have to learn and and work through these things for ideally in a conscious way. But a lot of us got punished because our parents didn't have better tools or strategies at the time.

00;07;31;21 - 00;07;58;22
Thais
And there is something now called conscious conditioning, but that's a topic for another video. So a lot of us punished and we didn't get our needs Reinforcing and speaking up and being vulnerable didn't feel good because more often than not we didn't have positive associations built in. Often we got denied, rejected, unseen, unheard as we learned that like, Oh, it doesn't feel good to talk about my feelings and it doesn't feel good to express my needs and it doesn't even work very well, it often ends up in rejection.

00;07;58;22 - 00;08;24;16
Thais
Well, a lot of us have a massive part of us are just repressed in terms of connecting to our own feelings and needs on a regular basis. Knowing what they are in real time, which is the goal of what you want to get to, and then expressing them in a healthy way that's orchestrated carefully enough that it bypasses what could often trigger other people so that we have the highest chance of actually getting the need that.

00;08;24;18 - 00;08;47;06
Thais
So what this often is control and manipulation is related to in childhood not going to be bad or just having really negative associations built in. They're a little bit more extreme. And so what happens is when we don't want to be vulnerable, let's let's say there's a child and let's give this child their needs. They grow up in a really unhealthy column, you know, one parent, an addict, another parent violence.

00;08;47;08 - 00;09;10;22
Thais
And this child is terrified or horrified. No. Of expressing their needs or being hurt or rejected because they might have experienced a lot of that. You know, what happens is that child probably isn't going to be like, hey, mom, can I have this? Or, hey, dad, can I do that? Like that child is going to feel like it's so unavailable to have their needs met, and yet those needs don't go anywhere.

00;09;10;22 - 00;09;40;15
Thais
Needs don't get like they don't get repressed and then stay repressed. They come out another forms where we try to get them met in other ways. Our subconscious mind is like wired. It's like a meeting machine. It's always trying to get our needs met. So if we don't have better strategies, all of our healthy potential strategies are deeply, negatively reinforced that a child might learn to manipulate and go around in these roundabout ways is sort of the survival strategy to adapt to the crazy environment and still find a way of getting the needs met.

00;09;40;18 - 00;10;14;16
Thais
So manipulation and control become a program. And so I want you to know as well, not every person with unmet needs manipulates to get them, but all people with a strategy of manipulation do deeply believe on some level that their needs are unworthy, sad or hopeless and they'll be rejected. So it's important to recognize that. I think that anything that we demonize as human beings, as a general rule, is is something that, like creates more separation between ourselves and other people.

00;10;14;16 - 00;10;35;11
Thais
So we'll talk about that in a moment. But we just reiterate again, too, we're not responsible for fixing other people, period. But I do see sometimes that that individuals are like stuck in a relationship. And I don't think anybody's actually stuck in a relationship. I think that that's usually the invisible prison of our mind like we tell ourselves.

00;10;35;11 - 00;10;59;08
Thais
But people do have real problems where they see way more benefits to staying in an unhealthy relationship anymore mentally. And this can be for religious reasons and deeply rooted beliefs can be for not being able to afford your your kids and your home and all of us living on your own. And so is if you are stuck in this situation, I'm going to give you some tools.

00;10;59;11 - 00;11;18;08
Thais
And again, it's not your job to change a person, but it is your job to do for yourself what is necessary to get your needs met and expressed in a healthy, nonviolent format. Okay, so I'm going to give you a framework that will work if you are with somebody who's relatively healthy, who just has these unhealthy tendencies here and there.

00;11;18;11 - 00;11;55;07
Thais
And this is something to check in with yourselves as well. But if you're somebody who's incessantly controlling and incessantly manipulating, you're probably dealing with somebody who's emotionally very unstable and toxic. And you really should be considering getting as far away of that from that relationship as possible. I'm leaving so and often, too, we think, like we have to say for the kids, I hear this so often from individuals and and the reality is that it's much better to give the kids a version of your best self when you're not in this terrible relationship.

00;11;55;09 - 00;12;14;25
Thais
And to take them out of the toxic environment. Because chances are if you have a very manipulating and very unhealthy, then they're getting some of that same manipulation and control, and that's going to be very detrimental to them as well as with the thoughts and better to give your kids a divorce and have them go through that, as painful as that can be, and to stay in a really toxic environment.

00;12;14;28 - 00;12;34;26
Thais
So when you see somebody being manipulative or with controlling somebody being controlling, you know, one of the most important questions you can ask this person is what are you feeling right now and what is it that you're needing? Because, again, people control they don't want to say what they're feeling and it can be super helpful. You can follow this up.

00;12;34;26 - 00;12;53;10
Thais
I think it would be super helpful if I can understand what's happening inside of you right now to cause you to behave this way. And I understand as a person I have to speak and understand that that this isn't necessarily going to work with everybody. This is going to necessarily work with these ten out of ten toxic people.

00;12;53;16 - 00;13;14;05
Thais
But for the average person with a little bit of room to grow and somebody who's healthy, that does work extremely well. So let's just a few examples. That might be day to day example. Let's say your girlfriend doesn't want you to go out. Maybe she's saying no, I don't want you to go with your friends. I don't like your friends.

00;13;14;13 - 00;13;39;22
Thais
Things that are like a little bit controlling and we're getting some red flags here. But, you know, number one, if this is extreme and it's all just a vulnerable moment of having this one bad day and this is this is extreme. Again, maybe you should think about getting out of the relationship, But if you can open that dynamic of conversation and say, like, what are you feeling right now and why are you trying to control the dynamic of the situation?

00;13;39;22 - 00;13;58;21
Thais
What are you meeting that would make that my needs of going out and doing my friends easier for you to see what I just did? We used that framework of What are you feeling? What are you meeting? And we should we substitute in to this specific situation? And you might hear these are the things I am afraid of losing you.

00;13;58;21 - 00;14;20;27
Thais
I'm afraid of a lot of young women. I saw a bad situation between their parents, a parent cheated or things like that, and they project to their relationship. So maybe she might say, I'm afraid of losing you and okay, I'll be open to going out and I just need you to validate and I just need to know that I can trust you.

00;14;20;27 - 00;14;45;00
Thais
And again, if you can just reinforce that, that would be really helpful. And again, we're not here justifying people's control or manipulation. I know. I'm like overdoing it by saying this so often, but I just want you to notice that, like, oftentimes there's just or there's just innocence and woundedness behind the unhealthy and toxic strategy. And I'm not saying the person's innocent.

00;14;45;00 - 00;15;11;13
Thais
I'm saying it's coming from the very childlike space, like some some fragmented, wounded part of that psyche of an individual. So let's say when I thought not too long ago what it was telling me that their son was lying about the bills at school that we're owed to get more money. And the mother was furious, really upset. And I said, like, just have the conversation first because, you know, pain doesn't solve pain.

00;15;11;13 - 00;15;30;19
Thais
Somebody said that to me the other day and it was a beautiful thing. In a webinar meeting, Ruby said This meeting, the Dana webinar and I was doing and it's such a beautiful quote and, and it's true. Like punishment is like trying to solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. We know this is punishment.

00;15;30;19 - 00;15;46;27
Thais
When somebody's doing something out of pain, you're just adding more fuel to the fire. You're not allowing yourself to get to the root and understand what's really going on. So we brought up the conversation and I said, Just ask what's going on? Why? You know, what is he feeling and why was he doing that in the first place?

00;15;46;27 - 00;16;05;04
Thais
What need was he trying to get back? And he opened up his mom. Even I felt like I had this new girlfriend and I felt like all my friends had girlfriends. I finally had my first girlfriend and I went out to dinner and I had to split the meal because I couldn't afford to pay for her meal. And she seemed me and she made fun of me and my friends.

00;16;05;04 - 00;16;30;24
Thais
And then they made fun of me. And like, I was feeling really embarrassed and and then it becomes like a healthy conversation. Like, what they ended up doing was creating a plan. The mother was like, Okay, you know what? I'm going to help you financially and give you a certain amount of money more per semester. I think she was giving me a little bit of money for food while he was in school, and she said, okay, well, we'll up this so that you have a little bit of money to do things like this.

00;16;30;27 - 00;16;45;25
Thais
But we're going to have a repayment plan every summer. You're going to come back and you're going to work extra hours if you have to repay me in the summer and then we'll go back again. And this could take so many different forms. You could be helping this person apply for jobs. You could do all these different things.

00;16;45;27 - 00;17;09;26
Thais
Now, accountability. This is the second part of this accountability on behalf of the other person has to be a conversation, right? You then have to just say, let me fix that. All good. Don't worry, everything's fine. It's okay. I understand you. And let's work with the root cause here so we can address that problem. And then let's also make sure that I am very clear as a person receiving the manipulation or the control to say this is non-negotiable.

00;17;09;26 - 00;17;28;22
Thais
You know, I. I can understand why you did what you did, why you feel that way. I can validate why you behave that way. I cannot hold space for again. So I'm happy to tell you that I can connect to this. I can work with you to solve the real problem. But this behavior is not welcome again. This is a non-negotiable.

00;17;28;22 - 00;17;49;05
Thais
So remember this discussion. I'm not letting you know this is okay ever I So we want to have those two parts where we ask the person, what are you feeling and what are you needing? And this really works. Well, you know, those are like sort of manipulative examples. One is kind of lying about the bills at school, but the first one is the controlling.

00;17;49;05 - 00;18;09;14
Thais
And a lot of times people are controlling in very small ways, controlling about time, controlling about, you know, little things, just how you know, how you behave in a certain way, just people tendencies that human beings have. And we want to open that dynamic up conversations are like, Hey, if you didn't notice, I feel like you're being a bit controlling.

00;18;09;14 - 00;18;28;22
Thais
Why don't you just tell me instead what you're feeling, what you're needing right now? And again, if this is you and you notice you controlling tendency the nag a lot unit you shame a little bit you can be controlling when you feel stressed out. Just know this is rooted in fear and it's a lack of you being vulnerable shows up as control.

00;18;28;22 - 00;18;51;25
Thais
So you want to ask is okay, what am I feeling? What am I needing? And how can I start expressing these things more vulnerably to other individuals? And when we look at other people and we demonize them before understanding them, we're also doing an injustice to ourselves because we're filling our own hearts with more fear and we're creating further separation between ourselves and the world because we start thinking, Oh my gosh, people can't be trusted.

00;18;52;02 - 00;19;11;26
Thais
The world a scary place. Everybody that we get into is victim mentality a lot of times. So we want to seek to understand the root cause, the problems, instead of demonizing the things that we see. And yet we want to be really firm and clear about setting the boundaries at the same time. And again, this does not mean staying with a person who's unhealthy.

00;19;11;26 - 00;19;31;09
Thais
This is like minor issues in relationships where somebody is a little controlling or rigid sometimes, or you notice that they manipulated about something the other day and you haven't seen them do that before, but they're doing it now and you want to make sure that this is not happening again. Okay. So those are some skills and tools for that aspect.

00;19;31;09 - 00;19;51;18
Thais
Now, if you're recovering and maybe I'll do a separate video on this if you want me to do this, everybody on this in a lot more detail, please let me know in the comments. But if you're recovering from a relationship where there was a lot of manipulation and control, number one, you want to make sure you set a value where this person does not come back into your life and then they can try to infiltrate it.

00;19;51;20 - 00;20;24;20
Thais
And it can be hard to set that boundary. Sometimes people can be so charming or so charismatic and flip things around so much and make us question or solve that we can get a little bit lost in the mix. But if you went through a lot of manipulation control in somebody that's part of their personality and showing up all the time, unless they're doing a very significant amount of work and therapy over the course of months and months, if not years, there is no way that this person is ready for a healthy relationship.

00;20;24;20 - 00;20;49;21
Thais
So it's just if that's what you went through, it's the point of no return. And I hope that that's really clear. If you're recovering, you know, the biggest loss that comes the biggest sort of grief or grievance, I think that comes from hyper manipulation and control is that the individual tends to lose their sense of identity and there's a major diminishment of their worth.

00;20;49;21 - 00;21;13;26
Thais
And why do they lose their sense of identity? Because their needs are so unmet and they become still consider leaving this manipulative or controlling person. A lot of the times, again, if they were in this relationship for a long time and it was extensive, that their needs go out the window and our personality is so deeply constructed around our needs, and I have this whole course around this about our personality needs.

00;21;13;29 - 00;21;34;20
Thais
But when we are disconnected from our own needs and we're essentially disconnected from our sense of self, and so that's a huge loss of identity. And then the diminishment of words, you know, oftentimes people are quite manipulative and quite controlling will do a big we'll do a lot of damage on yourself where there's a lot of you're not good enough.

00;21;34;20 - 00;21;54;03
Thais
So we want to address this and just going to do this in like a really short version here. We want to address this by reprograming our feelings of unworthiness. So we want to look for how we are worthy and how we are good enough repetitively. And we want to find very specific experiences that elicits an emotional response repetitively over time.

00;21;54;05 - 00;22;20;06
Thais
This is one really simple tool for reprograming because we're reprograming your repetition, collect emotion, your self-worth was taken away through repetition that elicit an emotional response, Oh, you're not good enough how you're unworthy. And then we have to start showing up for ourselves in our behavior to show that we do matter, to set boundaries, to express our feelings, and needs to take time out for ourselves, to listen to ourselves, to build trust, like all of these things impact our self-worth as well.

00;22;20;09 - 00;22;42;10
Thais
And we want to do reprograming work around that. I have another video that talks about Reprograming a little bit more, and I have courses that go way in-depth here, but you also want to understand your feelings. Me Because you look disconnected so much that you want to start doing feelings and use journaling on a daily basis. I do have like just on a simple basis, our tertiary needs.

00;22;42;10 - 00;23;10;17
Thais
We have like personality needs, tertiary needs and we have our basic for human needs. And I do have on the personal level on this website, like a free worksheet right now that's open and available. If you click on literature, it's there and it's your your feelings and needs worksheet. So you can get start getting in touch by journaling and checking through that worksheet and looking for what are my feelings throughout the day, what are my needs, and really getting in touch with them again, because that really creates a sense of identity.

00;23;10;17 - 00;23;31;02
Thais
And what our boundaries are is essentially the expression of our feelings and needs. And so in order to create healthy boundaries, we need to know what our feelings and needs are, especially in real time as much as possible. We need to get reconnected to those aspects of ourselves again and lasting self trust. What you really want to make sure that you are showing up for yourself again.

00;23;31;02 - 00;23;46;07
Thais
You're taking your interests into account in your group. It's about doing this because trust is so much based on congruency. If I say to you every time you come to my office and every time you comment like I'll get you a coffee, and then I never do, you might trust me in some ways, but you're not going to trust me, get you a coffee.

00;23;46;07 - 00;24;09;03
Thais
Because what I say and when I do it very, it can do it. And so what we say to ourselves, what we say we're going to commit to doing within ourselves, we have to follow up with action so that we start to build trust and the relationship to self. Again, this is coming out of a lot of manipulation, tends to really have strong negative impacts on our sense of identity, sense of self trust and sense of self-worth.

00;24;09;05 - 00;24;30;21
Thais
So I hope that makes sense. Yeah, that's everything in this video, but please check out all the questions coming up. Please be connected. Thank you all so much again for your comments, your your legs, your shares, just all the connection that's on your. It's so wonderful and so appreciate it. Thank.