Emotional Blackmail - When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward (US edition, paperback) - 9780060928971

A practical guide to better communication that will break the blackmail cycle for good, by one of the nation's leading therapists, Susan Forward. “Breathe a sigh of relief! Susan Forward helps you identify and correct an intensely destructive and confusing pattern of relating with those you love. I highly recommend this important book!"—Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway"If you really loved me...""After all I've done for you...""How can you be so selfish..."Do any of the above sound familiar? They're all examples of emotional blackmail, a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationships with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They are our mothers, our partners, our bosses and coworkers, our friends and our lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to give themselves the payoff they want: our compliance.Susan Forward knows what pushes our hot buttons. Just as John Gray illuminates the communications gap between the sexes in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Harriet Lerner describes an intricate dynamic in The Dance of Anger, so Susan Forward presents the anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation, and gives readers an arsenal of tools to fight back. “A helpful book!...[it] makes a whole lot of sense for the person who feels controlled by someone else’s needs, whines, and threats.” — Detroit Free Press"Breathe a sigh of relief! Susan Forward helps you identify and correct an intensely destructive and confusing pattern of relating with those you love. I highly recommend this important book!" — Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of Feel the Fear and Do It AnywayBestselling author and therapist Dr. Susan Forward, author ofMen Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them and Toxic Parents) shows us how to defend ourselves against those people who say to us: If you don't behave the way I want you to, you will suffer.aIf you loved me, you'd'stay at home with the kids: float me a loan: work extra overtime; stop seeing your friends on Friday nights. Sound familiar? We've all been targets of emotional blackmail, no matter whether the threats are explicit or implied. Susan Forward's book will be full of practical advice for recognizing and defusing blackmail effectively and with grace.aThe blackmailer in your life could be a lover, a parent, a boss, friend, coworker, or child. We all need to learn how to recognize emotional blackmailers. Dr. Susan Forward has seen the devastating effects of emotional blackmail during her twenty years as a therapist, a