Emotional blackmail

Emotional blackmail and FOG are terms, popularized by psychotherapist Susan Forward, about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics is useful to anyone trying to extricate 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. Emotional blackmail and FOG are terms, popularized by psychotherapist Susan Forward, about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics is useful to anyone trying to extricate 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. The first documented use of 'emotional blackmail' appeared in 1947 in the Journal of the National Association of Deans of Women in the article 'Emotional Blackmail Climate'. The term was used to describe one type of problematic classroom control model often used by teachers. Esther Vilar, an Argentine physician, also used the term 'emotional blackmail' in the early 1970s to describe a parenting strategy observed among some mothers with multiple children. Emotional blackmail typically involves two people who have established a close personal or intimate relationship (parent and child, spouses, siblings, or two close friends). Children, too, will employ special pleading and emotional blackmail to promote their own interests, and self-development, within the family system. Emotional blackmailers use fear, obligation and guilt in their relationships, ensuring that others feel afraid to cross them, obligated to give them their way and swamped by guilt if they resist. Knowing that someone close to them wants love, approval or confirmation of identity and self-esteem, blackmailers may threaten to withhold them (e.g., withhold love) or take them away altogether, making the second person feel they must earn them by agreement. Fear, obligation or guilt is commonly referred to as 'FOG'. FOG is a contrived acronym—a play on the word 'fog' which describes something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone's thought processes. The person who is acting in a controlling way often wants something from the other person that is legitimate to want. They may want to feel loved, safe, valuable, appreciated, supported, needed, etc. This is not the problem. The problem is often more a matter of how they are going about getting what they want, or that they are insensitive to others' needs in doing so that is troubling—and how others react to all of this. Under pressure, one may become a sort of hostage, forced to act under pressure of the threat of responsibility for the other's breakdown. and 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'. Forward and Frazier identify four blackmail types each with their own mental manipulation style: There are different levels of demands—demands that are of little consequence, demands that involve important issues or personal integrity, demands that affect major life decisions, and/or demands that are dangerous or illegal. Addicts often believe that being in control is how to achieve success and happiness in life. People who follow this rule use it as a survival skill, having usually learned it in childhood. As long as they make the rules, no one can back them into a corner with their feelings.