Do you feel you are easily manipulated?

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I don't like to admit it but in many circumstances I do feel like it is easy for others to manipulate me.

Part of it is I tend to take people at their word, even if I see their words don't match their actions. It's just hard for me to accept that people lie, and/or that they can be so unaware of their own behavior. It's the not matching thing that confuses me.

Depends on what it is. Usually I will go out of my way to do them a favor because I'm way too nice sometimes. Basically, my problem is getting walked all over by people and then not understanding why they never talk to me again after I do the favor. It's a punch right in the gut. Hurts a lot.

Sometimes.

When a stranger on the bus told me a sob story about his son getting a liver transplant and him not having the money to pay for the medication he needed and asked me for money, I thought that he could have been lying and just trying to extort money from me. For one thing I live in Canada and life saving treatments are free (covered by the government). You have to pay for prescription medication but if his son needed medicine right then or else he would die they would keep him in the hospital and give him what he needed. That's what the guy said, that he was from another country and couldn't access his foreign account but his son needed the medication immediately to live. I didn't give him the money and it turned out he was lying and trying to get money from people at subway stations. My mum told me she read about this guy in the newspaper! He actually was able to get money from some people, all girls aged 20-30.

Then again people who I've thought were my friends and colleges at work have used me and manipulated me in the past. When I decide a person is a nice person and is a friend then I tend to trust them too much and I get hurt sometimes.

I believe I tend to err on the other side. I always sense that people are trying to manipulate me, even when they are not.

Yeah, though I know I have been manipulated for that fear to be real, manipulated into being bullied, an instigator of bullying, manipulated out of money and conned. Also a victim of elaborate trolls online and my trust in people is long gone, now I just don't pay attention to anyone but trained professionals.

Yes, I am easily manipulated, and after each incident I think I will be quick to notice and avoid being manipulated, again, in the future, but it hasn't been working out that way, thus I have had to resign to accepting that I just do not have the ability to pick up when others are being manipulative. It is horrible, quite honestly. Makes feel completely clueless, exploited, used, shafted, fooled, tricked, et al, and has an immense affect on my self esteem.

Deleted double post.

Last edited by delaSHANE on 11 Mar 2014, 9:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I sense it very clearly, I am probably kind of hypersensitive to it. I can analyze what the person is doing and I feel the effects it has on me. I just get confused because the words don't match. Like if I confront someone about what is going on, and they say no they are not doing what I think, that I should trust them, then I believe that. And then I find out later my original instincts about it were right and yes they lied and/or they did something to manipulate me.

yeah,am highly vulnerable to manipulation but no way near as reachable as used to be because of bullying had recieved from a pyschopath who shoud be locked up away from any contact with society.

unfortunately am highly cynical and untrusting of people and what they say as a result,its a shield to manipulation but not in a good way.

I'm probably among the more gullible of people who ever lived. when I was a teen, some older fella told me a tall tale, a skyscraper-high tall tale in fact, he had me convinced that the empire state building was originally constructed upside down!

not any more.

^^^

It depends. Sometimes, with some people, very easily. Especially in real time, especially when they override me, talk over me, etc. it's easy for me to end up agreeing with something I do not agree with because of the way many allistic/NT types have of communicating without allowing room for discussion. Other NTs/allistics can meet this head on, but I can't function because I am behind the curve for the entire conversation, and may not even know what all was said until hours later.

Online, it's different, in that there's distance due to text. I can write a post without being interrupted repeatedly and get everything out. Also, I've found that some people tend to set off "warnings" and whenever I ignore those warnings I usually end up regretting it.

That doesn't mean I can't be manipulated (I think I got suckered in another thread earlier today) online, just that the way it works out is different.

I am often conscious of being manipulated. I have old friends who underwent a business education, and I caught them trying out the techniques of manipulation that they learned in self-help books written by people like Dale Carnegie. As a result, I don't trust them at all anymore.

Last edited by Stannis on 11 Mar 2014, 10:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Oh man, MBAs.

I hate those guys.

I am not easily manipulated. I don't trust people. I expect them to be lying.