Harriet Braiker - Who’s Pulling Your Strings

Whos Pulling Your Strings?

The September 11 Syndrome

The Disease to Please

Lethal Lovers and Poisonous People

Getting Up When Youre Feeling Down

The Type E Woman

Whos Pulling Your Strings?

How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life

Harriet B. Braiker, Ph.D.

McGraw-Hill

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Copyright 2004 by Harriet B. Braiker, PhD. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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DOI: 10.1036/0071435689

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Contents

Copyright 2004 by Harriet B. Braiker, PhD.
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Introduction

Copyright 2004 by Harriet B. Braiker, PhD.
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T HROUGHOUT my career I have been interested in the psychological problems that men and women develop as a result of their goodbut often misguidedintentions. In the mid-1980s, just as the full thrust of the womens movement was beginning to alter the American labor force and the fabric of American life, I wrote The Type E Woman: How to Overcome the Stress of Being Everything to Everybody . That book compared and contrasted the different types of stresses of men and women. Specifically, it examined the continuing stress cycles created by womens flawed attempts to have it all by trying to meet everyone elses needs at the expense of their own health and welfare.

For nearly 20 years now, high-achieving women across the United States and, indeed, the world over have identified with the Type E concept. They have populated my clinical practice, retained me to consult in their businesses, invited me to give keynote speeches, and formed a receptive and gracious audience for my radio and television appearances.

No matter how powerful or successful, Type E women talk to me about how their desire to make others happy sets them up to be victims in damaging manipulative relationships.

I revisited the topic of people-pleasing, twenty-first century style, just a few years ago in another book called The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome . This time, aided by the Internet, I created a Web site www.DiseaseToPlease.com for readers to communicate with me as well as with other people-pleasers so that they could benefit from an online supportive community.

Since publication of The Disease to Please in 2001, I have received a continuous stream of e-mails and messages on the Web sites guest book from both women and men who identify with the problem. The theme of these messages is consistent: People-pleasers nice intentions make them an easy mark for manipulators. And the victim status they adopt when manipulators wrest away their freedom, self-direction, and sense of personal control creates deeper and more damaging emotional problems.

The message to me came loud and clear: My readers could really use a good self-help book that cuts through the fog of confusion that manipulation produces. They need to better understand why, how, when, and by whom they get manipulated. Most important, of course, they need to know what they can do to stop it .

However, make no mistake, people-pleasers are by no means the only ones vulnerable to manipulation. Nearly 30 years of practice as a clinical psychologist and management consultant have driven that point home to me. I have witnessed the painful, disruptive, and disabling effects of manipulation on patients and clients from varied backgrounds, with disparate personalities, of wide age ranges, and all levels of economic, educational, and social status.

Some people are easier targets than others, but nobody is completely invulnerable to skilled manipulators. I have worked with patients and corporate clients who never felt the need to speak to a psychologist until they found themselves under someones thumbunable to extricate themselves from a manipulative spouse, a controlling boss, an ambitious subordinate, a back-stabbing competitive coworker, a guilt-inducing mother, or an insecure friend. The list of manipulators goes on and on.

My own experience with manipulative relationships extends well beyond a merely professional interest. I know firsthand the toll on self-esteem, happiness, and emotional and physical health that manipulation exacts. I have been entangled in the insidious web of coercive, manipulative control. I never want to go there again.