\"Letting Go\" and Giving Up Your Will to Control or That Part about \"Manipulation\"

Manipulation is the evil "M" word in the co-dependency new-speak. Manipulation represents everything that is screwing up your life, and the “wrong” you commit to make your life miserable. You are given to understand that your “sin” is manipulation, and the sin being committed against you is manipulation, which is abuse pure! It’s not only evil; it's bad; it's mean; and it's totally unfair, and of course, you will never be "cured" from co-dependency until you learn to "let go" of that nasty "M" -habit. Oh really?  My dictionary defines the word "manipulate" as follows: Manipulate (verb) 1. Handle or control something skillfully. 2. Control or influence someone in a clever or underhanded way.  On the one hand the 12 step program expects you manipulate your own behavior to focus on yourself. Yet they want you to refrain from manipulating people.I ask you, in what universe do they expect us to live in? Humans manipulate everything and everyone all the time. There is just no stopping it!  Oh, and I really like the part of how many people proudly claim that through a 12 step program they have skilfully have learned to "be assertive" yet somehow think that is not being manipulative. People in 12 step programs talk about choices, setting boundaries, learning to say “no”, and ignore the fact that this is exactly what manipulation is: handling, controlling and influencing someone else in a clever way. The 12 step program people hide behind the fence when they say "I didn't manipulate him. I just gave him a choice and let go of the decision, and left it up to God". Oh, come on! Get real! You did manipulate them! That's like saying when someone points a gun in your face, and demands your money or your life. Hey! The gunman gave you a choice and let go of the decision, and left it up to God. Yeah, right! Theoretically you have a choice. Practically, you don't have any choice (unless you are truly suicidal). The person threatening you is manipulating your choices so there is only one "correct" choice to make. Sales people are skillfully taught how to manipulate your choices based on responses you give them.  Example:Prospect: Is this car a dependable model?Car Salesman: Is car dependability important to you?Who in their right mind would say: "No, not really. Any old bucket of bolts is fine with me."? This sales trick is called positive choice reinforcement. It guides the customer into making a decision to buy, because the number of positive answer reinforcements are emphasized in his decision-making process. And yes, it is manipulation. We cannot give up manipulation. It's a known fact that young men buy cars to impress women; woman spend more money on clothes, hairstyle and make-up to look more attractive to men; and we naturally want to emphasize our qualities of reliability, competence and productiveness during job interviews. This is day-to-day manipulation.  Barrick Obama said impressive things out of his own self-conviction to manipulate people into believing he is the right choice as President of the United States of America, but then all the co-dependents know – Barrick Obama is just another co-dependent in denial – he’s a politician, and everybody knows how politicians manipulate. I wish there was a way to tell people in the co-dependency support group, "Hey! It’s okay to manipulate people, especially to manipulate that other person in your life who is making your life miserable because they refuse to clean up their drug/ alcohol/ control-issue problem – but the manipulation tricks you have been using so far, don't work as well as other manipulation tricks might work – like setting boundaries or limits in your world of self, or giving them choices that will either end a painful situation or make the other person decide to force themselves to change.    I am going to stop flogging myself up on this one and stop convincing myself that manipulating is wrong. I am going to learn to manipulate my environment, so that I can survive in it, and become psychologically strong enough to state in an adult manner what I like and do not like; what I want and do not want. Yes, I am not always going to get what I want, but I am not going to surrender my will or stop controlling myself to see if there is a way to positively manipulate my environment.  I won’t need a twelve step program to do this, because it is contradictory and counter-productive:  First you are good because you were manipulated and abused, then you are bad because you manipulate and abuse, then you are good, then you are bad...You are powerful, then you are powerless to control people. First you are powerful and responsible for yourself, and responsible for your controlling other people, and then you are powerless and your will power is useless... You are not responsible for what was done to you.... Then you are guilty of all kinds of defects, wrongs and sins... Then you are not responsible... And then you are guilty...First it's an addiction over which you are powerless, and then you are a sinner who is selfish and self-seeking and manipulative and dishonest and self-centered...In the 3rd Step, "God" supposedly loves you so much that He will take care of your will and your life for you, and solve all of your problems forevermore, just because you demand that He do so. That builds up your ego and gives you delusions of grandeur where you imagine that God is your butler, waiting on you hand and foot.But then the 4th through 7th Steps, where you make long lists of everything that is wrong with you, and dwell on it and confess it all to man and God, just continue the routine of having an angry addict constantly criticizing everything that you do, tearing you down, destroying your ego and your self-respect, and making you feel guilty about everything, or give up your relationships until you “recover” and surrender your will and control to a support group. Manipulation smacks of evilness. It’s a word like “propaganda”. Never forget what some people sell as “the truth” is sometimes nothing more than propaganda. And not all propaganda seems evil. Some propaganda is used to urge people to go out and participate in voting. When everyone thinks it's good they usually call it a “campaign”. But it isn’t. It’s propaganda. It’s manipulating you to exercise your democratic freedom to vote, and subconsciously suggesting that if you don’t exercise this freedom, you are not a good citizen.  Propaganda receives it’s negative connotations when they talk about political “campaigns” which are in opposition of what a group of people believe, like how Americans viewed political campaigns used in the former Soviet Union. Then suddenly that's nasty, evil, political propaganda, and had nothing to do with the “Truth”. Then suddenly it's easy to recognise how people were manipulated in a seemingly under-handed method that doesn’t correspond to most peoples’ personal value scales.  But let’s not forget the 12 steps is a program designed to manipulate people into changing their thinking and actions, and it is being “sold” as the “only way to cure co-dependency”. This program also maintaining it is telling people "the truth”. Okay fine with me, but this kind of manipulation violates my personal value scale, so I am going to do some of my own manipulating in my world. I don’t think that I am sinful, or I am wrong, or I am evil.   If I can influence people to stop intimidating me, present my alcoholic husband choices which spell out “stop drinking or else”; get people to understand that “no” means “no”, and support my decisions which reward me with personal happiness, then I will happily positively continue to manipulate.   Think critically - Think for yourself!