A psychologist has revealed three signs your partner is manipulating you to stop you leaving – from gaslighting to financial control and isolation.
Dr Lalitaa Suglani, a Birmingham-based chartered psychologist and author, who offers courses on topics including managing anxiety, overcoming fear and impostor syndrome, took to Instagram to share information on the topic in a video recent. mail.
She accompanied the video with a caption that read: “Have you ever felt like you couldn’t trust your thoughts because your partner insisted you say something you were pretty sure you hadn’t said?”
‘And how often do you end up saying sorry even when you know you didn’t do anything wrong?’
He went on to write that manipulation can be so sneaky that “we don’t even realize it’s happening.”
A psychologist has revealed three signs that your partner may be manipulating you into maintaining a relationship with them (file image)
Listing the three ways a person can manipulate their partner into staying in the relationship, he said, “Number one is gaslighting.”
‘This involves manipulating someone into questioning their own perceptions, their own memories and their sanity.
“Abusers may use gaslighting techniques to make their partner doubt their experiences, making them feel confused and unsafe about leaving.”
Moving on to your second sign, you mentioned isolation, which you described as where your partner “may isolate you from your family, your friends, and other support networks.”
This, he said, is to “control their access to help or information, making it difficult for them to leave the relationship.”
Continuing with the video, Dr Suglani said: ‘Number three is financial control.
‘This is where they can control all of their partner’s finances, making them dependent on money or resources.
“This can really create barriers to leaving, as you may fear that you will not be able to support yourself or your children if they leave the relationship in three hidden and manipulative ways.”
Several social media users took to the post to share their own experiences with manipulative relationships.
Several Instagram users commented on the video, sharing their experiences with the behaviors she mentioned.
One wrote: ‘Yes, those three shapes sound too familiar to me. Thank God I was finally able to break free, however the impact of years of this pernicious behavior requires a lot of work to move forward.’
Another added: ‘Wow. I totally felt it. And like many other things in a narc relationship, it’s only after the end and you remember all those moments when you realized exactly what they were doing. The saddest thing of all is that I’m not always sure that they are aware at the time that they are doing it, but not out of innocence, but because they have a lot of practice in doing it.’
Meanwhile, a third simply said: “That’s how it was.”
Dr. Suglani posts regularly on Instagram where she covers a number of mental health topics, including relationships and others.
One of the topics he regularly covers is high-functioning anxiety (HFA), about which he has written a forthcoming book and which is thought to affect around 20 per cent of adults in the UK.
HFA is described as a condition in which “individuals appear competent and accomplished on the outside, while internally they silently struggle with intense worries, doubts, and fear of failure.”
Around 20 per cent of UK adults are thought to suffer from high-functioning anxiety, a topic on which Dr Suglani has written a forthcoming book.
High-Functioning Anxiety: A Five-Step Guide to Calming Inner Panic and Thriving will be published on May 28.
According to information about the volume, in it, Dr. Lalitaa’ shares it personal journey of self-discovery and growth, shedding light on high-functioning anxiety and offering readers a path to understanding and embracing their authentic selves.
The book examines the root causes of HFA, as well as the science behind it and the behaviors associated with it, using real-life case studies.
It also offers sufferers of the condition a “toolkit to manage fear, anxiety and self-doubt.”
The psychologist said of the book: “For those struggling with inner anxieties and doubts, let this book act as a beacon of hope and a reminder that we are all inherently good enough just the way we are.”