What Is Emotional Blackmail? Examples & How to Deal With It

What Drives Emotional Blackmail? 13+ Causes

The drivers behind and causes of emotional blackmail are varied and complex.

While blackmailers are often motivated by fear and desperation, stemming from deep-seated insecurities, they can also (Kao, 2024):

Experience low self-esteem
Have a strong need for control
Exhibit a low tolerance for frustration
Be skilled at exploiting victims’ vulnerabilities
See love as an obligation to meet their needs rather than a respectful, trusting, and shared bond

Emotional blackmailers often target vulnerabilities in victims. Blackmailers may even interpret them as causes for their behavior. Examples of such vulnerabilities may include (Forward, 1997):

Strong (or excessive) need for approval
Fear of conflict or anger
Need to prioritize peace at all costs
Increased levels of self-doubt
Excessive responsibility for others’ happiness
Concern over secrets being uncovered or shared

While research is lacking, there are other potential causes and drivers. The following have both been suggested as potential additional factors involved in emotional blackmail:

Clients with borderline personality disorder often have relationships that shift between the idealization and devaluation of others. This can lead to emotional manipulation and difficulty in forming stable and reciprocal relationships. Such individuals can also be emotionally reactive and volatile when encountering perceived rejections (Kuo et al., 2015).
Attachment styles can significantly impact the nature of future relationships. Studies suggest individuals with anxious or avoidant attachment styles experience a greater fear of rejection and are more likely to engage in destructive conflict and emotional coercion (Bonache et al., 2019).

How to Deal With Emotional Blackmail

The following steps offer a reliable and repeatable approach for your clients to deal with their emotional blackmailer (Forward, 1997):

1. Stop

Often, the victim reacts to their blackmailer without thinking. So, it’s vital to interrupt the blackmail transaction earlier on. Buying time with phrases such as the following can help:

“I can’t answer you right now, so I’m taking time to think this over.”
“This is too important to decide quickly. Let me stop and think about it.”
“I’m not willing to make that decision right now.”

2. Become an observer

Once detached from the immediate drama of the situation the blackmailer has created, the victim can gather information to decide how to respond.

During this time, the victim becomes an observer of themself, the blackmailer, and the situation.

Forward (1997) suggests a visualization exercise. The victim is encouraged to picture themself in an elevator car, rising up out of the fog, away from the heightened emotions to a place of clarity.

Next, the victim asks themself:

What is being asked for?
How was the request made?
How did the person react when they didn’t get what they wanted immediately?

It is vital to take some time to reflect on how they feel about the situation, potentially capturing thoughts on paper.

3. Make a decision

Having taken time out, the victim can decide whether to comply with the request or not based on their own needs and wants.

Compliance is not a defeat so long as the victim decides on what they are and are not willing to do. Equally, they can respond with conditions that must be met now or in the future or explain why this doesn’t work right now for them.

Such a decision should be presented without defensiveness, along with how it makes the victim feel. It can be combined with setting some clear boundaries and ground rules.

11 Relevant Worksheets

Emotional blackmailers (and even their victims) can be unclear on how to form and maintain healthy relationships. It is helpful to begin by letting clients recognize their own and others’ emotions and learn how to manage their behavior and reactions.

The following helpful worksheets explore how to identify and regulate emotions:

4 Emotional Blackmail Quotes

While a great deal has been written about emotional blackmail, the following quotes are four of our favorites taken from Forward’s (1997) groundbreaking book.

Emotional blackmail is a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten, either directly or indirectly, to punish us if we don’t do what they want.

Forward, 1997, p. 4

Our blackmailers make it nearly impossible to see how they’re manipulating us at first, because they lay down a thick fog that obscures their actions.

Forward, 1997, p. 5

There’s no way of knowing how the other person will respond until you express your feelings and define the limits you need to set in your relationship.

Forward, 1997, p. 240