If we accept the premise that I have stated, that emotional blackmail it exists and is carried out towards adults and towards children, and that is a form of psychological violence, so we must ask what are its consequences. And is that verbal abuse is also violence.
Direct consequences of emotional blackmail
When you turn to emotional blackmail It is accompanied by communicative expressions that range from cries to tears, complaints, threats of abandonment or suffering, of loss of love. The objective, conscious or unconscious, is to make the victim modify his behavior and feel guilty or fearful for the person he loves.
That is, emotional blackmail has direct consequences: the victim feels fear, feels humiliated, feels guilty and with low self-esteem. Nobody wants to make their children feel that way and less for their cause. In addition, surely, immediate obedience can be achieved, but the reason for obedience is not conviction, but fear. Nor does anyone want their children to behave well out of fear.
If we resort to fear it is because we have no other tools, but we can learn to communicate more positively and empathically.
Medium and long term consequences
Perhaps, in addition to the insane relationship that sustains the usual emotional blackmail, we forget their medium and long term consequences. Children learn from their parents, what they do more than what they say. Suffering from blackmail can influence the future of children and their way of relating to other people.
If a father threatens and blackmails the child internalizes, even if he suffers, that this is legitimate and is a way of expressing affection or achieving the goals, just as when his parents hit them they assume that physical violence towards the weakest is a way legitimate to achieve goals.
If emotional blackmail is commonplace, the victim can internalize it so much that it is no longer necessary to do so openly. One look, especially in public, is enough for the victim to give in fear of the spectacle and public humiliation. It is controlled from within and yields without a fight, but the damage, in these cases, is that it has been repeated so many times that the spring jumps, like when we use conductivism to educate a dog, it is not necessary to reach the threat because the victim He has assumed his role and is victimized without the need for the external expression of the threat.
The boy has discovered learned helplessness and that mechanism can condition their future relationships, because the language of the threat and reaction are internalized and repeated mechanically, towards their parents and perhaps, towards others that threaten them in the future.
The victim as a blackmailer
These children may be doomed, if they do not have enormous inner strength, to replicate emotional blackmail in your environment. No, I do not mean the baby who cries because he needs to be cuddled, or the child who is afraid at night and claims his parents by his side, nor the one who has a tantrum that is, more than blackmail, an emotional overflow. That is not blackmail.
I mean the children who, at school, manipulate and pressure their peersThey make them bully, humiliate them, make fun of them or coerce them by threatening to reveal shameful secrets.
Later, when they are adults, they can use emotional blackmail to interact with other people, with their partners or with their own children, or at work, because they have grown up discovering that it can be used freely, so, to get rid of that reflex , you will need a deep personal work of growth and learning in other ways to express dissatisfaction.
That does not mean that we are condemned to repeat our parents' mistakes, but that, in order to free ourselves, we must work hard, recognize that they did it wrong even if they loved us, and that we can do it differently.
Or even, and that does happen, to those who blackmail their parents, telling them that if they do not buy something they will not want them, although, in this case, I continue to put myself on the side of the child, because they, many times, express intense feelings incorrectly, but only if we have the moral authority of not To do that we can never consider reference figures that explain to them, without punishment or shouting, that this is not the way to express unhappiness.
Positive communication
And it is that in healthy families authority is earned by example and decisions, within each one's capacity, are negotiated and spoken. Talking about the rules and limits, listening to what everyone has to say, is a good basis for family communication, although it is clear that parents can make decisions. If things are spoken and, above all, explained and consistent, the child will understand better and will not feel a slave who owes blind obedience, at the risk of punishment, to adults.
Children will not always meet the standards. The first thing we should do is to be able to question our own rules to understand if they are consistent, fair and adequate for the child's evolutionary moment. Then, after a self-critical reflection, if the rules, which should include that violence is not a way of relating to other people, are of the age they are, if the child violates them, we must resort to other strategies that are not punishments , blows, screams or emotional blackmail.
What is bad towards an adult is bad towards a child
Emotional blackmail towards children It is something so common that it is hard for us to recognize it. I began these articles with clear examples of how one adult blackmails another.
If our partner told us that he would not love us if we do not hurry to get dressed and go to work, if we do not eat everything he has cooked until we leave a crumb means that we do not want him, if he told us that or we are complacent , either moody or kind or will leave with the neighbor of the fifth, or that the neighbor of the fifth is a better wife than us because she does everything her husband asks, we might realize that there is something that does not work well and, surely, We would send our couple for a walk.
According. But if it is a child whose parents tell him that they will not want him if he is late to school, that not eating everything means that he is not a good son and makes them suffer for his lack of consideration if he leaves something on the plate, if they compare him to the boy in the famous neighbor, he is in the fifth grade if they are not obedient, if they are in a bad mood, if they cry or fight, if, finally, they say they will change him for that child, or they will call the police that they put them in jail or that they will run out of gifts because they are bad children, seems to be normal, acceptable, or, at least, not so serious if the same threats are made against an adult. What is bad towards an adult is bad towards a child.
And it is worse because, by teaching them that we do it, we teach them to do it and to repeat it in the future with their children, setting them as a link in emotional violence as a form of family relationship. I think it is time to move forward and learn to recognize and refuse to use emotional blackmail towards our children.
