I bet you are able to remember those blackmail, seemingly harmless, in your childhood. "Do you not love me?", "If you really loved me you wouldn't do it," "You wouldn't be so bad if you loved me," "If you obey me, I will love you, but if you disobey me, I will not love you anymore" ...
None of us are free to use this emotional blackmail with children , especially if we suffer it comes out almost automatically.
All that is emotional blackmail. It is hard to recognize if the victims are children, we tend to make it invisible, but its harmful effect is no different than if the victim were our partner or a friend. It is actually more harmful because the child's dependence on us is total.
When we put a condition on love for our children we make them feel very ugly things: that we will only want them if they are or do what we want them to do, that we do not want them if they are wrong, that we do not want them if they are the way they are. Emotional blackmail is a form of violence.
We teach them that our love and respect is bought with submission; that love and respect is bought with submission. We must avoid emotional blackmails to our children. We must be aware that the consequences of emotional blackmail range from learned helplessness to teaching that it is a valid way of manipulating the other.
Possibly we have all used the emotional blackmail. It is automatic, a form of erroneous communication learned in our own childhood. But, although it seems that for that reason it is almost impossible to stop, the opposite is true, changing is simple.
In the next topic we will try to explain how to recognize and overcome the use of emotional blackmail towards children. You will see how it is possible.
