Everyone tells you what to do and what is best for you. Nobody wants you to find your own answers. They want you to create theirs.
Let me guess, you want me to create yours.
No, I want you to stop receiving information from outside yourself and start receiving it from within. People are afraid of what they have inside, but in reality it is the only place where they will find what they need.
This dialogue of the film "The Peaceful Warrior" shows us the way to achieve authentic inner peace, that which is only achieved when we know who we are, what we want and we are convinced of it. That kind of peace is reached when we develop a strong "I".
The 2 mechanisms of manipulation to which we are all vulnerable
Wherever an interpersonal relationship is established, there is room for manipulation. This manipulation can develop more coarsely and directly through coercion or can acquire more subtle dyes, such as emotional blackmail or gaslighting.
Society, as an entity that seeks to perpetuate itself at the expense of the individuality of its members, also exercises its mechanisms of manipulation. It is not interesting to form free and self-determined people, but only people who enjoy a limited and illusory degree of freedom and who strive to seek their individuality as one who searches for a needle in a haystack, groping in the dark, which makes them vulnerable to any form of manipulation that seems to shed a little light.
In both levels, manipulation makes cam in two mechanisms that reinforce each other:
Move the internal reference points to the exterior. For the manipulation to take effect, it is necessary for the victim to assume the views of the manipulator. It is a process that occurs below the threshold of our consciousness through which we lose our internal reference points, replacing them with the one of the person who tries to manipulate us. That means we lose the ability to decide for ourselves, give up control and succumb to the threats / requests of the manipulator.
Generate self-blame Manipulation always has an emotional component, making us feel guilty. In this regard, Noam Chomsky explained: "If one addresses a person as if she were 12 years old or younger, then, because of suggestibility, she will tend, with some probability, to a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense, like that of a person 12 years of age or younger. " All manipulation attempts to circumvent reason by targeting emotions. It will be precisely the values and qualities that we are most proud of, those with which they attack us, because they are those that make an emotional resonance and "turn off" our rational brain