The key ideas

Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Susan Forward, Donna Frazier, 1997

“If you love me…” “After everything I’ve done for you…” Susan Forward shows how people close to us get their way through fear, obligation, and guilt, which she calls FOG. Six steps of blackmail, four styles of pressure, and ways to respond calmly without losing yourself or unnecessarily damaging relationships.

Who it is for

For anyone who repeatedly agrees to things they do not want, with parents, a partner, friends, or at work, and wants to understand why.

Emotional blackmail may not threaten life, but it steals one of our most precious human qualities: integrity.

What the book is about

“If you love me, don’t go.” “After everything I’ve done for you…” Such phrases rarely sound like threats. They sound like love, hurt, or exhaustion. Yet somehow you end up canceling your plans again.

American psychotherapist Susan Forward called this emotional blackmail. In her 1997 book, written with Donna Frazier, she describes how people close to us get their way through fear, obligation, and guilt, why we so often give in, and how we can respond differently.

This is the author’s model and experience of working with clients rather than a scientific classification. The book helps reveal a mechanism but diagnoses neither you nor your loved ones.

Idea 1. FOG that makes thinking difficult

Why does a sensible adult agree to something they do not want at all, only realizing it an hour after the conversation has ended?

Forward answers with one word: FOG. Each letter stands for one of three feelings: fear, obligation, and guilt. In the author’s view, a blackmailer rarely appeals to logic. They press on these three feelings, and in the fog it becomes hard to see what you want yourself.

Forward writes that our inner bearings seem to go awry in this state. A decision feels like the only possible one, although more options exist.

Your mother calls on Friday evening: “I thought you were coming. Never mind, I’ll sit alone.” You turn the car around, although you already promised your friends.

If a conversation leaves you feeling there was no choice, ask what carried more weight: the argument itself or fear, obligation, and guilt.

Read in Livria

About the author

Susan Forward is an American psychotherapist and author of popular books about difficult relationships, including Toxic Parents. Donna Frazier is the book’s coauthor.

All books by this author: Susan Forward, Donna Frazier

Terms from the book

  • emotional blackmail
  • FOG
  • Self-punishers: One of four blackmailer types in Forward’s framework: pressure through threats of self-harm. The author’s framework rather than diagnosis.
  • Nondefensive communication: A technique from the book: calm, brief responses to pressure without justifying yourself or counterattacking. The author’s advice rather than a scientifically tested method.
  • Conscious compliance: The book’s term for agreement given after pausing and reflecting, by your own decision rather than under the influence of fear, obligation, and guilt.

All terms

Similar books