Manipulation as a Power Grab: Why You Get Turned Into an Object

Manipulation isn’t a whim or an accident. It’s how life works when one person becomes a subject by turning the other into an object. The method looks not at “the bad person” but at the mechanism itself: who sets a price for whom, who holds the power to forbid, and why we so often hand that power over ourselves.

Subject and object: where power appears

In every relationship there’s a distribution: to someone I’m a subject, to someone I’m an object. That’s normal. But the moment those who were subjects toward me drop to objects, the one who rose up changes physically: “immunity changes, testosterone rises.” Power isn’t words — it’s the ability to objectify another.

“If I can forbid a person something, it means I have power.”

Prohibition is the very tool of objectification. And the most vulnerable spot is where the most essential thing is forbidden: sexuality, reproduction. “When that is forbidden, the person himself is forbidden.”

Why it works at all: they set the price, we don’t

Manipulation is possible because one side sees your price and you don’t. Then you get “used in the dark”: given something nice, while the real aim is theirs.

“The trouble is they set a price for us, and we set none for them.”

Until you understand your own flow, the manipulator values you on better terms than you value yourself. The doctor suggests measuring not abstract “income” but flow: how much “milk yield” actually comes in per day. Once you precisely know your, say, 5 liters, you stop being someone whose terms can be dictated.

A defensive reality instead of real defense

Many live as if crashes, illness and losses are “not about me, I got lucky.” That’s a defensive reality: “there isn’t even a thought of what protection was in place.” It doesn’t match the facts. And the wider the gap between this illusion and reality, the more a person is exposed to “glitches” — both mental and physical.

The doctor’s comparison is simple: a mouse in a library and a mouse in a python’s cage. It’s lean gnawing in both, but it isn’t the python’s cage. Immunity, allergies, rheumatism, cancer — these hit the one living under constant threat. “There’s no choice here. Life just does it this way.”

Total objectification: the fear that wakes you up

Defense begins not with self-soothing but with admitting: the probability can’t be excluded if it has already happened. It’s like the normal fear of falling asleep at the wheel — it doesn’t paralyze, it wakes you. When life and reality become an object you see soberly, an extra-focus appears: “it could be this way, it could be that way — we’re awake.”

Ideally, reactivity goes away — “why me? why like this?”. The fact is simply accepted. And then you can build your life differently.

You can only see it in yourself

You can’t grasp your own distortions from books — it’s an intimate process. “You won’t taste mango from a book.” Psychiatry is learned through one’s own experience, and manipulations too are first recognized in oneself. You won’t “cure” another’s distortions with a lecture, just as a drunk won’t sober up from reading.

Practice: a check before you give in

1. Name your flow. Count not “income in general” but the real “yield” — how much comes in per day/month. Until you know your price, someone else will set it.
2. Question the superiority. If a person pressures you with values and superiority, ask yourself: “If you’re so smart and have such values, why are you bothering with me?”
3. Don’t build a defensive reality. Admit it: the bad probability can’t be excluded if it has already happened. This is sobriety, not fear for its own sake.
4. Keep the distance. Distance means not allowing conditions where they can “throw the lasso” and you fall into someone else’s power.
5. Match the patterns. Look: is this “mine or not mine” — like a melody that fits or doesn’t. Don’t confuse categories, don’t pass one thing off as another.