Unmasking Manipulation in Toxic RelationshipsUnmasking Manipulation in Toxic Relationships
A Little Help For Our Friends
Dr Kibby McMahon unpacks what manipulation looks like in close relationships, especially where BPD, NPD and intense emotions are present. She explains common tactics, questions stereotypes about personality disorders, and offers practical ways to spot control and strengthen your own decision-making.
1:01:23•4 Jun 2026
Unmasking Manipulation: Spotting Toxic Tactics and Taking Your Power Back
Episode Overview
- Manipulation is framed as influencing another person’s emotions to steer their decisions, especially when there is a power imbalance.
- Common tactics include gaslighting, monitoring and isolation, humiliation, guilt-tripping, love withdrawal and threats to safety or financial security.
- Research discussed suggests that people with borderline personality disorder are often not intentionally manipulative but are acting from intense emotion and poor communication skills.
- Narcissistic personality disorder is more closely tied to exploitation, coercive control and a drive to maintain power over others.
- Key strategies to resist manipulation include recognising patterns, consciously weighing pros and cons, taking space, and seeking outside perspectives for a reality check.
“Manipulation is influencing someone's emotions in order to make them make a decision and making one decision seem more or less pleasurable than the other.”
How do people protect their sanity in toxic relationships? This episode of **A Little Help For Our Friends** zooms in on manipulation, especially in relationships where mental health issues such as borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), depression, trauma, or anxiety are in the mix. Psychologist Dr Kibby McMahon breaks down what manipulation actually is, why it feels so violating, and why it’s more common than many people realise.
She unpacks research definitions, from guilt-tripping and gaslighting to coercive control, and shows how tactics like reality distortion, monitoring, humiliation, love withdrawal and financial threats can slowly chip away at someone’s sense of choice and autonomy. You’ll hear memorable examples ranging from Tom Sawyer’s fence “trick”, to Shakespeare’s *Othello*, to a deeply personal story where Kibby describes being pressured into a sexual act by a boyfriend threatening self-harm.
These moments bring the theory down to earth and help you recognise similar patterns in your own life or in a friend’s. Kibby also tackles a big myth head‑on: that people with BPD are inherently manipulative. Drawing on research and clinical experience, she suggests that many are acting from intense emotion and poor skills in asking directly for what they need, rather than plotting to harm others.
Narcissistic personality disorder, on the other hand, is more clearly linked to gaining and keeping power through exploitation and control. For anyone who has ever said yes when every part of them wanted to say no, there’s practical help here. Kibby shares strategies to spot manipulation “in the moment”, strengthen your own decision-making (hello, pros and cons lists), and use distance and outside perspectives to get a clearer view of what’s really going on.
If you’ve been doubting your reality or feeling like a puppet in someone else’s drama, this conversation might be the nudge you need to start taking your power back. Who in your life might need to hear this too?
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