How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 128

25. Feigning innocence, feigning confusion or “playing dumb”:
Manipulators try to suggest that any harm done was unintentional or that they did not do something
that they were accused of. Feigning ignorance is an effective tactic that manipulates the person
confronting the behavior into having doubts about the legitimacy of the issue they’re trying to bring to
the other person’s attention and questioning their own judgment (and possibly their own sanity)..
Many times, when your gut is telling you that you’re being taken advantage of, played for a fool, or
simply being mistreated, and you confront a disordered character about it, they’ll act like they have no
idea what you’re talking about. They may put on a look of surprise or indignation and pretend to be
totally unaware and in the dark. Sometimes, when you have received information from a reliable
source about something you suspect they’ve been doing, they’ll pretend they have no earthly idea
where anyone could have come up with such an idea about them. Feigning ignorance is an effective
tactic that manipulates the person confronting the behavior into having doubts about the legitimacy of
the issue they’re trying to bring to the other person’s attention. It invites them to see themselves as a
false accuser and victimizer, instead of being the victim of the disordered character’s malicious
behavior.
The technique of feigning ignorance often goes hand in hand with the tactic of feigning innocence.
When disordered characters use this technique they will either simply act like (or loudly protest) that
they have done nothing wrong and have nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of. If there’s no way
they can deny doing something you can prove they did, then they might claim that they had no
malicious intent and that any harm that came of what they did was unintended. This tactic serves the
purpose of obscuring the true character of their actions.
I advise people who want to empower themselves in their potential dealings with manipulators to
“judge actions, not intentions.”
Feigning ignorance and innocence are effective ways to deny malevolent intention. They’re effective
tactics, especially when used on neurotic individuals, for several reasons.
First, when the victimizer denies malevolent intention, and appears innocent, the person confronting
the problem behavior begins to feel uncomfortable in the role of unfair accuser and begins to
misperceive who occupies the victimizer and victim positions. If the manipulator can make you feel
bad for indicting him, he’s half way home to successfully conning and manipulating you.
Second, neurotics are prone to judging intentions as opposed to actions. They want to think of most
people as good and kind and hate to think that people really harbor malevolent intentions. What’s
more, they hate to think of themselves as ever acting unfairly or in a manner that brings harm to others.
So, when the disordered character has them thinking F