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Grooming vs Manipulation

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LittleBigFoot

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What exactly is grooming vs just straight up manipulation?

I was searching around cause of some of my own shit that happened in my 20s and I guess I’m just confused because I always thought it was just straight manipulation to gain my trust but then as I’m reading I’m wondering if it was actually grooming? But I always considered grooming to be a childhood thing. Cause isn’t grooming more geared to gaining trust (through manipulation of course), and “teaching” like becoming that mentor or hero person for the victim?

Sorry if this is a bit convoluted, I’m just trying to make sense of a really toxic and shitty situation. But I was an adult so couldn’t really be “taught” anymore so I was just manipulated right? I suppose it ultimately doesn’t matter what it was but I have a thing for keeping the right words for the right situations.
 
I was groomed by a man at college. I don't think the word "grooming" just applies to children. I'm not just angry at him. I'm angry at myself for letting things happen although eventually I stopped it. I was a very vulnerable young man.
 
I was groomed by a man at college. I don't think the word "grooming" just applies to children. I'm not just angry at him. I'm angry at myself for letting things happen although eventually I stopped it. I was a very vulnerable young man.

So you see grooming defined by your reaction to it?
I just feel like grooming is a far more involved process and children are obviously susceptible to that but I’m not sure an adult would be. Unless you had grooming as a kid then I could see that adult being easier to be manipulated. I don’t know, I just feel like it’s different processes but not sure how to work that out in my brain.
 
What exactly is grooming vs just straight up manipulation?
i would use manipuletion as an umbrella term-grooming is a form of manipulation that involves favor and posetive attention and gifts and herding toward the behaviers they are looking to elicit from you.

i do not think it is limited to just child hood but i do agree it can get blurry in adult hood. i've been groomed as both a child and an adult and they were all very similer things.

the key factor of both of those things was that i was vulnerable to being groomed in both scenarios-i didn't have the skills to understand what was happening to me, and i was easy to ply with positive attention.
 
i would use manipuletion as an umbrella term-grooming is a form of manipulation.
Ya I guess that makes sense. I guess my thing is grooming feels like I wouldn’t have any control of the situation because I’m too young to know better. But manipulation implies I could have known or stopped it or had some level of culpability, but it seems to be used interchangeably.
 
So then, is there even a difference between the two?
i would say there isn't. grooming is a form of manipulation, in this instence manipuletion being an umbrella term. grooming itself does have a specefic defition

but it would be like asking if there is a difference between primates and humans. they both have different definitions but they are not inherently different-a human is a form of primate.
 
but it seems to be used interchangeably.
I think some people use them interchangeably but I do see a difference n think in majority of cases (not all) children can be groomed, adults manipulated in other ways, but maybe that's due to my own issues. N neither is better or worse but I agree that there is a difference.

I dunno what thread you read obv but I had a thread forever ago that briefly delved on that topic. N I'm probably no more sure now than back then. So I think yeh there's a difference. But I cannot tell for definite what it is other than I see grooming as someone being manipulated into agreement with abuse n manipulation more acknowledging it's bad but other aspects of the relationship make the person feel unable to tell.

A topic that confuses the hell outta me. So sorry if it's a bit disjointed.
 
Half of me thinks they are the same thing.

The other half of me thinks: a victim is groomed.
And people who could have protected that victim are manipulated to look the other way/not see what is happening.

What makes you ask about a difference?
 
So this shows what I view as grooming which seems geared toward children. With adults I think in terms of the DV cycle where you have a honeymoon period where manipulation occurs but the adult (victim) is choosing to ignore red flags and choosing to see the good things and then of course the other phases of the DV cycle occur and then come back to the honeymoon phase where again the adult victim ignores red flags and previous behavior. But as an adult you *know* that red flags exist and should be paid attention to but for whatever personal reasons (and we all have them) we ignore the bad phases and love the honeymoon phase.

But grooming, like in that link, seems like a very different process of being a trusted person to a child who then manipulates and uses that trust to gain more and convince the child that this is the right/proper/grown up way and it’s our secret and all that.

So with all that it seems like they can’t be used interchangeably and I’m always bugged by harmful language when something else is meant.

And just for clarification none of this is meant to be victim blaming, I do have plenty of past situations that I’m trying to like categorize and understand.

What makes you ask about a difference?

Because I don’t want to take on words that don’t apply to me. Like when people say they got PTSD from tripping on the sidewalk or something else super common/mundane. Nothing angers me more lol, so I don’t want to look at my past and use other people’s terms for something that doesn’t deserve that label. If that makes sense.
 
With adults I think in terms of the DV cycle where you have a honeymoon period where manipulation occurs but the adult (victim) is choosing to ignore red flags and choosing to see the good things
so this would be seperate to grooming altogether in my experience. this would occur within the context of an equal reletionship whereas grooming tend to occur within an unequal relationship.

So with all that it seems like they can’t be used interchangeably and I’m always bugged by harmful language when something else is meant.
for what you are using together those two things would not be used interchangebly because they are not describing the same thing. dv vs grooming are two very different relational dynamics.

this is why you often see grooming applied to children-because children are usually weaker within a power dynamic.

but you can also have it occurring within for example that you could hear of things like hollywood record producers and the like. and a lot of these people are young adults. but they are still dealing with a power dynamic (like s3 just described.)

and which i suppose it can occur in a dv situation but the dynamics in my experience are different anyway-primarily that one partner is severely disadvantaged in some way.
 
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