Police Psychology:  Emotional Extortion

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

A baby cries in her bed.  The parents run in and comfort her.  She cries again, and they comfort her again.  She never experiences crying alone because when she cries – she is comforted.  The parents may even stay in her room or move her to their room to make sure she is comfortable and doesn’t cry.  The parents do so to be good parents and it is sort of common.  After a while, the parents say (or their doctor tells them) let her cry and she will learn she isn’t going to be comforted every time.  The crying pains them, but they do it and eventually the child learns to fall asleep without crying.  But, maybe the parents never let the child be alone and when she is a toddler she throws a tantrum, or when she is a pre-teen she throws an emotional fit and the parents come running to comfort her.  They are locked into and controlled by their child by simply being a good parent.  They are trying to keep their child calm and steady, making sure they don’t have too many negative emotions or maybe just trying to keep calm in their own life.  This is one of many ways Emotional Extortion starts and it is painful when you are on the wrong side of it.

Now, given the Aumiller rule of “few things have a unitary cause,” this isn’t the only way for Emotional Extortion to start.  Basically, when a person gets emotional and causes others to acquiesce, and it happens repeatedly, over and over again, that is Emotional Extortion.  So, the parents who want to keep their kids calm or make it so they don’t get embarrassed by a tantrum is one way it happens, but it happens adult to adult as well.  The guy who doesn’t want to hear his wife’s tirade for being home late or because he didn’t do something the way she wanted, that is Emotional Extortion.  If he changes his behaviors, it is Emotional Extortion.  The wife that tires to not upset her husband because he goes into an anger rage and thus she changes her behavior, that is emotional extortion.  The key is that when you change your behavior to keep the other person’s emotions in check and it happens repeatedly – those are the factors that make it Emotional Extortion.

How does this happen?  Basically, there are some people that get emotional very quickly and get rather extreme in their emotions.  They tend to hit things and break things, or just make a mess of everything when they are emotional.  There are others that tend to hold in their emotions and back away from confrontation in any way that they can.  Mix them together and you have the grounds for Emotional Extortion.  Some would say these problems are gender-based, some would say they are based on ancestry, or what region of Europe or Asia you are from.  Germans are stoic, Sicilians are emotional, women tend to be more emotional than men, men tend to be angrier, etc. etc.  There something to both of these arguments that might lead to tendencies, but I tend to go with nothing is totally nature and nothing is totally nurture.  Life is an interaction of many factors.

So, let’s say after a tired day of work for 14 hours you come home and you just don’t know what to expect.  Are you going to smashed in the mouth with the problems of the day, or the kids homework that you have to do with them?  Do you stand outside not knowing what to expect and dreading the worst?  Do you have to psych yourself up for an argument or a fight when you open the door?  Do you have to calm yourself down from an anxiety attack because you don’t know if there is a lion or a kitten behind the door?  Hey surprise, you are Emotionally Extorted!

Now how did you get to this point?  First, you probably had signs for many years that you ignored.  Little problems became huge, a lack of stress tolerance, or any other myriad of signs that trouble was brewing.  You probably could have left much sooner before it got as bad as it is now.  But you thought you could make it better.   NAAAAAAHHH!  People get worse as they age, not better, unless they do something to examine it and admit it openly.  What else did you do – well at the point you recognized it you didn’t lay down the law and accept the tirade that comes sometimes when you state the obvious.  You didn’t say “look, I am not going to handle the screaming at me, so I am going away for a while (or forever).”  Instead, you just pacified, and pacified, and now look where you are.  Emotionally Extorted worried more about someone else’s emotions than your own.  Emotional Extortion traps you slowly, but man is it painful.  And it shortens your life.  It raises your stress levels to such heights that you don’t really care if the end is near.  The things we do to each other are amazing sometimes.

Emotional Extortion is common in divorce.  It is common in internal investigations where you could lose your job or are being accused of something.  It is common in court cases, in fact many lawyers I talk to say the biggest problems they have is keeping a client from going off the deep end while the opposing lawyer is playing a game.  It’s is common in teenagers.  Have you noticed that it is common in a lot of situations that lead people toward suicide?  You see, it creates a lot of desperation and that is the major factor in suicide.

Now the unlikable part.  How do you fix it?

First place you are not going to fix it so don’t ask it that way.  If you are getting Emotionally Extorted, you are in for a series of tirades upfront or on the back-end.  If it is few and far between, you might want to live with it.  If not, and it is happening often, you must take other measures.  Tell them when they are calm that being yelled at and emotionally punched around is cruel to you and must stop.  They sell little tape recorders that you can wear over your neck and no one would even know it is there.  Put one on because Emotional Extorters tend to get you in trouble in by your reactions.  Tell the person to go calm down so you can talk about the problem.  Don’t get drawn in, but don’t let the tirade go on.  If it starts to get out of control, tell them you will leave if they don’t leave.  If they touch you, you must contact someone to control them.  Each of these actions will bring another tirade, but do not try to change them while they are overly angry.  When the Emotional Extortion is over see if you can work with them on fixing the problem, and if not, or if they continue to deny it, plan an exit strategy.  Emotional Extortion should never be a regular occurrence in your life or anyone’s life for that matter.  Extorters need to be left alone, and many are.

So be aware of the Emotional Extortion in your life and get control of it.

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