How does culture inform 'emotional blackmail'?

Culturally Enough. is a community of anyone who straddles more than one culture. All are welcome regardless of age, gender, race, culture, sexuality, and so on. I am so pleased you are here. Welcome home.

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I have a secret. Ever since I was a little girl I have been hyper aware of my parent’s mortality. A part of this is because I have distinct memories of my dad talking about death — or when he would die — and a part of this is because my parents consistently harp on their mortality as a way to measure their own success, relationship happiness, and exert their power as parents. Over the years, my general anxiety has often manifested or resulted in me obsessing over, and worrying over, my parents dying.

It’s something I have had to explore in my own therapy over the years, and something that I have had to unravel to truly understand how it drives my own behaviors, emotions, and reactions to other (more on this next week).

The thing is, emotional blackmail — an ugly and uncomfortable label for many of us — is an experience that is common in our community. Last week, 250 of you responded to my poll asking if your parents/relatives engaged in emotional blackmail and 67% said yes, while 22% said yes in the past but not currently.

But WHY do our parents or relatives emotionally blackmail us?

Some common reasons may be:

• to (re)gain control

• to distract and avoid

• to exert power/maintain power dynamics

• because of a lack of trust in our ability to make decisions

• because of regret or jealousy they feel (related or unrelated to us)

• because of a fear of losing face

• to encourage children to consider the needs of others in the group and promote collectivistic values

• emotional immaturity

• an inability to handle their own stress

I want to expand on the last two, because they are often the root of the other reasons, as well. They also can encompass reasons that may not be intentional or understood within our families or communities.

When our parents are driven by a survivor mentality — maybe because of their own immigration or acculturation struggles, or because of their own marital or career conflict— they may be more likely to neglect their kids. In fact, parental stress is a significant contributor to child maltreatment, or psychological aggression, physical assault, and neglect.

Another common, and often unintentional, reason our parents may engage in emotional blackmail is emotional immaturity. There’s so much to unpack here, and maybe we will cover this as a monthly theme, but I want to focus on emotional immaturity as it relates to emotional blackmail.

I have always hypothesized that many immigrant parents have an arrested development — or an age in which they have stopped emotionally maturing due to other life experiences (early age of marriage, caregiver roles, war, genocide, poverty, etc). This can lead them to lack the tools and understanding for healthy communication, self-regulation of their own emotions, tolerating discomfort, and engaging in conflict resolution. Often, emotionally immature people are impulsive, manipulative, unpredictable, unable to tune into our needs and feelings, serving and preoccupied with their own feelings.

Here’s the thing: whether or not they know they are hurting you doesn’t matter. Just because they may not know better doesn’t mean the impact isn’t there. Let’s dig into that even deeper.

How does culture play into ‘emotional blackmail’?

There are different cultural narratives and norms that may contribute to certain types of emotional blackmail or parenting psychological control. But before I share some of these along with research I found, I want to be clear that parental interference is not always a sign of emotional blackmail.

Context matters. Culture matters. Parental behaviors may be experienced in different ways by different people because these folks may ascribe different meanings to behaviors due to their cultural or familial values. Even more, what is is being controlled by parents may differ between cultures, as will how the parents are engaging in psychological control or emotional blackmail.

With that said, controlling parenting, or parents who pressure their children to think, behave, or feel in particular ways, is often more common in Eastern societies than Western societies.

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Keep reading for:

- Research on how certain emotional blackmail and parenting control behaviors are more common in different cultures

- Specific examples of how cultural values can inform our understanding — and tolerance — of emotional blackmail

- How children of immigrants, specifically, may struggle with the concept of emotional blackmail

- Details for our next live community meetup on Zoom in a couple weeks

- If you sign up as a paid subscriber, you also get next week’s post with tips on healing from emotional blackmail

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