Pulling the Rug

Psychological Abuse and Manipulation Tactic 

"Pulling the Rug" is an intricate power and control siege of the perpetrator by a unknowing victim. 

 

Pulling the Rug is a covert abuse tactic used to disintegrate, confuse and control the target without their knowledge, and with the target's naive cooperation. The tactic uses an intricate manipulation matrix of guilt, fantasy and shame triggers to render the target powerless, and to take over the solar plexus.  

 

Rug Pulling involves building fantasies using key words and phrases as well as taking specific actions that (if resolved) meet the unmet needs and deep emotional wounds in the target. These words, actions, behaviors work within the target to quickly dissolve defenses and give quick access to deep recesses of the psyche.   

 

Pulling the Rug occurs when someone builds up your expectations and abruptly (or subtly) begins to pull the rug away in an attempt to trigger your sense of shame and self doubt, ie: control your emotions and cause you to feel pain.

This is a power play that is part of the push/pull dynamic, but with much more sinister motives of the perpetrator and dire consequences to the victim.

Pulling the Rug involves engaging the attachment system of another person through deceptively building up false hopes, making false promises, and then, unilaterally deconstructing the attachment through off-handed comments, intermittent silence and generalized failure to deliver.

The "Pulling the Rug" process involves six distinct parts

 

1. Setting the Rug - Love Bombing - Using words and phrases and actions that solve deep inner need that lays wounded and dormant in the target. The love bombing is the bait that leads the victim into the trance of the fantasy that their needs of external validation (impossible to meet externally) will finally be met and resolved through the actions (false and deceptive promises, word salad) of the Manipulator. 

2. Building on the Rug - The Rug Giver (RG) starts to build fantasies around the Rug Puller (RP) who is doing the love bombing. The RG starts making future plans, raising expectations and relying on the RP's continued contribution to the game. The RP builds his or her life, thoughts, feelings, behaviors and in extreme cases, gives money and resources to the RP.

 

3. Slow Pull - Slowly stop using said phrases, making said promises, or leading, guiding directing toward original objective to meet said need. This process involves intricate, covert positioning by the abuser that is often undetected by others, including the victim. Slight-of-hand tactics include: devaluing, diminishing, shaming, disrespecting and ignoring. The process involves intermittent reward / punishment, thus making the victim feel addicted to the RP. Devaulation Phase.

4. Rip - When the rug is completely ripped away suddenly, unexpectedly, leaving the victim dangling, shattered on the floor with a broken heart and broken dreams. This is the discard stage.

 

5.  Protest of Victim - Victim protests the behavior through a variety of means, only to be left with a hand full of ashes. The victim finds that there is no rug at all, and it was their own (perceived) foolishness that led to the whole debacle, and the process begins again.  

6. Replacing the Rug - The rug is replaced again and again, for as long as the victim will tolerate the behavior and fall prey to the game. 

Pulling the Rug requires two participants. There is the Rug Giver and Rug Puller. The Rug Giver gives the Puller the access through lack of awareness and deep inner wounds and unmet needs. 

The Rug Giver holds the power that the Rug Puller wants. If the Rug Giver wants to get out of the Gordian Knot of the game, then he or she must simply refuse to take the bait. The seductive bait is an intoxicating elixir of serotonin given in the form of deceptive emotional connection through false promises, soothing word salads and pretense. In more extensive, enduring cases, actions of self sacrifice may be taken by the Rug Puller, in anticipation for the ultimate sadistic tug and final pull of the entire rug, leaving the contents placed atop in shambles. 

The game repeats ad infinitum, until the Rug Giver wakes up and sets boundaries, or the Rug Puller finds another target. The game is always a mystery, hidden under a cloak of covert possibilities.