When Pleasant Words Hide Harmful Intentions
How to identify flattery in an abusive environment.
Flattery exploits our normal and healthy need to form authentic loving connections with others. Flattery can be used as a tactic in most any social interaction in which the flatterer wants something from another. It’s an effective tactic of coercion. You think of the flatterer in a more positive way because they’ve caused you to feel better about yourself, which enhances the likelihood that you’ll comply with their agenda for you. Politicians might flatter potential voters. Employers might flatter employees to artificially boost morale and production. Clergy might flatter their congregation to coerce tithes. A leader might use flattery in response to criticism to disarm and indirectly shame the critics. A sexual predator might use flattery to groom a targeted person.
Usually the flattery is directed at something important to the recipient and delivered in a manner that doesn’t seem outlandish enough for it to be clearly identified or confronted.
In my work and research, most of the flattery I come across is in the context of an abusive relationship in which an abuser uses flattery to control a victimized person, and so that will be the focus of the rest of this post.
An abusive person sometimes delivers flattery in a veiled or oblique manner because the flatterer isn’t in a position to be able to be as explicit as they’d like. They are testing the boundaries. It becomes a kind of allusive dance where the flatterer can easily pretend as if a boundary hasn’t been crossed or deny having knowingly crossed a boundary when confronted. As time goes on, the flatterer might start redefining those boundaries, slowly moving the fences in ways that afford the flatterer more freedom to impose themselves on a targeted individual. This is true of many types of grooming tactics.
Boundary-shifting flattery is captured a line from this report of a youth pastor who pled guilty to 7 felony counts of child sexual assault and received a five-year prison sentence (now released due to COVID after serving 2.5 years). The grooming progressed “little by little” and included remarks like “You’re special to me.”
This report tells more of the survivors’ stories and how they were groomed. One survivor described feeling confused that a married youth pastored “flattered” her in his communication. Words are powerful and the power of those words is greatly increased when they are misused by a person who is in a position of trust to coerce a person who is in a position of wanting or needing to trust.
Here are 9 characteristics of flattery that distinguish it from authentic expressions of love.
Flattery mixes exaggerations and untruths with compliments. Certain expressions might make you feel uncomfortable because you find that the statements are a bit “over the top” and you aren’t sure how to respond. A common example is when the flatterer tells you how special and exemplary you are without actually knowing you well enough to determine that - needlessly comparing you to others in a way that is intended to make you feel unique.
Flattery is inherently selfish. Flattery is given to get something from you - like compliance - so it might feel like nets are being laid around you. The flatterer, for instance, compliments you on Monday knowing that might increase the likelihood you’ll say yes to a favor the flatterer plans on requesting from you on Tuesday. You are at a disadvantage because you are unaware of the hidden agenda behind the compliment.
Flattery is often not in keeping with how well the flatterer knows you. The words sound pleasant but they lack weight and meaning because they are not the result of any significant effort over time to get to know you. You get the sense that the flatterer could say such things to just about anyone.
Because they use compliments like lines from a learned script, you might even discover that they throw out the same compliments to different people - meaning you aren’t actually all that special to them - you’re just the next person to walk into a trap that’s keeps being reset for the next target.
Another indicator that flattery is insincere is how the person responds when flattery isn’t received or returned. If you are made to feel guilty for not responding in kind, or accused of being ungrateful, then the former praise was likely insincere.
Flattery sometimes takes the form of innuendo, whispered remarks, non-verbal expressions, and other indirect forms of communication that deliver an intended message in a kind of coded or secretive manner.
Flattery is given intermittently. It might be offered in a kind of cyclical manner, perhaps following criticism or harsh treatment, in an effort to redefine the image you have of the abusive person. They may feel exposed, ashamed, or be concerned that you’ll become non-compliant, so they flatter you to repair and maintain the image they want you to have of them.
Flattering words end up coexisting with crippling fears. The charming flatterer intent on using you for their own benefit is a smuggler of fear. Hidden beneath the flattering words are coercive messages subtly telling you that non-compliance may result in harm instead of charm. This can be a confusing experience as you struggle to reconcile the charm you hear with the fear you feel. This keeps you trapped with a person whose words might be as smooth as butter, but war is in their heart.1 They desire to plunder you, not reward you, and you are unsure of how to escape it.
Flattery is often accompanied by other types of coercive and manipulative tactics. For instance, you may observe that the person flatters you while demeaning others behind their back. Some tactics, like threats and intimidation, may not emerge until later. This is why flattery is often identified in hindsight as you lack back on prior interactions and seek to make sense of the abuse.
Based on these characteristics, here is a set of questions that might be helpful to ask when you think you might be targeted by flattery.
Is the person complimenting you in ways that seem fabricated, exaggerated, or excessive?
Is the flattery connected to demands or requests that are being made of you?
Do you feel pressure to extend flattery in return?
Do you only hear flattering words intermittently, such as after a period of being mistreated or before being asked to comply with a demand or request?
Are you afraid of how the person will respond if you do not comply with requests or reciprocate the flattery?
Does the flattery cause you confusion because you are unsure of what is being communicated or how you are supposed to receive it?
Is the person flattering you also engaging in self-flattery? In other words, is the attention they give to you short-lived and quickly replaced with the attention they place on themselves?
Is the flattery accompanied by other manipulative and coercive behaviors?
Detecting and resisting flattery isn’t just an individual effort. A community must be able to protect against, spot, and confront grooming tactics if such tactics are ever going to be rendered ineffective at the level of the individual. This starts with leadership. Those who are put in positions of trust and authority must speak truthfully and use their power for the good of others. For instance, if a community is led by a narcissistic and self-promoting smooth talker who tells loyal followers that they too are special, premier, and uniquely better than the rest, then a dangerous culture of fandom emerges where cheerleaders are rewarded and dissenters are punished. Flattery becomes embedded in the culture and as a result it becomes difficult for anyone to interject a sincere expression of truth. The shunning of anything other than flattery creates blind spots as people are hesitant to speak criticism. The ever-breeding flattery crowds out dissension, and dissension in any community is an important and necessary safeguard against abuse. The abusive leader will then renegotiate boundaries when no policy or person is in a position to enforce those boundaries.
The more flattery, and other grooming tactics, becomes normalized within the larger culture, the more difficult it becomes to discern when a trap is being laid for an individual within that culture, and the less likely a targeted person is going to be believed and helped when reporting grooming behaviors to those within the community. There have been countless times when a perpetrator has used flattery to groom a targeted person. Then when the abuse is brought to light, many rally to defend the perpetrator on the basis of that niceness. The behaviors used to groom for abuse are offered as evidence of innocence because they are part of a culture formed around toxic and deceptive positivity.
It’s important that we give and receive encouragement and affirmation - but those words carry great power. And because they are powerful, they need to be truthful and sincere, not deceptive and coercive. False praise used to manipulate others is worse than no praise at all.
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Psalm 55:21