# 48. Emotional manipulation ## 48.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 48.5.14. Play Victim Playing the victim role ("poor me"): The manipulator portrays themselves as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's action in order to gain pity, sympathy or compassion and thus get something they want from the listener. Caring and conscientious people are moved by suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on their sympathy to get their cooperation. - **Play Victim: You're Sick, I'm dying:** This is an extreme variant of the "Play Victim" method. Emotional manipulators will try to make themselves look more of a victim than their victim. They crave attention and when their victim starts to lose interest, the manipulator acts up by playing victim in a more extreme way to regain the attention. - **Play Victim: Vulnerability:** This is a variant on the basic play victim method. It involves pretending to be vulnerable in some way to control a victim: "I don't know what I would do if you left me" etc.