When people ask about your family, you try to not mention him. You describe your beloved siblings and your outstanding mother in elaborate and adoring detail and you try to glide effortlessly into asking them about their family. If you’re lucky, they don’t catch it. They don’t ask “Well, what about your dad?” You never know how to answer. Even a decade later, you’re still caught off guard.
For us, the children of sociopaths, the tales of drunks and addicts and abusers are a fantasy. Granted, a disgustingly twisted one, but a fantasy nonetheless. In the “perfect” world of primetime dramas, the deadbeat dad is just trying to figure himself out. He’s trying to get clean or sober or work through his haunting past. It’s almost no one’s fault. A third-party is involved. Everyone wishes that the father had been better or stronger, but the neglect, the absence, is a product of bad, unfortunate habits. Bad habits that transform an otherwise good-hearted person.
When those kids talk about their father, there’s a clarity. “My dad is an addict. We’re stilling working out our issues.” For the kid whose father ran away, left for good, at least they can say “My father isn’t a part of my life, he left when I was (insert age).” The haunted past schtick is even used to excuse physical abuse. They provide these explanations and the conversation is quickly ended. Unless it’s a very special episode of Glee, in which case a stirring a capella rendition of “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” is sure to follow. There is a cause and there is an effect, that’s all the listener needs. The father obviously meant well, but things just didn’t work out or he’s just a shit stain of a human being. Plain and simple.
When your father is a sociopath, you don’t get to tell yourself that he loves you or that, if only things were different, he would be the perfect dad.
“Uh, yah…yah, um, my dad — um, we don’t really — he’s kind of not around.”
“Oh, does he live far away?”
“No… no, he lives in my hometown. He lives a couple miles away.”
“Oh…”
“We don’t really… get along?”
“Oh, when did your parents split?”
“About eight years ago.”
“So it’s been a while?”
“Yes…”
Their blank stares and confusion compel you to offer:
“My dad — my dad is not a good guy.”
But that isn’t quite right. It makes him sound like a criminal. It doesn’t explain a father who is there, who coached your little league teams and talks about you to everyone like he is a part of your life, and yet is almost entirely absent. Emotional absence isn’t really part of the deadbeat dad chimera. It’s not neglect, is it? It’s too grey, too touchy-feely.
You feel terrible. Thinking how much easier it would be if he had passed away. You could have made up a fantasy. You could have distilled it down to playing sports in the backyard when he wasn’t too busy with the football season and how much he could make you laugh. All of the teasing and prodding would block out the lack of connection, the disinterest that was so apparent when you opened your mouth about basically anything. There are moments now when you wish he was there to see things, to see that great play or that perfect little victory that makes your day. If he were gone, you could tell yourself he was proud of you, smiling down on you.
It could have been beautiful, a tall tale about the love that he didn’t know how to express at the time. A love that surely existed and would have been expressed if only you’d both known that time was running out. Probably something about how he didn’t get the right kind of love as a child. Something like that. Had he been given the gift of time, he would have turned things around. He would have recognized the error of his ways. But you don’t get that. Instead, everyday is another day that you simply didn’t cross his mind.
But wait, maybe you do cross his mind. Perhaps, he thinks about you everyday and all of those days coalesce into that one text message he sends every three to four months. Usually a mass text to you and your siblings on holidays. Something personal like that. Or you do cross his mind and he wonders about you, but he’s just too afraid or too busy to reach out. Perhaps this is the case. When these thoughts surface it’s important to pause and remind yourself that we children of sociopaths have a certain genetic predisposition. We create replacement realities too.
Erasing memories and generating misbeliefs are crucial parts of the process of having lived with him and now living without him. When your mother offers “he loves you as much as he’s capable” she means well. She really does. She’s just trying to help with the delusions. For a moment you want to believe it, to make it your alternate truth.
Does it make you feel any better? That thisis the extent of his capabilities? That’s it? That’s all he could come up with? True, the good-hearted person recognizes a pauper and accepts their offering when it’s far short of the listed price. $13? Sure, that’ll cover the 50. Maybe someday you will be that good-hearted person. It’s gotten better over the years or at least the pain has dulled. Maybe a few more decades and you’ll embrace those text messages. Oh, Father, hello! So good to hear from you! What have you been up to the better part of this past year?
The high road doesn’t always beckon the way it should. He’s the adult, emotional cripple or not, he walked away from a girl’s life. A girl who needed him. Why are you not allowed some anger? Yes, yes, it will eat you up inside and hurt you more than it hurts him, but you’re on your own to bring the emotion to the relationship. If proper love can’t be mustered, anger will have to do. You’re not fighting fire with fire, you’re fighting ice with fire. Isn’t that the only way it will melt? Do not look in the mirror and realize you’re rationalizing the way he does. Sometimes it feels nice to seethe. Singing along a little too loudly every time Taylor Swift warbles “a careless man’s careful daughter” gets old. Maybe someday it will be better. That day is not today.
In the end, you must not carry your mother’s well-meaning message with you. Throw it away as quickly as you can. Do not accept this level of “love.” Eventually your heart will go on and you will want to find someone to spend your life with. When you do this, do not bring this message with you. It will break you down and keep you in places you should have left. It will make you accept the unacceptable. “As much as he’s capable” is not an appropriate yardstick. Love is meant to be boundless. It is meant to be overwhelming and immeasurable. It would break her heart if she knew. If she realized that her own baggage became yours. Do not tell her that you reject her message, but do reject it. Keep it out of your mind, keep it out of your heart. Accepting a person for who they are is one thing, loving them is quite another.
I’m one of those people who likes to plan everything, and I won’t know that we’re having coffee until I see that you confirmed our appointment in our Google calendar. How will I know what I’m doing unless technology tells me? (If you’re judging me right now, think of four of your friends’ numbers. Couldn’t? Thought so. We’re all at the will of Big Brother.) Now, if they could also make a Google app to tell me how to be good at sex, that would also be helpful. According the Kama Sutra, there are more positions than “cuddling,” “kissing” and “watching The Voice together.” Apparently I’ve been doing it wrong.
2. Bringing sandwiches into the bedroom.
Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t find chocolate as erotic as the rest of the world. Yes, it’s delicious, but it always gets into weird places, and I don’t want to have to be reminded of chocolate when I’m showering. It just looks like baby poop, which combines one thing I hate and one thing I’m terrified of. (Yes, I have a babyphobia.) You know what I never hate being reminded of? Sandwiches. How awesome would it be to just pull out a 12-inch meatball sub while you’re going to second base (aka watching American Idol)? When I ask a guy how many inches he has, I’m not talking about a sandwich — except when I am.
3. Farting on the treadmill.
Look, everyone does it. This is what happens when you run for six miles at a time. During one of those miles, you’re going to have to fart, and you can’t control it. It shouldn’t be a big deal — because going to the gym in itself is disgusting. You’re going to sweat, grunt, fall down “accidentally” and look horrifying in front of a bunch of people who you might normally want to make out with. You have to give up looking at all sexy or cool, and farting is a major part of that. If you’re ever having a bad day and want to make yourself feel better, work out next to the exquisitely shaped, put together girl as she goes for a long run. Everybody farts. Deal with it.
4. Paintballing catcallers.
When you’re catcalled, they always say that you should catcall back and turn the heat on them. Tell them what a “sexy, three-inch penis” they have and how “no man has ever harassed them as sensually as they have.” I think that takes too much time, and I don’t know about you, ladies, but I’m terrible at coming up with comebacks on the spot. I’m a writer. I should be able to say ANYTHING, right? Instead, I’m usually good for a “Your Mom!” and that’s about it. Instead, I think we should just paintball the fuck out of street harassers. It saves time, and it’s just more fun. Haven’t you always wanted to paint the town red? Now’s your chance.
5. Being friends with your exes.
If you’ve ever read an article on Thought Catalog ever, you know that being friends with your exes is a bad, bad idea that leads to heartache, misery and eating your hair while you listen to Alanis Morrisette. It’s not “unacceptable,” but definitely outside the norm.
But am I ridiculous for thinking that we can be evolved enough to get past the drama? In extreme cases, where you genuinely hate each other with the fire of a thousand suns, you should definitely not see each other. But in most cases, you’re going to have to see this person socially at some point, and it’s better to be friends than have ten people ask you if you’re “sure” you’re okay with them being there. People might think it’s weird that you’re on such good terms, but wouldn’t you rather be the exception to the rule than the rule? The rule sucks. Make your own rules.
6. Having phone conversations on the toilet or the train.
I feel like everyone is going to instinctively turn on me for this one. “You want to poop and talk?” asks Mary Jane from Boise, Idaho. “I NO WANT TO HEAR YOUR DUMPING!” shouts Internet Meme from Reddit. And I get it, I really do! It’s gross, so I don’t do it unless I’m talking to my grandma — who doesn’t know what the echo sound of my bathroom signifies. I’m a bad person and find it funny, so I’ve told her that Chicago just has really bad reception. Sometimes when I call her from places that aren’t my bathroom I talk in “echo voice” to keep up the charade. It’s ridiculous, but I can’t quit at this point. It’s gone too far to turn back.
I’m a little obsessed with saving time — because it gives me more room in my daily schedule for the little things, like watching Archer or changing my outfit thirty times before I’m satisfied. (I still won’t be.) Thus, I really like multi-tasking and consolidating things, like eating in the shower or masturbating while I’m doing my taxes. That didn’t happen, but it could have. Because it wouldn’t be that I’m turned on by income data, it’s that having that extra free time is sexy as fuck.
7. Going topless in public.
No one will ever be able to explain to me why it’s okay for men to take their shirts off when women cannot. All I hear is blah blah blah sexism body shame. However, to be fair, that’s pretty much what I hear all the time anyway.
8. Hunting down and murdering people who don’t tip.
I’ve not tipped someone once in my life. It was because my original server forgot about my table, and another waitress helped us while Server Man was off saving the world — or wherever he went to that day. I’m an optimist, so I’d like to believe there’s a Server Signal of a lighted coffee cup in the sky, and he flew off to fill that cup for humanity. He likely just fell asleep in a closet or left early. So, I gave my tip to the other woman. She earned it by actually serving me. It was fair.
But under no normal, earthly circumstances should you ever, EVER not tip your server. Do you know how much those jobs suck? A man once stabbed himself so he didn’t have to go into work at a Blockbuster, which is a fraction of the shittiness of working in a restaurant. You shouldn’t just tip well. You should be aggressively nice. You should clean up after yourself. You should refill your own water when the pitcher is sitting right there. Because the waiter doesn’t just have to deal with you. They have to deal with the chef, the line cooks, the food runners and their house manager, all of whom are in a bad mood and wish they had stabbed themselves instead of coming into work.
If you aren’t nice, God knows what will happen, and your waiter can’t be held responsible. You asked for this.
I work at a summer camp. One year a kid (he was 12 I think) killed a caterpillar and made his fellow campers really upset. Then, when I took this kid aside to get him to calm down and to explain why what he did was wrong, he said to me “I like killing things. What’s wrong with that?”
I had a student whose parents were abusive; it was evident by the physical marks, however school administration could never do anything for multiple reasons. Anyways, the cops were called to the boy’s house one afternoon just a few weeks before summer vacation. They discovered that the boy had tortured local neighborhood cats by trapping them in makeshift, cardboard cages and then lighting the boxes on fire; apparently he used a magnifying glass to sear the cat’s fur and would let them out disfigured but alive so he could continue at another point.
Most were stray cats, however the cops finally found out when a passerby saw the kid stick a firework up a cat’s behind and thereafter throw it hammer-style across an overpass. Really fucked and never heard from the kid since. The parents ended up splitting and pretty sure the kid went to live with his grandmother.
I was a kindergarten teacher for a while, and one little boy came up to me and said: “I found a dead mole in my backyard, I talked to it, and it talked back. There’s death everywhere…”
When I was in kindergarten there was a kid named “Joe” who asked if he could use the restroom and when the teacher said he’d have to wait, “Joe” and another kid proceeded to piss their pants.
Also around that time, “Joe” once came to my house randomly and pissed in my kiddie pool. My mom saw it happen through the window, and then “Joe” came and rang the doorbell and asked her, “are there any kids here to play with.” My Mom said “NO.”
This kid had a childhood of anti-social behavior, including acts of animal abuse and arson (he burned down a house and a business, on two different occasions) before he turned 18.
It reached a point where he raped his ex-girlfriend and then murdered her by stabbing her almost 20 times. He is serving life in prison for his crime.
Oh, and I almost forgot another thing he did while a teenager. He pummeled a kid who was much younger with bricks in the woods near my house. The kid that was assaulted has physical and mental scars because of that.
My mom had a student in her preschool class who was always full of morbid thoughts. He was expelled in the 11th grade for threatening to bomb his high school and lashing out a knife on his least favorite teacher.
Unfortunately, I met a little boy that had some serious issues. I was assisting in the three-year-old room of a preschool when I was pregnant. I was about eight months along when one of the kids started acting out more than usual. At one point, he got into the toolbox (my dumbfuck boss wasn’t great about locking it up after she used it with the kids), grabbed a screwdriver, and came at me with it, saying “I’m gonna stab your tummy and kill your baby in the head!” my boss grabbed him and restrained him. My husband insisted I resign unless the kid was moved to a different class, but his parents pulled him out the next day. He’s six now, out there somewhere with his serious rage problems.
One of the kids in my summer camp took the little baby frog I caught and stepped on it and laughed at me while I cried. Is that sociopathic behavior or is that just how little boys are?
I went to school from grade 4 through to high school with a girl who planned and carried out the murder of her own mother. She was a terrible, manipulative cunt and I hated her a lot. Everyone laughed at me. Teachers asked why I couldn’t be more like her. My parents shrugged it off as a crush. My “friends” wondered why I had such a hate-on for her.
High school roles around, she’s inexplicably absent for a long time. No one tells me why. Turns out they finally found out she was responsible for her mother’s death and she’d gotten away with it for a year. Here’s the worst part: EVERYONE KNEW EXCEPT ME. All my “friends” figured I would do something like TELL THE POLICE SHE COMMITTED MATRICIDE because I had such an “unreasonable” hatred for her.
I work at a pediatric dental office where we have TVs on the ceilings above the patient chairs. We have apple TVs so we’re able to let the kids pick whatever movie they want and we can rewind it, pause it etc. One kid was watching Harry Potter 1 and asked me to rewind one part because he said it was his favorite. It was the scene where Voldemort kills Harry’s parents. No joke.
Danish teacher here. A 1st grader came up to me, looked my straight in my eyes and said nothing for ten seconds. Then she spoke, telling me how she wished the “blood red pigeons from the lake would come to take her away.” She then started to speak English; I can’t remember what she said, but it was four long sentences in perfect English, which she doesn’t speak. Anyway, she’s not a sociopath, just kinda weird, she just graduated and is still weird, but she’s doing fine.
A friend of my parents is an elementary teacher. One day, while she was over for dinner, she told me a story about this creepy kid in one of her classes. This kid would only draw bodies and weird shit, and wouldn’t talk unless forced. Just a kid with a bad vibe around him. Years later, it turned out he pushed someone over the railing on a bridge. The person caught the railing, but the kid stomped on his fingers until he fell into the ravine below. Went on to kill a few more people before getting caught. Creepy stuff.
I worked for a year as a support aide for a little boy who was in grade one (around 6 years old?). He had been expelled from his prep class at another school, reportedly for killing his class pets. The second day of his new school (before I started with him), he was suspended for repeatedly ramming a little girl’s head into the monkey bars. The worst story I heard was how he concocted a plan to kill his friend’s little sister. Apparently the family friend was complaining about his little sister, saying he hated her, so this boy got a knife from the kitchen and tried to lure the girl into a room with the apparent intent on stabbing her. He also knew where his father kept a gun (unusual in Australia). I spent a year working with him and would talk to my mother (an experienced psychiatric nurse) about his behavior. She would often say that he sounded like a budding sociopath. He was extremely impulsive and violent and never seemed to show any remorse or regret for what he would do to other kids, only that he had been caught and punished etc. I have no idea what happened to him but I do often wonder.
I coach my son’s soccer team and one of the kids got expelled from school for stabbing another kid in the chest with a pocketknife. He’s six. Knowing how fucked up the parents are makes it sadder.
I’m good at picking out sociopaths because I am one.
I babysit children of all ages, backgrounds, religions, whatever. Every once in a while there’s always that kid that’s a pathological liar — will lie even if it gets everyone in big trouble. There’s a need to have a more exciting life. They spend time developing lies and trying to live them out. It affects friendships and getting tasks done.
There’s the kids that hit, bite, fight. Do whatever it takes to get their way and will expect that everything automatically go their way. They don’t feel bad or apologize. A lot of them will make themselves out to be the victim.
I taught a preschooler a long time ago. He used to creep me out a bit. Once he threatened a five-year-old girl to fork out her cat’s eyes, boil them and eat them with ketchup. She cried her eyes out, and he just told her how easier she’s making it for him to pluck her eyes out as well.
Other examples include explicit descriptions of how he’d rape them if he ever got the chance (which I really don’t want to repeat), or kill their parents/siblings and eat them. He lacks empathy. He steals. He lies — left, right and centre. Even his parents are scared of him.
My 9th grade teacher, who is 60+ years old, taught a guy who was always quiet in class and never said anything. He ended up murdering dozens of females (according to one website, as many as 40), most of which were never proven. He’s currently serving life in a federal prison.
I taught a weird 7-year-old. He had a creepy look to him — limbs too long for his body, oddly shaped head. He was also rather socially awkward and would say strange things in an attempt to make conversation. That’s probably not sociopath material though. However, one day a bunch of kids came running over to tell me a baby bird had fallen out of its nest onto the playground. I went over to check it out. Unfortunately I was too late as the weird kid had decided to decapitate it with his ruler.
When I was about 8 I developed conduct disorder. I lied to everyone about everything, even I’d it didn’t matter, I stole thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff, I started fires and vandalized buildings, and I tortured small animals and neighborhood pets. I grew out of it after a while and never behaved like that ever again. In fact, I’m totally normal now which really confused me for a long time, because after taking some psychology classes I was worried I was a sociopath or that one day I would become a killer. It turns out, just recently it was discovered that bipolar disorder can manifest in children at a young age, and the symptoms cross over with ADHD and conduct disorder. So I’m not a sociopath, I’m just crazy.
My friend is a teacher and one of her students lives in her apartment building. He never sleeps and is always in the underground parking. I would truly be scared if I was her.
I currently work in a school meant for children with anxiety and I am 95% certain this boy will be a sociopath. He brings a knife and is always trying to bring harm to the girls of the class.
Btw I’m a female staff member, almost been stabbed 12 times in 4 months.
One of my best friends had this neighbor (“Cody”) who was her brother’s age (“Rob”). When they were about 8, the Cody made Rob come down to the local river with him, promising to show him this really cool fort that he made in the woods. Well, there was a fort… decorated with the skins and pelts of a ton of animals that Cody had killed and skinned. He then apparently dropped the carcasses in the river after skinning the animals. The fort had frog skins, bird feathers, raccoon pelts and tails, squirrel fur and tails, and even the coat of a cat. Rob ran the fuck out of there and told his parents. Cody was only 8, so he was sent to therapy.
This was right after Rob’s family moved to the neighborhood, and none of the other neighbors with kids had thought to warn them that their kid was going off with the local crazy. Apparently this kid routinely killed frogs and squirrels and would parade them around to the other kids. He duct-taped a dead squirrel to a girl’s window.
23. A kid who drew a very disturbing picture in class.
There was a kid in my daughter’s Kindergarten class that was decidedly…off. Everyone had just returned from Spring Break and the kids were tasked with drawing a picture of what they did while on vacation, which the teachers then captioned according to what the child said, and hung up around the room.
Most were various scenes of beaches or snowmen but this kid drew a standing stick-figure pointing at a stick-figure on the ground and what looked like snow or hail. The caption said, “On my Spring Break I shot a man. It was raining when I shot him.”
This is spot on my girlfreinds little sister at the age of 3 was stroking my new 3 month old puppy when she started to put her hand against it’s neck and measuring the size of her hand against it. She then turned and said to me:
Her: “I think i could kill this puppy”
Me: “What? Why would you kill it shes lovely”
Her: “No I’m not saying i will but i really really could”
At this point the girlfriend walked back in the room and saw me with fear in my eyes.
She then goes and grabs her baby doll and proceeds to slam it in the oven. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t scream “SHUT UP!” at it when the doll started ‘crying.’
Talking to my wife about needing to update our wills since we’d moved house, and I jokingly said to our 1-year-old, “That means if Mummy and Daddy die, you get all our stuff!”. He looked at both of us, his eyes shifting back and forth thoughtfully, then slowly smiled.
Once day I found out my son was getting bullied by three other boys. I was going to call the school about it but my husband told me not to. I can only assume he told our son to fight them…
The day after my son came home from school all smiles. I asked him if the other kids were still giving him trouble and he just laughed and said “no, not anymore”. Meanwhile, I saw my husband in the mirror, he had his arms crossed any he was nodding, he was probably thinking “fuck yeah, that’s my boy”
A few days pass and I think nothing of it. Then my son gets a virus on his computer and asked me if I could use my personal laptop while my husband got rid of the virus. I told him sure, and logged him in. He used it for a few hours until my husband got rid of the virus, then he shut down the laptop and gave it back to me.
Later that night I decided to go on Facebook and I noticed my son forgot to log out of his account. I know I shouldn’t snoop, but I was too tempted, so I looked at his messages. I saw he sent a message to the three boys that were bullying him, and I read it. The message was along the lines of “hey Chris did you cry like a bitch today because you saw your teeth on my necklace? If any of you fuck with my again I’ll be adding more teeth to my necklace”. Then he added a photo of this string with a bunch of teeth tied to it, his “necklace” I assume.
So, I found out my son wears a teeth necklace to school.
Not a parent, but when my brother was younger (around 4 years old I think) he had his own poop and pee in Play-Doh containers under his bed. My mom found it when she was cleaning his room. He said he was “practicing to be a doctor.”
As a 16 year old girl I babysat two boys, aged 6 and 3. The older one was always well-behaved, but as soon as he turned 7 he became spoiled, hyper and inappropriate. The last time I babysat those kids, he ran up to me and grabbed my breasts. Because of his age I assumed he didn’t understand why it was wrong to do that and tried to lecture him on why it was inappropriate. He interrupted me half way through by pulling down his pants and giving me a really creepy smile. And that’s how I learned that perverted children exist. Told his parents about the incident and never went back.
I was babysitting this kid for my mom’s friend. The kid, Tyler was like 5 or 6. Anyway, I’m chilling with him in the kitchen of his house, and it’s pretty normal. All of a sudden he says “Have you ever seen anyone die before?” I was a little suprised and creeped out, but replied “No…?” Then Tyler looks at me with a creepy-ass, wide-eyed stare and says “Just wait.”
I’m kinda fucking hella freaked right now, and Tyler gets up and goes to the cabinet and opens an air tight jar of peanuts and grabs a handful and scarfs them down. I look at him and ask “Dude, what are you doing?” He looks at me with the same face and says “My mom didn’t tell you? I’m allergic to peanuts.” Fucking great.
I drove him to the hospital and he got a shot and everything was alright. His mom said he had never acted like that before and I’m pretty sure he’s fine now. It was crazy though.
According to my parents, when i was like 3 i told my parents that god made me wait till all my other 4 siblings died to be born, my mom freaked out, they had never told me that they misscarried / lost 4 kids before me.
I’m not a parent but the creepiest thing I ever discovered while babysitting was that this seven year old kid had a dead fly pile. He made a game out of catching flies with his bare hands, but unlike normal people who would just walk away from the scene of the crime, he decided to keep them as trophies or something. So in the bottom of his closet he had a little pile of dead flies no one else knew about. I didn’t say anything.
There was a girl I used to go to school with and she told me a story about her sister once.
Her sister had an easy bake oven, and the family had some goldfish. One day, the sister decided to wake up extra early so she’d be able to make the family breakfast. Cute, right? Wrong. What she had planned for breakfast was Goldfish à la Easy Bake. Her goldfish died under a lightbulb.
I babysat a kid who drowned animals (a duckling and 2 baby chickens) in the backyard pond “to watch the bubbles.” His mother told me that; she was not at all disturbed but seemed to be bragging about his curiosity. I nearly threw up. He wanted to be a cop when he grew up. I had a lot to say about it, and then I wasn’t asked to babysit anymore.
My wife
As a child, my wife made a guillotine for her Barbies. Revolution, apparently.
My two neices were playing with some post-it notes at my mother’s house. The younger one was writing little messages on them, and sticking them on things.
“I love you”, “hello!”. Stuff like that.
I walked past them just to hear the older quietly telling they younger one to “write one to Grandma, saying you’re going to kill her”.
Comrades, allies, and fellow travelers, at some point the question needs to be asked: At what point does calling someone a “douchebag” become hate speech?
As everyone knows, hate speech isn’t free speech, and it isn’t protected by the First Amendment. There is a line between free speech and hate speech. It’s a real line. It is objectively and scientifically real. It’s even on a map. You can look it up!
Maybe you should read a book sometime and shut your fucking privileged mouth, and then you’d realize that a little book called THE U.S. FUCKING CONSTITUTION makes no mention of the word “douchebag.” Look it up! Just as the Founding Fathers couldn’t have anticipated that you’d be able to buy baby-killing machine guns at Walmart, they had no idea that in the 21st century, people would be maligning cisgendered males by calling them “douchebags.” I’m also pretty sure that none of the Founding Mothers ever called any of the Founding Fathers a “douchebag,” either. This is a simple FACT. Deal with it. Period. Case closed. End of discussion. End of story. It’s even the end of the discussion you have after reading the fucking story.
What the Constitution does protect, however, is the right of everyone, no matter how absurdly sensitive or mentally unstable or generally annoying, to have their feelings protected as if everyone was a baby bird shivering in a cold nest on a frosty winter’s morn. It grants the US government the right to seize someone’s person and property and throw them in jail for life if they make someone cry. Again—read the fucking Constitution, you stupid lowlife pieces of shit who deserve to die.
We are a society. We are one. We live as one. We breathe as one. We think as one. And if someone isn’t one of us, they obviously deserve to be exterminated. If someone somewhere says something that hurts somebody’s feelings, it’s only logical to think that if they aren’t immediately thrown in jail, they will think it’s OK to say hateful things and then start killing people. We, as a society, should not tolerate such intolerance.
You call these so-called “douchebags” primitive knuckle-draggers who are on the wrong side of history. Don’t you realize that’s EXACTLY what the racist purveyors of Manifest Destiny said about the bold and noble Native Americans as they were slaughtering them?
Do you realize how sexist the word “douchebag” is? Don’t you realize that the douche was designed ages ago by indigenous European tribesmen as a cleansing feminine product engineered to make a woman’s lady parts smell less offensive than they naturally are? How fucking dare you culturally appropriate a word designed and meant to improve women and apply it to men? If you’re able to even look at yourself in the mirror without cutting your head off, I suppose that’s because you’re a sociopath.
Do you realize how racist the word “douchebag” is? I’ve never heard a Strong Black Man called a douchebag. Why? Do you hate black men? Are you trying to tell me they don’t talk about women in demeaning ways, wear cheap cologne, and bond with one another in what should be openly mocked as a homoerotic manner? Why are you excluding them from this all-white country club? Racist much?
Do you realize how homophobic the word “douchebag” is? If you’d open your fucking eyes and think critically for a moment, you might notice that our media and Twitter never refer to gay men, lesbos, and the transgendered as “douchebags.” Coincidence? Exclusionary much?
Do you realize how Islamophobic the word “douchebag” is? Muslim men can be merrily raping and torturing and beheading women. They can be stoning gay men to death. They can wear cheap cologne and sail across the Riviera bare-chested while hooting at the ladies, yet I’ve never heard one of you afford them the luxury of being called a “douchebag.”
The word “douchebag” is also anti-Semitic, for obvious reasons.
As a cisgendered white male, I am an ally of the untold millions of American males who don’t speak with a lisp or wear girl jeans or collect Star Wars memorabilia or like Robin Williams, and I have had fucking ENOUGH of the hate and the persecution and the dehumanizing speech that is casually tossed our way as if there was something “OK” and “acceptable” about it.
Y’alls need to STOP maligning the natural wonder drug known as testosterone and fearing it with a Reefer Madness level of absurd paranoia. This wonderful hormone enables men to be enticed by women’s bodies at some point during puberty, whereupon they impregnate the woman, which leads to the miracle which we all know as “life.” Without testosterone, y’alls wouldn’t be here. Bow down.
Go ahead, I fucking DARE you: Tell me you don’t feel pure HATE when you call someone a douchebag or when you call them a “piece of shit” who “needs to die.” You are obviously seething with so much hate, you could fill Oprah Winfrey’s vagina with it. You think your motivation is “justice.” It is not. It’s hate. That’s a FACT. Read a book. Look it up.
So again, I must ask: At what point does calling someone a “douchebag” become hate speech? The question answers itself: At the very utterance of the word “douchebag.” So don’t say it, or we’ll post your home address online and encourage people to kill you.
It’s not like I broke up with him so I don’t understand why he’s always so mad and going out for vengeance and speaking so ill about the situation. He broke up with me but the way we broke up was all my fault.
I planned the break up, I planned how he was going to break up with me, and I called his reaction to everything. He’s a narcissist, if it isn’t about him he doesn’t care about the topic. If he isn’t getting attention he’ll ignore you for weeks. And that’s what I was going to do. We used to spend days upon days with each other and sometimes it felt like we were inseparable. Until one day I had enough of the fights and the yelling and most of all him manipulating his way out of everything and making me feel like the bad person. I went to spending 8 hours a day with him to 30 minute a day and I refused to see him in person during those days. I’d tell him I was busy with work and school and had no time anymore. Special projects were going on, I agreed to tutor someone, a study group was formed, work made me too tired to do anything. I was such a coward, and people always asked why I didn’t just end it with him?
I spent 11 months with this guy, I listened to his stories, listened to others, and I put two and two together. If it was unfair to him, he went out for vengeance. He did whatever he could to ruin someone. I liked my life how it was, I loved my friends, and good things were coming my way but the only thing that stood in the way was the guy I learned to hate.
He wasn’t getting the attention he wanted and within 2 weeks he wanted to break up. I was really happy to pack my things and return his things. I thought it was the end to such an awful relationship, but I was wrong. He kept pestering me and trying to inflict emotions upon me. It’s like he wanted to see me cry and beg for him back, but it didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. I left, packed my things, and went back to my life when he wasn’t in it. I reunited with old friends, I reunited with an old crush and the feeling he brought to me was something new. He looked at me with care, he held my hand gently, he spoke softly to me, and every time I asked him why he waited so long to tell me how he felt his response was ìYou were smiling and I only wanted you to be happy.î It was a start of a new chapter in my life, but something was coming my way and it wasn’t pretty.
My ex found out about my new beau and he almost lost it. He left countless messages: You’ll never get over me,î ìI live in your head rent free and I’ll be all you think about,î ìThe only person you really love is me,î
He was full of himself and it was an displeasure in my life. I agreed to sit down and talk to him, what came out of the conversation made me realize why I was so happy without him. ìI got the short end of the stick,î ìI refuse to waste 11 months of life with no payoff, There’s no walking away really, we both know I live in your head rent free,î ìYou awoken a spiteful person,î
In a sense I understood why he was acting this way. I moved on long ago from him and found someone new along with reconnecting with old friends he hated. He felt easily replaced and he was still brooding over this break up we had.
The conversation we had didn’t help much, we answered each other’s questions and I was honest with him. Why I left him. I was unhappy, I spent more of my days crying than being happy, I felt insecure with him, and I felt like my freedom was taken away. However, he kept sending me malicious messages, whether it’d be on social media, text messaging, or e-mails, he never stopped. It almost got to the point our whole group of friends were in it. He said, she said stories were told and eventually enough they contributed to his awful behavior.
It was time for my next move, it almost felt like I was living in a really bad movie with an obsessive ex but it was my reality. I had an obsessive ex and really bad friends that got into a break up they were never included in. I changed my number, disabled all my social media, changed my e-mail, and made sure that if I was searched for online nothing would give up my new contact information. He’d have to leave me alone then.
It didn’t stop, it turned out the whole entire time he was asking his friends to seduce my new beau. He wanted to hurt me no matter what, whether it’d be my social life to my love life he wanted to make sure I suffered with him. I lost friends because of him, I was the bad person in this situation when all I really wanted was a peace of mind and for me to live happily with the simple things I had in my life.
My life went smooth after he got tired of everything, so I assumed he did. Life went back to normal for a few months until I found people from the past popping up left and right. Arguments were flying left and right, old fights were coming back to light, and what did it all have in common? They befriended my ex. I let myself be vulnerable around this guy while I dated him and he turned it all back on me. I deserved this and I expected this. Nonetheless, they were fighting his battle unknowingly.
Everything was taken away from me; my privacy, my dignity, and my life. My accounts got hacked, my conversations monitored, private things released about me, and he went as far as saying I was indecent looking in front of a webcam with him (Webcam Sex – in which I never would do a thing. I was raised in a very traditional Asian culture.) I felt at that moment he wasn’t going to stop until I suffered enough, until I cried enough tears. Taking away my privacy and monitoring my online conversations was enough for me have a little fit and cry.
He eventually admitted to a mutual friend he was keeping tabs on me by other friends. After hearing that information I was quick to cut people out of my life, I needed it and most of all I wanted my privacy back. I quickly changed all my passwords and everything else I could think of. All he wanted was attention and to be acknowledged that he got the short end of the stick. But I refused to give him that, not a word, not a dot, not even a glance, or not even a check up on his social media.
2 years since the break up, 2 years of not speaking a word to him or even glancing at him, and 2 years since I’ve moved on from everything I wake up to a message that made me feel as if I was being monitored again. It was him. He was back and even more spiteful.
We heartbreakers are not a rare breed, but to those who are not chronic heartbreakers we are incredibly difficult to understand. These are six confessions of a chronic heartbreaker that will hopefully help everyone else understand us as a whole.
1. We really did love you.
Speaking from my own perspective, if I told you that I loved you at the time I really did mean it. Unfortunately, the human heart is fickle, and a heartbreakers heart is more fickle than the average persons. I loved you then, and maybe I still love you now. But I can’t be with you anymore.
2. Our lies weren’t because we didn’t care about you or didn’t think you deserved the truth.
Again, this is only my own perspective. But chances are every heartbreaker has lied, probably more than once, to the person whose heart they broke. It doesn’t mean we didn’t care about you, or didn’t think you deserved the truth. It’s likely because we knew eventually we would break your heart (as egotistical as that sounds) and wanted to soften the blow as much as possible.
3. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough.
You probably were enough, more than enough! I hope you are able to find someone who not only understands that like I do, but appreciates it like I simply couldn’t. You were always fantastic, always enough just not enough for me. I am a heartbreaker, and moving on is what I do.
4. We never meant to hurt you.
Again, this is only my perspective, but I hope it holds true for most heartbreakers. I knew I would hurt you, I really did. I know you thought we might have something special, and I knew it would shatter you when I told you we didn’t. But I did not hurt you on purpose, unfortunately you were simply collateral damage on my path to [self-awareness/self-destruction].
5. We will fondly remember you for the rest of our lives.
And it hurts that your memories of us will likely never be kind. I still remember that time you brought me a care package when I was sick, or the time you comforted me when something awful happened in my life. I remember the laughs, and the giggles, and the play fights and I will take these out and cherish those memories forever. It is incredibly upsetting that I have tainted all memories you have of me, but I expect and respect that.
6. You were important to us.
And we will always want to be your friend. But I respect that you will probably never want to speak to me again. This is heartbreaking to me.
As a divorce coach, it’s something I hear often: a recently divorced woman will talk about her ex and scathingly describe him as a “sociopath” or a “narcissist.” While it may bring her a sense of justification by labeling her ex, what does she really gain from playing the victim in her divorce?
Many people, both men and women experience a range of emotions when they are going through a divorce. They act out in ways that are not aligned with their innate personalities. They act this way out of revenge, anger and pain. And the act of name-calling may be a way to relieve these feelings.
So is your ex really a sociopath or a narcissist … or is he just acting out? Many skilled divorce coaches agree that a person will take on these personality traits during stressful life changes and then revert back to normal once the stress is gone.
How do you know he’s a sociopath? If he’s a true sociopath, there would have been warning signs at the very beginning of your relationship. Sociopaths are masters at deception. For instance, he may have lied about his job, finances or family. He probably did not have close ties with too many people as a sociopath is incapable of feeling shame, guilt or remorse.
A sociopath has little concern for another person’s feelings, desires or needs. His main purpose is to get what he wants, regardless of how it may harm other people. He was probably very charming and charismatic, which is how a sociopath will use to win over the love and affection of his target (you).
He knew how to play the victim so that nothing was ever his fault and had a way of twisting it around so that you believed that it was somehow your fault. A sociopath continuously invents outrageous lies about his past experiences and other people.
If your ex really is a sociopath, you’ll see a history of his fabricated storytelling and wonder to yourself how you could have ever believed some of those absurd lies in the first place. So, if he doesn’t fit the “sociopath” profile — could he still be a narcissist?
How do you know he’s a narcissist? If he’s a narcissist, he’s thoroughly satisfied with his own mental attributes as well as his physical appearance. Narcissists are very vain and selfish. He needs approval and praise from everyone around him and will be set off by the slightest criticism he receives.
Much like a sociopath, he’ll have no remorse over hurting people. Because he has no conscience, he may be quite successful in a business where cut-throat behavior is essential in order to get ahead.
A narcissist will find ways to punish those who reject him. He constantly seeks validation and recognition from others and will often put others down to inflate his own ego. He’s addicted to the spotlight and has an insatiable need to be recognized for every single achievement.
Because the narcissist needs constant reassurance, he’s more likely to become very desperate during a divorce. He won’t honor boundaries — he’s willing to break laws and hurt others, regardless of the consequences.
So what’s the difference between the two? A narcissist needs to be validated by others, a sociopath doesn’t. A sociopath will exploit others because he finds it amusing, while a narcissist only exploits those he believes is a threat. If you are dealing with a sociopath, stop playing his games. He enjoys pushing your buttons just for the fun of watching you squirm. If you are dealing with a narcissist, don’t feed his ego and avoid falling prey to his traps.
Even if your ex is not really a sociopath or a narcissist, going through a divorce plays havoc on your emotions. The person who remains calm and collected usually has the upper-hand during divorce proceedings (not to mention, relationships in general).
During this time of turmoil, you should consider scheduling an appointment with a skilled divorce coach. A professional can help you vent out your frustrations and make rational decisions.
For more tips and techniques to heal, love and find inner-peace during and after divorce, visit www.SupportForDivorcedWomen.com. Tweet me at @CindyHolbrook
On February 12, 2002, I was convicted of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and about 20 other related crimes. I was sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison. On June 2, 2002, I was released from prison and sent on my way. I was not placed on probation or parole. Those not intimately familiar with my case might scoff at the above statements, but they are completely factual. It is the events that occurred during that four month period that are the reasons my sentence was commuted and sent home.
I arrived at the United States Medical Center For Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri on February 13, 2002 at roughly nine in the morning. The two U.S. Marshals who delivered me handed the intake officer a stack of paperwork. One of the Marshals signed a form before leaving me in the care of the Bureau of Prisons. I was 18-years-old at the time and wet behind the ears. I had a lengthy juvenile record, but this was the big leagues. A guard read through my intake form.
“Hacker huh? You a homo or something?” he asked.
“No. Of course not,” I said.
He laughed.
“If you’re a homo you should tell me now. Homos go to a special cell block.”
The guard proceeded to perform a cavity search and corralled me into a shower where he sprayed me with a hose. After that, I was issued a prisoner uniform, shoes, belt, hygiene supplies, a towel, blanket, and a badge with my prisoner number on it.
I was lucky. I had been assigned to C Block. C block had private rooms and a common area. My room was a 10-foot by 6-foot cell complete with a single bunk, a metallic toilet equipped with a sink basin installed next to it, and a locker that served as a nightstand and a table. There was a camera in the upper left hand corner over the three-inch thick steel door with a single tempered glass window at just about eye level.
Okay, so now that I’ve given you an idea of what kind of place I was at, Let me get down to brass tacks. This was a giant stone building where every imaginable evil was committed on a daily basis for the better part of 70 years by the time I got there. I’m not asking you to believe in ghosts, but I know for certain that that prison is haunted. Inmates reported — almost every day — hearing rustling noises outside their doors or knocking behind their cells walls. Also turned out nearly everyone on C block had a story about Old Jim.
Old Jim was a guard during the riot of 1941. Legend has it, he turned the corner onto C Block and a group of inmates tackled him to the ground and raped him to death. Other versions of the story claim they raped him and then stabbed him. The point is, he died horribly. On some nights when we were supposed to be asleep, we’d stand at our meal flaps and have conversations through the crack. Every now and then we’d hear keys jingling and footsteps in the hall. If anyone was brave enough to look up, they’d see nothing…if they were lucky.
Anyone that said they looked Old Jim in the eyes was called a liar. As the story goes, if you look Old Jim in the eyes, he’ll come to your cell and kill you. More than one inmate had been found mutilated in their cell over the years. Even with the cameras in place, there was no evidence that anyone had been in the cell aside from the victim.
We traded Old Jim sightings like campfire stories, but he was far from the only ghost roaming the halls. My cell in particular was especially terrifying. Unlike most cells, I had a grate in my ceiling. It had been bolted up with mesh wire, but that didn’t stop a previous occupant from making rope out of his sheet to hang himself. Some nights, I’d wake up and see a body dangling above me. I’d close my eyes as quickly as I could. I asked Sarge, one of the inmates I developed a bit of a friendship with, about the cell. He said that it was a white supremacist pro-Nazi guy that committed suicide in my cell back in the 50s.
A nasty storm rolled in one afternoon and knocked the power out. By that evening, the backup generators went out. C Block was on lockdown. The guard-in-charge sat in his office smoking as the rest of us were forced to do without. We could smoke on an enclosed stoop four times a day, but the electric lighter on the wall was about useless that day.
The snoring from the end of the hall meant the guard was asleep. Larry was a good guy and none of us had a problem with him. He had a bad habit of falling asleep and most nights that wouldn’t have been a problem, but after the storm, the magnetic doors weren’t working. The main door to the cell block still used a key, but all the interior doors were upgraded to use magnetic doors. Larry was asleep in the unlocked office, which also contained contraband on a cell block that housed two serial killers, a marine that went on a rampage, about a dozen killers, four terrorists, and a hacker. It did not end well for Larry.
Tyrell was a gangbanger from Chicago convicted of killing a DEA agent. Larry had busted Tyrell several times for trying to gain entry to the hygiene cabinet in the guard office. Tyrell snuck into the office and killed Larry. Larry didn’t even have a chance to scream — I doubt he even woke up. Tyrell grabbed Larry’s night stick and his keys. As he went for the main door, we all heard a jingling noise that sent all of us scrambling back to our cells.
I didn’t watch, but what I heard was bad enough. Tyrell screamed and then I heard him being dragged across the floor and down the hall. His hands made wet slaps against the smooth concrete as he tried to pull himself from Old Jim’s grip. We heard the shower come on and one final scream before the keys began jingling down the hall again. I looked up from my position crouching inside the door and saw the Nazi hanging below the grate.
“Gott ist todd,” I heard him say.
Bernie, a former dentist and convicted serial killer lived in the cell across the hall from me. I heard Bernie shout, but I was paralyzed with fear. It was only when I saw the Nazi clawing at his noose, I moved out of the door with my eyes to the floor and headed for the common room. By this point, everyone was screaming, everyone that is, except Sarge.
Sarge reached out of his door and grabbed my shoulder. I almost suffered a heart attack on the spot. Sarge pulled me in and told me to be quiet. Sarge wasn’t innocent. He openly admitted to his crimes — something that was rare in a prison. While he was deployed in Iraq during Desert Storm, two men broke into his house and kidnapped his daughter. He received the news after returning from a mission. At that very moment he went AWOL, found his way back to the states and tracked those men down. By the time he was finished, you could have fit their remains in a shoe box. He turned himself in the next day.
“I think you’ll be fine kid, but I’m fucked,” Sarge whispered.
“What? What do you mean?” I asked.
“All of us are lifers who deserve to be here. You fiddled with a computer, big whoop,” he whispered. “Look kid. My grandmother was a medicine woman and told me restless spirits can only hurt the damned. I don’t think you’re damned.”
“B-but I’m an Atheist,” I said.
Sarge laughed to himself and shook his head.
“Does this look like a situation where it makes sense to be an Atheist?” he asked.
The jingling sound was getting closer. By this point, lights were flickering, but weren’t fully back on. I looked up just as the lights flickered and when it went dark again, I found myself staring Old Jim directly in the eyes. Sarge shouted at the apparition.
“Hey ugly! I heard you went out like a bitch!”
Old Jim turned his head towards Sarge and knocked him to the ground. He reached down and grabbed Sarge by the leg. Sarge looked back at me shouting.
“Get somewhere safe and don’t open your eyes until the guards pull you out!”
Old Jim dragged Sarge outside of the room and I heard Sarge struggle to get free. I closed my eyes as I heard bones crunching and Sarge screaming. Unable to hear any more of it, I ran for the main door. The key was still in the lock. I turned it and ran to the smoking stoop. I sat there with my eyes closed for the next several hours.
The sun came up and with it came several guards. They pulled me off of the smoking stoop. I didn’t respond. I was all but catatonic at that point. I had seen things no one should ever live to see. I was moved to solitary for the better part of a week. Even after my stint in the SHU, I didn’t respond when questioned. It was only when I was finally brought to the warden, I started showing any sign of being mentally present.
The warden brought me to his office. He offered me some soda, but I didn’t respond. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to his desk.
“This happened back in ’44 and again in ’59. Before my time mind you, but I read the reports,” the warden admitted. “Never had a survivor before. Honestly, we don’t know what to do with you.”
I looked up at him. He smiled.
“I talked to a friend of mine with the federal prosecutor’s office and he said you’re a non-violent offender that broke a computer or something and made some threats. He and I had a talk with an appellate judge we know and he ruled that certain evidence in your trial should have been ruled inadmissible.”
I relaxed and bit more and sat back in the chair as a slight grin came to my face.
The warden offered me soda. I accepted.
“I believe prison should be about rehabilitation more than incarceration,” the warden said. “A lot of the sociopaths need to be locked away, but the ones that can be reformed should be reformed. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
I nodded.
“I can’t speak to whether or not you are a sociopath. That’s a job for a psychiatrist,” he said. “But you survived something that has on more than one occasion killed every last inmate on that block. Someone or something decided that you should live. Who am I to argue with a higher power?”
He got up and turned toward the window.
“Tomorrow morning a pair of Marshals will drive you to an airport in St. Louis where you will be flown to Nashville, Tennessee and released into your own custody. Your sentence has been commuted to time served without probation or parole.”
“Thank you, sir,” I stuttered. After all, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The warden turned around with an expression that looked like an equal mix of fear and sadness.
“I try not to think about the kinds of spirit that might inhabit this place, but you saw them firsthand. The official policy when an event like this happens in a government facility is to purge the records and deny any occurrence of supernatural activity. Now I can’t stop you from telling your story, but do me a favor and wait until I’m dead. I’d rather be safe in the Lord’s arms when you reveal what really happened that night,” he said.
I was led back to solitary confinement and released the next morning.
I’ve kept this story to myself for the better part of 13 years now. To this day, I jump when I hear keys jingling at night. I’ve gotten by so far by trying to rationalize what I saw or why I saw it, but I don’t have any answers that even begin to make sense.
I kept my promise though. Warden Michaels died last week at the age of 57.
Yeah, you think he’s great too, but he doesn’t even need to hear it. This dude thinks he is straight-up Jesus walking on water. He thinks he invented the wheel. He can’t walk past a mirror without winking at himself. He probably doesn’t even need love from a chick. He already tells himself he’s what’s up. And that keeps him from complimenting you. Because that would mean the conversation isn’t about him. Not happening.
2. He’s a Storyteller
Everyone tells white lies. You tell your friend that bandage dress doesn’t show her belly at all because you know she’s gonna go out and feel like a million bucks. You tell your mom you got home at 2 instead of 5 so you don’t sound like a total dirtbag. But this guy could be the world’s greatest author. He elaborates to the point of question. And he believes it too! You won’t question it out loud, but you pick up that something is off with how many crazy things happen to this person.
3. He’s a Sweet Talker
Typically the way he snags you, this guy can sell meat to a vegan. He’s super talkative and knows all the right things to say. It’s his best superpower; he uses it to manipulate and control the situation without you even guessing that he could be a bad guy. He’s too good at swaying you whichever way he pleases.
4. No Shame
He is incapable of guilt. When you get to know this person and arguments inevitably arise, he never takes blame or holds accountability for his actions. He’s great at twisting the blame on you, even when the falling out is completely a result of his actions. He has no worry in the world that what he’s done to upset you has made you feel that way. He truly believes he isn’t wrong.
5. He’s Overly Competitive
Aside from the lack of taking blame for when he’s wrong, his mission is also to come out on top. Sociopaths have a dying need to be the winner of a situation, mostly to fluff their feathers and validate their feeling of superiority. You will not ever have the last word, they will always beat you at that game.
6. He’s Super Smart
He’s great at manipulating and talking you into doing what he wants because he’s intelligent. He is able to think in ways that the average person cannot, and while intelligence can be an attractive feature in someone, this person uses it to manipulate and plot their way into having the upper hand.
7. He Doesn’t Have Real Relationships
This guy has few friends, if that. And the ones he does have probably question all of these qualities, too and keep a distance for that reason. He cares too much about himself to make an effort to have close friendships and the friendships he does have are low-maintenance, superficial acquaintances if really examined.
8. Instant Gratification
Sociopaths live life in the fast lane. They live in the moment & that attributes to short lived friendships and romantic relationships. This guy has a high sex drive, but a low tolerance for any intimacy. He’s definitely not spooning you after the deed is done.
9. Rule-Breaker
This person does has a blatant disregard for rules and regulations that everyone knows to respect. His superior view of himself leads him to believe he can get away with anything, and in typical fashion does as he pleases. Many sociopaths have a criminal record and continue to add to their roster because of this lack of understanding.
10. He’s Incapable of Love
The hardest one to face: he cannot love you because of how much he loves himself. It is impossible for him to care about someone other than himself, and despite the attention he gives you in other ways, he will never see you as deserving of commitment or anything that conflicts with his self-loving agenda.
Toxic people such as malignant narcissists, psychopaths and those with antisocial traits engage in maladaptive behaviors in relationships that ultimately exploit, demean and hurt their intimate partners, family members and friends. They use a plethora of diversionary tactics that distort the reality of their victims and deflect responsibility. Although those who are not narcissistic can employ these tactics as well, abusive narcissists use these to an excessive extent in an effort to escape accountability for their actions.
Here are the 20 diversionary tactics toxic people use to silence and degrade you.
1. Gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic that can be described in different variations of three words: “That didn’t happen,” “You imagined it,” and “Are you crazy?” Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.
When a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath gaslights you, you may be prone to gaslighting yourself as a way to reconcile the cognitive dissonance that might arise. Two conflicting beliefs battle it out: is this person right or can I trust what I experienced? A manipulative person will convince you that the former is an inevitable truth while the latter is a sign of dysfunction on your end.
In order to resist gaslighting, it’s important to ground yourself in your own reality – sometimes writing things down as they happened, telling a friend or reiterating your experience to a support network can help to counteract the gaslighting effect. The power of having a validating community is that it can redirect you from the distorted reality of a malignant person and back to your own inner guidance.
2. Projection.
One sure sign of toxicity is when a person is chronically unwilling to see his or her own shortcomings and uses everything in their power to avoid being held accountable for them. This is known as projection. Projection is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility of one’s negative behavior and traits by attributing them to someone else. It ultimately acts as a digression that avoids ownership and accountability
While we all engage in projection to some extent, according to Narcissistic Personality clinical expert Dr. Martinez-Lewi, the projections of a narcissist are often psychologically abusive. Rather than acknowledge their own flaws, imperfections and wrongdoings, malignant narcissists and sociopaths opt to dump their own traits on their unsuspecting suspects in a way that is painful and excessively cruel. Instead of admitting that self-improvement may be in order, they would prefer that their victims take responsibility for their behavior and feel ashamed of themselves. This is a way for a narcissist to project any toxic shame they have about themselves onto another.
For example, a person who engages in pathological lying may accuse their partner of fibbing; a needy spouse may call their husband “clingy” in an attempt to depict them as the one who is dependent; a rude employee may call their boss ineffective in an effort to escape the truth about their own productivity.
Narcissistic abusers love to play the “blameshifting game.” Objectives of the game: they win, you lose, and you or the world at large is blamed for everything that’s wrong with them. This way, you get to babysit their fragile ego while you’re thrust into a sea of self-doubt. Fun, right?
Solution? Don’t “project” your own sense of compassion or empathy onto a toxic person and don’t own any of the toxic person’s projections either. As manipulation expert and author Dr. George Simon (2010) notes in his book In Sheep’s Clothing, projecting our own conscience and value system onto others has the potential consequence of being met with further exploitation.
Narcissists on the extreme end of the spectrum usually have no interest in self-insight or change. It’s important to cut ties and end interactions with toxic people as soon as possible so you can get centered in your own reality and validate your own identity. You don’t have to live in someone else’s cesspool of dysfunction.
3. Nonsensical conversations from hell.
If you think you’re going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness.
Malignant narcissists and sociopaths use word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gaslighting to disorient you and get you off track should you ever disagree with them or challenge them in any way. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for being a human being with actual thoughts and feelings that might differ from their own. In their eyes, you are the problem if you happen to exist.
Spend even ten minutes arguing with a toxic narcissist and you’ll find yourself wondering how the argument even began at all. You simply disagreed with them about their absurd claim that the sky is red and now your entire childhood, family, friends, career and lifestyle choices have come under attack. That is because your disagreement picked at their false belief that they are omnipotent and omniscient, resulting in a narcissistic injury.
Remember: toxic people don’t argue with you, they essentially argue with themselves and you become privy to their long, draining monologues. They thrive off the drama and they live for it. Each and every time you attempt to provide a point that counters their ridiculous assertions, you feed them supply. Don’t feed the narcissists supply – rather, supply yourself with the confirmation that their abusive behavior is the problem, not you. Cut the interaction short as soon as you anticipate it escalating and use your energy on some decadent self-care instead.
4. Blanket statements and generalizations.
Malignant narcissists aren’t always intellectual masterminds – many of them are intellectually lazy. Rather than taking the time to carefully consider a different perspective, they generalize anything and everything you say, making blanket statements that don’t acknowledge the nuances in your argument or take into account the multiple perspectives you’ve paid homage to. Better yet, why not put a label on you that dismisses your perspective altogether?
On a larger scale, generalizations and blanket statements invalidate experiences that don’t fit in the unsupported assumptions, schemas and stereotypes of society; they are also used to maintain the status quo. This form of digression exaggerates one perspective to the point where a social justice issue can become completely obscured. For example, rape accusations against well-liked figures are often met with the reminder that there are false reports of rape that occur. While those do occur, they are rare, and in this case, the actions of one become labeled the behavior of the majority while the specific report itself remains unaddressed.
These everyday microaggressions also happen in toxic relationships. If you bring up to a narcissistic abuser that their behavior is unacceptable for example, they will often make blanket generalizations about your hypersensitivity or make a generalization such as, “You are never satisfied,” or “You’re always too sensitive” rather than addressing the real issues at hand. It’s possible that you are oversensitive at times, but it is also possible that the abuser is also insensitive and cruel the majority of the time.
Hold onto your truth and resist generalizing statements by realizing that they are in fact forms of black and white illogical thinking. Toxic people wielding blanket statements do not represent the full richness of experience – they represent the limited one of their singular experience and overinflated sense of self.
5. Deliberately misrepresenting your thoughts and feelings to the point of absurdity.
In the hands of a malignant narcissist or sociopath, your differing opinions, legitimate emotions and lived experiences get translated into character flaws and evidence of your irrationality.
Narcissists weave tall tales to reframe what you’re actually saying as a way to make your opinions look absurd or heinous. Let’s say you bring up the fact that you’re unhappy with the way a toxic friend is speaking to you. In response, he or she may put words in your mouth, saying, “Oh, so now you’re perfect?” or “So I am a bad person, huh?” when you’ve done nothing but express your feelings. This enables them to invalidate your right to have thoughts and emotions about their inappropriate behavior and instills in you a sense of guilt when you attempt to establish boundaries.
This is also a popular form of diversion and cognitive distortion that is known as “mind reading.” Toxic people often presume they know what you’re thinking and feeling. They chronically jump to conclusions based on their own triggers rather than stepping back to evaluate the situation mindfully. They act accordingly based on their own delusions and fallacies and make no apologies for the harm they cause as a result. Notorious for putting words in your mouth, they depict you as having an intention or outlandish viewpoint you didn’t possess. They accuse you of thinking of them as toxic – even before you’ve gotten the chance to call them out on their behavior – and this also serves as a form of preemptive defense.
Simply stating, “I never said that,” and walking away should the person continue to accuse you of doing or saying something you didn’t can help to set a firm boundary in this type of interaction. So long as the toxic person can blameshift and digress from their own behavior, they have succeeded in convincing you that you should be “shamed” for giving them any sort of realistic feedback.
6. Nitpicking and moving the goal posts.
The difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism is the presence of a personal attack and impossible standards. These so-called “critics” often don’t want to help you improve, they just want to nitpick, pull you down and scapegoat you in any way they can. Abusive narcissists and sociopaths employ a logical fallacy known as “moving the goalposts” in order to ensure that they have every reason to be perpetually dissatisfied with you. This is when, even after you’ve provided all the evidence in the world to validate your argument or taken an action to meet their request, they set up another expectation of you or demand more proof.
Do you have a successful career? The narcissist will then start to pick on why you aren’t a multi-millionaire yet. Did you already fulfill their need to be excessively catered to? Now it’s time to prove that you can also remain “independent.” The goal posts will perpetually change and may not even be related to each other; they don’t have any other point besides making you vie for the narcissist’s approval and validation.
By raising the expectations higher and higher each time or switching them completely, highly manipulative and toxic people are able to instill in you a pervasive sense of unworthiness and of never feeling quite “enough.” By pointing out one irrelevant fact or one thing you did wrong and developing a hyperfocus on it, narcissists get to divert from your strengths and pull you into obsessing over any flaws or weaknesses instead. They get you thinking about the next expectation of theirs you’re going to have to meet – until eventually you’ve bent over backwards trying to fulfill their every need – only to realize it didn’t change the horrific way they treated you.
Don’t get sucked into nitpicking and changing goal posts – if someone chooses to rehash an irrelevant point over and over again to the point where they aren’t acknowledging the work you’ve done to validate your point or satisfy them, their motive isn’t to better understand. It’s to further provoke you into feeling as if you have to constantly prove yourself. Validate and approve of yourself. Know that you are enough and you don’t have to be made to feel constantly deficient or unworthy in some way.
7. Changing the subject to evade accountability.
This type of tactic is what I like to call the “What about me?” syndrome. It is a literal digression from the actual topic that works to redirect attention to a different issue altogether. Narcissists don’t want you to be on the topic of holding them accountable for anything, so they will reroute discussions to benefit them. Complaining about their neglectful parenting? They’ll point out a mistake you committed seven years ago. This type of diversion has no limits in terms of time or subject content, and often begins with a sentence like “What about the time when…”
On a macrolevel, these diversions work to derail discussions that challenge the status quo. A discussion about gay rights, for example, may be derailed quickly by someone who brings in another social justice issue just to distract people from the main argument.
As Tara Moss, author of Speaking Out: A 21st Century Handbook for Women and Girls, notes, specificity is needed in order to resolve and address issues appropriately – that doesn’t mean that the issues that are being brought up don’t matter, it just means that the specific time and place may not be the best context to discuss them.
Don’t be derailed – if someone pulls a switcheroo on you, you can exercise what I call the “broken record” method and continue stating the facts without giving in to their distractions. Redirect their redirection by saying, “That’s not what I am talking about. Let’s stay focused on the real issue.” If they’re not interested, disengage and spend your energy on something more constructive – like not having a debate with someone who has the mental age of a toddler.
8. Covert and overt threats.
Narcissistic abusers and otherwise toxic people feel very threatened when their excessive sense of entitlement, false sense of superiority and grandiose sense of self are challenged in any way. They are prone to making unreasonable demands on others – while punishing you for not living up to their impossible to reach expectations.
Rather than tackle disagreements or compromises maturely, they set out to divert you from your right to have your own identity and perspective by attempting to instill fear in you about the consequences of disagreeing or complying with their demands. To them, any challenge results in an ultimatum and “do this or I’ll do that” becomes their daily mantra.
If someone’s reaction to you setting boundaries or having a differing opinion from your own is to threaten you into submission, whether it’s a thinly veiled threat or an overt admission of what they plan to do, this is a red flag of someone who has a high degree of entitlement and has no plans of compromising. Take threats seriously and show the narcissist you mean business; document threats and report them whenever possible and legally feasible.
9. Name-calling.
Narcissists preemptively blow anything they perceive as a threat to their superiority out of proportion. In their world, only they can ever be right and anyone who dares to say otherwise creates a narcissistic injury that results in narcissistic rage. As Mark Goulston, M.D. asserts, narcissistic rage does not result from low self-esteem but rather a high sense of entitlement and false sense of superiority.
The lowest of the low resort to narcissistic rage in the form of name-calling when they can’t think of a better way to manipulate your opinion or micromanage your emotions. Name-calling is a quick and easy way to put you down, degrade you and insult your intelligence, appearance or behavior while invalidating your right to be a separate person with a right to his or her perspective.
Name-calling can also be used to criticize your beliefs, opinions and insights. A well-researched perspective or informed opinion suddenly becomes “silly” or “idiotic” in the hands of a malignant narcissist or sociopath who feels threatened by it and cannot make a respectful, convincing rebuttal. Rather than target your argument, they target you as a person and seek to undermine your credibility and intelligence in any way they possibly can. It’s important to end any interaction that consists of name-calling and communicate that you won’t tolerate it. Don’t internalize it: realize that they are resorting to name-calling because they are deficient in higher level methods.
10. Destructive conditioning.
Toxic people condition you to associate your strengths, talents, and happy memories with abuse, frustration and disrespect. They do this by sneaking in covert and overt put-downs about the qualities and traits they once idealized as well as sabotaging your goals, ruining celebrations, vacations and holidays. They may even isolate you from your friends and family and make you financially dependent upon them. Like Pavlov’s dogs, you’re essentially “trained” over time to become afraid of doing the very things that once made your life fulfilling.
Narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths and otherwise toxic people do this because they wish to divert attention back to themselves and how you’re going to please them. If there is anything outside of them that may threaten their control over your life, they seek to destroy it. They need to be the center of attention at all times. In the idealization phase, you were once the center of a narcissist’s world – now the narcissist becomes the center of yours.
Narcissists are also naturally pathologically envious and don’t want anything to come in between them and their influence over you. Your happiness represents everything they feel they cannot have in their emotionally shallow lives. After all, if you learn that you can get validation, respect and love from other sources besides the toxic person, what’s to keep you from leaving them? To toxic people, a little conditioning can go a long way to keep you walking on eggshells and falling just short of your big dreams.
11. Smear campaigns and stalking.
When toxic types can’t control the way you see yourself, they start to control how others see you; they play the martyr while you’re labeled the toxic one. A smear campaign is a preemptive strike to sabotage your reputation and slander your name so that you won’t have a support network to fall back on lest you decide to detach and cut ties with this toxic person. They may even stalk and harass you or the people you know as a way to supposedly “expose” the truth about you; this exposure acts as a way to hide their own abusive behavior while projecting it onto you.
Some smear campaigns can even work to pit two people or two groups against each other. A victim in an abusive relationship with a narcissist often doesn’t know what’s being said about them during the relationship, but they eventually find out the falsehoods shortly after they’ve been discarded.
Toxic people will gossip behind your back (and in front of your face), slander you to your loved ones or their loved ones, create stories that depict you as the aggressor while they play the victim, and claim that you engaged in the same behaviors that they are afraid you will accuse them of engaging in. They will also methodically, covertly and deliberately abuse you so they can use your reactions as a way to prove that they are the so-called “victims” of your abuse.
The best way to handle a smear campaign is to stay mindful of your reactions and stick to the facts. This is especially pertinent for high-conflict divorces with narcissists who may use your reactions to their provocations against you. Document any form of harassment, cyberbullying or stalking incidents and always speak to your narcissist through a lawyer whenever possible. You may wish to take legal action if you feel the stalking and harassment is getting out of control; finding a lawyer who is well-versed in Narcissistic Personality Disorder is crucial if that’s the case. Your character and integrity will speak for itself when the narcissist’s false mask begins to slip.
12. Love-bombing and devaluation.
Toxic people put you through an idealization phase until you’re sufficiently hooked and invested in beginning a friendship or relationship with you. Then, they begin to devalue you while insulting the very things they admired in the first place. Another variation of this is when a toxic individual puts you on a pedestal while aggressively devaluing and attacking someone else who threatens their sense of superiority.
Narcissistic abusers do this all the time – they devalue their exes to their new partners, and eventually the new partner starts to receive the same sort of mistreatment as the narcissist’s ex-partner. Ultimately what will happen is that you will also be on the receiving end of the same abuse. You will one day be the ex-partner they degrade to their new source of supply. You just don’t know it yet. That’s why it’s important to stay mindful of the love-bombing technique whenever you witness behavior that doesn’t align with the saccharine sweetness a narcissist subjects you to.
As life coach Wendy Powell suggests, slowing things down with people you suspect may be toxic is an important way of combating the love-bombing technique. Be wary of the fact that how a person treats or speaks about someone else could potentially translate into the way they will treat you in the future.
13. Preemptive defense.
When someone stresses the fact that they are a “nice guy” or girl, that you should “trust them” right away or emphasizes their credibility without any provocation from you whatsoever, be wary.
Toxic and abusive people overstate their ability to be kind and compassionate. They often tell you that you should “trust” them without first building a solid foundation of trust. They may “perform” a high level of sympathy and empathy at the beginning of your relationship to dupe you, only to unveil their false mask later on. When you see their false mask begins to slip periodically during the devaluation phase of the abuse cycle, the true self is revealed to be terrifyingly cold, callous and contemptuous.
Genuinely nice people rarely have to persistently show off their positive qualities – they exude their warmth more than they talk about it and they know that actions speak volumes more than mere words. They know that trust and respect is a two-way street that requires reciprocity, not repetition.
To counter a preemptive defense, reevaluate why a person may be emphasizing their good qualities. Is it because they think you don’t trust them, or because they know you shouldn’t? Trust actions more than empty words and see how someone’s actions communicate who they are, not who they say they are.
14. Triangulation.
Bringing in the opinion, perspective or suggested threat of another person into the dynamic of an interaction is known as “triangulation.” Often used to validate the toxic person’s abuse while invalidating the victim’s reactions to abuse, triangulation can also work to manufacture love triangles that leave you feeling unhinged and insecure.
Malignant narcissists love to triangulate their significant other with strangers, co-workers, ex-partners, friends and even family members in order to evoke jealousy and uncertainty in you. They also use the opinions of others to validate their point of view.
This is a diversionary tactic meant to pull your attention away from their abusive behavior and into a false image of them as a desirable, sought after person. It also leaves you questioning yourself – if Mary did agree with Tom, doesn’t that mean that you must be wrong? The truth is, narcissists love to “report back” falsehoods about others say about you, when in fact, they are the ones smearing you.
To resist triangulation tactics, realize that whoever the narcissist is triangulating with is also being triangulated by your relationship with the narcissist as well. Everyone is essentially being played by this one person. Reverse “triangulate” the narcissist by gaining support from a third party that is not under the narcissist’s influence – and also by seeking your own validation.
15. Bait and feign innocence.
Toxic individuals lure you into a false sense of security simply to have a platform to showcase their cruelty. Baiting you into a mindless, chaotic argument can escalate into a showdown rather quickly with someone who doesn’t know the meaning of respect. A simple disagreement may bait you into responding politely initially, until it becomes clear that the person has a malicious motive of tearing you down.
By “baiting” you with a seemingly innocuous comment disguised as a rational one, they can then begin to play with you. Remember: narcissistic abusers have learned about your insecurities, the unsettling catchphrases that interrupt your confidence, and the disturbing topics that reenact your wounds – and they use this knowledge maliciously to provoke you. After you’ve fallen for it, hook line and sinker, they’ll stand back and innocently ask whether you’re “okay” and talk about how they didn’t “mean” to agitate you. This faux innocence works to catch you off guard and make you believe that they truly didn’t intend to hurt you, until it happens so often you can’t deny the reality of their malice any longer.
It helps to realize when you’re being baited so you can avoid engaging altogether. Provocative statements, name-calling, hurtful accusations or unsupported generalizations, for example, are common baiting tactics. Your gut instinct can also tell you when you’re being baited – if you feel “off” about a certain comment and continue to feel this way even after it has been expanded on, that’s a sign you may need to take some space to reevaluate the situation before choosing to respond.
16. Boundary testing and hoovering.
Narcissists, sociopaths and otherwise toxic people continually try and test your boundaries to see which ones they can trespass. The more violations they’re able to commit without consequences, the more they’ll push the envelope.
That’s why survivors of emotional as well as physical abuse often experience even more severe incidents of abuse each and every time they go back to their abusers.
Abusers tend to “hoover” their victims back in with sweet promises, fake remorse and empty words of how they are going to change, only to abuse their victims even more horrifically. In the abuser’s sick mind, this boundary testing serves as a punishment for standing up to the abuse and also for being going back to it. When narcissists try to press the emotional reset button, reinforce your boundaries even more strongly rather than backtracking on them.
Remember – highly manipulative people don’t respond to empathy or compassion. They respond to consequences.
17. Aggressive jabs disguised as jokes.
Covert narcissists enjoy making malicious remarks at your expense. These are usually dressed up as “just jokes” so that they can get away with saying appalling things while still maintaining an innocent, cool demeanor. Yet any time you are outraged at an insensitive, harsh remark, you are accused of having no sense of humor. This is a tactic frequently used in verbal abuse.
The contemptuous smirk and sadistic gleam in their eyes gives it away, however – like a predator that plays with its food, a toxic person gains pleasure from hurting you and being able to get away with it. After all, it’s just a joke, right? Wrong. It’s a way to gaslight you into thinking their abuse is a joke – a way to divert from their cruelty and onto your perceived sensitivity. It is important that when this happens, you stand up for yourself and make it clear that you won’t tolerate this type of behavior.
Calling out manipulative people on their covert put-downs may result in further gaslighting from the abuser but maintain your stance that their behavior is not okay and end the interaction immediately if you have to.
18. Condescending sarcasm and patronizing tone.
Belittling and degrading a person is a toxic person’s forte and their tone of voice is only one tool in their toolbox. Sarcasm can be a fun mode of communication when both parties are engaged, but narcissists use it chronically as a way to manipulate you and degrade you. If you in any way react to it, you must be “too sensitive.”
Forget that the toxic person constantly has temper tantrums every time their big bad ego is faced with realistic feedback – the victim is the hypersensitive one, apparently. So long as you’re treated like a child and constantly challenged for expressing yourself, you’ll start to develop a sense of hypervigilance about voicing your thoughts and opinions without reprimand. This self-censorship enables the abuser to put in less work in silencing you, because you begin to silence yourself.
Whenever you are met with a condescending demeanor or tone, call it out firmly and assertively. You don’t deserve to be spoken down to like a child – nor should you ever silence yourself to meet the expectation of someone else’s superiority complex.
19. Shaming.
“You should be ashamed of yourself” is a favorite saying of toxic people. Though it can be used by someone who is non-toxic, in the realm of the narcissist or sociopath, shaming is an effective method that targets any behavior or belief that might challenge a toxic person’s power. It can also be used to destroy and whittle away at a victim’s self-esteem: if a victim dares to be proud of something, shaming the victim for that specific trait, quality or accomplishment can serve to diminish their sense of self and stifle any pride they may have.
Malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths enjoy using your own wounds against you – so they will even shame you about any abuse or injustice you’ve suffered in your lifetime as a way to retraumatize you. Were you a childhood abuse survivor? A malignant narcissist or sociopath will claim that you must’ve done something to deserve it, or brag about their own happy childhood as a way to make you feel deficient and unworthy. What better way to injure you, after all, than to pick at the original wound? As surgeons of madness, they seek to exacerbate wounds, not help heal them.
If you suspect you’re dealing with a toxic person, avoid revealing any of your vulnerabilities or past traumas. Until they’ve proven their character to you, there is no point disclosing information that could be potentially used against you.
20. Control.
Most importantly, toxic abusers love to maintain control in whatever way they can. They isolate you, maintain control over your finances and social networks, and micromanage every facet of your life. Yet the most powerful mechanism they have for control is toying with your emotions.
That’s why abusive narcissists and sociopaths manufacture situations of conflict out of thin air to keep you feeling off center and off balanced. That’s why they chronically engage in disagreements about irrelevant things and rage over perceived slights. That’s why they emotionally withdraw, only to re-idealize you once they start to lose control. That’s why they vacillate between their false self and their true self, so you never get a sense of psychological safety or certainty about who your partner truly is.
The more power they have over your emotions, the less likely you’ll trust your own reality and the truth about the abuse you’re enduring. Knowing the manipulative tactics and how they work to erode your sense of self can arm you with the knowledge of what you’re facing and at the very least, develop a plan to regain control over your own life and away from toxic people.
Growing up, I always wanted to go on a bike ride at night, something about it seemed really cool to me. It wasn’t until I was 13 that my mom finally let me. She told me to wear my helmet, have my phone, take a flashlight, and she set the parameters for where I was allowed to go. She gave me about 4 miles, which was a lot to me. So right after the sun set, I was off.
I loved it. There were no people out walking their dogs, no kids running around, the temperature was perfect, etc.. It was really fun, so fun, that I ignored the limits my mom set. You see, where I was biking was all walking paths. It was one of those grassy areas between two neighborhoods. There’s this long path that went at least 600 feet at a 25 degree angle. I was flying down this hill, having an absolute blast, and darted right through the parameters.
My mom set these limits for a reason. Everything on the inside was close to houses and people. The outside, more specifically, the place where the path I was on lead to, was barren. I rode along this path for 10 minutes before I could only see some of the lights of the houses on the inside of the limits.
After 15 minutes of riding along this dirt path, I hear singing. It sounded about 30-40 feet in front of me. I stop riding to hear it better. It was a woman’s voice. She was singing Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles. But she wasn’t singing the words, just the melody of the vocals. Her voice was strange. You know how when you have phlegm in your throat, your voice gets scratchy? That’s what her voice sounded like.
I inch forward to try and see her. I get close enough to see the silhouette of hair bouncing up and down, like she was headbanging. I decide to get my flashlight out. I’m thinking that maybe this person is in need of help or something. Or maybe this is an insane person and the light will scare them away. So I take the flashlight out of my pocket, point it at her, and turn it on.
The moment the light hit her, she stopped moving completely. She was facing away from me. She had disgusting hair that seemed to be sticking together in clumps. Some of her hair was ripped off, too. She was wearing a very over-sized, bright red hoodie. I was almost too scared to move. I think she was, too. I conjured up as much bravery as I could and said “Sorry” in a very, oops-this-is-the-wrong-room, kind of way. She didn’t respond.
I turned off the flashlight and put it back in my pocket. Just as I was turning my bike around, she screams. She screams in an awful, awful, high pitched voice. I damn near shit myself as I throw myself back onto my bike. I hear her voice getting closer to me. I book it as fast as I can. I don’t look behind me, and I don’t stop pedaling. Her screaming grew quieter and quieter until it dissolved into the howling of the wind.
I once worked as a live-in staff member in a college dormitory. During the summer we housed the few summer school students who remained on campus (near 30). It may be significant to point out these students tended towards the highly academically-motivated, often times high-stress students, if quiet.
One warm day in late June my office received a call from a concerned sibling that she and her family was unable to reach her brother who lived by himself in a room on the summer school floor. This wasn’t unusual as our office frequently dealt with students avoiding their kith and kin due to frayed nerves or general social awkwardness.
Our normal protocol to check on a student is to try to reach them by our emergency contact information, failing that – go check their room to verify they’re living in the building and perhaps available then and there, then have them call their family to verify we followed up on the original request. Also – we are to only enter a room with another staff member present to ensure personal safety of staff and students.
I failed to reach this student on his room and mobile phone, and was working short-staffed so since I was on my own I decided to pop up to his room and check on him.
I arrived on his floor around 2 in the afternoon and the floor seemed deserted as I had expected. I found his room number and immediately noticed the sound of a movie playing on a TV or computer from behind the door. I knocked three times and announced that I was a staff member checking on his health and safety.
No answer.
I didn’t think this was that remarkable, college students are notorious for leaving electronics running while not in the room. I checked the floor showers and bathrooms and found them deserted.
I returned to his door and knocked three more times, waiting about 20 seconds between each knock.
No answer.
This is when my instincts started to buzz. I worked in residence halls a number of years as a professional and something about all the pieces of this puzzle weren’t adding up; family concerned about his health and safety, electronics running (someone must have started them recently, within the time frame of a movie run-time), summer school students and their idiosyncratic behavior, something wasn’t right.
I was by myself, so I probably let myself get more worked up than if I was with someone else. A deserted dorm floor, even at 2 in the afternoon, oftentimes evokes Kubrician memories of the Overlook Hotel . . .
I decided that for some sense of closure or sanity I needed the immediate resolution of keying into this student’s room, even though I was by myself and not technically supposed to do so.
I knocked on the door one more time for good measure, again announced myself as the hall director. I keyed into the room and my spider sense went off even stronger:
The room appeared relatively vacant; the student appeared to be living out of a suitcase (which is unusual for someone staying no less than 8 weeks for a summer school session). The bedding was tussled like someone had been sleeping in it and all the lights in the room were on. And as I had suspected, there was an open laptop on a desk running on battery power playing The Matrix. But no student.
I began to start rationalizing to keep from feeling unsettled; surely this student and I had crossed paths on my way to his room (I’d never met him before so I wouldn’t recognize him otherwise) and perhaps he was just down in the lobby picking up delivery food for a late lunch.
Sure, that’s it.
Then I turned to leave, planning on trying to reach the student later in the afternoon or that night. As I turned to leave I noticed another odd piece of evidence; the accordion closet doors (which are removed in most rooms due to disuse, particularly single rooms like his) were still in this room. And they were closed.
Odd. I couldn’t remember the last time I actually saw someone use those cranky, dysfunctional doors. Then my intuition spiked higher than ever. SHIT SHIT SHIT. I realized I was alone in a room with a potentially suicidal student who may, in fact, have completed just that. And I am about to be “that guy” who discovers the body and then has a shit storm of paperwork and undesirable tasks, not the least of which would be calling the family back to break the news.
I felt like I was talking to myself when my voice cracked as I spoke to the closed doors and announced my name and title and that I would be opening those accordion doors in 3 seconds.
I fumbled with the latch on the doors, and finally managed to get them disengaged, and as I slid the doors apart, I was unprepared. I don’t know what I really expected, a hanging? gunshot wound?
I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect: a 7′ dark-skinned Indian man staring at me embarrassingly as though I had found his secret hangout. We stared at each other for a good 15 seconds without blinking, breathing or speaking.
I finally realized what was going on and my natural emotion was disbelief. All I could think to say was, “Um . . . are you in here hiding from me?”
He looked at me and said, “Yah.”
My heart was still racing, I turned to leave and before I shut his door I turned back to him and said, “Call your sister, she’s worried about you, and, frankly, I am too.”
One night, around 3am, I was dead asleep with my ex-boyfriend next to me. All of the sudden I hear someone IN my house asking if anyone was home. I woke up my ex, and told him to go see what the hell was going on. He was a total chicken shit and made me go. I get out of bed, can’t find my glasses but the guy is still shouting. I come out of my bedroom in my pajamas and see there is a big bald dude in what looks to be a police uniform standing in my entryway.
I’m squinting trying to get a good look at him and he looks at me and says, “I just wanted to tell you that your door was left unlocked and you should lock it.”
I mumble something to the effect of “Uh, thanks?” and he leaves my apartment. I’m still as blind as a bat but I see that he walks away instead of getting into a car. (No policeman would be policing the woodsy area I live in on foot)
The next day I called the local police station and asked if any officers had reported this incident and they said they would check with the on duty officers and get back to me. The called me the next day and said no one had done this.
I still get freaked out when I think about this happening and I wish I knew what that guy was up to.
My brother came into town on business and invited me to bar-hop on his expense account. I let my wife know not to wait up and met up with him once I got off work. We spent the night going from bar to bar catching up on what had been going on in our lives until the last bar closed (around 2-3am). Then we stumbled back to his hotel room and passed out.
I woke up the next morning around 7am and went home. My wife had already left so I didn’t see her. An hour or so later she called me and asked where I had gone so early that morning. I was confused cause I didn’t get home until after she had left for work. I explained this to her and she got really scared.
She explained that around 12:30-1am she heard a key in the front door and the door opening. She sat up in bed and saw a male figure come in (who she assumed was me) and go into the living room. She assumed that I had just decided to sleep on the couch rather than come into the room and risk waking her up. So she just rolled over and went to sleep. A few hours later (around 5-6am) she heard someone moving around downstairs again and then the front door opened and she watched the person leave and heard the door lock. She thought I was heading out and just rolled back over to sleep again.
We called a lock-smith and had the locks changed that day.
This story is 100% true, I experienced it myself in the Summer of 1991.
When I was about 10 years old, I lived on Woodway Drive in the Fox Harbor Apartments in Paducah, KY. If you look up the address, you will see some woods just to the north of the apartment complex. My friends and I played in those woods every day after school and all day on the weekends.
Through the few years I lived there, we cleared a small area in the woods and created a fort from various things we got out of dumpsters. It was our own place that no one else knew about, and it was awesome.
One day as we were walking to our fort, off in the distance we saw a man walking through the woods. He was walking parallel to us, but in the opposite direction – like cars traveling on a road, but with about 70 – 80 yards separating our paths. We stopped talking and stopped dead in our tracks when we saw him. We never saw anyone in the woods, especially not adults.
When we stopped moving, he did too. He turned towards us and looked right at us. As I stared at him and was able to make out the details of what he looked like, I noticed that he was wearing what looked like a Halloween mask (a generic mask, not Michael Myers) and carrying an axe in his hands. We stood there in silence and motionless for what was probably about 10 seconds – he looking at us, and us looking at him. The he started sprinting straight at us.
We did the only thing we apparently thought to do, run straight to our fort. We were probably about 50 yards from the entrance to the fort and in those 50 yards he gained a lot of ground on us. When we finally made it, he was upon us. All of my friends scurried up a tree and were screaming, but I was the last in line. By the time I could try and climb the tree, he was standing right there by us. He was screaming like a lunatic and waving the axe in the air. I was scared, had no idea what was going on, and my mind was blank on what I should do.
I grabbed a large stick and took a nice big baseball bat swing and cracked him on the face with it. He stumbled back a bit, moaned and took the mask off. I recognized the face. It was the landlord and manager of the apartment complex. A man who was probably about 50 years old. He wanted to play a joke on us and thought this was the most appropriate thing to do. He was a fucking psycho.
When I was quite young I was out at the park walking my dog (German Shepherd) when I realized it was getting quite late and I was the only one left in the park. A man dressed in a dark hooded top and a black scarf covering his face jumped the fence that leads into the alleyway behind the park and started marching towards me, but he hadn’t spotted my dog, who was off sniffing around or doing whatever dogs do. My dog got between us though and there was a kind of stand-off for a while. My dog was really tense and growling with his hackles raised, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if my dog was going to attack the man so I just kind of froze. After a while the man backed away, jumped back over the fence and ran away down the alley. I put my dog back on his lead and went home, but he was still tense the whole way back. I was a little freaked out, but perhaps not as afraid as I should have been, looking back on it now. I didn’t know what that man wanted, or what he was doing there, or what would have happened if my dog wasn’t there with me. There would have been no reason for him to go into that park by himself and come towards me like that. I shudder to think about it. I think if the man had made a move towards me my dog would have attacked him.
In Toronto there is a subway system run by the TTC or Toronto Transit Commission. They often square off certain parts of the subway route (Which is pretty fucking basic) in order to do some upgrades or fix bits. Lately they’ve been shutting down the subway rides into downtown on the weekends.
Anyway, They were doing some upgrades on the track and we were going by pretty slow making sure not to run over anyone while they scampered out of the way. Out of no where the power cut out. Now, I should say that I wasn’t the only one in the train car. The cars are decently long and I was at one end, and some woman was at the other end.
When I walked onto the train it was up at her end where there was a giant bubble of seats empty around her. She was displaying the typical signs of Batshit Crazy and people sort of avoided her. Everyone else was off, getting off at Yonge but I still had another couple stops east to go.
She was laughing, audibly, and I tried to tune it out by listening to some music but it never really worked. It was so chilling that my brain sort of just kept ignoring the music and focusing on her, so eventually I just unplugged the music and sat back, trying not to shit my pants.
So anyway, the power cuts out and here I am sitting at one end, as far away from her as I could possibly be, and the lights turn off for some reason.
She stopped laughing.
In fact, she stopped making any noise at all.
When the lights came back on about 5 seconds later when I had sufficiently shit my pants, she wasn’t at the far end. She was about 3 seats away from me.
Staring at me.
The second the train stopped I bolted for the fucking door.
After she ‘relocated’ she didn’t make another sound, she just kept staring.
I’ve got one hell of a disturbing story that happened to me a few years ago in the Parisian metro.
This happened at station “Filles du Calvaire” (which is a pretty nice neighborhood actually). I had a regional train to catch at a bigger station to visit my aunt in another city, but first I needed to reach the central station (Gare de Lyon) using the metro system.
So I entered the Filles du Calvaire station and waited for my train. There were only a couple people on the platforms. I waited, and waited but it still wasn’t coming.
In Paris it’s not unusual to be able to see the next or previous station through the tunnel, from the platform. So people stand on the edge of the platform and impatiently look in the dark of the tunnel to see if they can spot the next train coming, or, if they can see it arriving at the nearby station. Here’s a Google Images pic of how the station looks, it’s very small.
So I did just that, I looked at the previous station through the dark tunnel and saw that the train was actually there, but it was not moving, and not coming toward my station. I thought it must have some technical issues and since it was only a few hundred meters away from me, I figured it would eventually just start again and come. After a few minutes of waiting, it got to a point where I could miss my bigger train if I didn’t leave this station now. So I had to make a decision quickly, either know that it’s coming and wait some more, or bolt out of the station and take my bicycle to rush to the central and not miss my train.
But then, I heard some kind of weak moan coming from the tunnel. I figured, maybe there are some technicians on the tracks, who I can’t see because they’re in the dark portion of the tunnel between my station and the other one where the train is standing by. Or maybe there’s just some random person on the tracks and that’s why the train is stopped, which happens a lot in Paris. But usually they tell you on the speakers.
I walked to the end of the platform to have a better look at the dark part of the tunnel. I couldn’t see a thing at first, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I got chills down my spine. Close enough so I could see there was something, but far enough so it was still too dark and I couldn’t be sure what I was seeing, I saw what roughly ressembles a naked male human body laying on the track, but the position was weird and the angle such that I couldn’t see a head and wasn’t sure of the position it was in.
And then it moved.
Thanks to the movement I could make out a pair of hairy flexed legs that were extremely skinny (I would said atrophied), with very white skin. The legs were facing me as if someone sitting in front of you fell backwards from their chair.
It moaned a little more, making my shocked self snap back into reality, realizing that “it”, was an actual person, and one in a very unfortunate position. I couldn’t see much but it was clearly someone crippled. I figured if there had been any impact with a train already it would be much messier, so this probably hadn’t happened yet. But the poor guy seemed completely dizzy, barely conscious.
I turned around and started running to the middle of the station where the safety lever was (if you activate it it cuts off all electric current to the tracks), but as I was about to reach it I saw two security guards rushing the opposite direction to me, obviously to the rescue of the poor guy. It was clear that the current was already off and there was no service. I really wanted to know what happened exactly but I was about to miss my bigger train, so I rushed out and took my bicycle.
Later that day I googled the shit out of this and checked all the news websites to see if there were any reports and find out more. I couldn’t find anything. My best guess is that some sick fuck had kidnapped and stripped naked a disabled/paralyzed person and put them on the track for “fun”, in the hope they would be squished by a train.
I once got on a pretty crowded Bloor bus and thought I had begun a jovial conversation with a random guy. We said random drunk things to each other for a while, and it seemed as thought we were getting along merrily. Then we passed the shoe museum, where there was a gigantic pair of high-heeled shoes in a window display. ‘Whoa, what the fuck are those?’ Said my new friend. ‘I dunno,’ I replied. ‘But I’d give her the dick.’
I thought this was funny. Because we were drunk and that was the kind of stupid talk we’d been talking the whole time, and because if someone actually existed to wear those shoes she would have been 20 feet tall.
‘Yeah?’ he asked calmly. ‘How about I fucking skin you?’
‘Huh?’ I said. Confused at the sudden turn in our discourse.
‘I’m going to fucking kill you and skin you alive!’ He shouted.
I am 6’4 and probably had 60lbs on him, but where a moment ago I had been happy and laughing, I was suddenly afraid. He crazied me into stunned and frightened silence.
As the bus made a normal stop he leaped at me and started shoving me towards the door. Not like one big shove, but like a hundred little frantic shoves. Bemused and startled, I just kind of let it happen, and then watched as he stared at me through the window of the leaving bus.
I have no idea if he was wasted or crazy or just randomly decided to fuck with me. But in the future I know to be more careful when I suggest that I would enjoy intercourse with giant imaginary women.
I went on my first vacation without any adult supervision and minors under my watch at 19; we went to St. Thomas for a week and stayed at a really nice Marriott on the island. It was me, my best friend (17) and her little sister and her little sister’s best friend both 16. Everything was going wonderfully the drinks flowed we bronzed our ebony skin on the local beaches and we clubbed/bar hopped as we expected to.
On our second to last night of parent free paradise we decided to take a taxi to the other side of the island to meet up with an American bartender/waiter that we had befriended at one of the restaurants on the Marriott property.
This is where the night began to go the way of shit.
A nice taxi driver who had taken us to most of our destinations and who had become like a grandpa figure to us over the course of our vacation picked us up and told us to call him and he would pick us up when we were done.
So once he drove away we realized we were at the wrong spot. So we (already being pretty buzzed) walked away and began to do a recon for this dude walking from club to club (steadily getting more and more wasted) we ended up at this local bar filled with older, sketchy, Rasta type dudes but by this point we had been looking for like 3 hours and decided to just enjoy the music and dance the night away.
I excused myself from our dance circle to use the bathroom but after about 10 steps something told me to look back at my friends. There standing over my friends was a huge Rasta sprinkling some type of powder over the unsuspecting teens. I quickly looked down on myself and their was this dust all over me too! I was officially freaked out so I run over to them and tel them what’s been going on; WE’RE ALL FREAKED OUT NOW! So we call our grandpa taxi driver and his wife picks up and tells me that he fell ill unexpectedly and can’t come pick us up! We have no way to get back to the hotel so the younger girls begin to get paranoid and begin ranting about voodoo (I’m tired, drunk and now officially creeped out but need to keep my cool in front of the girls) so I call the hotel and see if they can send a shuttle (it’s like 3AM) but they say they can’t.
Wouldn’t you know that while i’m talking on the phone with the Marriott Rasta man has made his way over and starts in on us
Creepy Rasta Dude: “You girls staying at the Marriott I can take you there no problem I’m actually a taxi driver”
My BF: “No we’re good thanks though”
Creepy Rasta Dude: Why you got to treat me dis way YOU GOD DAMN TOURIST ALWAYS F’ING WITH OUR COUNTRY YOU JUST RAPE OUR LAND FOR A WEEK AND LEAVE US BEHIND!”
Me: “Hey man calm down no offense meant we’re good but really thanks for the offer”
Creepy Rasta Dude: “WHO THE F*** WAS TALKING TO YOU!”
At this point we’ve moved outside and are trying to flag any kind of taxi down; a crowd has gathered and they are all pro creepy Rasta Dude.
We’re are heavily outnumbered both by locals and by Men and now the younger girls are crying.
And suddenly like out of a dream a taxi driver pulls up and tells us to get in so we do so without really looking at the car.
He’s happy and talkative for the first minute of the car ride and then he completely shuts down stops talking and begins to blast some reggae music to the point where we can’t here each other speak in the back.
we get within half a mile of the familiar path to the hotel and he stops the car.
For NO REASON
There isn’t a light
He hasn’t run out of gas
We certainly haven’t asked him to pull over
He just stops the car and turns off the music and sits there like he’s trying to debunk Einsteins theory of relativity.
and then he turns his left blinker on…his left blinker that would lead us to the shanty side of St. Thomas…the left blinker that would go Away from our hotel….
My heart drops to my stomach and the worst case of pins and needles kicks in. I turn to the door that I’m sitting next to and try to open the door but they are LOCKED!!!!
I SHIT YOU NOT I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE SCARED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE AND I’VE HAD LIKE 5 MOVIE STYLE SCARY MOMENTS.
I was scared not really for myself but for my friends and for their families and especially for my parents who had already lost a child.
So I pull it together and try to make my voice as strong as possible and squeak out:
“This is not our turn I think you’re confused”
and for what felt like an eternity but was probably like 30 seconds he was quiet and then turned his blinker off, nodded and began to drive us to our hotel.
When we got out the security guy who we had also made friends with scolded us when we got out about getting into random cars.
Turns out there wasn’t even a taxi sign on the car he had just yelled taxi and we had gotten in due to how distracted we were from the crowd.
To this day I wonder what would happen if I hadn’t said anything about the turn.
One winter I was pushing my limits and winter camping a lot, but I had this crazy tent with a fireplace. The limits part was just the fact that I was solo and pretty remote in these places. This was rural SW colorado canyon country, there wasn’t that much snow at all on the ground but it was 0 degrees F that night. Well, it was a full moon and I was restless so at about 2am I got out of my tent (fire still going) and went for a long walk. I ended up climbing up some stuff that was probably a quarter or half mile from my tent/vehicle but up above it so I could see down on my tent and campsite clearly. It was really beautiful down there, dimly lit from the inside by the stove’s fire and dimly lit from the outside by the big moon. I was enjoying myself and just about to head back down when I heard distant gravel crunching. I had been there since noon that day and not a single vehicle had driven past so I was kind of put off and decided to stay up there until they drove passed.
The noise grows louder (amazing how far away you can heard in the canyons at night) slowly and eventually I can see that it is a car on the same road so I stay put and watch. It’s going really slow, I can see a lighter being used quite a bit (i’m not saying they were smoking meth, but they were smoking meth). And it’s something like a 89 caprice or something. Like the old cop cars, and really crappy. So I’m just watching, still in a very wistful mood and feeling somewhat powerful from my perch. They near the bend where they’ll be able to see my tent and round the corner. Brake lights. They slow way down and seem to pause at my tent for an eternity. Probably only a minute or so but now I was on high alert and pretty nerve wracking. I had no kind of anything weapon wise on me, just a hatchet down by the tent for firewood.
But they drive on. I’m pretty relieved but still shaken, now thinking about what if they come back. So I decide to chill for a little longer and make sure I see them exit. Nope. They turned around down the road and came back. I watched as they parked a ways down the road and got out and started walking down the road towards my camp. It was such bright moonlight with slick rocks all around that I could see this all happening SOMEWHAT clearly but I couldn’t make out much more than the basic scenes and there were still lots of big shadows.
I proceed to watch for quite a while as they approach my tent, look all around the outside, look in the vents (where it probably looked like I was sleeping, the bag was in there with bedding), mess with my vehicle, and then walk back to their car and leave.
I pretty much stayed up there until just before dawn and only came down when I knew I could break camp and bail. There were footprints in the snow on the outside of my tent and I kept imagining what it would have been like to have just woken up and not known what happened, just see the footprints.
After that I started carrying A) a spot locator beacon B) battery powered motion detector alarm C) shotgun. And I started using a much smaller tent and sometimes I even camp in a bivy 20 or 30 feet away from my tent and just put my pack in the tent. This way if someone starts messing with the “honeypot” I have enough time to get some awareness and do the right thing.
My Senior year of High School me and three of my friends went up to this tiny cabin in the middle of Fucking Nowhere, Michigan that my friends grandpa owns. Now by middle of nowhere I’d say this is probably the most remote location I’ve ever accessed by car, about 30 miles out we lost cell phone service, google maps didn’t have a map of the location, there were no street signs, and the roads barely qualified as such. The last leg of the drive was one single “road” went for maybe 5 miles with no intersections and ended at the cabin and nothing else.
Anyways, cut to the next evening we have been swimming and drinking a few beers at this nearby pond but it’s getting pretty dark so we decide we need to head back. We get close to the cabin and realize that not only is the light on but the door is open and there is the creepiest looking dude I’ve ever seen just kind of standing there looking out the door in our direction. Sensing danger we immediately bolt and get as far away as possible, none of us can sleep and we don’t have cell phone service to call 911 so we basically just hide and freak the fuck out all night long.
The next morning we work up the courage to go back to the cabin where the door is still open, we rush inside, grab our shit, take note of the fact that nothing is missing (we had laptops, ipods, liquor, etc. there) and that the fucking panel to the crawl space/attic area is open, get in the car, and drive all the way back to Ohio.
To this day I have no idea who the fuck he was and why he happened to be in the middle of absolutely nowhere looking through the cabin we where staying in but to this day I refuse to go camping, etc/ anywhere too far from civilization. Fuck now I’m going to have trouble sleeping tonight.
My sister’s bedroom was on the second floor. All of a sudden she screamed and said she saw a hand on her window. We thought she was having a nightmare, told her to go back to bed. Next morning we found a ladder up against our house by her window.
I once lived in a sort of bad neighborhood in a very tiny house with my brother, who was rarely there. Old house, so it was a little creepy and also felt like anyone who wanted to could have broken in.
One night I was getting ready for bed, it was pretty late and during a hot summer. We didn’t have A/C, so I had one of those two fan window deals. The blinds were pulled down to the top of the fan. I was changing for bed, I sleep in underwear and a t-shirt.
I slipped out of my pants and changed my shirt. I don’t wear a bra to bed because Fuck that. I am about to hop into bed when I hear a low, masculine voice say, ” Let’s see those titties again”
I think my whole body stopped working for 5 seconds while I absorbed the fact that there was a creepy peeping tom right outside my window and I was alone in a house that he could get into if he wanted.
It was the first and only time I called the 911. I had a panic attack waiting for the police and the very nice 911 lady had to calm me down. Bright note, apparently it was a slow night because they sent 3 cars. I was so happy when I moved.
When I was 17, my friend and I were walking down the street near my house at about 1:00 am. We lived in dense neighborhood dominated by three decker houses. We came around a corner to see this huge bull sized man on his knees, over a woman. He was furiously smashing her head into the concrete sidewalk. When I say this guy was bull sized, I mean he was not fat. His muscles had muscles and they were bulging. He reminded me of the Hulk. Only, he was not green. He was red. Red as if he was in heatstroke. We screamed at him right away.
He looked up, and I will never forget that face. There was snot pouring out of his nose. Long strands of it hung all the way down to the woman’s head. His eyes were bright white, crazed, wide, and far too circular. His face expressed a murderous fury I have never seen before, and hope I never see again.
He lifted the woman’s head by her hair, and with a loud “crack” spiked it into the cement like a football, and screamed “you want some of this huh!” I had not seen my friend pick up the rock he had, but he threw at the guys snarling face. He hit him right in the nose. It was a big ass rock, but it did not even phase the guy.
They guy lunged at my friend, who took of running. They guy took off chasing my friend. I knew there was no way a guy that size would be able to catch up to my buddy who was a track and field athlete. I ran to the woman.
Her hair was completely matted, and dark red blood was gushing from a huge deep gash across her forehead. I could not believe she was not unconscious. I tried to tell her I was here to help and she became combative. She started punching me screaming to leave her man alone. I was afraid that her screaming would bring that monster back to us.
With that thought I said “fuck this” to myself and I grabbed her wrists and dragged her to the nearest door and started pounding on it. This time it was me screaming “open the fuck up!” I was scared shitles that this guy would be back before I got to someplace safe.
Two men opened the door and pretty much freaked out when they saw that I was restraining a small woman covered in blood. I think they were about to take me out, but I screamed “call the police! Call an ambulance!” I told them that we needed to get in before he comes back. I told them “He WILL come back!”
We quickly dragged the woman into the hallway, shut, and locked the door. One of the guys called the police and they showed up in what seemed like seconds. An ambulance arrived soon after.
My buddy, seeing the lights of the squad cars, returned to the scene. He out ran the guy, and got to a store and had the clerk call the police. So I guess they were already on the way before we made the call.
The police had a lot of questions of course. We had no idea who the guy was. We never saw him or the woman before. In the end the police gave us a card and said that if we see this guy again, call 911 right away. Like I would even hesitate.
The next day, the events of the night before were in the paper. I read the article sitting on my porch. It said that the woman was in critical condition. It mentioned my name as well as my buddy. It also said that the man was yet to be identified, and was yet to be apprehended. Here is the part that really messed with my head. The place where this happened was one block away from my porch. I looked up and could see the spot where he was smashing her head. I remember thinking “That fucker is still out there!” and looking down at the paper “he knows my name.”
Two weeks later I turned 18, and I was on a plane to boot camp. This guy scared me THAT much.
Not quite an “encounter,” but this is a scary story nonetheless, I think.
I first got AIM when I was about 13. I wasn’t very smart about using it, so I was always talking to these random people that I didn’t know. One day, some guy who claimed to be from my school and just a couple years older than me IMed me and we started talking. Being 13 and niave, I talked to him for days and developed a “crush” on him.
He asked me if I wanted to meet up to “hang out” and we even planned a specific time and place to do so…but I was a little skepical. I made the smart choice to ask my older sister (who was his age) if she knew this guy. She didn’t, which was a red flag to me, since the school is small and it’s impossible to not know someone there. I decided not to meet the guy, and blocked him on AIM because I was creeped out that he obviously had been lying to me.
The scariest part? About three years later, I saw a news article with that guy’s name. He didn’t lie about that, or the fact that he was from my town, but he was really 25. Why was he in the news? He was convicted of raping three young girls who he’d lured from AIM. He planned to murder one of them, but she managed to get away.
During my first year of college my brother (8 years older) lived about 2 blocks up the street from where my dorm was. This made it super easy to go over and hang out since we’ve always been close.
Well this particular night, a Thursday I think, I decide to head home a little early and leave his place at about 11. I step outside onto the street and it is oddly empty. I can only see one other person in sight and hes directly across the street.
He was making all sorts of weird guttural noises and wigging out but this being in the city I see that all the time. So i just head left and think about putting in my headphones to listen to some music. God damn glad i didn’t because the noise from the guy suddenly stops after i walked about 10 feet. The abrupt silence was unnerving and I looked back over at him. He had stopped moving and was staring directly at me. Then he made a fucking beeline across the street (wide quad lane, no cars though) for me.
I picked up my pace and looked back once i reached the end of the block. He was about 70 feet away now and hobble/running like some kind of zombie. So I freak out and start running back to the dorms with him in hot pursuit, and now he’s making these slurping noises with his tongue and groaning.
As I near the door to the dorm I hope to god that my security card works on the first swipe (it never did). I jumped the short 4 stairs and zipped my card as the guy is now about 25-30 feet away and still running.
Card reader flashes green and i grab the door, rush inside, and slam it back closed behind me. A group of students are just about to go out the door but I stop them and tell them to wait. The guy comes all the way up to the door and paces for a little bit outside before slinking back off into the darkness.
The thing about him that scared me the most was whenever I looked back or when he was at the door he had constant eye contact. I never want to see that hungry look in someones eyes again. Maybe he just wanted my gum.
We got down to the stage without being bothered. Then we see a silhouette of some guy not far away. He is creeping around trying to be quiet, but I could make out his shape while my ex could hear him breathing. We go up a few rows of steps and make a big circle around him to get to the steps. The guy is following us.
We climbed the stairs looking back at him. He’d creep from seats to the side of the wall. He must have thought he was being stealthy and he followed us up like that. We didn’t let on we knew he was there until the last few steps. I had my ex run for it with the car keys while I half ran keeping myself between her and the guy. At this point the guy is following us doing an ape like impersonation by running with his hands on the ground and grunting.
When we get to the car he is hiding, my ex unlocked the doors while I looked around. We get in and the guy comes from behind a car as I start it. He beats on my windshield a few times, yells something I don’t understand, and runs off. He was probably on something pretty powerful.
I was sitting at a bus stop next to an older man in rumpled slacks and a white dress shirt.
I had seen him a few times before because we took a similar route. I rode one bus in particular that he was usually on to get to some summer classes that I was taking at the local public college. He’d made eye contact on occasion and said things like “You look very nice,” or “Your hair is very pretty today.” I honestly thought he was a very sweet old man being harmless and friendly and it made my afternoon a couple times.
On this particular day, my bus was nowhere to be seen and I’d been sitting there next to him for several minutes. All we’d said to each other was “hi”, so I started a conversation with him. Immediately he began telling me about his experiences in the Vietnam War and it became readily apparent that he was very mentally disturbed. He claimed that he heard God’s voice telling him, “Moses, I call you to this war to atone for your people,” and that he immediately enlisted, but not before a night of passion with his then girlfriend who he described as a “Chinese hippy”.
He then went on to describe in very explicit detail the physical characteristics of the various Vietnamese women he had sex with over the course of the war. And then about his girlfriends of varied Asian descent when he returned from the war. The universal defining characteristic that he never failed to mention was long black hair. “Long black hair” — while pointing at my head, immediately followed by “Loooong black hair” — while pointing at my crotch.
I am a 90 lb Asian female who was, at the time, wearing a sundress and carrying a bag of cookies I had just purchased.
I gave him a cookie and got on the first bus that came by. We were alone at that stop for maybe 45 minutes.
I was 17 and just entering my rebellious phase. I had gone to homecoming with a new group of friends. I was the only one old enough to drive and had full use of my mother’s car, a brand new VW bug. (Admittedly, I was spoiled.) I gave my parents some bullshit, “all girls slumber party after the dance” story and they totally bought it. I had a car, I had the whole night, and I had friends to impress. Of course there was the typical dance after party lined up and we went with bells on. There was a boy that I was sort of interested in. I was the (2 years) older woman and he didn’t drive yet. After I dropped my friends at the party I went to pick up my love interest.
I grew up in a very rural area of Southern Maryland. There are long stretches of road with very little activity. As I was making the 25 minute drive my car suddenly started shaking and I had to steer it off the road as smoke had started to come out of the hood. I pulled over a little frantic as I was about to be caught in a lie because obviously the car was broken and I was not where I was supposed to be. I was also alone because the girls had decided to hang at the party so I could go pick up my guy friend. I got out and started to pop the hood to investigate the source of smoke. In the distance I saw a pair of headlights. As naive as I was at 17 I assumed that I could get help from the car that was approaching.
The car pulled up. It was over 10 years ago but I still remember the shitty little Celica with three men who looked like they had just won the lottery. They slowed to a stop next to my car. They never said anything. They just started to unbuckle their seat belts. Suddenly red and blue lights cut through our field of vision and we both looked in the direction of the state trooper who was pulling up behind us. I’ll never forget her. She just glared at the men in the car confirming that the dread that had been rising in me was totally justified. As quickly as their perverted hopes were dashed, they were gone. She asked me if I was ok and waited with me until my mom came to pick me up.
After my Freshman year in college, a group of my friends rented an extremely large house. They had seven or eight people living their, so between rent and utilities each person had to pony up $125 a month. Even in the mid nineties it was dirt cheap.
But, because everyone was blowing all their money on beer, they were always throwing parties to make rent.
One of the guys didn’t want to deal with it and moved out. About two weeks later I come over and one of my buddies introduces me to the new room mate will call him Big Henry. Big Henry lived up to his name. He had been in the military, got shot in the ass and got discharged. That is all he would say on the subject.
Big Hank had a friend, lets call him “Psycho Joe”. Psycho Joe was an ex-military sniper. The story I heard was that he was discharged on a section 8 after his last mission was a failure. He had his target in his sights, pulled the trigger and had a young child walk into the line of fire. Joe had issues to say the least.
One night my friends are throwing a kegger and Joe got pretty drunk. He started picking a fights and Big Hank kicked him out. It gets to be about 2 A.M. and I find a couch to crash on.
About 3 A.M. I am startled awake by what I though was a crack of thunder. I sit up and look out the window. It isn’t raining and I decide to decide to go out and have a smoke before it starts getting heavy. As I reach for the door handle Big Henry tackles me.
He informs me that Joe is outside and having an “episode”. The sound I heard wasn’t thunder. Joe had shot at the house. Next thing I know I have about twelve guys age 18-24 debating on if we call the cops. Have of us are hammered and underage and one of the roommates has a very large amount of marijuana in his closet. The last thing most of us need is the cops showing up.
While we are having this debate, Big Henry is going around checking windows for Joe. He slides downstairs and catches Psycho Joe sliding through the basement window.
Henry and the roommate/dealer begin to have a calm conversation with Joe about his guns. Joe hands Henry the gun in his hand. Joe swears he wasn’t going to do anything. Henry asks if he has any more guns. Joe pulls one from his boot leg.
They chat for a bit. Henry asks if he has any more guns. He pulls one from his other boot leg. Henry goes back to chatting. Henry asks again and Joe pulls two more from shoulder harnesses under his jacket.
This continues for a good thirty minutes. They talk for a bit. Henry asks if he has any more guns and another one seems to appear out of nowhere. In total, Joe had the gun he was holding and 7 others on him.
Some where secured others were just in a pocket of his jacket. All the while Joe is swearing he just wanted to talk to us. After all the guns are laying out for everyone to see, Joe looks at Henry and says “I suppose you want the knives too, huh.” And out come four knives of varied sizes.
After all this he looks at the drug dealer/roommate and asks to get some weed. Joe stated “I don’t have any cash on me but you can keep the weapons as collateral.”
When I was around 12, a neighbor had a party where I met a girl my age. My mom was happy to see me making friends so we head to my house to play games. My dog was a sweet lab who had never been angry or growled ever. This girl walks up to him to pet him, and he immediately growls and barks, and eventually cowers close to me. I couldn’t believe it, but even by 12 I believed you don’t just ignore a dog’s intuition. So I take note of the sign but we go play and then go for a walk. Not 10 minutes into the conversation and this girl is an obvious sociopath. I realized what I and the dog had felt about her. She was empty and fake, in very visceral way. She starts talking about rape. Not in a ‘maybe she was abused’ way. In a ‘doesn’t that sound interesting, but how do the logistics work’ kind of way. She specifically wondered how you rape someone while holding a knife to their neck. Her parents invited me to spend the night at her house. I declined.
WARNING: NOVEL Below is my 100% true experience with what I (and others who encountered him) believe to be a genuine sociopath.
Years ago when I was in grade school, a kid in our class, “Matt,” moved away with his mom from our town in the midwest to the pacific northwest. Matt and I had never really got along- I was a fat little shit and a tattle-tale; he was a cocky little shit and a bully, likely due to his home environment- but thanks to skateboarding and punk music, we bonded through daily AIM conversations over the course of a few years. Eventually, I lost touch with Matt when I entered high school, and presumed he’d end up just fine. He was the type who was good at everything: good at soccer, good on the guitar, very good at arguing, good with girls, and good at being good looking (this is relevant, just wait).
Years pass and we reconnect when I’m a university sophomore. Matt is now back in our hometown living with his dad, and he’s undergoing a personal revolution. He discovered his bisexuality, started using drugs, constantly formed and reformed his philosophy on life, and settled on a new occupation: male prostitution.
I was a bit shocked by all of this information, but I resisted the urge to judge him, as did most of our old circle of friends- until they started hanging out with him. Matt would show up almost daily to our mutual friend’s house to smoke blunts, drink, and play video games. The more time Matt spent with my friends, the more stories about his weirdness began to trickle out.
On one occasion Matt showed up to our friend’s house with a huge shiner, and refused to discuss how he got it (this was before my friends knew he was a prostitute). Another time, Matt was high on meth and ran out of gas in the middle of an intersection while my good friend was in the passenger seat. It must be noted that he was shirtless, still had a massive shiner, and had just finished getting a spray tan at a salon. After acquiring some gas, he proceeded to break the nozzle of the gas can due to unfamiliarity with handling one. My buddy had to take over before the cops showed up.
Matt’s behavior around women was particularly odd. One night at this same friend’s house, Matt showed up for a party, obviously under the influence of some sort of stimulant. He proceeded to tell an asian girl who happened to be there about his passion for “asian pussy,” how it was the best, and how he bet hers was amazing. Naturally, he was essentially shunned for the rest of the night. The next morning my friend’s mom got on her work computer and noticed a website called adamforadam.com or something like that in the browser history, which, unsurprisingly, is a gay dating/escort site. Matt apparently had visited the site in the wee hours of the morning to make arrangements with his next client. When he was called out on it, he simply didn’t understand what he had done wrong. His social faux paus went completely over his head.
I was at university while all of this took place and was only in contact with him via facebook. During this period of time his drug use was increasing dramatically because he’d entered into a relationship with the rich drug-using owner of a famous gay nightclub in our city. He often related to me how much money and drugs this guy showered him with, and how he was purposefully manipulating him (the owner) into giving him more money and drugs in exchange for companionship. Matt was using mounds of coke, meth, weed, and probably more that I’m not aware of, and his behavior was becoming stranger and stranger because of it. He’d occasionally make very telling statements- about how he was superior to people in some way or another, how he was an excellent manipulator, or some kind of glib compliment that I would brush off. His instability and beneath-the-surface malice became continually clearer to me.
A month or two later, he got kicked out of his dad’s house because of all the shit he’d been doing, and moved with no money or possessions to the city that my university was located in.
One night, while I was home for the weekend, I noticed I had about 20 missed calls from him. Turns out he showed up at my dorm building and was at the front desk. I laughed, not really believing him since I’d never told him where I lived or even which campus I was on, and he told me flatly: “you have a package waiting for you, it’s on the board here.” I’d been expecting a package. My stomach turned a little bit and I told him that he couldn’t just show up at my dorm like that, and to call me ahead of time if he wanted to hang out.
When I got back to school, my roommate mentioned to me that he’d had a weird encounter with someone in the basement laundry room. After unloading his clothes into the washer, he turned around to see a man, probably 20-something, wearing a short-sleeved white collared shirt and a thin black tie, standing between him and the door. My friend, who is a very spiritual person (he claims to “see” auras and shit like that), saw him shrouded with an aura black as night, and had an accompanying mental “flash” of him holding a knife or a gun. The person asked him if he could borrow his cell phone, but my roommate had left it in his room. He told him no and hurried out of the basement back up to his room, locking the door behind him.
I thought nothing of this story at the time, and two days later, Matt called me and wanted to hang out, so I met him at a big park down the street. We took a walk while he told me about how he lied to an old woman and convinced her to let him stay in her hotel room, how he’d been stealing food and toiletries from stores, and how he was sure he was going to be more famous than John Mayer in a year.
During our walk we came upon a spot notorious for narcotics distribution, and Matt took the opportunity to scam a pot dealer out of a .5g nug by promising he “just had to hit up his Chase account” before he’d buy an 8th. I smoked the weed with him feeling a bit uneasy, and once it kicked in, I had to separate myself from him. His beady, empty little eyes were scaring the shit out of me. I told him I was tired and needed to take a nap and that I’d see him some other time.
We parted ways, and then it dawned on me: Matt was wearing a short-sleeve collared shirt and a black tie. My roommate and I went to the front desk that night and told them to call the police if they saw Matt in the building.
Matt is currently in jail for contempt of court and telephonic harassment. He was previously in jail for breaking into his ex-landlord’s house and hiding in her closet.
When I was younger I went with my family to Yosemite. My dad remembers going to the campground bathrooms there and seeing a janitor there who just gave him the chills for some reason. He’s a dentist, so he gets to know a lot of people. He has gotten very good at reading them. He says he has run into a few people in his life where he could just tell that something wasn’t working correctly upstairs and it freaked him out. I don’t mean the people had a mental handicap, I mean the people were cold. They were psychopaths. It doesn’t necessarily mean they were serial killers, he could just tell that they couldn’t comprehend empathy. When he saw the janitor, he immediately picked up on this. I don’t know if he talked to him at all though. Later that year he reads in the newspaper that a serial killer was caught in Yosemite. Sure enough, it was that janitor that he saw. The guy had killed four people earlier that year. I believe the guy’s name is Cary Stayner.
Unlike those who suffer from most other forms of mental illness, a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder hardly suffers at all. Instead, he makes those around him suffer, and his victims are often left scratching their heads and wondering why.
Look for these warning signs and spare yourself the suffering—if the guy you’re falling in love with exhibits many of these traits, you should run, not walk, away from him.
1. HE SWEEPS YOU OFF YOUR FEET AT FIRST…
Women are attracted to narcissists for the simple reason that they are very, very attractive—almost fatally so. Narcissists tend to be better-looking than most people; they also fairly vibrate and sparkle with charm. He will lure you in by making you feel special for even catching his attention—after all, why would such a handsome, witty man—a perfect “catch”—want to be with you if you weren’t beautiful and charming yourself? He will buy you gifts and show you off and tell you you’re the most amazing woman he’s ever met. You will feel an instant boost of self-esteem almost as if he’d injected you with it like a drug. For a brief time, you may feel happier and more in love than you’ve ever been in your life.
2. …THEN LOSES INTEREST ONCE THE CHASE IS OVER
The “honeymoon phase” with a narcissist can last anywhere from a few weeks to about four months, at which point you will feel fairly slapped across the face with the icy hand of reality. Once the honeymoon phase is over, it will feel like a long, drawn-out, agonizing divorce. He won’t call or text you as much. He will stop buying you gifts, showing you off, and complimenting you. If you seek another injection of self-esteem, he will withhold it from you like a sadistic drug dealer. If you even dare to ask him why he’s acting differently, he will treat you with annoyance as if he’s swatting away a fly. Remember how great you felt at first? You will feel exactly that horrible now—if not worse.
3. HE HOGS EVERY CONVERSATION
Did you hear about his new plan to take over the world? How about his gym routine? Or the clothes he wants to buy? Or all the people who compliment him? Or the movie he just saw? What did you say? Did you say something about yourself? Anyway, let’s get back to him…
4. HE SAYS ALL OF HIS EXES WERE “CRAZY”
Oh my God, with you at least he’s finally found a girl who understands him! As his curiously bad luck would have it, EVERY SINGLE ONE of his many, many exes was a psycho bitch who whined too much and falsely accused him of things and clung too tightly to him and stalked him after he dumped them. What are the odds? But at least you’re not like that—until he starts trying to make you think you’re crazy.
5. HE TRIES TO MAKE YOU THINK YOU’RE CRAZY
Why the hell did you keep texting him last night when he stood you up for a date? And no, that beautiful ex of his who posted pictures of them on Instagram last night is just a friend, and he accidentally ran into her at a bar when we went there to loan some guy friend twenty dollars. Please tell him you’re not some paranoid psycho bitch like all the others were!
6. HE EXAGGERATES HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Did you realize that he once held the world record for holding your breath underwater? He also was once offered a position on the President’s Cabinet but turned it down because he wanted to “see the world.” And when he went off seeing the world, he had a personal meeting with the Dalai Lama because the Dalai Lama follows him on Instagram. He also once discovered a cure for cancer, but Big Pharma stole his idea and is currently keeping it under wraps.
7. HE ALSO EXAGGERATES HIS SUFFERING
The reason he discovered a cure for cancer is because he’s had cancer—six different times, actually. He was also abandoned by his family at age two, whereupon he pulled himself up by the bootstraps by selling chocolate milk to rock-quarry workers for twenty hours a day. After being jailed for two years on false accusations, he was released and then had to fight for his life on the mean streets of Detroit every day for years—until he was hit by a car and spent another two years in the hospital. Why doesn’t he have any evidence to back up these claims? Because it was all lost when a jealous psycho ex burned down his mansion—duh!
8. HE TAKES UNNECESSARY RISKS
Sure, he has had tons of unprotected sex with strange women and drives his car 90MPH on suburban streets and gets into unnecessary fistfights and talks back to police officers and doesn’t have health insurance and quits jobs that he needs and doesn’t have a single plan for his future. That’s because he’s not boring like everyone else!
9. HE USES YOUR DEEPEST INSECURITIES AGAINST YOU
When you told him about your darkest childhood secrets and your insecurities about your looks and that one boy who broke your heart a few years ago, he seemed patient and understanding. But he was only gathering information to use against you the minute you challenge his authority. Since he knows everything that has hurt you in the past, he will beat you over the head with it and pick at every emotional scab until you’re left bleeding again.
10. HE CONSTANTLY REMINDS YOU THAT HE HAS OTHER OPTIONS
When he poured on the charm at first, he made you feel like the luckiest girl on Earth. But that was not intended to make you feel secure—as time wears on and it becomes obvious that you’re not the object of his affection but rather the target of his sickness, he will keep reminding you that you’re lucky because there are 100 girls waiting in line to replace you. He will not for one moment allow you to breathe easily and feel secure. Rather, he will keep you on your toes and wracked with worry.
11. HE ALIENATES YOU FROM FAMILY AND FRIENDS
He doesn’t understand why you even talk to your family anymore, because they obviously don’t appreciate you. And the only reason you have that guy friend is because he obviously wants to fuck you. And all your girlfriends are stupid and jealous of you because they all obviously want to fuck him. He really hopes that one day you come to your senses and realize that he’s the only person you will ever need. But be warned—the minute you do that, he will drop you like a hot potato.
12. HE WILL FREEZE YOU OUT OVER THE SLIGHTEST CRITICISM
Although he appears outwardly confident, the narcissist is the most insecure man on the planet. If you even gently try to suggest that he’s doing something wrong, he will walk away, quit talking, ignore your texts, or just outright dump you. He will wait for you to admit you were wrong and to beg and plead and cry and apologize. Once he’s reeled you back in, you will never feel the slightest bit comfortable expressing even the tiniest misgiving about him. It will feel like absolute torture.
13. WHEN HE FINALLY MAKES YOU CRY, HE WILL ACT DISGUSTED AND CALL YOU WEAK
You need to understand that you only exist to serve his needs—in fact, in all the most important ways, you are not even real to him. The fact that he’s insulted you and repeatedly dumped you and never made you feel safe and alienated you from everyone you know is completely irrelevant to why you finally broke down sobbing—it’s because you’re “weak.” So you better stop crying, or he’ll leave you again.
Girl, if he even meets one of these 13 criteria, he’s not worth it. If he meets even a few of them, you should block his number and threaten to get a restraining order if he attempts to make contact. If he meets all 13, he and everyone like him should be permanently exiled to Narcissist Island, where they can claw one another to death struggling to stare at themselves in the island’s only mirror.
But above all, don’t let him make you feel like shit. He’s just projecting. You are far better than he could ever hope to be.
I am not a psychologist, a psychotherapist, or even an expert on human behavior.
What I am, however, is a person who has been in two relationships with sociopaths—one two years long and the second, thankfully, much, much shorter. It took me until a good while after both these relationships, and thanks to my own counselors and support groups, to realize that I had, in fact, been taken in by two sociopaths who saw my empathetic nature, and as a young woman who adores romance, I didn’t stand a chance.
If I can help at all, I want to make sure that other people do not go through the pain and devastation that I did. And if they have already done so, I hope they will come out the other side with me, knowing that they were not alone and that they have now truly stepped into the light to be rid of these people.
So how can one identify whether the person who acts just that tiny bit weird/unpredictably is actually worthy of that strange gut feeling you have about them?
1. They are intense and fast-moving.
Yes, I know it’s a whirlwind and it’s everything a lot of us dream of. We meet someone and you just know. Everything seems to make sense. You’re dating. Now you’re steady. Now you’re living together. Now you’re engaged. Now you’re married.
Whoa, slow down there! It’s only been a few months!
Sociopaths like to take up your world, and they can do this by committing really quickly. We, of course, may take this as a sign of Disney-like love that we hoped existed somewhere, out there, for us….but they are essentially trying to trap you. Mine would even say—he said it as a joke but was also deadly serious—”Got to trap you as soon as possible/when we’re married, you’ll be trapped/when we’ve had our babies, you’ll be trapped forever.”
It is all a big ploy to become as involved with you as possible and to take up your life. It is such an ego boost for the sociopath to feel as if they are indispensable in your life. When they have found someone they can manipulate easily, they will be loath to let you go. The easiest way to trap you in their web is to commit to you and get you feel all your good feelings toward them, investing in what you believe to be genuine affection. But if you’ve only known them a month or two and they’re talking about rings and such, you need to ask yourself why.
Trigger claims include them testifying that you are the love of their life/they’ve never felt this way about anyone/they’ve never done any of the things they do with you for another. All very sweet phrases. But in the first month or two, maybe they should have a little pin of “To Consider Later” put in them…
2. They need to control.
The sociopath may fake being a laid-back person frighteningly well, but trust me, nothing could be further from the truth. Their need to dominate their surroundings, their relationships, their home lives, their circle of friends—everything that they feel capable of dominating in, they will. If they feel they cannot impress or will not be the best at something in a certain circumstance, they will likely avoid that altogether. One of my exes claimed social anxiety; what this meant was that he knew others were doing better than him or were more confident than him, so he would avoid anything that would make him feel like he was not the best in a social circle; he avoided prolonged interaction with others because it made him feel bad.
Don’t be surprised if the sociopath wants to know/tries to find out your passwords to your social media & emails. They may claim that they trust you, but they want to protect you from others, whom they don’t trust(!)
Don’t be surprised if they get irritated or upset if you don’t pick up the phone the minute they start ringing you. They’re important enough to command your instant attention, dammit!
Don’t be surprised if they react badly to you having nights out with the guys/girls. They can’t control you when you’re with your friends. They want to spend all that lovely free time with you. Why? Because I love you, that’s why! Don’t you want us to spend as much time together as possible? So I can protect you, watch over you, make sure you’re only saying nice things about me, can look like the doting spouse to your friends, cut you off from people I don’t like or who threaten to make you see what I really am, make you depend all the more on me because eventually I’m the only person you know?
If you have kids, they will either relinquish all parenting responsibilities because they can’t actually get anything out of a child, or they will need to have such a specific set of rules adhered to, you will worry your child is about to drown in their own parent’s needs.
Don’t be surprised—but act NOW if—you turn around one day and realize you don’t seem to have any friends left (“You need better friends than that. You like my friends/my family, right?/Aren’t I enough for you?”); you’re at odds with anyone who doesn’t like him (“You act different with them, and they’re jeopardizing our true love. Get rid of them, please? For us?”); you are stressed to the max (“I need this, and this and this, and WHY HAVEN’T YOU DONE THIS? I TOLD YOU…”) and when you wake up in the morning, your main concern is whether or not they will approve of you that day.
Run.
3. They will boast.
Their ego needs to be massaged. If you’re not doing it, they will be doing it for you. They will boast about things that you probably don’t think need to be sung up, or about things which other people can do, because their need to feel important is great. Of course, many people feel the need to talk about themselves when they’re proud of what they do, and that’s a beautiful thing. If it starts to feel a little overboard however…
4. They will criticize you, subtly or otherwise.
As long as there is someone around to make them feel good, they are content. If you are falling over yourself to tell them how much they are loved all the time, you should be fine. If, however, it’s been a day or two and the compliments have dried up, be prepared for a comment on your job. Or your body. Or your age and what you’re doing with your life. Or how you raise your kids. Or even how you do your hair. The sociopath is happiest when he feels like he’s the best person in the room. If you can’t make them feel that, they will do it themselves, through you.
5. They will project.
The sociopath can’t admit they have problems. They can’t admit that they are stuck in their job, or they feel like they’re getting older, or they’re not always able to approach a situation rationally. So what happens? “You’re mad at me cuz you have a crappy job you’re not happy with, and you’re getting too old to change it, and you’re acting crazy because of it.” None of which is true. But it takes the focus off them if they can accuse somebody else of it.
They may also accuse you of doing things they themselves are guilty of. If they start to accuse you of cheating or wanting to cheat when you’re not, for example, you may have to wonder what’s triggered off the suggestion. If they’re bad with money, they’ll accuse you of overspending. If they drink too much, they may accuse you of the same, or tell you your life is about to fall apart because of one of your supposed bad habits.
The blame has to go somewhere, and it CANNOT stay with them. They cannot deal with it.
6. Every breakup they’ve ever had has all been down to their exes.
Huge warning flag here. If your potential sociopath has a chip on their shoulder about absolutely every relationship they’ve ever had, you need to ask yourself why.
The stories always sound plausible enough. I gave them everything. I did this, that, supported, loved, blah blah blah. Note that they will often not talk too much about the emotion they felt for their exes. (I don’t know whether this is because there was nothing there or because that wouldn’t be the best in controlling you, but it’s something I’ve noticed!) Essentially, they had a great relationship, but then the other person buggered it up. It was their fault. They took all the good things that they did for that person and disregarded it.
The image that comes to mind here is of a person acting crushed, peering out at you between their fingers to see if you have fallen for it.
When every one of their stories is like that, there are two possibilities. Either this person has the worst taste in partners possible, or you are not being told the whole truth. With sociopaths, it is the latter. Lying comes easily to them.
The main reason this is the case is because they cannot accept blame, because that would force them to admit they were not perfect. They may tell you stories about themselves while they were in past relationships and talk about their own outrageous behavior (i.e., they had cheated multiple times on their ex, perhaps because they were “unfulfilled/they deserved it/unhappy and didn’t know how to get out” etc. etc.), only for them to then tell you why it was all their ex’s fault that they actually broke up. If a person is unable to accept any blame or cannot be positive about any of their past relationships at all, you may have a sociopath on your hands. This ties into the next point…
7. They are always the victim. Nothing is their fault.
Breakups? Ex’s fault. Credit card debt? Job doesn’t pay enough, and they need a raise. Argument with a friend? All the other person’s fault, every time. Didn’t keep up with repayments? You should have reminded them or done it yourself. Haven’t gotten as far in their career as they wanted? It’s all their bosses and colleagues fault; they’re so jealous and they’re out to get them…
Pay attention. The person who cannot accept blame will not do so if they do something against you. They WILL find a way to make it your fault. Acting abusive? You wound them up. Acting hysterical? Your fault, you shouldn’t have X, Y, Z. They cheated? You drove them to it, what did you expect with how you act with them…
8. Their emotions are more important than yours, whether they act like it or not.
The way the sociopath gets to you is to act like they’d do anything for you because they love you. However, something that threatens their security and emotions is not acceptable. That love vanishes real damn quickly.
Let’s say you’ve had an argument and you’re pretty upset about the things they’ve said, and you feel justified in that. Nope. Get over it. It wasn’t that bad. It was your fault anyway (seeing a pattern here?); you brought it on yourself. What, that thing? We’ve talked about that, we need to move on immediately, and I can’t believe you’re making a big deal over this, you’re acting crazy. Wait, what are you talking about? No. That never even happened, what are you talking about?
This is called gaslighting and the minute someone does this to you, you need to exit Stage Left.
Cuz they’ll do all this and then they’ll come home with flowers for you the next day, just to confuse you and make you forget all about it.
9. They are hysterical creatures.
This goes back to their need for control, and my mentioning that while they may appear to be calm people, even shy or retiring people at first, this is again a front for a capability of great swaths of irrational behavior and hysteria. For example, my first sociopathic ex found texts on my phone between myself and another man, complaining about how harsh my soon-to-be-ex was being to me, and telling him how much I enjoyed this other man’s company. (I had insidiously been forced to sever all ties with most of my male friends because of my fiancé’s paranoia.) What should have been a sit-down-let’s-talk-about-how-we-got-here situation couldn’t have been more extreme. He gave me twenty minutes to pack a bag, then bundled me into the car we shared together and drove me for two hours up the road to this man’s house (bearing in mind, I’d actually met this other guy only once before!).
When sociopaths see something that they do not like or cannot control, they will act like toddlers trying to get what they want. They will blow everything out of proportion, blame things that you don’t think of as a problem on you, give you the silent treatment even when you’ve done nothing wrong (they are often punishing you for what they themselves have done, but remember that they are incapable of accepting blame) and—here’s a biggie—they threaten the relationship over things which definitely should not jeopardize an adult relationship.
10. When they feel they can no longer control you, they will control the way others see you.
Again, I can think of no better example than what my ex did with me. “I’m gonna tell EVERYONE what you did…” Emails to my mother, my brother, my friends with a fake apology that he wished he could have been the person for me, but I had “made my choice.” Mother and brother both, thankfully, saw straight through it. Friends, however, were a little harder to win back, but this was, as I discovered, because a very select set of circumstances had been presented to them, and some of them were convinced that I was a terrible person who had done unforgivable damage to a person who was actually “a really nice guy” and had “done everything for me.”
They hate the loss of control, especially when they’ve found it easy to control you in the past. But again, you cannot look better than them. If you recover unblemished from your relationship, other people may start to think that they weren’t all that important, so you need to be made out to be the bad guy.
11. Once the relationship/friendship is over, you are officially dead to them.
Okay, maybe not exactly dead. They may occasionally call you up to use you as their emotional punching bag, or maybe they’ll get in touch to show you how “wonderful” their life is without you. But that nice person they might have pretended to be long ago instantly goes down the tubes. They’re not getting anything out of you, so why bother? If you share things, be prepared to never see those things again, or have a fight on your hands for it. If you share kids, the kids will either be completely ignored henceforth, or used as weapons to turn against you, no matter how graceful you were about the breakup.
12. They will replace you as soon as they possibly can after you break up.
They say that the sociopath cannot be alone for too long because the hollow emptiness of their shell-like existence is enough to drown them. While this may or may not be true, a pattern with them is to replace a person they have lost in their lives incredibly quickly. This is actually one of the easier ways to discern a sociopath if you already have your suspicions. If they are acting angry and treating you like the worst person in the world, or have severed all contact with you, yet three weeks after the breakup they’re engagement-worthy deep with another person, you can assume that the cycle of abuse has begun again with their new victim. Especially if the person is possibly desperate or easy to control, because the sociopath will do with them what they may have even done with you—They will waltz into this person’s life, put on their best acting face of I Am The Answer To All Your Deepest Dreams In A Partner, and make themselves indispensable to them. Sound familiar? Do not take this personally. The love that they used to drug you with was a fantasy, and now the dream and ensuing nightmare are over. This is what they do, for the sociopath’s ego is based on feeling needed, like the center of the universe to someone. And woe betide anyone whom they give the gift of themselves to in order to shut out the screaming void from within.
This is in no way an exhaustive list of the behaviors that sociopaths are prone to. I’m pretty sure I could punch out a short novel based on a few years’ worth of a toxic relationship, but these are some of the biggest factors. If you even suspect after looking through this list that you know or are in a relationship with a sociopath, get out of it. ASAP. If that’s impossible, and it certainly can feel that way sometimes (because they’re clever like that!), get some more advice, get a plan together and monitor interaction with this person. Good luck to you.
“I’m an addictions counselor and I treated a guy in his 50’s who was a professional musician and sold heroin to kids in their early 20’s. He sold heroin to people who died of overdoses and had zero remorse. He was the creepiest person I ever met. So long as I was neutral with him he was OK but when I confronted him with a positive toxicology he became very angry because I did not accept his denial. He threatened me by saying I better not run into him in the street. I told him that was it, get out, I’m not working with him. He left and I never saw him again. I believe sociopathy is an absolute need for control.”
2. I’ve worked with two people that I would say were sociopaths, one a serial granny rapist and the second a murderer who had killed three people.
“I’m a psychologist who used to work in maximum security men’s prisons. I’ve worked with two people that I would say were sociopaths, one a serial granny rapist and the second a murderer who had killed three people. The thing that I found most interesting was that they both had similar fantasies. One’s fantasy was that he lived in a spaceship orbiting the earth and that all humans on Earth had died. The other’s was that all the humans on Earth had died leaving only him and the animals. I found this so interesting I thought to check their prison record to see if they had ever had contact. They had never been in the same prison or on the same wing. One had spent his whole sentence in maximum security/maximum protection which meant that they did not mix with other prisoners. Probably useful to note that this was in Australia where solitary confinement is not used as extensively as in, for example, the US. Why I believe they merited a diagnosis of sociopathy, neither showed any sign of remorse or empathy for their victims. They both justified their actions by variously ‘they deserved it’ or it wasn’t my fault I was treated badly by others, nothing to do with me they shouldn’t have been where they were, etc. On the same subject one of the nicest guys I worked with was in for his second murder sentence. His first murder was his girlfriend who he then wrapped in plastic and slept with for some time before being discovered. The second was a taxi driver he stabbed with a carving knife. He was a paranoid schizophrenic. While on his meds the nicest, gentlest guy you could meet. Off his meds a whole other story.
And yes sociopathy is essentially untreatable. These guys were referred primarily as they were a management issues for prison authorities—essentially so they had some assistance but there was never an expectation that the work we did together could ‘cure’ them.
3. Something about him just felt off to me. No one agreed with me.”
“A child molester.
He had the whole ward eating out of his palm and thinking that he was being unfairly harassed by the police. He befriended several young (18, 19) males on the unit and took them under his wing. We didn’t know what he was being accused of, just that the police absolutely insisted he be released directly into their custody. This isn’t entirely unusual, it’s happened before, but this was a big, big deal.
It was on the news that night. He was being charged with a laundry list of charges, mostly males 13-16, but the first victim to come forward was 11. I don’t recall the final count of kids he was accused of raping.
I guessed it after a week of treating him. Something about him just felt off to me. No one agreed with me.”
“TL;DR: My very first therapy client as a graduate student was psychopathic, and I only almost shit my pants once….
I’m currently a clinical psychology doctorate student. In my program (which I assume is structured very similarly to other accredited doctorate programs in the states), the second semester of our first year we are given one client that comes in for an ADA assessment, typically geared toward assessing for learning disorders or ADHD. After the first year of grad school, we’re given the go-ahead to begin seeing therapy clients, as opposed to simply seeing clients for assessment. And thus, this is where the story begins.
Each semester (summer included), students are assigned to different practicum teams that are supervised by licensed psychologists. Each team specializes in certain types of cases, and the team I was on treated a wide breadth of presenting concerns for adults. There was one client that we talked about that was of particular interest to myself, even though it sounded slightly challenging, and I decided to grab the call sheet and claim this individual as my very first therapy client, which would include a full diagnostic assessment as this person’s primary goal in coming to the clinic was for diagnostic clarification.
So, as I sat in the clinic’s lab waiting for this person to arrive, I finally get the call from the front desk telling me that my VERY FIRST therapy client had arrived on time and was filling out paperwork/questionnaires related to levels of depression, anxiety, and general psychological distress, as was standard for this particular practicum team/supervisor. Once I got back to the waiting room to call this person up and as we walk to the therapy room, I’m simultaneously excited, apprehensive, nervous, and somewhat intimidated by this monster of a person. I’m not a small person by any stretch, but JESUS CHRIST this was a large human being.
Keep in mind, I’ve been told by someone that had already seen this person that panic attacks were a symptom, and the thought of having to ground this person and prevent them from passing out was somewhat terrifying. As luck would have it, as we walk down the hall, my client stated (with very shifty and unnerving eyes), ‘I’m about to have an anxiety attack.’ All I could think was ‘GODDAMMIT, seriously? My first fucking client is about to have a panic attack DURING MY FIRST GODDAMN SESSION!’ As we sat down in the room with a mound of paperwork to go over before beginning, luck was sent my way as this person’s exponentially elevating somatic symptoms were alleviated, very clearly, through the placebo effect of the pharmaceuticals thrown haphazardly into this person’s mouth (there was an immediate observed quiescence, when my knowledge of the pills taken says they take ~30-45 minutes before the drug does its “magic”). Thank God for the power of the mind.
As we began the intake interview, there was something unnerving about sitting in a room, one-on-one, with this individual. There was clearly an element of distrust, which I can understand—who wants to immediately trust a stranger with all of the intimate details of their likely complex past? It was beyond this though; this person was clearly what I can only describe as ‘removed.’ Before seeing this person, our team of graduate students and our supervisor decided to put together a list of potential diagnoses, based off of the reports gathered from his previous counselor as well as this person’s description of their presenting concerns.
We came up with the following: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD; there was noted hypersensitivity to external stimuli and somewhat dysfunctional interpersonal skills), Panic Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder. In seeing this person, I could get in line with looking further into Panic Disorder and MDD, but ASD just didn’t seem plausible. Yes, there was difficulty with eye contact, but it was due to apparent hyper vigilance and a constant shifting of their eyes from the door to the window and occasionally back to me, which made me think there was something trauma-related. Yes, this person’s social skills weren’t fully developed in this context, but it seemed to be due to learning and past experiences, there was coldness, anger, insensitivity, and a ‘fuck you’ attitude I received when prodding for specific details (this wasn’t constant, over the sessions we built what might be called rapport).
My brain began thinking PTSD as well as the potentiality for a personality disorder. Sitting in this room was uncomfortable. I’m a very approachable and understanding person, and I’ve never had an issue in building a relationship with a stranger, and I’ve seen enough clients now that I know my ability to build rapport with a client has not simply become astoundingly better from experience, but because of how I am as a person.
All the while, I knew there would never be a real connection with this client, no matter what I did. Given the apparent complexity of the case and the necessity to be thorough in providing a diagnosis, my supervisor and I agreed that the diagnostic/evaluation phase of seeing this client would likely take several two-hour sessions, so long as this person agreed to the extended sessions. Our diagnostic impressions shifted to the following based on my own observations as well as a series of self-reports: Posttraumatic-Stress Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Panic Disorder, and MDD.
I ended up spending about 12 hours with this client for evaluation, with a couple of sessions extending past 2 hours. Each session was exhausting, like pulling teeth. One of the weirdest aspects of our therapeutic relationship was that at the beginning of each session, it was as if we had never even met each other. The first 30 minutes of every session was spent trying to rebuild the trust acquired in the previous session. I had to curse in session, appease, pander to, and be exceptionally patient for the client to begin to open up about their experiences. Fortunately, in those 12 hours together, I was able to acquire a significant amount of information, so buckle up. I’m going to try to remain vague with some of these details so as to prevent this person from determining, in the event they saw this, that I am who they were seeing.
Here’s a brief rundown of this individual’s experiences, as I feel this has already become too lengthy: molested at an early, but fully salient age, caught engaging in sexual touching with a younger individual when the client was still a minor, completely broken home with an alcoholic for a father and a trauma-ridden mother, frequent moves state-to-state and city-to-city (e.g., California, Washington, Maine, Colorado, you name it), repeated and violent fighting between a sibling, severe conduct disorder in the aforementioned sibling, convicted sex offender as a result of the aforementioned touching, time in juvenile detention, frequent theft and manipulation of family members as a teenager, wildly successful in the client’s chosen field at quite an early age and would spend all of the earnings very quickly, extremely impulsive behavior, began selling and moving drugs as a young adult In Colorado, made a significant name for himself in the drug world, recruited by big names in the illicit drug industry across state lines, alluded to a no-nonsense way of conducting business, alluded to multiple deaths occurring in his presence but never claimed direct responsibility, physical violence very frequently with others that often resulted in the opponent’s hospitalization (like I said, this was a big, intimidating person), run-ins with undercover police officers, frequent superficial romantic relationships that seemed to function only as a gratification of a desire for sex, severely lacked any element of conscientiousness, once earned an objectively sizable salary, only a recent comeuppance of panic attacks, moves from place to place extremely often, tumultuous relationships with everyone around the client with the exception of those that were childhood friends, difficulty with succeeding in an academic setting, constantly experienced loss throughout their life, often wondered why everything was falling apart, you get the picture.
Once the evaluation was all said and done, and I had spoken with a family member to corroborate stories for accuracy, additional details, and to rule out something like Paranoid Personality Disorder, my supervisor and I agreed upon a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Keep in mind, any mental health diagnosis (with the exception of, say, Schizophrenia) provided is not an indicator of something someone ‘has,’ per se. The DSM if full of reified constructs, arbitrarily categorized descriptions of behavior that have been defined by man and not medicine. An ASPD diagnosis does not indicate that an individual ‘has’ psychopathy, but that their pattern of behaviors over an extended period of time and beginning in adolescence or sooner is described as ASPD. There is no biological marker for psychopathy, nor is there a chemical imbalance, or a diagnostically distinct difference in brain activity for those diagnosed with ASPD, or any other disorder for that matter.
Alas, once the evaluation was complete, so began the writing of the report. Report writing in a clinical setting isn’t always incredibly enjoyable (especially when writing up WAIS or WJ scores, that is, IQ and achievement testing), but with the lengthy interviews and the assessments we gave my client, writing this report was exceptionally enjoyable, coming from a naïve and green grad student. While writing this report, which took several days considering my client-load at the time, I would try to contact the client in question to schedule a feedback session. This client was notorious for neglecting to answer the phone, and often only showed up to session because each new session was scheduled immediately following the end of each session.
As such, I called my violent, unpredictable, and unnerving client upwards of 6 times to schedule this godforsaken session where I have to tell someone they’re being diagnosed with psychopathy. Each time I left a message but to no avail.
And so, at the very moment I’m organizing the report and putting on the finishing touches, I get a call while in the clinic’s lab that a client of mine had shown up and wanted to speak with me. This day was, for all intents and purposes, my ‘day off.’ I had no clients scheduled and had devoted the day to report writing, and was donning the traditional ‘I don’t give a fuck what I look like’ garb, i.e., gym shorts, T-shirt, backwards hat, and socks that were just too long unless you’re a 14-year-old wannabe ‘baller.’ In short, I was told that the client in question was ‘irate.’ How fun.
As luck would have it, as soon as I made my appearance at the front desk I was greeted with significant hostility. Accusations were thrown, demands were made, and violence was in the air. In knowing what I knew about this person and how they react to intense anger, I was…uneasy.
Further, trying to de-escalate who is defined by their impulsiveness, irrationality, and lack of foresight, is virtually impossible, especially given my inexperience in general, but also my distinct lack of experience with a psychopathic client population. The exchange was disturbing and I felt somewhat scared for my safety. It ended with the client storming off with an implied ‘fuck you’ and a threat to commit suicide. What initiated this, you ask? Evidently I had written this client off and never intended on scheduling a feedback session.
Fortunately (unfortunately), a suicide threat is common among those with ASPD and Borderline as a method of manipulation. Unfortunately, I still have to take these instances very seriously and it resulted in long talks with a supervisor and determining the correct course of action. Lucky for all parties involved, everything ended up panning out quite nicely. The client ended up agreeing to meet, our differences were resolved, and all of the appropriate therapeutic recommendations were provided without a hitch. As it turns out, being nervous to provide a diagnosis of ASPD to someone due to unpredictability in how they might react tends to be unfounded. Psychopaths tend not to care much about anyone but themselves, and following the discussion of what the diagnosis was and what it meant, the response was ‘that makes sense.’ I guess it would follow that someone who doesn’t care about much of anything probably wouldn’t care so much about the connotations society has attached to psychopathy, so go figure. Fortunately, many of the symptoms of ASPD tend to decrease over time, especially once the individual hits their 40s. And there’s the story of my first client as a graduate student, and I’ll carry that shit with me forever.”
5. To me he was a fuck who had seen a lot of trauma and took it out on women.
“As far as my experience as a therapist has taken me, I don’t truly believe that there is such a thing as a sociopath. At least, we don’t have the neuroscience yet to be sure that someone evidencing affective blunting or some other apparent lack of emotional interpersonal skills is ‘born that way,’ as they say.
In my clinical experience in an acute psychiatric ward, I met a man who was incredibly intelligent and also diagnosed with schizophrenia, residual (influenced by heavy drug use, we suspect). He was waiting on a p court hold with a history of domestic violence charges. When I met him he had just been re-committed after escaping from the facility to Europe (he had leveraged much of what he needed to do so from women in his life).
When I met him he tried to be exactly what I wanted in a patient. He was insightful and wise when answering abstract questions, helpful in groups, a talented musician, and curious about my life. He would even offer information that made him appear vulnerable and honest. I at first liked him for what he did for the other patients but then I asked him about something he said in passing (more on accident as opposed to the carefully constructed dialogue that was custom) and probed a bit. He was unprepared for it and became defensive. Later I attempted to confront him about his treatment and that the only way to really move forward was to stop the act, in more or less words.
From there he tried to upset me daily by using the little bits he knew about me, ultimately turning violent in frustration and then becoming a simmering malicious silent presence from there on out in groups. I just treated him as any other patient and I think that pissed him off. I didn’t buy into him being special and brilliant. To me he was a fuck who had seen a lot of trauma and took it out on women.
On a side note, I look at a lot of psychology and philosophy in my spare time and the first thing I thought of when I was working with him is that he resembles Machiavellianism. Smart and skilled with the perception of others’ emotions but seriously emotionally buried on a personal level and willing to use this skill to manipulate.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. He was just a guy with a lot of shit in his past. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those running around.”
6. It was as if his poor behavior lacked any ulterior motive or craftiness at all. Just be mean because you can.
“I used to work in an independent living facility. We had a client who was diagnosed as being a sociopath. He was a young man, early 20s. He was capable of working and regularly went to his job at a garage or tire shop or something like that, which was owned by his family. No idea if he actually worked when he was there (or even if he really went there), but he said he liked his job. He was horrible to live with, though. He refused to do any of the housekeeping and would put his dirty dishes under his bed. His room was a mess. He didn’t care how it made his roommates feel. He had no respect for their property and would take whatever he wanted. There was no incentive we could give him that would make him want to clean up after himself or participate in any of the activities or otherwise behave as a decent citizen. He was cruel to housemates although he didn’t physically harm anyone as far as I can remember. He was basically a lot like others there who were diagnosed borderline personality disorder except without the ability or desire to manipulate. It was as if his poor behavior lacked any ulterior motive or craftiness at all. Just be mean because you can. Just take stuff because it’s there. Do/don’t do/break/destroy/take/hurt whatever you feel like for no reason.
Since he behaved so badly we eventually got him out of our program because we weren’t set up to handle that sort of thing.
7. They see things very rationally and often have higher than average vocabulary skills.
“I worked with psychopaths. They see things very rationally and often have higher than average vocabulary skills. My guess is that their left hemisphere for language & logical thinking is very active while their right hemisphere for emotions and empathy is less active. Nonetheless, their emotions seem to be very low intensity and have a hard time actually feeling anything other people feel. They have to understand things from a more rational and practical point of view.”
8. There was never sincere regret or remorse shown regarding their actions.
“I worked in a school with a teenage individual who the entire staff eventually agreed showed extreme sociopathic tendencies. Here’s a brief list of things they had done over the two months I was there before they were expelled:
• Thrown baseball-sized rocks at other students. (Provoked by other students telling the individual that they didn’t want the student to join them outside during free time)
• Intentionally farted on an autistic student, who consistently responded with semi-violent, self-harming outbursts. (Unprovoked)
• Broke another student’s nose by pushing back in their chair to slide backwards into another student who was picking up food they had dropped. (Unprovoked)
• Stabbed another 8-year-old student’s toy drum with a pencil. (Unprovoked)
• Pinched our therapy dog’s ear, paw, skin until she yelped. (unprovoked and repeated until he was no longer allowed around the dog)
• Flipped off other students and staff. (usually provoked by consequences for his other actions)
• Consistently watched videos on the topic of death and execution during free time.
• Very oppositional in therapy and denied any fault of their own.
• At times when more serious meetings were held with the individual and parents, the student would always finish the meeting by saying things like, ‘thank you for talking about this with me,’ ‘I know you’re trying to help,’ and ‘I’ll do better’ in the most flat tone with 0 emotional affect.
• The final day the student was at school, they repeatedly broke small rules and tested limits after he knew that another mistake meant expulsion. Another student tattled that they were making faces at staff when they enforced/reminded the student of a rule. The individuals response was, “I want to cut open your chest, rip out your heart, cook it over an open flame, and feed it to my dog.”
• In all of these circumstances, there was never sincere regret or remorse shown regarding their actions.
It’s really a sad story because the parents were great and so desperate to find help for their child. Unfortunately, the student’s enrollment was a major safety risk for the other students and we did not have the staff to provide the student with the assistance and supervision they needed.”
She has a genuine smile, calm nature and bright glow. He greets her and there is no compliment to be had. No “you look beautiful tonight, so good to see you.” Just a simple “oh hi” and a coy and charming smile. Because giving her even a little compliment would only empower her, something he doesn’t want to do. The predator gives his victim the once over. Before his true nature is revealed he mimics her every thought, making her believe how much he understands her. But boy, is he beautiful in the beginning. They laugh and they feel a connection that is almost instant.
A superficial charm is what distracts an empath from the deeper and more disturbing nature of a sociopath. His every word is calculated and has an intention; to size up the empath and test her to see if she fits to be the toy in his game.
I know what your thinking. Everyone says his or her ex is a sociopath. But just because someone isn’t emotionally available doesn’t make them a sociopath. The characterization of a sociopath is a person who lacks empathy or a moral conscience and disregards societal norms. They con people for personal pleasure and amusement and have a complete lack of remorse. They live in their own bubble, ignoring reality and existing only to meet their selfish needs, not caring whom gets harmed in the way. One thing that attracted me to sociopaths was their antisocial behaviors.
I knew they lived in their own bubble and I so desperately wanted to be the one to break into the bubble and the mind of this highly intellectual, manipulative and calculating man.
But sociopaths and empaths are not gender exclusive. This isn’t a naïve girl being manipulated by a player type situation. There are many sociopaths who are both men and women, as with empaths. These are two very real personalities that have special characteristics and when they come together, it many times is extremely dangerous. To be clear on just exactly what an empath is, they are a person with an “abnormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual.” Empaths have the ability to suck in other people’s emotions like a sponge, and have an intuition to know just exactly when there is a shift in a room and something doesn’t feel right. They also are very sensitive to the emotional distress of others and are known to feel the pain of those around them.
An empath that knows their gift, has a protective barrier that surrounds themselves from negative energies. But even the most mature empath can be tricked by a cunning sociopath. A sociopath takes the knowledge that an empath has compassion and runs with it. On a first date for example, it is likely that the sociopath will share a sad story about childhood to appear sensitive and filled with emotions. They are masters at mirroring what someone with emotional capabilities says and does. Socially, the conversation isn’t a natural flow of back and forth. The sociopath takes awkward long pauses, rarely breaking eye contact. The sociopath seems to be studying his counterpart to pick out facts about their life to later use to question them with.
This in what we like to call the “sociopaths dance” and is the first phase of a term called gas lighting.
Growing up as a kid my Grandmother and I would watch old school psychological thrillers together. We would get the popcorn going and I would be ready to be freaked out. One of our absolute favorites was a mysterious, dark film called Gaslight. In this film the husband does everything in his power to convince his wife she is going insane. Sociopaths use gas lighting for a similar effect and to gradually gain control over their partner. During this calculated game, the first stage is called the idealization stage where the sociopaths paint a beautiful picture of themselves to charm and trick the empath. An empath sees the truth in people, so they are a sociopath’s natural nemesis. This makes for a high stakes situation and ultimate challenge for the sociopath. And to them, this is only where the fun begins.
It is during the second stage of gas lighting where the relationship usually develops further. As these two continue to learn about one another, the sociopath slowly throws in small lines that devalue their counterpart in a tactful and clever way. The sociopath sees that this throws an empath off, because their sensitivity is strong. Sociopaths take pleasure in knowing that they have the power in this mind game and like to see their victim confused and questioning his or herself. It tickles them. For example, in relationships people develop inside jokes together. I frequently would wake up and tell one new guy I was seeing how many coffees I had to start the day. “Two coffees deep!” I would text and send a photo of my morning coffee. He even sent me a picture of his coffee in Europe with the caption “Coffee number one.” Months later he looked me in the eye one day and asked if I ever drank coffee. “Are you kidding me?” I wanted to say. This confused me so much and left me to question myself.
Now remember, the purpose of a sociopath to develop a relationship with an empath is to seek, validate and then toss away.
Just like how Dracula seduces and tricks his victims to own them for eternity, the sociopath will do the same until they choose to discard them. Frequently, the sociopath will pull that card back into their deck in hopes of once again controlling that person. The sociopath becomes indifferent, bored and ready to move on to his next target, leaving the empath wounded and completely confused. According to Psychology Today, “it is often the kindest and most trusting individuals who suffer most at the hands of sociopaths, and the healing for these individuals continues long after the relationship has ended”. For an empath who manifests negative energies physically, this can leave him or her distressed, physically ill and in a dark place wondering what they did to push the sociopath away. The saddest part of this story is if the sociopath keeps an empath around just as a toy to stoke his or her ego. This will only cause further heartache and can break the empath down to nothing, but can almost make an empath lose faith in the goodness of people.
It’s funny. Some sociopaths are smarter than others. I have had sociopaths in my life who are not even good at phase one of gas lighting and accidentally reveal their nature right away. A guy on a date in the past has to me, “people have told me before they think I have no feelings.” Um check please? If you haven’t already guessed this by reading this article, I myself am an empath. I always knew I had a light that was different than others. Growing up I was able to calm people down in a crisis and my energy could make dark situations positive.
Empaths are healers of the world, givers, teachers, musicians, nurses; all with distinct gifts to share to make the world a better place. We naturally try to heal people, but we have to realize a sociopath will most likely never change.
So, what can be done to prevent this from happening to an empath? It is important for an empath to know his or herself enough and understand our gift to develop a shield of protection. For our safety, the last person in the world we should let ourselves be close to is someone who lacks a conscience. Just because an empath feels a connection to someone, doesn’t mean their intentions are as pure as the empaths. Actions are the key to knowing if the sociopath is playing you for their own amusement, because they can only act for so long before the mask comes off.
Empaths are unique and sensitive people who need to be surrounded by others like them that abide by a strict moral code. They need to be around kind hearted people who and are on the same mission of making the world a better place. One positive outcome of having a relationship with a sociopath is that an empath can take the experience and learn more about themselves and their boundaries to protect them against it so it never happens again. We all come across negative people along our journey, but remember a sociopath has a specific talent for destroying people in their path. For an empath, steering clear from romantic partners with these qualities will allow an empath to find love that mirrors the deep love they have to give.
Pathological mind games. Covert and overt put-downs. Triangulation. Gaslighting. Projection. These are the manipulative tactics survivors of malignant narcissists are unfortunately all too familiar with. As victims of silent crimes where the perpetrators are rarely held accountable, survivors of narcissistic abuse have lived in a war zone of epic proportions, enduring an abuse cycle of love-bombing and devaluation—psychological violence on steroids.
From how to heal our addiction to the narcissist to how to recognize a covert narcissist, Shahida Arabi’s articles on narcissistic abuse have gained renown as some of the most accurate and in-depth depictions of this terrifying trauma, resonating with millions of survivors all over the world and receiving endorsements from numerous mental health professionals.
In this essay compilation, readers can enjoy some of her most popular articles as well as new thought pieces on narcissistic abuse: what therapists have to say about malignant narcissists and how children of narcissistic parents can become trapped in the trauma repetition cycle. Survivors are offered new insights on what it means to be both a survivor and a thriver of covert manipulation and trauma.
POWER teaches us that it is important to not only understand the tactics of toxic personalities but also to recognize and combat the effects of narcissistic abuse; it guides the survivor to learning, growing, healing and most importantly of all—owning their agency to rebuild their lives and transform their powerlessness into victory.
A common abusive tactic is gaslighting the victim into thinking the abuse they are suffering isn’t real. By casting doubt onto the victim’s sanity and perceptions of the abuse, the abuser is then able to distort and manipulate the victim into thinking that the abuse didn’t exist or that it wasn’t abuse at all.
Another painful aspect of this gaslighting effect as well as the effects of trauma is that we begin to rationalize, deny and minimize the impact of the abuse in an effort to survive a hostile, toxic environment. We essentially begin ‘gaslighting’ ourselves and blaming ourselves for the abuse, though certainly not with the same intent or awareness as our abusers.
I want to emphasize that this is not your fault, but rather a common reaction to enduring and having to survive severe trauma. Here are five ways we rationalize abusive behavior that we can all be more mindful of, moving forward. These are not only relevant to survivors of abuse, but also society as a whole to remember, in order to combat victim-blaming.
1. “Well, I am not perfect either.” A popular misconception is that one has to be perfect in order to gain respect and decency. There is no excuse for any form of abuse, period. If you are a non-abusive person who is capable of empathy, there is especially no excuse for a person to verbally, emotionally, or physically violate you in any way, regardless of your flaws.
Many survivors of abuse have been accused of being too sensitive, too clingy, too much of everything – this has caused them to excessively look inward for someone to blame rather than seeing the true culprit. The abuser works very hard to implant false insecurities as well as exaggerate existing ones; they continually blameshift to make everything the victim’s fault. There are plenty of imperfect people in the world who have loving partners, friends and family members. These people don’t have to meet some fictitious criteria for perfection to be worthy of respect and decency. Neither should you.
If you don’t quite believe this yet, think about the most caring, empathic person you know who has ended up in a toxic relationship with an abuser. Didn’t that same abuser still reap the benefits of having such a wonderful partner? Why is it that an abuser gets to be with such a warm, loving person and you, a nonabusive, albeit imperfect person, has to settle for abuse? The truth is, you don’t. No one is perfect – and considering your abuser is probably condescending, filled with rage, contempt and a lack of empathy, he or she is especially not one to talk about imperfection.
2. “Now he/she is being sweet. They’re back to normal.” Don’t mistake saccharine sweetness for authentic change. There is a difference between a non-abusive person taking responsibility and an abusive one who lacks empathy; the latter often takes responsibility without making any concrete changes. If a loved one who has otherwise been respectful has done something wrong that is out of character, has taken responsibility and worked to repair the relationship, this is different than the abuse cycle with an abuser who is unwilling to change.
A person who has empathy and can take accountability for their actions is not normally unpredictable; they are fairly consistent in their behavior. They don’t go out of their way to manipulate, berate and demean you at every and any opportunity. They can place themselves in your shoes and understand the rules of basic decency and respect. Abusers undermine these very rules by acting as if ‘respect’ is a relative term that can be reframed to suit their own agenda.
Consider that the abuser’s ‘normal’ is not the kind, charming person they presented in the beginning of the relationship – the ‘normal’ in an abusive relationship is the unpredictable, hurtful person who leaves you walking on eggshells, has no problem prioritizing their comfort over your pain, and regularly gains pleasure from controlling and demeaning you.
The abuse cycle relies on hot and cold, mean and sweet behavior, which means nice actions after an abusive incident cannot be taken at face value, but rather as embedded in a chronic pattern of behavior. According to domestic violence specialist, Dr. Clare Murphy, ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ abusers deliberately switch masks at the drop of a hat to simultaneously punish and comfort you. This cycle of intermittent emotional battery and resolution keeps us traumatically and biochemically bonded to them.
The abuser knows you will use this rationalization to excuse his or her abusive behavior, so they ensure that their apologies, pity ploys, or their ability to revert back to the false self make you second-guess your perceptions so they can win you over once again. It’s all a ploy to get you back into the abuse cycle so they can mistreat you all over again. Remember to keep in mind all of the abuser’s actions up until this point, before you begin feeding into false hopes. Documenting and writing down accounts of the abuse can be helpful in keeping you grounded about what has occurred.
3. “They reached out to me after I set boundaries, so that must mean they miss me.” A recent study revealed that narcissistic exes are likely to reconnect with their past partners for convenience and pleasure, not because they miss them or truly want them back in their lives. When an abuser reaches out to a survivor after the relationship has already ended, this is known as “hoovering,” where, like a Hoover vacuum, the abuser attempts to suck the victim back into the traumatic vortex of the relationship. In “The Hoover Maneuver: The Dirty Secret of Emotional Abuse,” therapist Andrea Schneider, LCSW notes that for abusers, hoovering enables the abuser to regain control over the status quo of the relationship.
For malignant narcissists, hoovering is not about the fact that they miss their former victims who they once devalued – it’s about re-idealizing past flames so they can continue to keep them as permanent members of their harem for whenever they’re lacking in narcissistic supply. When you’re being hoovered, you’re essentially being manipulated, not missed or pined for.
4. “They’re just under a lot of stress.” Think about a time when your abuser was very stressed – whether at work or due to other extenuating circumstances. Did they lash out at people like their boss, their harem members or at complete strangers? Did they make a scene in public and humiliate themselves? Did they risk losing their jobs, their public reputation or the shallow friendships with people who believed in their facade due to their seemingly ‘uncontrollable’ rage?
Or did they come home to you and use you as an emotional (or even physical) punching bag behind closed doors? If you were involved with a covert narcissistic abuser, it’s likely that you experienced the latter. See, abusers ‘select’ who they feel safe revealing their abusive behavior to. They know that their loved ones, who are heavily invested in them and emotionally bonded to them, will be more likely to protect and defend them, even if they are the victims of the abuse, because victims tend to be traumatically bonded to their abusers. They feel a great deal of power and control being able to unleash their fury onto their victims – without as many repercussions.
Keep in mind that survivors of some of the worst traumas, such as domestic violence, undergo a great deal of stress and the traumatic impact of the abuse has a direct impact on their mind, body and spirit. Yet many of them, with the right tools and resources, as well as professional support, manage to not use their trauma as an excuse to abuse others. In fact, their experiences often ensure that they become extra vigilant about their behavior, in an effort to avoid hurting anyone in the way they’ve been hurt.
The bottom line? We all have stress in our lives. Many of us have undergone trauma that is unimaginable, including being children of narcissistic parents. Some of us may act out or lash out occasionally, or still have trouble managing our triggers from time to time. It doesn’t make us abusive, especially if we take accountability and have taken steps to improve our behavior. However, chronic abusers will use their trauma background as an excuse to be abusive, rather than using that energy to improve their behavior. This differentiates the manipulative abuser from the traumatized survivor. At the end of the day, unless we’re experiencing severe psychosis, the choice to abuse is still always a choice and we are still accountable for it.
Abusers who are aware enough to switch from their abusive behavior to their false mask quickly when there is a witness can choose to change their behavior – as evidenced by their false, charming behavior in the early stages of relationships – they simply choose not to.
5. “I found myself reacting to the abuse, so I must have asked for it.” The myth of mutual abuse is one that even the National Domestic Violence Hotline dispels. It is, for the most part, still a myth. There is often a clear power imbalance between victim and abuser. The abuser is the one who erodes the victim’s identity, beliefs, goals, and dreams, while the survivor becomes increasingly diminished and demeaned. Survivors may exhibit maladaptive reactions to the abuse over time, but there are also plenty of ‘normal’ reactions to abuse that are simply symptoms of trauma. Many survivors may feel confused about talking back to their abuser or feeling bouts of rage, but the truth is that when a victim has been chronically traumatized, it is irrational not to assume that this will have an impact on their behavior or emotional well-being.
Know this: if you are being abused, it’s normal to feel angry and hurt. These are normal, human emotions that arise due to being mistreated – and as many have noted, normal reactions to heinously abnormal and dysfunctional behavior. These emotions are signals that tell you that something is very wrong. It’s important that if you are being abused, you release some of the self-blame and refocus on how you can emotionally detach and safely leave your abuser. The abuse was not and never will be your fault.
“How you start to realize every conversation with them is pointless. Either every word that comes out of their mouth is a lie, or they have already made up a completely different conversation in their head.”
“I unfortunately have one as a roommate. I had to buy a lockbox because things would go missing inexplicably all the time (including my wallet). I found some of my stuff in his room, which is when I confronted him about it (denial) and made the decision to buy a lockbox. He lies about everything. I can’t have a conversation with him because he constantly interrupts everything I say and always changes the topic to himself and how great he is in some way. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never witnessed him do a single act of kindness where he didn’t expect something in return and use it as collateral later on. The list really goes on and on and on.
He doesn’t respect boundaries and is constantly doing more and more bad things to see what he can get away with. I have to firmly establish boundaries, and even then, it’s going to get tested again and again.
I can’t eat with him. He constantly talks with his mouth full, spitting food all over my food, and if I subtly try to cover my food or move it away, he notices and gets pissy about it. He’s a social media addict—he’s the type of guy who constantly posts selfies of himself wearing sunglasses indoors and shit like that, and he also ‘airs out dirty laundry’ on social media, calling out people publicly who he believes have wronged him in some way. Did I mention that he’s 30 years old? When someone asks what we do for a living, he immediately answers, making up a fake fancy-sounding title for his job (he’s a telemarketer) and then immediately answers for me, making it sound like my job is much more menial than it actually is. Call him out on the slightest thing, he starts screaming immediately.
He argues with everybody and has a horrible reputation with people. Every single person he has ever lived with cannot stand him. He can’t sustain relationships with people for longer than about 4 months. Every time he talks to his parents he yells at them. It’s unfortunate that I got roped into living with him for a year (only a couple months left thank God), but it’s a long story that involved him blatantly lying to me and me not being able to get out of it (I’m on a lease) without a shit load of trouble and opposition from him.
At this point, I definitely feel resentment towards him but I also feel bad for him. He’s lost all of his friends that have known him longer than 2 years (I’m the only one left), but it’s because he does something horrible to them, like stealing from them (talking more than $100-200 worth of stuff) completely unprovoked and with no remorse on his part. On top of that, he often steals from people less fortunate than him who need whatever it is he is stealing more than he does. I know that he’s like this because of his upbringing (wealthy family and a spoiled childhood but at the same time not given enough actual affection from his parents and is the younger brother of a much more well-adjusted, successful and well-liked guy—who is not a narcissist).
I know that deep down, all of this behavior secretly stems from an incredibly low self-esteem. I can’t fix him though, and I teeter between feeling sorry for him and just thinking that he’s a total piece of shit. When I am able, I’m just going to cut contact from him like almost everyone else who’s known him more than a couple years has.”
“When they post videos or pictures of them helping homeless people or doing charity… we should all strive to help the homeless and less fortunate, but not fucking make an Instagram video about it.”
“The way they seem to ask questions about topics outside themselves, then show anxiety and impatience in any answer that doesn’t address themselves or their world view, or offer and easy way to turn the conversation to those concerns.”
“I used to deal with these types of people in the past.
Of the many, many traits of people with NPD, I think my least favorite is how they tend to massively overrate their own abilities at reading other people. The result is often that they assume the worst in your intentions, and it is difficult to sway their opinion.
For example, I was once tasked by someone to find businesses to hang flyers for an event. But, I was assigned an area of my city that is fairly corporate-dominated, so family owned businesses that can do stuff like this are few and far between. But of course to her, the reason why I was taking so long was obviously because I was ‘taking several breaks to get food.’
Did I mention that I had volunteered to do this? (With my own gas money, no less). So basically, fuck that teacher. (I have many, many more examples, but this is the most direct one).”
“Most of the time, they are never fucking wrong. And even when they are wrong, you cannot prove them to be wrong no matter how hard you try. It is a complete waste of your time.
Had this experience with my ex-boyfriend’s mother. She was always like this, and it was infuriating.”
“Ugh. The only person allowed to have feelings is them. No one else. You’re sad? Don’t you see how you being sad affects me? Don’t you care that you’re upsetting me? Oh, you’re happy? Well, it must be because of something I did, so you’re welcome.”
Spirituality can be a beautiful thing, a healing balm for the hurting trauma survivor. I believe as survivors we all have a right to our unique beliefs and faith. Yet there are some spiritual beliefs and principles that, when taken too far, can be distorted to blame or shame victims of abuse or other forms of trauma, proving harmful and limiting to the healing journey. It’s important to shed light on spiritual frameworks that may hinder or impede a survivor’s journey to authentic healing and can perpetuate a larger victim-shaming discourse in society. Here are seven spiritual philosophies that can be misused to blame the victim and enable abuse.
1. The idea that there is no separation. Spiritual gurus like to promote the idea that we are all “one.” This is true to some extent: we are all humans, having a similar experience of consciousness, living in an interconnected world. What affects one, will inevitably affect another (unless they are protected from the effects by a bubble of privilege). Yet the idea that abuser and victim are “one” tends to minimize and deny the reality of the abuser’s pathological behavior, which makes them far less united with the rest of humanity and society as a whole. The truth is, while we are all interconnected, abusers rarely have any respect for that sacred interconnectedness; they are more prone to being divisive and hateful to bolster their false sense of superiority, their selfish agendas and their lack of empathy or compassion for anyone other than themselves. They pose incredible harm to their loved ones as well as the larger society.
The abuser makes himself or herself distinct and separate from the victim by engaging in horrific acts of emotional, psychological and physical violence. When used to excuse the abuser, this philosophy outright denies the fact that some abusers have no ability to empathize or show remorse for their behavior, which is a large part of what makes us human. This philosophy can be exploited to justify horrific assaults on the victim’s identity and erosion of beliefs, urging him or her to reconcile with the abuser under the idea that we must treat the abuser like everyone else, like ourselves, rather than a perpetrator who needs to be held accountable for their actions.
2. Our pain is an illusion, created by our ‘dysfunctional’ thinking. We’ve all heard this one, especially in new age spiritual frameworks. In this scenario, we are the creators of our own pain due to erroneous thoughts, because “love is all that ever exists.” Yet true love rarely exists within an abusive relationship (unless it’s coming from the victim), and our perceptions of the abuse are not simply due to erroneous thinking – they are due to egregiously damaging acts of mental and physical violence. Whatever your spiritual beliefs on this matter may be, the idea that pain is an illusion created by separateness invented in your mind when used to refer to abuse is extremely invalidating to survivors of severe trauma, whose pain is unlikely to feel like a figment of their imaginations. It is, in fact, a form of gaslighting to tell abuse victims that their pain only exists within their own perceptions rather than in reality.
Apparently, the psychological and biochemical effects of abuse that we feel are not real at all, and reality is a rather convincing mirage that obscures the richer, deeper spiritual world where all of our trauma makes sense, where the experience of abuse fits into the larger picture – a picture that otherwise seems inexplicable to us. It’s true that we have the agency to make choices that cause us pain or lessen our pain; to some extent, we can also control our thoughts and behaviors. Therapies like CBT, for example, rely on the fact that human beings can relieve some of their suffering by changing the way they think, which can potentially affect their emotions as well as behavior.
Yet when it comes to trauma, changing our thoughts alone can be limited in healing complex trauma – it often takes healing on the level of mind, body and spirit using both traditional and alternative methods, to truly overcome the effects of abuse (and even then, healing has no set deadline). The pain of an abusive relationship is in no way illusory – it may exist within us, but it is inflicted upon us and evoked by toxic people in this world who manipulate, control and demean others until they feel worthless, until they are drained of their resources, their dreams, and their hope – all through the trauma they’ve subjected their victims to. To say pain is an illusion is a cop-out for holding abusers responsible for changing their abusive behavior; it is victim-blaming and victim-shaming, and it does nothing to improve society as a whole.
In order for survivors to feel validated in their experiences, reach out for help, and detach from their abusers, we need to acknowledge the reality of the harm that is caused to survivors of abuse. We need to let go of the myth that survivors of abuse are just holding onto a “story” that causes them pain, rather than working to address the real-life traumas that may still affect them psychologically and physiologically years after the abuse.
There are ways to reframe and rewrite our narratives withoutblaming ourselves for the abuse. That harm only becomes more exacerbated when spiritual communities encourage the survivor to look at all pain as an illusion rather than a legitimate, lived reality that affects our minds, our bodies and our spirits.
3. Forgiveness is a must in all situations, across all contexts. As I’ve written about in-depth in my article, “Should We Forgive Our Abusers?”, not every survivor finds that forgiveness is necessary to their healing or in moving forward with their lives. Premature forgiveness is also reminiscent of the behavior survivors engaged in when they excused, minimized or tried to forget their abuser’s behavior during the abuse cycle; it is not something that all survivors feel relieved by during their journey to healing – in fact, some survivors may feel empowered by not forgiving their abusers, particularly in cases of sexual abuse.
Forgiveness certainly has its benefits, but for some survivors who have been robbed of their choices, it can feel retraumatizing to forgive an abuser who shows no remorse; it is also retraumatizing to be forced or shamed by society to do so. To shame survivors about what should be a personal choice is counterproductive and often premature.
If forgiveness is truly for the survivor, not the abuser, then survivors must be permitted the choice of what feels best for them and their unique journeys.
Survivors will forgive if and when they are ready, usually after they have processed their traumas in healthy ways. Pushing them to forgive too soon or when they are unwilling due to this spiritual framework that forgiveness magically makes you a better person, actually impedes their healing process and erodes the integrity of their choices.
4. The ego must be eradicated completely to achieve happiness. While we all want to steer away from letting our egos, the part of ourselves most associated with fear and physicality, run our lives, the truth is that what many spiritual communities call our “ego” consist of authentic human emotions that are incredibly important to acknowledge, validate, process and channel into healthier outlets. For example, it is actually their righteous anger and outrage towards mistreatment and injustice that allows survivors to detach from their abusers, to fight against societal ills and motivates them to rebuild their lives.
While the ego is often denigrated as the root of all evil, the truth is that the emotions associated with the “ego” actually has indispensable roots in the process of healing, and can be used to cultivate emotional freedom. Acknowledging emotions associated with the spiritual definition of “ego” can be liberating for the abuse survivor who has been taught that their needs, feelings and basic rights do not matter.
Many spiritual communities degrade the “fear-based thinking” of the ego, but the fact of the matter is, we need fear sometimes in order to gauge our intuitive gut feeling about someone’s intentions; we need anger to remind us when we are being treated unfairly. To dismiss anything that is not “love” as ego, and to say it is always harmful, is false and counterproductive.
These emotions can also be signals, and while they don’t have to be acted upon destructively, they should be heeded for self-care and self-protection.
Consider that this philosophy also encourages us to desensitize ourselves to the multiple layers of grieving that are involved in healing from trauma, rather than confronting them and processing them in constructive ways. It dismisses the fact that many abuse survivors can suffer from symptoms of PTSD or Complex PTSD, which contains a plethora of the same traits that is traditionally known as “ego.” Spiritually, there should be a balance between validating our emotions and allowing ourselves to heal. We ultimately cannot work to recover from what we do not even allow to come to the surface.
5. What you see in another exists in yourself. Occasionally, this is true, but it just doesn’t cut it when it comes to the abuse survivor community as a whole. It is, in essence, a false equivalency that compares abuser to victim in harmful ways and refocuses the attention on the qualities of the victim, rather than the perpetrator. It is true that we may at times subconsciously gravitate towards people who represent what spiritual and psychological communities call our ‘shadow selves’, parts of our identities we have concealed or sublimated. Every human being at some point has also projected qualities onto others at some point or seen themselves disliking qualities in others that they see in themselves.
However, this philosophy is used far too often to fabricate similarities between abuser and victim where there are none, to divert the focus from the abuser and to instead hold the victim responsible for qualities that do not exist.
A compassionate victim, for example, actually considers the abuser’s feelings even during incidents of horrific abuse; many find that fear, obligation and guilt about leaving their abuser plays a role in staying far too long in the relationship. The abuser, on the other hand, has no consideration for how he or she affects others or the harm they commit.
You could not find two more different, distinct human beings in interaction with one another in an abusive relationship. One seeks basic decency and respect, shows tremendous empathy, has a desire for a loving relationship – while the other seeks to exploit that desire to fulfill their malicious agenda.
6. We “attracted” the abuser so we have to take responsibility for being abused. While I am a big believer in agency and empowerment, I simply cannot stomach the victim-shaming idea that the abuse is in any way a survivor’s fault. Abusers manipulate, demean and belittle others regardless of who they are. Independent or codependent, wealthy or just barely surviving, outgoing or introverted, happy or depressed – they target victims due to their capacity for empathy, not because of their personal deficiencies, shortcomings or character traits. If the victim did have past traumas that ‘programmed’ or ‘primed’ the victim for abuse, it still does not justify the abuse; in fact, it makes the abuser all the more sick for retraumatizing a victim who has already been victimized.
7. We are never victims – we create everything. Don’t get me wrong: I like the idea that survivors can create a new reality for themselves, empower themselves and rebuild their lives, more victorious than ever. I encourage survivors to use all the tools they have at their disposal to achieve their goals and dreams (including a life of freedom away from their abusers), in both traditional and alternative ways. If the principles of manifestation helps you to achieve a new reality, go for it. There is nothing wrong with envisioning yourself in a brighter future and taking the steps to achieve your goals. You are worthy of the best life possible.
Yet when this idea is used to blame the victim for an abuser’s actions, it becomes extremely problematic. When society is focused on asking the victim what he or she “did” to create this situation, rather than showing compassion for their situation and thinking about which resources they could use to help them, we have more and more survivors remaining silent about the abuse they’re enduring (believing it is their fault), more survivors who feed into toxic self-blame and shame for a burden they never asked for. Victims are already told by their abuser that the abuse is all their fault – the last thing they need is for society to agree with them.
No one ever asks for or ever consciously creates for themselves an abusive relationship; survivors do not desire the traumas that come with an abusive relationship or the potentially lifelong impact. Victimhood is not a role abuse survivors play, either: it is a legitimate reality. Instead of placing the blame where it really belongs (on the perpetrator), this philosophy dismisses the fact that most victims do not see an abuser’s real self until they are already invested, minimizes the impact of chronic abuse on a survivor’s self-esteem, their agency and their capacity to leave an abuser with whom they develop a trauma bond.
Regardless of what your spiritual beliefs are, let’s put them to good use. Let’s extend the idea of interconnectedness to help victims who suffer every day from the realities of verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Let’s stop letting abusers off the hook and enabling their behavior – it is not good for either the victim OR the abuser, and it is possible to show compassion from a distance. Let’s stop desensitizing ourselves to the traumatic impact of abuse and policing survivors who speak the truth about it.
There is nothing more compassionate and authentically spiritual than helping those who truly need it. There is nothing more compassionate and empathic than holding people accountable for changing the behavior that destroys lives. Let’s practice authentic spirituality – the type that celebrates empathy for those abused, that permits survivors to have their own unique healing journey on their own terms, and creates a safer world for all.
