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Here I've tried to summarise a list of things I consider very important nowadays.
1. The most important book for me on psychopathy is 'Snakes in Suits', by R. Hare and P. Babiak. I have it handy in my room so I look at it from time to time. In this book you will learn:
- how the psychopathic bond works, explained in detail, step by step
- you will see many examples of possible case scenarios with psychopaths
- you are provided with a great list of steps on how to protect yourself from psychopaths
- all it's explained with easy, non-technical language
R. Hare gave his life to study psychopathy. While other of his books are more technical, this one seems to be the most important piece of all of them. The more I read it, the more I learn.
2. Learn how to do the PCL-R. Yes, you can do it. You may find some psychologists warning you that this can be only done by professionals. The thing is that you are not going to prescribe any drugs, you are going to learn to know who is a psychopath and who isn't. I've learned a lot when trying to understand how the PCL-R works. It has been really helpful. It gave me much more confidence when I get some red flags from someone. It helps you to follow a script, looking for specific traits.
3. As someone I know put it "the Stasi never dreamt of having so much information about people". He refers to social media. Well, the thing is, that there is a lot of information also about psychopaths. Probably R. Hare never dreamt about having so much information about them when he spent everyday patiently observing them in the prisons of Canada.
This means this is a unique opportunity to know all those things we didn't know about them.
4. Read a lot of books. My father, a covert narcissist, but I'd rather call him a psychopath, traumatised me with everything, including, with reading. It has been very hard for me to get the habit of reading. But here I am, trying. I read now faster than I ever thought. All it takes is patience and let the habit works on its own.
Here are some books that have literally saved my life:
- 'Get the Truth: Former CιΔ officers teach you how to persuade anyone to tell the truth'
I've read a few things about negotiation techniques but nothing like this. This book will teach you how to spot a liar. I recommend it also reading the other book they wrote. There are a few things that are repeated in both books so I just skipped those parts I already knew and read it quickly. Both books are well worth it. You can quickly tell when someone is lying, and of course, psychopaths lie a lot, and now you will quickly see a red flag before anyone else. This also helped me to figure out when someone is lying on his resume. Take advantage of these advanced techniques. For the price of this book you will have the best knowledge to negotiate and to better handle situations, especially when dealing with abusive people.
After reading these two books I thought I won't ever put in use these techniques, however, I found recently myself in a situation where I really regretted not properly studying these techniques, so I've come back to study them properly. They are very important.
- 'Trust me, I'm lying' These are the confessions of a social media manipulator. You will see with lots of detail how they do it. I've learned a lot. There's much more going on in social media than you may realise.
- 'LikeWar: the weaponisation of social media' With this book you will get a full view of the current "hybrid war" between different countries. We're being used as weapons - and we don't know it - any time we're in social media. Here it talks about how dangerous disinformation is for our democracies, and how this approach is destroying our democracies without tanks or grenades, in plain sight. Disinformation is a very interesting topic. I encourage anyone to read more about how it works.
- 'Persuasion' by R. Cialdini. Not just this book, but any book about persuasion techniques is helpful. Once you know these techniques, it's much more difficult to fall for them.
- 'Thinking fast, thinking slow' by D. Kahneman. It's a bit long. You may not agree with all he says, but there are many hot topics related with manipulation that are worth a reading. So to increase your power against manipulation, this vaccine also helps.
- 'So you've been publicly ashamed' by Jon Ronson. This is more on the topic of social media. The more you know, the better.
- 'The psychopath code: cracking the predators that stalk us' This book is free. You can either download it to Kindle or from their website in pdf. I recommend reading as much as possible about them. If you type "psychopath" and filter by "4 stars or more" in Amazon, you can see a few books on the topic. There is always some bit of new information that can be helpful.
- 'Lenin, the dictator' Read what a psychopath can do and how it can last in a society when they reach a position of power.
- 'The rage' by Julia Ebner. Read this if you want to know how powerful is hate in social media and how are most terrorists created nowadays.
- 'Dark Money: the hidden story of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right' This is a brave book. It's well researched. I wish she was more concise sometimes. The book could have been much shorter. Nevertheless, a unique resource to understand the mess these people created and how we are paying for it.
- 'This is not propaganda: adventures in the war against reality' This author beautifully describes what is happening to our democracies and why they are in danger. As psychopaths are experts creating chaos and destroying reality, I consider this book also a very important read.
- 'Get the life you want' by Richard Bandler. Read as much as you can about NLP and practise it. Search for books on this topic. Also for self-hypnosis. This literally saved my life. I cannot recommend it enough.
- 'Bad blood: secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup' Well, if you don't already know it, Silicon Valley is full of individuals with psychopathic traits. I can speak for myself. The name itself it shows a sense of grandiosity like nothing else. If you go there, there's nothing more than tech companies. But the name says it all. It seems like a sort of paradise. San Francisco is full of homeless people and it has one of the highest - if not the highest - difference of social classes. There's the extreme rich, and the extreme poor. Moreover, no one cares. It's just paradise for a psychopath. There are other books about this topic that I'd like to read but I haven't yet. I leave them here too in case you want to have a look: 'Abolish Silicon Valley', 'Brotopia'.
I cannot stress enough how important is that we change our mindset from victim to be a fighter and learn to daily focus on not letting anyone cross your boundaries. While I don't consider myself a mystical person I must admit that there's something else we don't know and I cannot longer ignore it. You need to take it so seriously as your energy will change. When you start seeing your daily life from the perspective of boundaries - as opposite of people pleaser - something changes in your spirit too.
There's a list of books I haven't read yet but I have them on my list and I can't wait to read them. I share a few with you in case they are helpful.
These are the most important books in my bucket list. Now, you'll see the books come from all different topics. That is the whole point. You need a holistic view of how things work. If you know a lot only about a single field, it is very much like living in a echo chamber. This is what I believe happens to psychologists and many other study fields. That's why they're stuck.
A couple more things. Psychopaths are very active people. That is, while most of us are rather relaxed and laid back in the way we take life, for psychopaths is a whole different story. They permanently work to spread their toxicity and create chaos. Before social media they had a quite limited outreach but now with social media that has definitely changed. I have seen psychopaths writing books. Actually, many of them wrote at least one book. Guess what, they sell a lot of copies! Psychopaths weaponise absolutely anything. They are being taken seriously and respected. The damage they do is unmeasurable. Meanwhile, most of us don't even think about writing a book, or anything like that.
They are permanently trying to find those grey areas where there's no regulation or norms that can restrain what they want to say. For example, if you publish in a newspaper, you need to subject your writing to the guidelines of the editorial. However, for books there's a lot of freedom. You can even be your own publisher nowadays. They exploit this freedom. They are so fast finding these cracks in the system because they permanently devote their lives to this. So we need to count on this.
We tend to underestimate the power of an individual and the power that we have in our society. Do you know the story of Eliot Higgins? He defeated one of the most powerful countries' narratives doing open source investigation. And he did it on his own. He just decided to devote his time to this cause instead of wasting his time in socia media. My advice is that if you use social media, use it in a sensible way, with a clear purpose and understanding of what's happening.
As I said sometimes, psychopaths, scammers and other types of manipulative individuals partner together. They are fast to openly admit what are their real interest on a subject, and they partner quickly. It's known in the literature of psychopaths that when two psychopaths get together it is a horror story twice as horrible as when with one psychopath. They feed themselves with twisted machiavelic ideas, hence multiplying the destructive effect. Nowadays we live in an interconnected society. This good and bad. This is good as isolation was not good for improvement, communication improves performance. However, not only the good guys are better communicated nowadays, but also the bad guys. This is something we cannot longer afford to overlook.
The, they are extremely organised. They don't leave anything casual for the next day. Spreadsheets are their best friends. Learning to use spreadsheets is probably one the best investments you are doing in your life. You will use this knowledge for your work and for your personal life. It really pays.
An important manipulative trick manipulative people do is to "radicalise you". For example, let's say you hate smoking because you quit smoking a few years ago and the smell of smoke it causes you to feel bad. When you are walking on the streets and you come across someone smoking you don't say anything but you do think and feel bad. Here is when the manipulative person comes. She or he is watching you, of course you don't know it. As soon as she realises there's some discomfort inside yourself, she will say something like "Smoking is horrible! I hate these people smoking everywhere!". Suddenly something shifts inside yourself. You don't know what happened but you will have a huge amount of hate inside yourself. Next time you find someone smoking you will react rather violently. You will be shocked as how angry you've become and you get worried and a bit upset. You blame yourself, and you get into the well know vicios cycle of guilt-and-shame.
This can happen in many different scenarios. For example, your manager is a manipulator and you are in your office. One of your workmates, one you really like, and you know he's a good person, starts making noises. He's a good person but he can be rather annoying sometimes. For this reason, everybody is quiet. They all know he's such a good guy. However, the manipulator detects this behaviour and enters the stage. He will drop a comment that seems innocent like "This guy (the nice workmate) is so nice but he can be so annoying at times". He says this with a nice smile while leaving the room, with a big smile. I've observed this situation many times. The reaction of everybody is start complaining. It doesn't matter how much you respect your workmate, the manipulator pushed a powerful button and it seems like we have almost no control over it. Most of my workmates, including myself, were involved into bullying my workmate quite often. The manipulator found so entertaining pushing people's buttons and getting the desired outcome. They all seemed like puppets. I soon realised that something was going on so I decided to step back and not participate any more. However, he was so good at pushing people's buttons that many times my reaction was "automatic" and then I found the time to retract myself from it. That's how powerful it is.
That's why it's very important that you know "your hot buttons" (R. Hare), they will surely push them. As a woman, I find manipulators keep saying things like "muslims treat women badly". This is something many women find hard to avoid and it creates a false perception of reality and hate. That's precisely what they want.
Sometimes we wonder how we can fight these powerful forces. There's a saying "Tell truth and shame the devil". Sometimes the problem is that we are not even sure about what the truth is, or we are so scared to tell the truth because we anticipate the consequences. The thing is, most of the times, we create and exaggerate the consequences in our heads, hence preventing us from taking action. A good way to prevent this is to be more strategic. Psychopaths see life as a chess game. If you don't play chess, try it. Imagine that everyday is like that. Planning the day before. Thinking about your moves. Never leaving things unplanned. Having a plan doesn't mean you strictly follow the plan, but that you previously know a lot of possible things you can do. Leave the decisions to the day before, not to the moment. That is, it's better to have a plan, that to have no plan. Get used to the words and the meanings "tactics" and "strategy".
Lastly, and maybe the most important thing you need to know as an empath: you are the favourite target for a psychopath, but this can backfire to a psychopath, because you are now the most dangerous adversary to the psychopath. How many people can really understand what a psychopath is, without going through it? The fact is that the knowledge you have now is something very few people have, but fortunately, this is changing. This means that we can now support each other. These secrets are slowly becoming more and more mainstream. I consider myself that I have responsibility with this.
You need to know why you are the psychopath's favourite target:
- You are seized easily. This makes the task of the psychopaths much easier.
- You are easily weaponised. That is, the psychopath will use you for their own needs, and many times you will find yourself in dangerous situations.
- You are an idealistic person. Whatever you believe in, the psychopath will use your faith for their aims. Maybe you suddenly find yourself fighting for some "good cause" that the psychopath has put in your head.
- You tend to be alone. This is great for the psychopath. Manipulation and echo chambers exist by the idea of isolation. Without isolation no manipulation is possible.
- Your life sucks and you have nothing to lose. As you wander around in social media, a psychopath is waiting for you. As you are lonely you spend more time in social media and your narrow vision of reality doesn't let you see how dangerous is this place and how dangerous can the people be. As you walk into these places looking for "a meaning in life" you are just looking for the worst to happen. If you get trapped by radical people you may turn into a teΓΓorist. Studies say that radical people don't know they are radical.
- You are a person with some sense of martyrdom and self sacrifice. You see yourself in need to help others all the time (people pleaser). You rationalised this pathologic behaviour as "being a good person", however, this is a pathology. To be a good person you need to be fully conscious, and that's something an empath doesn't have. So you are willing to sacrifice your time, and your life, for that cause, or that person that needs help. If this doesn't resonate with you when you read about teΓΓorism then I don't know what does. The manipulative narrative of cults and teΓΓor groups exploit these traits in people.
- People will believe you. Some people will perceive something "just not right" about the psychopath. That's when you enter the stage. You will be used to easily spread misinformation and toxicity. People will believe you, you are a good person.
At the end of the day, you will be the one losing your life and your reputation. If you get involved into something dangerous, people will see you as a criminal, and you will end up in jail.
I can't leave without mentioning about the relationship between cults and psychopaths. Psychopaths are cult leaders. And when they don't perform as cult leaders, they do what cult leaders do to people around them. The use the same power that cult leaders have with you. Instead of "having a relationship" your mind was kidnapped by a cult leader. You lost all those years of your life and you won't get them back. I want to read about split personality and doublethink. That might explain how cults work. So "cults" can be about anything. You need to look for utopian ideas. In the technology world there are many utopians. This is bad. You can actually tell when someone is part of a "cult", that is, when there's a psychopath nearby that did this to someone's brain. You can see their eye wide open and their sight fixed, especially when they talk about a subject related with the psychopath. Sometimes, a person is a puppet not just by one psychopath but by more than one. Sometimes it can be the CEO of a company, the director of a bank. It can also be just anyone else.
Here are some inspirational cards.
Last edited by D3lt4 on Mon Mar 30, 2020 2:56 pm; edited 2 times in total
