#empathtip

24. he brings you down

For the pleasure, to have you in his power, to feed his fragile ego and to get from you the emotions he’ll use to feed himself or discredit you.

And also because, well, the manipulator secretly hates you: you have a heart and he hates you for it.

It can be difficult to differentiate between systemic depreciation and valid criticism.

Because everyone can be critical. And sometimes it’s warranted.

How then, can you know the difference ?

Quite simply: you have to ask yourself how you feel.

If you feel bad, that you lose progressively the trust you have in yourself, that you feel like a failure, never encouraged to do something or be yourself... you may have been under too much targeted criticism.

And the true danger is that in living this alternative reality when you are constantly hit while he presents himself as the victim, you can end up doubting of yourself, of your own perceptions, your cleverness and your equilibrium.

Furthermore, one of his classic attack is to say you’re loosing the plot or your mind. That you’re inventing stuff, lying, imagining things, are hysterical, should calm down, are batshit crazy...

The easiest way to send the problem back in your turf as quickly as he possibly can.

And you can come to the point where you wonder if indeed you are still mentally sane.

If this happens, he’ll use it against you.

And will relish telling the world he was right all along.

25. special attention on the passive-aggressive

It’s a two time movement.

The manipulator will attack you verbally, without reason, preferably with innuendos you’ll be the only one to understand. This is the aggressive part.

The ideal is for you to react but for other people around, if there are, to not perceive the intensity of the attack. And therefore to not understand your logical reaction and think YOU are the aggressor.

Because once the aggressive part has been dealt, the manipulator will protect himself behind his victim mask, giving you the role of the bad guy. This is the passive part.

It’s the bully who hits you and then puts his false glasses on. You won’t be so mean that you’d hit someone with glasses, will you?

#bekind

The two movement can be in the opposite order when the manipulator will preemptively present you as the bad guy before going to your throat.

It can look like this: “You aren’t a nice person, you should be kinder, you ugly son of a bleep, selfish, jealous looser, get a life!”

Yes, I know, written like that it seems to be a caricature but just give a second look at the many comments on social media...

Because the manipulator, as I wrote before, can’t bear criticism and will, if submitted to one, bury you under recriminations, blaming you – the irony! - for not being kind.

Criticism is useful when it’s constructive or when there is a manipulator at the receiving end.

You shouldn’t let him be destructive without reacting. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the recent #bekind movement has partly been launched by one or more manipulators: it’s a virtual pair of glasses.

When they get low, he won’t let you go high, though: the manipulator will take it as encouragement and attack you until he hits the mark. He wants to prove you’re bad and meanwhile he can have fun. Pure happiness.

26. he doesn’t want your happiness

At all.

Without a heart, he can’t be happy and can only feed on you or on crowds.  Or know pleasure, this substitute promised to those who abdicated their conscience.

Your happiness is an insult to him.

He can’t bear it.

And then his ego whispers in his head that you have everything HE deserves. That you are robbing him. That you had everything easily when he’s slaving. That it’s soooooooo not fair.

He’s eaten by jealousy, bitterness, envy and hate.

If life hasn’t given him what he is sure he deserves, it’s because you have his job, especially if you are an immigrant. If you are happily married, it’s because you have his spouse. Or the kids she was supposed to give birth to. The money that should be in his pocket. His oxygen...

And he will try to kill your happiness.

27. you don’t feel good

You are depreciated, criticized, attacked, nothing you do is good enough and it’s always your fault.

Your emotions are dismissed, you are not respected.

And after the first love-bombing months, and the subsequent episodes he hopes briefer and briefer when he makes an effort to keep his hold on you, he will do everything in his power to have you feel unhappy.

If this wasn’t enough, the manipulator is an energy vampire.

And I would guess, an inspiration for the bloody one.

Energy is another vital force and as a Reiki master, I should know how important it is to your well-being.

If you live with a intense manipulator, you can feel drained, without enthusiasm, without desire, sad without cause, exhausted without knowing why, and sometimes without any more forces to resist.

The more toxic the manipulator, the more intense the symptoms.

Is the manipulator is only a low range narcissist, you could spend an entire life being slowly eroded,  sustaining him, trying unsuccessfully to please him: daily Sisyphus running behind your stone.

Some manipulators have taken the extra measure to isolate you.

And as you are alone, you feel worse and worse. It can raise to the physical level: you are more easily ill, you gain weight, loose hair...

In some cases, you can go through apathy periods. When you don’t even have the strength to get out of bed. It isn’t necessarily a depression, sometimes getting you out of the talons of the toxic person, can be enough for you to recover.

But it can get you to a true depression.

The manipulator won’t have any compassion for you and will take advantage, again and again, of your vulnerability.

Everything is in his interest and against you.

19. he is cut from a large part of his emotions.

He doesn’t know love, nor happiness: he has no quality attributed to the heart. The only positive emotion he knows, it’s pleasure. Most notably the pleasure of winning: money, energy, influence, power, your attention. And he is always running after it.

And so we find ourselves in he Troll movie, with the big bad Bergens who, in order to have an agreeable moment, think they have no other solution but to eat a happy Troll.

Because as I said in the precedent article, his main emotion is anger. And it cuts him from every others. The manipulator doesn’t face his emotions, he flees them. He is basically a coward.

20. he doesn’t like to give

His ego is always whispering he deserves everything.  So when the manipulator gives, it’s to receive more in the bargain or to build his charitable image.

As one of the members of my family said: “generosity is just well thought selfishness”.

When the manipulator gives, he thinks he deserves effusive thanks and, if at all possible, a visible display of his gift.

21. he doesn’t like physical contact...

... unless it’s used to brand you and mark his power. Or for his personal pleasure. And there are all kind of gestures he will use to control you: his hand on your back to make you feel inferior, your hand he will grab and keep in his space to prevent you from escaping, the punishing handshake to show you who is boss...

He doesn’t like touching to give affection because he doesn’t like to give. And he doesn’t like loosing his grasp on control.

Sometimes, sadly, if his mass-scale manipulative job requires it and he must seem to care, he will force himself to do as he’s supposed to: hands displayed just so, eyes closed, big smile, white teeth. A less careful narcissist will be seen kissing the air or pretend touching his kid for a photograph when in fact, his hand is staying prudently away from the surface.

In bed, it can give a variety of consequences, from asexuality to 50 nuances of Grey. To love pleasure but to run from affection has manipulators looking for a delicate sex balance. Some will rape or enjoy sexual harassment, fully embracing their predatory nature.

And sometimes, at last, he has learned to be a good lover as another weapon to hunt you down.

22. he knows how to get your love

They all know how to be loved. You should never underestimate him. But it’s always puzzling for those who know the victim: how can it be he doesn’t see? Why doesn’t he realize he’s bamboozled?

The gas-lighted victim will answer something like “you don’t know him like I do” with a sprinkle of “he has excuses, he has had a difficult childhood/marriage/something.” And it’s true the victim won’t have seen the manipulator under the same light  as his kin.

Because the manipulator uses his poisonous charm on a selected few. And for a limited period.

The victim will have thus the impression to know a totally different person than the one others describe, when they try to save him. And the victim believes he knows best because he thinks he has had access to the manipulator’s intimate self. In reality, the victim is fooled: the one under which charm he has fallen, lover, wife, friend, politician, guru... isn’t real.  It’s an illusion created to seduce him. And this is, by far, the most difficult to let go. Because this illusion has been invented especially for you, for what you miss in life, for your traumatism, your faults, your dreams, your needs, your wishes and your fantasies.

The manipulator won’t always keep this illusion alive. He can’t. And even if he could, he wouldn't. He won’t make more efforts than necessary and will let the illusion progressively disappear. But the victim, dazzled by his dream in the flesh, has already committed emotionally. Or more: he can have married his manipulator, have had children with him, let his previous life go, lost his financial autonomy or his friends...

And so, in love of an illusive star or stuck in the swamp, the victim will find more and more excuses to his torturer, find justifications. And become in the deed, the accomplice of his own ordeal.

23. the more toxic the more charisma

Because it’s fairly known you don’t attract flies with vinegar. And you are the fly.

I believe in love at first sight, first and foremost when there is a manipulator involved. And it could seem a paradox, that a person I describe lacking in personality could also be so seductive. It’s because charisma doesn’t depend on personality but depends on some very clear and definite tricks: an apparent self-confidence (in fact, no shame which allows him to dare anything, lots of arrogance and self-love), this way he has to savour life and the energy of those around, and an everlasting narcissism that has him play a role to get anyone’s attention. If all that weren’t enough, some can turn an internal switch and project some kind of electric energy.

The human energy exists, the manipulator knows it.

As his total lack of conscience, his ambition and rage may have propelled him to the highest levels of money and power, we have here a classic potent aphrodisiac. And a romantic cliche à la “Pretty Woman”.

I’ve recently seen on social media, this sentence, meant to be motivational, I guess, and which could be the perfect motto of manipulators: “There is the lamp and there is the butterfly. I choose to be the lamp.”

Knowing the poor insect will, in the best case scenario, loose his time flying around an illusion, and, in the worst case, been consumed on it, you get the idea...

You can’t be too careful of neon lights.