Quote from Power Duck on August 4, 2023, 10:26 pm

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Quote from Bel on August 4, 2023, 1:29 pm

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Quote from Power Duck on August 4, 2023, 12:15 pm

I don't know if there's any, but I believe an article about how manipulators think would be really useful and interesting. Staring at the abyss can be a  traumatizing experience or life changing.

Some pointers on this based on my experience (may not reflect all truly manipulative personalities):

- hating everyone

- thought patterns of life as a chess game (“he said this. What can I now say to manipulate him into believing he is the problem and making him do as I say and break his will for good”)

- in some cases, constant homicidal thoughts

- inability to see win/win. Only acceptable  possibility is win/lose, win/win is seen as a loss

- always having to resist urges to harm, destroy, hurt. These are usually deferred until a “good opening” appears

- always covering manipulation under a veneer of gaslighting and “good intentions”

-never, ever, ever admitting anything. Any attempt by the mark at obtaining admissions is seen as an opportunity to further manipulate and recover the higher position by further gaslighting. The ultimate tool is faking that “yes I was manipulative but it was in the past, now I changed”

- inability to change

- inability to see even the closest people as people. They are all hated

- having to constantly fake being loving and forgiving and good. But it is a mask

- if you saw the manipulator while he doesn’t realize you see him, you would see a nasty, evil face - ie NOT the usual mask

- always blaming everyone else for everything bad, and taking credit for everything good

- resenting people who play into his machinations, or give advice. Later punishing them in underhanded ways while making sure the link between the “offense” and the “punishment” is hidden

- thinking everyone is playing the same game, but that the manipulator is the best one

- thinking life consists in controlling others. The more the manipulator is able to manipulate, the more alive he or she feels

- using all people as pawns, including the closest ones

- inability to bond emotionally with anyone, but faking bonding (ie repeating “I love you” over and over and over while it is totally fake)

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Boom! Thanks for that Bel, I find this really interesting.

Plus I think  that knowledge will be really useful to deal with the manipulator in the debate club I joined. Thanks again.

I'm finding a new hobby in understanding manipulators and dark triads. Currently reading the Panzram papers, an autobiography of one of the most brutal murderers of the US, Carl Panzram. He does exhibit some of the behaviours and thoughts you mention, in fact his dream was to exterminate the whole human race.

Cheers.

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Quote from Power Duck on August 5, 2023, 12:07 am

How the manipulation went:

First some context:

Group of 5 without including myself, here are the main characters. they're not friends of course but I'll use the word because it's easier that way:

1. High power main manipulator female friend. Will call her H
2. One upping female friend, high power from time to time. Used to like me. " " L
3. Male friend, only one ups me when most of the group does it. He uses irony from time to time to one up me. " " I
4. Male frenemy, babies me and uses me to social climb. Also uses social dominance a lot, he's the best definition of Dionysian dominance  I've seen, of course really value taking.  " " D
5. Female friend. She does behave rudely and one up me from time to time. " " F

So for the most part they either one upped me or behaved rudely. D was always babying me or one upping me, also uses irony. He has a thing for telling everyone "what a good person you are" as if they were lil kids.

The thing that happened before the first time I decided to call out the disrespect went like this:

Everybody eating in cafeteria after classes.

H and L: hey power duck there isn't enough protein in that food for your gym diet. Hey are you going to eat that. Hey give me some of your dessert. Hey eat faster. Hey eat slower.

Power duck: I'll eat my desert first so you shut up. *Starts eating it"

*Everybody puts face as if saying wtf are you doing"

Power duck: what's the problem?

H and L: what are you doing eating that are you crazy? Who eats the desert first?

Power duck: shut up it's just a stupid social norm.

*Everyone puts the same face again*

They keep one upping me, another girl that wasn't in the group one ups me too.

I handled this very badly and came across really bad, by this moment the abuse had been going on for quite some time.

L: one ups me.

Power Duck: If you keep doing that I'll get up and go eat somewhere else.

L  interrupts me and one ups me. I get up and go eating somewhere else.

After this I did something really stupid: I finished eating my food alone, I get up and return to the table because I feared them leaving me alone and the uncomfortable situation that would occur because of this.

Power duck returns to the table.

They keep talking for quite some time without adressing me. One person says something to D

D: power duck look I'm going to get up and go eat somewhere else because I'm angry.

more talking.

I then calls me a name everybody knew I didn't like being called.

(In fact I had to tell everyone everyday to stop calling me that name, but apparently "they didn't realize when they called me that name because they had accustomed to it")

Some more things happened after that, and some days later F speaks to me rudely.

After that I speak to her via WhatsApp and tell her I'm tired of the constant disrespect and one upping, I was  disrespectful too by the way. I also tell her to send that audio message to the rest of the female friends.

So after this L didn't even bother speaking to me and H sent me audio messages.

I've just listened to it again and she was even nastier than I remembered:

H: Power duck you said in your message what you thought and now I'm going to do the same.

You spoke once to me and told me that you didn't liked when I called you that name, (after me telling her to stop like 20 times or more) and I told you oops I didn't realize. So in that sense I've respected you and I don't understand why you mention me and tell me I've disrespected you when I didn't disrespect you in any moment, and you know that we've sat together laughed a lot and had really good times so I want you to tell me when have I disrespected you.

And you know I always behave the same with everyone but with you I've behaved in a different way because you didn't like how I behaved and because I wanted to have a decent good of friends. The group was created by everyone and you're creating a bad mood in the group for being that way.

And if you don't want to tolerate our jokes and want others to change the way they are because they don't like the jokes that isn't how it works. You should think and then talk because I've joked with you you've joked with me and I didn't say anything when I didn't like some things you said.

And in fact we've been thinking about you, because we are your friends and we care about you, people who aren't your friends don't think about you when you could have a problem. That while you try to frame us as the bad ones here. We've thought about what we could've  said that offended you.

We've talked about it and we think you have had problems with past relationships, and I tell you this, I've gone throw lots of things and here in college I've discovered what true friends are and you have to go through that too. I've  told you multiple times that you can count with me, to tell me whatever problem you have.

I think we are adults and if we don't like someone we don't hang out with them, do you think we would hang out with you if we didn't like you?

Wrote it from audio to text, seems like her ego was threatened as we later spoke by phone and all she wanted was me to tell her that she hadn't done anything wrong. (It's likely that she's also a nasty power player as she's power aware.) I even told her:

"Do you want to fix this or what do you want?"

She also discarded any possibility of her disrespecting me, or some of her jokes possibly being disrespectful. I apologised and told her lots of things about how I was mistreated in my adolescence, about me going to therapy, etc. Big fail.

After this I apologised the next day, F apologised too for how she spoke to me on the phone. Both H and L didn't apologise. After this most power moves stopped and H became suddenly really nice.  Also the name calling stoped, now the frame was that we were a group of supporting friends in which problems were openly discussed and we tried to solve them.

Well some time later the power moves started again, I stopped attending to college got PU, and met one day. (What happened that day is in this post) What H told me when I went assertive again was basically the same as the first time.

A month after that, the girld of the group had been talking about meeting the week after tests to have a farewell party as F was going to be transfered to a different college in a far region, to sum it up we wouldn't see her again . By this time I didn't talk in the group and wasn't going to meet with them.

The girls of the group had talked for two weeks about going to a club to meet before F was transferred. Well L canceled the same day because she "had a really big problem" and she wouldn't meet to "satisfy anyone". Also played victim lol. In the end they didn't meet, not even once to say goodbye to F.

And that was it. I behaved as a pushover most of the time. Reading TPM articles and PU made me realize that I was gaslighted and the good will I had towards them disappeared.

If anyone is interested in anything more feel free to ask of course.

Cheers.

P.S:

Thanks to Lucio again for being really direct in that post by the way. It definetely helped me to improve a lot. Sometimes we need somebody to tell us when we f up without sugar coating.

Quote from Power Duck on August 5, 2023, 12:16 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on August 4, 2023, 8:48 pm

Quote from Power Duck on August 4, 2023, 12:38 pm

Another trap about the growth mindset paired with naivete, is mistaking ego with the feel for power moves. I find this really really interesting.

This can be used to manipulate too, specially if the target knows a thing or two about psychology.

The thing is that I've found that the feeling we get when our ego is threatened and the feel for power moves are really similar, although differences can be spotted if one pays attention.

What's the problem then?: The self help trap of "ego is bad". Pair that with a bit of naivete and you get a completely powerless person that will take any criticism and attack  framed as help and sometimes even when it isn't framed as help, as valuable information. Not only that but will believe that power moves are ego issues he will have to solve.

Dropping gold in this thread, Power Duck! 🙂

Yes, great call, and quite similar.

A drive to "get rid of the ego" or external calls to "not take it so personally" can manipulation and gaslighting tools.

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Edit: on "how manipulators think"

If anyone wants to continue the topic of "how manipulators think", feel free to open a new thread since it's a very interesting as well as very different topic.

But one thing I'd take care not to forget: manipulators also think like normal people do because manipulation is common and widespread.

Manipulation is also on a spectrum and zero manipulation in any relationship is both uncommon, and also ineffective.

So better to specify we're referring to chronic manipulation, over-manipulation, extreme win-lose, etc. etc. 

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Thank you 🙂, I'm glad my post was value adding.

And I fully agree, often manipulation is done without the manipulator doing it purposefully.

Quote from B on August 5, 2023, 1:55 am

Very interesting.

I find it is a common pattern among the worst manipulators.

Gaslighting the mark into “needing help and advice with his life/self-esteem/therapy” is really twisted, but very effective if one doesn’t understand the move.

Agree that these people you encountered were best faded/dropped from your life. And the story also confirms that conscious understanding is the foremost way to remove the effects of the manipulation.

And yes, as to the topic of “how manipulators think”, I probably was lucky enough to encounter those at the extreme end of the spectrum :).