Manipulate Someone Quotes

Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good.

And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

Love can be exploited, I guess, used to manipulate. It's leverage. But I would never call loving someone else a weakness. I think living without love at all, any kind of love, is weakness. And the worst kind of darkness.

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

Until you realize how easy it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.

Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.

I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators --these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.

Damon Torrance was gifted at manipulating someone’s mind. Putting the right glasses over someone’s eyes to make them see the world how he wanted them to see it.

The need for control always comes from someone that has lost it.

It is not the homeless, mentally ill or extremely cunning people that we have to be afraid of. When someone loses everything that meant something to them is when people should get very afraid. A person that has nothing to lose is the scariest person on earth.

Someone can decide it’s in their best interests to agree to something, but a choice is only really a choice if there’s a genuine alternative. Otherwise it’s manipulation and it’s taking advantage.

It was easier to manipulate someone if they didn’t perceive you as a threat.

When you know what someone wants, it's easy to manipulate them.

Don’t let people who don’t care about you, manipulate your mind, feelings and emotions or control how you think about yourself. Never give that much power to someone else.

If someone is inconsiderate or rude to you, risk telling them how it made you feel or that you didn’t appreciate being treated that way. If you tend to talk yourself out of anger by telling yourself that you don’t want to make waves, try telling yourself instead that it is okay to make waves sometimes and risk letting people know how you really feel.

Controllers, abusers, and manipulative people don't question themselves. They don't ask themselves if the problem is them. They always say the problems is someone else.

A person raised in a healthy family is equipped to live a confident and independent life; someone from an unhealthy family is filled with fear and self-doubt. He has difficulty with the prospect of life without someone else. The devaluing messages of control and manipulation create dependency so those who most need to leave their family of origin are the least equipped to do so.

It is an old, old adage that if you want someone to do something, get them to believe it is their idea. Humanity is mind controlled and onlyslightly more conscious than your average zombie. Far fetched? No, no. I define mind control as the manipulation of someone's mind so that they think, and therefor act, the way you want them to.

When you understand the mechanincs of stress and master the techniques to manipulate someone's fears and dreams, you will be powerful.

If someone can change your mind, he has won you over without raising his hand against you. This is the future of warfare.

Whether they’re family or friends, manipulators are difficult to escape from. Give in to their demands and they’ll be happy enough, but if you develop a spine and start saying no, it will inevitably bring a fresh round of head games and emotional blackmail. You’ll notice that breaking free from someone else’s dominance will often result in them accusing you of being selfish. Yes, you’re selfish, because you’ve stopped doing what they want you to do for them. Wow. Can these people hear themselves?!

You are being manipulated when someone reduces, by any means, your ability to be your own judge of what you do.

They may take you for a fool, promise to shower you with the world, use their canny devastating tongue to manipulate and dominate your mind, but its better to put them bulshit people at arms length rather than falling into the arms of infidelity.

Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them. Know what I mean? If someone wants to do fucked-up things to you, and you let them, you’re making them more fucked up. Then you have the control. As long as you don’t go crazy.

She watched the clip several times—enough times to know w certainty her father had nothing to do with the crash. He’d done everything in his power to stop the car and avoid the truck. Someone else had been driving.

Eldest thinks power is control, that the best way to be a leader is to force everyone into obedience. Holding Amy against me, I realize the simple truth is that power isn't control at all-power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn't someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to other so that they may have the strength to stand on their own. This is what I've been looking for since the first day I was told that I was born to lead this ship. Leading Godspeed has nothing to do with being better than everyone else, with commanding and forcing and manipulating. Eldest isn't a leader. He's a tyrant. A leader doesn't make pawns-he makes people.

But cockteasing is also a metaphor: she is someone who will manipulate your inner self while holding hers back from you.

Always think deep inside and listen to your gut about someone that “loves” you. If you wonder if they should be treating you that way you know the answer.

It's hard to think clearly when someone has you emotionally unnerved, so you're less likely to recognize the tactics for what they really are.

When words don’t add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons: 1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them. 2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control. 3. They don’t know the truth themselves. 4. They are undecided. 5. They refuse to let their guard down and be vulnerable because you or someone else have hurt them tremendously. 6. You are not being told all the information because of a break down in communication.

Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn't mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don't go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage.

Someone is out there," I said. "Someone who has been manipulating the events. Playing puppet master, stirring the pot, stacking the deck - " "Mixing metaphors?" Thomas suggested.

If you're trying to change someone you love, you don't love them. It's the oddnesses, the most unique imperfections that you'd miss the most. That's the stuff you can't replace. Everything else is easy to come by.

You think that I'm so manipulative and scheming, Miss Sage? It's all for them. For my loved ones first. My people second. And yes, I suppose I'm in the mix there too, but don't think for an instant I wouldn't sacrifice myself if it could save someone I love. And don't think for an instant that I wouldn't do terrible, unspeakable things if it could save someone I love.

The idea of someone who can play with their emotions, who can 'mystically' get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize-and what you must realize-is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of our social interaction." He settled back, raising his dueling cane and gesturing with it slightly as he spoke. "Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing-in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others." -Breeze

The price you pay for your addiction to praise will be an extreme vulnerability to the opinions of others. Like any addict, you will find you must continue to feed your habit with approval in order to avoid withdrawal pangs. The moment someone who is important to you expresses disapproval, you will crash painfully, just like the junkie who can no longer get his “stuff.” Others will be able to use this vulnerability to manipulate you. You will have to give in to their demands more often than you want to because you fear they might reject or look down on you. You set yourself up for emotional blackmail.

The reason we are so controlled is not that we don't have the power to decide our own destiny, it is that we give that power away every minute of our lives. When something happens that we don't like, we look for someone else to blame. When there is a problem in the world, we say "What are they going to do about it". At which point they, who have secretly created the problem in the first place, respond to this demand by introducing a 'solution' - more centralisation of power and erosion of freedom. If you want to give more powers to the police, security agencies and military, and you want the public to demand you do it, then ensure there is more crime, violence and terrorism, and then it's a cinch to achieve your aims. Once the people are in fear of being burgled, mugged or bombed, they will demand that you take their freedom away to protect them from what they have been manipulated to fear. The Oklahoma bombing is a classic of this kind, as I detail in ..And The Truth Shall Set You Free. I call this technique problem-reaction-solution. Create the problem, encourage the reaction "something must be done", and then offer the solution. It is summed up by the Freemason motto 'Ordo Ab Chao' -order out of chaos. Create the chaos and then offer the way to restore order. Your order. The masses are herded and directed by many and varios forms of emotional and mental control. It is the only way it coud be done.

Staying for your children is noble. However, staying with someone that teaches your children that "selective" evilness is okay is mental illness.

Do not seek your worth in someone else. Your worth is inside you, realize this and then find a partner worthy of you. Never stay if they do not know your worth.

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputation. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.

Selective amnesia by harmful people is blame-shifting. According to FreeDictionary.com, “Blame-shifting is when someone shifts the blame from person to person.” The root of blame-shifting is when an abusive person fails to take responsibility for their cruelty.

And he didn't like love, the way it had made him feel stupid and vulnerable. If he ever married, he'd choose someone incapable of swaying his heart. Someone he hated, even, so they could never manipulate him the way Lucy Grey had. Never make him feel jealous. Or weak.

The midwest is full of these types of people. The nice enoughs but with a soul made of plastic. Easy to mold, easy to wipe down. The woman's entire music collection is formed from Pottery Barn compilations. Her books shelves are stocked with coffee table crap The Irish in America, Mizzou Football - A History in Pictures, We Remember 911, something dumb with kittens. I knew I needed a pliant friend for my plan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick. Someone who would become overly attached to me. Someone who would be easy to manipulate. Who wouldn't think to hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it.

When someone thinks they are getting away with something, they're easier to manipulate. They stop looking closely at the things that might make it feel like their lie is unraveling, and they reveal things they didn't mean to.

I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That’s why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic. Until I met you, I didn’t understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn’t bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me, Wren, because no one gets us but us. You know why you’re not a monster, but I might be. I know why throwing me in your dungeon meant there was still something between us. We are messes and we are messed up and I don’t want to go through this world without the one person I can’t hide from and who can’t hide from me.

Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies.

God told us to love everyone. However, when you don’t like someone then you need to walk away and focus not on him or her, but the hatred you’re harboring. Otherwise, you will allow your piety to take over. Before you know it, you’re using the gospel as a sword to slice other religious people apart, which have offended you. From your point of helplessness, it will be is easy to recruit people that will mistake your kindness as righteousness, when in reality it is a hidden agenda to humiliate through the words of Christ. This game is so often used by women in the Christian faith, that it is the number one reason why many people become inactive. It is a silent, unspoken hypocrisy that is inconsistent with the teachings of the gospel. If you choose not to like someone, then avoid them. If you wish to love them, the only way to overcome your frustrations is through empathy, prayer, forgiveness and allowing yourself time to heal through distance. Try focusing on what you share as sisters in the gospel, rather than the negative aspects you dislike about that person.

Convincing someone to have sex is the same as manipulation and does not actually count as getting consent.

It is a scientifically known fact that collectivities are capable of manipulating their individual members’ beliefs, thoughts, and even bodily reactions. You keep hearing a certain story over and over again, and the next thing you know you have internalized the narrative. From that moment on it ceases to be someone else’s story. It is not even a story anymore, but reality, your reality!

Being nice to someone who did you foul in the past is kinda like a mature way of getting revenge because it sometimes confuses the hell out of them & brings them to the realization that they no longer can manipulate your emotions with their actions...something they thought they'd always be able to do.

Presenting a humble façade gains trust; flattery appeals to ego; combine the two to gain an ego-based trust within someone, and you will find in your hands a judgement clouding tool second only to love.

You're safe with me, Mira. And I'm safe with you." He kissed her again to prove it. And when the clock struck one - that lone, ominous tone hovering in the dark - they were still kissing. Her razor blade had snagged his shirt and nicked his chest, and they'd ended up lying in the grass, hidden inside a shadow, ignoring their names whenever someone called them. He traced her mouth again and again, like he still couldn't believe it was real. There would always be a part of him she couldn't know. A secret place where his heartbreak was stored, where lost innocence and regret filled the air like smoke. She had no desire to open that door ... but she didn't know if that would change one day. If the key would tempt her, if a fairy would manipulate her or she would just be curious. But she had to believe she could be strong enough to resist. That what she wanted - what they both wanted - mattered more than the path that had been laid out for them. She let her hand slip under his shirt to touch the heart mark on his back, and he brought her other hand to his lips, and kissed every finger he'd entrusted with the key. He was so much more than his curse, and she was so much more than the girl who could betray him. Together ... they could be anything.

Vengeance is a potent emotion. It makes you easy prey to both humans and demons alike. Never let someone know what your true motivations are. If they know what you want more than anything, they’ll craft all sorts of sweet lies and half-truths to manipulate you. They’ll know exactly how far they can push, what to offer, and what you would never refuse, giving them the upper hand. Your first goal should be to remain alive. Figure out everything else as you go.

Remember that the word "no" is a complete sentence, not an invitation for a negotiation. If someone tries to persistently negotiate your "no," that speaks volumes about how much they are willing to infringe upon your boundaries to meet their own needs.

Always do the right thing, despite the games someone else is playing.

When you hold onto anger it eats at your soul. Anger never changes someone elses heart, but it will change yours.

Across the board, gaslighting is a way of psychologically manipulating someone (or many people) such that they doubt their own reality, as a way to gain and maintain control.

Fear sticks like a barb in the mind. Someone cold enough to take advantage of it can attach strings to those barbs and make puppets of men and women.

If you carry around a lot of suppressed or repressed anger (anger you have unconsciously buried) you may lash out at people, blaming or punishing them for something someone else did a long time ago. Because you were unwilling or unable to express how you felt in the past, you may overreact in the present, damaging a relationship.

Much of what I’d done — mistakes, poems, manipulations, success and books and sex — had been done merely to get love. To get it. To answer my question: do you love me? . . . From that moment on, the love affair I would develop would be with my soul. [God] was already part of me; that much was clear. And now this would be where I would go for love — to the God in me. No more begging or pursuing or needing. Possibly it was only a myth, Jack’s myth [Til We Have Faces], that could have obliterated the false belief that I must pursue love in the outside world — in success, in acclaim, in performance, in a man. The Truth: I was beloved of God. Finally I could stop trying to force someone or something else to fill that role

Manipulating or controlling others through the use of one's illness or suffering,for example,was-and remains-extremely effective for people who find they cannot be direct in their interactions,Who argues with someone who is in pain? And if pain is the only power a person has,health is not an attractive replacement. It was apparent to me that becoming healthy represented more than just getting over an illness. Health represented a complex progression into a state of personal empowerment in which one had to move from a condition of vulnerability to one of invincibility,from victim to victor,from silent bystander to aggressive defender of personal boundaries.Completing this race to the finish was a yeoman's task if ever there was one.Indeed,in opening the psyche and soul to the healing process,we had expanded the journey of wellness into one of personal transformation." -

If our primary caregivers are shame-based, they will act shameless and pass their toxic shame onto us. There is no way to teach self-value if one does not value oneself. Toxic shame is multigenerational. It is passed from one generation to the next. Shame-based people find other shame-based people and get married. As each member of a couple carries the shame from his or her own family system, their marriage will be grounded in their shame-core. The major outcome of this will be a lack of intimacy. It’s difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Confluence creates pseudointimacy.

The real danger has always lived in my granddad's kind voice, his soft caresses. All of it masquerading as innocent, but really just a gateway drug for girls starved for affection, desperate for someone to love them. He doesn't force us with a heavy hand. He manipulates with a gentle touch, guides us exactly where he wants us to go. So in the end, we blame only ourselves.

When you love yourself you won't need to ask God if someone is being honest with you. You will know already because you wouldn't have asked him if you had the self confidence to know how people should treat you.

While others might feel manipulative, I feel powerless. Sometimes I just hurt so bad from the mean things that people do to me, real or perceived, or I’m so desperately feeling abandoned, that I withdraw and pout and go silent. At some point people get pissed off and fed up with that crap and they go away and then I’m left with nothing all over again.

If you feel confused because someone tells you that they love you but they don't act like they do, judge them by their actions alone. You will have your answer.

You shouldn’t keep secrets that eat you alive because you’re worried about what people will think. And definitely not because someone is manipulating you into it.

Next time I fall for someone, it won’t be a conniving, manipulative— His hand moves lower, cupping my ass. —horny fae king. Next time it will be a good boy.

Narcissistic Supply You get discarded as supply for one of two reason: They find you too outspoken about their abuse. They prefer someone that will keep stroking their ego and remain their silent doormat. Or, they found new narcissistic supply. Either way, you can count on the fact that they planned your devaluation phase and smear campaign in advance, so they could get one more ego stroke with your reaction. Narcissists are angry, spiteful takers that don't have empathy, remorse or conscience. They are incapable of unconditional love. Love to them is giving only when it serves them. They gaslight their victims by minimizing the trauma they have caused by blaming others or stating you are too sensitive. They never feel responsible or will admit to what they did to you. They have disordered thinking that is concerned with their needs and ego. It is not uncommon for them to hack their targets, in order to gain information about them. They enjoy mind games and control. This is their dopamine high. The sooner you distance yourself the healthier you will become. Narcissism can't be cured or prayed away. It is a mental disorder that turns the victims of its abuse into mental patients because it causes so much psychological manipulation.

For Peter, social systems are never confusing, always transparent, and usually manipulable to his own ends. He is someone who not only knows a vast number of people, but through knowing them can somehow make them do things he wants them to do.

Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will – if someone actually had that kind of power – wouldn’t it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical.

I mean, what if I were to suggest that there are some sensible middle-aged people out there who allow themselves to fall for someone, and in the process allow themselves to become so controlled and manipulated that they are powerless to prevent it? I mean, could you ever imagine yourself allowing THAT?

The grave problem with hidden abuse is the target is being manipulated. The feelings are being manufactured for the power and control of an abuser, but the target doesn’t know it yet. The target thinks she or he has met someone wonderful, possibly even “the one.”   In

Looking for someone to tell me how great I am, do everything for me and don't dare want anything from me. Skills... Fooled easily, kind, loving, smart with low self love. Willing to keep quiet while I abuse you. People with boundaries need not apply. Call Narcissist 555-123-4567.

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other. In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused. In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control.

The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what “other people are saying” and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is.

The best way to fool someone is to make them believe that you actually said something.

I sometimes wonder if people are so wary of transgender progress because we highlight how something we often consider carved in stone can be so easily manipulated.

Don’t let people who don’t care about you manipulate your mind feelings and emotions, or controls how you think about yourself. Never give that much power to someone else.

Why so eager to jump in and direct someone else's life when you can't stick to your own goals and resolutions?

Being extra nice to someone can be a form of manipulation--kindness is an exercise of power in its own right.

In the political/geopolitical news segment - one who pays someone to create content has a hidden agenda, and one who likes to get paid for the content creation has a vested interest.

your healing process should not revolve around giving or withholding attention from someone else. You should be going No Contact because you genuinely believe that you deserve better. This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you.

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as known that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

Most of us have the ability to be far happier and more fulfilled as individuals than we realize. Often, we don’t claim that happiness because we believe someone else’s behavior is preventing us from doing so. We ignore our obligation to develop ourselves while we scheme and maneuver and manipulate to change someone else, and we become angry and discouraged and depressed when our efforts fail. Trying to change someone else is frustrating and depressing, but exercising the power we have to effect change in our own life is exhilarating.

To know that you are loved for who you are, and to know someone else in all of their vulnerability and to love them as they are, may be one of life’s most fulfilling experiences, says sociologist Brene Brown.

I’ve learned to bully doesn’t only involve attacking someone physically or verbally; it is so much more. Bullying consists of invading other people’s property, humiliation, mind games (pretending to be someone’s friend), manipulation, making threats, spreading rumors, showing aggressive behavior, and/or excluding someone from a group on purpose.

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

I am sure that I am in possession of a soul that is at the very least, a thousand years old. And I say this not on a whim; I say this as someone who is sure of something, who is not thinking fancifully but who is thinking solidly and fully. So why is it that I am childlike and playful? There is only one answer to this, and that is, after existing for a very long time, one learns the skill of retaining childlikeness and the state of childlikeness, which is called playfulness. The immature are not childlike and they are not playful; rather, they are manipulative and insecure. Manipulation is the game of the immature and insecurity is their state of being. I’m saying this because I want to draw the great distinction in the sand very clearly. The older your soul becomes, the more childlike it will be in texture. But we only make playtime out of small and joyful things; there is no playtime when it comes to bravery, honesty, and trust.

How someone responds to your emotions and perceptions will indicate how much they respect you, how much they care about you and your feelings, how capable they are of empathy and intimacy, and how much they are trying to change or control you.

Don’t ruin your life over somebody else’s foolishness. If they want to leave, let them leave! Manipulating, begging, or coercing someone to stay with you is an insult to SELF. Have confidence in yourself! Know your worth! Take a stand for YOU. You deserve to be loved, respected, and appreciated by someone who’s genuinely in love with you. It may hurt to let go, but trying to force someone to stay with you is more damaging than you realize. It’s VERY unhealthy. Set Yourself Free! Be a Priority to Yourself!

It’s hard to describe how someone has manipulated you because you’re generally not aware of it when it’s happening.

You know…it always seems obvious to outsiders when someone is doing something wrong, but when your mind is in the midst of evil, it is easy to be manipulated by crueller instincts.

someone who will manipulate your inner self while holding hers back from you.

When someone tells you that there is no agenda, you can be certain there is nothing but an agenda.

Claiming to care about someone or something, Laurie saw, could be highly manipulative. It was a way of ascribing yourself rights.

Everywhere you walk today, everything you see, everything you taste, be grateful. Someone can't walk, someone can't see, someone is hungry.

the conservatives saw the Fascist leader as someone they could hide behind, manipulate, and, when convenient, replace.

Along every step of our journey through life, our mind is being programmed. If we are not programming it ourselves, someone else is doing it to us.

If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.

He's sort of a Svengali... It means someone who's manipulative. More than that: somebody who makes you think that you need him in order to accomplish anything.

When you’re manipulated into believing that the abuse was your fault, it’s a boundary violation. Regardless of the reason behind the abuse, it’s never okay for someone to abuse you.

The person staring back at me was a stranger. Someone who had taken the girl I was two years ago and stripped her down only to rebuild a different person. Now I was strong, I was capable and smart. They were the good qualities. But I was also calculated, manipulative and selfish. These were the things I promised myself I wouldn't be. After I found him. After we put this right.

It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it’s because someone is dominating you. If you can’t find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like “dominating” and “manipulative.

Women often feel ridiculous that they let someone this disordered into their lives and they didn't even recognize the symptoms until she was way in over her head and emotionally destroyed. Welcome to the world of psychopathy where many--even most--don't recognize them either! The main characteristic of this disorder is social behavior and social hiding. Psychopaths blend in as 'normal' and manipulate others into believing them. These chameleon-like traits help them to move about freely and remain largely undetected. This is why Cleckley called these traits 'The Mask of Sanity'--because psychopaths can look and act (at least for a period of time) like a normal person.

People don't like us, my dear. The idea that someone who can play with their emotions, who can "mystically" get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize - and what you must realize - is that manipulating is at the core of our social interaction. (...) Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing, in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others.

I have never known what this sadness feels like when you cannot feel the sun or the air around you And time they say will heal you but even my own mother doesn't know what to do. You promised to keep me safe You knew what the others had done and I fell for the sincerity in your face. Maybe I deserved this for trusting someone who could manipulate so easily Maybe I deserved this for not listening when mother knows best. But all I was trying to do was show you that even a monster can be loved.

This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you. As you develop self-respect, you should come to understand that this is all more than enough reason to remove someone from your life—permanently.

Some Survivors think that getting angry is inappropriate and a sign that a person is out of control. Others are afraid of anger, that of others, as well as their own. They are afraid that if they get angry, they will be rejected or abandoned, afraid they will lose control and hurt someone. But, allowing yourself to get angry and express your anger in constructive ways is one of the most healthy and empowering things you can do.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant. You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good.

is amazing how disconcerting a single vile, manipulative person can be even if you have never and (hopefully) will never see them. The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and frightened and weak is amazing. This was not the first time someone had made me feel this way, but it was the first time it had happened through the internet, and it was enough to make me want to withdraw from the whole thing

When language works to make you question your own perceptions, whether at work or at church, that’s a form of gaslighting. I first came across the term “gaslighting” in the context of abusive romantic partners, but it shows up in larger-scale relationships, too, like those between bosses and their employees, politicians and their supporters, spiritual leaders and their devotees. Across the board, gaslighting is a way of psychologically manipulating someone (or many people) such that they doubt their own reality, as a way to gain and maintain control.

If she'd said she loved me and still did all those cruel and careless things, would my child mind have decided to accept that as the definition of love? Probably. Would I have ended up believing that love was manipulative and hurtful and full of pain, gotten use to being shoved aside, sworn at and disregarded, picked up and hugged, and then slapped around for getting in the way, starved and smiled at, neglected and cursed, told I was no good and would never amount to anything, then hefted high and proudly shown off down at the Walmart, introduced as a little pisser and a big mistake in the same breath? Yes, I would have, because if she said she loved me and then acted that way I would have thought that was how you loved someone, and how someone should love you back.

There’s always manipulation,” Valencia replied. “When you’re in a position of power over someone else, I think it’s inescapable that your actions are tainted by that power. The best you can do is to pretend that power doesn’t exist, and to hope that they trust you enough to do the same, because then things can proceed as they normally would.

You will see at precisely what moment the writer ceases to think of his character as an instrument to be manipulated and think of him as someone with whom he has fallen in love. For it is always, must always be, a matter of love.

When someone chronically uses their words to put you down, control, or manipulate you—and then they deny it—they become true verbal abusers. The goal, whether or not the abuser recognizes it, is to gain dominance and control over you.

Talking about someone to another person instead of communicating directly is called triangulation, and it is about controlling the flow of information. It is a manipulation technique that works only in families with broken dysfunctional communication, and it is a perfect tool for a narcissist. They can create tension between the members of the family and benefit from it by playing the one who solves all problems. It is another way of getting in a higher position of influence.

When relationships have outlived their shelf life, people often realize that at some level, they are sticking it our because they once thought in the light of their divine love that the other person would change. Sorry for breaking the poetic hope here, but that doesn't happen. People are like rubber bands. They may be able to stretch from time to time and do some amazing things, but in general they are who they are. If manipulation and machinations on your side get them to behave the way you want, I will set my clock on the fact that they will return to their previous way of behaving, or they will keep faking it. To be in a relationship with someone who is not really there doesn't make sense. People who aren't cooperating feel like a project to us, like something for us to rescue or fix. Rescuing is the province of firefighters and fairy tales, but it's not real life. The stance of sticking it out in hopes of redemption is an old story and one that has wasted many lives.

I don’t think so,” he says. “Love can be exploited, I guess, used to manipulate. It’s leverage. But I would never call loving someone else a weakness. I think living without love at all, any kind of love, is weakness. And the worst kind of darkness.

Long before there were digital photos and digital manipulation, there were scissors. A simple pair of scissors could remove history, remove the truth. Sometimes the truth behind a picture doesn't have to be cut out. You just have to keep quiet about it.

Manipulation isn’t bad, in and of itself,” Jason said. “Look at it this way: if you have the choice between manipulating someone into doing the right thing, or punishing them for doing the wrong thing, which is more moral? Pushing someone onto a better path and to do the right thing done, or having the wrong thing done and hurting the person for doing it? Righteous honesty says to be upright and put the moral decision onto the other person. But what is more important? Feeling righteous or putting a little more good into the world?

Perhaps when you were a little child, people would sometimes take your toy away from you. You learned to cry, to try to manipulate the situation; or to smile so as to please your caretaker, to make her give back the toy. As a young child, you learned to produce a diplomatic smile. That’s one way of dealing with the problem of survival. You learn without even knowing that you’re learning. The feeling that you’re fragile, vulnerable, unable to defend yourself, the feeling that you always need someone to be with you, is always there. That original fear—and its other face, original desire—is always there. The infant, with his fear and his desire, is always alive in us.

Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant. You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself.

Hypercritical, Shaming Parents Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming. There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations. -BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison. -BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high. -CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me. -HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul. -DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible. Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit.

In a situation where flesh is consumed, vegetarians inevitably call attention to themselves. They have made something absent on their plates; perhaps a verbal demurral has been required as well. They then are drawn into a discussion regarding their vegetarianism. Frequently, there will be someone present who actually feels hostile to vegetarianism and regards it as a personal challenge. If this is the case, all sorts of outrageous issues are thrown out to see how the vegetarian will handle them. The vegetarian, enthusiastic reformer, sees the opportunity as one of education; but it is not. instead it is a teasing game of manipulation. At times, ludicrous questions are raised; they imply that the entire discussion is ludicrous.

Many fundamentalist Christian Evangelicals are racist because religion and racism are two sides of the same coin. Both are nothing more than primitive tribalism: Us vs Them thinking. That's why religious nuts and racists can so easily be manipulated into hating someone who is different from them.

On the positive side, you are “in love” with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together, you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing — fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?

Because the covert narcissists are not very good achievers, and because of their need for supply, they need a spouse who is easy to manipulate and who will not call them out on their bullshit – someone to deal with real life while the narcissists are busy maintaining the illusion of how great they are.

We are so selfish that we want the person with whom we are sharing our life to be as needy as we are. We want “someone who needs me” in order to justify our existence, in order to feel that we have a reason to be alive. We think we are searching for love, but we are searching for “someone who needs me,” someone we can control and manipulate.

You know, sleeping outdoors isn’t all bad. You get to stare up at the stars and cool breezes ruffle your fur after a hot day. The grass smells sweet and,” he made eye contact with me, “so does your hair.” I blushed and grumbled, “Well, I’m glad someone enjoyed it.” He smiled smugly and said, “I did.” I had a quick flash of him as a man snuggled up next to me in the forest, imagined him resting his head on my lap while I stroked his hair, and decided to focus on the matter at hand. “Well, listen, Ren, you’re changing the subject. I don’t appreciate the way you manipulated me into being here. Mr. Kadam should’ve told me at the circus.” He shook his head. “We didn’t think you’d believe his story. He made up the trip to the tiger reserve to get you to India. We figured once you were here, I could change into a man and clarify everything.” I admitted, “You’re probably right. If you had changed to a man there, I don’t think I would have come” “Why did you come?” “I wanted to spend more time with…you. You know, the tiger. I would have missed him. I mean you.” I blushed. He grinned lopsidedly. “I would have missed you too.” I wrung the hem of my shirt between my hands. Misreading my thoughts, he said, “Kelsey. I’m truly sorry for the deception. If there’d been any other way-“ I looked up. He hung his head in a way that reminded me of the tiger. The frustration and awkwardness I felt about him dissipated. My instincts told me that I should believe him and help him. The strong emotional connection that drew me to the tiger tugged at my heart even more powerfully with the man. I felt pity for him and his situation. Softly, I asked, “When will you change into a tiger?” “Soon.” “Does it hurt?” “Not as much as it used to.” “Do you understand me when you are a tiger? Can I still speak to you?” “Yes, I’ll still be able to hear and understand you.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll stay here with you until the shaman comes back. I still have a lot of questions for you though.” “I know. I’ll try to answer them as best I can, but you’ll have to save them for tomorrow when I’ll be able to speak with you again. We can stay here for the night. The shaman should be back around dusk.” “Ren?” “Yes?” “The jungle frightens me, and this situation frightens me.” He let go of the apron string and looked into my eyes. “I know.” “Ren?” “Yes?” “Don’t…leave me, okay?” His face softened into a tender expression, and his mouth turned up in a sincere smile. “Asambhava. I won’t.” I felt myself responding to his smile with one of my own when a shadow fell across his face. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. I saw a tremor pass through his body, and the chair fell forward as he collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees. I stood to reach out to him and was amazed to see his body morph back into the tiger form I knew so well. Ren the tiger shook himself, then approached my outstretched hand and rubbed his head against it.

Her thirteenth birthday was on the horizon, and her choice to live only by the skills that did not require manipulation had made her more aware of what those skills are. Politeness, it turned out, was almost as effective when you wanted someone to do something for you. And kindness went further toward lasting admiration than any amount of mind control.

Knowing someone, all their weaknesses, all their beautiful insecurities and vulnerabilities, all the ways to manipulate them—it gave her

There was one that was very clearly creepier than the rest of the normal creepiness. It is amazing how disconcerting a single vile, manipulative person can be even if you have never and (hopefully) will never see them. The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and frightened and weak is amazing. This was not the first time someone had made me feel this way, but it was the first time it had happened through the internet, and it was enough to make me want to withdraw from the whole thing for a moment.

Svetlana said that I thought of myself as a robot who could act only negatively. She said I had cynical ideas about language. “You think language is an end in itself. You don’t believe it stands for anything. No, it’s not that you don’t believe—it’s that you don’t care. For you, language itself is a self-sufficient system.” “But it is a self-sufficient system.” “Do you see what you’re saying? This is how you get yourself involved with the devil incarnate. Ivan sensed this attitude in you. He’s cynical in the same way you are only more so, because of math. It’s like you said: math is a language that started out so abstract, more abstract than words, and then suddenly it turned out to be the most real, the most physical thing there was. With math they built the atomic bomb. Suddenly this abstract language is leaving third-degree burns on your skin. Now there’s this special language that can control everything, and manipulate everything, and if you’re the elite who speaks it—you can control everything. “Ivan wanted to try an experiment, a game. It would never have worked with someone different, on someone like me. But you, you’re so disconnected from truth, you were so ready to jump into a reality the two of you made up, just through language. Naturally, it made him want to see how far he could go. You went further and further—and then something went wrong. It couldn’t continue in the same way. It had to develop into something else—into sex, or something else. But for some reason, it didn’t. The experiment didn’t work. But by now you’re so, so far from all the landmarks. You’re just drifting in space.

You are not rejecting a person if you reject his words. You get to receive the person with kindness and compassion and treat him as a human being. If someone gets offended and feels rejected just because you rejected his words, then stay away from him, because he has unhealthy heart boundaries that cause him to use prophecy to control or manipulate the people around him.

The blame game can happen in relationships, business dealings, and politics. Politicians who find someone else to blame for the problems happening in their country often present themselves as saviors and heroes for their people. They are the ones who have a solution for everything, yet when you drill down on their track record, they really don’t achieve much of anything.

People who lie to you cannot be taken at face value because their words and actions are built on deception. When someone repeatedly bends the truth, hides information, or manipulates facts, it becomes impossible to trust what they say. It's exhausting to second-guess someone constantly. Their words become meaningless, and their actions are the only thing left to measure.

When you have a “gut instinct” about someone, it is after interacting with them. When you know whether or not a job is right for you, it is only after having done it for a while. The problem is that we are trying to use our instincts as fortune-telling mechanisms, our brain’s creative way of trying to manipulate our body to help us avoid pain and increase pleasure in the future. But that’s not what happens. We end up stuck because we are literally trusting every single thing that we feel instead of discerning what’s an actual reaction and what’s a projection.

A helpful thing to notice while you are trying to find answers is the fact that men and women who are with healthy people don’t enter words into online search engines such as “toxic relationships”; “energy vampires”; “mean spouses”; “confusing relationships”; “hidden abuse”; “subtle abuse”; “manipulation”; “narcissism”; “covert narcissism”; “sociopaths.” The same is true for people who are going through a divorce or a breakup where they just realized they weren’t a good match, or they fell out of love, or they find themselves wanting other things. If you are searching for answers because you feel utterly confused, you are on the right track because you’re smart. If your body feels weak and flustered around someone, it knows something is not right.

Someone will decide who you are if you don’t know yourself. A person can change your whole energy and manipulate you to act how they want you to. By the time you realize this, it might be too late.

Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. There are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay bout the lies.

I thank the bullies who bullied me in many ways they taught how not to treat other human beings, not to manipulate, to not to lack empathy, to not lack morals, not to to abuse physically and/or emotionally. I thank them for the assumptions that I was "slow", "stupid", "thick". I often wonder with most them hitting their late 20's would they want their children/loved ones to be treated how they treated me? Good question isn't it and I probably know the answer. Because the scary thing is looking into the lense of someone else acting the same as YOU to your loved one must be difficult to take.

The malignant impact of over-generalizing Freud's observations about a small group of overly inhibited individuals into a broad set of assumptions about the causes of psychological ill-health in everyone cannot be overstated.6 But these theories have so permeated our thinking about human nature, and especially our theories of personality, that when most of us try to analyze someone's character, we automatically start thinking in terms of what fears might be "hanging them up," what kinds of "defenses" they use and what kinds of psychologically "threatening" situations they may be trying to "avoid.

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.

The winning electoral strategy with phishable voters is threefold: 1. Publicly, proclaim policies that will appeal to the typical voter on issues that are salient to her, and where she will be well informed. 2. But on other issues, where the typical voter is ill informed, but where potential campaign donors are well informed, take the stance that appeals to donors. Publicize this stance to would-be contributors, without broadcasting it widely to the general public. 3. Use the contributions from these “special-interest groups” for campaigning that increases popularity among the regular run of voters, who are more likely to vote for someone who “mows their lawn on TV.

Sometimes he would remember a moment of sweetness and almost wish things had ended differently. But it would never have worked out between them, even if he'd stayed. They were simply too different. And he didn't like love, the way it had made him feel stupid and vulnerable. If he ever married, he'd choose someone incapable of swaying his heart. Someone he hated, even, so they could never manipulate him the way Lucy Gray had. Never make him feel jealous. Or weak.

(...) performance anxiety [in the worplace] is connected to other, more general fears which have to do with feeling inadequate and defenseless in the world: the fear of retaliation from someone with whom one disagrees; the fear of being critisized for doing something wrong; the fear of saying "no"; the fear of stating one's needs clearly and directly, without manipulating. These are the kinds of fears that affect women in particular, because we were brought up to believe that taking care of ourselves, asserting ourselves, is unfeminine. We wish (...) to feel attractive to men: non-threatening, sweet, "feminine". This wish crimps the joy and productiveness with which women could be leading their lives.

Now Vegas, while you were asleep your classmates and I were discussing time manipulation. What are your thoughts on the subject?” “Well,” Vegas turned to the class, his captive audience and smiled, “if you can manipulate time so this bell would hurry up and ring, I'd think it’s fabuloso.” The class snickered again, but not everyone since someone else had made a similar joke just several minutes prior. Naturally, Vegas hadn't been able to hear it over the sound of his own snoring.

Someone living a life-lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought and action, so that only some narrowly desired and pre-defined outcome is allowed to exist. A life lived in this manner is based, consciously or unconsciously, on two premises. The first is that current knowledge is sufficient to define what is good, unquestioningly, far into the future. The second is that reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices. The first presumption is philosophically unjustifiable. What you are currently aiming at might not be worth attaining, just as what you are currently doing might be an error. The second is even worse. It is valid only if reality is intrinsically intolerable and, simultaneously, something that can be successfully manipulated and distorted. Such speaking and thinking requires the arrogance and certainty that the English poet John Milton’s genius identified with Satan, God’s highest angel gone most spectacularly wrong.

Complainers, like the friend on the phone, who complain endlessly without looking for solutions. Life is a problem that will be hard if not impossible to solve. Cancellers, who take a compliment and spin it: “You look good today” becomes “You mean I looked bad yesterday?” Casualties, who think the world is against them and blame their problems on others. Critics, who judge others for either having a different opinion or not having one, for any choices they’ve made that are different from what the critic would have done. Commanders, who realize their own limits but pressure others to succeed. They’ll say, “You never have time for me,” even though they’re busy as well. Competitors, who compare themselves to others, controlling and manipulating to make themselves or their choices look better. They are in so much pain that they want to bring others down. Often we have to play down our successes around these people because we know they can’t appreciate them. Controllers, who monitor and try to direct how their friends or partners spend time, and with whom, and what choices they make. You can have fun with this list, seeing if you can think of someone to fit each type. But the real point of it is to help you

When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett. Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy. It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right—but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them—most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation—they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat. I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best.

What does that story tell us about the Cardinal? It tells us that he could soften or harden his flesh at will. How did he do that? For a long time I had no idea. Then I listened to the stories again, and noticed how many of the translucent gods screamed like the Cardinal, or sang like the Gathergeist. They used sound - vibrations - to change their own bodies." It crossed Hark's mind that people could be softened the same way. You said the right thing, and struck the right chord, and then they were easier to manipulate. Bringing up Vyne's great success seemed to have sounded the right note. "That is the trick of it," remarked Vyne. "Listening to someone's story, and hearing what lies behind it. People always tell you more than they realize.

Want to know if someone is lying or betraying your trust? Notice that during a conversation the person has these four attitudes: he leans on his hand, he leans on his face, he crosses his arms and he maintains a posture that is tilted somewhere, not erect.

Of all her siblings, Gabriel was the one to whom Phoebe had always felt closest. In his company, she could make petty or sarcastic remarks, or confess her foolish mistakes, knowing he would never judge her harshly. They knew each other's faults and kept each other's secrets. Many people, if not most, would have been flabbergasted to learn that Gabriel had any faults at all. All they saw was the remarkable male beauty and cool self-control of a man so elegantly mannered that it never would have occurred to anyone to call him a lunkhead. However, Gabriel could sometimes be arrogant and manipulative. Beneath his charming exterior, there was a steely core that made him ideally suited to oversee the array of Challon properties and businesses. Once he decided what was best for someone, he took every opportunity to push and goad until he had his way. Therefore, Phoebe occasionally found it necessary to push back. After all, it was an older sister's responsibility to keep her younger brother from behaving like a domineering ass.

It seems that many of us have the goal of making other people conform to our desires and expectations, whether or not we would admit to such a thing. We see this especially in parents who get upset because their children don’t conform to their expectations, but instead follow a pattern of development that is unique and individual. We often use language with peers and colleagues that encourages them to change their ways of doing things to our ways of doing things: “You should” and “You ought to” are usually presented as advice, but in the end they really are about changing someone else’s ways of doing things. And we may offer this “advice” in a spirit of love and helpfulness, but we can be much more helpful when we help them to find their own ways of changing things. It can be incredibly freeing to spend an entire day not looking to try to change the behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes of other human beings. If we approach life in this way, we may learn much about the other people in our lives instead of trying to make them be like us.

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible. John Rutger lied because he was a scumbag. Nothing about his appearance said, Hey, I'm a despicable human being.

And I could’ve drowned in that senseless joy of standing and finding myself tall. Someone that can finally be seen in a mirror. A twin to my dad. But when I glanced back at the pile of flesh with the stretchmarks, I thought; that’s me too. Can I be everything and nothing at the same time? Extra fat, extra parts, narrow bones. A shadow you know is there but whose shape remains unseen until it emerges on concrete. I want a body that’s easy to manipulate. What a gift that no one sees inside my mind. What a curse that no one sees inside my mind.

You have to understand, she said, a suicide attempt is selfish. Someone close to me said it was irresponsible; another said manipulative. Yes, I know what you mean, I said to each of them. Understanding cannot be willed into existence. Without understanding one should not talk about feeling. One does not have the capacity to feel another person’s feelings fully - a fact of life, democratic to all, except when someone takes advantage of this fact to form a judgment. One never kills oneself from knowledge or understanding, but always out of feelings.

He nodded to our left, where several humanlike entities were materializing directly in front of us, at a distance, of what appeared to be about thirty feet. My first reaction was to be cautious. “Wil, how do we know their intentions are friendly? What if they try to possess us or something?” He gave me a serious expression. “How do you know if someone on Earth is trying to control you?” “I would pick up on it. I could tell that the person was being manipulative.” “What else?” “I guess they would be taking energy away from me. I would feel a decrease in my sense of wisdom, self-direction.

UN-Impressive Acts of Indiscretion • Forwarding other people's emails without getting permission. • Throwing other people under the bus to save yourself. • Talking loudly, being boorish and insensitive to the others around you. • Flagrant cheating. • Burning bridges. • Talking smack. • Dissing your competitor to your customer. • Oversharing and revealing too much personal information about yourself and others. • Breaking trust by sharing someone else’s secrets. • Being passive-aggressive to manipulate a situation or person. • Saying one thing and doing another. • Being two-faced. • Lying by omission. • Dispensing bulls#@%!

Basically, a lie is a false statement deliberately  presented as the truth.  But there are many other ways to lie that go far beyond simply making a blatantly false statement. Those statements often work, though, because we can't believe that someone we trust would look us in the eye and tell us such a brazen, bald-faced lie.

What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. We all-each and every one of us-even if we try to pretend to others and to ourselves that we don't have dependency needs and feelings, all of us have desires to be babied, to be nurtured without effort on our parts, to be cared for by persons stronger than us who have our interests truly at heart. No matter how strong we are, no matter how caring and responsible and adult, if we look clearly into ourselves we will find the wish to be taken care of for a change. Each one of us, no matter how old and mature, looks for and would like to have in his or her life a satisfying mother figure and father figure. But for most of us these desires or feelings do not rule our lives; they are not the predominant theme of our existence. When they do rule our lives and dictate the quality of our existence, then we have something more than just dependency needs or feelings; we are dependent. Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name "passive dependent personality disorder." It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders. People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love…..This rapid changeability is characteristic of passive dependent individuals. It is as if it does not matter whom they are dependent upon as long as there is just someone. It does not matter what their identity is as long as there is someone to give it to them. Consequently their relationships, although seemingly dramatic in their intensity, are actually extremely shallow. Because of the strength of their sense of inner emptiness and the hunger to fill it, passive dependent people will brook no delay in gratifying their need for others. If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and you cannot be a person worthy of love when your primary goal in life is to passively be loved. Passive dependency has its genesis in lack of love. The inner feeling of emptiness from which passive dependent people suffer is the direct result of their parents' failure to fulfill their needs for affection, attention and care during their childhood. It was mentioned in the first section that children who are loved and cared for with relative consistency throughout childhood enter adulthood with a deep seated feeling that they are lovable and valuable and therefore will be loved and cared for as long as they remain true to themselves. Children growing up in an atmosphere in which love and care are lacking or given with gross inconsistency enter adulthood with no such sense of inner security. Rather, they have an inner sense of insecurity, a feeling of "I don't have enough" and a sense that the world is unpredictable and ungiving, as well as a sense of themselves as being questionably lovable and valuable. It is no wonder, then, that they feel the need to scramble for love, care and attention wherever they can find it, and once having found it, cling to it with a desperation that leads them to unloving, manipulative, Machiavellian behavior that destroys the very relationships they seek to preserve. In summary, dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.

Ritual in a way is an anti-machine, even though the industrial world is not totally devoid of the practice of ritual. David Kertzer, in Ritual, Politics and Power, points out it is innately inscribed within humans to do ritual. He goes on to show that ritual exists in every aspect of political practice where the construction of power is ordered by symbol and ceremony. For him, ritual is unavoidable in modern political and social interplay because it is something that enables people to deal with archetypes. There is some truth in such a vision. But I think that the term is being manipulated to fit certain urges for legitimization. A spirit can be used to legitimize someone’s desires. For example, someone can say that a spirit told him or her to do something, which legitimizes his or her unwarranted action (as in the American comedy line “The devil made me do it!”). One can claim divine sponsorship to justify actions that have nothing to do with the divine. One has only to look at American televangelism for that. It

The Rothschilds are people we certainly would not attempt to defend given the rumors swirling around them of financial corruption and market manipulation in this era and in earlier eras. However, the way they are held up, by conspiracy extremists and other paranoid thinkers, to represent the Jewish community is an absolute joke. There are good and bad people in all races. The fact that there are many Jews in the banking sector is being used by neo-Nazis and anti-Semites to try to sway the uneducated to believe the Jews are the problem instead of banking shysters and banksters in general. Another important point relating to the current Jewish prominence in the banking world is there is a very obvious historical reason for it...Historically Jews did not have much freedom of choice when it came to their occupations. In fact, they were once forbidden by Christian authorities, and by some Muslim authorities, to pursue most regular occupations. They were, however, permitted and even encouraged to enter the banking industry because, in the medieval era at least, Christians/Muslims were not allowed to charge fellow-Christians/Muslims interest, but someone had to make loans – so the Jews were charged with the task. Jews were also permitted to slaughter animals – another equally unsavory job – and they were then despised and mocked by entire communities for being animal slaughterers and bankers.

Governments are especially adept at using propaganda to induce fear among citizens to control their behavior. When people are frightened enough, they turn to governments for protection. Because we all fear the judgement of others to some degree, governments also use propaganda to manipulate our perception of the expectations of others. If propaganda creates the impression that all the other citizens expect us to be obedient, our default position will be obedience, and that can only be overcome with careful, rational analysis. Any time someone trying to control us can fill our heads with emotions, they can keep us from thinking clearly and lead us to believe in whatever bad ideas advance their agenda.

You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in "spiritual direction". Actually, I am more than a little ambivalent about the term, particularly in the ways it is being used so loosely without any sense of knowledge of the church's traditions in these matters. If by spiritual direction you mean entering into a friendship with another person in which an awareness and responsiveness to God's Spirit in the everydayness of your life is cultivated, fine. Then why call in an awkward term like "spiritual direction"? Why not just "friend"? Spiritual direction strikes me as pretentious in these circumstances, as if there were some expertise that can be acquired more or less on its own and then dispensed on demand. The other reason for my lack of enthusiasm is my well-founded fear of professionalism in any and all matters of the Christian life. Or maybe the right label for my fear is "functionalism". The moment an aspect of Christian living (human life, for that matter) is defined as a role, it is distorted, debased - and eventually destroyed. We are brothers and sisters with one another, friends and lovers, saints and sinners. The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction. But then it begins to develop a culture and language and hierarchy all its own. It becomes first a special interest, and then a specialization. That is what seems to be happening in the circles you are frequenting. I seriously doubt that it is a healthy (holy) line to be pursuing. Instead, why don't you look over the congregation on Sundays and pick someone who appears to be mature and congenial. Ask her or him if you can meet together every month or so - you feel the need to talk about your life in the company of someone who believes that Jesus is present and active in everything you are doing. Reassure the person that he or she doesn't have to say anything "wise". You only want them to be there for you to listen and be prayerful in the listening. After three or four such meetings, write to me what has transpired, and we'll discuss it further. I've had a number of men and women who have served me in this way over the years - none carried the title "spiritual director", although that is what they have been. Some had never heard of such a term. When I moved to Canada a few years ago and had to leave a long-term relationship of this sort, I looked around for someone whom I could be with in this way. I picked a man whom I knew to be a person of integrity and prayer, with seasoned Christian wisdom in his bones. I anticipated that he would disqualify himself. So I pre-composed my rebuttal: "All I want you to do is two things: show up and shut up. Can you do that? Meet with me every six weeks or so, and just be there - an honest, prayerful presence with no responsibility to be anything other than what you have become in your obedient lifetime." And it worked. If that is what you mean by "spiritual director," okay. But I still prefer "friend". You can see now from my comments that my gut feeling is that the most mature and reliable Christian guidance and understanding comes out of the most immediate and local of settings. The ordinary way. We have to break this cultural habit of sending out for an expert every time we feel we need some assistance. Wisdom is not a matter of expertise. The peace of the Lord, Eugene

Someone described a writer's world as tormented, and I had to laugh.  A tormented writer?  I personally wouldn't have put those two words together.   Emotions have the power to torment a soul, yes, I agree to that.  But writers, through the formation of our characters, delve so often into the depths of a vast range of emotions that we earn the advantage.  For we've examined every little thrumming, fracture, spark, pang, and darkening of the heart to a point that we understand and appreciate the necessity and strength of emotions as well as the cause and effects manipulating them.   We understand.   We can imagine.   We sympathize.   Our knowledge is power over the torment of emotional ignorance.   I would suggest that those truly tormented are the readers of our works because those poor souls shall never know with such clarity and sentiment all the tiny little details that make our characters breath, move, and live before our very eyes.   Perhaps, if torment does lurk among writers, it comes simply through knowing more about an imagined friend than can ever be adequately expressed in words.

BOUNDARIES STEP ONE - set a boundary, what do you not want to hear, see, or do. STEP TWO-decide limits - what you will and will not tolerate STEP THREE - pay attention to people's reactions, if your boundaries make someone mad, then that person is abusing you. LESSON - someone that loves you would never hurt you, PERIOD! Learn this and self-love and you will be ok. @tracyAMalone

Think of all those times you hear people say, “things would be different if you weren’t sick.” That is one of the most rudimentary means of making someone feel guilty, yet it is highly powerful. Also, you may hear others say things like, “remember when you needed my help? Now, I need your help.” This is a clear attempt at coaxing someone to go along with the manipulator’s intentions.

The more my own eyes began to open, the more overwhelming grief and anger I felt. With time, education, and support, this awakening turned into a growing strength and hope inside me. This will happen for you, too. Reading this book is going to be incredibly helpful for you as you begin to awaken to the truth of what you have been through. If you have lived with a covert narcissist, you have been held down for a long time. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. You have been lied to, manipulated, and controlled. You have not been heard or respected. You were devalued and brutally discarded by someone who said they cared about you, but in fact only cared about themselves. You have experienced an insanity-inducing relationship that is difficult to describe.

You have been through a tremendously difficult and painful experience. You have been treated terribly by someone who is selfish and doesn’t care about you. You have been given messages about who you are that are not true. You have been conned, manipulated, lied to, and brainwashed. You have been belittled, talked down to, and treated with disrespect. You were used. You have been emotionally and psychologically abused for years. You have been blamed for things that had nothing to do with you. You have been made to feel like things are wrong with you when they are not. You have been treated in a way that has made you doubt yourself. Someone who does not have your best interests at heart has controlled you. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. Not even close.

someone puts his arms around me from behind, his fingers easily finishing the complicated knot I’ve been sweating over. Of course it’s Finnick, who seems to have spent his childhood doing nothing but wielding tridents and manipulating ropes into fancy knots for nets, I guess. I watch for a minute while he picks up a length of rope, makes a noose, and then pretends to hang himself for my amusement.

At the highest level, there is the general Subject-Self metaphor, which conceptualizes a person as bifurcated. The exact nature of this bifurcation is specified more precisely one level down, where there are five specific instances of the metaphor. These five special cases of the basic Subject-Self metaphor are grounded in four types of everyday experience: (1) manipulating objects, (2) being located in space, (3) entering into social relations, and (4) empathic projection-conceptually projecting yourself onto someone else, as when a child imitates a parent. The fifth special case comes from the Folk Theory of Essences: Each person is seen as having an Essence that is part of the Subject. The person may have more than one Self, but only one of those Selves is compatible with that Essence. This is called the "real" or "true" Self.

The Misunderstood Social Butterfly   Like manipulative mothers, scheming co-workers act nice toward their intended target and present themselves as a victim. These schemers make themselves seem misunderstood and victimized to gain their target’s trust. The unwitting target then makes it his or her job to cover for the “victim,” making sure that the “victim” is protected from others.   This forms an exclusive bond between the two parties, with the manipulator effectively cutting off the target’s contact with other employees by painting them in a bad light. The target then becomes the manipulator’s personal pep squad, leaving the employee emotionally and mentally drained.   Typically, the person being manipulated in this type of relationship at work is someone who is hard working, trusting, and unfortunately, often times easy prey to a manipulator. The manipulator sees the victim as the person who is always working late and the person who always “tries to do the right thing”. The manipulator, conversely, often times is the one leaving early, skating by day-to-day, but occasionally has enough “golden opportunities” with the boss to make themselves the “favored employees”. Nearly always a gregarious and outgoing person, these manipulative people can be true terrors to those whom they manipulate.

The man who had abused him would ask, ”I abused you yesterday, why did you not reply yesterday? You are very strange.” No one waits for a second when you abuse him. He retorts immediately.” Junnaid answered, ”My master taught me not to hurry in anything. Take some time. I must wait a little when someone insults me. If I were to give an immediate answer, the heat of the happening would catch hold of me; the smoke would blind my eyes. So I have to wait and let the cloud pass. When twenty-four hours have passed and the skies are clear again, then I can give my reply in full consciousness. Now I realize how tricky my guru was. Because I have never been able to answer my opponents since then.” Is it possible to hold on to anger for twenty-four hours? It is impossible to maintain it for twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds. The truth is that, even if you hold back and watch for a single second, the anger vanishes. But you do not wait even for a moment. A person abuses you – as if someone switches the button, and the fan starts whirring. There is not the slightest gap between the two, no distance! And you pride yourself in your alertness! You have no control of yourself. How can an unconscious person be master of himself? Anybody can push the button and goad him into action. Someone comes and flatters you, and you are filled with joy; you are happy. Someone insults you, you are full of tears. Are you your own master or anyone can manipulate you? You are the slave of slaves. And those who are manipulating are not their own masters either! And the irony is that everyone is expert in manipulating others and none of them is conscious. What greater insult can there be for your soul than the fact that anyone can affect you?

interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014). In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan’s Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in their 1995 book, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, which included some of these cases. I was initially skeptical of the book’s argument for personal reasons. It seemed implausible to me that we had overreacted to child abuse because everything in my own personal history said we hadn’t. When I read the book closely, my skepticism increased. Satan’s Silence has been widely reviewed as meticulously researched. As someone with legal training, I looked for how many citations referred to the trial transcripts. The answer was almost none. Readers were also persuaded by long list of [presumably innocent] convicted sex offenders to whom they dedicated the book. If I’m dedicating a book to fifty-four people, all of whom I think have been falsely convicted, I’m going to mention every one of these cases somewhere in the book. Most weren’t mentioned at all beyond that dedication. The witch-hunt narrative is so sparsely documented that it’s shocking.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world. You are negotiating, instead of playing the martyr or the tyrant. You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully.… Ask, and ye shall receive. Knock, and the door will open. If you ask, as if you want, and knock, as if you want to enter, you may be offered the chance to improve your life, a little; a lot; completely—and with that improvement, some progress will be made in Being itself. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That's why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic. 'Until I met you, I didn't understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn't bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me, Wren, because no one gets us but us. You know why you're not a monster, but I might be. I know why throwing me in your dungeon meant there was still something between us. We are messes and we are messed up and I don't want to go through this world without the one person I can't hide from and who can't hide from me. 'Come back,' he says again, tears burning the back of his throat. 'You want and you want and you want, remember? Well, wake up and take what you want.

Despite the controversy over whether psychopaths exist, psychiatrists generally agree that one of the defining characteristics of those we refer to as psychopaths is the lack of interpersonal empathy, what one might call a flat emotional playing field. Psychopaths may not hate, but they also may not love the way most of us would prefer to love and be loved. Psychopaths are usually manipulative, are champion liars, and can be quite glib and disarmingly charming. They don’t fear consequences the way most people do, and while they may react to the stress of being caught in a lie or violent act like anyone would, some remain cool as cucumbers. Even the most dangerous can appear jovial, carefree, and social at times, but sooner or later they will display a telling distance, a quiet coldheartedness and disregard for others. They are often impulsive, yet lack guilt and remorse, meaning they may invite you to join in on their reckless, even dangerous fun, and then shrug their shoulders if someone gets hurt.

Kraus asks the question of Freudian analysis: What would be enough? At what point would talking about one’s problems for x hours a week, be sufficient to bring one to a state of “normalcy”? The genius of Freudianism, Kraus writes, is not the creation of a cure, but of a disease—the universal, if intermittent, human sentiment that “something is not right,” elaborated into a state whose parameters, definitions, and prescriptions are controlled by a self-selecting group of “experts,” who can never be proved wrong. It was said that the genius of the Listerine campaign was attributable to the creation not of mouthwash, but of halitosis. Kraus indicts Freud for the creation of the nondisease of dissatisfaction. (See also the famous “malaise” of Jimmy Carter, which, like Oscar Wilde’s Pea Soup Fogs, didn’t exist ’til someone began describing it.) To consider a general dissatisfaction with one’s life, or with life in general as a political rather than a personal, moral problem, is to exercise or invite manipulation. The fortune teller, the “life coach,” the Spiritual Advisor, these earn their living from applying nonspecific, nonspecifiable “remedies” to nonspecifiable discomforts.The sufferers of such, in medicine, are called “the worried well,” and provide the bulk of income and consume the bulk of time of most physicians. It was the genius of the Obama campaign to exploit them politically. The antecedent of his campaign has been called Roosevelt’s New Deal, but it could, more accurately, be identified as The Music Man.

One of my greatest concerns for the young women of the Church is that they will sell themselves short in dating and marriage by forgetting who they really are--daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. . . . Unfortunately, a young woman who lowers her standards far enough can always find temporary acceptance from immature and unworthy young men. . . . At their best, daughters of God are loving, caring, understanding, and sympathetic. This does not mean they are also gullible, unrealistic, or easily manipulated. If a young man does not measure up to the standards a young woman has set, he may promise her that he will change if she will marry him first. Wise daughters of God will insist that young men who seek their hand in marriage change before the wedding, not after. (I am referring here to the kind of change that will be part of the lifelong growth of every disciple.) He may argue that she doesn't really believe in repentance and forgiveness. But one of the hallmarks of repentance is forsaking sin. Especially when the sin involves addictive behaviors or a pattern of transgression, wise daughters of God insist on seeing a sustained effort to forsake sin over a long period of time as true evidence of repentance. They do not marry someone because they believe they can change him. Young women, please do not settle for someone unworthy of your gospel standards. On the other hand, young women should not refuse to settle down. There is no right age for young men or young women to marry, but there is a right attitude for them to have about marriage: "Thy will be done" . . . . The time to marry is when we are prepared to meet a suitable mate, not after we have done all the enjoyable things in life we hoped to do while we were single. . . . When I hear some young men and young women set plans in stone which do not include marriage until after age twenty-five or thirty or until a graduate degree has been obtained, I recall Jacob's warning, "Seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand" (Jacob 4:10). . . . How we conduct ourselves in dating relationships is a good indication of how we will conduct ourselves in a marriage relationship. . . . Individuals considering marriage would be wise to conduct their own prayerful due diligence--long before they set their hearts on marriage. There is nothing wrong with making a T-square diagram and on either side of the vertical line listing the relative strengths and weaknesses of a potential mate. I sometimes wonder whether doing more homework when it comes to this critical decision would spare some Church members needless heartache. I fear too many fall in love with each other or even with the idea of marriage before doing the background research necessary to make a good decision. It is sad when a person who wants to be married never has the opportunity to marry. But it is much, much sadder to be married to the wrong person. If you do not believe me, talk with someone who has made that mistake. Think carefully about the person you are considering marrying, because marriage should last for time and for all eternity.

Legalism The weight we are describing is called legalism. It is a form of religious perfectionism that focuses on the careful performance and avoidance of certain behaviors. It teaches people to gain a sense of spiritual acceptance based on their performance, instead of accepting it as a gift on the basis of Christ. Why were the leaders of Jesus’ and Paul’s day spreading legalistic teaching? Was it simply a matter of being right? It’s more serious than that. Look at Galatians 6: 12-13: Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in your flesh. You see, living with Jesus as your only source of life and acceptance is a confrontation to those who seek God’s approval on the basis of their own religious behavior. This, then, explains the pressure you feel to perform religious behaviors in spiritually abusive contexts. If you perform as they say you must: (1) it will make them look good; (2) their self-righteousness will escape the scrutiny of the cross of Christ as the only means to God’s favor; (3) it will allow them to examine you instead of themselves; (4) they will be able to “boast in” or gain a sense of validation from your religious performance. Can you see the abusive dynamic described in chapter one? Here we have religious people trying to meet their own spiritual needs through someone else’s religious performance. And it’s all cloaked in the language of being holy and helping others to live holy lives.

Western society has in the past few decades taken a great step forward, which gives its members a perhaps unparalleled opportunity. This has been due to the final recognition of the way in which people can be (and are) conditioned to believe virtually anything. Although this knowledge existed earlier, it was confined to a few, and was taught to relatively small groups, because it was considered subversive. Once, however, the paradox of change of 'faith' began to disturb Western scientists in the Korean war, they were not long in explaining - even in replicating - the phenomenon. As with so many other discoveries, this one had to wait for its acceptance until there was no other explanation. Hence, work which Western scientists could have done a century or more earlier was delayed. Still, better late than never. What remains to be done is that the general public should absorb the facts of mind-manipulation. Failure to do so has resulted in an almost free field for the cults which are a bane of Western existence. In both East and West, the slowness of absorption of these facts has allowed narrow, political, religious and faddish fanaticism to arise, to grow and to spread without the necessary 'immunization'. In illiberal societies it is forbidden to teach these facts. In liberal ones, few people are interested: but only because mind-manipulation is assumed to be something that happens to someone else, and people are selfish in many ways, though charitable in others. Yet the reality is that most people are touched by one or other of an immense range of conditioned beliefs, fixations, even which take the place of truth and are even respected because 'so-and-so is at least sincere.' Naturally such mental sets are not to be opposed. Indeed they thrive on opposition. They have to be explained and contained. The foregoing remarks will not 'become the property' of the individual or the group on a single reading. An unfamiliar and previously untaught lesson, especially when it claims careful attention and remembering, will always take time to sink in. This presentation, therefore, forms a part of materials which need to be reviewed at intervals. Doing this should enable one to add a little ability and to receive a minute quality of understanding each time.

Nevertheless, scholars keep obsessing about selfish motives, simply because both economics and behaviorism have indoctrinated them that incentives drive everything that animals or humans do. I don’t believe a word of it, though, and a recent ingenious experiment on children drives home why. The German psychologist Felix Warneken investigated how young chimpanzees and children assist human adults. The experimenter was using a tool but dropped it in midjob: would they pick it up? The experimenter’s hands were full: would they open a cupboard for him? Both species did so voluntarily and eagerly, showing that they understood the experimenter’s problem. Once Warneken started to reward the children for their assistance, however, they became less helpful. The rewards, it seems, distracted them from sympathizing with the clumsy experimenter.50 I am trying to figure how this would work in real life. Imagine that every time I offered a helping hand to a colleague or neighbor—keeping a door open or picking up their mail—they stuffed a few dollars in my shirt pocket. I’d be deeply offended, as if all I cared about was money! And it would surely not encourage me to do more for them. I might even start avoiding them as being too manipulative. It is curious to think that human behavior is entirely driven by tangible rewards, given that most of the time rewards are nowhere in sight. What are the rewards for someone who takes care of a spouse with Alzheimer’s? What payoffs does someone derive from sending money to a good cause? Internal rewards (feeling good) may very well come into play, but they work only via the amelioration of the other’s situation. They are nature’s way of making sure that we are other-oriented rather than self-oriented.

First, remember how Control Dramas get started in the first place. When people feel insecure, they do things to feel better in various ways. We don’t just have to defend against our own hurts and anxieties; we also have to defend against others who we think are trying to put us down or otherwise manipulate us to steal our energy. When someone puts us down, we sense that we are under attack and pay attention to them. Because “where attention goes, energy flows,” they get a hit of energy from us and we feel diminished. So we tend to fight back by putting them down or manipulating them in return to get the energy back. As you read in Celestine, this is the game played by too many, keeping too much conflict and corruption in the world. But this is all Ego stuff, of course, developed initially in insecure families. You already know the cure is to always be Spiritually Connected so we have our own centered inner security, which gives us an endless supply of energy, regardless of who is trying to steal it. We don’t have to play these games any longer. Here is what to do: simply stay connected with the person, giving them energy, and then “name their game.” For instance, if you are facing a “poor me” drama, in which the person wants to make you feel guilty about something you didn’t intend to do, simply say, “I am feeling that I’m being forced to feel guilty.” And stick to that. Don’t defend yourself. Just keep explaining your experience of the situation. Keep sending love. They might need to retreat, but you aren’t affected. You are a giver, secure in yourself. You cleared an inauthentic game by expressing authentic honesty. You offered your experience of the situation. Whether the other person wanted to or not, in response to your authenticity, they will find themselves becoming more authentic as well. And since you aren’t disconnecting, it opens the door to talk about true feelings in a relationship. Sometimes it’s the “aloof” Control Drama you’re facing, and the person is using distancing or mystification to get you to keep asking questions in order to win your energy. Collapse their game by giving them energy anyway and authentically saying, “I feel like I really can’t get to know you because you don’t share details about yourself.” Similarly, if you are facing an “Interrogator” who bids for energy by constantly finding something to criticize about you, simply say that you feel criticized and put down when you are with them. They will feel your energy and authentic sincerity and, again, will grow more authentic themselves, right in front of your eyes. The same name-the-game approach also works for the most aggressive Control Drama, the “Intimidator,” trying to get energy from you by telling you they are going to blow up and do something crazy, literally trying to scare you into giving them energy. Gently name the game, but be careful—sometimes it is more prudent to remove yourself from the situation.

We didn't chat much about the bad things that were happening around us--and if we had chosen to, I'm not sure that the conversation would have been very long. It's difficult to put a nightmare into words, and this is exactly what our lives were--nightmares. If someone had asked us to describe our days, we'd have talked about waking up, going to school, eating lunch, going home, church, taking a nap, doing homework, more church, eating dinner - nothing extraordinary whatsoever. The thing about nightmares is that they don't immediately appear to be nightmares--instead, they come, masquerading as benign events, all snipped apart and mashed back together, but when you wake up, you can't forget what your brain has shown you. Instead, you begin to perseverate on the short moments of the dream that aren't sitting well with you, and it's in these short moments that you realize that this dream was no dream, it was a nightmare, and it is not benign at all. It is, in actuality, milliseconds of your real life, stolen from the memories you'd put aside because they are too terrifying to acknowledge, then turned and twisted and manipulated until they are almost completely unrecognizable.

The most skilled manipulators are able to mix lies with the truth. This enables them to paint a more credible illusion as the kernels of truth embedded in the illusion gives those around them the impression that what they are saying is actually real. As a result, they may get away with their lies. However, please bear in mind that the devil is in the details. So, if you knit pick long enough, you may find that you are dealing with an impostor. That’s why it’s always a good idea to take everything you hear with a grain of salt. If you choose to take everything you hear at face value, you may become disappointed when you realize that you believed someone who was deliberately trying to fool you.

13. If the goal is to build up one's sexual energy, what's the harm of sleeping with a lot of different women (or men) to increase your ching chi? Chia: The goal is not to build up one's sexual energy—it is to transform raw sexual energy into a refined subtle energy. Sex is only one means of doing that. Promiscuity can easily lower your energy if you choose partners with moral or physical weakness. If you lie with degenerates, it may hurt you, in that you can temporarily acquire your partner's vileness. By exchanging subtle energy, you actually absorb the other's substance. You become the other person and assume new karmic burdens. This is why old couples resemble each other so closely: they have exchanged so much energy that they are made of the same life-stuff. This practice accelerates this union, but elevates it to a higher level of spiritual experience. So the best advice I can give is to never compromise your integrity of body, mind and spirit. In choosing a lover you are choosing your destiny, so make sure you love the woman with whom you have sex. Then you will be in harmony with what flows from the exchange and your actions will be proper. If you think you can love two women at once, be ready to spend double the chi to transform and balance their energy. I doubt if many men can really do that and feel deep serenity. For the sake of simplicity, limit yourself to one woman at a time. It takes a lot of time and energy to cultivate the subtle energies to a deep level. It is impossible to define love precisely. You have to consult your inner voice. But cultivating your chi energy sensitizes you to your conscience. What was a distant whisper before may become a very loud voice. For your own sake, do not abandon your integrity for the sake of physical pleasure or the pretense that you are doing deep spiritual exercises. If you sleep with one whom you don't love, your subtle energies will not be in balance and psychic warfare can begin. This will take its toll no matter how far apart you are physically until you sever or heal the psychic connection. It's better to be honest in the beginning. For the same reason make love only when you feel true tenderness within yourself. Your power to love will thus grow stronger. Selfish or manipulative use of sex even with someone with whom you are in love can cause great disharmony. If you feel unable to use your sexual power lovingly, then do not use it at all! Sex is a gleaming, sharp, two-edged sword, a healing tool that can quickly become a weapon. If used for base purposes, it cuts you mercilessly. If you haven't found a partner with whom you can be truly gentle, then simply touch no one. Go back to building your internal energy and when it gets high you will either attract a quality lover or learn a deeper level within yourself.

White anger is something else. It can spit on a kid and appear victim enough to have someone else thrown off the bus. White rage, like all rage born not in defense of dignity but in defense of oppressive power, is manipulative. It is one of many examples of the difference between anger that dominates and anger that liberates […] Anger that dominates relies on fear tactics and abuse to live. It makes no demand of the world except that it bow. This is often because it fears being ruled or overpowered itself. This is no excuse. Holy anger is that which liberates. It marches, chants, and flips tables, demanding wrong be called by its rightful name. It is both passion and calculation, longing for more but for the sake of justice and dignity.

A covert narcissist is in some ways a more dangerous abuser. I say this delicately. All abusers are horrific, and all abuse is deplorable; all victims of all types of abuse have been through a tremendous amount. I don’t want to diminish anyone’s pain. The point I’m trying to make is when someone is hitting you or yelling at you it is clearly abuse. Covert abuse is hidden and so subtle, it is far from obvious. Manipulative, covert tactics not only hurt you, they also chip away at your identity, your self-worth, and make you feel like this is all your fault. Covert emotional and psychological abuse is what happens in cults. Leaders who make you feel loved can also talk you into committing suicide. These people are powerful. Do not diminish what you have experienced. You have been controlled and manipulated for years.

As a civilization progresses, it goes through wars, pandemics, catastrophes. those that survive grow more astute, more perceptive, more advanced. Diseases are conquered, infirmity eliminated. Life spans increase. Suffering becomes largely a memory. "Meanwhile, their explorers and historians find evidence of past cultures, and cultures before that. At first it is exciting. But all they keep finding are ruins. And slowly, either through science or history, every advanced civilizations becomes aware of a disturbing possibility -- that their futures may end in ruin too. "The civilization then rushes to probe other stars, even other galaxies; it increases its research, attempting to manipulate space, time, in the hope that somewhere, someone might have found an escape, a loophole. "But eventually, the find, and solve, the mathematical equation that explains the entire universe." "I think our scientists are working on something like that too," Shizuka said. Lan shook her head. "They'll need to find the Grand Unified Theory a few more times before they can even begin to understand what 'everything' is -- sorry, I didn't mean to offend your civilization." Shizuka shrugged. "No offense taken." "Still, should your civilization survive, it will eventually find the same equation. And that will be your death sentence. For in that equation, there will be no forever, no eternity. Nothing. "And this collapse, and all its attendant despair, is the Endplague." Shizuka was puzzled. Space aliens, she could understand. Purple skin? Cute. Two elbows? Weird, but fine. Galactic warfare? Frankly, expected. Being a refugee? Of course. But how could the mere concept of mortality be enough to topple advanced civilizations? People live, people die, and so what?

Does God get what God wants? That’s a good question. An interesting question. And it’s an important question that has given us much to discuss. But there’s a better question. One that we actually can answer. One that takes all of the speculation about the future, which no one has been to and returned with hard empirical evidence, and brings it back to one absolute we can depend on in the midst of all of this which turns out to be another question. It’s not, “Does God get what God wants?” but “Do we get what we want?” and the answer to that is a resounding, affirming, sure and certain yes. Yes, we get what we want, God is that loving. If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God allows us that freedom and we have that kind of license to do that. If we want nothing to do with light, love, hope, grace, and peace God respects that desire on our part and we are given a life free from any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with what God is, the more distance and space is created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love. If, however, we crave light, we’re drawn to truth, we’re desperate for grace, we’ve come to the end of our plots and schemes and we want someone else’s path, God gives us what we want. If we have this sense that we have wandered far from home and we want to return, God is there standing in the driveway arms open, ready to invite us in. If we thirst for Shalom and we long for the peace that transcends all understanding, God doesn’t just give, they are poured out on us lavishly, heaped until we are overwhelmed. It’s like a feast where the food and wine do not run out. These desires can start with the planting of an infinitesimally small seed in our heart, or a yearning for life to be better, or a gnawing sense that we are missing out, or an awareness that beyond the routine and grind of life there is something more, or the quiet hunch that this isn’t all there is. It often has it’s birth in the most unexpected ways, arising out of our need for something we know we do not have, for someone we know we are not. And to that, that impulse, craving, yearning, longing, desire God says, “Yes!”. Yes there is water for that thirst, food for that hunger, light for that darkness, relief for that burden. If we want hell, if we want heaven then they are ours. that’s how love works, it can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says, “yes”, we can have what we want because love wins.

I don't understand,' Gamache said finally, bringing his eyes back to Myrna. 'Can you explain?' Myrna nodded. 'Pity and compassion are the easiest to understand. Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn't. If you pity someone you feel superior.' 'But it's hard to tell one from the other,' Gamache nodded. 'Exactly. Even for the person feeling it. Almost everyone would claim to be full of compassion. It's one of the noble emotions. But really, it's pity they feel.' 'So pity is the near enemy of compassion,' said Gamache slowly, mulling it over. 'That's right. It looks like compassion, acts like compassion, but is actually the opposite of it. And as long as pity's in place there's not room for compassion. It destroys, squeezes out, the nobler emotion.' 'Because we fool ourselves into believing we're feeling one, when we're actually feeling the other.' 'Fool ourselves, and fool others,' said Myrna. 'And love and attachment?' asked Gamache. 'Mothers and children are classic examples. Some mothers see their job as preparing their kids to live in the big old world. To be independent, to marry and have children of their own. To live wherever they choose and do what makes them happy. That's love. Others, and we all see them, cling to their children. Move to the same city, the same neighborhood. Live through them. Stifle them. Manipulate, use guilt-trips, cripple them.' 'Cripple them? How?' 'By not teaching them to be independent.' 'But it's not just mothers and children,' said Gamache. 'No. It's friendships, marriages. Any intimate relationship. Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.' Gamache nodded. He'd seen his share of those. Hostages weren't allowed to escape, and when they tried tragedy followed.

Listen to some words: Today Christianity stands at the head of this country. . . . I pledge that I will never tie myself to those who want to destroy Christianity. . . . We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit—we want to burn out all the recent immoral development in literature, theater, the arts and in the press. . . . In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess the past . . . few years.2 Take these words at face value. Do they resonate with you? Here is what one listener said upon hearing them: “This . . . puts in words everything I have been searching for, for years. It is the first time someone gave form to what I want.”3 I suspect many would say the same. There are thousands of people who, upon hearing these words spoken, would cheer and agree and say amen. The words are Adolph Hitler’s, and the listener was someone in the audience who made that comment to Joseph Goebbels in 1933. Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda and clearly a very good one. Hitler’s words sound like they are inspired by Christian faith and morality. Listeners assumed a certain kind of person stood behind them. But Hitler’s words masked the deception behind them so that those listening, without knowing the character of the man, heard what they longed for but what never came to fruition. What did come was the extermination of millions, the destruction of countries, and evil that has affected generations. The words were said to manipulate the audience whose longings the Third Reich understood well. Hitler deliberately deceived the people and drew them in, calling forth loyalty and service. And he got it, not just from the general population but also from the German church. Words full of promises that cloaked great evil were tailored for a vulnerable culture.

I begin this chapter with President Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Speech on January 11, 1989. President Reagan encouraged the rising generation to “let ’em know and nail ’em on it”—that is, to push back against teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, and others in the governing generation who manipulate and deceive them: An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs [protection]. So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.1

According to Finnish psychologist Kaj Björkqvist, by the time a girl is eight years old she is unlikely to express frustration and anger toward others physically. Girls are, on the other hand, as verbally aggressive as boys. Instead of hitting or shoving, girls will use verbal, nonverbal, and socially manipulative skills to hurt others—mainly other girls. Girls will insult and denigrate each other; they will also hold grudges for a very long time. Björkqvist and others have shown that girls are “significantly more likely than boys to become friendly with someone else as revenge”; and that girls will gossip and suggest the “shunning” of another girl. According to Björkqvist, indirect aggression is a type of “hostile behavior [that] is carried out in order to harm the opponent, while avoiding being identified as aggressive.” Björkqvist and others developed a scale, known as the Direct and Indirect Aggression Scale, which measures physical aggression (hitting, kicking, tripping, shoving, pushing, pulling), and verbal aggression (yelling, insulting, teasing, threatening to hurt the other, calling the other names), on the one hand, and on the other hand, indirect aggression (shutting the other out of the group, becoming friends with another as revenge, ignoring, gossiping, telling bad stories, planning secretly to bother the other, saying bad things behind the back, saying to others: “let’s not be with him/her,” telling the other’s secrets to a third person, writing notes in which the other is criticized, criticizing the other’s hair or clothing, trying to get others to dislike the person).

Any relationship will have its difficulties, but sometimes those problems are indicators of deep-rooted problems that, if not addressed quickly, will poison your marriage. If any of the following red flags—caution signs—exist in your relationship, we recommend that you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor. Part of this list was adapted by permission from Bob Phillips, author of How Can I Be Sure: A Pre-Marriage Inventory.1 You have a general uneasy feeling that something is wrong in your relationship. You find yourself arguing often with your fiancé(e). Your fiancé(e) seems irrationally angry and jealous whenever you interact with someone of the opposite sex. You avoid discussing certain subjects because you’re afraid of your fiancé(e)’s reaction. Your fiancé(e) finds it extremely difficult to express emotions, or is prone to extreme emotions (such as out-of-control anger or exaggerated fear). Or he/she swings back and forth between emotional extremes (such as being very happy one minute, then suddenly exhibiting extreme sadness the next). Your fiancé(e) displays controlling behavior. This means more than a desire to be in charge—it means your fiancé(e) seems to want to control every aspect of your life: your appearance, your lifestyle, your interactions with friends or family, and so on. Your fiancé(e) seems to manipulate you into doing what he or she wants. You are continuing the relationship because of fear—of hurting your fiancé(e), or of what he or she might do if you ended the relationship. Your fiancé(e) does not treat you with respect. He or she constantly criticizes you or talks sarcastically to you, even in public. Your fiancé(e) is unable to hold down a job, doesn’t take personal responsibility for losing a job, or frequently borrows money from you or from friends. Your fiancé(e) often talks about aches and pains, and you suspect some of these are imagined. He or she goes from doctor to doctor until finding someone who will agree that there is some type of illness. Your fiancé(e) is unable to resolve conflict. He or she cannot deal with constructive criticism, or never admits a mistake, or never asks for forgiveness. Your fiancé(e) is overly dependant on parents for finances, decision-making or emotional security. Your fiancé(e) is consistently dishonest and tries to keep you from learning about certain aspects of his or her life. Your fiancé(e) does not appear to recognize right from wrong, and rationalizes questionable behavior. Your fiancé(e) consistently avoids responsibility. Your fiancé(e) exhibits patterns of physical, emotional or sexual abuse toward you or others. Your fiancé(e) displays signs of drug or alcohol abuse: unexplained absences of missed dates, frequent car accidents, the smell of alcohol or strong odor of mouthwash, erratic behavior or emotional swings, physical signs such as red eyes, unkempt look, unexplained nervousness, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has displayed a sudden, dramatic change in lifestyle after you began dating. (He or she may be changing just to win you and will revert back to old habits after marriage.) Your fiancé(e) has trouble controlling anger. He or she uses anger as a weapon or as a means of winning arguments. You have a difficult time trusting your fiancé(e)—to fulfill responsibilities, to be truthful, to help in times of need, to make ethical decisions, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has a history of multiple serious relationships that have failed—a pattern of knowing how to begin a relationship but not knowing how to keep one growing. Look over this list. Do any of these red flags apply to your relationship? If so, we recommend you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor.

Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET    YOUR KIDS  KILL  YOU  A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2

For me, that translated into fund-raising. I knew that I could and I would raise any amount of money to get that job done. Fund-raising to end hunger wasn’t just a job or a fad or a political statement for me. It was an expression of my own soulful commitment, and as such, I could only do it in a way that would call on people to reconnect with their own higher calling, or soulful longing, to be the kind of people they wanted to be, the kind of difference they wanted to make, and see how they could express that with their money. So rather than feeling that fund-raising was a matter of twisting arms for a donation or playing on emotions to manipulate money from contributors, it became for me an arena in which I was able to create an opportunity for people to engage in their greatness. It was in this soul-searching dimension of fund-raising, in these intimate conversations, that I discovered deep wounds and conflicts in the way people related to their money. Many people felt they had sold out and become someone they didn’t like anymore. Some were forcing themselves to do work that wasn’t meaningful. Many felt enslaved by their experience of being overtaxed by their government, or felt beaten down by their boss or by the burden of running a family business or employing others. Their relationship with money was dead—or, more accurately, dread—and there was hurt there. There was resentment. There were painful compromises, a kind of rawness. People were bruised and battered there. Not everyone, but many people were very unsettled and uncomfortable and just not their best selves in their relationship with money. They felt little or no freedom with money, no matter how much they had. This lackluster relationship with money wasn’t for lack of expert advice or practical tips. Money-management strategies were plentiful, but the concept of personal transformation was a stranger there. What became clear was that when people were able to align their money with their deepest, most soulful interests and commitments, their relationship with money became a place where profound and lasting transformation could occur.