Toxic Manipulative Quotes

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Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.
Susan Forward (Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life)
Unhappy people can be very dangerous, don't forget that.
S.E. Lynes
Whoever controls the money controls you.
Sharon Law Tucker (How to Be a BadAss - A Survival Guide for Women)
As you work on building healthy boundaries, you will gradually realize it is not your job or responsibility to fix anyone or teach them basic human decency.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
i don't wanna be with anybody who weaponizes my vulnerability saves it in a wooden box loads it in a shotgun when I least expect it
Michaela Angemeer (Poems for the Signs)
What’s important to remember is that while human beings in general can engage in toxic behaviors from time to time, abusers use these manipulation tactics as a dominant mode of communication. Toxic people such as malignant narcissists, psychopaths and those with antisocial traits engage in maladaptive behaviors in relationships that ultimately exploit, demean, and hurt their intimate partners, family members, and friends.
Shahida Arabi (Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself)
Gaslighting is a subtle form of emotional manipulation that often results in the recipient doubting their own perception of reality and their sanity. In addition, gaslighting is a method of manipulation by toxic people to gain power over you. The worst part about gaslighting is that it undermines your self-worth to the point where you’re second-guessing everything.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
what are your insecurities? Get out a piece of paper and make a list. This will save your life down the road. Once you’re aware of these traits, you will also become aware of the people who try to manipulate them. And even better, you can begin to make changes—to better yourself and improve your life.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
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.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
Toxic people live in denial and entitlement, and they feel rewarded by their exploitative behavior.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
If you’re an HSP, you’ve probably developed a destructive habit over the years of trying to educate toxic people on how to be more empathic or considerate.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
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.
John Bradshaw (Healing the Shame that Binds You)
Oftentimes, the scapegoat feels worthless and powerless. After being beaten down, year after year, we have a strong sense of false guilt. Unconsciously, we take the narcissist’s guilt as if it were our own. As if it were our fault. As if we are deserving of mental torture and physical abuse.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
People cannot go from abusing and manipulating you one day, to magically being healed a week later. This is simply impossible. Especially when this change occurs as a response to possible abandonment or rejection, there’s just no chance this is authentic change.
Jackson MacKenzie (Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse)
He or she was only an illusion, a mask the psychopath created in order to mirror and manipulate you. As crushingly hard as it is and as much as it hurts, the only way to find freedom is to stop believing in that illusion.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
During and after the relationship, you’re a victim of abuse. You were manipulated, insulted, degraded, belittled, and neglected. Full responsibility for this goes to the psychopath.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
It’s perplexing how family members claim their undying love for us. They can say whatever they choose, but their actions and behaviors don’t match their words. There is an imbalance in the relationships with distinct discrepancies, especially in who overpowers the scapegoat.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
Delayed arrogance is common in sociopaths. When you first meet, they’ll seem unusually innocent, humble, childlike, and thoughtful. But as time goes by, they inevitably transform into a monster: manipulative, arrogant, and neglectful.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
Start healing those wounds and understand that your insecurities were manufactured. You were not yourself—you were manipulated. The real you is kind, loving, open-minded, and compassionate. You do not need to question these things anymore.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
You owe it to yourself to stand up and advocate for yourself. To not agree to what is harmful to you. To protect yourself from further bullying, manipulation, gaslighting, and abuse.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
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.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
The cultural obsession with purity originates in the evolutionary struggle to avoid pollution. All animals are torn between the need to try new food and the fear of being poisoned. Evolution therefore equipped animals with both curiosity and the capacity to feel disgust on coming into contact with something toxic or otherwise dangerous. Politicians and prophets have learned how to manipulate these disgust mechanisms.
Yuval Noah Harari (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI)
From beginning to end, all this phony relationship can offer you is a toxic combination of fake love and real abuse. He constructs the psychopathic bond through deception and manipulation. You maintain it through self-sacrifice and denial.
Claudia Moscovici
Toxic people do not think, operate, or play by the same rules we do, and our failing to recognize this sets us up by default for manipulation and unhappiness.
Sherrie Campbell (But It's Your Family . . .: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath)
What happens after Moksha (liberation)? Moksha means free from Time. So, there is no after or before. Mind exists inside Time. It can never be free from Time, It asks such questions to keep you (soul) attached. It’s a toxic love story between you and your manipulative mind.
Shunya
Trump creates his own extreme manipulation of reality. He insists that his spokesmen defend his false reality as normal. He then expects the rest of society to accept it—despite the lack of any evidence.” This leads to what Lifton calls “malignant normality”—in other words, the gradual acceptance by a public inundated with toxic untruths of those untruths until they pass for normal.
Bandy X. Lee (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)
The difference lies in how you act upon those insecurities. Psychopaths see them as a way to manipulate & control. Empathetic people, on the other hand, seek to cure insecurities with love and compassion.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
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.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
The more power they have over your emotions, the less likely you’ll trust your own reality and the truth about the abuse you’re enduring. Knowing the manipulative tactics and how they work to erode your sense of self can arm you with the knowledge of what you’re facing and at the very least, develop a plan to retain control over your own life and away from toxic people. . . . Taking back our control and power . . . means seeking validating professional help for the abuse we’ve suffered, detaching from these people in our lives, learning more about the techniques of abusers, finding support networks, sharing our story to raise awareness, and finding appropriate healing modalities that can enable us to transcend and thrive after their abuse.
Shahida Arabi
One day I hope we can all deprogram from the lie that rest, silence, and pausing is a luxury and privilege. It is not! The systems manipulated you to believe it is true. The systems have been lying and guiding us all blindly to urgent and unsustainable fantasies. We have replaced our inherent self-esteem with toxic productivity.
Tricia Hersey (Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto)
When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did.” ​— ​Jill Blakeway
Chase Hill (Toxic People Survival Guide: How to Deal with Difficult, Negative, or Manipulative People, Handle Narcissists and Disarm Sociopaths)
What the toxic family unit has lost sight of is the positive traits of the innocent person who was manipulated into being the scapegoat. The scapegoat can feel the acute injustice that leaves a psychological scar. Although nobody would willingly choose to be a scapegoat, this person has countless wonderful strengths, characteristics, and accomplishments.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
Domination and submission can be healthy traits in an environment of trust. But superiority complex in man and inferiority complex in woman forms a toxic circle. One becomes oppressor, the other becomes manipulative. Both harm each other.
Shunya
I’m me. Manipulation is me. I toy with people. I toyed with her for years and she called it a lovely romance that she won’t ever be able to live up to. Because that’s how she operates and that’s how I operate and that’s how we function as a pair.
Wildbow (Twig)
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) causes problems in many areas of life, such as relationships, work, school or financial affairs. People with NPD may be generally unhappy and disappointed when they're not given the special favors or admiration, which they believe they deserve. They may find their relationships unfulfilling. Others may not enjoy being around them.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
These are the Cluster B personality disorders, and based on the statistics above, they are found in more than one in every seven people—over 15 percent of the population (I’m rounding down, to account for comorbidity). Now consider that most of these people are highly functional, nonincarcerated, active members of society. So given the raw numbers, it’s highly likely that you unknowingly pass by one of these cunning manipulators every day on your way to work—perhaps even today, when they served you your morning coffee. So what’s the problem? The problem is that the general public knows virtually nothing about these incredibly pervasive disorders.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
The narcissist is a master of manipulation. To maintain the illusion of power over you, they employ the use of third parties to gaslight you, manipulate you, and to bully you. They try to groom your friends, family, children, spouse, or intimate partner from the moment they meet them. Initially, the narcissist is testing them. To see how strong your other relationship bonds are in effort to triangulate them.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic— full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it.
Wendy Brown (Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Near Futures, 4))
I read somewhere, manipulators deflecting by blaming you for their toxic behavior is the craziest shit ever. — Siddhartha Aggarwal
Snehil Niharika
Have faith in what you know is wrong and no one will be able to manipulate you.
Lorelei Balansa
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.
Anne Beattie
Psychopaths see insecurities in a very different way—a tool for manipulation and control.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
Technology makes it so much easier for psychopaths to manipulate through triangulation.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
You’re on high alert the entire time, constantly looking out for manipulation & red flags. The slightest jokes will offend you.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
A toxic leader may achieve short-term success through fear and manipulation, but they will ultimately leave behind broken spirits and damaged organizations.
Abhysheq Shukla
Fifty people can go to the same party, the same reality, but everyone will have a different experience.
Chase Hill (Toxic People Survival Guide: How to Deal with Difficult, Negative, or Manipulative People, Handle Narcissists and Disarm Sociopaths)
Envisioning fungi as nanoconductors in mycocomputers, Gorman (2003) and his fellow researchers at Northwestern University have manipulated mycelia of Aspergillus niger to organize gold into its DNA, in effect creating mycelial conductors of electrical potentials. NASA reports that microbiologists at the University of Tennessee, led by Gary Sayler, have developed a rugged biological computer chip housing bacteria that glow upon sensing pollutants, from heavy metals to PCBs (Miller 2004). Such innovations hint at new microbiotechnologies on the near horizon. Working together, fungal networks and environmentally responsive bacteria could provide us with data about pH, detect nutrients and toxic waste, and even measure biological populations.
Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World)
The next step is validation: helping victims through the darkness and showing them that they are not alone. Sharing experiences with one another and understanding how we were manipulated.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
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.
Debbie Mirza (The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse)
It is possible to set boundaries provided that you prioritize your own self-care. To protect ourselves in their presence, we first have to understand the way they think and manipulate. This will give us insight into their agendas, their exploitative ways of approaching the world, and the essential tools needed to safely exit interactions, friendships, and relationships with them.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition])
I realized that I had to change myself to make myself happy. That was when I broke free from not just one toxic relationship but soon after, all of the negative relationships that I found myself in.
Chase Hill (Toxic People Survival Guide: How to Deal with Difficult, Negative, or Manipulative People, Handle Narcissists and Disarm Sociopaths)
Sibling abuse is underreported and it goes under the radar. The concern with sibling rivalry is when it turns into sibling abuse. The core root of sibling abuse is the intent to harm and control the other sibling.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
Looks, intimidation, specialisation, special titles, awards, and any superlative status quo can never hide the deficient character of a toxic leech of calumny, and/or one's excessive sense of entitlement. Genuine diplomacy, true deep honesty, sincerity, and mutual respect are absent in an arrogant, offensive, defensive, deceptive, destructive, distractive, intimidating, abusive, defamatory, sicko, toxic, and sadistic, manipulative, unscrupulous, strategical, power player, fame whore.
Angelica Hopes
EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE: Manipulative rhetoric lacks substantive, logical arguments and replaces them with demands that you feel a certain way. If you’re really loving, caring, understanding, empathetic, etc., you will buy into a particular position. Often, your rational points will be rebuffed with accusations of callousness instead of thoughtful responses. When they call you hateful, bigoted, racist, or any other epithet, it usually means they don’t know why they believe what they believe, so their insecurity manifests itself in anger.
Allie Beth Stuckey (Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion)
If there is, indeed, an anti-Marian spirit, what might it look like? Well, a woman in its grip would not value children. She would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. She would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. She would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. She would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and self-servingly ambitious. In short, she would be everything that Mary is not. She would bristle especially at the idea of being a virgin or a mother.
Carrie Gress (The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity)
When you stop taking care of others all the time, you give them a chance to meet you halfway. The truly toxic ones won’t like this new dynamic and they’ll try to manipulate you back to “normal.” Again, this is simply a sign that the person isn’t a good fit for you anymore.
Jackson MacKenzie (Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse)
The poisonous pedagogy justifies highly abusive methods for suppressing children’s vital spontaneity: physical beatings, lying, duplicity, manipulation, scare tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation and coercion to the point of torture. All of these methods are toxically shaming.
John Bradshaw (Healing the Shame that Binds You)
Abusers happily cheat, lie, verbally assault, manipulate, confuse, and ignore others, but survivors often find that when they try to react firmly and stand up to this abuse, they immediately end up feeling bad. Let go of this inner turmoil. Having boundaries is what makes you healthy.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
Untreated personality disordered individuals are masters at pity stories and making themselves seem like the sympathetic victim, even when they’re the ones causing harm. They often present a childlike innocence to the world, while they are abusing and manipulating you behind closed doors.
Jackson MacKenzie (Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse)
Empathy lets you know that you are not alone and that you will be okay. However, empathy can be a curse when you unknowingly empathize with a toxic person who uses your soft-hearted nature to further exploit and manipulate you, thereby driving you into deeper and deeper levels of insecurity.
Sherrie Campbell (Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut)
Wetikos can psychopathically (and thus toxically) mimic the human personality perfectly. If it serves their agenda, they can be convincing beyond belief, making themselves out to be normal, caring, politically correct human beings. They can endlessly talking about taking responsibility, but they never genuinely face up to and become accountable for their actions. They are unable to genuinely mourn, being only concerned with themselves. They will feign grief, however, just as they will try to appear compassionate, if it is politically expedient to do so and, hence, to their advance, they are master manipulators.
Paul Levy (Dispelling Wetiko)
You find that you’re set off by the most obscure triggers, unable to enjoy a date or some time with an old friend. You’re on high alert the entire time, constantly looking out for manipulation & red flags. The slightest jokes will offend you. That feeling of dread in your heart never seems to go away—warning you that anyone and everyone could be out to hurt you. And then, after you spend time with others, you over-analyze the experience and come up with a list of reasons that this person shouldn’t be in your life anymore. Then you feel awful for thinking those things, guilty and ashamed that you could be so disloyal.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
Bree Bonchay, author of I Am Free, explains that we relate to our toxic family members as if they are normal healthy people who possess a conscience, self-awareness, and a sense of integrity. Because of this inherent trust in them, we believe their words. We know that we don’t lie or manipulate so we believe our toxic family members would never lie to or manipulate us. We give them the benefit of the doubt because we believe they genuinely love us. Because we believe they truly love us, we cannot believe they could ever or would ever do anything to intentionally hurt us. When we believe in this way, we are essentially projecting our own good qualities or character traits onto the toxic family members we love. So when they don’t respond in the ways that a loving, kind, healthy person would, we are left feeling hurt and confused and questioning ourselves, believing we must somehow be to blame for their lack of love and understanding.
Sherrie Campbell (But It's Your Family . . .: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath)
Ecologically, bourgeois exploitation and manipulation are undermining the very capacity of the earth to sustain advanced forms of life. The crisis is being heightened by massive increases in air and water pollution; by a mounting accumulation of nondegradable wastes, lead residues, pesticide residues and toxic additives in food; by the expansion of cities into vast urban belts; by increasing stresses due to congestion, noise and mass living; and by the wanton scarring of the earth as a result of mining operations, lumbering, and real estate speculation. As a result, the earth has been despoiled in a few decades on a scale that is unprecedented in the entire history of human habitation of the planet.
Murray Bookchin (Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics))
The courts do not care if your partner has a narcissistic, borderline, psychopathic, antagonistic, high-conflict, or passive-aggressive personality style. In fact, people with these personality styles are often masterful at manipulating the cast of players in a toxic divorce, including attorneys, judges, mediators, family therapists, and custody evaluators
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
Certainly, blame for all this [turmoil in the Middle East] doesn't rest solely with the terrible decisions that were made at the end of World War I, but it was then that one particularly toxic seed was planted. Ever since, Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialism, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms. This culture of opposition has been manipulated—indeed, feverishly nurtured—by generations of Arab dictators intent on channeling their people's anger away from their own misrule in favor of the external threat, whether it is "the great Satan" or the "illegitimate Zionist entity" or Western music playing on the streets of Cairo.
Scott Anderson (Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
When we’d get into an argument and I would back up my side with facts, he would take those facts and spin them around in so many circles that by the end of the argument, he was able to use some of those same facts for himself and leave me feeling lost and ‘crazy.’ I’d walk away asking myself how I ever thought standing up for myself was a good thing to do in the first place.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
when we spend time with toxic people, difficult people, narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and/or assholes. it is not good for us. It erodes our self-esteem, infects us with self-doubt, increases the likelihood of stress-related illnesses, and makes us less efficient, because we spend our time walking on eggshells and trying to protect ourselves against their careless, mindless, and sometimes downright cruel words, actions, and manipulations.
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
In 2018, I publicly disclosed that I had experienced psychological abuse by my sisters. Prior to uploading my first YouTube video on this sensitive topic, I had no idea if anyone else would relate. Shortly after my video went live, I received hundreds of comments by strangers who shared similar stories of being bullied, manipulated, gaslit, and abused by their own siblings. Five years later, my videos now have over 163,234K views and thousands of comments.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
LIVE TO YOUR OWN DEFINITION OF ENOUGH. You can at least please yourself. If your expectation is ‘pleasing others,’ you have no control over doing so, because the toxic personality will keep redefining the standard in such a way that you can never measure up. The thing to keep in mind about a toxic person is that you are ‘darned if you do’ or ‘darned if you don’t.’ They are going to be frustrated with you, regardless of your behavior. You cannot be governed by their frustration. Keep in mind that they use the frustrations of others as a tool to manipulate, control, and intimidate. They also have endless lists of expectations. Just as you get close to doing everything on the list, Aaron will change the list. He can never let you be enough.          “When you see the insanity of this treadmill, you will come to realize that toxic people are ‘crazy makers.’ They drive you crazy trying to please them. The crazier your life becomes, the more in control they become; and because you are going crazy, the focus can be on your aberrant behavior. You are the one out of your mind, and they are the ones who are justified. Most toxic people were raised that way in their families. They were never enough as individuals, as children, or as siblings, so, what’s the big deal? Not measuring up, not being enough, trailing barbs, constant criticism, or blame-fixing is normal to them.
John Lund (How to Hug a Porcupine)
I have come to realize since breaking free of my toxic family members that I was justifying insanity to stay connected with them. The longer I am free of their manipulations, I notice that more memories surface of instances of manipulation I didn’t even have the time to focus on at the time they were happening because the next manipulation was already in play. Now I can see that even the smallest things that were going on or that were said to me all served to push me down.
Sherrie Campbell (But It's Your Family . . .: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath)
Another way is via genetic engineering. Here the germ is inserted into plasmid that has been manipulated by scientists. This type of plasmid is circular segments of DNA extracted from bacteria to serve as a vector. Scientists can add multiple genes and whatever genes they want into this plasmid. In case of vaccines, this includes a genetic piece of the vaccine germ and normally a gene for antibiotic resistance. This means that when the toxic gene is cultured inside the yeast, it has been designed with a new genetic code that makes it resistant to the antibiotic it’s coded for. The gene-plasmid combo is inserted into a yeast cell to be replicated. When the yeast replicates, the DNA from the plasmid is reproduced as a part of the yeast DNA. Once enough cells have been replicated, the genetic material in the new and improved yeast cell is extracted and put into the vaccine. Examples of this vaccine are the acellular pertussis and hepatitis B vaccines. One thing that doesn’t seem to concern scientists is the fact that the manmade genetic combination becomes the vaccine component. This mixture of intended and unintended genetic information may cause our immune system to overreact. This can be especially complicated for a child with compromised immune system. Another concern is that this new genetic code can become integrated with our own genetic material. Yeast, for instance, is very much like human DNA. It shares about one third of our proteins.
James Morcan (Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed? (The Underground Knowledge Series, #8))
Keep interactions as short as possible; you can be cordial, but do not engage. Narcissists are master provocateurs who will subject you to dizzying diversion tactics to make you feel off-center and off-­balance. That’s why you must understand when you are being manipulated and stay focused on your real goals. If your goal is to do your best work at your job, then you must do everything in your power to stay focused on that goal and channel your energy into producing high-quality work.
Shahida Arabi (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition])
The scapegoat is the family punching bag. On a daily basis, you are singled out for all of the collective ridicule, made into the butt of every joke, and excluded from family events, holidays, and important legal matters. It doesn't take long for outsiders or other relatives to take note of your role and to be drawn into the destructive dynamics. Family scapegoats are belittled, humiliated, battered, rejected, betrayed, and treated poorly. It's a clear case of psychological abuse, manipulation, and harassment.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
One can forgive the past offences of cons, cowards, swindlers, scammers, pathological liars, financial, political parasites, mob lynchers, compulsive liars, digital aggressors, group political narcissists, bullies, vile, vicious slanderers, and vindictive deceivers. Still, it is wiser to NEVER EXTEND TRUST AGAIN nor give a second or third chance to repetitive, abusive opportunistic users, habitual offenders, and toxic bullies who happen to be Machiavellian manipulators. ~ Angelica Hopes, Sfidatopia Book 2, Stronzata Trilogy
Angelica Hopes
Foundational anxiety is not a brain chemistry issue but rather an attachment issue. When your core attachment foundation is unstable, so are you. Susan Forward teaches that “an unpredictable parent is a fearsome god in the eyes of a child. As children we are at the mercy of our god-like parents. If we never know when the next lightning bolt of neglect, abuse, or manipulation will strike, we live in fear. The fear of its strike and the anxiety of not knowing when it is going to hit becomes deeply ingrained and grows in us as we grow.”10
Sherrie Campbell (Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut)
Third, the Laws will empower you to take on and outthink the toxic types who inevitably cross your path and who tend to cause long-term emotional damage. Aggressive, envious, and manipulative people don’t usually announce themselves as such. They have learned to appear charming in initial encounters, to use flattery and other means of disarming us. When they surprise us with their ugly behavior, we feel betrayed, angry, and helpless. They create constant pressure, knowing that in doing so they overwhelm our minds with their presence, making it doubly hard to think straight or strategize.
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
Speculators, meanwhile, have seized control of the global economy and the levers of political power. They have weakened and emasculated governments to serve their lust for profit. They have turned the press into courtiers, corrupted the courts, and hollowed out public institutions, including universities. They peddle spurious ideologies—neoliberal economics and globalization—to justify their rapacious looting and greed. They create grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge citizens into crippling forms of debt peonage. And they have been stealing staggering sums of public funds, such as the $65 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that have been unloaded each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.21 They feed like parasites off of the state and the resources of the planet. Speculators at megabanks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the weak from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their own shareholders. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They only manipulate money. They are no different from the detested speculators who were hanged in the seventeenth century, when speculation was a capital offense. The obscenity of their wealth is matched by their utter lack of concern for the growing numbers of the destitute. In early 2014, the world’s 200 richest people made $13.9 billion, in one day, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index.22 This hoarding of money by the elites, according to the ruling economic model, is supposed to make us all better off, but in fact the opposite happens when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and corporations, as economist Thomas Piketty documents in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.23 The rest of us have little or no influence over how we are governed, and our wages stagnate or decline. Underemployment and unemployment become chronic. Social services, from welfare to Social Security, are slashed in the name of austerity. Government, in the hands of speculators, is a protection racket for corporations and a small group of oligarchs. And the longer we play by their rules the more impoverished and oppressed we become. Yet, like
Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion)
When you shed the light, be sure to have a genuine heart, a truthful mind, and an honest soul. On 11th November 2018, I had a very inspired heart as I remember the "Sunday Express" from the airport to the City of Peace and Justice. Three years later, I look back with a grateful heart, vigilant mind, and wisdom filled soul as I had always chosen and prefer the paths toward the truth, and not the manipulations, deceptions, lies, libel and slander, calumny, calculated financial opportunism of political harridans, and targeted toxic, repetitive abusive ways of Signora Imbrogliona and her associate accomplice of Machiavellian manipulators. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Onestopia, Book 3 of Stronzata Trilogy
Angelica Hopes
Conflict is not only normal, then; it’s absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship. If two people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally, then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation, and it will slowly become toxic. Trust is the most important ingredient in any relationship, for the simple reason that without trust, the relationship doesn’t actually mean anything. A person could tell you that she loves you, wants to be with you, would give up everything for you, but if you don’t trust her, you get no benefit from those statements. You don’t feel loved until you trust that the love being expressed toward you comes without any special conditions or baggage attached to it.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
When you contribute to a safer world for the truth, contribute to help stop violence and help end impunity: be vigilant, be alert, stay safe, protect your emotions and health from aggressive troublemakers and manipulators, and have a strong, diplomatic, clear and firm boundaries. Be honest, be factual, and have an indestructible firm coping mechanism ways while you could experience waves of digital aggression as they would like to silence you, discredit you, and they try to ruin your integrity, persona, reputation and credibility. The deceptive, evil manipulators plant lies and create intrigues, polemics mongering, gossip-mongering, and calumny committed by abusive political harridans, bitches and assholes who can shame you privately and publicly. Group cyber lynching, group cyberbullying, defamatory libellous slander is committed by these cyber aggressors who are also financial-political abusive parasites, pathological liar cyberbullies toxic manipulators, and repetitive abusers. Usually when the stakes are high, these manipulative, deceptive, dishonest, unscrupulous aggressive and vindictive, abusive toxic people would resort to any forms of aggression/abuse: digital or cyber aggression, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and psychological abuse, financial/economic abuse, and/or physical aggression. When a group of habitual, deceptive, toxic netizens, digital aggressors send you threats, disturb your family member with their concocted destructive lies, and they took hold a copy of your passport or ID - change it immediately. Document the threats, the libellous slander, done by these aggressive and abusive people who took advantage of you, used you, and abused you, and do not hesitate to report them to the right authorities. You have to learn how to handle these scammers, habitual offensive abusive offenders/perpetrators, manipulators, bullies, digital aggressors/aggression, cyber lynchers, coward, pathological liars, opportunistic users, economic/financial abusers, emotional, psychological and verbal abusers, and repetitive abusers without breaking the law. Even if they dehumanised you, shamed you and abused you for several years, do not and never dehumanise them. Always remember the three Rs of life: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from The S. Trilogy
Angelica Hopes (Life Issues)
It was the German powerhouse Deutsche Bank AG, not my fictitious RhineBank, that financed the construction of the extermination camp at Auschwitz and the nearby factory that manufactured Zyklon B pellets. And it was Deutsche Bank that earned millions of Nazi reichsmarks through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses. Deutsche Bank also incurred massive multibillion-dollar fines for helping rogue nations such as Iran and Syria evade US economic sanctions; for manipulating the London interbank lending rate; for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to unwitting investors; and for laundering untold billions’ worth of tainted Russian assets through its so-called Russian Laundromat. In 2007 and 2008, Deutsche Bank extended an unsecured $1 billion line of credit to VTB Bank, a Kremlin-controlled lender that financed the Russian intelligence services and granted cover jobs to Russian intelligence officers operating abroad. Which meant that Germany’s biggest lender, knowingly or unknowingly, was a silent partner in Vladimir Putin’s war against the West and liberal democracy. Increasingly, that war is being waged by Putin’s wealthy cronies and by privately owned companies like the Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg troll factory that allegedly meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. The IRA was one of three
Daniel Silva (The Cellist (Gabriel Allon, #21))
When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it. Without conflict, there can be no trust. Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man. If Disappointment Panda were here, he’d tell you that the pain in our relationship is necessary to cement our trust in each other and produce greater intimacy. For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no in here no. Without that negation, without that occasional rejection, boundaries break down and one person’s problems and values come to dominate the other’s. Conflict is not only normal, then; it’s Absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a healthy relationship. If two people who are close are not able to hash out their differences openly and vocally, then the relationship is based on manipulation and misrepresentation, and it will slowly become toxic. Trust is the most important ingredient in any relationship, for the simple reason that without trust, the relationship doesn’t actually mean anything. A person could tell you that she loves you, wants to be with you, I would give up everything for you, but if you don’t trust her, you get no benefit from those statements. You don’t feel loved until you trust that the love being expressed toward you comes without any special conditions or baggage attached to it.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
DON’T LET YOUR CULTURE BECOME TOXIC SUCCESSFUL START-UPS often begin with a culture where people challenge one another directly and even fiercely, but also show they care personally. That’s because they start small, involve people who get to know each other really well, and are fighting for survival. However, as the business grows and new people join the firm, it’s impossible to know everyone’s name, let alone to have strong relationships with everyone. The kind of super-direct challenges that are easy when people know each other well become difficult. Not wanting to lose the friendly culture of the early days, many hesitate to speak up when they see problems, backing off of Challenge Directly and retreating to Ruinous Empathy. Because Obnoxious Aggression is more effective than Ruinous Empathy, that kind of behavior has an advantage; people who behave badly begin to win, rising in the company. When confronted with a powerful jerk, many people retreat to Manipulative Insincerity, more out of instinctive self-protectiveness than intentional wrongdoing. In this kind of environment, there’s an incentive to retreat to Manipulative Insincerity in front of those who are more senior to them, and resort to Obnoxious Aggression with those who are less powerful. The culture becomes toxic—many kissing up and kicking down, few willing to speak truth to power. This kind of behavior won’t kill a company right away. Instead, it leads to a slow, painful death of innovation, and lives of quiet desperation. That’s the bad news. The good news is that many companies large and small are now taking active measures to shift to a culture in which caring personally and challenging directly go hand in hand. When people learn to do both simultaneously, bad behavior no longer gives anyone an advantage. Bad behavior is punished not rewarded, the truth comes out, and the environment is more conducive to both success and happiness.
Kim Malone Scott (Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity)
The narcissistic mother will manipulate other family members to gang up against you by focusing on everything that’s wrong with you. This conveniently takes the focus away from the real perpetrator, which is of course her. It’s interesting to think about the manipulation that’s actually going on. So if you have been labelled as the black sheep and that has been your permanent role in the family, it actually allows all the other family members to start feeling better about themselves. They actually start to believe that they are healthier and more obedient to the narcissistic mother than you, and again this creates a division within the family. Another important point is that if a child is scapegoated from an early age, he or she may fully internalize all of their narcissistic mother’s criticism and shame. This means that the scapegoats develop this harsh inner critic that will continue that inner dialogue that constantly reminds them of how bad and flawed they are. I guess you could call that “inner scapegoating,” and it is extremely toxic to a young impressionable child whose identity is still being formed. So, the scapegoat may struggle with low self-esteem and often continues to feel deeply inadequate and unlovable. Adult scapegoat children also tend to suppress a huge amount of abandonment anxiety because they were emotionally or even physically abandoned by the narcissistic mother over and over again. Adult scapegoat children therefore become super sensitive to observing any potential signs of approval or disapproval. These are all important aspects of the profound impact that a toxic family dynamic may continue to have on adult relationships. Perhaps you may still have issues with authority. Maybe you’re still used to justifying yourself or somehow proving your worth. This is an unconscious pattern that you may still not be aware of and that you are perpetuating because you don’t realize how powerful these dysfunctional family dynamics still are. And once you wake up and understand you can let go of that label, you can break that pattern by choosing to think and behave completely different. You can learn to choose your battles and do not always have to be defensive. You do not always have to feel victimized. You need to become more self-aware and notice if you are still trying to get your parents’ approval or validation. Maturing into adulthood means that you may need to understand that you may never have a healthy relationship with an intentional perpetrator of abuse. You need to process your feelings of frustration, loneliness, rage, and grief.
Caroline Foster (Narcissistic Mothers: How to Handle a Narcissistic Parent and Recover from CPTSD (Adult Children of Narcissists Recovery Book 1))
We tend to think of psychopaths as serial killers, bomber, super villains, and people who are certifiably insane, and the danger here is that we forget that most psychopaths are just normal (at least by all appearances), and they can harm us in other ways. People who like starting fights, who disregard your emotions and those who consistently lie to you may turn out to be psychopaths.
Jonathan Mind (Manipulation and Dark Psychology: 2nd EDITION. How to Learn Speed Reading People, Spot Covert Emotional Manipulation, Detect Deception and Defend Yourself from Persuasion Techniques and Toxic People)
I bought into the lie,” she said, “that because Darin has a strong, masculine personality he must be the manipulator and I must be the victim. God showed me that it was really more the other way around. By withholding affection, respect, and communication, I often played the role of the manipulator.
Gary L. Thomas (When to Walk Away: Finding Freedom from Toxic People)
Toxic and narcissistic people are so good at manipulation because it allows them to maintain their sense of self
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
MANIPULATIVE PEOPLE They are heartless and guiltless They have no friends and they have no empathy. Their mission is to keep destroying everyone they think is in their way. They think they know it all and they are so desperate for recognition. They don’t like those who see through their agenda and their feeble thinking. Manipulative people are toxic period and they forget that you reap what you sow.
Euginia Herlihy
According to an article, Sibling Abuse and Bullying: The Hidden Epidemic on Psychology Today by Darlene Lancer, “Often labeled rivalry and ignored, sibling bullying and abuse cause real trauma. Sibling abuse is the most common, but least reported abuse in the family. Prevalence is higher than spousal or child abuse combined with consequences well into adulthood similar to parent-child abuse. Up to 80% of youth experience some form of sibling maltreatment; yet it’s been called the forgotten abuse.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
We were never "too sensitive." We were intuitive. We saw the abuse we endured for the cruelty and manipulation that it was.
Sherrie Campbell (But It’s Your Family…: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath)
In 1991, betrayal trauma was originated by Jennifer Freyd, PhD, an American psychology researcher, author, and educator. She states, 'During trauma it is usually not safe or possible for individuals to consciously access their emotional reactions or experiences, awareness often emerges after trauma ceases.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
Sibling triangulation is a heartless form of manipulation in which one person seeks to control a three-person interpersonal situation for their selfish needs. It can involve the use of threats of exclusion or strategies tom divide and conquer. Sibling triangulation may involve narcissistic abuse. The narcissist could be your father, mother, sibling, partner, spouse, relative, friend, co-worker, boss, or someone else.
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
Unscrupulous political movers, dishonest politicians, and Machiavellian manipulators are among the endless toxic snakes of any society. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Calunniatopia Book 1, Stronzata Trilogy
Angelica Hopes
In the 2019 Harvard Health Publishing article on how past trauma can haunt your future health, researchers state that a person's risk for mental and physical health problems rise as the number of traumatic events experienced increases. In other words, someone with five traumatic experiences will have a higher chance of developing health issues than someone who had only one negative adverse childhood experience.
Olivia K. Rice (Absent: How to Heal from Emotionally Toxic Parents - A Grown-Up’s Guide to Healing from Childhood Neglect, Manipulation, Trauma, and Abusive Emotional Behavior)
Honourable Breeze - a behavioural haiku from the chapter, “Poetic Justice” Honourable Heart? You were spreading smear campaigns. Is that honesty? Honourable mind? You committed forgery. Your cyber libel. Honourable soul? You intentionally hurt, Con, scam, and slander. Honourable mouth? Your habitual offenses Fraud, lies, bullying. Dishonourable. Politicians’ instrument: Machiavellian. Justify your end? with your Machiavellian ways? Note: crime does not pay! Crowned thorny cactus, you pretend to be “yellow,” Ask funding from them. Thorny toxic lies, You discredit whom you scammed. Your: libel, slander. Manipulator, Fraud, bully, provocateur, Machiavellian! Politicians served: You’re a very good person. Thorny irony. People you slandered, Scammed, libeled, deceived, abused. Forgery you did. Your former victim, From twelve or ten years ago: said, “you’re a devil.” “Move away from her,” Your past victims had warned me. I thanked their warning. Warning was too late. Thorny, toxic harridan: you used and abused! Honourable Breeze? For people who benefit from your deceptions. Honourable Breeze? For dirty politicians, Donations and votes. Honourable Breeze? for needy politicians: delivered service. Delivered service? At the expense of others, you manipulate. Manipulations, your catch-me-if-you-can games, Your confidence games! Politicians’ smears, means won’t justify your end, Machiavellian bitch! ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Life Unfolds © 2021 Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn
Angelica Hopes
toxic people and narcissists find it quite easy to convince a highly empathic and conscientious person that they are paranoid, losing it, or just “overreacting
Shahida Arabi MA (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
toxic people can take a toll on the mind, body, and spirit. More “benign” manipulators may cause inconvenience, stress, annoyance, and overall dissatisfaction, and they may occasionally use silencing tactics. More “malignant” manipulators, however, such as narcissists who lack empathy, pose serious harm and risk to your health, well-being, and even your life, using manipulation tactics as a primary mode of interacting with the world.
Shahida Arabi MA (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)
Healing doesn’t mean that all narcissistic relationships magically fade from your life. Instead, healing means that you continue the process of growing yourself outside of these narrowly defined toxic spaces while preparing for the other narcissistic and manipulative people you will inevitably meet as you move forward. Growth and individuation mean facing the core of healing from narcissistic abuse, and that is radical acceptance.
Ramani Durvasula (It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People)
These are not normal relationship problems or indicative of a “communication” problem—these are patterns of heinous abuse and calculated mind games.
Shahida Arabi MA (The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators)