How Dark Personality Types Control Others

Transcript from video

So how do dark personality types brainwash and gaslight people into toxic, abusive relationships, cults, and movements and so on? How they condition them to comply to keep them there? This could be a narcissistic person you started dating, or has wormed their way into some area of your life. It could be a cult leader eager for new followers, or someone in charge of some group or movement. Regardless of the situation, it’s someone who maybe recognises you have something of value to them they can exploit.

I’m not just talking about opportunists who just chance their luck. Most of us can generally see through the lies and fake persona of someone selling snake oil. I’m talking about highly skilled manipulative people who have a finely tuned ability to convince people into not trusting their own judgment by hijacking their instincts, targeting their cognitive dissonance and weaken their critical thinking skills.

But just so you know what you’re up against, dark personality types have a combination of personality traits that includes narcissism, which is having an over inflated sense of self-importance and superiority. They believe themselves to be highly entitled and lack empathy for others. There’s psychopathy which is being callous, lacking remorse and having a disregard for the rights and well being of others. There’s Machiavellianism which is being duplicitous and highly manipulative, and lastly sadism, which is taking pleasure in the pain and misery of others, either inflicting it for their own enjoyment, or to control and dominate, sometimes both.

So how do people like this con people into becoming involved with them, into going along with their schemes and scams? Becoming part of their group, getting into a relationship with them? They do it in stages, a little piece at a time.

When you first meet they are pleasant, friendly, charming, but they’re watching, studying, paying attention. They want to know about you. Where are you from? What are you interested in? What do you think about this and that? They also want to know your hopes for the future, your ambitions, what’s missing in your life. What prevents you from doing whatever it is you’re wanting to do?

They can be very encouraging. They learn about you and start to reflect back what they hear and see. Now on one hand people generally recognise if something seems to good to be true it probably is, but there is part of us that is hard wired to look for opportunity as much as for threat. Also, they can be accomplished actors. They seem genuine and they become the very thing you feel is missing from your life. That could be love, resources, opportunities to succeed at something, a chance to be a part of something special. Whatever you feel you lack, or whatever you need to improve, that’s what they have, that’s what they are. As time goes on they want to learn more about your fears, your regrets, your secrets, any past traumas. They are looking for things they can exploit or utilise at a later date.

In the early stages of the relationship in small, seemingly innocent ways they begin to plant seeds of doubt in your mind when you’re talking. They pick up on minor discrepancies, something doesn’t make sense, that wasn’t what they’d heard about it. These little, seemingly innocent conversations lay the foundations for people to doubt themselves whenever the gaslighting increases. If you were mistaken about one thing, they’ll try to convince you you’re wrong about a lot of things.

Another long term manipulation tactic is they might also ask you to do things you wouldn’t normally do, just for them, such as tell a little white lie to someone on their behalf, cover for them, make an excuse. That’s not too much to ask, it’s a favour. Thing is though, they’re not just testing you, they’re also conditioning you to do more and more for them. They’ll remind you of your dishonesty, your actions, your choices when you begin to say no, or try to break away.

Next, as time goes on they create a them and us mentality. Others mean harm, others want to destroy. They might claim it’s due to envy, or just because they’re just evil and nasty. But the ‘others’ shouldn’t be listened to. This works in the sense that it isolates people from other sources of information and different perspectives. But it also works in the sense that if someone tries to warn you, you’ve already been told they have an ulterior motive. So they portray people as good or bad, heroes or villains. They might play the victimised hero which gives them a sense of moral immunity. Whatever they’re doing, even if it seems cruel and callous, even if it’s illegal, it’s for the greater good. What we often see are double standards but they can be very good at a psychological slight of hand where they can shift contexts to excuse themselves whilst condemning others for the same thing. They may even have examples of bad things that happened to them, how they were badly treated, but it’s generally a one sided version with no real context. So this prevents people from questioning as they don’t want to be seen as someone who is hurts a hurt person.

Next, they reinforce the good vs bad narrative is by using emotional reasoning and interpretations of facts rather than reason. This can involve outrage, being dismissive, laughing at other people’s stupidity or playing the victim. They use labels and slurs against those who question, doubt or challenge. This again prevents people from questioning out of fear of those labels and slurs, the fear of rejection, fear of being seen as the enemy.

They also use logical fallacies and false dichotomies to plant generalisations such as good people do this and bad people do that. This can create cognitive dissonance in people and over time it can coerce people into conforming with their narrative to avoid that dissonance. If the other people are bad, and you don’t want to be associated with bad.

Another common form of manipulation is triangulation, and a highly skilled manipulator isn’t just going to bring people in to induce jealousy, but they bring other people into reinforce their narrative. In coercive relationships people hear things like, “My doctor said you have to stop being like that because it’s causing me distress,” Or, “My therapist said you’re abusive” So they use trusted experts to back them up. They might say, “Other people agree with me, in fact they were talking about how you…” and so on. They claim other people endorse them, their opinion, their position. It’s another way of isolating people, and it can cause people to doubt themselves. No one wants to be in a minority of one.

But if others are agreeing with the narcissistic person it could be that they don’t know the full story, only the version they have presented. Or it could be because they are all in an echo chamber where everyone has the same opinions, beliefs and talking points. An easy to spot sign of an echo chamber and ‘group think’, is when people keep repeating the same slogans but cannot go into any depth about what they mean, but rather respond without word salad, insults or accusations. This could be a sign their critical thinking has been inhibited by the group narrative.

Another common way they condition people is to hijack people’s attention with sudden dramas, important revelations about something, or external threats. A sudden crisis or disaster can create a sense of urgency to comply. When this happens the narcissistic person usually presents it as what it means to them rather than what it actually is. They have knowledge, insight or experience that you don’t have so you’d better listen. Terrible things will happen of you don’t do whatever it is right now.

Lastly, in order to keep people from leaving or exposing them, way back at the beginning they wanted to know all about you, your fears, regrets, secret shames, things you told them in confidence. During the relationship or time you spent with them they may have talked you into doing things that went against your character, but led to believe it was for the greater good, or a special favour or whatever. In the NIXVM cult, the members were encouraged to share their dark secrets, give intimate pictures of themselves as leverage, and the members had all been conditioned to comply. It can be the same in personal relationships. They’ve learned about you, and you’ve been conditioned not to say no, and to trust them. All of these things are brought up as leverage against you. If you leave they’ll expose you. If you disagree they’ll expose you, if you tell anyone anything they’ll expose you. They use your regrets, your poor choices, the things you did for them, your shame, as leverage to keep you to keep you compliant.

It’s important to remember this kind of manipulation doesn’t take place in an afternoon. It can be very subtle and take place over weeks, months, sometimes even years. In some cases, some narcissistic types could have already cultivated a reputation for themselves. You may already have heard stories from their friends and followers about their good works and deeds, Stories about them being kind, generous, decent or whatever. So you have a pre conceived image in your head about them. When you meet them for the first time, whether it’s on a first date, or at an event, they are very friendly and charismatic, which reinforces what you heard about them. In some cases they may have even done a little homework on you.

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