Chapter Four
The Toolkit.
You are joining the dinosaurs on the steep descent to annihilation if you don’t ask WHY your society is stuck on warfare, flawed economics, environmental rape and unsustainable consumerism. WHY has it always been like this?
Naturally, most of you are infinitely smarter and more affluent than me and your learned narrative from childhood has already denounced my findings. For the few remaining readers who feel there is something diabolically wrong with human society and wish to seek a solution, there is a toolkit to help you spot the psychopaths around you. It’s a field guide to help you identify deeply disturbed people who may appear to be wholesome, fascinating individuals at first meeting.
The following list is a litmus test for ASPD people you may encounter and may help you escape an abusive relationship. It may even save your life.
It also gives you a deeper understanding of the ‘people’ who rule you.
This is the first time in human history that people have tools to help them avoid the mayhem of psychopathic encounters.
Seek professional help if you experience too many of the scenarios described below, then run.
Don’t be hung up on the word ‘psychopath,’ it’s only a common word to describe people with advanced Anti-Social Personality Disorders. Any person capable of deliberately harming other people for their personal enjoyment or benefit is not an authentic human being and must be treated with extreme caution.
Here are 20 warning signs of a psychopathic individual:
1. The psychopath will deliberately hurt you.
If he or she hits you, twists your arm, pulls your hair, kicks you, pushes you, or breaks your personal property even once, get out of the relationship. It’s very important to get away from a psychopath at the slightest hint of violence, including verbal aggression, since abuse usually escalates in frequency and severity over time. With absolutely no conscience, the psychopath has no hesitation in murdering you. You cannot change the unchangeable no matter how qualified or loving you may be.
2. Quick Attachment.
The Psychopath has very superficial emotions and connections with others. One of the things that might attract you to the Psychopath is how quickly he or she says ‘I Love You’ or wants to marry or commit to you. In less than a few weeks of dating, you’ll hear that you’re the love of their life, they want to be with you forever. You’ll receive gifts, promises, and be showered with their attention and nice gestures. Psychopaths pour on the charm; they deluge their targets with flattery and gifts at the beginning of the relationship. No matter how promiscuous they really are, they focus their energies on their desirable new target, this behaviour signals shallowness of emotions rather than strength of love.
Normal, healthy individuals require a long process to develop a relationship because there is so much at stake. The rapid warm-up is always a sign of shallow emotions, which later cause the psychopath to detach from you as quickly as they committed.
3. Terrifying Temper.
Eventually the psychopath reveals his or her violent temper. Psychopaths often begin with indirect violence, such as hitting the wall with their fist or throwing objects, but it isn’t long before they start pushing, punching or hitting their partners. The physical outbursts towards inanimate objects function as a form of intimidation. The Psychopaths show their targets that they’re capable of doing the same thing to them. These violent outbursts overtly train partners to accept acts of violence.
4. Destroying Your Self-Confidence.
Psychopaths generally prefer short-term affairs, which provide constant new thrills to relieve the boredom that constantly haunts them. In long-term relationships, it’s nearly impossible to control healthy human beings who have clear boundaries and a strong self-esteem. This is when psychopaths move from the initial over-the-top flattery to scathing criticism. Once they have secured their chosen partner in their grasp, they begin to put them down to erode their self-esteem.
Psychopaths constantly correct your slightest mistakes, making you feel ‘on guard’, unintelligent, and leaving you with the feeling that you are always doing something wrong. This gradually erodes your confidence and allows them to treat you badly, as though you deserved it.
The increased insecurity you experience increases the control exerted by the psychopath.
5. Cutting Off Your Support.
In nature, predators isolate their prey from the rest of the herd to reduce the protection of the herd and allow them to attack and kill their target without harassment. That is precisely what psychopaths do to their human prey; psychopaths isolate their partners from their families, friends and colleagues. They do this through overt criticism and by following partners around when they meet with friends or associates. Psychopaths cunningly turn their victim against their own family and friends, they know your friends and family will influence you and offer negative opinions about the psychopath’s behaviour.
Rather than face the verbal punishment, interrogation, and abuse from the psychopath, you’ll stop talking to family and friends.
6. The Nasty and Sweet Cycle.
The psychopath cycles from nasty to sweet and back again. You may find yourself verbally abused and threatened over some minor event, suddenly; the next day they become sweet, doing all those little things they did when you started dating. The period of sweetness leads the partners of psychopaths to cling to the relationship in the misguided hope of finding what psychologist Susan Forward calls “the magic key” that will make the psychopath stay nice to them. That magic key, however, does not exist. The psychopath invariably cycles back to his real, vile self. Over time, the nasty cycle escalates in severity and increases in duration. It’s interspersed with increasingly fewer ‘nice’ moments, which trap the victim in their own wishful thinking.
The psychopath victims stay in the relationship, hoping each nasty-then-sweet cycle is the last one. The other purpose of the nasty cycle is to allow the psychopath to say hurtful things about you or those you care about, again chipping away at your self-esteem and self-confidence.
7. It’s Always Your Fault.
Psychopaths never accept blame for anything they do wrong; they deny the truth and accuse their victims of wrongdoing. Their twisted logic goes something like this: “I didn’t do it, but even if I did, you deserved it.” They outright lie in the case of abuse and blame partners for provoking them. According to the psychopath, they accuse their victim of lying about being hit or verbally abused. They create a picture of their victims as the ones who were ‘on edge’ and ‘disturbed,’ not the psychopath.
The psychopath never, repeat never, takes personal responsibility for his or her poor behaviour - it’s always the fault of someone else.
8. Breakup Panic.
Psychopaths need to control everything in their lives, especially their romantic relationships. When they get bored with one partner and find a replacement, they can leave them impulsively, heartlessly, often without even bothering to offer an explanation. Psychopaths get very angry when the tables are turned and their partners leave them. The Psychopath panics at the idea of breaking up, unless it’s completely their idea - then you’re dropped like a hot rock.
Abusive boyfriends often break down and cry, they plead, they promise to change, and they offer marriage, holidays and gifts when you threaten to end the relationship.
If you foolishly return to the relationship, escape will be three times as difficult the next time and infinitely more dangerous.
9. No Outside Interests.
To control their victims, psychopaths don’t just isolate them from other people. They also narrow the range of their interests and activities, leading their partners to focus exclusively on them. They give money and gifts, to keep victims financially and emotionally dependent on them. They may follow their partners everywhere to monitor if they are seeing other lovers. If you have an individual activity, they demand that they accompany you, making you feel miserable during the entire event.
The purpose of this is to prevent you from having fun or interests other than those, which they totally control.
10. Paranoid Control.
As a mirror reflection of themselves, psychopaths suspect other people, including their partners, of being manipulative, deceptive and unscrupulous. Psychopaths routinely cheat on their spouses with countless sexual partners and they tend to think their spouses may be cheating on them as well. The psychopath will continually check up on you and keep track of where you are and whom you are seeing. If you speak to a member of the opposite sex, you must explain how you know them and what you were doing.
11. Public Embarrassment.
Psychopaths enjoy putting down their partners in private and publicly, to embarrass and isolate them. They attempt to build a psychological, if not physical, prison around their primary targets. They do everything possible to undermine their partner’s confidence, reduce their sociability, narrow the range of their interests and eliminate all positive human contact from their lives.
In an effort to keep you under control while in public, the psychopath will lash out at you, call you names, or say cruel or embarrassing things about you as you attempt social interaction.
If you foolishly stay with the psychopath, you’ll find yourself politely smiling, saying nothing, and holding on to their arm when in public.
Psychopaths aim to transform strong and proud individuals into doormats.
12. It’s Never Enough.
Incredibly, psychopaths don’t want to have successful, balanced relationships, they want to dominate by destroying their partners psychologically and emotionally. Ultimately, there’s nothing anybody can do to please a psychopath. You find yourself constantly jumping through more and more hoops to try to please them. Through this insidious process, a psychopath wears down his partner’s self-esteem. Eventually, victims feel too insecure to leave the abusive relationship.
The Psychopath convinces you that you are never quite good enough. You don’t say ‘I love you’ enough, you don’t stand close enough, you stand too close, you don’t do enough for them after all their sacrifices, and your behaviour always falls short of what is expected. This is a method of destroying your self-esteem. After months of this regime, they begin telling you how lucky you are to have them, somebody who tolerates a person as inadequate and worthless as you.
13. Entitlement.
Psychopaths believe they are entitled to do and have everything and everyone they want. Laws, ethics and other people’s feelings mean nothing to them. The psychopath has a tremendous sense of entitlement, the belief that they have a perfectly logical right to do whatever they desire.
If you disobey their desires or demands, or violate one of their rules, they feel they are entitled to punish you in any manner they see fit. The psychopath believes that you don’t have the right to object to their mistreatment or to leave them as a result of it.
14. Your Friends and Family Dislike Them.
Psychopaths superficially tend to be pleasant and charming, especially at the beginning of a relationship. Once they have their partner firmly in their grip, they proceed to isolate them from their support system.
As the relationship continues, your friends and family will see what the psychopath is doing to you. They will notice a change in your personality or your withdrawal and they will try to warn you.
The psychopath will tell you they are jealous of the ‘special love’ you have and then use their protest and opinion as further evidence that they are against you, not him. If you fail to heed their advice, your life may be forfeited.
15. Bad Stories.
The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour. There may be exceptions to this general principle and authentic, feeling people can improve their character and behaviour with genuine and consistent effort.
A psychopath can never change their behaviour. If a man cheated on every wife he’s ever been with, it’s highly likely that he’ll cheat on the next one as well. The problem usually isn’t the woman or women he was with, but his underlying lack of character. Psychopaths don’t find anything wrong with their harmful behaviour, they’re perfectly happy with what they are and may even boast about it. This also sends out some obvious warning signals. Psychopaths brag about their temper and violent outbursts because they don’t see anything wrong with violence and actually take pride in the ‘I don’t take nothing from nobody’ attitude. Listen to these stories, they tell you how you will eventually be treated and what’s coming your way.
16. The Waitress Test.
The way people behaved in the past is an indication of how they’ll behave in the future, so how they treat others functions as a good indicator of how you’ll eventually be treated. A person who’s uncaring and unethical towards others will most likely treat you that way when you no longer serve their interests. Psychologists call this ‘the waitress test.’ The way a Psychopath treats people who aren’t useful to them, reveals how they’ll treat you once your expiry date is up. When dating, the way an individual treats a waitress or other neutral person of the opposite sex is the way they will treat you in six months.
During the ‘honeymoon phase’ of a relationship, you will be treated like royalty. If they whine, complain, criticise, and torment, that’s how you’ll be treated in six months’ time. Psychopaths lack consistency in their ‘good’ behaviour because for them, goodness is a facade. The way they treat someone relates strictly to the person’s perceived value.
When people are useful to them, they treat them well. When they are no longer useful, they ignore or mistreat them. Genuine, authentic people treat others cordially, regardless of their perceived usefulness.
If you find yourself dating a man who treats you like a queen and other females like dirt, hit the road. Soon, you’ll be the dirt he walks on, on his way to conquering other temporary queens.
17. The Reputation.
Victims of psychopaths describe them as Jekyll and Hyde personalities. The Jekyll side is a mask they construct to attract, distract and use others. The Hyde side represents their true nature, which becomes increasingly dominant over time. To outsiders, psychopaths may appear to be easy-going, nice people. That’s because people only see one side of them, the fun-loving mask they wear in public. The psychopath’s families see another, much more sinister and dangerous side of their personality.
Any sign of independence from partners means escaping control: something that can’t be tolerated and results in punishment through abuse and possibly elevates to murder. Mentally healthy individuals are consistent in their personality and their behaviour. This is not the case with psychopaths, who may have two distinct reputations. Some people will give you glowing reports and others will warn you that you are in serious trouble.
Pay attention to what others say, trust your own intuition and powers of observation. Pay close attention to how your partner treats you over time and in different circumstances.
Be particularly attuned to how they respond when you express different needs or opinions. Psychopaths can’t tolerate any real assertion of independence from others. Although some psychopaths may consistently maintain the mask of charm in superficial interactions with their friends, colleagues and acquaintances, their vile controlling, selfish and aggressive natures is exposed in extended intimate relationships.
18. Walking on Eggshells.
People entering a relationship with a psychopath, initially feel desirable, in love and valued. Over time, a partner finds himself or herself walking on eggshells. They fear that anything they do or say might trigger the psychopath’s emotional detachment, abuse or hostility. Instead of experiencing the warmth and comfort of love in your relationship, you will be constantly on edge and tense when talking to others as they may say something you’ll have to explain later.
19. Discounted Feelings and Opinions.
Psychopath’s callousness and evil, stems from their selfishness and inability to respect other people. They cannot see fellow human beings as having independent needs and desires.
Those involved with a psychopath, come to realise that their feelings, needs and opinions don’t matter. As Hervey Cleckley’s study of psychopathy concluded, the psychopath’s narcissism is, absolute. The Psychopath is so self-involved and self-worshipping that the feelings and opinions of others are worthless. The Psychopath is extremely hostile toward criticism and often reacts with anger or rage when questioned on their behaviour. Narcissists and psychopaths flatter others only to use and manipulate them. They lack any genuine consideration for others.
20. They Drive You Crazy.
Psychopaths quite literally drive their partners insane. They lie to them to the point where partners start doubting their perception of reality. They discourage and belittle them so they lose their self-confidence and become reclusive. They mistreat them to the point where they’re overcome with rage.
The Psychopath operates in such a damaging way that you find yourself doing ‘crazy’ things in self-defence. While you think you are ‘going crazy,’ it’s important to remember that there is no such thing as ‘normal behaviour’ in a combat situation.
Your behaviour will return to normal if you detach from the psychopath before permanent psychological damage occurs. When involved with a psychopath, you may escape alive, but unless you end the relationship in its earliest stages, you’re not likely to escape unharmed.
Psychopathic seducers can fake decency and love convincingly in the beginning of a relationship, that’s how they manage to attract so many potential partners, but they can’t sustain their mask of sanity over time in intimate contact, since it’s completely fake. If you remain vigilant, you’ll be able to see red flags early on in the relationship with a psychopath despite his veneer of charm and extravagant romantic words and gestures.
Psychotherapist Steve Becker suggests most of his clients recognised the warning signals in their relationships with ASPD partners. They just minimised those signals or completely ignored them. They preferred to focus on their romantic fantasies rather than face an unpleasant reality. According to Becker, the most difficult challenge isn’t noticing the red flags, but actually heeding them. He said, “I find that many of my clients were in fact cognisant of odd, disconcerting behaviours/attitudes that their exploitative partners were reckless enough to reveal (or incapable of concealing). They may have even felt troubled by them, but in their intense need to want the relationship, they found ways to suppress their uneasiness: to ignore and/or minimize the significance of these signals and rationalise the alarms their instincts triggered.”
If you encounter a person, aroused by perverse and forbidden desires rather than by you, yourself, run.
If you encounter a person who appears to offer you the world to gain your trust only to violate his promises or raise the bar higher and higher, run.
If you encounter a man who behaves in a despicable manner towards any other woman, examine his behaviour carefully since that’s how he’ll eventually treat you and, needless to say, run.
If you find yourself involved with someone who hurts you or others, but continually looks for sympathy, you can be 100 per cent certain that person is a cold, calculating psychopath. Incredibly, pity is one of the cards they use most in their game of social manipulation in an attempt to glue people to their web of deceit. Seek professional advice, as the individuals you are dealing with may be extremely dangerous.
Truth is not a convenient fiction. Similarly, love is not a power game for anyone capable of this emotion. Love is the deepest and most significant bond human beings form with one another and the foundation of our lives and society itself. If you encounter a man who gives any signs that he regards love as a game and you as a ‘prize’ to be won, run. Any intimate relationship with a psychopath is a gamble where you risk losing everything, including your life and gain nothing.
They have manipulated you in the most inhumane way possible for their selfish needs and they do not care.
Psychopaths cannot care.
Not now, not ever.
There is limited physical connection to the nurturing area of their brain. Incredibly, psychopaths have substituted the feeling of love and care with their trademark of control, lies, hatred, contempt and violence. Without any moral compass whatsoever, the 'path is free to do whatever they wish with you – and they do, on a scale that is completely unbelievable to a normal, feeling human being. No ordinary, caring human being can comprehend the emotional desert of people suffering psychopathy.
A spiritualist described psychopaths as sadly having their spirit trapped in a cage, as a wild tiger trapped in a zoo. If anyone comes near them emotionally, they can only lash out in fear and frustration. Like a small child, they are unable to understand or control their raw emotions.