DARK PSYCHOLOGY

6 BOOKS IN 1

Introducing Psychology, How To Analyze People,

Manipulation, Dark Psychology Secrets, Emotional
Intelligence & Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,
Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse
© Copyright 2020 by BENEDICT GOLEMAN - All rights reserved.

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 Table of Contents
Introducing Psychology

Introduction
Chapter 1: A Brief History of Psychology
Ancient Psychological Thought
The Philosophy of the Mind
From Philosophical to Scientific
The Spread of Psychology
The Rise of Psychoanalysis
Chapter 2: What is Psychology?
The Study of the Mind
The Psychodynamic Perspective
The Behavioral Perspective
The Cognitive Perspective
The Humanistic Perspective
Chapter 3: Emotional Intelligence and Psychology
Defining Emotional Intelligence
The Pillars of Emotional Intelligence
Emotions and Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Emotional Intelligence and Communication
Chapter 4: Emotions and Psychological State
The Purpose of Emotions
The Cause of Emotions
 The Universal Emotions
Emotions, Moods, and Feelings
Chapter 5: Managing Thoughts and Regulating Emotions
When Thoughts Require Management
Managing Thoughts
Managing your Thoughts and Feelings
Emotional Regulation
Chapter 6: Principles of Psychology and Your Relationships
The Psychology of Relationships
Healthy Relationships
Reciprocity and Relationships
Commitments and Relationships
Expectations and Relationships
Chapter 7: The Psychology of Success
Making Your Own Definition of Success
Psychology of Success and Emotional Intelligence
Developing Emotional Intelligence for Leadership
Chapter 8: Using Psychology to Fight Procrastination
The Problem with Procrastination
Why People Procrastinate
Defeating Procrastination with Psychology
Visualize Your Future
Accountability
Bribes
Conclusion
How To Analyze People with Dark Psychology

Introduction
Chapter 1: Analyzing People
Why Analyze People?
How to Analyze People
When to Analyze People
Chapter 2: Personality Types
What is Personality?
Why Personality Matters
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Identifying Personality Types
Chapter 3: Verbal vs. Nonverbal Communication
Communication
Verbal Communication
Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 4: Reading Body Language
Kinesics
Oculesics
Haptics
Proxemics
Chapter 5: Falsifying Body Language
The Power of Body Language
Why Falsify?
Identifying Others Falsifying Their Body Language
Chapter 6: Detecting Lying
 Deception
Types of Deception
Signs of Deception
Identifying Deception
Why Deception is Used
Chapter 7: Dark Psychology
What is Dark Psychology?
The Dark Triad
Why Use Dark Psychology?
Chapter 8: Dark Psychology and the Mind
How Dark Psychology Works
Example 2: Sales with Dark Persuasion
Example 3: Emotional Manipulation with Dark Psychology
Chapter 9: Analyzing Body Language with Dark Psychology
Analysis with Dark Psychology
Mirroring
Understanding and Analyzing Body Language for Influence
Chapter 10: Dark Psychology’s Effects
Ethical Dark Psychology
Signs of Manipulation
Malicious Dark Psychology
Benevolent Dark Psychology
Conclusion
Manipulation and Dark Psychology

Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Manipulation?
Manipulation
The Process of Manipulation
Manipulation Tactics
Manipulation Techniques
Chapter 2: When and Why to use Manipulation
Who Manipulates?
Why Manipulate?
When Manipulation Occurs
Chapter 3: The Power of Persuasion
What is Persuasion?
Persuasion vs. Manipulation
Using Persuasion
Persuasion in the World
Chapter 4: Mind Control Techniques with Persuasion
Principles of Persuasion
Rhetoric
Chapter 5: Influencing Others with the Science of Persuasive
Psychology
Persuasive Psychology and Influence
Create an Appeal to Needs
Loaded Words
Anchor Biases
 Ask First What You Can Do for the Other Person
Chapter 6: What is NLP?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
The Keys to NLP
The History of NLP
Chapter 7: NLP Basic Principles to Improve Life
Know your outcome
Take action
Sensory acuity
Behavioral Flexibility
Chapter 8: Mind Control with NLP
NLP to Control Minds
Mirroring
Anchoring
Pacing and Leading
Learning to Read Body Language
Chapter 9: Improving Communication Skills
Making Eye Contact
Listening Effectively
Confident Body Language
Chapter 10: NLP for a Successful Life
Dissociation
Content Reframing
Anchoring Yourself
Conclusion
Dark Psychology Secrets

Introduction
Chapter 1: Dark Psychology
Defining Dark Psychology
The History of Dark Psychology
Chapter 2: The Dark Side of Personality
A Note on Empathy
Machiavellianism
Narcissism
Psychopathy
Sadism
Dark Personalities and Abuse
Chapter 3: Manipulation
Defining Manipulation
Using Manipulation
Recognizing the Manipulator
Defending Against Manipulation
Chapter 4: Manipulation Techniques to Control Minds
Mind Control with Implanted Ideas
Using Mind Control
Chapter 5: The Power of Persuasion
What is Persuasion?
Principles of Persuasion
Rhetoric
Chapter 6: Brainwashing
 What is Brainwashing?
Why Brainwash?
Steps to Brainwashing
Chapter 7: Deception
Defining Deception
Types of Deception
Detecting Deception
Chapter 8: NLP Mind Control
What is Neuro-Linguistic Processing?
NLP to Control Minds
NLP and Mirroring
NLP to Create Anchors
NLP and Pace and Lead
Chapter 9: Hypnosis
How Hypnosis Works
Why Use Hypnosis?
Chapter 10: The Benefits of Dark Psychology
Is Dark Psychology Evil?
Reasons to Use Dark Psychology
The Insight of Dark Psychology
Conclusion
Emotional Intelligence & Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy (CBT)

Introduction
Chapter 1: Emotional Intelligence
What is Emotional Intelligence?
The History of Emotional Intelligence
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence in Real Life
The Practicality of Emotional Intelligence
Traits of Emotional Intelligence
Chapter 3: The Pillars of Emotional Intelligence
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Chapter 4: Emotional Intelligence and the Narcissist
What is NPD?
Emotional Intelligence and the Narcissist
Chapter 5: Intro to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
What is CBT?
How CBT Works
Why CBT is Used
Negative Thinking and CBT
Chapter 6: Cognitive Therapy and Behavioral Therapy
 Understanding Cognitive Therapy
Understanding Behavioral Therapy
Chapter 7: Anxiety
What is Anxiety?
CBT and Anxiety
Chapter 8: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques to Eliminate
Anxiety
Affirmations
Graded Exposure
What-If Roleplays
Chapter 9: Depression
What is Depression?
Types of Depression
Depression and CBT
Chapter 10: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques to Eliminate
Depression
Successive Approximation
Goal Setting
Activity Scheduling
Chapter 11: Insomnia
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia and CBT
Chapter 12: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques to Eliminate
Insomnia
Stimulus Control
Sleep Restriction
Relaxation Training
Chapter 13: Anger
 What is Anger?
Anger and Motivation
When Anger Becomes Problematic
Chapter 14: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques to Eliminate
Anger Issues
Anger Disruption
Cognitive Change
Acceptance and Forgiveness
Chapter 15: Social Skills
Mirroring
Empathizing
Making Good Eye Contact
Active Listening
Understanding Body Language
Conclusion
Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

Introduction
Chapter 1: Abuse in Relationships
What is Abuse?
Who is Abused?
Reasons for Abuse
Types of Abuse
Effects of Abuse
The Cycle of Abuse
The Challenges of Escaping Abuse
Chapter 2: Recognizing Emotional Abuse
Signs of Emotional Abuse within the Relationship
Identifying Emotional Abuse Toward Yourself
Effects of Emotional Abuse
Emotional Abuse Tactics
Chapter 3: Fighting Emotional Abuse
Identifying and Acknowledging
Preparing to Leave
Avoid Triggering Abuse
Stress Management
Self-Care
Refusing to Engage
Avoiding Personalization
Chapter 4: Recovering from Emotional Abuse
Take Time to Grieve
 Reclaim Your Life
Create Your Boundaries—and Enforce Them
Forgive Yourself
Reclaim Your Narrative
Seek Professional Help
Chapter 5: The Narcissistic Abuser
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
The Narcissist
The Narcissist’s Target
Identifying Narcissistic Abusers
Chapter 6: Narcissistic Abuse
Signs of Narcissistic Abuse
Mirroring and the Narcissist
Love Bombing and the Narcissist
Gaslighting and the Narcissist
Projection and the Narcissist
DARVO and the Narcissist
Chapter 7: The Effects of Narcissistic Abuse
Echoism
Losing Self-Confidence
Becoming Codependent
Mental Health Issues
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Chapter 8: Disarming the Narcissist
Cut Off Contact Completely
Become the Grey Rock
Take Advantage of Time
Create and Enforce Boundaries
 Create Some Distance
Chapter 9: Leaving the Abusive Relationship
Get Your Ducks in a Row
Create a Safety Plan
Create an Escape Plan
The Aftermath
Chapter 10: Staying Free
Find Support
Write Down Your Reasons for Leaving
Find a Hobby
Chapter 11: The Importance of Empathy
What is Empathy?
Types of Empathy
Empathy to Fight Narcissism
Empathy to Increase Self-Awareness
Empathy to Build Self-Esteem
Chapter 12: Protecting Yourself Against Future Abuse
Building Confidence
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Emotional Intelligence
Affirmations
Conclusion
 Introducing Psychology

Psychological Guide to Improve Emotional

Intelligence and Develop a Strong
Personality for Success, Positive Thinking,
Mindfulness, Trust and to Block
Procrastination
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing Introducing Psychology, and thank you for

doing so.

Have you ever wondered why people do what they do? Or what makes you
think or act the way you do? Usually, people pride themselves as being
particularly unique. We assume that we are entirely autonomous, able to
make decisions on what we want, and need with ease. We assume that there
is no way that someone else can control our actions or feelings simply
because we are superior beings and entirely rational.

However, people tend to forget that, at the root, they are not as powerful as
they try to make themselves out to be. Our methods of thinking are not
unique in any sense—in fact, the thinking of other people can be regularly
and readily predicted by those who study it. In particular, everything that
you do reduces down to a certain triggering of neural impulses via brain
chemistry. That feeling of falling in love is nothing but hormones and
electrical impulses, as is the anger that you feel when someone wrongs you,
and the joy that you feel when you are finally able to hold your newborn
child for the first time. Effectively, everything is able to be reduced down to
simple numbers. Just as the computer processes all of its functions in
impulses, so too does the brain.
Psychology seeks to understand the why and how of what happens in the
mind. In particular, it is the scientific study of the mind. Of course, there are
different interpretations of what that could mean. It could be the
understanding of what the mind does and seeing exactly how, on a
biological level, it works. It could be watching to understand the behaviors
themselves. Ultimately, what is important in psychology is figuring out
exactly what is going on within the human mind in order to understand how
it functions and how to predict behaviors.

Understanding psychology can help you better understand people

themselves. When you know the reasons why people get attached, how
these attachments occur, and how to facilitate that sort of attachment, you
can very effectively understand how to work around them. If you know that
certain things will get certain reactions, you can ensure that you always get
the best reactions from those that you interact with.

Within this book, you will be introduced to entry-level psychology. You

will get an idea of the history of psychology and how it has changed over
time with advancements in technology and what people can do. You will
see how there are several perspectives through which you can address
behaviors and actions as well. You will see how psychology impacts every
aspect of your life, looking in-depth at emotional intelligence and
psychology, the emotional state of someone else and psychology, and more.
You will gain a solid understanding of what emotions are, how they are
believed to occur, and why we have them. You will learn about the seven
universal emotions and what they are meant to convey. You will learn about
managing those very emotions, as well as any thoughts that may underlie
them in an art known as cognitive behavioral therapy, which is used in
order to combat mental health issues such as anxiety or anger. You will
then be guided through three distinct concepts: How psychology impacts
your relationship, your chances at success, and how it can ward off
procrastination. When you understand these concepts, you can then begin to
take action, taking advantage of your newfound knowledge of how the
mind works in order to ensure that you are able to do always put your best
foot forward. You can use your knowledge of how your mind works to
benefit your relationships, help yourself move toward success, and to fight
procrastination.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible; please enjoy!
 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Psychology

For as long as people have been able to record history, they have been
interested in understanding the mind. People have been interested in the
study of behavior and how the mind works even in ancient Greece. This is
significant—people have been trying to figure out how people work and
why they work the way that they do for as long as they have been
recording.

Of course, in the ancient days, the explanations were often filled with spells
and exorcisms that were designed to drive away the demons that were
assumed to be the root cause. What is significant about this is the fact that it
began the look at the human mind, creating a clearly defined point between
what is considered normal behaviors versus what would be considered to be
a problematic sort of behavior that people reject. It was known that certain
patterns of behaviors were problematic and not within the realm of
normalcy—the people seeking to understand how to treat these abnormal
behavioral patterns were engaging in a sort of primitive psychology.

The history of psychology has come a long way from believing that people
with abnormal behavior are possessed and require some sort of exorcising
in order to treat them. Nowadays, people’s proverbial demons are able to be
addressed and treated through other means, such as with medication and
therapeutic processes, to ensure that people get what they need in order to
thrive.
Within this chapter, we will see a comparison of then and now, as well as
looking at key moments in between. Understanding the evolution of how
this information was discovered and why it has worked the way that it does
is critical to better understanding people in general. We will see how what
was once the philosophy of the mind and thought eventually shifted over
into modern psychology that is actionable.

Keep in mind that, as you read this, you are getting a condensed timeline of
some of the most notable moment in psychology. There is more to it than
just what is presented to you, but in order to avoid writing a book of its
own, you will be provided just the gist of what happened within each of the
steps from ancient psychology all the way to modern cognitivism.
Ancient Psychological Thought
Even in ancient history, there was a need to understand the mind, the brain,
and the workings of humankind. In fact, some of the first medical
recordings in history will relate to the brain and behavior. People sought to
understand how not only the body worked, but how to heal it as well.
Around the world, it is possible to find all sorts of documentation on how
psychology has developed, from Egypt to China, and from Greece to India.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus

Perhaps the most ancient known acknowledgment of the brain and how it
worked is found in the Edwin Smith Papyrus. Named for the individual that
bought it in the 1800s, this scroll is believed to date back to around 1600
BCE. In particular, this scroll described details on actively treating several
different medical conditions and injuries that are important to understand.
These not only include injuries and attempts to treat ailments such as a
gaping wound, but also information about the brain, the nerves, and how the
injuries of certain types can create certain unintended side effects.

In particular, it was discussed that brain injuries would impair both motor
and sensory functions. This is relevant—it identifies the fact that the brain
is responsible for controlling the body. Not only were the injuries noted, but
also noted the first explanations that were ever recorded of the structures of
the brain, as well as how to treat injuries and when to know not to. ‘
While this particular document did not explain much about behaviorism, it
does create a foundation for the idea of psychology and the brain becoming
a legitimate medical and, therefore, scientific field. The knowledge
involved in this scroll was found to far exceed even Hippocrates, believed
to be the founder of modern medicine, who lived 1000 years after the
penning of these scrolls.

The First Psychology Experiment

Perhaps the beginning of psychological study, however, came with the

experimentation of Lin Xie in the 6th century AD. This experiment sought to
understand how vulnerable people were to being distracted, and in
particular, they involved the active testing of several people to determine
what they were capable of doing when distracted.

In particular, Lin Xie had people drawing a square with one hand while
actively drawing a circle with the other in order to determine if they could
control both sides of their body in different manners at the same time.
While this does not provide much insight to us today, it is commonly
believed to be the birth of the study of the mind and what humanity can do
as an experimental science. Just as with the Edwin Smith Papyrus, then, this
is important to recognize not for the contribution itself, but because it began
to set the stage to understand psychology as a science instead of as an
aspect of philosophy.

The Vedanta

Moving forward in history, the next major acknowledgment of psychology

could be seen in India’s Vedanta. This was a series of Buddhist
philosophical writing that acknowledged the sense of self. In particular, it
addressed several concepts that anyone with even a little bit of psychology
knowledge would recognize as common psychological keywords. In
particular, the Vedanta addressed feelings of the mind in several ways.
These were recognizing aggregates, emptiness, the non-self, and
mindfulness.
In particular, aggregates encompassed the understanding of five distinct
concepts. These were form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and
consciousness. Form acknowledged the physical or material existence of
anything, in particular in relation to the four elements of earth, water, fire,
or wind. Sensation referred to any sort of sensory interaction with objects in
ways that are either positive, negative, or neutral. Perception referred to the
understanding of a sensory and mental process. Effectively, it allows for the
recognition and labeling of something, such as the acknowledgment that the
furry little quadrupedal animal in front of you is a cat, or that the plant next
to you is the color green. Mental formations refer to the ability to create an
understanding of activities. It is the idea of conditioning a feeling or action
based upon the exposure to an object. Finally, consciousness refers to an
awareness of something around or in front of you, as well as an ability to
understand its components.

Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn al-Balkhi and the Psyche

As we move on from India into the Middle-East, we meet a Persian scholar

who was particularly interested in science and psychology. He was the first
to introduce mental health and mental hygiene, treating them as a method to
treat the soul. In particular, he penned Sustenance for Body and Soul,
calling it a form of spiritual health. In his work, he described that physical
and mental health are directly connected to each other, recognizing that
spiritual and psychological health are intricately intertwined and that
doctors of the day would emphasize too much on the body without ever
treating the mind as well.
In particular, he asserted that because of the fact that people are both their
soul (or mind) and body, it is important that they must both be healthy. In
addition, he was certain that if the body gets sick, then the psyche loses its
ability to function, referring to the fact that when you are sick physically,
you usually feel exhausted, foggy, and unable to really properly function. If
the psyche gets sick, then, of course, the body would also struggle, leading
to physical responses to mental illnesses.

Additionally, he was the first to recognize that there is a difference between

neurosis and psychosis, asserting that neurosis is distressing, but still allows
for functioning, whereas psychosis involves a disconnect between reality
and fantasy. He identified four distinct emotional disorders, which you may
recognize as being quite similar to several of the more commonly known
disorders of today. These were fear and anxiety, anger and aggression,
sadness and depression, and obsession. When discussing depression, three
types were considered: normal depression, endogenous depression that is a
response to something physical, and clinical depression, which is more
reactive.

Al-Balkhi also was able to identify treatment for these sicknesses, such as
talking through a loss, advising, and counseling, and also internal manners,
such as learning to develop other methods of thinking in order to help cope
with them. Effectively, this was the first real step toward the psychology
that you know today.
The Philosophy of the Mind
Up until relatively recently, psychology was not seen as a science the way
that it is today. Rather, it was considered a branch of philosophy until well
into the 1800s. If you are familiar with philosophy at all, you may recognize
some of the bigger names that are discussed here. Influential philosophers,
such as Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, David Hume, and John Locke all
busied themselves with ways to tackle the mystery of the human mind. Ever
the deep thinkers, these philosophers sought to address why we behave the
way that we do, coming up with ideas that would become the forefront of
modern-day psychology.

Rene Descartes

Even if you are not particularly savvy with philosophers, you are likely
familiar with Descartes. Considered the father of modern philosophy, he
was responsible for spreading far more than just philosophical ideas or
thoughts—he also contributed greatly toward calculus, and more
importantly to this book, the idea of dualism: a concept within psychology
that recognizes that there is an inherent difference between the mind and the
body. Effectively, dualism declares that the mind is one thing that is not
physical, compared to the brain, which is physical and recognizes the split
between the two.

With his monumental words, “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think; therefore, I am),
Descartes tackled the concept of dualism head-on. He recognized that the
mind and body had to interact somewhere, believing that the pineal gland
was the area through which the mind can interact with the body.
In his work, The Passions of the Soul, written in 1646, he declared that
there were animal spirits that influenced the human soul—these spirits were
known as passions, and there were six that he identified. These were
wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness. As you can identify, these are
quite similar to the universal emotions, missing only a few of them.
Effectively, the thought was that the pineal gland served as the connection
between the soul (or mind) and body, but the animal spirits could sort of
hijack that connection, causing the body to react in ways that are not
necessarily intended.

John Locke

Continuing along with the theme of philosophers and psychology, we must

now look at John Locke. In particular, he was interested in the cognitive
abilities of people. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke
attempted to address the foundation of human knowledge. He determined
that the mind was effectively a blank slate at birth, with nothing stored
within it. Think of the newborn mind, then, as a brand new hard-drive that
has not yet been hooked up to your computer .He then described that,
through time, the mind was filled with information and learning via
experience. He was determined to reject the commonly accepted idea of
innate ideas, such as the idea that all people are born with the ability to do
or believe something.

Locke, however, rejected that concept and stated that the idea of innate
ideas, such as recognizing something as sweet, comes not because humans
innately understand sweetness, but rather because the exposure to sweetness
occurs incredibly early on before children are able to begin communicating
what they know. Effectively, Locke addressed the idea of learning and
knowledge.

David Hume

In the mid-1700s, the continuous pursuit for understanding of the human

mind continued with David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, designed
to be a sort of combination between empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.
Effectively,
He discussed the idea of ethics in relation to the mind—he described that
people were enslaved to their passions, marking a difference between
morality versus reason. Effectively, he wanted to address how and why
people make the decisions that they do.

Hume also addressed his own theory of mind and the passions—he
determined that what we would refer to as emotions and desires (Hume’s
“passions”) are impressions instead of being ideas. The passions felt, fear,
grief, joy, hope, aversion, and desire, come directly in response from pain or
pleasure. Further, his indirect passions, such as pride, shame, love, and hate,
are a bit more complex and indirect—unlike the passions listed previously,
indirect passions do not drive behavior but rather influence thinking.

This can be summarized as attempting to identify how our feelings toward

situations determine behaviors. While there is far more to Hume than just
learning about emotions, this is the most relevant portion to the furthering
of psychology.
Immanuel Kant

German philosopher Immanuel Kant helped propel psychology even closer

to becoming its own proper discipline through his own writing. Kant felt
that psychology of his own day was far too out of touch with true human
experience, focusing too much on internal processes. Instead, he sought to
look into how the mind worked. He wanted to answer questions about how
knowledge is attained, how much we can know about an object, or how we
could even learn to begin with.

In the psychology of his time, knowledge was nothing but a replication of

the external world within the mind. However, Kant acknowledged that the
mind is far too complex to simply be a reflection for sensory input, and
instead said that we gain knowledge through cognitive faculties.
Effectively, we learn from our environment, but what we learn is not
exactly what we see in front of us—it must be interpreted. The mind does
not just learn—it receives input, understands that input, processes that
input, and then learns from it, all of which are united by the sense of self.
Effectively, the mind is a conglomerate of all of the mental faculties coming
together.
From Philosophical to Scientific

Eventually, the bridge from philosophy to its own discipline arose. Up until
the mid-1800s, it was seen as little more than theory, left to the philosophers
to debate and understand amidst their politics and metaphysics. However,
over time, it became clear that psychology varied greatly from true
philosophy. While both were endlessly fascinated with understanding why
something happened or how it worked, psychology was not dependent upon
logic. Philosophy itself is an incredibly logic-driven field—everything must
fit within certain boundaries, and if they do not fit within those boundaries,
then they are likely to be rejected from philosophical discussion.

However, as psychology grew more and more complex, with questions to

consider, such as why some people tended to behave one way in response to
one thing, but another person would respond entirely different, it became
clear that psychology would require more than just logic and observation. It
required experimentation.

It was the growing understanding of physiology as well as the need for

scientific studies that began to really propel psychology into its own
discipline, entirely separate from philosophy. It became clear that the
continued study of the mind would require that level of scientific structure
toward it, as seen through the work of the mid-1800s German physiologist,
Wilhelm Wundt.

Wilhelm Wundt and the Principles of Physiological Psychology

In 1874, Wundt published a book known as Principles of Physiological
Psychology. This was largely considered to be one of the first links between
physiology and the study of human cognition and behavior. His opening of
the world’s first psychology lab in 1879 became known as the beginning of
psychology of its own, and he began to push for empirical studies.

Wundt focused on psychology as the study of consciousness, using

experiments in order to study mental processes. The only way that this was
possible at the time was through the use of introspection. Introspection was
the act of informal reflection, as well as what Wundt defined as the process
of experimental self-observation. Effectively, he would take several people
and then train them to become their own psychologists; he taught them how
to carefully analyze their own thoughts as free from judgment or bias as
possible.

Of course, most people see Wundt’s methods of gathering data to be about

as far from unbiased as they could be—after all, there is no way to truly
monitor the inner workings of someone else’s mind in order to test for
veracity, and because of that, his methods today would likely be rejected as
unscientific, but there is no doubt that this research was monumental in
propelling psychology into its own discipline.

Wundt’s lab educated an estimated 17,000 students, spreading the idea of

psychology as its own concept far and wide. It is undeniable that, while
many of his ideas were disconfirmed and made less influential over time,
his own actions did act as the catalyst in the shift toward scientific
psychology.
The Spread of Psychology

With Wundt’s spread of psychology through his educational lab, several

other branches began to pop up as well. In particular, two became notable in
the progress of psychology: Structuralism and functionalism. These were
the first two schools in a chain of many that psychology would grow to see.
They provided paradigms through which to look at the impact of
psychology, using several common rules and thoughts that would guide the
process.

Edward Titchener and Structuralism

Structuralism became the first school of thought of psychology. Within this

school of thought, it was believed that the consciousness could be divided
into smaller components, and through understanding those components, you
would be able to begin to understand the mind. Like Wundt, Titchener made
use of introspection as the primary mode of collecting data. Titchener made
it a point to use several aspects of Wundt’s psychology, though it all had his
own spin.

Unfortunately, structuralism never really took hold in the field, and as

Titchener eventually died, so too did structuralism.

William James and Functionalism

With the rise of one school of psychology, several others began to pop up as
well, all vying for the domination of the field. In almost a direct response
and challenge to Titchener’s structuralism came functionalism. One of the
first major American psychologists, William James, wrote a book known as
The Principles of Psychology. With this book, he managed to dominate the
American psychology field, and his book very quickly became the new
standard that was used. The information within this book was not directly
titled to be functionalism, but it did serve as the basis for the school of
thought.

As functionalism came onto the scene, it brought about an understanding of

how behaviors function. IN particular, it cared about learning how
behaviors benefit anyone at all. They sought to see how certain behaviors
were conducive to the situation while others were far less so. Effectively,
while both structuralism and functionalism emphasized the study of the
unconscious mind, functionalism prioritized looking at consciousness as a
continuous process through which everything was processed.

Functionalism, too, died off after a while, though the theories left behind
were still quite influential.
The Rise of Psychoanalysis

In the late 1800s, another familiar name to most people entered the
limelight: Sigmund Freud. An Austrian neurologist, he became the founder
of psychoanalysis. What set psychoanalysis apart from its counterparts was
primarily the ability to begin therapeutically treating issues that have arisen.
Effectively, the idea of psychoanalysis pushes forth the idea of the
unconscious mind that drives everything, and in taking information from
the unconscious to the conscious part of the mind, you can achieve catharsis
—the ability to cope with the issue at hand.

Effectively, Freud founded what would become one of the most influential
aspects of modern psychology: The art of therapy. The principles of
psychoanalysis very closely align with what you would see in modern
techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy, in which it is believed that
unconscious thoughts influence your feelings, which drive certain
behaviors, and that you can begin to restructure those thoughts into
something more functional if you were to bring them to the conscious mind
to address them.

Psychoanalysis brought with it the psychodynamic approach to psychology,

stepping away from the ideas of the past and instead focusing on the fact
that the mind has several aspects to it that must be considered.

Today, many of Freud’s own aspects are considered quite outdated, such as
believing that everything is motivated by sex and sexual aggression.
However, the principles he used in treating other people remain incredibly
influential in today’s psychology.
And with that, we have arrived at the first of the modern perspectives of
psychology. That was an overview of thousands of years of development,
taking psychology from theoretical philosophy to a hard science that is
driven by evidence, numbers, and the scientific method.
 Chapter 2: What is Psychology?

With the history of psychology behind us, it is time to begin to delve into
the understanding of psychology as a field. Psychology itself is incredibly
influential—it is necessary to be able to understand the mind in order to
truly treat the mind. As we learn more and more about the mind, it becomes
imperative that our ability to study it grows as well. Whereas before, it was
assumed that some sort of emotional upset was a direct result of a demon or
spirit, it is now known to be caused by other causes, such as personality
disorders or mental illnesses. Sometimes, it is biological in nature, such as
having a physical structure of the brain that is different, while other times, it
involves learned responses to a situation or to stimuli.

Nevertheless, psychology itself, as a study of the mind, is critical to learn.

As it is learned and developed, we gain so much more insight into what is
going on with other people. We learn to acknowledge what holds other
people back and what drives them forward. We see what drives people to
behave altruistically or to take care of their family, and what drives them to
harm others. To understand psychology is to understand being human and to
understand being human is to be able to understand how to treat others with
kindness and empathy.
The Study of the Mind
By definition, psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior,
and it has done that. However, there is so much to the mind and behavior;
think of all of the fields within psychology that exist. There are fields
dedicated to understanding normal human development, seeing how
children grow and learn. Other fields look at abnormal psychology and take
a look at how it matters and how to treat it. Some people study how to
learn, while others look at how drugs and other substances may impact the
body and mind. At the end of the day, psychology covers anything to do
with the mind, both mentally and physically.

Psychology achieves this by having four main goals: To describe, explain,

predict, and change the way that people think and act. We will go over each
of these goals in a moment, but what is critical to understand here is that
these goals drive psychology forward. They make it clear that we act in
certain manners for certain reasons and see, to figure it out in order to make
any changes if necessary.

Describe
The first goal is to describe behaviors and thought processes. This is critical
if you want to be able to understand general rules that are typically
exhibited in behavior. For example, if you want to be able to tell how
someone is going to behave, you would look at several instances that show
exactly how they are going to behave. We observe infants playing to figure
out that at some point, something changes and they no longer think that
something ceases to exist when it is out of sight. We watch how children
interact with each other without guidance to identify when altruistic
behavior starts to develop.

Describing and observing create a critical first step precisely because they
are responsible for developing a base understanding of standard behavior. In
being able to analyze, you must figure out a base norm in order to figure out
where the deviations from the norm are.

Explain

After being able to describe the processes of other people, explaining is the
second goal. Upon being able to describe what occurs, such as watching the
infants seem to come to the realization that, even when mom and dad are
out of sight, they still exist, the law can start to be assembled. They can start
to figure out why this happens. This is what happens during the second goal
of psychology—explaining.

Usually, this goal involves understanding what happened—it looks at the

description of what has happened in the describe stage and then begins to
come up with several theories that may or may not support it. These
theories are meant to come up with whatever the explanation is for that
particular behavior.

Effectively, the psychologists will try to figure out the most reasonable
explanation for why someone does something and then tries to test it.

Predict

As the empirical research yields potential explanations for the behavior

being studied, psychology then moves toward prediction as the primary
goal. During this stage, the explanations created in the previous step are
taken and tested. If they fail to meet expectations, they are removed from
the list, and they will try to come up with something else.

For example, assume that you have been watching your child seem utterly
baffled when you disappear and reappear playing peekaboo. You can then
assume that your child thinks that you are gone when you disappear. You
then predict that your child will react with the same sense of bafflement
when you take that ball that he was playing with and cover it up with a
blanket because the child will be looking for his ball. You test this out, and
sure enough, your explanation was correct.

Change

Finally, once you have been able to describe, explain, and predict the
behaviors, you can then begin to understand how to influence change in
other people. You may look to help control a negative behavior, such as
someone who suffers from anxiety learning to cope with those feelings. You
may make it a point to look at someone who has obsessive-compulsive
disorder, figure out their triggers, and then figure out how best to help them
change that behavior.

Effectively, change allows for behaviors to be modified in order for people

to develop healthy coping mechanisms, even when they are faced with
difficult situations, disorders, or struggles that make otherwise normal
functioning difficult. You can learn how to overcome phobias once you can
understand and predict the cause, or you can learn to fix issues with
emotional regulation. You can challenge depression. You can correct
negative thoughts. You can effectively begin treating the other person’s
mind when you know how the mind is implicated.

The study of psychology can largely be broken down into five distinct
perspectives—each wishes to focus on an entirely different part of the mind.
These different perspectives are the biological perspective, the
psychodynamic perspective, the behavioral perspective, the cognitive
perspective, and the humanistic perspective. Effectively, someone who
looks at an issue such as depression from the biological perspective is going
to be focused on the biology behind the depression being studied—it will
look at neurotransmitters and areas of the brain that are responsible for the
feelings. However, someone in the behavioral perspective may be looking
for the way that the external world is directly responsible for influencing
those feelings of depression.

We will take a look at all five of these perspectives to get a solid working
idea of all aspects of what is happening within the mind. While having one
specific focus can be incredibly useful, it takes all five to put together a
proper, complete view of what is happening.

The Biological Perspective

As you may have assumed, the biological approach is all about how your
body impacts your mind. In particular, it is an attempt to understand the link
between the mental states and body of someone else. If you are feeling
happy, what is going on in the body? There is a physiological change in
response to your feelings, and the biological perspective is incredibly
interested in looking into it. Effectively, then, you will be looking into how
the brain works.

Within the biological perspective, effectively, you and your consciousness

are all the collective sum of your body. Your brain all comes together to
work through electrical impulses and chemicals, and those tiny impulses are
what create you. In the great debate of nature vs. nurture, this is the nature
part. It believes that the biology of the brain and body are what are
important in determining the behaviors and thoughts of the other person.

Just like the other perspectives, the biological perspective is entirely

interested in understanding people and their behaviors. However, they want
to look at other aspects. Genetics come into play, as do physical changes to
the brain. They may take a special interest in how genetics influence all
sorts of aspects of personality, like depression or anxiety, or how brain
damage can lead to several issues in ability or behavior. In particular,
biological psychologists will look into identical twins, learning as much as
they can about the tendencies of people versus what they actually do.

When you are using the biological perspective, you are likely going to use
tools to observe the brain as directly as possible. Scans such as a PET or
MRI can allow psychologists to view the brain’s physical structure in order
to begin to make inferences on the behavioral aspects of the person.

In particular, the biological perspective is a powerful one to take—when

you use the biological perspective, you are effectively ensuring that you
understand the physiology, and sometimes, that is enough. If you know that
someone has suffered from a massive stroke and can see exactly where the
damage is, for example, you can begin to predict exactly what parts of their
behavior are likely to be impacted. It also means that certain behavioral
changes may be approached as a sign of a physical medical issue, such as a
brain injury or a tumor.

This is also the perspective that would be responsible for ensuring that
medication is effective. When the physiological cause is understood, it
becomes far easier to begin identifying how best to medicate the issue. If
there are certain parts of the brain that are struggling to create enough of a
certain neurotransmitter, for example, then that can be medicated for in
order to help the body to then help the mind.
The Psychodynamic Perspective

The psychodynamic approach began with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis,

but it did grow over time to encompass several other theories as well, such
as the theories of Karl Jung, Erik Erikson, and Alfred Adler. Within the
psychodynamic theory, it is believed that early childhood events influence
almost everything. Effectively, during the early childhood period, you are
particularly susceptible to being damaged and therefore internalizing issues
within your unconscious mind. These lead to behavioral problems that are
the results of the unconscious mind.

In particular, you will see within the psychodynamic perspective; the

emphasis is placed on the unconscious mind. Think of the mind like an
iceberg—only the tip is visible. You can see the conscious part of the mind
or the tip of the iceberg, but the vast majority of it is hidden beneath the
surface of the water. Effectively, the unconscious mind houses almost
everything. All of your motivational impulses are housed in the
unconscious. Your feelings will come from it, your motives will be rooted
in it, and your decisions will be based upon it.

The unconscious mind, while incredibly powerful, is also incredibly

impressionable. This, then, pushes the focus of human behavior from nature
to nurture.

Further, within the psychodynamic perspective, you see three parts of

personality that arise: The id, the ego, and the super-ego.
Your id refers to the instincts—it is inherited and holds all of your natural
personality and behavioral tendencies. Your ego is the part of the mind that
is meant to sort of mitigate the demands and desires of the id, which is
primarily quite unrealistic, and the world around you. This is the part that
makes decisions. Finally, the superego is the series of values and morals
that are learned from both society and parents.

The id and super-ego are considered the unconscious mind—they both fight
to win the favor of the mind (ego). Effectively, your instinctive tendencies
toward sex and aggressive behavior will constantly be trying to get you to
act impulsively, while the learned portion is trying to keep you in line in
order to guarantee that you will not do something that you should not be.

The conflict leads to anxiety, which the ego must cope with somehow.
These coping mechanisms become the method through which you behave.
Effectively, then, the conscious mind is the slave for the unconscious mind,
with the unconscious mind making the decisions and controlling. However,
the unconscious mind is also influenced regularly by external features and
instances. A trauma can, for example, lead to a change in the unconscious
mind, which is then noticeable in the behavior.
The Behavioral Perspective

The behavioral perspective places emphasis on the environment on your

behaviors. It asserts that you can effectively be trained to do just about
anything if someone is willing to put in the effort to do so. When you
believe in the behavioral perspective, you reject the idea of free will—you
effectively declare that all behavior is learned through either reinforcements
or punishment.

Reinforcements refer to consequences that occur after a behavior that is

either positive or negative. Positive refers to the fact that something was put
in place, whereas negative refers to the act of something being removed. In
this case, positive reinforcement is a pleasant situation that is added to
encourage the behavior to continue. A negative reinforcement, then, is a
situation being removed, usually an unpleasant one, in response to a
behavior in order to encourage it to continue happening in the future.

On the other hand, punishment is the act of something happening to

discourage a behavior. It is the opposite of reinforcement in the sense that it
is designed to be discouraging while reinforcement is enforcing. Like
reinforcement, punishment can be both positive and negative. For example,
positive punishment could entail adding extra chores in retaliation for not
listening or lying about a situation. On the other hand, negative
reinforcement is the act of removing something pleasing in order to deter
the behavior in the future. For example, imagine that your teen daughter has
not turned in several assignments, and she has her cell phone taken away
until she gets them all in. You took away something pleasant, in this case,
her cell phone, in order to discourage the behavior of continuing to miss
assignments.

Behaviorists believe that the above processes are what cause behavior to
continue or discontinue. When you enjoy a situation or get something
pleasant in response, you want to encourage doing something. When you
realize that you have the same bad response every time you try to do
something, you are going to learn not to do that behavior any more out of
wanting to avoid the negative stimulus. Effectively, in behaviorism,
thoughts do not matter—behaviors do. It does not matter how angry
someone is about the consequences or how unfair your child believes losing
her cell phone was—all that matters is the end result.
The Cognitive Perspective

Cognitive psychologists, on the other hand, assert that behavior is

determined due to expectations. You have a certain thought about a
situation and expect it to behave that way. Effectively, then, you make
expectations that are informed based upon what you already know and try
to make the proper inferences in your behavior. In this instance, you are
solving problems and interacting with the world based on the memory of
what has happened in the past. You assume that what has happened in the
past will happen again in the future, or you make assumptions based on
similar events.

This takes humanity away from the idea of being completely devoid of free
will and instead as something that is capable of thoughts and feelings again.
Of course, this also brings with it far more complication than was present
otherwise.

Imagine that you have plans to go out with friends for the night. You
assume that the night will be full of fun—you and your friends would leave
the kids at home, go to a movie, and then have dinner and a few drinks at
your favorite restaurant. You get yourself all dressed up and ready, but
when you arrive at the meeting place, you realize that two of your three
friends have brought their children with them, which means that movie that
you have wanted to see is no longer on the table, nor is having a few drinks
with dinner, as there are little eyes there.

In this instance, you are probably quite disappointed. You had certain
expectations, only to have them completely overthrown, and that can be
incredibly difficult for some people to cope with. However, according to
cognitivists, you are not disappointed because of the fact that your friends
brought their children along to what was supposed to be a kid-free event—
you are annoyed because your own expectations were completely and
utterly thrown out the window. The fact that the instance did not line up
with your own expectations is why you are annoyed and disappointed. It is
that thought process and the disconnect that is the root of the
disappointment, not the fact that the other parties did something
unexpected.

This is where the idea of other people not being responsible for your own
feelings comes from—only your own thoughts can influence your behavior,
and no one else is responsible for them. Even if someone else does not live
up to your own expectations, it is your own job to figure out how to manage
that disappointment.
The Humanistic Perspective

Finally, the humanistic approach to psychology emphasizes that humans are

motivated by their own inherent goodness. Effectively, people need to be
empowered in order to become the best person that they are able to be.
They want to offer support without the guidance, to empower individuals to
make their own decisions.

Humanistic psychology approaches the situation in a way that directly

rejects those behaviorist and psychodynamic approaches that are believed to
be too limiting. Instead, people are believed to be entirely free to make their
own decisions, and inherently, they will always strive to be better. Those
who use the humanistic approach emphasize the idea that people will
actively work toward improvement, seeking to overcome difficult situations
in order to attain what is known as self-actualization—satisfaction in life.

Effectively, the driving force behind behaviors is not the brain or the
environment, but rather the inherent drive people have to better themselves
and their situation. Of course, this comes with its own implications as well
—humanistic studies inherently reject scientific methodology. They instead
focus on qualitative research, like discussing situations. These are
effectively useful for individual studies to understand an individual person
without trying to figure out the entirety of humankind’s behavior.
 Chapter 3: Emotional Intelligence
and Psychology

With the basics out of the way, it is time to begin discussing emotional
intelligence. Emotional intelligence is incredibly trendy these days, and for
great reason. Emotional intelligence itself has been used in several
capacities, even before it was ever defined. It determines whether you are
able to interact well with others or whether people will like you. It
determines your successes, as well as how you move forward in improving
in the future.

Ultimately, nearly every behavior that you have is believed to be rooted in

some way to your emotional intelligence, particularly from a cognitive
perspective. Essentially, if your emotional intelligence acts as a driving
motivator, you can begin to predict how people will behave based on how
emotionally intelligent they are.

What holds true no matter how much or little emotional intelligence

someone has, it is primarily a skillset, and as a skillset, it can be developed
and learned over time. You can learn to become emotionally intelligent,
even if you are not naturally. You can spend the time to develop these skills
in order to become the emotionally intelligent individual that you wish to
be.

Within this chapter, we will discuss what emotional intelligence is, touching
upon the main purposes of emotional intelligence, the pillars of emotional
intelligence, and how emotional intelligence relates to psychology concepts,
such as emotions, empathy, and communication. As you read through these
chapters, try to think about yourself. Do you have these skills that are being
discussed? Do you feel like you are lacking in the empathy department, or
perhaps that your communication could be better? If you think that you may
struggle with your emotional intelligence, this is perhaps one of the most
straightforward parts of yourself to work on.
Defining Emotional Intelligence
Before we begin, let’s create a working definition of emotional intelligence.
Primarily, emotional intelligence is the ability to do three things. It involves
being able to understand emotions, regulate your own emotions, and use
your ability to understand emotions to manage and facilitate your
relationships with other people. When you are emotionally intelligent,
effectively, you are able to actively harness these abilities in order to
achieve a high leadership potential. When you have that high leadership
potential, you find that you are more capable and confident when you
interact with other people.

Effectively, emotional intelligence is largely able to determine whether you

are able to understand your own emotions while still being able to regulate
and influence the emotions of others as well. This skill is one that is critical
to interpersonal relationships for several reasons—it determines how you
approach other people. It determines how you are able to communicate with
other people. It determines how likely you are to being annoyed by other
people’s actions or inactions.
Emotional intelligence is effectively the pinnacle of emotional maturity—
when you learn to be emotionally intelligent, you are resilient and in
control. You will be able to manage those difficult emotions, such as anger
or sadness. You will be able to sense these signals in other people as well
and act accordingly in order to help mitigate the negative effects or
behaviors. You will be able to solve conflicts with other people with ease,
and you will be just in tune enough with other people’s emotions to ensure
that you are always helping people in the way that they need.

People who are highly emotionally intelligent are incredibly skilled when it
comes to being able to interact with other people, and this makes them
incredibly desirable in relationships, workplaces, and as leaders. When you
are emotionally intelligent, people will naturally flock to you, as they feel
that you are trustworthy, confident, and charismatic enough to be a proper
leader.
The Pillars of Emotional Intelligence
Ultimately, one of the simplest methods of understanding emotional
intelligence and the skills it entails is through looking at emotional
intelligence as a series of pillars. These are sorts of clusters of behavior that
you will look at in order to get a better idea of the skills they entail.
Emotional intelligence is commonly considered to have four pillars of
emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness,
and emotional regulation. Each of these four pillars is critical to
understanding if you ever hope to master emotional intelligence for
yourself.

Self-Awareness

The first of the pillars is self-awareness. As you may imagine, it entails

your ability to check into your own emotional state at any given moment.
Many people struggle to ever truly understand their emotions—they feel
good or bad, but beyond that, they are unsure what they are feeling. This is
unfortunate, as feelings have far more nuances than just good or bad. When
you know exactly what you are feeling, you will be able to understand
yourself better, recognizing your motivations and why you are doing what
you are doing.
Beyond just being aware of the emotional states, self-awareness also
encompasses the ability to be aware of your own abilities in an accurate
fashion. When you are able to identify your own abilities accurately, you
know what you are capable of, as well as what you struggle with, and
knowing this enables you to build up a reasonable, accurate, logical
understanding of who you are as a person. You will know what you need to
work on and what you are capable of, so you never volunteer to do more
than you can handle.

Self-awareness also entails the ability to be self-confident. You will

effectively be able to trust yourself because you are so in-tune with your
abilities. Effectively, knowing how you behave enables you to recognize
when you should trust yourself to do something. If you can trust yourself to
do something, you come across as more trustworthy to others. After all, it is
incredibly difficult to trust someone that you do not know to do something
for you or for other people.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the second of the pillars of emotional intelligence. When

you are able to use self-regulation, you are able to manage your own
emotions. With self-control, you are able to make sure that your emotions
are always expressed in a method that is effective and appropriate. If you
express your emotions in a way that is less than appropriate, or if you give
in to whatever emotional impulses you feel, you are likely to burn bridges
in relationships rather quickly, making this a critical skill. As satisfying as it
may feel in the moment to scream at a customer, it would not be so
satisfying to lose your job as a result.

On top of that ability to control yourself, the ability to self-regulate involves

plenty about your own intrinsic motivations. Those who are skilled at self-
regulation tend to be achievement-oriented and self-motivated. This means
that they are able to work toward their goals with their own initiative. When
you are willing to be self-motivated, you show that you are willing to work
through setbacks, even if those setbacks are such problems as
procrastination and simply not being motivated to work.

Self-regulation also comes with the ability to be transparent—you are open

and honest when you are able to self-regulate. You may know that what you
are saying or doing is less popular, but you trust yourself and that you are
making the right decision by telling other people the truth. This brings with
it a sense of trustworthiness. When you are trustworthy, other people are
going to naturally feel like you are more approachable.

Self-regulation, because it also involves the ability to control your own

emotions, also brings with it the ability to become adaptable—you know
that change happens sometimes, and you are willing and able to cope with
it. You are able to manage your own expectations, even when they do not
come into fruition. You know that there is plenty to learn from plans
changing, even if they changed due to failure, and you are optimistic
enough to keep hoping for the best.
Social Awareness

The third pillar of emotional intelligence is social awareness. This is the

ability to understand other people. This skillset is critical if you want to be
able to interact meaningfully with other people. If you want to be able to
communicate with others, you need to be able to understand them, and that
is the entire purpose of social awareness. Social awareness comes with
three major skills: the ability to empathize, the ability of organizational
awareness, and developing a service orientation.

Empathy itself is the ability to connect with other people in a way that
allows for the acknowledgment and understanding of their feelings. It is
critical in relating to other people. You need to be able to acknowledge
other people’s emotions if you wish to be able to understand people’s
emotions, and you are not likely to be able to acknowledge the emotions of
other people if you do not first understand your own feelings.

Organizational awareness refers to your ability to manage how you explain

yourself to others. It is effectively your ability to make sure that you are
always speaking at a level that is readily understood by other people. You
are able to ensure that the comprehension levels of those around you always
line up with being just right. Think about how a presentation geared toward
kindergarteners would go if it were given to high schoolers—they would
not bother paying attention to it because it would be far too simple to be
worth listening to. Likewise, if you were to deliver that same presentation
to a bunch of kindergarteners despite being meant for high schoolers, the
children probably will not understand very much. When you are able to use
organizational awareness, however, you will be able to ensure that you are
always speaking to the proper audience whenever you are trying to speak to
someone else, allowing you to retain attention longer and more effectively.

Finally, a service orientation refers to just how willing you are to help other
people. It involves being willing to contribute to the efforts while also
showing that you are happily willing to help guide your group to your
desired goal. When you use this, you are able to make sure that you listen
effectively as well.

Relationship Management

The final pillar of emotional intelligence is relationship management. This

particular pillar refers to the ability to manage relationships and influence
other people. In order to develop relationship management, however, you
must first develop all of the other pillars. Relationship management requires
you to be intricately aware of your own emotions and behaviors, as well as
able to control them. It requires you to have a solid understanding of other
people as well. The skills in relationship management include being able to
inspire leadership, influence others, manage conflict, trigger change,
develop others, and be skilled in teamwork.

Relationship management creates inspirational leaders who are capable of

leading other people. Whether a leader through authority or respect or
working as a mentor to other people, this skill is critical if you want to be
able to manage others. This is what makes people willing to follow you in
the first place.

Influence allows those skilled at relationship management to ensure that

they can convince other people to do what needs to be done. They are
persuasive, articulate, motivating, and able to call people to action with
ease. This skill is critical in leading others, as if you cannot get other people
to do what they need to, you cannot lead them.
Conflict management grants these individuals the ability to manage the
relationships with other people, either interpersonally, or between two other
people. They are able to facilitate the necessary communication between
people to ensure that everyone is able to leave a situation feeling like they
have been listened to and supported .Effectively, conflict management
allows for the ending of arguments or opinions by ensuring that everyone
ends up on the same page.

The relationship manager is able to facilitate change in the world, even if it

means that they have to be the catalyst for that change. They are willing to
support any change that is necessary, even if that means they must take a
difficult or uncomfortable position. They will do anything that is necessary
to make that change happen.

Because of the unique position of the leader, you need to be able to

understand how other people interact with each other. If you can see two
people that are interacting with each other in a certain way, you can usually
begin to figure out who works best with whom. Being able to understand
how people interact means that you can put together teams effectively, and
being able to see the skills of other people means you will be able to point
them in the right direction to ensure that everyone is always growing and
moving toward their greatest potentials.

Finally, the leader must be willing and able to work with other people
effectively, no matter what happens. This requires an ability to cope readily
and easily with any change that may arise.
Emotions and Emotional Intelligence
Emotions and emotional intelligence are intricately combined just by virtue
of both being involved in the act of feeling and acknowledging emotions.
As you have seen, emotions are sort of the primary backbone to the entire
process of emotional intelligence. You must begin with understanding your
own emotions if you want to be able to progress past that first stage of self-
awareness, and without that awareness of your own emotions, you cannot
ever hope to understand other people. If you cannot understand other
people, how can you hope to ensure that other people are actively and
readily willing and able to listen to you as a leader? If you cannot touch
base with your own emotions, how can you expect other people to be
willing to put up with you and your dramatics if any conflict were to ever
arise?

What is important to note is that despite the fact that emotional intelligence
is primarily focused on behaving in ways that are not emotionally
impulsive, it is not seeking out a blanket ban on emotions in general. In
fact, emotional intelligence strongly encourages people to feel their
emotions whenever possible and relevant. When you feel your emotions,
you feel what your body and unconscious mind want you to. Your
emotions, as you will learn in Chapter 4, are incredibly important. They
serve a valuable purpose in keeping you regulated, and because of that, they
should never be completely ignored or disregarded.

Rather than disregarding emotions, emotional intelligence seeks to regulate

the act of behaving impulsively in response. When you are able to become
emotionally intelligent, you will effectively be learning how to stop when
you do feel strong emotions so you can regulate them out. You will be able
to prevent yourself from acting in an inappropriate manner.

Imagine for a moment that you are incredibly angry—perhaps you just
found out that your child broke your watch that was gifted to you by your
late father. You are absolutely furious, as that was the last precious
belonging of his that you had, and now it’s broken. If you are emotionally
intelligent, you acknowledge that anger—you allow yourself to feel those
emotions because being able to feel emotions is important to finding some
sort of closure or resolution. However, despite acknowledging your anger
and continuing to feel it, you are able to remind yourself that reacting in
anger is hardly the right decision here. You remind yourself that acting in
anger would do nothing but upset your child, how did not intentionally
break the watch. It had been an unfortunate accident, and your child was
devastated about it. You could see that much looking at his face.

When you are able to acknowledge your emotions, recognizing the value
that they bring to the table, you can use them to inform yourself. You can
use the feeling of that emotion as your unconscious cue to remind yourself
to slow down, relax, and continue moving forward. Effectively, you can
make sure that you are able to use your emotions and the knowledge that
you are feeling that emotion in order to help yourself self-regulate.

Beyond just that, however, imagine that you are aware of other people’s
emotions. Keeping in mind that emotions are indicative of a need that is
currently going unmet when you are able to use emotional intelligence in
order to better enable yourself to read the feelings of those around you, you
are also able to understand the needs of those around you who may need
your help sooner rather than later. When you can understand the needs of
other people, you are also able to understand far more. You can understand
how best to ensure that other people have their needs met, and with that,
you can become an effective leader.

Emotions are critical—we feel them for incredibly important reasons and
attempting to disregard them, even when we are trying to think with a
rational mindset, is doing a disservice to those around you.
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Empathy is one of the most critical skills in emotional intelligence. While
being able to identify your own emotions is always important, what matters
more in many cases is whether you can empathize. This is what bridges the
gap from focusing on yourself to being able to accurately interact with
others.

If you look at the four pillars of emotional intelligence once more, you may
notice that two of the pillars are focused on the self while the other two are
directed outwards toward others. The way that you move from the self to
the others is through being able to empathize.

For example, imagine that you are able to recognize your own emotional
states. You are quite confident in your ability to understand how you are
feeling—you have learned the body language you need to know. You have
figured out how best to identify when to step in and intervene on your own
emotional outbursts. You know what your most common emotional triggers
are. But, can you understand what other people are feeling?

Being able to understand your own feeling is not a sudden ability to

understand others as well—being able to understand the emotions of others
requires empathy, but in order to really understand the feedback that you get
via empathy, you must also understand your own emotional state as well.

Forms of Empathy

Empathy itself is defined as the ability to relate to other people, and it exists
primarily in three different forms. You can empathize cognitively,
emotionally, or compassionately. When you empathize cognitively, you
understand the other person’s feelings from a straightforward perspective—
you know what they are feeling simply because you recognize the signs.
However, there is no emotional attachment on your part. You do not
particularly care what the other person has that particular feeling—you
simply know that they do.

When you empathize emotionally, however, you are able to understand the
feelings of the other person as well through feeling it yourself. You are
effectively relating to the other person so much that you are able to feel the
same way. You see someone suffering, and you feel their pain as if it were
your own. Even if you are not doing this unintentionally, most of the time,
emotional empathy involves you automatically put yourself in the position
of the other person in your mind. You know that you would be sad and
scared if you had nowhere to live, and winter was rapidly approaching.

When you empathize compassionately, which is the form of empathy that

emotional intelligence emphasizes, you are effectively combining the
previous two. You understand the person’s feelings cognitively, allowing
you to have a solid idea of the feelings of the other person. You are also
able to understand the other person’s emotions as you relate to them. When
you empathize both cognitively and emotionally, you are often driven to
emotional empathy—this drives you to act in some way. Feeling both
cognitive and emotional relationship to the other person encourages you to
act in some way to ensure that they are taken care of as well. You want to
help them; however, you can to ensure that you can actively meet their
needs to alleviate their suffering. There is rarely any motive for you other
than to help. Your compassionate empathy is a sort of call to action that you
obey in order to ensure that you actively meet the needs of those around
you.

The Purpose of Empathy

Empathy primarily has two purposes that are both directly related to
emotional intelligence: It acts as a way through which you can self-regulate,
and it acts as a means of communication, primarily of nonverbal emotional
signs. When you are able to empathize, then you are able to regulate, as
well as read the signs in order to better understand the needs of those
around you.

However, before delving into that, consider for a moment why we would
need to feel empathy in any degree. What does empathy do for you? Why
does it matter? The answer is quite simple—we are a social species. In fact,
nearly all of emotional intelligence is only relevant because we are a social
species. When you live in a group setting, whether that is a family unit, a
neighborhood, a tribe, or an entire city or town, you must be able to
communicate. Humans, because we depend on others for survival, need to
be able to communicate with others clearly.

Think about humans “in the wild” for a moment—we are discussing human
beings that have not yet made a move toward modern civilizations. We are
specifically discussing the humans that had no choice but to hunt and grow
their own food to survive. They had to exist in groups. Humans would hunt
in groups with other people as well, allowing them to take down larger prey,
which is critical when you consider how much weaker humans are
compared to other animals. Humans had to rely on their tribes to help
provide protection and to hunt. They relied on each other to live and
traveled in these sort of tribes.

Empathy allowed for nonverbal communication to be used. When you are

running with a group of people in many life-or-death situations, you are
going to want to understand the emotions of those around you, as those
emotions will provide you with all sorts of information. You will be able to
tell that those around you are scared when there is danger, or sad when they
need help. However, even further than that, you can see what their needs are
to help them meet them. You will be driven to act because you can feel the
needs of the other person, and you are willing to help.

When you are willing to help, you encourage the other person to be willing
to help you whenever you find yourself caught in a moment of need.
Altruism, that behavior of helping someone else at no benefit, and quite
possibly a detriment to yourself is only an effective trait in a species that is
primarily altruistic, so empathy keeps us on the right track. You know that
you need to make sure that those around you are cared for and fed, so you
make sure that you always have enough food to share. Of course, if you
were to ever fall on tough times, then they would be more than happy to
reciprocate and share with you.

Beyond just survival, however, empathy can benefit interpersonal

relationships as well. When you are able to empathize with other people,
you know how to manage yourself around the other person. Think back to
the example about your child breaking your father’s watch—you could see
that your child was upset and feeling guilty about the situation, and being
able to see the look in your child’s eyes helped to remind you to ensure that
you did not snap at them or judge them in a way that would be harmful to
them. You self-regulated in direct response to empathizing with your child.

Another example of this could be in action having a discussion with

someone. Perhaps you are trying to figure out how best to make something
work. Your partner keeps suggesting things, but you shoot down each and
every one of her ideas. You continue to shut them down simply because
they do not make sense given the context, and in doing so, you effectively
end up stressing her out. You can see that she is starting to get stressed out,
and you can feel those familiar pangs of empathy, and you are able to
realize what is going on: You are causing the stress. You are being too
controlling and need to somehow otherwise regulate what you are doing.

You then are able to scale it back and make several concessions for your
partner, allowing your partner to stop stressing out nearly as much. When
you do this, you make sure that your partner is taken care of. You ensure
that your partner feels valued instead of stressed out. In being able to
recognize that your own emotions were causing some serious stress or other
negative emotion in someone else, you can begin to pull it back and ensure
that you do not continue to behave in harmful ways.
Emotional Intelligence and Communication

Emotional intelligence also has a significant impact on communication

abilities. This makes sense—you cannot possibly be influential if you have
no manner through which to communicate somehow with other people.
With the increased awareness of how your own emotional feelings can alter
your speaking and body language patterns, you can then begin to monitor
this. If you know that you are stressed out, you may be able to use your
emotional intelligence skills to ensure that you are actively behaving in
ways that will serve you well. You will be able to take that extra pause to
communicate clearly because you are aware of your tendencies.

Communication then gets more effective simply because you are able to
better regulate yourself. You know that you are speaking too rapidly
because you are stressed out, so you manually take control and deliberately
speak in a slower, more controlled manner. Doing this takes away the power
of your anxiety in the first place, allowing you to communicate clearly.

Ultimately, just as developing emotional intelligence was critical in the

building of empathy, it is critical in communication settings as well. You
must be able to be emotionally intelligent if you want to communicate in
the most effective manner possible. Remember, the best way to keep
yourself levelheaded when stressed out is by making a point to take a deep
breath in and out before speaking to answer the question.

As one final note, remember that you can use your emotions to your benefit.
You can leverage your emotions to allow you to communicate clearly.
Remember, your emotions are not a sign of weakness, nor do they require
total elimination. There are times and places to utilize your emotions, and if
you find that the current situation is an appropriate one, you should
absolutely make use of those emotions yourself. Doing so allows you to
make your point even clearer, and if your emotions are appropriate ones to
whatever the situation that you are communicating about, your own display
of emotions can help you further emphasize your point and how passionate
you are.
 Chapter 4: Emotions and
Psychological State

Emotional states are critical to understand when you are talking about
person-to-person contact. Emotions can strongly complicate nearly
everything about your interaction with someone else, changing how they
are approached. When you approach your psychological state at any point
in time with your emotions, you find that the emotions are always
constantly interfering with it.

Your emotions are constantly in a state of fluctuation, just due to the nature
of emotions themselves. They are always changing from person to person,
and that is important to keep in mind. When you are well aware of the fact
that your emotions will always be directly interacting with your mind and
your behaviors.

Imagine that you were already feeling pretty annoyed as you got onto the
road to drive home from work. You were already frustrated, and because of
that, as you drove, when someone else cuts you off, you slam on your horn
angrily. Angrily honking at the person, you try to pass them just to be done
with it, but the other person interprets it as an attempt to race. They speed
up to block you from crossing past them, and that was enough to make the
situation worse.

At the end of the day, you almost get into an accident before swerving off of
that main road and onto another street altogether, swearing and raging
angrily. You then get home and are incredibly short with your children and
partner, all because you are already in that combative mindset, and you end
up upsetting the people who were simply happy to have you come home.
The Purpose of Emotions

Emotions themselves have two primary purposes—they allow for nonverbal

communication, which is critical on its own, and they allow for the constant
motivation to keep you alive. Effectively, your emotions exist because your
unconscious mind needs a method through which to interact with the world
around it.

Keeping in mind that the mind has two distinct parts, the conscious and
unconscious, it is important to recognize that the two rarely, if ever,
communicate with each other. They are unable to actively and reliably
communicate between the two of them, and because of that, they are not
always as effective as they could be.

The unconscious mind seeks to guide behavior—it takes care of anything

throughout your day that does not require any attention, such as paying
attention to what you need to do, how you need to do it, and making sure
that you are able to do what you need to do without wasting the space of
your conscious mind.

Think for a moment about how your conscious mind is directly responsible
for your perceptions and conscious decisions—it takes care of the heavy
lifting and anything that does require attention. For example, take into
consideration the act of writing an email—your conscious mind is able to
decide exactly what you wish to write, while your unconscious mind takes
care of the active typing that you do in order to put the point across
appropriately. This means that your unconscious mind does the more menial
of the tasks—paying attention to how you are typing and manually
controlling your fingers, so you do not have to.

The unconscious mind is typically the quicker of the two simply because it
is automatic. It happens without the conscious mind having the opportunity
to influence it. You simply do what it is expecting you to do. Of course, you
can consciously override it if you know what you are about to do, but for
the most part, you are not going to see that happen.

Now, writing an email is relatively low-stakes—it does not matter much if

you make a typo because all you need to do is correct it. However, imagine
that we are considering a more dangerous situation. Perhaps you are driving
down the road when a truck suddenly veers into your path in traffic. You
slam on your brakes to avoid hitting them before you even realize what is
happening—your unconscious mind was responsible.

Communication

At this point, it is time to look at emotions more in-depth in terms of a

mode of communication. When you feel an emotion, your body naturally
changes in response. You may feel yourself shrinking inward when you are
nervous, hunching over and cursing your arms to protect yourself. You may
find yourself actively attempting to avoid eye contact.
This directly tells everyone around you a very specific message—you are
uncomfortable and closed off. Your own behaviors actively tell other people
that you are trying to avoid interaction and that you wish to be left alone.
This is your way of communicating nonverbally.

Nonverbal communication encompasses so much of the way that we

communicate with other people. It takes into consideration body language,
such as how close or far away from others you are willing to get, to how
likely you are to make any concessions in how you approach someone else.
What is particularly critical to remember is that when you are interacting
with other people, you need to consider the fact that their body language is
incredibly telling, and that is because their body language tells of their
emotions.

Think for a moment about cognitive behavioral therapy. If you are not
familiar with this therapy, it is a combination of cognitive therapy and
behavioral therapy. It looks at the fact that thoughts influence emotions,
emotions influence behaviors, and behaviors then reinforce thoughts. This
means that if you can read the body language, you can analyze in order to
identify the emotion being felt. If you can figure out which emotion is being
felt at any given moment, you can then begin to figure out why that emotion
is being felt in the first place, allowing you better access to the mind of
others. This will allow you to gain valuable feedback that you otherwise
would not have access to. When you understand the mindset of someone
else, then you are better able to interact with the people. You can make it a
point to behave in ways that you know are conducive to the behavior that
you want because you know about this cycle of thoughts, feelings, and
behavior, and you recognize that your own body language allows for
communication back toward the other person.

Motivators

Now, let’s look at your emotions as motivators—consider how, when you

were in danger, driving on the road, you slammed on your brakes without
being conscious of doing so. This is because, for that moment, in your
extreme state of emotion, your unconscious mind took hold. It was able to
guide you through the process of slamming on that brake to protect yourself
because the unconscious mind is largely dedicated to keeping you alive and
functional. You need to be able to protect yourself in order to stay alive.

Your emotions work when your unconscious mind feels the need to actively
intervene in a process or attempt to do something. Effectively, the emotions
are designed to skew you toward the behaviors that make the most sense for
your own given situation. Think about how you would feel if someone
continually harassed you at work—you would be angry. This is a direct
response to not having your need for boundaries met. Your boundaries were
repeatedly being crossed, and no matter how much you tried to tell the
person kindly to leave you alone, you found that the boundary breeches
kept happening over and over again, so you eventually gave up hope of
getting through to the person and snapped at them. You were motivated by
your anger to enforce your own boundaries that were being disregarded.

Each of your primary emotions serve a very specific motivational purpose

—they guide you toward some sort of behavior set in order to make sure
that your basic interpersonal needs are met. You are able to enforce that you
need, for example, for someone to help you when you are afraid or sad. You
communicate something clear: There is something wrong, and there may
even p0tentially be some level of danger that must be given the proper
consideration as well.

When you keep emotions as a motivator in mind, they start to become

incredibly easy to understand. When you feel angry, you know that you are
having some sort of boundary broken, and it is frustrating you. When you
feel sad, you know it is because something is hurting you, and you feel the
need to fight back against it or to get support, and so on.

However, in modern-day, many times, the situations that trigger our

emotions do not line up so much with what used to say they were developed
in nature. You may feel scared, but that fear is coming from a place of
fearing losing something rather than a fear of death or otherwise being
threatened. Effectively, you will react with fear to a situation that does not
actually warrant such a strong reaction. For example, having someone
comment something cruel on your social media page is different than
feeling truly threatened by the situation at hand as if you were staring down
the mouth of a cougar or some other animal that was primarily determined
to eat and kill you.

This means that most of the time, your emotional impulses are usually gross
overreactions to what they otherwise should have been. You do not need to
react like someone is trying to kill you if they are simply telling you that
they disagree with you, nor do you need to actively attack and fight to the
death over some sort of misunderstanding or who gets that last pack of
toilet paper at the grocery store.

Of course, that does not, by any means, mean that your emotions are
unimportant or should not be considered. Your emotions are critical in
several contexts, and being able to recognize your emotions can help you
know exactly how you are feeling at any given moment. What is important,
however, is knowing when to put that distance between yourself and what is
happening, and when those emotional impulses developed over millennia of
survival of the fittest in nature are actually appropriate to act upon.
The Cause of Emotions

Despite the attempts to explain the cause of emotions, ranging from the
spirits and passions of old philosophical psychology all the way to
assuming that it is some sort of hormonal event, the only constant between
everyone’s explanations of what causes emotions is that there is no
definitive answer. In fact, there are six major theories on what causes
people to have emotions in the first place and what triggers them. Within
this section, we will address all six of these theories, allowing you to come
up with your own explanation and theory upon hearing them. The six major
theories of emotion are the Evolutionary Theory, the Cognitive Appraisal
Theory, the Facial-Feedback Theory, the James-Lange Theory, the Cannon-
Bard Theory, and the Schacter-Singer Theory.

Ultimately, these theories can be understood in three ways—as being

physiological in nature, asserting that the body is what causes emotions,
being neurological in theory, asserting that the brain is responsible for
emotions, and being cognitive in theory, asserting that thoughts and mental
states are influential over emotions.

Evolutionary Theory

Starting off with Charles Darwin, the Evolutionary Theory states that
emotions exist to keep animals capable of survival and reproduction.
Effectively, we feel some positive emotions to lead toward mating, while
other emotions encourage people to fight or run away. Ultimately, within
this theory, emotions are adaptive—they are motivating and allow for quick
responses to the environment.

Understanding how emotions work in others also allows for adaptive

survival—when you are able to understand the feelings of others, you can
effectively make sure that you are capable of protecting yourself. For
example, if you know that feeling angry makes people volatile and prepared
to fight back if the need arises, you may see someone showing defensive or
aggressive behaviors and intentionally distance yourself from them. You
will effectively ensure that you stay safe and comfortable because you are
making it a point to avoid encouraging any behaviors that could become
problematic for you. You are able to effectively respond because you
understand the emotional signs of the other animal or person.

Cognitive Appraisal Theory

Within appraisal theories, it becomes clear that thinking must happen prior
to an emotion occurring. Effectively, within a series of events that will
trigger an emotion, the thought that happens after the stimulus is what
determines the emotions. Think about how you may be absolutely terrified
at the sight of a spider, but someone else is more than happy to walk around
with their pet tarantula hanging out on their shoulder. The reason that you
may be terrified by a spider that brings someone else great joy is the
thought processes behind it.

The Facial-Feedback Theory

It has been noted over the years that sometimes, the body’s responses do
have a direct impact on emotions instead of being a consequence of that
emotion. Some people take this to the extreme—they assume that it is the
changes in the facial muscles, then, that caused emotions. Think about how
if you have to smile at someone, eventually, you start actually having a
better time than you otherwise would have. This is because you are
engaging with your facial muscles and your facial muscles are directly
responsible.

This may seem far-fetched to some, but consider that both Charles Darwin
and William James, who you will hear more about momentarily, both
recognized that link between physical and emotional. Because of backers by
people like Darwin and James, people who believe in these theories, the
facial-feedback theory did manage to become one of the more well-known.

James-Lange Theory

Of all, however, perhaps the best known theory of the cause of emotions is
the James-Lange theory. In particular, this theory was developed by the
psychologist, William James, and the physiologist Carl Lange. Together, the
two pieced together a theory that stated that emotional responses are born
from a result of physiological reactions to events.

This may seem complicated but consider for a moment what happens when
you see a wolf or a bear or another predator staring you down from your
yard. Most likely, you will feel your heart rate quicken. You will notice that
your body seems to shake and run cold. Your breathing pattern changes.
These physiological responses, then, must be interpreted somehow. After
all, think about how similar several of those sensations are to extreme
excitement as well? If you are extremely excited, you will also feel your
heart rate and breathing increase.

The James-Lange theory says, then, that the only difference between your
feeling of a racing heart being for excitement or for terror is how you think
about it. You are essentially set to interpret your physiological response, and
then that provides your emotion. Instead of feeling your heart race because
you are scared, you feel scared because your heart is actively racing.

The Cannon-Bard Theory

Another common theory is known as the Cannon-Bard theory—and this

one is set out to show disagreement with the James-Lange theory.
Effectively, because it is entirely possible and expected that people will
have physiological responses for various reasons, it is impossible to say that
it is solely the physical that determines the emotional. Further, because
emotional states are so rapid, it is impossible for them to be a result of
physical changes. After all, we feel the emotion immediately with the
symptoms—if the physical came first, then there would be a slight lag in
the onset of the emotion and the physiological reaction.
In order to address these issues with the James-Lange theory of emotion,
the Cannon-Bard theory was born. Within this theory, Cannon suggests that
your emotions are a result of the thalamus within the brain to respond to
some sort of stimulus. That one message gets sent out and triggers the
emotional experience while also triggering the physiological at the same
time. Effectively, the one message gets interpreted in two different ways.

For example, imagine that you walk out to your car, only to find a bear
staring at you. Your body takes in the stimulus—you register visually being
aware of the bear. Yoru thalamus then seeks to respond to the bear. In
response, the message from the thalamus makes you feel terrified, while
simultaneously creating your sensations of fear—you feel shaky and
nervous, for example. You feel your heart race. You want to run.

Schachter-Singer Theory

The final theory that we will address is the Schacter-Singer theory, also
known commonly as the two-factor theory. This is a cognitive theory in
which the physiological response must occur first prior to the creation of an
emotion. In response to the physiological, then you must figure out why
that arousal is happening and then label it yourself. Effectively, only then
can you figure out the emotion.

This theory is quite similar to the Cannon-Bard and the James-Lange

theories, drawing from both to create a new one to explain the working of
emotions. Consider first how the James-Lange theory proposes that the
emotions are based upon inferences from the physical reaction to a stimulus
and how the Schachter-Singer theory mirrors that. Both the James-Lange
and Schachter-Singer model point out that people make those inferences
from physical to emotional, using a cognitive interpretation.
In regards to the Cannon-Bard theory, the two both agree that the same
physical reaction can cause several different emotions. For example, you
can acknowledge one particular sensation, such as trembling, as fear in one
situation when you are staring down the bear, but sometimes, trembling can
be a direct result of your own excitement for something.

So, if the Schachter-Singer model involves a physical response being

cognitively interpreted, imagine that you have just walked outside, and that
bear is sitting there, staring at you. You notice that you start to shake and
that your heart is pounding. You look at the bear and acknowledge that the
bear’s presence is what is causing you to feel these signs of arousal—you
are hyper-aware of the bear’s presence. You must then understand what the
sight of the bear means—you acknowledge and recognize that the bear’s
presence would be deemed to be a threat, and you respond accordingly. You
acknowledge that the bear’s presence is a threat and that the threat should
be met with feelings of fear. Thus, you determine that the trembling and
racing heart that you felt in response to seeing the bear is fear.
The Universal Emotions
Along with all of the ways that emotions could possibly be caused, another
common point to contend with is whether emotions are universal. It is
currently believed that emotions that you feel, from being pleasantly
surprised, to moderately irritated, to even feeling guilty, all come from what
are known as the seven universal emotions. These seven emotions are sort
of families for others and many of the emotions that people know and
recognize come as a series of several of these emotions. The seven
universal emotions are anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and
surprise. Any other emotions exist somewhere on the spectrum within those
confines.

Each of these seven emotions convey very important messages for those
present around them. They convey some sort of need that is unmet, or in the
case of happiness, a lack of unmet needs altogether. Understanding the
needs that these emotions convey aids dramatically in the managing of
relationships with others. These emotions are determined to be universal
because they are recognizable, no matter where the individual that is
exposed to them is from. They are effectively a way to communicate that
seems to be innate—in fact, even people who have grown up blind still
convey body language related to these seven emotions.

Anger

Anger as an emotion is strongly motivational. It is a response that is

incredibly intense and is meant to be used as a response to perceiving a
threat of some sort. When you experience anger, you are usually conveying
to other people that you are feeling threatened—you are saying that you
have a need for defense or boundaries.

Contempt

Contempt is incredibly close to anger—it is a feeling that whatever you are

looking at or dealing with is beneath you to some degree. You show that it
is worthless to you effectively. It is to treat other people or a thing with
disregard or disdain—effectively, you are saying that you do not respect
that other person or what that other person is doing. This is showing a need
for space from the other person—you are effectively disgusted by the
presence of that other person.

Disgust

Disgust is that feeling you get when you look at something repulsive. If you
have ever smelled a foul diaper or opened a pack of food only to find that it
is covered in mold, you have probably experienced disgust to some degree.
When you feel disgust toward something, you are feeling an intense need to
get away from something—likely because it poses a threat to your health
and safety. You feel disgust to keep you from eating something moldy or
toxic; for example—the smell or look is enough to sort of turn your
stomach and discourage you from continuing.

Fear

Fear is the feeling you get when you are exposed to something that is a
significant threat to you—it leads to either the fight or flight response, and
as a response, you either feel afraid, which will cause you to flee, or your
fear shifts over to anger instead and you move into the fight response. Fear
is a necessary emotion to keep you safe—it encourages you to defend
yourself by conveying a need to protect or defend. It tells other people that
you have a need for safety that you need help meeting.

Joy

Joy is the state of feeling happy or calm with what is happening. You feel
comfortable in your surroundings, and you are content with what is going
on, or you are even enjoying yourself and what is happening. When you are
experiencing joy, you are experiencing a lack of needs. All of your needs
have been met, and you are enjoying yourself.

Sadness

Sadness is felt for a very important reason—it is meant to be adaptive.

Sadness has very real purposes that are integral for a happy life, as
contradictory as it seems. It reminds you to pay attention to what brings
meaning to your life. It tells you that you should appreciate what you have.
It allows you to feel centered and grounded and also encourages resilience.
It shows that you have a need for support, and it reminds people to provide
that help and resilience for you.

Surprise
Finally, surprise brings with it the need to pay attention to something. It
shows some sort of disconnect between your expectations and what you had
in front of you. You may have expected one thing, only to find that your
expectations were entirely avoided altogether. Effectively, then, you feel the
need to pay closer attention to whatever is happening around you to figure
out what is going on with it. This also signals to others as well to pay closer
attention as whatever is happening is deviating from the expected.
Emotions, Moods, and Feelings

Finally, as we wrap up this chapter, it is time to pay special attention to the

difference between emotions, feelings, and moods. Despite the fact that we
may refer to all three of them as the same thing, they are all distinctly
different from each other. Your feelings and emotions are different, as are
your moods. While they are closely related to each other, you must be able
to recognize the inherent differences as well, especially considering that
they become quite relevant to understand later on.

Overall, however, the primary difference is time. Time take something from
an emotion to a feeling and from a feeling to a mood. Effectively, the three
work together with similar sensations, but they do have differing purposes.

Emotions are believed to be the chemical response to the trigger and is

nearly instantaneous. The brain is able to understand the stimulus and
trigger the chemicals necessary within about half a second. These chemicals
go throughout the body, which is why many of your emotions also directly
impact your body as well. These emotions last for roughly six seconds
before the initial emotion fades.

Feelings, then, are the integration of the emotion. We understand the

emotion that was felt and begin to understand it. We feel both physically,
such as when you dip your foot in hot water and feel that it is hot, and we
feel emotionally as well, such as in response to a strong emotion. As
opposed to the emotions, which were pushed forward by the brain and
chemicals, feelings are cognitive. They are usually several emotions coming
together, along with the thoughts surrounding. They are also longer-lasting,
but still not permanent.

Finally, moods are general sensations. They are your general state at any
given time. When you are in a good mood, then you are feeling mostly
good about yourself and what is happening. You are generally calm and
relaxed, for example, and you are likely to be more patient. When you are
in a bad mood, on the other hand, you may find that you have no patience
whatsoever to deal with anything.
 Chapter 5: Managing Thoughts and Regulating
Emotions

Imagine that you were heading through the grocery store to pick up some
last-minute items before you go home for dinner. It is the Friday before the
following Thanksgiving, and you know that the store will be packed. You
have already had a bad day and were already feeling impatient. Let’s really
set the stage here—you have two sick children at home, and your third child
just got suspended. Your car died earlier in the day and you are overall just
at the end of your rope. You cannot put up with anything else going wrong.

Of course, however, despite feeling like you cannot deal with anything else,
you find out that 2/3 things that you went to the store for are , in fact, sold
out, and you cannot get them. You needed them for your big holiday dinner,
and without them, you cannot possibly finish the meal. Perhaps it was the
big main dish that is missing—perhaps there is no turkey left to buy. You
lose it right there. You yell at the attendant who had just asked if there is
anything that you needed. You tell him that you are furious that they do not
have any turkeys when it is Thanksgiving, and you cannot believe that the
store dropped the ball so badly. You completely unload on this poor, 16-
year-old grocery store shelf stocker who does nothing but make sure that
there is food on the shelves.

In reality, it is not the employee’s fault—he is not the one responsible for
the lack of turkeys. Sure, the store could have ordered more, but in reality,
the only one to blame for the lack of turkey at that point is you. You could
have gone earlier in the week to get one, which would have made much
more sense. You could have tried going to another store to get one, but you
were too tired to continue driving around everywhere. You could have done
plenty of different things, but at the end of the day, you chose instead to yell
at a poor teenaged employee who probably had better things to be doing at
that point in time.

In this example, it is a sign of struggling with emotional regulation. It is

okay to feel furious at your situation, but what is not acceptable is deciding
to take it out on some random, innocent person who had nothing to do with
what you were feeling. As much as it can make you feel better to yell at
someone else, it is not particularly healthy to do so. It is not fair to the
employee that you yelled at, nor is it a solid method of managing your own
emotions.

Being able to self-regulate is a critical skill for everyone to learn—adults

and children alike. When you can self-regulate, you can keep yourself from
responding negatively, such as in the instance above. You know how to deal
with your emotions and allow them to be felt in a manner that is healthy and
actually conducive to solving the problem. Instead of screaming, you could
have chosen to go to another store, for example, or asked when they are
getting more turkey in, rather than risking getting permanently banned.

Of course, there is more to self-regulation than just managing emotions, as

well—you can also manage your thoughts to manage yourself as well.
When you are able to manage your thoughts, you are able to regulate
yourself as well. Think back to how your own thoughts could alter how you
register your emotions—if you feel like your emotions are going to be
skewed by your thoughts, you may need to change the thought to ensure
that it does not happen. For example, you may want to manage your
thoughts surrounding your current phobia in order to avoid your emotions
from being problematic.

As we go over this chapter, you will be learning about several situations in

which you may need to manage your thoughts. You will learn about
negative thoughts and cognitive distortions and how these thoughts need to
be mitigated due to their tendency to have negative impacts on your
emotional state. You will learn about how to manage thoughts, looking at
using both cognitive behavioral therapy and emotional intelligence to help
you do so. You will then focus specifically on emotional regulation,
understanding what it entails and why it should happen. Finally, as this
chapter comes to a close, you will look at several techniques that are used to
manage thoughts and regulate emotions.

By the time that you have finished this chapter, you should feel comfortable
with the idea of regulating both your emotions and your thoughts. In doing
so, you will find that there is a positive impact on your life. You will feel
more capable of handling yourself in difficult or negative situations. You
will feel more in control of yourself, and you will find that even your most
strained relationships of the past will actually become more easily managed.
When Thoughts Require Management

Have you ever had a thought, and then moments later wished that you had
not had a thought like it? Perhaps you had a thought that triggered you to
act, such as the example in the grocery store, in which you were so
overwhelmed with your day that you lashed out emotionally at everyone
present. After the fact, as you sat in your car and gathered your thoughts,
you may have felt embarrassed or like you wish you had managed the
situation much better than before.

We all have thoughts from time to time that are problematic. You may get
down on yourself for messing up something that you thought was extra
important, such as telling yourself that you are useless for failing. You may
find that you were stuck thinking in what you will soon come to recognize
as a cognitive distortion—thinking that is illogical and problematic and
therefore should be disregarded.

While it is normal to have these thoughts from time to time, it is critical to

make sure that you are able to recognize them so they can be corrected. You
need to be able to regulate, reminding yourself that these thoughts that you
are having are not conducive to being happy or successful, and for that
reason, you should disregard them. This section seeks to identify both
negative thoughts and negative emotions, so you know how to handle
yourself. In learning to do so, you can counter them before they can get out
of hand once and for all.

Negative thoughts
Have you ever walked into a situation while immediately wondering what
will happen if you fail? Perhaps you talk yourself out of trying to do
something because you are convinced that your attempt will always be a
failure. No matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, you
get caught up in the thoughts of negativity—your thoughts are rooted in
can’ts and won’ts, and despite even acknowledging that your current
thinking is far too negative, you cannot help but continue on.

Ultimately, negative thinking is any thinking that is inherently locked into

functioning form a place of fear. It is negative and dangerous, and no matter
what you attempt to do to erase it, you find that it keeps coming back. The
apprehension that you feel that drives these thoughts directly challenges
you—it keeps you back, convincing you that you cannot actually get
through the processes that you need. It makes you feel like you are
worthless, leaving you to feel guilty because you believe that you are
incapable, while simultaneously feeling guilty for never trying in the first
place.

These negative thoughts are largely contagious—they can be based on what

should be or what must be, effectively creating some sort of obligation. You
should be able to do that, or you must make sure that you finish that work
before the deadline, and if you are unable to do so, then there is a problem.
This sort of logic is problematic—it sort of forces you into this impossible
situation in which you think you have to do something a certain way, and
anything beyond that certain way is failing. When you are caught up in
negative thoughts, you find that you repeat them over and over again. You
have a thought, which causes guilt, which causes inaction, which reinforces
the thought, causing further guilt.
Most often, these occur because of a fear of some sort. You may be afraid of
failing or afraid of venturing into unknown territory if you are entirely
unfamiliar with the situation that you are entering. This causes problems,
especially as the thoughts become automatic and repeated without effort.
This leads you to sort of attempt to do better, but really get caught up in
inaction instead, creating the aforementioned cycle.

Cognitive Distortions

Those negative thoughts mentioned are just one form of cognitive

distortions. Cognitive distortions themselves refer to any sort of
exaggerated thought pattern that is frequently quite irrational. In being
irrational, you often see problems related to them. You may have a thought
about how things must o a certain way, and when they do not, you struggle
to compensate. Alternatively, you may think in another way that leads you
to feel like you understand exactly what is going through the mind of the
person you are attempting to interact with. You assume that you know, even
though you have no true way to do so. These sorts of thoughts are known as
cognitive distortions, and oftentimes, if a thought falls into any of the
distortions that are being listed here, you know that you can disregard them
altogether.

To better understand this, think of proper logic. There are several forms of
logic, known as fallacies, that are simply inaccurate. They cannot possibly
be used because they simply do not make sense in formal logic. No matter
how hard you may attempt to justify something in logic with a fallacy, it
will still never be any more valid as a form of argument. The cognitive
distortions that you are likely to encounter at any point in time are:

The need to always be right: This thinking assumes that it is

impossible to be wrong. Effectively, when you fall for this
thought process, you try to justify your own thoughts and feelings
at all costs, looking for literally any way that you can possibly
force what you have asserted as being true, even if it involves you
looking strange as you do it.
Casting blame: When you use this distortion, you find that
everyone else is held responsible for what they do wrong, and you
are quick to remind them of this. You effectively always fault
other people, even when, in reality, you would not push the idea
so much.
Ignoring positivity: When you use this distortion, you are
effectively completely disregarding anything positive that occurs.
Even if something good happened to you in the course of a day,
you would sooner focus on how everything that day went wrong.
Emotional reasoning: This particular form of reasoning is
incredibly problematic. When you engage in emotional reasoning,
you effectively allow your own emotional states to determine
your thoughts on something. If you feel happy about something,
you assume that it is positive, even if it is not necessarily the right
choice for you. This is the sort of logic that lands you with a car
payment you are struggling to afford simply because the thought
of driving the car felt good, so you chose to get it.
Change fallacy: With this distortion, you find that you rely on
social control to get other people to cooperate. Effectively, you
try to browbeat people into doing what you want or need, using
pressure or other techniques to do so.
Fairness fallacy: When you fall into this distortion, you are often
making the assumption that things must be fair at all costs, and if
they are not, you feel like something was unfair and, therefore,
wrong. You feel like life, in general, should be fair, despite the
fact that life is inherently unfair, and you then use your emotions
about the unfairness of the situation as your reasoning for how
you have behaved
Jumping to conclusions: When you do this, you usually arrive at
some sort of conclusion with absolutely no support for that
thought process. Typically, it involves one of two forms of
jumping to conclusions. You may engage in mind reading in
which you assume that you know what the other party is thinking.
You assume that their thoughts are negative, even when they may
not be. This leads to you behaving according to how you assume
the other people will, which can be a big problem if you are
assuming that the other party is intentionally being negative or
problematic. The other form of jumping to conclusions involves
fortune-telling—when you are fortune-telling, you assume that
you know how something will play out. You assume that the
ending will be negative and act accordingly.
Labeling: When you label someone, you are overgeneralizing—
you effectively assume that someone’s actions are directly
indicative of someone’s character. For example, if someone
accidentally made a mistake, you may assume that they are
generally quite incompetent and leave it at that.
Minimizing: When you are minimizing something, you are
intentionally downplaying it—you are trying to make it sound
like it is less negative or problematic than it actually is. For
example, you may tell yourself that whatever you have done well
is not actually as good or beneficial to you as you thought it was
initially.
Catastrophizing: Sometimes, you go the opposite direction from
minimizing—when you catastrophize, instead of making
something smaller, you magnify it into something far worse than
it actually is. You effectively make the situation out to be as
terrible as possible.
Overgeneralization: when you engage in this distortion, you find
that you are making decisions and generalization without enough
evidence one way or the other. You may assume that if your
friend cancels plans with you due to life reasons, they do not like
you, or they wish that you would stop inviting or taking them
places.
Personalization: When you personalize, you take everything
personal. You allow yourself to be responsible for everything,
whether good or bad, even if realistically, you had no true control
or influence over what has happened.
Must statements: When you do this, you focus on what must or
should—this is expecting things to be different instead of
attempting to change or better accommodate for what has
happened.
Dichotomous thinking: Finally, when you use dichotomous
thinking, you think that everything is in extremes. It is either
perfect or a failure. It is either always or never. When you do this,
you fail to acknowledge all of the colors of grey that lay between
the extremes.
Managing Thoughts
If you believe that your mind may be run by these negative sorts of
thoughts, it may be important to begin to manage them. If you are able to
manage your own thoughts, you can begin to manage your behaviors as
well, and that is incredibly important most of the time. If you could have
managed your emotions, you never would have blown up at the grocery
store employee, for example—you would have accepted what had happened
and moved on instead.
Managing thoughts can keep you calm when you are in the face of stress. It
can make you more reliable and capable of protecting yourself. When you
are able to manage your thoughts, you ensure that you are able to make the
best in nearly any situation. Making the best of the situation is sometimes
the best that you can do, and without it, you may feel weighed down upon
or otherwise incapable. This is why managing your thoughts can be so
incredibly beneficial.

Ultimately, there are several methods through which you can manage the
thoughts of others. The two that will be focused upon, however, are
managing through emotional intelligence and managing through cognitive
restructuring, a common technique used within cognitive-behavioral
therapy.

Managing thoughts with CBT

Cognitive restructuring is a common exercise within CBT—it is done in

order to identify any problematic thoughts that you have, such as your
negative thoughts or cognitive distortions, and then find some sort of
method that you can use to tackle them. Usually, the technique is designed
to override through constant thought challenging or otherwise making
oneself into an unreliable judge of the situation at hand.

For example, imagine that you are terrified of finding help form other
people. Just the act of having to ask someone else for help is enough to
leave you absolutely terrified. When this happens, you will find that even
asking for help in an emergency is nearly impossible. You struggle to ever
actively address those that may be in a position to help you, and because of
that, you are failing far more than you should be.

Of course, this fear of asking for help leads to constant failure. You do not
ask, and then as a natural consequence, you fail. This is problematic—you
cannot get through life constantly failing. For that reason, you decide that
you will use cognitive restructuring to help defend yourself. You then focus
on identifying the thoughts responsible for that fear of asking for help so
you can directly target them. You may make it a point to tell yourself that
your thought process is flawed because it hits the distortion list, for
example, and therefore, it does not matter. It may involve other methods
such as constant reinforcement through constant repetition, effectively
drilling the thought into the mind of someone else. No matter the method
that you use, what holds true is that you should be able to change the
thoughts that you have in order to protect yourself in the future.

Managing thoughts with emotional intelligence

Compared to cognitive behavioral therapy, the methods of thought control
within emotional intelligence may seem a bit vaguer and less intuitive. In
particular, you will find that when you must fix your negative thoughts with
emotional intelligence, you are actively making it a point to prevent them
from happening in the first place. You may use methods such as
affirmations and cognitive restructuring, or you may find that you are better
off with other methods instead to best defend yourself.

When you use emotional intelligence to regulate your thoughts, you are
effectively making sure that your thoughts are healthy by learning to bypass
the negative ones. Yes, the negative thoughts must be defeated in any way
possible. However, you must also keep in mind that it is incredibly
important for you to make it a point to defend against them as well.

Emotional intelligence is so incredibly effective with these forms of thought

because of the fact that emotional intelligence teaches discipline and
control. When you are learning to be emotionally intelligent, you are
learning to be resilient, capable of any change that comes your way, and
more. You effectively figure out how best to get around poor or negative
emotions by learning to recognize that, as negative thoughts, they deserve
no more consideration than they have already had by the time they have
been acknowledged in the first place. You are able to remind yourself that
you should not, in fact, give in to your every whim and thought, and instead
make sure that you are able to see past the impulses and toward the goals
that you have set out for yourself.

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation occurs largely the same way no matter which method
you choose—emotional intelligence or cognitive behavioral therapy.
However, what is important to note is that when you choose to use
emotional regulation, you are not completely disregarding the emotions that
you are having at any given moment. Remember, feeling emotions is
incredibly important and incredibly powerful. Rather than not feeling
emotions, you focus on how to regulate—you are making it a point to learn
how best to target your feelings and ensure that they do not get in your way
rather than telling yourself that what you are feeling is wrong.

For example, imagine that you are upset at the grocery store all over again.
It is okay to be upset—what was not okay was effectively blowing up on
someone who was entirely unrelated to the person that was there with you.
Rather than moving on like nothing important went wrong, you are
choosing to acknowledge that a problem has occurred, and then you are
better able to begin to figure out how to control the emotions that caused it
in the first place.
A
Perhaps the better name for this is to build up emotional tolerance—when
you are engaging in emotional regulation, you continue to feel all of the
major emotions. The only difference is that you have learned to be mindful
—you have learned to be conscientious of the entire concept having to
avoid emotions at all. Instead, you allow those emotions to be felt and learn
from them. There is always something more that you can learn from
someone or a situation if you really look for it.
Managing your Thoughts and Feelings
When you are ready to manage your thoughts, one method that is
commonly used is through affirmations. In particular, you make it clear that
you can manage your thoughts by repeating positive thoughts to yourself
until you internalize and believe them. For example, imagine that you have
just been told that you are fired due to not stocking enough turkeys—if you
are able to manage your thoughts, you can keep yourself from spiraling into
a depression in which you blame yourself endlessly. Instead of seeing the
situation as your own fault, you are able to figure out what to do next.

Affirmations

Affirmations refer to the short statements that you will reiterate to yourself
on a regular basis. You will use these affirmations whenever you feel like
you are struggling in any way. For example, if you find that you cannot
manage to get over a negative thought about your own worthlessness, you
can come up with an affirmation that will help you directly counter it. All
that you have to do is make sure that you are able to come up with an
affirmation that is formed well enough to help you do so. Using
affirmations is incredibly important to regulating your negative feelings,
helping you to overcome them in order to keep moving forward.

When you are making affirmations, it hopes to remember three distinct

rules—keep it personal, keep it positive, and keep it present-oriented. If you
can remember these three rules, you will find that even the most difficult
and stubborn of negative thoughts can ultimately be slain like the monster it
is.
You must keep your affirmation personal because ultimately, at the end of
the day, literally, the only person and situation that you have the utmost
control over is yourself. When you are not the subject of the affirmation,
you will find that you cannot act upon it, meaning that you cannot possibly
ensure that the affirmation will be true at the end of the day, rendering it
almost ineffective in the first place.

You must make sure that your affirmation is positive—when it is not, you
are hardly helping yourself defeat a negative thought. While a negative
times a negative in multiplication may create a positive, that is not the case
in real-world interactions. If you have just been cut off while driving to
work, the right answer is not to tailgate the other party and harass them until
the police arrive. This means that if you wish to be effective, you want to
make sure that your affirmation is positive.

Finally, your affirmation must be present-oriented. This means that it is

actively true at the exact moment that it is being discussed. You must be
able to acknowledge the truthfulness of the affirmation if you hope to use it
for cognitive restructuring.

When these three rules come together, you effectively create an affirmation
that is actionable because it is present-tense and able to tackle a very
specific problem that you may have. When they come together, you can
find that you are more than capable of ensuring that you are encouraging a
good state of mind because you are using positive language. Finally, you
know that it is focused specifically on you, so you know that the thought
that you are correcting is well within your own jurisdiction.

Cognitive Restructuring

Another common method to regulate is through cognitive restructuring.

This process primarily involves four steps—you must identify the
problematic thoughts, you must identify any distortions, you must dispute
the distortions, and then you must develop an argument to the negative
thoughts. If you follow these four steps, you can eventually overcome the
negative thoughts or distortions that are present.

By starting with identifying, you know exactly what you will be targeting,
and because of that, you know where your efforts are going. In figuring
these out, you are identifying either negative thoughts or cognitive
distortions that will be challenged.

By identifying any of the distortions that exist, you already sort of put a
chip in their armor. After all, if you know that something about the thoughts
is inherently flawed, you will be able to actively protest against that thought
process. You may be able to remind yourself of the problems in order to
better overcome it, for example. You will be able to recognize that there is
an inherent flaw that can help you throw out the thought altogether. After
all, if someone came up and told you that, in their country, 2+2=6, you
would look at them like they are crazy. It is the hope that, through
recognizing distortions, you would give that same look to your distorted
thoughts.

Next, it is time to dispute the automatic thoughts. You may do this through
actively questioning yourself and your thoughts, such as wondering how
those particular thoughts are truthful or wondering why you would follow
that particular train of logic in the first place.

Finally, in developing a rational rebuttal, you are coming up with a new

way of thinking. You are replacing the old thought with a new one here,
offering up an alternative thought that actually makes sense. You may tell
yourself that instead of feeling like you are worthless and then telling
yourself that you are worthless, which is effectively just thinking with
emotional reasoning and following it up with some degree of labeling as
well, you tell yourself that you are trying the best that you can.
Emotional Regulation

Ultimately, grounding yourself is a technique that is largely personal. What

works for you may not necessarily work for others as well, but what is
important is that you are willing to try to see what does, in fact, work for
you. You may find that you do best with some sort of mindfulness
technique in order to regulate your emotions. You may feel like you need a
breathing exercise or some other exercise altogether. What is the most
important during this time is that you are choosing a method that feels
comfortable for you. Ultimately, you must be comfortable enough to use
these methods during moments of extreme duress in certain situations. For
this reason, it is always recommended that you use these grounding
methods several times before ever actually needing them. You want to
ensure that you have practiced enough to ensure that you are actually
capable of using them when they matter most.

Grounding Method

One such manner of grounding yourself involves the use of your

surroundings. When you use this manner, you are effectively making sure
that you can focus on everything around you, identifying and engaging with
your senses in order to make sure that you are focused on what is around
you rather than what you are doing.

In this instance, you will engage each of your senses one at a time in order
to sort of bring yourself down from the emotional state. Think of this as
slowly making your way back to shore after going out too far into the
middle of the lake.

Starting with your vision, find five things around you that you can see.
Make a note of each one as you do so. Then, move on to four things that
you can hear around you. Third, you want to identify three things that you
can touch. Fourth, you must be able to identify two things that you can
smell. Finally, you need one more thing that you can taste.

This serves two purposes—it distracts your mind by giving it something

structured to look at and consider, and it also makes sure that you are able
to regulate yourself. You effectively distract your mind from any sort of
panic attack or troubles that you were having by using your senses as much
as you can.
Deep Breathing

There is something oddly therapeutic about deep breathing—whatever it is;

it makes it far easier for individuals to engage in changing their emotions.
When you are using deep breathing, you are effectively activating the vagus
nerve—a nerve that connects from the gut to the brain and is heavily
involved in much of the physical and emotional connections.
When you use deep breathing, your deep breaths unintentionally activate
the vagus nerve. This is not problematic for the vast majority, and actually
making use of this nerve is actually quite healthy. Many cultures push a
strong emphasis on this sort of method—they actively encourage you to use
deep breathing, such as in prayers that naturally follow the rhythm of the
vagus nerve, or in meditation that uses long, drawn-out sounds.

When you want to use deep breathing for emotional regulation, you
effectively want to focus strongly on your breaths. Take in a deep breath,
making the inhale last four seconds. As you do this, you want to count
slowly. Hold your breath for four seconds as well before exhaling deeply
through your mouth. When you do this, you are going to begin to feel the
results quickly.

This method is incredibly effective. It allows you to actively remind your

body that you are safe and that your emotional state should not be nearly as
volatile as it appears to be during these moments of stress.
 Chapter 6: Principles of Psychology and Your
Relationships

Relationships are often considered critical to humankind. Though many

people tell you that you should live life without allowing someone else to
define it, nearly everyone is going to naturally crave a relationship of some
sort. As a social species, you are commonly going to be exposed to people
and commonly desire to fit in with them as well—this is only natural. When
you feel these urges, it can be easy to remind yourself that you do not need
to be worrying about a relationship or that you have no interest in a
relationship. However, the vast majority of the time, this is not true.

You naturally want to have other people to spend your time with. You
naturally want to ensure that you can relate to others, engaging with them,
and living your life as happily as you possibly can. For this reason, it
becomes important to understand the psychology behind the relationships
that you will have. When you understand how they work psychologically,
you will begin to figure out where any past relationships failed. If you have
commonly run into relationships that fail, you may feel entirely discouraged
from continuing to try to engage with them. However, if you were to engage
in your relationships with a different mindset and attempt to approach them
in the first place, you would find that you are actually far better off. You
will find that your relationships will be happier and more successful, and
this means that you, yourself, will be happier as well.
The Psychology of Relationships

You may be wondering why these relationships are so important to you in

the first place—there is one particular reason for this: It is a basic human
need. If you were to look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you would see
love and belongingness right on the list, and this is because it is a proposed
psychological need. No matter how much you may attempt to convince
yourself otherwise, you feel a biological need to fit in and find love. You
will keep searching for this as much as possible as well.

Romantic love, then, becomes one of the most important relationships that
you have in life—in fact, you may find that your entire life is based upon
finding such a relationship. This may seem absurd, but think about it—you
spent time going to school so you could get a good job. You spent time
working that job so you could save money for a house. You bought that
house, so you had the time and space to have a family.

Effectively, when the biological imperative in life is to reproduce, you are

going to be seeking out a mate. After all, you cannot reproduce on your
own—you need a partner to do so. This means that your entire life is going
to be a build-up to your romantic relationships.

Unfortunately, relationships have a tendency to fail. In failing, they also

cause a great deal of sadness or frustration as a direct consequence. This
makes sense—if your entire purpose in life is to reproduce, if you feel like
you cannot have children because you cannot find a relationship, you are
going to feel like you are failing, and that sense of failure can be
debilitating. For this reason, learning to ensure that you have the skills to
manage your relationships is critical. You need to know that you can
manage your relationships as successfully as possible if you hope to ever
actually keep and maintain a relationship.
Healthy Relationships

When you seek to build a healthy relationship, you may find that you have
some serious soul-searching to do. Are you the one that is causing problems
in the relationships? Is there something wrong with your own approach? In
being willing and able to question the relationship from the perspective of
others, you may find that you are actually doing several things that may
make your relationship far more difficult to manage than you had intended.

Nevertheless, let’s take a look at what a healthy relationship will typically

look like. Understanding it can really help you gain insight into how best to
approach your future relationships.
First and foremost—you should always feel like you can communicate with
your partner. When you are able to communicate effectively with your
partner, you and your partner can work through almost any problem
together. Effectively, working together creates a situation in which you can
actively engage together, understanding both sides of the problems until
you can both come to some sort of consensus or solution.

Beyond that, both parties should be willing to spend time together. You
should trust that your partner wants to spend time with you, and even if that
time is difficult to find in the first place, it is critical for you to find it if you
hope to be effective in your relationships. You must also be willing to
accommodate when challenges arise. Perhaps your partner has to go away
for two weeks for work—will you be okay? Some weaker relationships may
struggle with this, but if you are able to cope with it, you may find that
distance makes the heart fonder.
Your relationship should also be quite fair—both parties should put in a
reasonable amount of work. Remember one critical aspect here—fair is not
always equal. If one party works an inordinate amount of time, then it is
only fair to assume that the other party is going to be doing more of the
housework. For example, say that you work a standard 40-hour workweek,
and your partner works regular 60 hour work weeks. Since you are home
50% more than your partner, it makes sense that you would take a larger
amount of the housework. This does not mean that your partner would be
exempt, but you would not have to do nearly as much.

All of the above leads to a relationship based upon gratefulness for each
other, and both partners are willing to show it. Further, you and your partner
are then both far more willing to provide that sense of camaraderie and love
that you have been seeking. When you are able to maintain that camaraderie
long-term, you will strengthen your relationship.
Reciprocity and Relationships
Reciprocity is critical in nearly every context in your personal and social
life. Because reciprocity is one of those things in which you do it, or you do
not, when you are always willing to include reciprocity with your
relationships, you are able to better the relationship in general. Reciprocity
refers to how likely you are to return the favor.

Within intimate relationships, reciprocity is critical. It is the epitome of

equality—both you and your partner feel like neither of you are willing to
put up with the idea that one of you would be dominant in the relationship.
This does not mean dominant in the sense that one member of the
relationship tends to care more than the other about trivial matters such as
where you are going out to eat or what you will do on date night—it refers
to dominance in the sense of utter control. While some relationships can
make this work, for the most part, a relationship in which one party is able
to entirely dominate and control the entire thing is not usually considered
particularly relationship friendly.

Reciprocity in a relationship implies that you and your partner are willing to
cooperate, as well as recognizing the idea that while you and your partner
are individual people with your own likes and dislikes, you are also people
that are highly interdependent. You rely upon each other and are committed
to nurturing those feelings toward each other.

With that in mind, you may begin to see why reciprocity is so important.
This is not referring simply to reciprocity in the sense that you must be
returning a gift at the next gift-giving season after one person has given a
gift to the other—rather, this sort of reciprocity occurs when the two of you
have dedicated yourselves to ensuring that the other is taken care of. It is
the idea of being willing to offer to scratch your partner’s back before your
partner asks you to, and then getting your own back scratched in return.

Please note, however, that the expectation of reciprocity can sometimes lead
to some serious disconnects. Remember that in your relationships, you
should not be expecting anything. Expecting that leads to your own
entitlement, which is the exact opposite of reciprocity.
Commitments and Relationships
Next, keep in mind that commitments are critical in relationships. If you are
making a commitment within your relationship, you are offering to do a
certain set of things for the other person, and this should not be taken
lightly. When you take this sort of behavior lightly, you may find that you
actually struggle to find people with whom you can create a meaningful
relationship. After all, commitments can be scary and difficult to make,
especially early on. However, people value commitment, and if you are
afraid to commit, you are essentially afraid to ever have a functioning
relationship as being willing and able to commit is perhaps one of the
largest criteria for most people. If someone is not willing to commit to
monogamy, most people are likely to struggle with the idea of the
relationship in the first place. If you refuse to acknowledge that you will no
longer pursue other people, the person you are actively dating is likely to
dump you because you are effectively treating him as a backup in case
someone else that catches the other person’s fancy comes in.

When you are willing to commit to a relationship, however, you may notice
that things are actually going to change for the better. If you are willing to
make commitments, other people will be more willing to commit to you
simply due to the idea that you should reciprocate when someone else does
something for you.

This means then that in your relationships, you are likely to find someone
somewhere that can, in fact, make things work the way that you want.
When you do find them, as soon as you can get a commitment from them,
you are likely to get whatever was committed.
Expectations and Relationships
Finally, one thing that is important to look at is what will happen when
things expectations are added to a relationship. Expectations are certain
things that you assume are going to happen simply because you believe it.
In many instances, it is accurate, but today, he is wrong. When you are in a
relationship with someone else, you may find that over time, it becomes
incredibly easy to develop an expectation for that person.

When you are in a relationship with someone who does not tend to
recognize reality for what it is, you may be working under a narcissist. In
particular, when you look at a relationship that you have had in the past, can
you identify any problematic behaviors that may have happened before.
What was the root cause? Can you identify any of the times during that last
relationship that you may have had some unrealistic expectations?

In particular, unrealistic expectations are amongst some of the worst that

you can expose your partner too. If you have an unrealistic expectation that
your partner should be a certain body type at all times, and you got with
someone with that body type that eventually changed, if you left that
relationship because it no longer met your expectation, you might have
been unrealistic. Being unrealistic is typically quite bad—while it is
important to have an idea of what you want, having several unrealistic
standards can leave you scrambling to find a relationship with little to no
luck. You may desperately try, and yet, at every turn, you find that people
run away like their pants are on fire. This is a huge red flag that something
you are doing is inappropriate or problematic.
With your relationships, perhaps the best thing that you can do is ensure
that your expectations are reasonable. Ask yourself if you are willing to
follow the expectations that you set out for yourself, for example. However,
as you do this, remember that just because you are willing to do something
does not mean that everyone is willing to do it, and you must keep that in
mind. It is incredibly important for you to figure out what you absolutely
want and need, while also juggling what is realistic and fair to expect out of
the other party. You do not want to have these unrealistic expectations that
are impossible to ever actually meet, as that is asking far too much out of
the other party—that is not fair to them and should never be forced.
 Chapter 7: The Psychology of Success

Success—everyone wants it. Whether you want a successful relationship, a

successful career, or a successful life, you are striving for excellence, and
that is okay. When you are striving for this sort of excellence, you are
telling yourself that you deserve the best of what you have to offer yourself,
and that is showing that you truly care about how you see yourself and what
you do with yourself.

This is good—you are showing what you are deserving of. You are showing
that you know that you deserve the best and that you are willing to put your
best foot forward. However, you may feel like it is difficult to get past that
point. What is success? How do you become successful? How can you be
sure that you ultimately get the life that you feel that you deserve? This
chapter seeks to help you answer these questions—we will come up with a
definition of success .then, we will discuss how success exists as a
psychology within emotional intelligence—and finally, how to strengthen
emotional intelligence in order to ensure that you are as successful as you
have set out to become.

When you are successful, one thing is for sure—you are opening up dozens
of doors for yourself, and in doing so, you are bound to find one that is
perfect for you. You will find one that serves you well and keeps you happy.
It is simply a matter of finding happiness and figuring out how best to
pursue it.
Making Your Own Definition of Success
Success is one of those things that is incredibly personal. Your own
definition of success is likely to vary greatly from the definitions of those
around you. This is okay—success is something that is entirely for you, so
it is okay for it to be personal and varying based on the individual. You
should make sure that the definition of success that you create is one that
truly encompasses what you want to achieve.

In particular, there are seven steps to defining your own success—if you can
follow these steps, you are likely to find that you can find that success for
yourself.

First, you must ask yourself what success looks like to you. Figure out what
it is that you want out of life and write it down for yourself. Do you want a
life that is defined by being comfortable? Perhaps you want to ensure that
you are happy. Maybe it is with a partner, exactly three children, a nice
minivan parked in the driveway, and a nice, middle-class home that you
own. This is a perfectly okay picture of success—if your dream is to have a
family. It may be. Ultimately, however, your picture of success should
directly reflect what you want in life.

With that picture of success in mind, it is time to make a plan. This is when
you figure out exactly how you will achieve that success that you so deeply
desire. This step is critical for ensuring that you are actually able to achieve
your success—a plan that is not actually planned out is not likely to pan out
either, and that is problematic. Make sure that your plan is as specific as
possible as you do make it, as well. With a specific plan in mind, you are far
more likely to achieve it than you may actually believe.
At this point, you need to make your goal happen. Do what you must and
see what happens as a result. Is the other party happy with you? Do you like
the results? Was it everything that you ever wanted? This is a critical point
in this skill.

Finally, you must determine whether you were actually successful or not. If
you were great! If not, try again in the future. You may need to make some
tweaks to what you are doing, but it will be worth it when you finish your
work up with ease and find that your success has, in fact, been achieved
once and for all. In making sure that you never give up, you promise
yourself to remain resilient and steadfast in your attempt to achieve success
for yourself.
Psychology of Success and Emotional Intelligence
Remember, if you want to be successful, you want to be emotionally
intelligent. This means you want to learn to begin with all of those
regulation skills that have been discussed thus far. You want to learn if you
can, in fact, successfully pull off those stretch goals that you have been
reaching for. If you do succeed, great! If not, remember that it is not the end
of the world.

Those who are emotionally intelligent tend to also be quite skilled when it
comes to coping with stress and discomfort. Thanks to the fact that they are
great at self-regulation, you can usually keep the stress and discomfort at
bay. This means that you can actively protect yourself in ways that you did
not think were possible at some points in time.

Emotionally intelligent individuals are able to cope with the stress and
overwhelming feelings that come along with failure as well—when they do
face that fear and discomfort, they tend to figure out how best to cope with
it. The emotionally intelligent individual may make it a point, for example,
to try again. This sort of resilience is critical to those who are trying to be
successful. If you can be successful through making it a point to deal with
failure, you are effectively learning through trial and error without ever
letting someone else hurt or impact yourself negatively.

When you are faced with failure, you instead decide to learn from it. You
figure out a new way to tackle the problem, and much of the time, when
you do behave in such a way, you find that you are actually far more likely
to get further in life. You figure out how best to take care of yourself, and
that brings with it a happiness and feeling of success. Effectively, because
you continued to try and were perseverant, you eventually found the
solution on your own, and that is worthy of praise itself.

This means, then, if you wish to be more successful in general, you want to
figure out how best to go about becoming emotionally intelligent. You want
to actively become emotionally intelligent to pursue that definition of
success, no matter what that definition is. If you are able to bolster your
own EQ skills, you may find that you are far more likely to finally achieve
that success when you reach for it.

Building Emotional Intelligence

Trying to figure out how best to build your emotional intelligence if you do
not know what you are doing or where you are going is incredibly difficult.
However, thanks to this book, you are getting a short guide right here. In
fact, this section will provide you with several tips to help build your
emotional intelligence to levels at which you will be far more effective in
general.
Find Assertion

Remember, assertive is not the same as aggressive. If you can figure out
how to be seen as assertive, you can ensure that people do not see you as
too aggressive and, therefore, too threatening or too timid and therefore a
risk of being abused into giving them free things, for example.
Learn active listening

It is critical for those who wish to be successful in having strong, active

listening skills. When you find that your skillset, you commonly spend far
too much time looking at yourself and how you feel instead of learning
what other people are truly trying to communicate. For example, imagine
that you are in a fight with your partner. If you are able to communicate
clearly through the methods associated with emotional intelligence, you are
far more likely to find that you are actually able to figure out the problem at
the end of the day. Effectively, active listening will encourage attention and
learning skills.

Developing your own motivation

One of the crucial differences between people who are successful and those
who are not is primarily a matter of whether or not someone is able to put
up with some negative behaviors and if you are willing to put up with it, but
rather what your own motivations are. When you know what your own
motivations are, you can usually figure out exactly what you need to do in
order to actively and accurately what you want in life. Understanding your
motivation and coming up with a goal for yourself can help immensely.
Become an optimist

Another critical skill in emotional intelligence is optimism. If you want to

be optimistic, you are far more likely to succeed simply because you will
have positive mindsets. Remember, mindsets are contagious, and if you
think in a positive mindset, you are likely to attract more positivity to
yourself as well. For this reason, you want to make it a point to always look
on the bright side of things to ensure that you are actually as happy as you
need to be in order to truly be successful in the first place.

Be self-aware

If you want to be successful, you must also be self-aware. In being self-

aware, you are effectively able to self-regulate when you are not happy or
optimistic. Effectively, you are able to begin progressing in your work
because you no longer have to worry about actively trying to project
something in particular. Your ability to become self-aware is all that you
need.
Learn to Empathize

Success comes primarily from within you, but most of the time, other
people are still relevant to it. You need to make sure that you interact with
other people as well to be as successful as possible. This means then that
you have no choice but to actively try to empathize with other people.
Empathy brings with it better understanding, and better understanding
brings with it better relationships, and those relationships push you in the
right direction toward the success that you naturally want and crave.

Develop Open Body Language

Perhaps a critical skill, if you wish to be successful at anything involving

other people, you are going to want to make sure that you actively develop
body language that is inviting rather than shut off from the world. This
means making it a priority to emphasize smiles, keeping your body
language relaxed, and more. When you do this, you find that people are far
friendlier than you realized. Effectively, people all want to see you and
interact with you when you are actively friendly and helping other people
out.
Developing Emotional Intelligence for Leadership
When you do actively decide that emotional intelligence is right for you or
that you absolutely want to be in some sort of leadership position, perhaps
the best thing that you can do is push those emotional intelligence skills in
order to actually ensure that you are on the right track for leadership and
success.

The Positivity Challenge

Considering that perhaps one of the largest threats to your success is your
own attitude, especially if that attitude is one of indifference or negativity,
changing your own mindset to become positive is one of the best ways to
increase your chances of success. Consider for a moment how many
negative thoughts go through your mind in the course of a day. You may
find that you are happy one minute, but as soon as you drop a mug that
shatters, you find yourself furious and telling yourself that you are stupid.
This is problematic—you should never be that negative to yourself.
When you do find yourself in a negative moment, one of the best things that
you can do is ensure that you are able to actively challenging negative
thoughts with positive ones. You will be tasked with providing three
positive tasks to anything you word one toward negatively.

For example, imagine that you tell yourself that you are stupid. Now, you
must come up with three distinct positives, and they should all be about
yourself. When you do this, you are effectively shifting your own thinking,
allowing yourself to think in positive manners instead of the negative ones.
Effectively, you are actively teaching yourself to figure out how best to
avoid all of the negativity by drowning it in a sea of positivity. Very quickly,
after several reiterations of actively having to figure out how to positively
address a situation that you have had a negative thought about, you are
likely to begin sort of curtailing the habit, especially if it is tied to some sort
of reward for yourself.
Gratefulness Challenge
Similar to the idea of having that positive thought challenge, you must also
come up with a challenge about things that you are grateful for. You think,
for example, that you are not grateful enough with what you got for
Christmas because you feel like the items that were bought for you were
items that probably would have been better served toward the other person.
When you are attempting the gratefulness challenge, you effectively want to
ensure that you are able to practice gratefulness on a regular basis. You
want to make sure that you can actually recognize what you are happy to
have that is not entitled to you, and you are happy to thank those who have
worked so hard to give you what you have.
Perhaps one of the best ways to do a gratefulness challenge, however, is
done on paper and pencil to write down what you are happy and grateful
for. You may write down what you are grateful that you have food, for
example, or that you are thankful for the clothing or dog food that was
donated to a dog that had nothing to give. When you acknowledge out loud
or on paper what you are grateful for, it can help you greatly in figuring out
what to do next and where to go from there.
The Eye Contact Challenge
This does not mean that you should be actively attempting to have staring
contests with everyone around you—instead, you should be actively
attempting to maintain eye contact at a healthy level. You will want to be
able to actively make that eye contact with other people if you ever hope to
have a good chance of success.
Because so much of success depends upon other people, you need to be
able to look at people in the eyes. If you are able to make eye contact, you
are far more likely to be able to get that success simply because you will be
better at interacting with other people. If you can do so, you will find that
you are perceived to be better socially than if you were unable to make eye
contact at all.
To do this challenge, you must make it a point to work up to eye contact for
extended periods of time with other people. In particular, the magic number
is 50% when speaking, 70% of the time when listening. This is imperative
—it is the perfect amount to let the other person know that you care about
what they think while also actively avoiding staring down the other person
to the point that he or she feels uncomfortable. Instead, you keep eye
contact somewhat causal while still quite attentive with them.
 Chapter 8: Using Psychology to
Fight Procrastination

And finally—you have arrived at the end of the book! Here, you will be
tasked with figuring out exactly what you need to do, how to do it, and why
it matters. Effectively, in this method, you will be figuring out exactly how
you should approach situations of procrastination, which can be some of the
most difficult to ever actually get out of simply due to the nature of the
problem.

Everyone procrastinates now and then, however sometimes, it gets to a

point in which it is overwhelming—it is so problematic that you are
actively procrastinating that you fail to get things done by their deadlines
much of the time. Slowly, bit by bit, you find that your procrastination is
taking over your life and ruining it. You want to do your work, and you
know that you have work to do, and yet instead, you find that you are stuck.

Within this last chapter, we will be addressing procrastination in general.

We will look at what it is and what the problem with procrastination is. You
will see some of the most common reasons people around you tend to
procrastinate, and finally, you will be exposed to several of the methods
through which you can defeat procrastination once and for all. In doing so,
you may be surprised to find many of your issues relating to time
management will disappear altogether.

In making these issues disappear, you may find that your stress level also
declines dramatically, and with that decreased stress level, you may be
better suited toward continuing to get your work done. This is good—with
less procrastination comes more productivity, and that productivity is what
you are looking for if you wish to be successful.
The Problem with Procrastination
Procrastination is incredibly difficult to cope with—it becomes habitual
after a while, and it is only in demolishing that procrastination problem that
you are ever actually able to defeat it. In defeating it, you will begin to
improve your success, but until you get to that point, you are going to have
to practice extreme self-control if you wish to bring that procrastination
problem to a grinding halt.

First, let’s look at what procrastination is. At its core, procrastination is the
absence of doing what you should be at any given moment. You are actively
choosing to do something contrary to what you should be, even though you
know that you are making a bad choice. This means that it is nowhere near
the same as laziness, which involves apathy. In this case, it is a willingness
to do something entirely unrelated to what needs to get done.

Typically, people procrastinate because whatever it is that they have been

tasked to do is boring, uncomfortable, or generally unpleasant in nature, and
they decide that they are better off simply avoiding doing it altogether.
However, all this does is cause more problems in the end. It leads to you
instead trying to haphazardly rush through everything at the last minute
instead of taking your time to get everything done with meticulous attention
to detail as is usually expected of you.
Nevertheless, people everywhere continue to procrastinate. Even knowing
that procrastination is something harmful, it is done anyway willingly. Of
course, then, in response, work builds up instead of gets done. It becomes a
matter of having a backlog of poorly done work instead of having your
work done meticulously in advance, and that is problematic.
Why People Procrastinate
People tend to procrastinate for all sorts of reasons. Some do so because
they are bored and do not want to do what they are supposed to be doing.
Others do it because they would rather find something fun or enjoyable to
do. Others still do it out of compulsive habit. They become so habituated to
procrastination that it becomes this vicious cycle that is incredibly difficult
to escape.

Consider for a moment that you have been procrastinating on that big paper
for your politics class all week. You knew that it was coming up—it had
been in your calendar for months, and yet, you still had not touched it.
Knowing that it was due tomorrow, you looked it up this evening, only to
find that you have no idea what you are doing. You choose to instead spend
some time watching television instead of working on it.

A little bit later, you remind yourself that you have no choice but to get that
work done if you want to actually get through it. You go to sit down at the
paper, but you cannot help but feel stressed as you sit there. Soon, you are
on social media instead of working, and soon after that, you find yourself
constantly reading messages online.

Though you may not be aware of it, this is all because you have developed
a tendency to be afraid of tests in general. You know that you usually
struggle with tests, and because of that, you find that you stress out about
them for a few weeks before they arrive. Of course, because you spend all
of that time incredibly nervous and not studying effectively, you are
nowhere near prepared on the morning of. You submit your paper and hope
for the best.
In the end, you really struggled. However, that failure could actually have
been a good thing. Had you been any quicker or they been any slower, you
would have been able to figure out exactly how to tackle the problem
sooner. However, instead, you failed and then took that failure to heart. That
failure taken to heart becomes the reason that you struggle to get work
done.

Effectively, getting the work done becomes stressful. When you are at
work, you do not have any real leeway in your schedule. However, at home,
that leeway is there—and you use it all and then some. This problem leads
you to constantly be running late on everything.

However, if you were to stop and consider what was actually happening in
the moment, you would realize that it was actually a cycle of anxiety. You
are afraid of failure, so you struggle to begin. In struggling to begin, you
run late. In running late, you fail. You then effectively solidified that
particular negative thought—you did fail. Therefore, you must be a failure.

Remaining stuck in that mindset is incredibly unproductive, however, and it

is in your best interest to ensure that you are able to actively figure out how
best to combat that as soon as you can.
The problem, however, is that the mind is effectively hardwired to follow
the negative habit of procrastination. It is designed to avoid any sort of
negativity. When you are procrastinating, you are avoiding some sort of
negative stimulus, and at the end of the day, you are designed to do exactly
that. Effectively, you get hit with anxiety, and that anxiety sends you into
fight or flight mode. You then instinctively go into flight mode, allowing for
further procrastination despite the fact that it is so incredibly harmful to the
individual. You struggle to actually keep up, and your stress levels then
skyrocket in response and you are left disappointing those counting on you.
Defeating Procrastination with Psychology

Defeating procrastination is all about learning how to kick back those

feelings of negativity in order to bring back productivity. If you can get
yourself working in productivity instead of negativity, you will find that
you can begin to meet those deadlines once more. You can actively get
yourself working toward exactly what you needed to since you will be
motivated, rather than being avoidant.

While defeating your procrastination problem may seem incredibly

intimidating, it is quite doable. At the end of the day, all you need to do is
figure out how best to tap into your mind to visualize exactly what you
want. You need to force your mind to see that procrastinating is the enemy
—despite the fact that it seems to be exactly what you want in the moment,
it is actually hurting you far more than it is helping, and that can be
incredibly intimidating. When you feel like you cannot benefit from
procrastination any longer, you may be more willing to avoid it in the
future, essentially hijacking your mind to push toward motivation as the
default state once more.
As your mind accepts that motivated and achieving is the right state to be
in, you will find that you are actually far more likely than ever to succeed.
Your motivation is attractive to other people, and new opportunities will
arise for you in the end. You will start to see long-term benefits that arise if
you can just convince your mind that what you need to do more than
anything else is to figure out how best to be motivated once more.
Visualize Your Future
Perhaps one of the most versatile tools that you have in your arsenal is your
ability to visualize. You can visualize nearly anything—you can fantasize
about something that you have always wanted, or you can fantasize about
success. Ultimately, what you will be doing here is fantasizing over
whatever it is that is incredibly important to you. If for you, what is
important is success, you would envision that success exactly as you think it
looks. Effectively, you want to show yourself exactly what it is that you
want and exactly how you hope to get it. If you do this, you are likely to
ensure that your mind gets a taste for what may be in store if you are able to
actively push for it.

For example, imagine that you know that you have a vacation coming up.
You know that you do not want to take your work on vacation, but you will
have to do so if you do not take care of everything that needs to be done.
Imagine for a moment how you would feel working away in your room
while also watching out the window as people enjoy the beach outside
without you. If you do not get that work done, that will be your future. You
want to stress to yourself that in failing to meet that deadline for yourself,
you are going to have no choice but to continue down that road. Remind
yourself that you have plenty of time to actually meet your goals if you
spend the time to get through all the work without actually procrastinating,
and then encourage yourself to do exactly that. You want to make sure that
you are able to actually get that work done so you can be free.

Now, imagine that same vacation if you were to spend the time to get your
work done ahead of time. Think of the beach—the sand underneath your
feet and the sound of the ocean lapping at the shore. Remind yourself that
you would absolutely love to spend your time there instead of at home or in
the hotel working. Remind yourself that the point of your vacation is to
leave your work behind and to take a quick break. Tell yourself that if you
want that break, you will need to work while committing that thought to
memory. Burn the image of your vacation destination into your mind and
summon it into your mind’s eye every time you feel yourself beginning to
procrastinate at all. In doing so, you will make sure that you deter yourself
from procrastination every time you start to feel tempted to do so.

If done correctly, your mind will be willing to go through finishing the

work as planned simply because it now feels like working on vacation is far
worse than working at work when you’d rather watch another cat video.
Because your mind is reminding itself that if you were to not work when it
was work time, you would work more during the vacation, you will find
that you are more likely to actively work and stay on schedule.
Accountability

People frequently find themselves workout buddies for the sole purpose of
accountability. All things considered, working out with someone else can be
quite distracting, but at the very least, it offers a level of accountability that
you otherwise will not have. At that point, if you are to procrastinate, you
will not only be letting yourself down—you will be letting down the other
person as well. You will be making them go to the gym on their own instead
of going with a friend that is going at the same time.

The idea of holding yourself accountable is incredibly powerful—humans

tend to feel like they must be held accountable simply because telling other
people that you have failed is generally not particularly enjoyable. If you
have told other people that you were going to be doing something, you will
feel the urge to ensure that you follow through simply due to the
accountability.

Because people want to be seen as consistent, they tend to follow through

when they voice that they are going to do something, and this is exactly
why you end up doing exactly as promised when you are telling others what
you are up to. Effectively, you are making sure that other people will follow
up and ask you about your work, or you are making sure that someone else
will be actively looking for you wherever you are supposed to be. If you are
supposed to be at the gym working out, you will have someone looking for
you and expecting you to spot them.

It is generally much harder for people to be willing to let down others than
to let down themselves, and this is why it is so important to set up that
accountability—people will follow along simply because they want to avoid
letting down others who may be following or paying attention to what they
are doing.
Bribes

Finally, one last way that you can keep yourself motivated is through the
use of bribes. In psychology, this method is known as positive
reinforcement—you actively reward good, positive behavior. Because of
this, you can use bribes to effectively get people to stay on track with their
work. You will do this if you want to ensure that everyone is doing what
they said that they would do and what they need to do.

Imagine that you have a 30-page file to get through at work. You may feel
like that is far too much and continue to push it off simply because you do
not want to work on it. As you do this, you find that it is getting pushed off
simply because you do not want to do it in the first place. With that in mind,
you instead make it a point to actively bribe yourself to get through the
work.

You decide that, after every 5 files you get through, you are free to spend 30
minutes playing a video game that you have been dying to play. Once all of
the files are done, you tell yourself, you will buy yourself that new game
that you have been dying to get your hands on as well. Effectively, you
layer on so much positivity to what you need to get done that suddenly,
getting through everything is a breeze. You may find that those files are
finished up far quicker than they otherwise would have been, freeing you up
and allowing you to move on with your life without worrying about
procrastination continuing to eat away at your time and energy.

Eventually, you find that all files are done, and you feel quite accomplished
and proud. This alone is a positive reinforcement, but when you add in the
idea of actually getting a new game as well, you have doubly reinforced
that new action. You are beginning to see procrastinating as less of an
attempt to avoid work and more of an attempt to be lazy, and little by little,
you find that you get better about actively finishing up all of your work
without complaint. Eventually, you are even able to develop that internal
motivation that comes from yourself. So long as you learn how to tap into
that motivation, you will find that everything else comes naturally.

As with the vast majority of difficult tasks and difficult habits to break, the
hardest part is the beginning. As soon as you get started and get past that
first hurdle, it does get easier. It becomes easier and easier to find that
intrinsic motivation within yourself to help you, and you are far more likely
to succeed. All you need to do is get past that first push once and for all.
Remember, you can do it. You just need to set your mind to it.
 Conclusion

Congratulations! You have arrived at the end of Introducing Psychology! At

this point, you should have a pretty solid idea on the foundation of
psychology, what it entails, and how you should approach it. It is of the
utmost hope that you have found this book to be at least as informative as it
was intended to be. The book was designed to teach about psychology as
much as possible within a short period of time, and while it is not a
complete textbook the way something for psychology 101 in college may
be, it is still jam-packed with some of the basic principles of psychology,
such as what emotions are, what causes them, why they exist, and more.

As you read this book, it is with hope that you begin to put some of the
work discussed into practice. Make it a point to remind yourself how happy
you are with your partner to help build your relationship. Spend time
talking to coworkers about your goals, so you work harder toward them
simply because you expect the subject to be brought up over and over again
when your coworkers get curious. Remind yourself that emotions are so
incredibly important to understand and why they matter.

From here, you have several choices in where to go. You could make it a
point to look into some of the most popular self-help fields of psychology.
These are most commonly cognitive behavioral therapy, dark psychology,
subliminal psychology, and emotional intelligence. Any one of these
subjects would provide plenty of information about the mind, as well as
provide you with more on it all.
Remember, this book is meant to cover plenty of different topics—if you
wish, you can go more in-depth for literally any of them. You can choose to
learn more about empathy or how to interact with other people. No matter
what you choose, however, you know that you are making a good choice
simply because you are actively learning. Active learning is critical if you
wish to be successful.

As this book draws to a close once and for all, remember that you are
capable. Whether to regulate your emotions, tackle your anger, or even to
help you become successful in relationships and with other people in
general, this book had help to offer you. This book wanted to provide you
with all of the basic information necessary to think about the topics
included.

Finally, if you have enjoyed this book at all, please consider leaving a
review with your honest opinion. It is always greatly appreciated to have
the opinion of a reader written out, and it would be an honor to have yours
as well. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey through the
mind from beginning to end. Hopefully, you found it insightful, enjoyable,
and overall, quite pleasant. Good luck on your journey. If you set your mind
to it, you will be able to do just about anything. Remember, you hold the
power of your mind—all you need to do is learn how to tap into it once and
for all. If you do so, you will be able to actively engage with your mind in
the most productive manner possible.
How To Analyze People with Dark
Psychology

By Learning To Read People Through

Behavior and Body Language, You Will
Understand the Mind and Personality of
Those Who Are Close To You in Everyday
Life
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing How to Analyze People with Dark

Psychology, and thank you for doing so.

People are inherently tricky to understand. With free will, the ability to
think and override emotional impulses, and innumerous personality types
and temperaments, it can be difficult to understand exactly what pushes
someone to do what he or she does or to predict what will happen next.
When you are interacting with someone, you may oftentimes wonder what
it is that is going on inside the other person’s mind—this is a normal thing
to wonder, especially if it is someone close to you, or if you are doubting
the veracity of the person that you are interacting with. When this happens,
your best possible course of action is to learn how to read the other person.

When you learn how to analyze someone, you learn how to figure out what
makes them tick. You figure out motivations and goals. You learn about
what makes someone who they are and how to push them to behave in
certain ways. You can do this to better understand who someone is, or you
can also attempt to make someone do something. You can use it to detect
lying or to better your own relationships. You can use it to become more
skilled at your job, enabling you to develop better people skills. The
possibilities for your usage of analyzing other people are endless.
In particular, one way to analyze people is through the understanding and
usage of dark psychology. This may sound insidious and threatening, but it
does not have to be. Dark psychology is not necessarily designed to be evil
and underhanded, but it is directly derived from looking at how some of the
darkest minds in the world function. In particular, you will be looking at
how people tend to behave as if you were looking through the eyes of a
human predator—of someone whose sole goal is to figure out what
motivates other people and figure out how to exact absolute control and
command perfect submission from the other party.

As you read through this book, you will be guided through learning how to
analyze people for yourself. You will delve into understanding the various
personality types that people can have, learning more about how other
people view the world. You will develop an understanding of verbal vs.
nonverbal communication and how both are used constantly when you are
interacting with other people. You will be guided through how to read the
most common telltale nonverbal communication signs, as well as how to
falsify your own language. You will learn how to detect when people are
deceptive with you, learning why, how, and what to look for. You will be
introduced to dark psychology and how to understand the world through the
eyes of human predators, learning how to use it to analyze others. Lastly,
you will begin to see how dark psychology affects people, both in looking
at malicious attempts to manipulate others as well as looking at when it is
used benevolently and in a way that is intended to help other people.

Throughout the reading, you will be provided all of the information that you
need to begin understanding people around you. If you are willing to
commit the information that you will be provided to memory, you will find
that understanding even strangers becomes easier for you.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible; please enjoy it!
 Chapter 1: Analyzing People

Take a moment to imagine a time when the sight of someone sent a chill
down your spine. You may not have known why, but you were simply
uncomfortable around the person that you were facing. Despite your best
attempts to identify the reasoning behind your problem, you found that
there was no particular reason that you could discern. All you knew was
that you were afraid of the person in front of you and that you had no idea
what was driving those feelings or how to overcome them.

There was a very good reason for this guttural reaction—your instincts were
telling you that something about the other person was not right. You didn’t
need to know specifics, and all that mattered to you was that your own
reactions were accurate. This is because all these guttural reactions must do
is keep you alive. So long as that is managed, your instincts did their job.

When you first look at someone, your unconscious mind goes through all
sorts of information to come up with what it assumes is a valid reading of
the person. Of course, this all happens beneath your conscious awareness.
This means that you are entirely unaware of it as it happens, and yet, you
are able to respond to it without effort. Of course, being able to react
without having to think about it much is always quite useful in survival
settings—when you are not sitting to rationalize out what to do and why
when in a survival setting and simply going on impulse, you do not waste
valuable time that could be the difference between life and death.
However, if you are not in a life-and-death situation, do you really want to
be acting on impulse? Will your impulses really help you discern whether
the person at the interview is lying or simply uncomfortable about
something? Or to determine how your partner is feeling during an
argument? There are limitless reasons that being able to rationally
understand what is going on in someone else’s mind is critical, even if you
already have a decent gut reaction. Ultimately, when you are able to analyze
someone calmly and consciously be aware of why you are uncomfortable or
what is putting you on-edge, you are better prepared to cope with the
problem at hand. This is because you are able to act rationally. You can
strategize on how to better react in the most conducive manner that will
allow you to succeed in the situation.

This means that in the modern world, when things are very rarely life or
death situations, making an effort to switch to responding rationally and
consciously is almost always the best bet. You will be able to tell when
someone is setting off your alarm bells because they seem threatening, or
because they seem deceptive. You will be able to figure out what the
problem is in order to respond appropriately.
Why Analyze People?
Analyzing people is something that is utilized by several people in different
capacities. The most basic reason you may decide that you wish to analyze
someone is to simply understand them. While you already have your own
built-in method of understanding other people, through being able to
empathize with them, you will discover that having a cognitive rather than
an emotional connection is critical if you want to truly get into someone
else’s mind.

Consider for a moment that you are trying to land a deal with a very
important client. You know that the deal is critical if you hope to keep your
job and possibly even get a promotion, but you also know that it is going to
be a difficult task to manage. If you have the ability to read someone else,
you can effectively allow yourself the ability to truly know what is going on
in their mind. Think about it—you will be able to tell if the client is
uncomfortable and respond accordingly. You will be able to tell if the client
is being deceptive or withholding something—and respond accordingly.
You can tell if the client is uninterested, feeling threatened, or even just
annoyed with your attempts to sway him or her, and you can then figure out
how to reply.

When you are able to understand the mindset of someone else, you can self-
regulate. You can fine-tune your own behaviors in order to guarantee that
you will be persuasive. You can make sure that your client feels
comfortable by being able to adjust your own behavior in order to figure out
what was causing the discomfort in the first place.
Beyond just being able to self-regulate, being able to read other people is
critical in several other situations as well. If you can read someone else, you
can protect yourself from any threats that may arise. If you can read
someone else, you can simply understand their position better. You can
figure out how to persuade or manipulate the other person. You can get
people to do things that they would otherwise avoid.

Ultimately, being able to analyze other people has so many critical benefits
that it is absolutely worthwhile to be able to do so. Developing this skillset
means that you will be more in touch with the feelings of those around you,
allowing you to assert that you have a higher emotional intelligence simply
because you come to understand what emotions look like. You will be able
to identify your own emotions through self-reflection and learning to pay
attention to your own body movements. The ability to analyze people can
be invaluable in almost any setting.
How to Analyze People
Though it may sound intimidating, learning to analyze other people is not
nearly as difficult as it may initially seem. There are no complicated rules
that you need to memorize or any skills that you really need to learn—all
you have to do is learn the pattern of behaviors and what they mean. This is
because once you know the behaviors, you can usually start to piece
together the intent behind the behaviors. You can begin to figure out exactly
what it is that someone’s eyes narrowing means and then begin to identify it
with the context of several other actions or behaviors as well. You can
figure out what is intended when someone’s speech and their body language
do not match up. Body language rarely lies when people are unaware of
how it works, so you can oftentimes turn to it for crucial information if you
are interacting with other people.

The reason this works to understand people is because it is commonly

accepted that there is a cycle between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Your thoughts create feelings, and the feelings you have automatically
influence your behaviors, as you can see through body language. Most of
the time, this is an entirely unconscious cycle. You are unaware of it
happening. However, several schools of therapy have chosen to identify and
utilize this cycle, such as cognitive behavioral psychology. When you are
able to recognize that this cycle exists, you can take advantage of it—you
can begin to utilize your understanding of the cycle in order to follow it in
reverse.

Effectively, you will be looking at behaviors that people display and then
tracing them back to the feelings behind them. This is why body language is
so important to understand. When you can understand what is going on with
someone’s behavior, you can understand their feelings. When you
understand their feelings, you can begin to figure out the underlying
thoughts that they have. This is about the closest thing to mind reading that
you can ever truly attain.

In order to analyze other people, you have a simple process to get through
—you must first figure out the neutral baseline of behavior. This is the
default behavior of the person. You must then begin to look for deviations
in that neutral behavior. From there, you try to put together clusters of
behaviors to figure out what is going on in the mid of someone else, and
then you analyze. This process is not difficult, and if you can learn how to
do so, while also learning how to interpret the various different types of
body language, you will find that understanding other people could never
be easier.

Establish a neutral baseline behavior set

The most important aspect of being able to analyze someone else is through
learning how to identify their baseline behavior. If you can do this, you can
effectively allow yourself to identify how that person behaves in a neutral
setting. Effectively, you will learn what that person’s quirks may be. For
example, someone who happens to be reserved or particularly timid is
likely to show several common signs of discomfort, even by default. They
may cross their arms to shield their body, or stand defensively and refuse to
make eye contact. As you will learn later through reading, this is a common
body language that is regularly exhibited by those who are lying and do not
know how to cover their tracks. However, the timid person is probably not
lying if their behavior by default involves crossing arms and refusing to
make eye contact.

Because people’s baseline personality types and quirks vary so drastically

from person to person, this becomes a critical first step, and you must make
it a point to never skip it. Otherwise, you would assume that any shy person
must be trying to deceive you. Getting that picture of baseline personality
and nonverbal communication quirks is crucial.

Identify deviations from neutral behaviors

Once your baseline has been established, you can begin to identify any
deviations from it. This means that you can figure out which of the
behaviors that you are seeing do not match up with what you have come to
expect via your initial observations. This stage can occur during all sorts of
interactions. You may ask a question and then observe to see what the
response will be in order to determine whether that person is answering
truthfully. You can probe and look for signs of discomfort. You can
effectively test to see how convincing you are being when you are trying to
persuade someone to do something.

Identify clusters of deviations

Of course, just identifying those individual deviations is not always enough.

You must also make it a point to recognize clusters of the deviations in
order to get the true picture. When you get to Chapter 4: Reading Body
Language, you will see that much of human body language can be
interpreted in different ways depending on context, and oftentimes, you
need to get that context from looking at other behaviors that are occurring
in conjunction with the behaviors you are analyzing. For example, there are
several behaviors in deception that could have several meanings, but as
soon as they occur together, you can usually infer that there is some level of
deception occurring, which means that you need to proceed with caution.

Analyze

Finally, as you identify those clusters of deviations from the original,

neutral behavioral baseline, you can start to figure out what they mean. You
can start to trace it backwards to figure out whether or not the person is
honest or how they are feeling. When you begin to analyze, that is when
you truly get the real snapshot of the thoughts inside the person’s mind. You
will be able to piece together whether the person has a problem in certain
settings based upon seeing general repeated responses. You will be able to
tell what is intimidating to them, or what seems to consistently motivate
them to keep working toward their goals. In going through this stage, you
can start to figure out exactly what is needed to influence or manipulate
them, if you should choose to do so.
When to Analyze People
Analyzing people is one of those skills that can be used in almost any
context. You can use it at work, in personal relationships, in politics,
religion, and even just in day-to-day life. Because of this versatility, you
may find that you are constantly analyzing people, and that is okay.
Remember, your unconscious mind already makes snapshot judgments
about other people and their intentions, so you were already analyzing
people, to begin with. Now, you are simply making an effort to ensure that
those analyses are made in your conscious mind so you can be aware of
them.

Now, let’s take a look at several different compelling situations in which

being able to consciously analyze someone is a critical skill to know:

In parenting: When you can analyze other people, you can begin
to use those skills toward your children. Now, you may be
thinking that a child’s mind is not sophisticated enough to get a
reliable read on, but remember, the child’s feelings are usually
entirely genuine—they have their feelings that they have, and
though the reason behind those feelings may be less than
compelling to you as a parent, that does not in any way dismiss
the feelings. By being able to recognize the child’s emotions, you
can begin to understand what is going on in your child’s mind,
and that will allow you to parent calmly and more effectively.
In relationships: When you live with someone else, it can be
incredibly easy to step on someone else’s toes without realizing it.
Of course, constantly stepping on the toes of someone else is
likely to lead to some degree of resentment if it is never
addressed, and yet some people have a hard time discussing when
they are uncomfortable or miserable. This is where being able to
analyze someone else comes in—you will be able to tell what
your partner’s base emotions are when you interact, allowing you
to play the role of support.
In the workplace: Especially if you interact with other people,
you need to be able to analyze other people. You will be able to
see how your coworkers view you, allowing you to change your
own behaviors in order to get the company image that you desire.
Beyond just that, you may also work in a field that requires you to
be able to get good reads on someone in the first place. Perhaps
you are a doctor—you may need to be able to tell how someone is
feeling and whether they are honest with you to begin with.
Maybe you are a lawyer and you need to be able to analyze the
veracity of your client and of those that you are cross-examining.
Maybe you are a salesperson who needs to be able to tell if you
are being compelling in your attempt to close.
In public: When you are interacting with people in public, you
need to be able to protect yourself. When you can read other
people, you can figure out whether you are safe or whether
someone is threatening or suspicious. This means that you can
prepare yourself no matter what the situation is to ensure that you
are always ready to respond.
In interviews: When you are applying and interviewing for a job,
you may find that being able to read the interviewer’s body
language can encourage you when you are doing well or cue you
in to when it is time to change tactics or move on to something
else. You will be able to tell how you are being taken simply by
watching for body language and other nonverbal cues.
When watching presentations: When you are watching a
presentation, speech, or address, you may fall into the habit of
simply taking everything at face value. After all, why would
anyone ever make it a point to tell you something that is not true?
This is because you are falling for one of the principles of
persuasion—an appeal to authority. This means that you deem the
person speaking an authority and therefore deem them to be
trustworthy. Instead, make an effort to see the other party as what
they truly are by learning to read their body language. You can
tell if the politician on television is uncomfortable or lying simply
by learning to analyze their behaviors.
In arguments: When you are arguing with someone else, usually,
emotions are running high on both ends. No one is thinking
clearly, and things that were not meant can be said. However,
when you can analyze people, you can start to figure out when
someone else is getting emotional in order to disengage
altogether. You will be able to identify the signs that you should
disengage and try again later in order to ensure that you are not
stepping on toes or making things worse.
In self-reflection: When you can analyze other people, you can
start to analyze yourself as well. This means that you can stop and
look at your own body language to sort of check in with yourself
and figure out what is going on in your own mind. Sometimes, it
can be difficult to identify exactly how you are feeling, but this is
the perfect way to do so in a pinch. If you can stop and self-
reflect, you can identify your emotions.
In self-regulation: Identifying your emotions then lends itself to
the ability to self-regulate. When you are, for example, in a
heated argument and feel yourself tensing up and getting
annoyed, you may be able to key in to the fact that you are getting
annoyed and respond accordingly. Conversely, when you can
analyze other people, you can look at them and see how they are
feeling. This means that if you can see that you are intimidating
or making someone uncomfortable, you can make the necessary
changes to your own actions.
 Chapter 2: Personality Types

Now, before making it a point to analyze others, you must first begin to
recognize personality types. Personalities change so much from person to
person that learning how to identify the personality of someone else can be
incredibly beneficial to you. When you can more or less piece together how
someone thinks or what their default states of being may be, you will start
to have a better general idea of how to predict your own behaviors will be
interpreted. If you know, for example, that you are dealing with an
introvert, you may make it a point to give the other person some breathing
room rather than making it a point to insist on confrontation and problem-
solving right that moment.

From a slightly darker perspective, those who utilize dark psychology often
use this step and understanding the personality type or tendencies of those
around them to help them identify their next targets. This is because some
personality types are far more tolerant than others, and those more tolerant
people are going to be more likely to put up with problematic behaviors.

Ultimately, when you stop to read someone else’s personality type, you will
not get quite as clear of an image as you would get if they, for example,
stopped everything that they were doing and suddenly made it a point to
take a personality test, but you will still get valuable information that could
serve you well.
Within this chapter, we will be discussing one of the more popular methods
to divide personality type—the Myers-Briggs Personality Types. You will
be guided through each of the four categories that people get parsed into,
giving you a total of 16 different personality types based on how people see
the world. You will be guided through introversion vs. extroversion,
whether people go with what they can observe or sense or their intuition,
whether people think or feel, and whether they go based on judgment or
sensing the world around them. This may not make sense yet, but you will
be guided through each of those categories. Lastly, you will understand how
to more or less guess what someone else’s personality type is based on a
brief guide to the 16 Myers Briggs Personality Types.

Please note that there are several different ways that people can stop and
take apart personality types—you may see people refer to the Enneagram,
another way to figure out personality type. You may see people discuss the
four temperaments. Ultimately, there are many different ways that you can
utilize to figure out the minds of others. Which you prefer is largely a
matter of preference for yourself.
What is Personality?
Personality is, simply put, who you are as a person. When you are talking
about personality, you are looking at the differences between how you may
think, feel, and behave versus how other people choose to think, feel, and
behave. It then takes into consideration how those three categories come
together to make you as a whole. In general, you may hear people describe
someone else as introverted or extraverted, or that they are bold and unique,
or maybe timid. These are all characteristics that come together to create
your own personality.

Your personality traits come from several different aspects of life—some

are genetic inheritances, others are genetic predispositions that required a
certain sort of activation somewhere in life, and others still are simply
learned responses to the world around you. Ultimately, when you want to
look at your personality or the personality of other people, you will be
looking at the Big Five Personality Traits. These can be remembered by the
acronym OCEAN:

Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion vs. introversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

Each of these personality tendencies can help you understand who people
are as a whole. Everyone will exhibit some level of each of these five traits
—it will simply be a matter of figuring out if someone is entirely agreeable
or entirely defiant, for example. When you understand someone’s
tendencies within these five traits, you start to figure out their personality
types.

Openness

This particular trait is crucial to imagination or being able to find insight.

When someone happens to be highly open to experiences, they tend to be
creative and adventurous. They are typically quite curious and want to learn
more about the world around them. They are excited about exploring the
world.

However, those who score far lower on their openness to experience the
world tend to be far more rigid. They like tradition and schedule and are
aversive to change in general. They will resist anything that is unfamiliar
and usually dislike when conversations or discussions lean toward
theoretical. They want to live in comfort without worrying about what will
happen next or how they will need to proceed throughout life.

Conscientiousness

This personality trait is all about how thoughtful someone is as an

individual. It takes into consideration how likely someone is to be able to
control their impulses or make sure that they are constantly working toward
their goals. Those who are largely conscientious are usually the ones who
pay meticulous attention to details. They feel the need to plan exactly how
things will play out and always consider how other people are likely to feel
as a result of their own behaviors and tendencies.
On the other hand, those who are not particularly conscientious are usually
very dismissive of structure. Things will happen when they happen and not
a moment sooner. They do not mind, and sometimes even prefer, the
unpredictability of chaos and are usually not particularly disciplined. They
will procrastinate or simply fail when it comes to achieving deadlines or
goals.

Extraversion

This particular trait encompasses how one views being able to socialize
with others. In particular, those who are extraverted tend to feel like they
are energized by other people or engaging in social interaction. They tend to
enjoy others and will go out of their way to get out and be social.

Those who are not particularly extraverted are usually referred to as

introverts, and introverts are typically quite reserved. They feel like they
must expend energy when interacting and engaging with people out in
public. Rather than being energized by social activity, they feel drained and
often feel the need to retreat and relax. This does not mean that they are
necessarily antisocial, but rather that socialization, no matter how enjoyed,
is exhausting, and they need to spend the time to recharge after the fact.

Agreeableness

This trait looks at trust, kindness, and other behaviors that would be deemed
prosocial. Effectively, they are happily cooperative and are willing to help
others. In fact, they are usually quite empathetic and care strongly about
how other people feel. They want to make sure that they are helping other
people.

On the other hand, people who are less agreeable typically care about and
empathize less with those around them. They do not care much when they
see people suffering and may even tend to manipulate others, having no
problems with using other people to get what they want or need. All they
care about is how they get what they want.

Neuroticism

The last trait is neuroticism—this looks at the emotional instability and

moodiness of an individual. When you are highly neurotic, you are typically
quite moody in general, with higher levels of anxiety or irritability. You
may be easily upset and struggle to cope with stress when you are facing it.

Those who are not neurotic; on the other hand, tend to be far more
emotionally stable—they are resilient and relaxed. They are able to cope
with stress as it arises without worrying too much about it. They can
manage their own emotions and are rarely stuck in feelings of despair.
Why Personality Matters

Personality is crucial because it determines how people in the world

interact. If you are neurotic, you are going to have a tendency to sway from
emotion to emotion, and if you pair that with someone who is not agreeable,
you may find that you are dealing with someone who does not care about
prosocial behaviors while also oscillating from mood to mood. When you
understand what someone’s tendencies are, you are prepared to deal with
them.
Beyond just that, however, personality determines how you will interact
with the world and how those around you will also respond. When you can
understand personality and the personality traits of other people, you can
make sure that you can predict the behavioral patterns of other people. You
can see how other people will react and in understanding that reaction, you
will be able to understand what to expect in your own interactions with
someone else. You will also be able to identify body language cues that may
be important to know.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Perhaps one of the more well-known personality type indicators out there is
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This particular personality type
indicator looks at four distinct modes of interacting with the world that
combine to create 16 distinct personality types that all have their own
tendencies and determinants.

This particular personality type indicator works on introspective self-

reporting, meaning that people are required to go through the test on their
own and answer what they feel is the most accurate. Of course, this also
means that it can be flawed sometimes—people can skew the test toward
traits that they think they have or they wish they would have, and that can
bring up some doubts on whether this is an effective or trustworthy way to
analyze personality. Nevertheless, it is still useful to offer some insight into
the minds of other people.

The MBTI will look in particular at cognitive learning styles—this means

that it is focused on how people interact with the world. It is important to
recognize that the comparative pairs of traits are not meant to be seen as
polar opposites but rather two ends of one spectrum in which the world is
viewed. Some people can exist halfway through one category, balancing out
in the middle, and someone who is largely on one end of the spectrum can
exhibit traits that exist on the other as well.

Introvert vs. Extravert

The first learning style that is looked at is the introvert versus the extravert.
In particular, when you are looking at the MBTI, you are going to see the
spelling of “extravert,” though it is commonly spelled as extrovert in
several other sources. Nevertheless, this particular type looks to see how
people learn in regards to social interactions.

People on the extravert end of the spectrum usually learn well by

interacting with the world around them. They look to the physical world
around them in order to figure out what is happening. They are more likely
to require being able to touch and feel things rather than simply
contemplating it, and they are happy to process in person.

People on the introvert end of the spectrum, on the other hand, prefer to
reflect in peace and quiet. They do not require the physical aspect to
learning and do better oftentimes when they are able to internally grapple
with a concept. They prefer to process internally as opposed to the
extravert’s external preference.

Sensing vs. Intuition

The next spectrum that is identified is the spectrum between sensing and
intuition. This is where people tend to focus their attention in order to
understand the world around them. It determines whether people are
interested in the physical versus the abstract.

In particular, those on the sensing end of the spectrum tend to favor the
concrete and tangible. They want to see the results and have the evidence in
their hands and available to them. There is a major preference toward
details and sequences, and they want to focus on what is in front of them
rather than abstract or hypotheticals.

The intuition end of the spectrum, on the other hand, involves people that
are good at understanding and grappling with the hypothetical and abstract.
They do not feel the need to have something in front of them, and would
rather contemplate what is happening rather than have to interact physically.

Thinking vs. Feeling

The third spectrum identifies the preferences used during decision making.
This particular spectrum seeks to identify whether people are more likely to
make a decision based on their emotions or versus looking at things
logically and rationally. Both forms of thinking have their own important
purposes, and it is ultimately a matter of looking at the preference.

People on the thinking end of the spectrum usually look at cold logic and
truth. Feelings have nothing to do with their decisions, and they will always
look to make objective decisions based upon the truth and evidence that
they have in front of them. They are interested in logic and deduction and
will go with the logical decision, no matter how much they may dislike the
implications or the feelings that go along with it.

The people on the feeling end, however, tend to emphasize the emotions
that go along with their decision. They will look at situations in much more
nuanced ways, taking a look at the reason behind why someone did
something rather than simply judging it to be black or white.
For example, the thinker may say that the person who was stealing is a
criminal who deserves to be prosecuted accordingly, while the feeler may
point out that the person stole a loaf of bread to feed his children, and that
leniency is in order. They are both looking at the same problem, but the
thinker believes that things must be logical and follow the rules, meaning
the man is guilty no matter what and deserves the same punishment as the
people who have stolen for gain rather than to simply survive, while the
feeler cares about the motives.

Judging vs. Perceiving

Finally, the fourth spectrum seeks to identify how people tend to regard
complexity in the world. People tend to approach the world in different
manners, with some choosing a structured, logical manner, while others
prefer to go with the flow.

In particular, those who are on the judging end of the spectrum prefer to
have a structure to their approach to the world. They enjoy having protocols
in place and a pattern for how they will get through the world around them.
This structure is used as their guide and helps them know what to expect.

On the perceiving end, however, people prefer to keep things open. They
want to be able to have options that will allow for change if it is needed.
While the judging types will try to fit new information into their
understanding of the world and its structures, the perceivers are more likely
to change without needing any sort of previous structure. They are willing
to go with the flow.
The MBTI Personality Types
INTJ: The Architect: These people are imaginative and tend to
do well with strategy. They are able to develop plans with ease
and prefer to always have plans. They question everything as they
observe the world around them.
INTP: The Logician: This personality type is categorized as
being skilled at analysis. These people are able to analyze quickly
and then use those analyses to ensure that they are able to achieve
what they set out to do with the possible success
ENTJ: The Commander: Those with the ENTJ personality
types are typically comfortable in a leadership position. They are
willing to take charge and are particularly skilled in structure.
They typically are driven by ambition and are optimistic and
comfortable in making decisions quickly.
ENTP: The Debater: This personality type is driven by the
ability to have conversations and learn. They love to engage with
other people, welcome challenge and like to look at the world
through logic while inviting others to join them as well.
INFJ: The Advocate: The INFJ is all about helping other people.
This person has a kind nature and tends to reflect. They are
creative and are willing to look at the world with uniquely
idealistic perspectives. Usually, these people are visionaries
INFP: The Mediator: These people are usually interested in
figuring out what the meaning of the world is. They are usually
quite sensitive and prefer to spend time at home on their own,
allowing their imaginations to run wild. Usually, these people are
reserved and interested in pursuing their values.
ENFJ: The Protagonist: The ENFJ is usually driven by
principles. They are charismatic and find it easy to relate to others
while still maintaining their idealistic values. They are usually
quite outspoken.
ENFP: The Campaigner: This personality type focuses on
creating the path to the life they wish to live. They are interested
in beginning new projects while also seeing the potential that
other people possess, encouraging, and fostering it.
ISTJ: The Logistician: Those with this personality type tend to
be incredibly organized and driven to work hard. They are
attentive and are skilled in managing their social and cultural
responsibilities. Usually, these people are interested in thinking
deeply to identify clearly what is right. They are usually
trustworthy and reserved, but also intimidating to those that they
do not know.
ISFJ: The Defender: This personality type is determined to help
other people. They are usually quite warm and nurturing while
also sensitive. They are usually deemed to be loyal, generous, and
considerate.
ESTJ: The Executive: The ESTJ personality type is
characterized by being traditional and deeply driven by their
desire to follow those values they hold dear. They are usually
quite happy to lead other people and asked for help regularly
because their advice is typically deemed to be orderly and result-
oriented.
ESFJ: The Consul: This personality type is identified as being
entirely comfortable being in the limelight. They enjoy social
interaction and do everything in their power to be liked. They are
usually quite gracious and thoughtful, along with being interested
in helping everyone around them.
ISTP: The Virtuoso: These people are driven by their desire to
be rational. They observe the world around them and then figure
out how best to reply rationally. They are usually incredibly
spontaneous, bringing with them enthusiasm with a side of
pragmatism.
ISFP: The Adventurer: These people tend to be good at
listening and focus on being a good friend. They may struggle
with that initial connection to others, but once it is made, they
value making sure that they and those around them are at peace.
ESTP: The Entrepreneur: These people are the doers—they are
willing to go out and do new things. They enjoy spending their
time with other people and do not want to have to be bothered
with the details. They are good at solving pragmatic problems and
negotiating, but they are also usually deemed to be quite
impulsive and unconventional.
ESFP: The Entertainer: This personality type is characterized
by the ability to bring energy to any event. They are good at
interacting with other people, and those skills make them
incredibly beneficial to be around. They are usually quite
sympathetic and thoughtful about the world around them.
Identifying Personality Types

Though most of the time, proper types are determined by the active analysis
of a test that the individual themselves fills out, you can also usually piece
together what the most likely personality type of someone else is just by
comparing which characteristics that particular person seems to have more
of. In order to determine which category someone falls into, try to figure
out which side of the spectrum fits that person better
Chapter 3: Verbal vs. Nonverbal Communication

Imagine that you are trying to send an important message to someone. How
should you go about delivering it? It is difficult to know how best to convey
a message to someone else, especially if you find that you will need to
convey some sort of bad news to the other party. When that happens, your
best interest is often in making sure that there is no miscommunication,
meaning that you want to be there in person.

Think about when the police are tasked with delivering the bad news of
informing someone that their loved one has been found dead—they go in
person. This is to make sure that the message is heard while also ensuring
that there is no miscommunication.

When you communicate in any other way than physically with someone
else, you run the risk of miscommunication simply because so much is
conveyed through nonverbal cues. This means that if you were to send an
email with just the words in front of you, the message may be taken
drastically differently than it would have been if you had chosen to say it in
person.

As social creatures, you have to communicate regularly with other people,

and you do so, almost all of the time. Even not doing or saying anything is
communicating something to someone else. The problem is, most of the
time, we tend to ignore or disregard nonverbal communication, simply
because so much of it is interpreted unconsciously. You may not be aware
of it, but you are constantly cueing into how other people speak to you,
approach you, or even look at you.
Communication is so intrinsic to our ability to relate to other people, and
yet most people do not understand the effort that goes into it. People do not
realize or recognize how intricate the art of communication is, and they
simply take it for granted. That means, then, that they also have a tendency
to miss out on important cues that would otherwise help immensely when it
comes to understanding and interacting with others.

Within this chapter, you will be provided with a crash-course into

understanding communication. In particular, we will take a look at the
differences between verbal and nonverbal communication, allowing you to
begin to understand the difference between the two. You will see an
overview of each of the types of communication and what they entail. For
example, you will learn what is meant when someone refers to vocalics
versus verbal communication—there is a difference between the two.

As you read this, you will be given all of the pertinent information you will
need to proceed with learning to read and understand body language. This
will provide you with far more insight than you otherwise would have
developed if you had simply been given a list of which actions mean what.
This is imperative if you want to have a solid understanding of people and
how communication truly works.
Communication

Communication, when simplified, is the idea that two people or beings are
able to convey messages to one another in order to share thoughts or ideas.
However, there is so much more that goes into communication than simply
assuming that if you say one word, I understand it. There are seven stages
to communication with an eighth element interfering with the entire
process. Within this section, you will be guided through understanding the
eight elements of communication.

The sender

The sender is the individual that is conveying a message. This is the

original source of the communication that is being sent. The sender is the
one who decides what it is that they want to communicate to the other party.
The sender may feel the desire to communicate with the other party and
needs to figure out how best to go about the process.

For example, imagine that your friend has come to your house and has
brought a delicious cake. You took a bite and really enjoyed it. You now
have a desire to communicate with your friend. This makes you the sender.

The message

With the desire to send a message in mind, you now must figure out what
the message that you wish to convey is. Perhaps you have a deep-seated
feeling of joy after taking a bite of that cake, feeling entirely satisfied. You
decide that you wish to convey that satisfaction to your friend in order to
make sure that they know that you truly appreciated the deliciousness of the
cake that they provided for you.

Encoding the message

With your message in mind, you now must figure out how best to convey
that message. This is where encoding the message comes into play. You
must look at the situation and your receiver in order to figure out exactly
how you should be communicating. Can you communicate it in words? Will
you be able to use a verbal language? Which language is the most effective
here? If you speak English and Spanish, but your friend that made the cake
only speaks English, you likely would not choose Spanish as your language
of choice to convey that message. You want to ensure that your language is
encoded in a way that will be understood by the receiver, no matter how
you may choose to channel the message. Here, you decide that your
message is, “I really like this cake!”

Channeling the message

With your message chosen, you must now figure out how best to channel
the message. This is determining how you are sending the message. Is it
told face-to-face? Are you sending a text message? Perhaps you will write a
note. Are you saying it out loud, or handing a quick note? No matter how
you choose to convey it, what you are sending is the message of, “I really
like this cake!”

The receiver

With the message channeled, it should now be provided for your receiver.
This means that the other person has, in fact, received the message and will
now be responsible for the other half of the communication process.

Decoding the message

Upon receiving the message, the receiver must figure out how to decode it.
This means that the receiver must figure out what was meant to be
conveyed. They are able to understand the message so they can respond
accordingly. At this point, your friend hears your message and processes the
channeled message. This is the stage where your friend understands that
you liked the cake and is happy himself.

Feedback

After understanding the message, the receiver then responds to it somehow,

marking the beginning of the process all over again. This means that the
communication process functions largely as a cycle, in which people
convey messages, have them understood, and then have the messages
responded to in a constant back and forth exchange until the communication
session is over.

Noise

Finally, noise refers to anything that will interfere with the communication
session. For example, you may have literal loud noises interfering, making
communication impossible between yourself and the other party. There may
be bad weather that is making your phone reception spotty, meaning the
phone call continuously drops on you. You may try to send a message via
text-to-speak technology on your phone and have it completely bungle the
message. You may have an incredibly thick accent that makes you difficult
to understand. All of these are examples of noise that would interfere with
your communication.

The example given above was an example of verbal communication.

However, the same order follows for nonverbal communication. Think
about a dog wagging its tail. The dog is the sender. It has a feeling of being
happy and then figures out how best to communicate that message. The dog
then wags its tail to communicate to others that it is happy, who then
receives the message, and acknowledge that the dog is, in fact, happy. Of
course, when it is nonverbal communication, it is not usually quite as
intentional consciously.
Verbal Communication

We will first address verbal communication. When you are using verbal
language, you are using the use of words or sounds in order to express a
message in some way. Perhaps the most notable feature of verbal
communication is that it is largely arbitrary and requires learning in order to
truly understand it. Verbal communication, then, is learned and specific to
certain groups. This is exemplified by the fact that humans have several
different languages that are rather clustered based on geography. People
within one geographic language tend to speak the same language as each
other, though there are always exceptions.

Verbal communication is any form of communication that relies on words

—arbitrary sounds meant to define or convey a very specific idea. For
example, in English, we may say that a cat is a cat. The process of making
the word cat tells anyone else that speaks English that you are referring to a
small, fuzzy, four-legged feline with whiskers and a tail that is commonly
kept as a house pet. If you were to say cat to someone who does not
understand a word of English, such as someone who speaks Spanish, they
would not understand what you meant by the word, “Cat.” However, if you
pointed at a cat, they would probably say the word, “Gato,” in response,
while someone who spoke French may say, “Chat,” and someone who
spoke German would say, “Katze.”

At the end of the day, cat, gato, chat, and Katze all refer to that quadrupedal,
fluffy feline with the long tail and whiskers. They all share that common
meaning, though they are all said entirely differently from one another. This
is because they are all speaking different languages.

Verbal communication is not limited solely to the words that you speak,
either—it also encompasses written communication, as you are still using
arbitrary symbols to represent a concept that you would not be able to
clearly define otherwise. Along with written language, you may also see
sign language. Though commonly lumped into nonverbal communication
due to a lack of using the voice and relying on gestures, sign language still
classifies as verbal simply because it is still making use of arbitrary signs
and symbols that are meant to represent a concept that would not be
innately understood by those around you if they did not have prior
knowledge of the language.
Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication, on the other hand, is far more innate. For the
most part, nonverbal communication is largely understood across borders.
There are always certain aspects of nonverbal communication that are
cultural, such as avoiding eye contact in the United States is deemed as rude
while other cultures would deem you rude for making eye contact in the
first place.

Beyond some of the specific meanings that are cultural, however, most of
the nonverbal communication cues that will be discussed in the next chapter
are largely universal. When you are communicating nonverbally, you are
focusing on how to interact with someone else without words. Think about
a smile—no matter the culture you are from, you should be able to
understand that a smile is a sign of kindness or happiness, no matter where
you were from.

In particular, nonverbal communication is commonly broken down into five

categories that define different aspects: Kinesics, oculesics, haptics,
proxemics, and vocalics. All of these will convey a certain message without
the use of any words.

Kinesics

When you think about nonverbal communication, the first thing that comes
to mind is probably kinesics—this is the way you move your body. This
would encompass the way you move, how you express yourself, and how
you hold yourself. You will effectively be looking at the position someone
will take when facing you, whether they are facing you with their whole
body or not, or even what they may be doing at the time. You can tell a lot
about how someone is moving their body, from whether they are looking
uncomfortable to whether they seem thrilled to be there.

Most of the time, people assume this is all there is to nonverbal

communication. They think that if they learn to understand what people
mean when they move their bodies in certain ways, they know everything
they need to know about the situation or person. However, there are other
important aspects to remember, as well.

This is, however, the most likely thing you will first notice when you
approach someone else. You will identify how they are holding their body
and what they seem to be paying attention to. You will be looking at the
head and expressions, the shoulders, the hands and arm, the direction the
body is facing, and the legs and feet. As you learn to read people, you will
find that you need to read people from the feet up in order to truly
understand them quickly.

Oculesics

Technically a subset of kinesics, oculesics looks at the movements and

motions of the eyes. Despite being a subset of kinesics, it will be provided
its own category simply because eye contact and eye movements can be so
defining. There are several ways that you can choose to look at other people
and several more ways that your eyes can also move as well.

In particular, you will look at eye contact, the direction of the gaze, how the
eye is moving, and the dilation of the pupils. Each aspect of how the eye is
behaving will provide new snippets of information that can then be
clustered together to get a clearer picture of what is going on in mind
behind them.

Haptics
Haptics is just a fancy way to refer to touch between people. Think about
the touch screen on your phone or tablet—that uses haptic feedback when it
makes a slight clicking feeling to let you know that your press on something
was received. It is also used when playing video games on a console that
also makes use of vibrating controllers.

Haptics in body language is not much different—when you are speaking

about nonverbal communication haptics, you are referring to how people
use their touch to communicate with others. This may be a quick touch to
the shoulder to be reassuring, or a firm handshake in order to greet a
prospective client. No matter the form, it is any sort of touch between
people and how that touch is conveyed. Think of the act of touching
someone’s face, for example. If your spouse lovingly reaches out and
caresses your cheek, you will likely feel loved and cared for. However, if a
stranger were to reach out and touch your face, you would likely cringe
away. If that stranger were to reach out and slap at the face instead of
reaching out to caress it, you would likely feel offended and angry. All three
examples were different examples of touching one’s hand to someone else’s
face, and yet they all three had different contexts, meanings, and reactions.

When you are talking about haptics, you will be looking primarily at where
you are being touched and the intention behind the touch. Your touch, when
slow and gentle, may be perceived as comforting, whereas the same
position to touch but done with force is going to be deemed an assault or
attempt to hurt you.

Proxemics
Proxemics is all about learning the proximity between yourself and other
people. When you are looking at proxemics, in particular, you may notice
that the other party is likely to position him or herself in very specific
places in relation to you, and if you encroach on their personal bubble, they
will likely shift back in order to provide that space that they wanted in the
first place.

When you are considering proxemics, you are going to look at the direction
of interaction on two planes—you will be looking at how the other person
holds themselves vertically, referring to whether they are making it a point
to look up or down at you. For example, are they intentionally tilting their
heads up so they can look down their nose at you, or are they getting down
to eye level for a child to speak and communicate clearly?

Proxemics also looks at horizontal distance between people. This is to

figure out how far apart you situation yourself from other people and how
you will interact with people in regards to the distance that you set. If you
are very firmly maintaining a distance between yourself and the other party,
there is likely a good reason—you feel like that relationship is not built up
enough yet. On the other hand, a married couple may very well seem like
they want no space between them—because their relationship allows for
that intimacy.

Vocalics

Finally, the last aspect of nonverbal communication to be discussed will be

vocalics. When considering vocalics, you will be looking at how people
want to communicate with each other via their voice without ever actually
using words. This, in particular, is looking at the different sorts of sounds
that people make to convey a meaning without there being a word. For
example, a growl is going to be well understood as someone who is
frustrated or angry, whereas sighing implies that there is something wrong
or amiss.
Vocalics seeks to analyze all of those sounds that are made. Because these
are not arbitrary noises or symbols meant to represent a concept, they are
considered a part of nonverbal communication, despite the fact that they are
other forms of vocalizations.
 Chapter 4: Reading Body Language

Now, imagine that you are standing in front of someone. You can see that
they are crossing their arms with hands hidden behind them, their eyes
shifting nervously from you to veer off to the left every now and then. They
shift their weight from foot to foot and struggle to maintain eye contact.
Something about the body language of this person makes you uneasy, but
you cannot place it. They are keeping their distance from you, and every
time you approach closer, you notice that they are likely to move away.

Body language is good at giving us feelings that tell us to be on edge,

offended, or relaxed, but if you do not know what you are reading, you are
going to struggle to understand why you are feeling that way. It can be
difficult to know what someone intends if you cannot put meaning to what
they are doing. You can have a general idea of how you want to respond,
but it can be incredibly beneficial to be able to read the language of
someone else.

This chapter will take you on a breakdown of the most common body
language usage that you are likely to run into. You will be introduced to the
kinesics, which will take the vast majority of this chapter, learning to
interpret what is intended by the various body movements that you will
encounter. You will learn what the most common expressions are and how
people hold themselves. You will learn how to read oculesics in order to
understand what the eye contact of other people means. You will see what is
meant in proxemics, vocalics, and haptics, as well.

By the time you have finished this chapter, you should have a solid
foundation in reading common body language and behaviors. Keep in mind
that this list is not complete—this is simply focusing on the most common
behaviors. After all, it would take an entire book to go over every sort of
nonverbal communication cue that humans can give off!
Kinesics
As a brief reminder, kinesics refers to the movements of the body. In
particular, here, you will be looking at how people make expressions,
learning about the seven universal expressions that transcend borders. You
will then look at common facial movements. From there, you will work
your way down the body, looking at shoulders, arms, and hands, and then
the legs and feet.

Expressions

Expressions are what people usually think of when they are asked to
envision body language—they may think of the smile of happiness or the
furrow of brows in sadness. Nevertheless, being able to read this body
language is critical. This is effectively a guide to several clusters of body
language of the face to identify the emotional state of someone else. In
particular, we are going to identify the expressions that match the seven
universal emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, contempt,
and disgust. Keep in mind that each of these emotions will have their own
purposes of existing, and each feeling will be noticeable based upon the
expressions on the face. Of course, you can hide or fake these, but there are
usually cues or microexpressions that cannot be faked or hidden.

Happiness: Happiness is usually quite simple to identify—the

face will be far more relaxed, and you will see that the individual
is smiling—the corners of the mouth will pull upwards and back.
The mouth may be parted to expose the teeth or it may be closed,
and you will be able to identify a wrinkle from the nose to the
outer lip, raising up the cheeks. The lower eyelid usually wrinkles
or tenses up, and in a genuine smile, you will see the wrinkle on
the outer corners of the eyes. When happiness is faked, there will
be less tension in the face, and you will not see the wrinkle in the
corners of the eyes.
Sadness: When identifying sadness, you will notice that the
individual’s inner corners of the eyebrows raise up and inward,
creating wrinkles. The lips pull down into a frown, and the jaw is
usually tensed and pulled upward. The bottom lip may even pout
out. Of all the expressions, this is the hardest to actually fake.
Anger: Anger usually is noted by the lowered brows, designed to
hood the eyes. They are typically drawn together, creating
wrinkles between them. The lower eyelid is usually tensed, and
the eyes will typically stare intensely at whatever the object of the
anger is. The lips may be pressed together tightly, or they will be
opened into a square if the individual is yelling. The nostrils may
dilate with breathing, and the lower jaw is oftentimes forced
outward.
Fear: Fear is usually noticed by eyebrows that are raised up and
pulled inward toward each other. They are most commonly
 straight rather than curved or arched. There are usually wrinkles
in the forehead that are mostly in the center rather than all the
way across. The eyes will be opened widely, though you will only
see whites over the top of the iris rather than around the whole
thing. The mouth is typically hanging open, but there is tension
around the lips, tensing them up and pulling them back slightly.
Surprise: This particular emotion is most commonly expressed
with raised and rounded eyebrows—the arches will be curved.
The skin underneath the brow will be stretched out as a result of
the brows being raised, and you will often see wrinkles across the
forehead as a result. The eyes are opened wide, and you can
usually see whites of the eye above and below the eye. The mouth
regularly hangs open with the teeth apart, though there is no
tension held here. It seems to just hang open.
Contempt: Of all of the expressions, contempt is the simplest
.Usually, most of the face is neutral, though you may be stared at
with slightly lowered eyes. The most defining feature of
contempt, however, is the slight twitch upwards of one side of the
mouth in a sort of smirk.
Disgust: Disgust is usually characterized as a lowering of the
brows, with a wrinkle between the two. Usually, the upper lip has
been raised, allowing it to lift up toward the nostrils to shield
them. The cheeks pull up as well toward the ears, and the nose is
typically wrinkled. You will likely be able to see the upper teeth
as the mouth opens.

Reading the brows

The eyebrows are incredibly expressive and can be moved in a multitude of
ways. This section will guide you through the most common movements
that the eyebrows can make.

Knitting the brows: Oftentimes, if the brows become knitted

together, it is meant to convey concern, sadness, or confusion.
You will usually see some sort of wrinkling in between the two
that will give this away.
Lowering the brows: When you see that the brows are simply
lowered down, hooding over the eyes, you may be dealing with
someone interested in hiding from the situation at hand. This
becomes even truer if the individual is dropping his or her head as
well. This can be indicative of an attempt to be deceptive.
Lowering the middle of the brows: When you make it a point to
lower the middle of the brows, you create a straight brow instead
of one that naturally curves. Usually, this shows anger or
frustration and occasionally fear as well, especially when paired
with raising the brows while flattening the centers.
Raising the brows: When the brows raise upwards, typically, you
are looking at someone that is surprised, attracted to the other
 party, or even submissive and hoping to not draw any
unnecessary or unwanted attention.
Raising the middle of the brows: When you raise the middle of
your brows up, you are showing that you are surprised or
relieved, with the true meaning being entirely dependent upon the
other signs that are present as well.
Raising a single brow: When you raise a single brow up, you are
usually showing contempt, disbelief, or cynicism.

Reading the mouth

The mouth can tell a lot beyond just the words that come out of it when
communicating. When you look at someone’s mouth, you can usually pick
up a few details about what they want or what they are attempting to do.
Baring the teeth: When you see someone baring teeth, they are
either smiling, or they are snarling, something that would be
considered quite negative. Depending on context, it is either
aggressive or pleasant.
Biting the lip and cheek: Typically considered a nervous habit,
people tend to chew on their lip or cheek in an attempt to soothe
themselves when nervous. However, it is also regularly associated
with deception, as it can be done in an attempt to hide something.
Parting the lips: When you allow your lips to part, you may be
trying to get the attention of someone else, or you may be
interested in trying to flirt or show that you are attracted to them.
Relaxing the lips: When this happens, the individual is typically
sitting, calm, and relaxed.
 Touching the mouth: This is a common sign of self-soothing or
deception
Twitch of the lips: This can happen due to either feeling
contemptuous or as a result of trying to suppress some other
emotion from showing on the face.

Arm movements

People can move their arms and hands in several different manners, all of
which show different meanings and can convey different levels of
contempt, contentment, or annoyance. Take a look at these common arm
and hand movements.
Crossing the arms: When this happens, the most common reason
is that the person is being defensive or closed off. This conveys
that the individual wants as much between you and him as
possible.
Expanding the arms: Arms can be expanded out or pulled
inward to either make you look larger or smaller. When the arms
are expanded outward, it is usually a display of feeling
comfortable in the setting and being relaxed. On the other hand,
when they are drawn inward, it is usually due to some sort of
stress.
Holding the arms still: When arms are held entirely still, it is
typically because it is an attempt to ensure that they do not hide
anything. When someone’s arms are resting motionlessly at the
side, you can assume it is an attempt to deceive you. You may
even see the individual literally gripping the arms to keep them
perfectly still.
 Pulling the arms back: When you see someone with their arms
and shoulders pulled back, it is typically due to them attempting
to protect themselves. They want to make themselves less
exposed and vulnerable to some sort of attack or attempt to grab
them.
Raising the arms up: This is typically reserved for an
exaggeration of some sort. It can be meant to exaggerate
whatever emotion is being felt at that particular moment.

Hand movements

Along with the arms, the hands are incredibly easy to maneuver. This,
paired with plenty of points of articulation, leads to an ability to create
several different positions with different meanings.
Behind the back: This can oftentimes imply confidence—it
makes the individual vulnerable, exposing the chest, and is a sign
that the individual is not afraid of anyone in the surroundings.
Clenched into fists: When you clench your hands into fists, you
are showing that you are firm in whatever you are saying. You are
showing signs of stubbornness, and possibly even aggression,
depending upon what you can pair with that particular action.
Direction of the palms: When you have your hands outstretched,
the direction of the palm matters. When the palm is downward,
you are showing that you are in control and asserting yourself
over the situation. When they are upwards, however, you are
showing that you are approachable and deserving of trust.
In the pockets: When you put your hands in your pockets, you
are showing some level of discomfort or reluctance toward the
 situation that you are in.
On the heart: Often used to show that you are honest. However,
this is regularly and readily falsified, so you should always look
for signs of truthfulness or deception when you see this.
On the hips: This regularly is seen as aggressive, despite being
intended to show readiness thanks to the fact that it is easy to shift
into almost any different position.
Pointing: This is typically reserved for authoritative situations.
Think of the disapproving teacher scolding a student with a finger
out. It can also be done toward people who are your peers for an
extra-confrontational approach.
Rubbing them together: When you rub your hands together, you
are seen as waiting in anticipation for something, whether that is
to get what you wanted or because you are unsure of the bad
news you are about to get.
Steepled: When you steeple your hands together, you are resting
your fingertips against each other while your palms remain
parallel from each other, never touching. The only points of
contact between your hands are your fingertips.

Legs and feet movements

When people are trying to disguise their own movement, most often, it is
done through the upper body and expressions. However, people do not
realize that their legs actually tell an immense amount of information about
the individual at hand. People who are trying to hide their body language
regularly leave their legs and feet uncensored, meaning that you should
look there to see true intentions and interests.
Crossing the legs: When you stand with crossed legs, you are
usually either showing shyness or coyness, but it is quite
submissive thanks to the fact that the entire pose is rather
unstable.
Direction of the feet: Wherever the individual’s feet are pointing,
you can assume that what they want is there. They will direct
their feet to whatever it is that they want, whether intentional or
not. If their feet are pointed toward you, they are interested in
engaging. If they point toward someone else or toward the door,
you can assume that they wish for the entire interaction to end.
Genital emphasis: This is usually done with men with a wide
stance and thumbs stuffed into pockets, with the hands pointing
downward to naturally gesture toward the crotch. This is done to
display dominance and confidence.

Opened legs: When people’s legs are open or spaced

comfortably, you can tell that they are quite open to continuing
engagement. Usually, a good rule for the distance between the
feet is shoulder-width shows openness. Closer together typically
implies being nervous or uninterested in continuing contact.
Toes up: People generally will have their toes point upward when
they are content, especially if they are simply standing still at that
moment.
Oculesics
The eyes are, in many ways, the windows to the soul. They are incredibly
expressive, despite having so few ways to move. When you want to look at
how the eyes express themselves, you are primarily looking at the direction
of the gaze, the amount of eye contact is made, the movements of the eyes,
and the dilation of the pupils.

Direction of gaze

Gaze refers to the direction that you are looking—it is the focus of your
eyes. When you gaze at something, you are looking intently at it. You may
gaze at other people or objects. It is usually closely related to whatever you
want at that moment. As a general rule of thumb, the more you look at
something, the more you want it. You will generally disregard things that
you do not care about in favor of looking at things that catch your eye and
your attention.

Eye contact

Eye contact is a major component of being able to communicate effectively

with other people. When you make good eye contact with other people, you
let them know that you are listening to them. However, the intensity of eye
contact can mean different things to different people. As a quick aside,
please note that while ample eye contact is recommended in Western
cultures, it is usually seen to be problematic in many others.
Regular, relaxed eye contact: Regular eye contact is usually met
with several breaks to the eye contact as well. There are ample
pauses in which you or the other person glance away, but eye
contact is restored after a moment. This means that you are
contentedly communicating with someone else.
Harsh, staring eye contact: This can be disciplinarian,
threatening, or just authoritarian, depending on the context.
Usually, this is the kind of eye contact that will make people
uncomfortable. This is the kind that is usually joined with a scowl
or a blank face without wavering.
Avoiding eye contact: When eye contact is avoided repeatedly, it
is usually a sign of some sort of discomfort—usually, it involves
someone not wanting to engage in any interaction. It can be
indicative of deception, especially if in conjunction with other
deceptive behaviors.
Forced, uncomfortable eye contact: When the eye contact is
forced but feels unnatural, it could also be indicative of deception.
People know that they are expected to make eye contact with
other people and that not making eye contact is a sign of lying, so
they overcorrect and stare, but that stands out just as much.

Eye movements

Eyes can move in several different ways—they can wink, blink, close, or
remain open. They can shift around and do much more. In particular, when
you look at the movements of the eye, you are looking for:
Blinking: Blinking normally is usually a sign of relaxation. Rapid
blinking, on the other hand, shows that the individual does not
want to see what is in front of them, or that they are attempting to
hide. It usually shows some sign of stress.
Closing: When you close your eyes, you are implying that you
want to hide. You want to avoid the world around you at all costs,
so you close your eyes to drown out what is in front of you. This
allows you to think deeply or to simply remove distractions.
Crying: This usually implies intense emotion, usually in anger,
sadness, or fear. Of course, people can also cry when they are
overcome by happiness as well.
Winking: Winking shows some sort of camaraderie of sorts—
when you wink at someone, you make it known that you and the
other person are in on the same joke.

Pupil dilation

Pupil dilation is tough to spot but entirely impossible to control consciously.

This means that whatever the pupils are doing is directly indicative of the
mindset of the individual moving them. Eyes tend to dilate for several
reasons, such as:
The usage of drugs: Several drugs will alter the pupil’s ability to
contract and expand effectively.
Interest or attraction: When you are attracted to someone else,
the pupils naturally expand. This is why lovesick cartoon
drawings typically have the big, exaggerated pupils, and is also
responsible for why cats’ eyes tend to dilate before they pounce
on something.
Intensive thought: When you are thinking intently about
something, whether it is a complex math problem or simply
something that you are seriously considering, there is usually a
slight change in the dilation of your pupils.
In response to the light: This is what most people think of when
they see pupil dilation—the pupils will contract in bright light and
expand in the darkness.
In response to a head injury: Head injuries that have caused a
concussion or other serious injuries oftentimes present with
altered function of the pupils and require immediate medical
attention.
Haptics

This is a fancy word for how you touch other people. In particular, you will
be looking at the area in which you are touching someone else. There are
areas on the body that are deemed acceptable for touch from just about
anyone and other areas that are reserved for intimate touches of a spouse or
lover. There are five different categories that are used to understand touch
between people as a form of communication:

Sexual: This is the most intimate of touch—it is reserved for your

partners or lovers. In particular, this is touch that is meant to
convey your intimacy, either to achieve an end goal of sexual
intimacy or to use in comfort or bonding, such as attempting to
calm someone down with a hug, a kiss, and a massage.
Love: This touch is far more frequent than many others, but is not
quite intimate—it is usually a sign that you are connected to
someone else. For example, walking down the street while
holding someone else’s hand is usually an implication that you
are in a relationship with them. This generally encompasses
touches such as a hand around the waist, holding hands, or a
quick kiss to the head or cheek.
Friendship: This is touch that is welcome between friends—it is
typically more common in women than men just because men
tend to see it as a form of dominance, while women see it as
camaraderie. This touch may be, for example, a quick hug
between friends or a pat on the shoulder by a friend or family
member.
Social: A social touch is one that is generally considered
acceptable no matter who the toucher is. For example, it may be a
pat to the forearm, which is seen as polite and acceptable, even
amongst strangers in some areas. So long as the touch is in a non-
vulnerable body part, such as the hand, arm, shoulder, and the
upper back, it is generally acceptable. All other parts of the body
are considered vulnerable and are reserved for people that
actually have a relationship.
Functional: This is any touch that is intentional and done with
purpose. These may be handshakes or attempts to communicate
with a pat on the shoulder. They are usually seen from a person in
power toward a subordinate, without the converse being
acceptable in many times. For example, praise plus a pat on the
shoulder is seen as good, or this also entails handshakes in the
business world.
Proxemics

Proxemics refers to the distance between yourself and someone else—it is

the usage of space between yourself and the world around you. Naturally,
people put varying degrees of space between themselves and others, and
when you are looking to understand proxemics, the best way to do so is to
consider it a judgment of the relationship between yourself and those
around you. You can also judge the relationships of others based upon the
distance they put between each other, both vertical and horizontal.

The use of vertical space

Vertical space is exactly what it sounds like—it is the space relative to your
own position height-wise. When someone is utilizing vertical space, they
are attempting to make themselves taller or shorter, depending on the
context. Those who want to make themselves taller may want to be seen as
an authority or otherwise as someone that is deserving of respect and
compliance. They may even use this space when they are trying to look at
others who are taller than them—they simply tilt their heads back to look
down their nose at the taller person to create the same impact.

When you make yourself smaller, you typically want to be seen as less
dominant for some reason. You may be attempting to shrink down to speak
to a child in order to truly be understood, for example, or you may be
lowering yourself to make yourself seem more submissive. In particular,
people will pull their chins inward when they want to be seen as smaller
because they will then be required to look up through their eyelashes at the
other person, even if the other person is taller.

The default, eye level, is deemed to be the most respectful—it marks you
and the other person as equals deserving of the same respect and
consideration.

The use of horizontal space

In horizontal space, you are looking at how near or far people are to each
other. You will use this when you are picking apart the relationships of
others. In particular, there are four distances that are used between each
other, ranging from intimate distances all the way to the public distance.

The intimate distance: This refers to being as close as possible

to the other person. When you are in this position, you are usually
touching without trying, or close enough to do so. This is
typically for young children and parents, or for lovers that are
comfortable being this close to each other. Generally speaking,
this zone is only about 18 inches away from you.
The personal distance: Slightly further away than the intimate
distance, the personal distance covers about 18 inches away up to
about 5 feet around you. This is what people are talking about
when they say that you are invading their personal bubbles. This
zone is usually reserved for those that you like or feel
comfortable with, such as friends and family members, or
children that are too old to be within the intimate zone. The closer
you can get to the center, the closer your relationship with that
other person.
The social distance: This is a bit further out. This is the distance
that you naturally try to maintain with strangers around you, or
when you are interacting with someone else that you do not know.
Typically, this is between about 5 and 10 feet. You will use this
when you are out and about unless you have no choice otherwise.
When you are forced to encroach on this distance, most often,
you will make it a point to ignore the other person in an attempt
to ignore the fact that they are violating those personal
boundaries, such as if you are sitting on the bus.
The public distance: This is even further out—this refers to
anything beyond about 12 feet and is reserved for instances in
which you are speaking out toward a crowd. You want to be loud
enough that everyone in the crowd can speak, so you want to
ensure that people are a bit further away from you so they can see
and hear you easier. This is reserved for lectures in classrooms,
for example, or in performances.
 Chapter 5: Falsifying Body Language

Of all the tools that you have at your discretion, none are as powerful as
your ability to wield body language. Your body language is incredibly
powerful, and because most people do not go through the effort of
controlling their body language, people tend to take what they see or hear at
face value. They are not even aware of the fact that their unconscious minds
are processing over all of the body language you are exhibiting and
responding accordingly.

When you learn to finally take control of your body language, you will find
that you are able to be far more effective in several contexts. You may be
able to help yourself achieve the results you want. You may be able to
persuade other people. You may be able to calm down other people or
influence them to say yes. You will be able to figure out their mindset all
because you are able to recognize and reflect body language back and forth.

Within this chapter, we will discuss the power of body language in a bit
more depth—you will begin to see how changing your own body language
can influence how other people respond to you. You will be guided through
several reasons why people choose to falsify their own body language from
wanting to be able to negotiate well to wishing to calm down the other party
or instill a sense of trust. You will be guided through the process of
falsifying your own body language and how to get good at doing so, and
lastly, how to identify when other people are falsifying their own body
language.
The Power of Body Language

It has already been discussed and established thus far that body language is
powerful and that people are always reading the body language of those
around them. This is because the unconscious mind is always drawing
inferences from body language on how best to interpret what is happening
around them. However, body language is even more powerful than that.
People can use body language to more or less control the minds of other
people, and you can learn to do this, too. In particular, neuro-linguistic
processing is one such example of this—in NLP, people are actively using
their body language to establish a relationship with other people and
influencing how they process and understand the world to see real changes
in behaviors.

Beyond that, body language is also useful in several other aspects as well. It
can change the perception of other people toward you. It can be used to
change your own behaviors and mindsets through changing your own body
language, allowing your body to send feedback to your own brain. It can be
used as a tool to relax during periods of anxiety. It can be used to establish
and determine relationships with other people.

Body language has the power to make you look like a criminal or as a
confident, productive member of society without needing to change
anything but your pose. You can be seen as a threat or as someone
trustworthy, all based upon your pose, with everything else remaining the
same. This is because your body language is incredibly powerful. Your
body language is perhaps one of the most obvious forms of nonverbal
communication, and it makes up a massive amount of your communication.
You have already gone through the process of learning how to read body
language, but now, it is time to look at how you can use body language to
impact and sway those around you. Falsifying body language is not always
a bad thing—when you do so, you can usually help your communication
improve, as contradictory as it may sound. Sometimes, you need to change
your body language just to communicate clearly.
Why Falsify?

If you knew that it was possible to feign body language on a regular basis,
would you feel like those around you are less trustworthy? Now, it would
certainly be possible for people around you to be problematically
untrustworthy, but for the most part, body language is tweaked in ways that
make people better leaders. Leaders, in particular, are well aware of the
benefits of good body language, from power poses to simply positioning
oneself in a specific way.

When you falsify your body language, you usually have a good reason to do
so. You may want to be seen as more confident or in control, such as at a
job interview, in which you are hoping to get the job out of it. You may use
it when interacting with your children if you are a parent. You may use it
when confronted by someone to let them know that you are not willing to
back down, no matter how you may truly be feeling internally.

Effectively, there is no shortage of reasoning for falsifying language, and it

is not particularly difficult if you know what you are doing. Likewise,
falsifying your body language does not inherently make you manipulative
or untrustworthy—in fact, the entire purpose of this chapter, at least in
guiding you, will be to establish the ways that you should alter your natural
body language in order to better communication between yourself and other
people. Let’s spend some time going over several reasons in which you may
intentionally alter your behavior.

In negotiation
If your career is based around negotiations, and you know that you need to
be compelling and convincing in order to seal deals, you may find that the
best way to do so is through making it a point to alter your behaviors. You
will want to come across as confident but not cocky—you will want to
make sure that you seem authoritative, but not authoritarian. When you are
setting up to sit through negotiation, you want to make sure that you are
seen in a light that is effective and trustworthy. You may choose to set up
your chair to be in a position that is more likely to be seen as powerful, such
as making sure your chair is slightly taller and sit with open, attentive body
language, even if you are not particularly interested in whatever you are
negotiating. Being able to alter your behaviors helps other people see you as
effective at your job.

In positions of power

If you are a leader in any capacity, the last thing you want is to come across
as weak and inefficient. For this reason, being able to alter your behavior
just enough to ensure that you are seen as calm and in control can be
incredibly beneficial to you. This is not a difficult process—all you will
need to do is ensure that you are able to keep your body language confident
and in control. For example, you may make it a point to stand tall with your
hands behind your back while attentively watching other people as they
speak. Think of the typical poses in which you see leaders in movies and
emulate that.

To calm people down

If you have ever seen someone in crisis, you know that they are usually
flighty and erratic—they are oftentimes panicking and far too stressed out
to function effectively. However, you have a built in mechanism to help
them settle. Your body language, when calm and in control, can help tell
other people that everything is okay. You can change your body language to
be calm, even when you know that you are stressed out about the situation.
Think about how doctors and nurses can pull off that excellent bedside
manner, even when in crisis, and they are able to reassure the patient that
they will be okay, even when doubts may be filling the other person’s mind.
When they are able to make sure that their body language is calm, they are
able to better keep the patient calm, allowing them to do their job better.

To communicate

A massive amount of communication is done via nonverbal means. In fact,

it is estimated that upwards of 55% of your communication is done via
body language and other nonverbal means. This makes sense if you think
about it—when you take away the body language, you start to see all sorts
of new conflicts and misunderstandings. However, this means that
sometimes, you are going to find that taking control of your body language
and making it work for you instead of working for your body language is a
necessity. If you want to communicate a message with someone, you are
not going to want to do so with a scowl unless you are communicating your
current displeasure, for example. Other times, you may find that what you
want to communicate calls for a serious expression when you would rather
laugh, such as when scolding a child. You are not sending the right message
across to people if you laugh while scolding them. By ensuring that your
body language always matches up with the message that you are trying to
convey can help you avoid any unwanted mistakes.

To understand

Listening is one of those skills that people often struggle with. However,
you can learn to master listening to understand through making sure that
you assume the proper body language. Tuning your body into listening, by
taking poses designed for active listening, can help you actively pay better
attention. Your body will naturally settle into listening effectively, and all
you need to do is make it a point to pay close attention to the other person
with open postures.

To influence others

Similarly to the methods that have been discussed thus far, when you are
trying to influence someone to do something, you want to make sure that
your body language is trustworthy. You want the other person to feel
compelled to help you, no matter what. This means that you need to ensure
that you are able to present yourself as calm, friendly, and trustworthy in
order to help.

For example, imagine that you want to influence your children to clean up.
Yelling at them is not going to work. Threatening them is not going to
work. However, what is likely to work is telling them, very seriously, that if
they do not pick up, that there will be consequences, such as their toys
being broken because they will get stepped on when left on the floor, and
you are far more likely to get results.
To influence yourself

Your body language is also incredibly effective at influencing yourself.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Fake it until you make it”? This is the
perfect example of that. Body language has been used to fight panic attacks
—if your anxiety is running haywire, you can do something that you would
never do during a truly panic-worthy emergency, such as chewing on gum
to remind yourself to calm down because you would never be chewing on
gum when in danger. Effectively, your mind begins to take feedback from
your body and will then regulate accordingly. This means then that your
body ends up regulating your mind. Your body language tells your mind to
change its state.

You can see this effect with several other forms of body language. You can
try smiling more than usual in order to start motivating yourself to feel
happier or more confident. You can stand in certain poses to encourage
yourself to feel more confident, such as the power pose of standing with
your hands on your hips, straight and tall, with your head raised.

Effectively, then, using your body language is a fantastic way to

communicate with your unconscious mind to regulate it. If you can master
this, you can begin to utilize your own body language during your own
emotional regulation.

How to Control Your Body Language

Controlling your body language does not have to be difficult. If you are
ready to begin controlling your body language once and for all, all you need
to do is develop the ability to be self-aware and self-regulate. These skills
are two foundational skills in emotional intelligence, but they do play a part
in attempting to change your own body language as well. In developing this
ability, you will start to see all of the benefits that you can gain from having
good body language.

Become self-aware

Perhaps the most important part of being able to control your own body
language is to learn how to be self-aware. This means that you need to be
able to stay in touch with your own emotions and learn how they directly
impact your body language. You may notice that you have a tendency to get
upset and then struggle with showing that you are open to further
communication. You may find that you cannot possibly work through your
anger when faced with it. No matter what your body language tends to skew
toward, make it a point to figure out how best to understand it.

Over time, you should start to pick up patterns. You will know that you take
certain stances in certain moods and see how your stances seem to influence
how you feel as well. In learning how this happens, you will be able to
understand the patterns. Those patters will be your baseline, and you can
use them in real-time. You will be able to cue into the fact that you are
getting upset when you realize that you are clenching a fist. You will be
able to tell that you are stressed out when you start biting your nail, and
when you learn to recognize these signs, you start to identify the times in
which you really need to change your body language in the first place, and
you will be equipped to do so.

Pay attention to how your body language impacts other people

Upon studying your own body language, it is time to start watching how
your body language seems to be impacting other people. You will now how
your body language lines up with your own internal feelings, but you need
to also see how it impacts others. Watch to see if people avoid you when
you stand a certain way or if you seem particularly approachable in some
situations. No matter what the situation and how you are seen, you will be
gathering valuable feedback.

This stage will require you to empathize. Empathy itself is your ability to
understand the mindset of other people, and if you are able to do so, you
will begin to get extra insight into how others view you. You will begin
understanding those views so you can start to piece together which of your
behaviors get what reaction. If you are influencing other people on a regular
basis with your own body language, you need to understand how they see
you.

Learn to self-regulate

When you are pretty confident that you understand how you are seen by
others, you can start to self-regulate. This means that you can start
experimenting with your own behaviors. Of course, the best way to truly
alter your body language is going to be to develop the mindset that you are
trying to exude. You will need to ensure that other people are seeing you the
way that you want to be seen. Sometimes, that may be standoffish, such as
if you want to be left alone and are walking through a crowded area. Other
times, you may want to be open and approachable, such as at work or with
your family. Experiment with your body language and watch how everyone
around you responds. You may be surprised to notice that people will
respond in ways that you did not necessarily expect them to.

Focus on good body language cues

Finally, when you are controlling your body language, you need to develop
good body language cues. This one can take practice, as you will be
developing several at once in order to really make sure that you can regulate
effectively. You will want to know how to be a good listener, how to be
seen as confident, and more. In spending the time to learn how to use your
own body language to influence others, you will not only be able to regulate
yourself but also your interactions. Some examples of good body language
to develop include:
How to make good eye contact
How to listen effectively
How to be seen as confident and open
How to be seen as approachable
There are several other examples, as well. Please feel free to review
Chapter 4: Reading Body Language to ensure that you are confident in how
to be read by other people.

Try not to fake your body language whenever possible

When you are trying to come across a certain way, do your best to avoid
lying about your body language. This means that when you are exuding a
specific kind of body language, you should always be doing so in a way that
is congruent with something that you are feeling. Your body will resist you
when you fake your body language—for example, a falsified smile will not
have the characteristic crinkle in the eye. By ensuring that you are always
changing your body language to something that you are feeling, even if it is
not your primary feeling, you can sort of bypass this. As you will see in the
next section, you can identify falsified language relatively simply.
Identifying Others Falsifying Their Body
Language

When you are ready to look at your body language next to other people, you
may be surprised to see that some people’s body language may seem
disjointed. They may seem dishonest somehow, and you may not be able to
quite place your finger on it. When this happens, one of the best things to
look for is whether the body language is being faked or not. This is a
fantastic skill to have—you will be able to tell if the other party is showing
you body language that is intentionally incongruent, or if there is something
else going on. In particular, this section will provide you with several signs
that the other party may have falsified language in some way.

Look for microexpressions

Microexpressions are the minute, nearly uncontrollable twitches and

movements of the face that are made when you feel an emotion. Because
your unconscious mind works automatically with no regard to the
conscious, it will automatically try to shift your body language accordingly,
and you will need to override it. When you override that language,
oftentimes, you do not do so perfectly—some sort of microexpression
remains. It could be a slight twitch of the lip, or it could be a twitch of the
eye. No matter what the microexpression is, if you notice that the other
person’s face seems entirely stoic after noticing a slight twitch somewhere,
there is a good chance that someone is going to be feeling something that
they do not want to let on.

Look for signs of dishonesty or discomfort

As you were shown in Chapter 4, there are several signs that people are
uncomfortable with their situation and that betray lying. When you notice
these, there is a good chance that something is being lied about and that
something can always be body language. When trying to determine whether
someone is showing the truthful body language, you may need to look for
signs of dishonesty to ensure that they are, in fact, lying.

Study eye contact

Forced or falsified attempts to maintain eye contact when someone does not
want to tend to come across as incredibly fake, and for good reason.
Unnatural eye contact is usually uncomfortable for everyone involved, and
it can be a sign of forcing eye contact in order to send a certain message.
However, if you feel like the eye contact being maintained does not seem
right or normal, you may want to reconsider whether the interaction is
honest.

Look for clusters of body language

When people’s body language is uncensored, it typically appears in clusters.

A smile will likely be joined by the facial expression and a relaxed or
excited posture. Crying is likely to be joined with hunching over and
crossing arms. Looking to make sure that the entire body seems to be
sending the same message will help you understand if the message is faked
or if only one or two aspects are being feigned. Sometimes, people will try
to mimic body language, but forget a few critical parts, or they will have a
sad face while their body language is standoffish or even confident and in
control. When it is a cluster that is congruent, however, you can generally
be sure it is truthful.
 Chapter 6: Detecting Lying

Stop and think of the stereotypical 3-year-old child. You see that the child
in front of you has chocolate around his mouth. You ask him if he took the
cookies off of the counter, noting that two are missing. He looks up at you,
grins, and shakes his head. Did he do it?

There is a good chance that he did, especially since you caught him
chocolate-mouthed right next to the missing chocolate cookies. Notice how
he grinned up at you without any talk and ran away, cackling gleefully and
thinking that he got away with it.

Children start lying and experimenting with lying early on—it is not a sign
that you are raising a child that will be dishonest or that your child is a bad
seed—you simply have a young child that is experimenting with how best
to interact with the world. Your three-year-old now recognizes that you are
not omniscient and cannot see what is in his head, so he lies.

Lying can be particularly problematic in the adult world when more is at

stake than a couple of cookies and a hyper three-year-old; however—when
you are interacting with the world around you and find that adults are lying
to you, you can run into issues. You could potentially find yourself
scammed or the victim of fraud if you cannot tell when people are honest or
dishonest. Being able to identify deception and lies becomes critical in the
adult world.

Within this chapter, we will address lying and deception. You will be guided
through several forms of deception, many of which people assume are not
true lies, and how to recognize them. You will be provided with a list of
criteria to double-check to determine when someone around you has been
dishonest. You will also be guided through several reasons that people may
choose to lie and be dishonest with others. Upon finishing reading this
chapter, you should be able to recognize lies a little easier than you could
before, and that skill alone can help you immensely in your interactions
with the world.
Deception

Deception is not just an attempt to pass a lie as the truth—in fact, there are
several other aspects as well. Deception is any attempt to mislead the truth
in some way, whether verbally or in action. There are several different types
of deception, but ultimately, all are designed to alter the truth in some way,
shape, or form, whether by legitimately changing all details or by making it
a point to avoid talking about something or skirting around a question
because you feel like not answering honestly by not saying anything at all is
not the same as deception.

Unfortunately, deception runs rampant in the world, and it can seriously

damage relationships between people. Regardless of whether the
relationship is romantic or entirely professional, deception can cause
serious mistrust and feelings of betrayal to arise. Where there is no trust,
there may as well be no relationship, something that is incredibly
unfortunate. This means that lying is perhaps one of the easiest ways to
entirely decimate a relationship.
Deception is actually so poorly received and violates so many social rules
that it can actually be deemed grounds for civil litigation. It can even be
prosecuted criminally if it slips into fraud. This means that dishonesty and
deception are incredibly frowned upon and should be avoided as much as
possible.
Types of Deception

Deception is so much more than simply lying about what is being said—
there are several other aspects to the deception that are critical to
understand as well. You can deceive without ever saying a word in some
instances. Understanding these different types of deception can help you
acknowledge and protect yourself from them in the future, as you will know
what to look out for. There are primarily six different types of deception
that will be discussed in this chapter. Take the time to familiarize yourself
with each of these in order to ensure that you do not fall into the trap of
using these forms of deception yourself.

Concealments

Concealing something is effectively finding a way to omit information that

would be imperative to making a proper judgment. You may also behave in
a way that is designed to hide the truth somehow, such as acting, to avoid
mentioning the truth. When you are able to identify concealments, you can
tell when people are intentionally avoiding the subject at hand for some
reason, and that can be enough to cue you in to looking at how truthful they
are being.

For example, imagine that you left your child with a friend to babysit while
you went out on a date with your spouse. When you get back, you find that
your child has a big bruise on his face. You ask what the bruise is from, and
your friend sort of shrugs and continues talking about something entirely
unrelated or mentions something cute that your child has done in order to
distract you. This was not to genuinely share what your child has done, but
rather to make you distracted so you would not pay as close of attention to
the bruise.

Equivocations

When you are using equivocations, you are making statements that are
either indirect or ambiguous in order to skirt around the truth. You may say
something that is not necessarily untrue, but you have avoided answering
the true question at the heart of everything.

For example, imagine that you asked your friend about the bruise on your
child’s face. Instead of telling you how the child was bruised, you get some
spiel about how children are clumsy, and accidents happen. Technically
true, but that completely avoided the question at hand. You still do not
know how your child got the bruise in the first place.

Exaggerations
When someone uses an exaggeration, they try to make things seem worse or
bigger than they currently are. It is some sort of overstatement, taking the
truth and stretching it out to be bigger and worse than it otherwise would
have been. This is still a form of deception, though the truth is at the heart
of what is being said, simply because the truth is not being reported as the
whole truth. It is being manipulated and stretched into something entirely
different than it originally was.

For example, after you asked your friend what happened to your child’s
face, you may have been told that your child had been running way too
quickly without paying attention and slammed into a wall, and it was
entirely accidental. Your friend says that your child should have been
paying attention. You stop and consider the veracity of this and come to the
conclusion that she is lying because your child is not yet running—perhaps
the child has just learned how to unsteadily toddle around.

Lies

Lies are simply making up information that is entirely unrelated or

inaccurate to the truth. This could be saying something that has no grounds
in the truth or saying something that is the opposite of what is actually true.
When you are told a lie, there is no truth in the statement at all. It is meant
to be as far away from the truth as possible, likely to disguise the real truth
that could likely be construed as worse than the lie.

For example, when you ask about the bruise on the child’s face, your friend
may respond that he already had the bruise when he was dropped off and
completely refuse to answer anything other than that. You are left trying to
figure out whether or not that is the truth and wondering if the child was
actually bruised when dropped off.

Understatements

Understatements are the opposite of exaggerations—when someone makes

an understatement, they are downplaying the truth to some degree. They
may feel like telling the truth will be far worse than understating it, so they
opt to make it seem like less of a big deal than it was initially assumed to
be. This is still dangerous as it makes a potentially serious issue miss
whatever attention it may have needed.

For example, your friend tells you that your child simply bumped his head
when he slipped while trying to walk. What she did not tell you was that he
hit his head really hard, cried for 20 minutes, and vomited shortly after, and
has been acting lethargic since. In that instance, your child likely needed
medical treatment, and yet your friend made it sound like it was no big deal,
so you would not blame her for not supervising the child closely enough.

Untruth

Finally, we arise at the untruth—this is when people say things that are
taking and misinterpreting the truth into something different. It is entirely
meant to misinterpret things in order to distract from the actual truth and
should be treated with extreme caution. When you are dealing with
someone being untruthful, you may find that the other person is likely to
completely sidestep any truthfully problematic aspects and misinterpret
what has happened into something else.

For example, when you ask what happened to your child, your friend says
that he hit his head. What she does not tell you was that she had actually
dropped the child because she was not paying attention to what she was
doing as she walked through her home, and she did not expect the child to
flail. She sort of told the truth, but put another spin on things.
Signs of Deception

If you are not well-trained, you may find that spotting deception is actually
surprisingly difficult. When you know what to look for, however, it
becomes infinitely simpler. Deception has a handful of signs that make it
incredibly obvious, even when not paying attention to body language, such
as:

Vagueness: When someone is vague with the details and seems

to resist providing any specific details, they may be trying to hide
their lie altogether.
Repetition: When what someone says becomes repetitive or goes
in circles, they may be lying and trying to convince themselves of
whatever they are saying because they are lying.
Speaking in fragments: When the other person does not speak in
full sentences and instead answers in short statements such as,
“No, not that,” or “Yes, to the store,” you may be dealing with
someone who is lying.
Not giving specific details when asked or challenged: If, when
asked directly, the other party still cannot give specific details, it
is quite possible that they are actively lying to you or about
something, which is incredibly problematic if you need the truth.
Nervous behavior: If the other person seems uncharacteristically
nervous, they may be lying, especially if the situation is not one
that would usually warrant any sort of nervousness or discomfort.
If the other party is quite familiar in that environment but is
repeatedly appearing to be nervous, you may want to analyze
their honesty.
Identifying Deception
Just knowing the signs is not always enough. Sometimes, it helps to have a
sort of checklist to go through in your mind when you are trying to
determine whether someone is actively lying to you or not. By
understanding whether or not the other party is lying or being deceptive,
you can begin to figure out how much you want to trust them. There are
primarily four ways that you can identify whether or not you feel like
someone is deceptive:
Look at more than just body language: Listen to the voice for a
while—does it sound nervous or like someone who is lying? Pay
attention to the words being used and whether you can identify
any of the signs of deception.
Focus on deceptive body language: When you do look at body
language, however, look specifically for the body language that is
traditionally clustered as deception.
Ask for the story to be told in reverse: If someone has provided
you with a long, drawn-out tale that you are doubting, one way to
figure out if it is true or not is to ask them to tell you what
happened, but backward this time. If they have to think too hard
about it, you have a pretty good indicator that they are making
things up.
Trust your gut: Finally, when you are attempting to identify
whether or not someone is deceptive, trust your gut instincts.
Those instincts are there for a reason, and it is entirely possible
that your unconscious mind has picked up on cues that you are
missing as you go through the interaction.
Why Deception is Used
When people do decide to lie or be deceptive, they usually have some sort
of reason. Of course, some will do so just for fun to see if they can do it,
and others may do it in an attempt to be polite, such as saying they like
something that they did not actually care for. No matter the reason,
however, deception is usually recommended to be avoided. After all, even if
you are actively lying to maintain a relationship, you may run into problems
later on if the deception is ever discovered.

Instrumentally

When used instrumentally, deception is designed to be used as a tool. It may

be done as an attempt to avoid punishment, for example, such as trying to
lie about doing something in order to escape blame or to establish an alibi
that does not actually exist. It could be used to protect resources, such as
telling someone that is asking for money that you do not have any on you
and, therefore, cannot help them with whatever it was that you were asked
about. These are basically wielding deception as a tool of sorts to avoid
something.

Relationally

When you use deception relationally, it is meant to maintain a relationship.

This would be the idea of telling someone that no, that dress does not make
their butt look big while leaving out the obvious truth—their butt is what
makes their butt look big, not the dress. Relational deception is effectively
to protect the feelings of other people in a way that makes sure that they are
happy, even though they are still being lied to.
With unimportant lies, such as how big that dress made someone’s butt
look, they are usually relatively harmless. However, sometimes there are
larger lies as well, such as insisting that someone not related biologically at
all is a child’s true father, despite not sharing that genetic contribution.
While that person may, for all intents and purposes, be a dad to the kid,
there is still an important factor to consider that oftentimes, people want to
know where they came from. Larger relational lies, such as telling someone
their father is one person when, in fact, it is someone else can generally be
quite harmful.

To preserve identity

Finally, people often use deception when they need to protect their self-
image. They will use this form of lying to ensure that they are protected
from the truth somehow, and they want to ensure that they look better than
they actually are. For example, if someone has a criminal record and
therefore is disqualified from a job that someone has been pushing for him
to apply to, he may say that he applied and was not called back, or that he
simply is not interested due to needing the background check, which the
friend likely does not know about.
 Chapter 7: Dark Psychology

Now, with all of that background information taken care of, it is time to
delve into the world of dark psychology. This will take you into the minds
of predators, whose prey of choice is often their own peers—those who
wield dark psychology without any formal training tend to err toward being
abusive or controlling of other people, using the manipulation to their
advantage with no regards for the other party.
When you are looking at dark psychology, you are considering how these
predators in human skin choose to wield their weapons, looking at how they
like to choose their targets and figuring out how best to think like they do.
This chapter will guide you through the process of learning how to identify
dark psychology users, as well as how to start thinking with dark
psychology. You will be introduced to the concept of dark psychology with
a brief explanation of what it is. You will be walked through the Dark Triad
—the personalities that tend to wield dark psychology. Lastly, you will be
guided through the reasons why someone may use dark psychology in the
first place.
What is Dark Psychology?

Dark psychology itself is the study of how people with the dark triad
personality types tend to interact with the world around them. It looks
specifically at how those particular people view people, how they choose to
manipulate those people, and how they choose to interact with people. The
usage of dark psychology is often considered quite controversial simply
because of the distress that it can cause the other party. Because so many of
the dark psychology users are prone to manipulation and the use of people
without concern for how they may hurt others, dark psychology itself has
developed the bad rap of being entirely negative simply because it looks at
those same techniques.
However, it is important to note that dark psychology is little more than just
another viewpoint to interact with the world. It is not inherently evil or
wrong—it simply is what it is. It is a toolset—it is techniques that could be
wielded in ways that are harmful, but even your dinner fork could be used
as a weapon if the person holding it truly wanted to hurt someone else. You
cannot simply disregard dark psychology altogether simply because some
people have chosen to use it negatively or as a weapon.
The next several chapters will guide you through dark psychology and the
dark psychology mindset. You will be shown how to think about the world
as if you were in the mind of a predator. You will be shown a glimpse into
the darkness that fills their mind, but unlike those with the dark triad
personality types, you do not have to give in to the temptation—you can
simply learn how dark psychology works without ever deciding to act upon
it.
Dark psychology looks at influence and persuasion. It looks at using NLP to
control other people. It seeks to get what the users want at all costs.
However, what if someone with no interest in manipulation were to wield
this tool? What if they were to use dark psychology in ways that were not
met to hurt, but rather were designed to help people break free of anything
that is holding them down. Maybe you use it to convince someone that they
must break up with their abusive partner. Maybe a doctor uses it to
encourage someone to seek proper treatment for a tumor that will be fatal if
they do not operate soon. Maybe you use it during negotiations and
consequently get a promotion because your numbers have been so good.
Ultimately, dark psychology does not have to be evil or wrong—it can
simply be neutral until someone decides to pick up the tool and use it.
The Dark Triad

The dark triad refers to a very specific set of personality traits: Narcissism,
Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Each of these traits can be incredibly
detrimental to one’s ability to relate to a socially meaningful level simply
because of the implications that come with each of those personality types.
These personality types are referred to as dark just because they have a
tendency to be malevolent. Each of these types of people struggle in their
daily interactions with others and are at an increased risk of being
antisocial, as well as being more likely to commit crimes. These people
usually struggle with empathy and generally are quite negative and
disagreeable.
Narcissism
The narcissist is someone suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.
This is a person who is entirely consumed by grandiosity and egotism, and
his lack of empathy makes it impossible to really relate with other people as
well. The narcissist believes that he is the greatest person in the world, and
is usually quite entitled and dominant, though that entitlement and
dominance is never truly earned in the way that most people would earn it.
Machiavellianism
Machiavellian personality types typically are quite cynical, but only in the
sense that they must protect themselves at all costs rather than looking at
the world through a skeptical lens. These people typically feel like they
must manipulate other people if they want to possibly succeed .Usually,
these people struggle with agreeableness and conscientiousness, and
oftentimes, those who rank highly in Machiavellianism also tend to score
highly in psychopathy as well.
Psychopathy
Finally, the last of the three dark triad personality types is psychopathy. This
is usually considered to be the most malignant of the three, with the
psychopath showing to struggle with empathy while also showing that they
have a high level of impulsivity and seeking out thrills in any way possible.
Why Use Dark Psychology?
Ultimately, there are several reasons that one may use dark psychology, and
not all are as bad as one may think. Several people in society use these
techniques not to hurt others but to make sure that they are able to get
results that are needed. Politicians and leaders may wield the tools of
influence and persuasion to keep people motivated. Public speakers may
mess with the mood in the room to convey a certain message. Police
officers may use it to get people to stay in line. No matter who is using it,
there is generally some sort of purpose, even if sometimes, that purpose
turns out to be simply for entertainment. Now, let’s go over a list of several
ordinary usages of dark psychology that you have most likely encountered
recently.

Attorneys

Attorneys will often use dark psychology techniques when desperate for a
win. They may get so caught up in wanting to make sure that they get a
positive result for themselves, and for their record that they will use
manipulation or dark persuasion in order to guarantee that end result.

Leaders and managers

People in any sort of leadership position sometimes use dark methods to

keep people in line. They do not care about ensuring that their image is
good—they simply want the results, which involves complete compliance,
no matter how it may have been attained.

Politicians
Similar to the attorneys, politicians may use techniques that are dark in
order to convince others to side with them. They may appeal to emotions or
try to completely sidestep any sort of honest attempts to present facts in
favor of those that will stir up emotions and rile up crowds. Those
politicians that only care about the vote are likely to use any means possible
to get them.

Public speakers or activists

Sometimes, public speakers will intentionally mess with the emotional state
in the room in order to see better results. They will intentionally tell people
sad stories, knowing they are more likely to donate if they are already
feeling guilty over having seen, for example, a bunch of pictures of children
starving in Africa.

Sales

Salespeople are oftentimes entirely reliant on the commissions that they

will get through their ability to actually close sales. They become so
determined to sell more in order to keep their job or just to pay their bills
that they may begin to use dark psychology tendencies to get what they
want or need. For example, they may intentionally use neuro-linguistic
programming or dark persuasion techniques in order to get the other party
to agree sooner rather than later.
 Chapter 8: Dark Psychology and
the Mind

Dark psychology is so insidious because it targets the unconscious minds of

others, attempting to infiltrate and control the other person completely.
There are techniques that involve completely decimating the previous
personality that resided within someone’s mind and changing it up,
grooming the individual to follow along with whatever the dark psychology
user wanted. Other techniques may attempt to completely erase the person
that was there through brainwashing, destroying the person, and creating a
new persona for them instead.

Of course, not all of dark psychology is interested in creating new

personalities with perfect obedience—several are involved in simply
swaying people to do something for them. Nevertheless, all forms of dark
psychology have the potential to be dangerous. When used dangerously or
in ways that are intentionally dark, they can cause some serious problems
from the victim.

This chapter seeks to identify and understand exactly how it is that dark
psychology directly interacts with the mind, as well as to provide a few
examples for you to see this process in action. In understanding how the
mind is infiltrated and just how deep-reaching dark psychology can be, you
may find that you think twice about utilizing it within your life or toward
people that you know and like.
How Dark Psychology Works

Ultimately, dark psychology works quite similarly to manipulation—you

must be willing to first and foremost target someone else without qualms.
When you have decided upon a target, you must also be able to direct your
efforts in a way that remains covert, allowing the entire process to seem
quite relaxed or natural. When you are playing the dark psychology game,
you are playing the long game, and it is not unusual for people who are
using dark psychology to spend months, or even years, setting up for their
next victim. They want to be able to get the exact results that they want or
need without worrying about detection, and that means spending enough
time to build everything up over time.

Most of the time, people will go out of their way to befriend the victim.
Befriending the victim means that the manipulator can spend the time
necessary to begin scoping out the victim to ensure that they are, in fact, the
right person for the job and for what is wanted. From there, the manipulator
spends plenty of time getting to know the victim. After all, the best person
to manipulate someone is someone who is trusted. As soon as the individual
is able to secure a place in the victim’s friend group, they soon are deemed
trustworthy. With friendship established, the manipulator is free to begin
reconnaissance.

During this point in time, the manipulator cares about getting data that can
be sued later. They want to know why you want things a certain way. They
want to know what makes you tick and why you plan your life the way you
have planned it. The more information they know about you, the more
likely it is that you have given him or her some sort of important snippet
that can be used somehow.

With the understanding of what makes the victim tick, the manipulator
begins the manipulation process—slowly at first and then slowly picking up
the pace until the victim is entirely entrenched with the manipulator. The
manipulator will be able to then begin to plant ideas and thoughts into the
victim’s mind through techniques such as repetition until the ideas become
absorbed and the victim, completely unaware, believes that the ideas were
his or hers, to begin with.

Over time, the manipulator is able to install all of the strings that are desired
in the victim, as being in a position of trust means that very little will
actually be questioned as it occurs. Because of the position of trust, the
victim will simply accept what is being said at face value without worrying
about analyzing each and every statement for veracity.

In the end, the strings are installed, and the manipulator is free to continue
on as if nothing ever happened, pulling on strings whenever it is necessary
to get what they want done when they want it done.

This primarily works because the individual being manipulated does not
realize that they are. There are times during which the individual being
manipulated is aware of the coercion, such as during brainwashing, but for
the most part, the best way to make sure that you can successfully
manipulate other people is through ensuring that they never know what you
are doing it. When you are able to make sure that the victim is in the dark,
they are far more susceptible.
The unconscious mind is surprisingly unprotected, and that is exactly what
you target with this process. Thoughts are internalized. Patterns are built up.
Ultimately, the individual begins to change over time without realizing that
it is happening until suddenly, they cannot figure out how they changed or
why. They never think to point the finger at the manipulator either because
they feel like they could trust them.
Example 1: Mind Control with Dark Psychology

Imagine that you know this woman that you really want to get involved
with romantically. However, you feel like sometimes, she can be a bit
obnoxious or annoying, and you wish she would tone things down a few
notches. You decide that you will pursue it, but you want to also make sure
that she tones things down, and you set up an action plan for yourself to
essentially manipulate her into quieting down and being a bit more
subservient.

You start by getting to know her a bit better—you make sure you are the
picture-perfect date and give her everything she wants. You lavish her with
gifts and make sure that she always feels listened to. You are listening—but
you are only listening because you need weapons to use against her in the
future. Perhaps she mentions that she had a poor upbringing and is not in
contact with any family any longer. She has a few friends, but most of her
time is simply spent between work and home, where she lives with her cat.
You do not really like cats much but are willing to tolerate it.

Over time, you earn her trust, and occasionally, you mention how annoying
it is to be dealing with people that are louder than they need to be. You say
that you find women that have to get the last word to be shrill and
obnoxious. She seems mildly put off by this, but nothing happens.

After a few weeks, you notice that she seems to be quieting down a bit. You
can’t tell if she is simply stressed out as she has been working a lot, or if she
is beginning to internalize what you have said. When she is quiet, you
praise her, telling her you love how attractive and gentle she is, and that she
is the perfect picture of femininity. When she is too loud for your liking,
you frown, but do not say a word.

Eventually, she is simply quieter. She does not seem interested in rocking
the boat, and she does not mention anything being wrong either. You
effectively convinced her to quiet down simply through the use of your own
words to infiltrate her mind and install those thoughts of insecurity
surrounding the idea of being loud.
Example 2: Sales with Dark Persuasion

Imagine that you sell cars for a living. You like your job well enough—you
are good at it and tend to land sales pretty regularly. However, you have
been studying recently and found out that if you were to use your own
methods of convincing the other party that you know best, you would have
a pretty good chance at ensuring that they are more likely to buy what you
are suggesting. All you need to do is establish yourself as an expert and
drop some hints down about how other people in their position bought the
car that you are attempting to sell them versus the car that they are
interested in.

You go in one day and see that you have an appointment that afternoon with
someone who is interested in buying a new car. They specified that they
really wanted an older minivan in the message they left on your machine.
You keep that in mind, but looking at the price, you realize that it would not
net you a very nice commission bonus, and you decide that is the perfect
attempt to use your dark persuasion techniques that you have read about
recently.

They come in, and you immediately greet them. You make mention of the
fact that you have been selling cars for the last decade and that you have
had the very same van that they are interested in, but you hated it. You line
out several issues that you claim that you have had and then gently redirect
them toward a newer, and consequentially, more expensive SUV. It still has
the same number of seats, but the newer car has more features and is nicer.
They seem to resist the suggestion, but after a few attempts and telling them
that you got into a car accident in that car and the airbag malfunctioned, as
well as several other comments meant to make them feel unsafe in the van,
they finally relent, though you can see that they are visibly uncomfortable
with the amount of money they will be financing.

Ultimately, you got what you wanted—they took the car because they
eventually relented to your authority on the subject. However, in forcing the
point, they do not seem particularly confident in you as a salesperson, and
you are not likely to get another sale from them in the future, nor are you
likely to get good reviews. The good news, however, is that you got the
bonus that you wanted.
Example 3: Emotional Manipulation with Dark
Psychology

Now, imagine that you have decided that you are going to be giving a
speech at a fundraiser. You really need to make enough money to cover the
cost of the fundraiser, and then funds to also give to the cause as well. You
know this, and you realize that the amount of money that you needed is
actually far higher than it otherwise would have been had you chosen to do
something simpler.

The cause you are raising money for is to help provide food and shelter to
victims of domestic violence and their young children for the holidays. You
went all out because you wanted to create a nice Christmas party, but now
you realize that the bar has been set far higher. You need to make even more
money. Thinking about it, you realize that the best way to get the money is
to really appeal to emotions.

When you push an appeal to emotion, you will effectively be guilting the
people out of their money, making them feel like they are lucky to not be in
a situation rife with violence and instability. When it comes time for the
fundraiser, you lay on the guilt, bringing out stories of people fleeing
domestic violence and how they often leave with no money or belongings
beyond the clothing on their backs.

You really lay on the guilt, and eventually, you do happen to meet your
quota that you needed, all by telling sob stories and over-exaggerating about
the people you have been helping recently. Sure, some people do have it as
bad as you have spoken about, but not most of the ones that you have
helped as of late. Nevertheless, the end result is perfect for you—you
succeeded, and everything balanced out.
 Chapter 9: Analyzing Body Language with Dark
Psychology

Dark psychology, considering just how concerned it is with infiltrating the

unconscious mind, is also incredibly concerned with making sure that it can
analyze any body language that it is exposed to. When you are interacting
with someone else, you are effectively constantly taking feedback from
their body language.

Dark psychology users are no exception to this rule, either. They are also
constantly getting that same feedback, but unlike the ordinary people that
are uninterested in analysis, they are actively analyzing. They are aware of
the movements, of the body language and what it means, and how their own
body language is being reciprocated. They use their knowledge of body
language and how it works in order to glean as much information as they
possibly can in order to be certain that they are able to successfully
manipulate.

Within this chapter, you will delve into what it means to use dark
psychology to analyze body language. You will also delve into how those
users of dark psychology are likely to use their own body language to
influence other people. You will see how people can use mirroring to
effectively hijack the other person and make themselves more trustworthy.
You will see how you can use body language to alter the impression that
other people are developing about you. You will see how those who
understand dark psychology will use their skills to both learn about other
people and to influence them as well.
Analysis with Dark Psychology

When you analyze body language with dark psychology, you are doing so
in order to understand vulnerabilities. You will make it a point to look for
signs that the other person is uncomfortable or afraid of interacting further.
You want the other person to be just unsettled enough to be easily
controlled. You want them to be on edge because then they will be far more
likely to be agreeable in the first place.
Ultimately, people who feel like they are uncomfortable or unsettled, or like
they are at a disadvantage tend to be more agreeable. They are easier to
convince for one specific reason—their minds are so busy figuring out how
best to keep themselves safe and end that discomfort that they are too
preoccupied to truly defend themselves from the manipulation attempts.
This means that with their minds busy and them feeling off-balanced, they
can be controlled with ease.
The dark psychology user is going to know this, and they will look for signs
that the other person is uncomfortable, so they know that they can lash out.
They will see that the other person is likely to be more susceptible and
strike right then. Remember, the dark psychology user, when they are truly
trying to manipulate someone else, are acting as predators. They will
intentionally lash out and hurt other people whenever they can if it means
that they will get their way and they have no qualms about it. They do not
care that they are taking advantage of other people, so long as they get what
they want in the end.
In particular, when they are finally able to get a read on someone else, dark
psychology users tend to use other techniques as well. They may mirror in
order to create the impression of a good relationship between themselves
and their target far quicker than before. They may use their body language
to create anchor points—a technique that is specific to neuro-linguistic
programming but oftentimes taken in by dark psychology users. They will
watch as they can trigger people to say yes simply by inclining their heads.
They will see exactly how all of this comes together to make them far more
likely to actually persuade someone than they thought that they could ever
be.
The dark psychology users are skilled when it comes to understanding
people, and whether they have developed this skill innately and naturally
picked up on the most obvious cues, or because they have intentionally
taught themselves how to read other people, they use this skill to their
advantage.
Mirroring

One of the more popular techniques that can be used for influence is
mirroring. This is another NLP skill that often gets utilized because it works
upon the idea that people who trust each other tend to mirror each other’s
behaviors and movements back and forth. For example, if you see a
husband and wife sitting across from each other to eat dinner, you will
probably notice that one of them is probably constantly shifting their
movements to match the other. When the wife takes a drink, the husband
takes a drink a few seconds later. When one shifts to the left, the other shifts
to mirror them. When one takes a bite, the other takes a bite, and so on.
This is because they have a close relationship—spouses are incredibly close
when their relationship is a healthy one.
Mirroring does not require that level of intimacy to occur, however. It can
occur far sooner when the beginning of the relationship is sparked. Two
people who are actively interested in each other and who have some degree
of trust in one another are likely to be mirroring each other, even if their
acquaintanceship is still quite new. All that matters is that they believe that
the other person is not going to hurt them and that they are on the same
page with everything that they have discussed and decided upon thus far.
This means, then, that people will naturally mirror people as their
relationship builds. However, people also have a tendency to reciprocate
their own behaviors back and forth. If one person gives a gift, the other
person feels obligated to do the same (this is known as the principle of
reciprocity). You can sort of trigger this sense of reciprocity in someone
else as well simply by starting the mirroring process artificially.
If you can effectively mirror the other person, you can usually get them to
mirror you back, and as soon as that mirroring relationship is built up, you
have that access to the other person’s unconscious mind that you were
seeking to get. This means that when you move, they move.
Now, consider for a moment what that would imply—if you can effectively
trigger your mind to behave or feel a certain way just because you had
moved like you feel that way, such as smiling to make you feel better, even
when you were actually quite sad, you can then get the other person to
move with you. You can convince them to do things simply because they
are locked into your own body language. Unconsciously, they are following
your lead, so if you wanted to nod your head while asking a question, you
would make them feel more likely or inclined to nod their head as well. You
would effectively take over their mind for them and allow you to make all
of the decisions yourself.
Of course, all of this depends upon you learning to mirror the other person.
Thankfully, mirroring is not particularly difficult—you can learn to mirror
someone else with relative ease, so long as you know what you are doing.
Remember, doing this is sort of creating an artificial bond between yourself
and the other person—it is not quite the same as developing that rapport
naturally and incrementally in the way that it would normally be built.
Instead, it is designed to be far quicker. The other person will never be able
to tell the difference, though! In fact, they will likely be entirely unaware of
it happening unless they were also trained in dark psychology or NLP.
There are four easy steps when you want to mirror someone: You will first
trigger a connection between yourself and the other person. Then, you will
spend the time to match their speech patterns. Thirdly, you will attempt to
identify what is known as the other person’s punctuator. And finally, you
will test to make sure that the relationship has been triggered.

Creating the connection

Before you are able to begin mirroring, you must first make sure that you
can trigger a connection between yourself and the other person. This is not
too difficult—in fact, this can be broken down into four simple steps as
well, and if you follow these steps, you will find that you are actually quite
likely to get exactly what you were looking for.
1. Front the person: This is a fancy way to say that you are facing
the other person. You will make sure that you are making eye
contact and looking them over directly. In doing so, you show
them that you are giving them your utter attention.
2. Triple nod: With eye contact made and while you listen to the
other party speak, make it a point to nod occasionally. In
 particular, you want to do a triple nod every now and then. Three
nods are critical to this, as the first nod says that you are listening,
the second nod says you understand, and the third nod says that
you also agree. People like people that agree with them, so doing
this makes them feel more inclined to follow your lead.
3. Fake it: Yes, faking it until you make it comes back again. This
time, however, you must convince yourself that you are talking to
someone you genuinely enjoy. You can do this in several ways.
For example, you could tell yourself that you are utterly
fascinated with the current topic of conversation and make sure
that you truly believe it. Stop pretending and simply feel like you
are enjoying the other person. You are basically triggering the
connection that you wish to feel with the other person.
Mimicking the speech patterns
Next, you are responsible for figuring out how to match the other person’s
speech. This is not particularly difficult—you simply have to adjust your
own tone and manner of speaking to line up with the way that the other
party is speaking, as well. You will do this by ensuring that your pitch and
volume are quite similar. If the other person speaks slowly, deliberately, and
quietly as they contemplate what they are talking about, make sure that you
match this. If they are animated and excited, you should mimic that. This
will key into their unconscious mind that you are in agreement and
interested in them, allowing for the connection to be fostered just a bit
easier.
Finding the punctuator
This sounds complicated, but all you are looking for is the motion, gesture,
or phrase that the other person uses as their way to accentuate what is being
said. If they, for example, punch the air when they get excited, you should
make it a point to do so the next time that you feel like the other person is
getting ready to punch. This can be a bit tough to get just right, and if you
mess it up, you risk damaging your connection, but once you have
identified their punctuator, all you need to do is figure out the patterns. Do
they pump the air in excitement? Is it only when they say something that
defeats an argument? What is the reason they choose to do so? Mimic that
and use it to your advantage. They will likely not notice consciously that
you are mimicking them, but their unconscious mind will latch on to feeling
like you truly understand them and set the stage.
Testing the mirroring
Now is the time to find out if your work actually was effective. At this
point, you will find out whether or not you actually did successfully
convince the other person to actively start mirroring you. All you will need
to do here is try some subtle motion that you do not think would be
coincidental if it were copied. For example, brush off your shoulder and see
if the other person does as well. You could also take a sip and watch, or tilt
your head slightly to one side. If the other person mimics you, then you
have been successful. If not, however, you will need to make sure that you
go through the effort to get them acting accordingly. You will have to start
the mirroring process all over again and test again afterward.
Understanding and Analyzing Body Language for
Influence
Along with being able to mirror, the dark psychology user is also able to
understand the nuances in body language that are seen. They are able to
recognize when the grimace on someone’s face is out of fear or anger. They
will be able to tell when a smile is fake versus when it was genuine. They
will know all of the important signs and clusters to look out for in order to
ensure that they can always take advantage of them whenever necessary.
Effectively, they are able to put together a proper understanding of their
reading and take advantage of it.
The particularly skilled user, however, is also able to make inferences and
figure out the perfect way to act in order to start to influence the other party.
Mirroring is just one such form—you can use mirroring to influence, such
as getting someone to trust you or feel like you have a closer relationship
than you truly do. However, there is more than can be used. In particular,
those who use the dark psychology techniques that have been introduced
are also able to constantly influence how they are seen. They know how to
be seen as dominant in the workplace or in a relationship, and they will do
so. They know exactly what to do with their body language to be seen as a
threat if they want or need to. They know how to assert their own
dominance, or how to tell who in the room currently has that dominance or
is the most well-liked individual, and if it is not the dark psychology user, it
will likely be their next goal to become that individual.
In particular, dark psychology users favor the shows of dominance. They
allow them to assert themselves with very little effort—all they need to do
is position themselves just a bit higher up on their office chair than the other
person and they are automatically deemed to be more threatening or more
dominant, even if they are talking to a peer in their office at the same table.
This section will provide you with a handful of methods that are often used
to establish dominance by the dark psychology user after analyzing and
reading body language.
Adjusting the chairs: The dominant person’s chair should be
elevated just slightly compared to the chair of whoever is sitting
at their desk. This will give the illusion of the dominant person
being larger and therefore being the one that has dominance in the
situation, regardless of whether that is true or not.
Looking for dominance: When in a crowd of people, you can
tell who has the dominance with a simple check. All you need to
do is see the direction that everyone is orienting themselves. If
they are all leaning toward one person, no matter the side they are
sitting, you can figure out who the dominant individual is. You
may also notice that feet will point toward the dominant or most
desirable person in a room or crowd, as well.
Sitting with the feet propped on the desk: This is a position of
comfort at home, but in the office, it is commonly seen as a
position of power. Not just anyone is comfortable enough at work
to sit, sprawled out, with their legs propped up on the desk. After
all, the desk is company property, and you are now sitting there
with your dirty shoes on it. That takes guts or dominance.
Looking down at people: When you are dominant over other
people, you will most often look down at them. You may not
actually be taller than the other person, but that is okay—your
stare can be just as intimidating if you want it to be. All you need
to do is tilt your head back just slightly and make sure that you
look down your nose at the other party. In doing so, you are
effectively telling the other person that they are not important
enough to you to be treated as an equal with straight, eye-level
eye contact.
Staring: A solid stare can also be an effective way to actively
encourage and enforce your own dominance toward other people,
especially if the people around you tend to be a bit more
submissive. The constant eye contact can be deemed too
intimidating to maintain, and they will effectively give in.
 Chapter 10: Dark Psychology ’ s Effects

Finally, you have arrived at the last chapter of How to Analyze People with
Dark Psychology. This is where your journey of learning begins to wrap to
a close. Nevertheless, it is critical for you to learn just a bit more about dark
psychology and its effects before you move on. Remember, dark
psychology is a potent tool that can be used to gain plenty of insight and
intelligence, but at the same time, it can also be seen as a sort of weapon.
People who do not know what they are doing may struggle to actively
ensure that they avoid hurting other people, and unfortunately, when you
are poking around in someone’s mind, the damage that you can potentially
do can be irrevocable in some situations, such as if you have inflicted some
sort of trauma in your manipulation attempts.

Dark psychology may be designed to be a study and mimicry of those with

the dark triad’s most potent methods of manipulation, but that does not
mean that the act of interacting with other people must be harmful or
detrimental to anyone involved. On the contrary, you can use these
techniques and your powers in ways that are ethical. You can choose to
wield your tools in ways that are actually beneficial for everyone involved
as opposed to using these dark psychology techniques simply to hurt other
people and get whatever it was that you were craving or wanting.

When you are willing to use dark psychology with the intention of doing
real good in the world, you may find that the techniques and tools take a
different light. There may be some that you choose to avoid, but there could
also be others that are quite compelling to you. For example, what if you
made it a point to use mind control techniques, but instead of convincing
the other person that she was not good enough or too loud for you, you
boosted her confidence, reminding her of how capable and beautiful she
was? Suddenly, that technique that used to be insidious is actually quite
compassionate.
This chapter will serve to wrap everything up once and for all. Within this
chapter, you will look at the harm that dark psychology can do to an
individual. You will see several signs of manipulation and abuse. Then, you
will be provided with an explanation of ethical dark psychology, as well as
a brief guide to ensuring that your own usage remains ethical. Lastly, you
will be shown several examples of dark psychology techniques being used
in ways that are helpful and benevolent rather than harmful and destructive.
Ethical Dark Psychology

As the name implies, ethical dark psychology would be the usage of dark
psychology in ways that are not implicitly harmful. Of course, many people
may argue that dark psychology is wrong, no matter who uses it simply
because it accesses one’s mind, the most private part of one’s self.
Nevertheless, if you can keep your dark psychology ethical, you can find
that you are actually doing plenty of good. That good energy that you put
out into the world will help several people, and you never know just how
far that ripple of one good deed will flow.
This section will address five questions that you can ask in order to
determine whether you are harmful or malicious in your attempts to get
results from other people.

What is the intention of this interaction? Who will this benefit?

This question is the first one in the list—it is designed to make sure that
whatever you are doing is not solely designed to benefit you. Remember,
manipulators are those who tend to manipulate simply because they wish to
take control of other people and serve themselves. When you are able to
answer honestly that you have no interest in serving yourself but would
rather see that other people are the ones benefitting, you are on the right
track.

Am I confident that I am doing the right thing with this interaction?

This question forces you to figure out whether or not you are doing
something that you truly believe is right or if you are doing something that
you feel obligated to do or something that you know is ethically or morally
ambiguous or simply wrong. When you can answer that you are, in fact,
confident that you have chosen to do the right thing, no matter how you are
approaching or interacting with someone else, then you can guarantee that
you are actually going to be able to sleep with yourself. Remember, the true
manipulators, the true ones that cause harm, do not care about this. They do
not care that they are hurting people, so long as they get what they want.

Am I being honest here?

Now, this right here can eliminate several tactics from your repertoire that
has been built up thus far if you are truly looking to remain ethical.
However, you must make sure that you remember that people have their
own free wills. You must be willing to respect that to ensure that you can
actually make them happy or benefit them without assuming that they need
someone there, holding their hand, and treating them like a baby that is
incapable of caring for themselves. If you can do this effectively, you will
be able to maintain their own autonomy.
Will this interaction benefit the other person in the long-term?
This once again causes you to look at whether or not your actions are
beneficial to the other party. You need to make sure that what you have
chosen to do is something that you are confident will help the other party;
otherwise, who are you helping? Most likely, the only other option would
be yourself, and you should not be using people as a means to an end.

Will my choice in method allow a relationship based on trust to

develop?

This is the last question to ask yourself and is perhaps one of the most
important. Will the way that you have chosen to influence the other person
to damage your relationship with them, or will they still be able to trust
you? Would they be able to trust you if you happened to tell them what you
have done? If you have to feel like whatever you are doing must be hidden
from the person that you are interacting with, it may be time to reconsider
your tactics and what you seek to achieve. After all, you should not be
making people feel like they do not get a say or like you think you know
better than they do about what they want or need.
Signs of Manipulation

If you do find yourself on the receiving end of dark psychology with no

regard for whether or not it is ethical, you may notice that you are suffering
regularly. You will start to develop telltale signs of emotional abuse and
manipulation. You may not be able to articulate it, but reading over this list
could open your eyes to the truth. This section will go over five traits
common to victims of manipulation.

You feel depressed around the manipulator

Especially if the manipulator is a partner of yours, it is common for you to

feel like you are depressed or unhappy. This is because you have so much
going on, even though you do not realize it. Behind the scenes, you are
suffering from worsening self-esteem and confidence. Your demeanor is
becoming more timid and resigned.

You feel an immense obligation to the manipulator

If you have been in a relationship of any kind with the manipulator,

platonic, romantic, familial, or otherwise, you may be surprised to realize
that you feel incredibly obligated to your abuser. This is often because
obligation comes from manipulation, and you have been made to become
obligated to the manipulator to allow for further control over you.

You have had to change to fit with your partner

This is a huge red flag—if you feel like you have changed recently,
especially if other people are also commenting that you seem like you have
changed recently, it is entirely possible that you have, in fact, changed, and
that is problematic for everyone involved. While relationships do involve
both parties bettering each other, you should never feel like you have to
change to make the relationship work.

You feel like the manipulator is unpredictable

Despite potentially living with the person, you realize that you cannot
predict how the manipulator will be responding to situations. They may not
care about whatever has happened, or they may be incredibly frustrated
about it, but you have no idea which it will be. It may seem like the other
person is constantly volatile and changing, even when it is something
minor.

You are constantly feeling worthless

Relationships should be full of each other, valuing each other. However, the
manipulator will oftentimes completely devalue you. They want you to
think that you are dumb and not worth listening to—that means that you
will be complacent and easier to control. If you are too busy worrying or
feeling like you do not have the self-esteem to protect or encourage your
own personal growth, you may find that you actually need to get out of the
relationship altogether. It is entirely possible that you have a manipulator
constantly devaluing anything and everything that you do. If you do
something, they immediately tell you that it does not matter or that they will
not really acknowledge it even though it may have been a big deal to you.
Malicious Dark Psychology

Now, let us take one final look at what malicious dark psychology may look
like. Imagine that you feel like you constantly need to be showered with
lavish attention and affection. You do not know why you need it, but as
long as you have lived, you have felt that desire to always be the center of
attention. You will intentionally do things that gain you negative attention
simply because negative attention is better than no attention, though
recently, you have noticed that your partner has been feeling quite bothered
by this.

Instead, you choose to change your tactics. You choose to guilt-trip your
partner at every turn. You tell your partner that you do not feel appreciated
and that if they had appreciated you more, then you would not be so upset.
You tell your partner that you do not think that you can be in a long-term
relationship with someone who is not loving enough. You lay down the
guilt and threaten to leave if your partner is not more attentive to your
needs, even though your partner is already struggling to spend time with
you, work, and get enough sleep. You demand more and more, despite there
not being much more to give.

Nevertheless, your partner desperately tries to give you more and actively
attempts to spend more time with you. Your partner starts sleeping even less
frequently and has a health scare. Instead of being compassionate, you
continue to threaten your partner and then eventually just leave because you
did not get the love you felt entitled to.
This is an example of emotional manipulation and guilt-tripping, both of
which are incredibly unfair to do. The partner ends up feeling alone,
heartbroken and wondering why they could not do anything right.

Notice how the partner kept trying to push his or her needs away until there
was no more give. This is typical in dark psychology—the victim is often
trained to feel like their own needs are problematic or should be completely
foregone.
Benevolent Dark Psychology

Despite sounding kind of like an oxymoron, you can absolutely have dark
psychology that has been designed to be benevolent. You could choose, for
example, to make sure that whatever you are doing is meant to raise up the
other party rather than dragging him or her down with you. You could make
it a point to ensure that you are always honest with those around you and
that you are always conscientious about people having their own opinions
and free wills. No matter the form you may make sure that your influence
takes, you want to ensure that it is ethical. From there, it will be a matter of
judgment call for yourself.
Nevertheless, here are several situations in which dark psychology could be
used to help someone:

Convincing someone to buy something that is genuinely better for them

Though it may be easier to think that people always have their own best
interests in mind, that is not always the case. Sometimes, people will be on
the road to making risky decisions that are going to impact them for a
significant amount of time, and in those instances, you may be able to use
your persuasive techniques and ability to build a rapport with ease in order
to convince someone else that they are making a bad decision. For example,
imagine that your friend has decided to buy a sports car for their family car.
However, your friend is a single mother with custody of an infant—where
will she fit the car seat? You can see that the decision does not make sense,
but you cannot seem to convince your friend that she is making the wrong
decision until you break out the persuasive principles to gently persuade her
to do something that is in her own best interest.
Helping someone through a panic attack

As already briefly touched upon earlier, you can use body language to sort
of eliminate panic attacks. However, that is not always the easiest thing to
do when you are actively panicking. However, if you see a friend that is
having a panic attack, it is far easier for you to go up to that friend and ask
if they need any help than it would otherwise be, all because you will be
able to help. You can begin to mirror your friend almost immediately and
start encouraging mirroring on his end. His heart rate should slow as his
breathing regulates to yours, and he should begin to calm down relatively
quickly.

Presenting yourself fairly for an interview

If you are going to an interview, you may be well aware that the nerves that
come along with that initial drive and walk can be incredibly intimidating.
Nevertheless, knowing how best to overcome, that means that you will be
able to fight off the urge to run or do something else destructive. Instead,
you can use your ability to read body language and to alter your own to help
you make sure that you put your best foot forward and that you could
respond to the actions of your interviewer effectively.

Parenting children effectively

Children are notoriously difficult to put up with, especially during the teen
years, when they think they know everything. Of course, they do not, and
usually, there ends up being some sort of clash or disagreeability when
trying to keep the kids on task. When this happens, however, you can
always make it a point to use your ability to wield dark psychology. In this
case, you may make it a point to use persuasion to really convince them that
their decisions are not particularly smart and that they can make better ones,
such as listening to you.
 Conclusion

Congratulations! You have arrived at the end of How to Analyze People

with Dark Psychology. Hopefully, this has been an incredibly informative
process for you. As always, with psychology topics, it can be difficult to
find a book and a topic that is truly interesting and also easy to understand,
but it is with my utmost hope that you found this book to be interesting,
easily understood, helpful, and actionable. You have spent the last several
chapters learning how best to utilize dark psychology and how to analyze
other people. These skills are crucial if you want to be a successful adult in
the real world, and yet so many people simply lack the capacity or ability to
wield either of these.

Remember, you were first guided through how to analyze people. You were
told why analyzing others works and how important it is to know how to do
it. You were guided through identifying personality types and how best to
use that information in order to gain special insight into the minds of others
.You were taught about the difference between verbal and nonverbal
communication, as well as the several aspects that exist in nonverbal
communication. You then read through the five different forms of nonverbal
communication—kinesics, oculesics, proxemics, haptics, and vocalics in
order to better learn how to approach any situation with ease. You were
given a guide on how to read body language, and how to control and falsify
it as well. From there, you were taught about deception and lying, and
finally, you wrapped up with dark psychology teaching you anything that
you would need to know to tie together analyzing others and the skills
involved in dark psychology.
Of course, there is still plenty for you to learn. Just because you have
dipped in the tip of your toe does not mean that you are an expert. From
here, you could delve further into dark psychology. Several concepts have
been briefly introduced within this book, such as neuro-linguistic
programming, the principles of persuasion, and mind control. You can begin
to learn so much more about dark psychology if you continue to delve into
more books on the subject.

Perhaps instead, you think that you would be better served addressing
emotional intelligence. After all, two of the skills discussed within this book
were specifically about how to use emotional intelligence—how to self-
regulate and how to be self-aware. Maybe you choose to look into
cognitive behavioral therapy, another line of psychology that is interested in
observing the cycle between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and how they
all interact with each other.

As this book comes to a close, remember that your dark psychology usage
should always be ethical—you should always be choosing to act in ways
that are not harmful to others. You should be attempting to avoid harm
whenever possible when using these techniques, as several of them can lead
to irreparable damage.

No matter what it is that you choose to do next, however, make sure that
you remember to stay true to your morals. Do not use dark psychology to
hurt other people whenever you can avoid it. Make sure that you are always
actively trying to help those in your area, and do your best to ensure that
you do not end up victimized yourself.
Thank you so much for allowing me to join you on this journey. While this
book is coming to a close, the rest of your journey has not. There are
several other books that will relate to this one if you have found this one
particularly useful or compelling.
Finally, if this book has served you well, a review on Amazon is always
incredibly well received and appreciated. Thank you once more, and good
luck on your journey through understanding dark psychology. Remember,
this was only the beginning.
Manipulation and Dark Psychology

Learn the Art of Persuasion by Influencing

People with Secret Techniques of Dark
Psychology, Mind Control and PNL for A
Successful Life
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing Manipulation and Dark Psychology, and

thank you for doing so.

Consider a time where someone made you feel guilty. Perhaps you told
your partner that you were tired, but you got called into work and cannot
possibly go on that elaborate anniversary date night that you two had
planned for weeks. You work a job where you are crucial, and they cannot
easily replace you, and you feel like you have no choice but to go in. Your
partner, instead of being understanding about the predicament, looks at you
and sadly sighs, saying, “You know, I was really, really looking forward to
our date. It’s already paid for and non-refundable, and I can’t believe that
you would have to work on our anniversary when you requested it off two
months ago.” Your partner sighs again and slowly and sadly starts to take
off shoes and coat. You are left feeling incredibly guilty as you walk out the
door, but you have no choice.

You were just the victim of an attempt to guilt-trip you into refusing to go to
work that day.

Guilt-tripping is a commonly used form of manipulation, especially when

people want to make someone else feel bad. They will say things that lead
the other person to feel guilty about having to refuse to do something, no
matter how reasonable that refusal may have been, in an attempt to force
the other person’s hand. This is more or less what manipulation seeks to do
—it is designed to make the other person feel guilty and less in control of
the situation. Because guilt is a driving motivator for most people, that
feeling of guilt is like a call to action—a warning that you are not fulfilling
your obligations, and that can be enough for the manipulator to get the
upper hand.

Manipulation is limited to instilling feelings of guilt—in fact; there are

several other common, far more insidious ways to manipulate others in
order to get what you want. You can literally control minds if you know
how to do so and can get the right rapport. You can trigger people to do
things that you never thought they would be willing to do. You can
effectively influence people to do just about anything if you know what you
are doing.

Forms of influence designed to force people into obedience without them

ever truly being aware of what is happening are known as covert
manipulation, and they are the favorite weapons of those who practice what
is commonly known as dark psychology—these are people such as
narcissists, psychopaths, and sadists who do not care about those around
them. This book is designed to provide you with a guide to influence and
manipulation, as commonly seen in dark psychology, as well as how to
utilize these tools in order to wield the tools of dark psychology for
benevolent or beneficial reasons rather than simply to exert power and
coerce people into obedience.

Within this book, you will be given a guide to recognizing what

manipulation is, why it occurs, and how. You will learn about persuasion, a
secondary form of influence that focuses more on convincing the other
person to obey rather than forcing their hand. You will be introduced to
neuro-linguistic processing, another process that those who practice dark
psychology tend to wield, and lastly, you will address how to improve your
communication and NLP skills in ways that are conducive to living a
successful, happy life.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible; please enjoy!
 Chapter 1: What is Manipulation?

If you could force people to obey you, would you do it? If you could force
the hand of someone else, even though you knew that they did not want to
do what you were asking, would you be willing to do so? Perhaps you
really need to borrow $5000 for a down payment on a car, but your parents
are unwilling to give it to you. Maybe you really want to borrow your
friend’s new motorcycle to experiment on it, but they are reluctant because
you do not have a license. How likely are you to make it a point to move
forward? What if your friend is in a relationship with someone who is
abusive or just not right for her? Would you do anything in your power to
convince her to end the relationship?

All of that and more is possible with the power of manipulation. When you
are able to manipulate people, you are effectively managing to influence the
mind of the other person. You are able to figure out how best to control the
other person and ensure that you can, in fact, take over once and for all. You
can use your understanding of the other person’s mind in order to get them
to do just about anything. If you can play your cards right, you can covertly
access the mind of someone else, install all of the right strings, and play the
other person like a puppet.

This skill can be incredibly useful to you if you know what you are doing.
You can figure out how best to take control of the mind of someone else.
You can convince them to do your bidding, whether for your own or their
own benefit. This chapter will introduce you to manipulation as a concept.
You will learn how manipulation works as a concept. Lastly, you will be
provided with several examples of types of manipulation that you may
encounter in your daily life.
Manipulation

By definition, manipulation is a form of social influence that is designed to

change either behaviors or perceptions of other people through methods that
are deceptive in some way. Usually, the purpose is to allow the manipulator
to get what he or she wants, even if it is at the expense of his or her target.
Effectively, it is finding a way to coercively and secretly exploit someone
else into doing what you want or need them to do.

When you manipulate someone else, you have your own ulterior motive
that you are pushing. You want to ensure that your desired result happens,
regardless of whether it impacts you versus your child. For example, telling
your child that he must tell the truth or you are going to die would be a form
of emotional manipulation. You are putting excessive weight on the
consequence that would never happen in order to coerce your child into
telling you something. You may be trying to get him to tell the truth, but
you are also doing so in a way that is emotionally harmful to the child.
Sometimes, manipulation is a bit more difficult to spot—it can be finding
ways to use insecurities against the victim without them being spotted. No
matter what, however, what holds true is that manipulation is designed to
override everyone’s inherent right to free will. This is not something to be
proud of or to accept—if you are on the receiving end of manipulation, you
should be trying to protect that free will as much as you can. If you are the
manipulator, you may need to reconsider your motives and tactics.

Keep in mind as you read through the rest of this chapter that this book does
not condone the active and excessive use of manipulation. Controlling
people is typically considered quite underhanded and cruel, and it should
not be occurring on the regular, or at all if it can be avoided. It can be
valuable to understand the art of manipulation in order to understand how
the mind works, or how manipulators will attack, but ultimately, the use of
true manipulation is not recommended.
The Process of Manipulation

People tend to believe that manipulation is effective for different reasons.

They have different ideas about what makes manipulation effective. In
particular, there are three criteria involving the manipulator that must be
met in order to ensure that manipulation is successful. Ultimately, it is the
manipulator that is primarily responsible for the manipulation and
determining whether it will work, though there are certain personality traits
that tend to be particularly vulnerable to the attempts to manipulate. The
three criteria that must be met to ensure successful manipulation are:
The manipulator must hide the true intentions
The manipulator must know the victim’s most viable
vulnerabilities
The manipulator must be ruthless enough to follow through
Keep in mind that these three criteria being present is not a guarantee that
the manipulation will always work. However, they must be present if it will
work.

Hiding true intentions

If someone came up to you and said, “I am going to force you to buy me

dinner,” you would be likely to outright refuse. People tend to be contrarian
—they will lean toward doing the exact opposite of what someone else is
asserting that they do simply because they want to have their free will.
Because of this, manipulation only really works well when the true
intentions are hidden. This way, the victim is unaware of the manipulation
taking place and is more likely to fall for it. They will be unsuspecting and,
therefore, more susceptible as opposed to if they were already on guard and
looking for any attempts to force their hands.

Understanding vulnerabilities

Ultimately, the only way that you can possibly get to someone is if you
know where their weak spots are. By taking advantage of the other party’s
weak spots, you can effectively figure out exactly how to present what you
want in order to ensure they give it to you. For example, if you know that
you are dealing with a people pleaser, you may make it a point to mention
that you have this really important need that you want to figure out how to
meet and word it in just the right way that cues the other person to ask if
they can help. This is an example of a vulnerability. Others can include:
They need to be given external approval
Fear of negative emotions
Unassertiveness
Struggling to know one’s true self
Struggling with self-reliance
Feeling out of control
Being naïve
Lacking self-confidence
Being too conscientious
Of course, there are other vulnerabilities as well, and you can begin to
pinpoint more personal ones as well if you know what you are doing. Your
job when manipulating others will be to figure out those vulnerabilities and
use them.
Ruthlessness

Ultimately, manipulation is quite often harmful to at least one party that is

being victimized. In most cases, the one being manipulated stands to lose
something, and most people feel guilty at the idea of costing someone else
something personal. For this reason, the successful manipulator must not
care about the other person enough to be able to shirk off the guilt that
would come along with hurting them. For many people, they are simply too
empathetic to completely disregard everyone else. For others, however, it
becomes effortless to simply disregard any guilt over feeling like they have
used the other party. They move on with their lives after getting what they
want without ever batting an eye.
Manipulation Tactics

Typically, manipulators exert some sort of control over their targets. They
would have to in order to truly get their way. However, no two manipulators
are the same. Some may favor positive reinforcement, while others prefer to
punish. No matter the method, there is no denying that the manipulation can
be exhausting, unhealthy, and sometimes completely dangerous.

Within this section, we will identify the five distinct tactics that
manipulators tend to use. Keep in mind that these tactics are separate from
the techniques that will be discussed shortly. The tactics are sort of
categories of different forms of manipulation—they are the most simplified
form of classifying the techniques that you will be introduced to, and they
use some sort of psychological tendency or process in order to control the
other person.

Positive reinforcement

Rather than looking at positive as something good, think of positive as

being provided or given something. When you are given positive
reinforcement to encourage you to do something, you are introduced to
some sort of motivator. You will get something as a direct result of your
choice in action or in order to get you to do something.
For example, one form of positive reinforcement is being given praise or a
reward for completing a task as you were expected to do. In particular,
during manipulation, you may be offered praise if you do the right thing
without being asked or encouraged to do it. Ultimately, it is designed to
encourage. Other forms of positive reinforcement include:
Praise
Public recognition
Facial expressions
Approval
Love or affection
Gifts
Negative reinforcement

Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, involves using negative

situations with the removal from that negative situation as the reward.
When you are provided negative reinforcement, you are effectively being
told that if you do something, a negative situation will be remedied in some
way. This uses the negative situation and the desire to be rescued from that
negativity as the motivation to push you toward a certain action.

For example, imagine that you are in a bit of a bind—you may realize that
you are $1000 short for your bills in three days and be panicking. A
manipulator may say that they will give you that $1000 and therefore save
you from the uncomfortable and terrifying potential of losing one’s home.
Another example could involve telling a child that they will not have to do
the dishes if they do whatever you want instead.

Intermittent reinforcement

Intermittent reinforcement refers to only sometimes providing positive

reinforcement. Doing so causes doubt, fear, and a desire to keep trying to
fish for that approval or positive reinforcement that is desired. The absence
of whatever is being offered up intermittently can cause people to work
harder to get it.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand intermittent reinforcement is to look

at gambling. In gambling, you are occasionally able to win, but most of the
time, you lose. The occasional win and the knowledge that you have the
chance to win are both enough for people to continually pour money into
gambling, even though they are probably losing out on more money than
they have ever won back.

This form of reinforcement may be the most effective—it causes the

individual to effectively become addicted to the chase toward success or
fulfillment. Think about an abusive relationship for a moment—the victim
will oftentimes become addicted to the intermittent reinforcement of the
honeymoon period within the cycle of abuse, and that is enough to keep the
individual stuck.

Punishment
When discussing punishment, you are thinking about the sudden inclusion
of something negative as a response to a failure or refusal that is meant to
be unpleasant in order to encourage the other person to act as you are
hoping for. This causes the other party to give in, oftentimes, because the
other party on the receiving end of the punishment is afraid or hurt, either
physically or emotionally, and they want to avoid that same result in the
first place.

Think of fines when you get a ticket—the money you pay is, in part,
administrative to take care of the cost of the police officer who issued the
fine and the judge presiding over it. However, most of that fine is designed
to punish you. You are losing out on a set amount of money because you
have committed some sort of crime.

Some examples of punishment include:

Yelling
Hurting (physically, i.e. spanking)
Playing the victim
The silent treatment
 Nagging
Blackmail

Traumatic one-trial learning

Finally, traumatic learning refers to the use of abuse or trauma in very

specific instances in order to train the other party to feel like they must
concede to avoid triggering such abuse in the future. Effectively, you are
getting direct obedience through terrifying the other party into obedience in
the first place. This is among some of the more harmful types of
manipulation that people receive.

For example, you may find that you have returned home for the family for
the holidays, and your partner drove over just a bit later—no big deal,
sometimes families drive separately. However, your partner is furious that
you went rather than staying home where you would have been present with
him. He then screams at you about how you are never home or present for
him and goes onto a rampage. The message that he is trying to send is that
upsetting him is never worth it. Some forms of this include:
Abuse of any kind
Establishing dominance
Allowing emotions to blow out of control
Manipulation Techniques
Manipulation comes in several forms beyond those five different tactics.
Some people may gaslight while others love bomb and devalue. Others still
may choose to delve into mind control. There are several different
manipulation techniques that can all be used in various situations, meaning
that you always have plenty of options. What may work in one situation is
not necessarily guaranteed to work in another, and most of the time,
manipulators will have several different techniques in their back pocket to
draw from as needed.

Understanding each of these different forms of manipulation means that you

can be prepared. When you are prepared, you become less susceptible to
that form of manipulation. You will effectively be able to protect yourself
because you know what the patterns are and can recognize them as they
occur, allowing you to figure out giving in. This section will provide an
explanation of the eight common methods that are used.

Love bombing and devaluing

This form of manipulation is particularly common in relationships with

narcissists. The manipulator will shower the other person with love and
gifts to essentially addict the individual to them. Then, when the
manipulator wants something that is not being given, that love will
suddenly be revoked, often with intentionally hurting or knocking the
individual down a few pegs. They may stop responding or tell the victim
that they no longer care about the other person. The idea is to make the
victim desire that love bombing stage again to get them to work extra hard
to attain it. It usually occurs in a cycle.
This is the quintessential form of intermittent reinforcement.

Gaslighting

In gaslighting, the manipulator seeks to make the other party feel entirely
incompetent and doubtful of whether or not they can truly accurately
identify what is going on around them. The whole point is to make them
feel unstable, and like their perceptions of reality, are incorrect. For
example, they may tell the victim that the victim’s perception never
happened, or that the victim is making things out to be far worse than they
actually were. The gaslighter will deny and reject thoughts and opinions so
convincingly that the victim will trust the gaslighter, and over time, the
gaslighter will retain complete control.

The silent treatment

This is a common form of punishment in abusive situations. During the

silent treatment, the person who is being ignored will be entirely erased—
the individual will not acknowledge their presence or that they have said or
done anything. If the one being ignored says something, the one ignoring
will stare right past them. The entire purpose of this is to make the other
person feel the displeasure that the manipulator is feeling. It can also lead to
the individual being manipulated to be so desperate to get back to the way
things used to be that they will comply with any requests provided.

Guilt-tripping

The guilt trip tactic is designed to make the person being manipulated feel
guilty simply because guilt is a motivating emotion, and the feeling of guilt
is one that drives people to do whatever they can to alleviate it. If you are
able to guilt-trip someone, you effectively make them feel like the only way
they can escape that guilt is through doing whatever you have asked them to
do. For example, your sibling may tell you that they cannot afford to keep
their home if you do not lend them the money and that if you refuse, it will
be on you if their children are removed or if your sibling loses custody.

Playing the victim

Oftentimes, the manipulator will spin things around, so they reflect that the
manipulator is actually the victim of the circumstances rather than the
aggressor of the situation. For example, if a manipulator gets into an
argument with someone else, they may tell everyone else that they were the
victim in some way, shape, or form in order to gain sympathy. They will
twist the truth in order to make sure that they are believed to not be
responsible for whatever has happened.

Scapegoating
In scapegoating, someone else is made to take the fall for a situation. They
may push all of their faults onto the scapegoat, particularly when a child is
involved, but they may also simply refuse to give the same consideration to
the one being scapegoated. This is another form of intermittent
reinforcement.

Mind control

Another common method of manipulation is through mind control. When

you are controlling the mind of someone else, you are effectively swaying
them to do something that they do not want to do, even if it is not
necessarily what they would want to do. This is usually a method that takes
plenty of time, however, as the one doing the controlling has to first get into
a trusted position with the person, then slowly work up to the situation and
then take it when the time is right.

Covert intimidation
This refers to the sort of intimidation where you are not quite sure why you

are feeling scared, but you cannot help it. You simply feel like something is

going to go wrong or that there is some sort of problem that you will face if

you do not make it a point to first do what was expected of you. In covert

intimidation, you cannot quite put your finger on it, but you know that

something is making you uneasy.

 Chapter 2: When and Why to use Manipulation

Now, are you curious why people would choose to use this sort of
manipulation? Why does anyone need that level of control over someone
else’s actions or feelings? Who would use these forms of manipulation?
Who actually is ruthless enough to follow through without guilt or regret?
All of those are fantastic questions, and this chapter seeks to answer as
many of those questions as possible. When these questions are answered,
your portrait of the manipulator will become all the clearer.
Who Manipulates?
Manipulators come in several forms. Some are younger and simply have
not learned how to interact with the world. Others still just happen to be
manipulative by nature—they are intentionally using their abilities to get
what they want with no regard for how it hurts other people. Ultimately,
however, the manipulators tend to have several traits in common. This
section will address several traits and tendencies that can help you identify
a manipulator in the process of manipulating.

They are always the victim

It does not matter what has happened—the manipulator will always be the
victim or not at fault in some way. The manipulator could pull out a gun
and shoot you and would rationalize that he had no choice and insist that he
was the victim as he holds the smoking gun in his hand. This is a common
trait of manipulators as it makes them deserving of sympathy, which gives
them the upper hand in many different situations. They will try to figure out
how to get all of your friends and family on their side and will blame
everything on you. The worst part is that since they are so skillful at doing
exactly this, they can often convince other people to fall for it.

They regularly distort the truth

The manipulator will always twist reality. Skilled at weaving webs of lies,
the manipulator will always have a way to rewrite history, change a
situation, or otherwise make it, so their narrative is the correct one. One
such example is playing the victim. Other times, they may simply make up
lies because the lies suit them, such as saying that they are struggling to get
to work because there was a car accident and that they will be there soon, or
claiming that they cannot go outside to get to their car because a bear is
sitting next to it. Some lies may seem incredibly unconvincing, but they
will vehemently insist that he is telling the truth.

They are passive-aggressive

Manipulators tend to be passive-aggressive. A part of this is to make sure

that you know your place around the manipulator—they use it to assert
dominance and covertly exert their own influence and desire over you. For
example, they will intentionally use passive-aggression to make you feel
bad, and then be satisfied that they held power necessary to make you feel
bad in the first place.

They will pressure you

The manipulator is convinced that he is always right no matter what, and

with that in mind, he will not hesitate to pressure you in order to get
whatever he wants from you at any given moment. He knows that his way
is the right way, and he will force the point until you agree.

They will not work to solve a problem

If you find that there is a problem with the manipulator, good luck—they
will not work to come to some sort of solution. Instead, they will continue
on as if nothing is wrong, or at the very least, that nothing is wrong with
them. They could not care more about your own problems, so long as they
are not the manipulator’s problems.
They will always keep the advantage

The manipulator has an uncanny way to always remain in control in nearly

any situation. They will oftentimes find a way to ensure that they can find a
way to stay in charge. They will always pick the restaurant that you go to,
or they will always invite you out of your comfort zone and into theirs, all
done intentionally to maintain power and control over the situation. When
they do this, they effectively guarantee that they are able to stay in charge
long enough to keep you off balance and make sure that they always have
the upper hand.

They will always have excuses

When they do happen to make a mistake, manipulators typically will have

some sort of excuse. There was a car accident on the way over, or they just
got fired for no reason at all. It does not matter what the problem is; there
will be some sort of excuse that will arise to take the blame away from the
manipulator and push it onto someone else.

They will make you feel unconfident

Something about the manipulator will always leave you feeling incompetent
and unable to do anything right. This means that you will constantly be
feeling like you are the problem rather than seeing that the whole problem
may have been resting firmly with the manipulator all along.
Why Manipulate?

Manipulators have all sorts of reasons to manipulate others, with some

simply having no reason at all. When you begin to understand the
motivation behind these drives, you may be more inclined to understand
those techniques that the manipulators everywhere tend to use. This means
then that you will be able to figure out how to fight back. You can defend
yourself and others based on the knowledge that you have. Knowing why
people manipulate others can be a critical skill to develop if you want to be
successful in the world around you.

They want to advance in life

When you feel like you need to advance somehow, whether due to needing
the money in order to get what you wanted or needed, manipulation is one
way to get it. When you manipulate someone, you are usually using them as
a sort of stepping stone for yourself in order to ensure that you can, in fact,
withstand future struggles while also progressing the agenda that you have.
Typically, this is the most selfish of the reasons on this list—these
manipulators do so simply because they can.

They need power and superiority

Similar to the last reason for manipulation, oftentimes, manipulators need to

feel like they are in power. They simply are only secure in themselves so
long as they are in a position of power over other people. If they feel like
their superiority will be questioned in any way, shape, or form, they will
feel insecure. They will feel like the only way they can make themselves
feel comfortable is if they exert and enforce their own superiority, which
they give themselves through making a point to manipulate those around
them.

They need control

When people are particularly controlling, they may find that manipulation is
one of the easiest ways to get the results desired. When you are able to
manipulate someone else into doing what they need to do, you are able to
ensure that you maintain control in nearly any situation. You may have to
find a way to covertly encourage the other person to do what you want, but
as soon as you manage to do that, you can effectively maintain control,
even if the other person does not realize that you are in control of the
situation at hand. The need to be in control can be particularly motivating
for people when it comes to deciding to manipulate.

They need to manipulate to better their own self-esteem

Some people, such as narcissists, tend to feel like they are only comfortable
with themselves when other people are lavishing them with attention or
admiration. These people tend to result in manipulation to get that attention,
especially if they are not particularly outstanding or deserving of attention
in the first place. In manipulating other people into giving them the craved
attention, they are able to feel better about themselves.

They are bored

Some people simply enjoy watching the world burn and will make it a point
to manipulate other people simply to get entertainment. They treat it like a
game or a challenge, intentionally testing boundaries to see how far they
can get with no real reason or motivation beyond being bored to guide
them. These may be some of the more dangerous manipulators as they have
no real goal in mind—they simply want to wreak havoc and spend some
time messing with other people despite not getting anything other than their
own satisfaction in return.

They have a hidden agenda

More often than not, the manipulator has some sort of reason to manipulate
those around him or her. This is typically hidden from the target but can be
figured out with enough time and information. Think about how some
people will intentionally seek out vulnerable people with ulterior motives.
They may marry in order to get their hands on money, or intentionally
volunteer as a caregiver for an elderly family member in order to steal
money from them. No matter what the hidden agenda is, the manipulator
has good cause to try to keep it hidden.
They do not properly identify with the emotions of others

Sometimes, the manipulation is unintentional and a side effect of simply

being unable to identify with other people. Effectively, they lack empathy,
and that lack of empathy is enough to make it so they cannot easily identify
when they have done something that is manipulative, nor do they
automatically recognize when what they have done is problematic. These
are people who simply do not understand social norms for some reason or
another. They may have a personality or other mental health disorder.
When Manipulation Occurs

No one wants to be on the receiving end of manipulation, and yet it seems

to be all around us. The world is literally surrounded by different people
and their attempts to manipulate. You can see it on television and in the
media. You can see it in religion and politics. It happens in all kinds of
relationships when they become unhealthy. There is no real way to truly
avoid manipulation, and that in and of itself can be incredibly disheartening.
However, because manipulation is everywhere, it becomes prudent to
understand what it looks like in a wide variety of situations and cases. You
want to be able to notice when it is happening and figure out how best to
fight back from it to ensure that you actually are able to protect yourself.
When you are able to protect yourself from manipulation, you can
guarantee that you, at the very least, are not regularly being used by other
people simply because you refuse to allow yourself to be

Within this section, we will take a look at manipulation in several different

relationships and contexts for a brief overview of what to expect and why it
happens.

In relationships

This is particularly referring to romantic relationships. Romantic

relationships seem to attract manipulation frequently, especially if one
member of the couple happens to be on the less confrontational side and is
afraid of ever standing up for him or herself. When this happens, you may
find that you have run into quite the conundrum—you need to figure out
how best to leave a romantic relationship rife with manipulation, which can
be difficult if the manipulator has done his job right.

In particular, when you are in a relationship and at risk for manipulation,

you will realize that the other party is likely to completely steamroll over
the relationship. The other party may try to get you to move quicker than
you are usually comfortable with, insisting that you advance your
relationship to the next level in a whirlwind romance. If the person seems
too good to be true in a situation like that, you can usually assume that it
was full of manipulation in the first place and should be avoided if at all
possible.

In friendships

Manipulative friends may try to get on your good side as quickly as

possible, but they will soon fall into the habit of always needing you but
never being available when you need them. At first, you will assume it is a
coincidence, but over time, you will realize that it is actually a pattern,
leaving you stuck to decide whether you would like to leave the friendship
altogether or if you would prefer to instead put up with the manipulator’s
lack of support and enjoy what you can.

In churches

Churches commonly also manipulate people, attempting to force them into

situations and actions that they may not necessarily want. In particular, you
will commonly see threats of damnation and punishment if they do not live
by a very specific life, and that is a perfect example of manipulation. They
use their authority to sort of force your hand and make you feel like you
have no choice but to comply. This is what they count on—they assume that
you will continue to donate, to serve, and to attend because they threaten
you if you do not. While many people may not see it as a threat, being told
that you may be excommunicated or that you will be damned for eternity
are two ways to sort of scare someone into behaving a certain way.

In politics

Politicians frequently attempt to manipulate each other during debates and

will attempt to manipulate the people during speeches. You can see it in the
way they hold themselves and how they interact with each other that they
are trained and scripted on what to do, and even the way that they stand has
been scripted to avoid any of the typical discomfort signs, such as crossing
arms. Instead, to be seen as more powerful, they may fiddle with a watch or
a piece of jewelry to try to hide their gut reaction to show signs of distress.

In cults

Cults commonly use brainwashing techniques in which they may tear down
entire personalities to install their own, more obedient ones in other people.
They may welcome people with open arms, making them feel like they are
welcome and will be happy, but over time, the manipulation and
brainwashing will increase. Eventually, people are left as shells of
themselves, forced to obey and do whatever they have been told if they
want to avoid punishment. You can see these in extreme cults in particular,
and cults can be so effective that leaders can literally command their
followers to kill themselves or others, and they will do so, such as in the
Jamestown cult, in which everyone drank flavored drink laced with poison
as a mass suicide.

In sales positions

Sometimes, people in sales positions will have to get crafty with how they
choose to present themselves in order to guarantee that they can, in fact,
actually close a sale. They may choose to use certain appeals to authority or
emotion in an attempt to convince you, or they may try to scare you into
submission in other instances. No matter the situation, however, it is
common to see salespeople try all sorts of influential attempts to get you to
buy something. Even something as simple as asking you a few yes
questions can be a form of manipulation taken from neuro-linguistic
programming, depending on if the other party is prepared with the
techniques. In particular, much of the influence that you will see in sales
settings tend to be persuasion or NLP.

In court

In court, when lawyers are often battling it out to figure out the truth, you
may see manipulation. Especially if the lawyers happen to be particularly
eager to prove their own positions, you may run into issues in which both
parties start flinging manipulative attempts at each other. They may word
their questions in a loaded manner to try to get the other party to fall for it.
They may try to frame the other party or pressure them into confessing.
Ultimately, even though the courtroom is supposed to be particularly
unbiased, you can frequently see manipulative attempts to control each
other play out.
In negotiations

Negotiations attempts are another area in which you may see attempts to
manipulate or influence each other. Both parties have a certain desire, and
they are likely to attempt to get their way in some degree. Of course,
negotiations also come along with compromise, so some concessions will
have to be made, but the individual responsible for those concessions may
change depending on the results of the negotiation.
 Chapter 3: The Power of Persuasion

Have you ever been trying to figure out what to do for dinner one night only
to have your partner or child come up to you with a complete argument on
why you should go to your favorite sushi restaurant for dinner? Perhaps the
argument is all nicely laid out for you. Your child points out that you would
not have to cook or clean, which means that you have more time to spend
with your family, something that is in desperately short supply these days.
Your child points out that everyone loves sushi, so you cannot go wrong
going to the restaurant and that the whole family will find something to eat.
Lastly, your child tells you that he knows that you really want to get some
sushi because you always want to get some sushi.

You may realize that your child is right—all of that is true, and you agree to
go. In this instance, you have just been persuaded to go out to dinner by
your child. Now, the argument and attempt to persuade may have been
rather simplified, but it still counts as a form of influence. You were not
thinking about going out to dinner until your child pointed out all of the
reasons that you should. This means, then, that your child influenced your
choice.

Of course, most of the time, persuasion attempts tend to be a bit less

obvious. They may be as simple as wording things in a way that is
conducive to you making a specific decision. They may be pointing out that
the other party knows best because the other party happens to be an expert
on whatever is being sold. No matter the form, however, what persuasion
does that manipulation does not is that it puts the question out in the open
for everyone to see.
Slightly more acceptable than its sister form of influence, persuasion
focuses more on free will than covertly attempting to convince someone to
give in and be controlled. In particular, you may find that you actually are
okay with persuasion simply because it is more out in the open than the
covert attempt to manipulate. They are quite similar, however, and within
this chapter, you will be introduced to what persuasion is.
What is Persuasion?

Persuasion, like manipulation, is a form of social influence. It is designed to

change the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors of someone else for reasons that
are listed or dictated for the other person in the bid to get the other person to
change. This means that the other person is well aware of the attempt early
on. Just as your child pointed out that you would love to go to sushi for
dinner, any other form of persuasion is going to be telling you what you
should be wanting or doing. It will encourage you to do something in
particular in an attempt to persuade you, but you are still always welcome
to turn it down and move on with your initial choice.

Typically, persuasion is incredibly powerful. You are creating an argument

of some sort for someone else and attempting to follow through with that
argument. You want other people to see that your argument is valid and that
you have the right idea. You want to figure out how to do just that without
there being a clear and easy way to get out of it. All this means that you
need to figure out what will motivate your target and then figure out how to
motivate them. This usually happens in several different ways, such as in
the principles of persuasion or with the understanding and usage of rhetoric.
What is true, however, is that you should end up with someone who has at
least some sort of idea about what they want by the end of the attempt.
They will either agree with you, or they will disagree and move on, and it
will be up to you to figure out which.
Persuasion vs. Manipulation

At face value, the two seem to be intricately linked—they are both attempts
to convince or cause someone to do something else. However, you likely
persuade someone nearly every single day, and yet you may make it a point
to never manipulate others. You are able to toe the line because the two are
entirely different from each other.

In particular, however, you must look at the differing definitions of the two
attempts to influence. In manipulation, you are attempting to change via
unfair means for one’s own selfish purposes. For persuasion, however, you
are looking to cause someone to do something.

This means that primarily, manipulation is unfair or secretive by default—it

seeks to use and abuse people in order to satisfy the manipulator and
whatever it is that the manipulator wants. Persuasion, on the other hand, is
simply a way that people interact with those around them. You are
attempting to persuade someone to help you because you feel like they may
be a valuable asset, and you think that they will get something out of it, too.
You are completely upfront about everything when you attempt to persuade
someone, however when you manipulate, you are not.

For example, consider that you really need a ride to work tomorrow for
some reason. You go up to your neighbor and say, “Hey, you know, I
noticed that your yard could use some TLC—would you like me to help
you with that today? I’m free all day!” The neighbor agrees, and the two of
you happily chat while taking care of yard work. The neighbor, upon
finishing everything up, asks if you need any help yourself, offering to
reciprocate. You reply that actually, you need a ride to work, and you would
greatly appreciate it.

On the other hand, if you had wanted to manipulate the neighbor into a ride,
you may have gone out in the morning like usual and desperately tried to
start your car while groaning loudly and slamming on the steering wheel
before looking at your watch in exasperation. In this case, you are not
interacting with the other person directly at all—you are making it clear that
you are unhappy, but you are not speaking to your neighbor.

Your neighbor happens to see your plight and offers to help you, getting
your ride without you ever having to ask for help. That is manipulation. You
intentionally did something with your own self-interest in mind. You did
not help your neighbor, and simply took advantage of his kindness when he
offered to give you a ride without any offer for reciprocity.

As you can see, manipulation versus persuasion can be a bit complex to

figure out if you do not know what you are looking at, but it is important.
Effectively, when you are manipulating someone else, you are attempting to
make them do something for you without you having to overtly ask for it in
any way.
Using Persuasion

Between the two, persuasion is generally deemed to be socially acceptable

and something that will not be problematic for you if you were to be on the
receiving end of it. You may not feel like persuasion is particularly
threatening in the way that manipulation typically is considered simply
because when someone attempts to persuade you, they are usually honest
with you. They will tell you exactly what they want or need and they will
usually offer up reasons for why you should help them, which may
sometimes be a negotiation of services or otherwise simply appealing got
logic or something else to prove that you helping would literally be no
inconvenience to you, but would be a lifesaver to them.

When you are planning to use persuasion against someone else, you are
likely to need some sort of plan. Generally speaking, you will need to know
exactly what you want and how you need to get to that result. If you want to
get a job, for example, you may realize that the steps to get a job will
require you to be applying for jobs and working on your resume as much as
possible. You may see that there is little room for error and that you will
need to actively attempt to find that job.

When you make your plan, you can start to figure out who you will ask for
help. Do you know anyone with some connections? Do you have a friend
that works somewhere with job openings? Do you have any skills that can
get you that job that you really need or want? If you can answer yes to any
of that, you can figure out who you want to target for your persuasion. After
all, there always has to be someone on the receiving end when you attempt
to persuade someone.
Upon identifying who you will persuade, you must figure out how you wish
to persuade them. Now, this will be a bit trickier to figure out—there are
dozens of ways that you could go about trying to persuade someone, and
ultimately, you will need to choose the one that works best for you. When
you can identify exactly how you wish to be persuading someone else, you
can begin to put together the best possible toolset to do so.

Now, we will not get into the tools for persuasion until the next chapter, so
hold tight on that particular concept. However, recognize that there are
several persuasive techniques that can be used, so long as you make it a
point to use them effectively. With the plan in mind and the tools in mind,
and recognizing that you are not only persuading to get help, you need to
figure out what you are willing to offer in return. Why should the other
person help you? Will you do something in return? Will it benefit them in
any way? Remember, manipulation is the one that is self-serving. When you
are persuading someone, everyone should see at least some sort of benefits
to helping or agreeing to whatever you are attempting to persuade them of.

Finally, with the who, what, how, and why figured out, you can now attempt
to use your technique. Now is the time to go up and talk to whomever you
have identified as the individual that you are asking for help. Remember,
you should probably try asking them if you can help them before slamming
onto the theme of everything that you are looking for from them.

This means that you can make it a point to ask and persuade. You should
point out all of the reasons that helping would be good for the other person,
as well as what you will do in return. Persuasion is a give and take, after all,
and you need to be clear to the other person that you absolutely intend to
give as well as take to ensure that they do not feel pressured or stuck in the
process. When you do this, you assure them that you are not simply using
them, especially once you follow through with helping them.
Persuasion in the World

At this point, you should have a generally solid idea that persuasion is
something that can involve give and take—that either the giver or both
people should benefit. As a general rule, the taker should never be the only
one benefitting from persuasion. You can see this happen in several
contexts. You may see people shopping for a house and notice that
persuasion happens during the sales. You may see that persuasion happens
in regular interactions with your romantic partner simply as a side effect to
the fact that you two regularly interact with each other and will often have
something or another that you really want or need. You can see it in
parenting, and in negotiations as well. Leaders are also masters at
persuasion—especially if they are effective leaders, and you will often see
that the best leaders are well-loved and incredibly persuasive. They know
how to wield their tools so well that those around them are always willing
to help.

This section will take the time to go over several contexts in which you may
run into an attempt at persuasion throughout your life. It is incredibly
common to see persuasion pop up regularly because it is so regularly used
in terms of interactions. If you want someone to do something, the best way
to get them to do it is by asking them to do it. If you can do that, you are
well on your way to persuading them.

In sales

When you are buying something, such as a car, you may run into someone
who is interested in attempting to sell you something that you were not
necessarily interested in at first. In order to be an attempt at persuasion, the
newly presented car should do something for you—it should be useful to
you in some way, shape, or form, and it will be on you to determine if the
use of that new car is enough to encourage you to move forward with
getting the new car or if you want to stick with whatever your original
choice was.

Perhaps you went in for a small sedan because you do not like to drive
anything much large. However, you have two young children, and you find
that you are always frustrated that you do not have enough room for car
seats, a stroller, a diaper bag, and any shopping you may do during the day.
This means that your car, despite being one that you are comfortable
driving, is not one that you are necessarily going to be comfortable in using
on a regular basis.

The salesperson sees that you need some more space and recommends some
compact SUVs to you as well. They are just big enough that they will
actually accommodate the rest of your belongings without causing you to
struggle to fit some groceries when you run to the store during the day as
well. Now, to be fair, the SUV is a bit more expensive, and you know this.
The salesperson knows this too, and you can presume that the salesperson is
going to get a slightly larger commission on the SUV as opposed to the
sedan.

However, after mulling it over, you realize that the salesperson was right—
you need the space. You need room for your children, their necessities, and
anything that you may get when you are out, and your stroller barely fits in
the trunk as it is without anything extra. You then decide to go with the
SUV.

Now, what makes this persuasion and not manipulation is the attempt to
make sure that you know what you are doing and that the salesperson is
genuinely trying to help you. Now, if the salesperson were simply trying to
convince you to get the largest car on the market with the most expensive
monthly payment, that would have been more along the lines of
manipulation, but considering that your salesperson showed you some
reasonable options and did not push the point, it was considered to be
persuasive instead.

In relationships

You can see this sort of give and take play out in relationships, too—for
example, imagine that you and your partner are ready to take the next step
and move in together. However, neither of you really wants to let go of your
apartment. Ultimately, the best way to get one of the two of you out of their
home and into the other’s home is through persuasion—you will both have
to come up with the reasons to stay in your own respective apartments
while the other party moves.

Because neither of you are attempting to underhandedly manipulate your

way into staying in your own home and you are both willing to calmly
consider what is going on and what the reasons for staying or going would
be in order to rationally decide the best course of action, this is considered
an attempt of persuasion.
In parenting

In parenting, the best thing that you can do is learn t0 talk to your child, so
they understand you clearly and effectively. This means that you need to
figure out how best to communicate with your own child, and that could
very well be different than what you would use for someone else that you
know or with someone else’s kid. If you can effectively learn to
communicate with your child, you can then use persuasion on a regular
basis.

When you are raising a child, what you are doing is trying to figure out how
best to help them become responsible, mature adults that are productive and
capable of interacting with those around them. This means that they need to
develop skills such as how to persuade someone or how best to
communicate when they need something. This means that you should teach
by example—you should talk to your child using the same persuasive
patterns that you would use for a friend or family member.

For example, if they really want a cookie and ask nicely for one, you could
very politely say, “I am so proud of you for using your manners! But you
know, dinner is about to be finished, and you need to make sure that you
save room to eat your dinner. How about we have it tomorrow after lunch
because you don’t need sugar after dinner.” This involved you negotiating a
new time for eating the cookie and your child agreeing.

Now, of course, you could have simply said, “No cookie; it’s too late,” and
had that be the end of discussion, but that would not have been doing your
child any favors. Instead, you are making it clear that good communication
skills are critical if they want to be successful at all. You are helping them
become the best possible adults that they can be because you are teaching
them skills such as persuasion early on.

In negotiation

Negotiation is something that only certain people will deal with on a regular
basis, but nearly everyone will face it at one point or another. If you need to
negotiate with someone, persuasion is the perfect way to begin attempting
to get someone to see your own side. Effectively, you can lay out your
argument for having things done your way, offering up your own
concessions, and then seeing what happens next. You want your negotiation
partner to feel willing to accept the deal that you have put out without
feeling like they are being taken advantage of because taking advantage is
not one of the main purposes of persuasion—being fair and forthcoming is.
At work

Finally, at work, you are likely to need persuasion at some point in time. Do
you need a day off for a trip? You will have to persuade your boss that you
need it. Do you want a raise? Why do you deserve it? How will your own
productivity change if you get that raise in order to warrant it when you
ask? What can you possibly do to make that raise worthwhile?

Beyond just negotiations with employers, however, you also need to be

prepared to negotiate with clients or business partners, and you will need
persuasion to make you effective at those as well. Ultimately, nearly any
time you need to ask someone to do something, you are effectively trying to
persuade them to do something. This is exactly why persuasion is so
incredibly important to have a solid grasp upon.
 Chapter 4: Mind Control Techniques with
Persuasion

Now, you have seen just how critical persuasion can be in several different
contexts. At this point, it is time to start seeing the techniques that you can
use to persuade other people. Remember, persuasion is all about being clear
about what you are asking for. However, on the other hand, it is also about
convincing people to do what you want. You need to be able to walk along
that fine line without falling on either side if you want to be effective.

This chapter will introduce you to both the principles of persuasion and the
rhetoric of persuasion. You will be guided through each and every step of
the persuasion and provided with the reasoning that you should make it a
point to truly develop these skills. Each has its own important uses if you
are willing to put in the effort to learn them.
Principles of Persuasion

First, we will discuss the principles of persuasion. These are six different
persuasive tools that you can use in order to convince those around you to
behave in certain ways. They can be used on their own or in tandem with
others on this list. However, what is important is that you remember that
these tools are useful, and you practice them whenever you get the chance.

Authority

The first of the principles of persuasion is authority. When you seek to

appeal to authority, you are simply trying to make yourself into some sort of
authority figure. This is for a very specific reason.

Stop and consider for a moment—would you rather take medical advice
from a random person walking down the road or from a doctor wearing a
lab coat and a badge? Which would seem more convincing to you? If both
of them held out a pill in their hand and urged you to take it, would you?

Many people would be willing to be treated by the doctor in the coat and
with a badge. They are deemed to be an authority on medicine just because
they happen to be wearing a lab coat and have their credentials printed out
on their badge. The other person, however, is some random nobody, and
even if they were to say that they are a doctor, you would have no way of
knowing for sure, nor would you be able to verify what was being offered
to you to take.

Ultimately, this is exactly the kind of divide you would see ordinarily—
when there is an appeal made to authority, the one who is knowledgeable
wins out. The one deemed to be more of an authority due to credentials or
experience wins out in the end.

This means that when you want to appeal to authority, what you need to do
is make sure that you find a way to make it clear that you are, in fact, an
authority on the subject. If you are the car salesperson, maybe have letters
and pictures from your happy clients that have bought cars from you and
left fully satisfied after your help. Maybe you should pay attention to the
fact that when people walk in, the first thing you want them to see is that
you are qualified at your job. You may set up so they can see your diploma
or awards, or you will make sure that they hear about it in the first few
minutes of the meeting.

Commitment and consistency

The next principle of persuasion is known as commitment and consistency.
When you are dealing with commitment and consistency, you are
effectively playing on the fact that people tend to like what is familiar and
expected. This means that people will always try to continuously follow
through on a commitment that they have made, and the more often that they
make that particular commitment, the more likely they are to continue to
make that commitment with it eventually just becoming standard.

For example, say you asked your neighbor, who happens to be your
coworker, for a ride to work. It is literally no inconvenience because you
both travel both ways at the same time. After several drives in which your
coworker takes you to work, it eventually becomes expected, and you no
longer have to ask—you are simply waiting by your neighbor’s car before
and after work each day to catch that ride. Effectively, the first time they
agreed to take you, they locked themselves into a chain of repeatedly being
asked by you for rides and agreeing to do so on a regular basis.

People love to be consistent—it is valuable to be consistent, and because of

that, people will usually continue to follow through, even if they do not like
it and do not want to continue.

You can trick people into doing things for you with this same process as
well. If you want something, such as maybe wanting your coworker to
cover a shift for you, you may start by asking a simple yes question, such as
asking if they have had a nice week so far. Your neighbor says yes, and then
you ask if they will trade shifts with you so you can make sure that you are
able to go to a concert that you have been looking forward to.
Thanks to having already begun to say yes to other things, your coworker is
going to be in a state of mind in which he or she is already saying yes, so
they may as well continue. After agreeing to a few smaller things as well,
you may run into someone who is willing to accommodate more difficult or
larger requests in the name of consistency.

Liking

This is perhaps one of the most straightforward of the principles of

persuasion—all you need to remember is that the more you like someone or
something, the more likely you are to feel like whatever you liked is
valuable, and the more likely you are to be convinced in its favor. For
example, you are more likely to do a favor for someone that you really like
than someone that you do not like at all.

Luckily, there are several ways that you can make it a point to become
likable to someone else. You can, for example, mirror someone until they
like you. This means that you would be copying their behaviors as covertly
as you could possibly manage, which may not be particularly secretively if
you do not know what you are doing. Upon setting everything up and
mirroring the other person to the point that they mirror you back, you
should be good to continue.

However, if you are unsure how to proceed with mirroring or you simply do
not want to deal with it, there are other techniques you can use as well, such
as choosing to intentionally make someone like you. This is not nearly as
difficult as it sounds.
Start by making some sort of connection between yourself and the other
party—perhaps you make it a point to comment that you can relate to the
other person when they arrive with their child to an appointment. You tell
them that you have a child about the same age and that going back to work
at that age is just so difficult.

With the connection made, you will want to make eye contact and continue
to talk. You may offer the other party some praise or a compliment, meant
to make them feel like you genuinely care about what they are saying or
what they think. The catch here is that the compliment that you make has to
be genuine, and you must mean it.

Finally, if you want to be likable, you must make it clear that the two of you
are on the same side. Perhaps you point out that you will both be working
together toward getting the other person a car. Maybe you convince them
that you will both try to solve their problem, no matter what it is, with them.
This camaraderie set up then makes it less likely for the partners to worry
about them.

Reciprocity

The next principle of persuasion is reciprocity. When you are appealing to

reciprocity, effectively, you are working with the attitude that you will help
anyone that helps you first. You make it clear that you are happy to help
them if you think that they will respond in kind. This is not nearly as
entitled as it may seem upfront.

Think about how, when a friend buys you a gift, you feel like you must
reciprocate? This is intentional with human development—it is done, so
you feel the urge to reciprocate when someone else is offering you
something. This means that when someone else has helped you, you will be
more inclined to help them when they need help. You effectively safeguard
with your own altruistic behaviors to make sure that both you and the other
party are able to receive in your times of need.

If you want to take advantage of this, for example, you may start by
reaching out to someone that you need help from. Maybe you want your
neighbor to take care of your dog while you go out of town overnight. You
then offer to do something for your neighbor. Perhaps you clean up his yard
before asking him if he can take care of your dog for the day. You let him
know that all he will have to do is let your dog out a couple of times, and
things will be fine. After having been helped by you, he feels obligated to
follow through and help you out as well. He agrees to take care of your dog
during your trip, and that is one less thing for you to worry about over the
next several days.

Scarcity

Scarcity refers to supply and demand. Effectively, the more regular or

readily available something or someone is, the less important it is. You can
often see this with material items—limited edition items tend to be far more
in demand than the same item in a standard color. For example, if you really
want that newest game console, but you want the one specific to your
favorite game series, you are likely going to have to find it on a used sale
site and hope that you can find it at a regular price. Otherwise, you will
have no choice but to simply trudge on ahead without that particular
console.

This is because the regular console is common. It is easy to attain and

therefore is not particularly important to you, nor is it deemed as valuable
as the regular one to you.

Now, you may be wondering how supply and demand can relate to
persuading someone to do something. The answer is that you need to make
sure that you are able to convince them that you are in demand. Perhaps you
find that your partner seems to take you for granted. If you have a serious
talk with your partner about how you do not feel loved or respected, and
during that talk, you mention that you would rather be anywhere but there
because it is so exhausting to live completely unwanted.

This should cue to your partner that you will not always be available—you
are only available as long as you wish to make yourself available, and that
immediately ups your value. You can do this with other people, too. Reject
the first attempt to schedule something with you and say that the date does
not work for you. When you get to a date just a bit later, you can convince
the other party that you are worth the money that will be put into you. You
want people to feel like they got lucky to get you. After all, you are one of a
kind—treat yourself like it.

Social proof
Finally, social proof refers to the tendency of people to fall for peer
pressure. This is effectively just a fancy word for peer pressure and involves
you actively making a point to choose to defer to what other people are
doing. If you do not know what you should be doing, you effectively decide
to defer to what you see around you. If you see that your peers are dancing
in a circle, but you do not know why they are dancing in a circle, you are
likely going to just join in without understanding why, and that is okay. You
do it anyway and never find out why.

When you want to use this form of persuasion effectively, you will just
want to set up a control area. Do you remember why so many manipulators
liked the home-court advantage? It is so they are able to manipulate their
surroundings. You can do this, too. For example, if you want someone to do
something for you, make sure that you ask them around other people that
are actively doing whatever it was that you asked them to do in the first
place.
For example, if you want to go around and collect signatures and donations
for a cause, you would want to be sure that those around you are actively
seeing that you are getting what you want. When they see that other people
are signing and donating, they are more likely to do so, especially if they
recognize names, or they feel like they need to keep up with their peers.
Effectively, then, this works well to keep people in line just by maintaining
the environment around them.
Rhetoric

Another series of techniques that can help you become more persuasive is
the art of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art to speak or write persuasively in an
attempt to get other people to see things your way. Dating way back to the
time of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, if you are able to form
your arguments with rhetoric, you can make sure that you are addressing
other people in a way that is compelling and difficult to reject or ignore.

In particular, rhetoric involves three distinct methods of persuasion—these

are three techniques that are commonly used in order to make sure that the
other person is likely to go along with your suggestion. These are
commonly referred to by their Greek names of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Ethos

Ethos is an appeal to character. It focuses on making sure that the one

presenting all of the information for the listener is viewed as credible. If the
speaker is not credible, no one is going to believe in what he or she has to
say, which means that his or her attempts and techniques will be particularly
worthless. After all, you cannot clearly convince someone else to do
something if they do not trust you. This is essentially quite similar to the
appeal to authority in the principles of persuasion.

Ethos primarily can be seen in advertising—when you are trying to sell

something, you want to make sure you have someone credible be the one
advocating for your product, and staying true to that, you often find that
celebrities commonly are called in to promote the brands. Of course, those
people are being paid for their time and endorsements, but the effect is
undeniable. For example, imagine a local sports personality making it clear
that he always drinks one particular brand of soda without fail. The next
time that you are in the mood for soda, if you happen to be a fan of that
particular person, you may find that you are far more likely to pick up that
same brand of soda simply because your unconscious mind wants to
emulate someone that you are fond of.

This works precisely because people admire others, and when they do
admire someone else, they want to emulate them. People naturally want to
be like the people they look up to or admire in any way, and because of that,
they will be more likely to make decisions based on those admired
individuals.

Pathos

The next form of rhetoric that is commonly used is pathos—this is an

appeal to emotions. This is effectively coming up with a way to establish an
emotion in your listeners in hopes of getting them to act in a way that you
want to see. You may make someone feel sad or guilty in order to get them
to donate. You may try to make someone angry in order to make them act.
You may try to make someone feel happy to encourage them to like
whatever you are promoting.

Ultimately, emotions are so powerful precisely because they are meant to be

motivating. You are going to naturally feel inclined to act according to your
emotions simply because that is why they are there. Your emotions are
effectively your unconscious mind’s way of interacting with your body,
creating emotional impulses that are meant to keep you alive. You may feel
fear when you are being chased by a hungry mountain lion, or anger when
someone threatens you—this is because your emotions are meant to help
you survive, and when you are angry, you are more likely to stand up for
yourself, or when you are in danger, you need to be able to act in a way that
will keep you alive.

By creating the necessary emotions, you can usually begin to persuade

those around you to act; however, you want or need them to. If you need
someone to be angry and act, you figure out the best way to instill that
anger. If you need help, you instill a sense of obligation or guilt. If you need
to keep someone complacent, you want them to feel content and relaxed.

A lot of the time, people will instill these emotions through stories, quotes,
and vivid language. For example, if you are at a fundraiser to benefit a
children’s hospital that sees a large number of patients with cancer, you may
be told stories of how being on that floor is a parent’s worst nightmare and
that sometimes, what they want more than anything else is to see their
children doing something normal—they want that sense of normalcy to
cling to because they do not know if they will be taking their children home
at the end of the journey, and some people know for sure that they will not
be taking their children home. The speaker may involve photos of sick
children and sobbing parents, all designed to make the audience sad or
guilty, especially if they have their own children at home. In their guilt and
sadness for those parents in the story or slideshow, more people are willing
to donate.

Logos

An appeal to logic and reason is the final form of rhetoric. With Logos, you
are seeking to establish as much reason as possible that cannot be denied to
do whatever you are requesting. You may point out the numbers and facts
that support what you are asking for, or otherwise use studies that support
your opinion. Those using Logos have a tendency to throw as much data as
possible at the other person, hoping that something will stick.

Of the forms of persuasion, this may seem like the most valid—after all,
how do you fake statistics and studies? However, the problem with this
form of persuasion can arise in the fact that it is incredibly easy to
misconstrue or misuse statistics, especially if those statistics are not being
fact-checked, or the listener does not feel the need to question them.

For example, consider the difference between correlation and causation—

you can present two different statistics as correlation, but many people will
immediately assume that there is causation, despite the fact that there may
be none at all and the similarities in statistics may be nothing but
coincidence .Perhaps the most easily imagined form of this is to consider
that as the sales of ice cream increase, so does the rate of violent crime.

To someone not familiar with statistics or correlation vs. causation, they

may automatically assume that ice cream and crime are linked. However,
they both are simply results of the temperature rising. Ice cream sales tend
to go up during the hot summer months, but crime also happens to go up as
the heat makes people’s tempers shorter than ever. They are not actually
related at all beyond both having the same root cause.
Chapter 5: Influencing Others with the Science of
Persuasive Psychology

Thus far, we have thoroughly discussed the concepts and techniques behind
how to persuade others, but have not actually looked at the act of being
persuasive. There is more to persuasion than just theory, and while the
theory is important, there should also be equal, or more, consideration given
to the methods through which you can be persuasive. These methods will
utilize the principles of persuasion and rhetoric, but they will also serve as
instructions on how to be persuasive in general. You cannot simply say that
you must appeal to emotions and then leave it at that—there are other
persuasive techniques that exist.

We will be taking some time to look at how the one being influenced takes
the persuasion offered. You will be seeing why and how these methods
work and how to use them. You will be considering exactly how you can
influence the decisions that other people make without having to coerce or
force the other party to do what you are asking. Instead, you will be
focusing on how best to convince them that they ought to have a certain
mindset or make a certain decision.
Within this chapter, you will take a look at how persuasive psychology is
built up, specifically looking at the emotionally intelligent leader, who is
able to gather followers with ease, and then extrapolating beyond that
particular individual to others as well. You will see how emotional
intelligence encourages people to become persuasive individuals that they
are without ever having to coerce or force. After painting the background to
what persuasive psychology utilizes, you will be guided through four
different methods that you can use to ensure that you can persuade others to
do as you wish. As you proceed, keep in mind that one of the most defining
differences between persuasion and manipulation is that the one being
persuaded can always choose not to do what is being requested. The
persuader honors free will, and while the persuader may try to guide the
individual toward what they want, it will never happen in a forced manner.
Saying no to the request is still an acceptable result.
Persuasive Psychology and Influence

Consider, for a moment, the most influential person that you personally
know. They may be someone that you regularly interact with—a teacher, a
boss, or a friend. What makes them so influential? The answer may not be
that they are smart, funny, or handsome—but rather, they are emotionally
intelligent.

Emotionally intelligent individuals tend to be far more likely to convince

other people to do what they want or need simply because they know how
to present themselves .They know how best to interact with others and are
able to sense the best way to proceed. Interestingly enough, many of the
actions that the emotionally intelligent individual uses to try to persuade
others happen to line up almost perfectly with the principles of persuasion
and with rhetoric. They know how to utilize those particular techniques
almost instinctively, and the end result is someone who is incredibly skilled
at persuasion.

This also happens to lead these emotionally intelligent individuals to be the

ones that others go to for guidance as well. If you knew that your friend
always seemed to make the right decision, after all, you would likely go to
them any time that you felt like you were at a crossroads and were unsure of
what to do next. This is simply because you trust that friend’s judgment and
know that they would not lead you astray.
Effectively, then, your ability to be persuasive with other people will
naturally increase simply by learning to be emotionally intelligent. That is
perhaps the best way to naturally increase your persuasiveness without
having to consciously think about how to persuade others. When you do
have to think about it, however, the best way to figure out how to persuade
someone is to figure out the best approach.

Are you looking to lead someone to a decision that requires you to be

authoritative? This would be if you were attempting to sell someone on
something. Are you looking to get a friend to do a favor for you? You may
want to use an emotional appeal to make them feel like they need to help
someone that they care about. Do you want to make a whole crowd choose
an action that you are attempting to push? If so, you may want to use loaded
words and stories in an attempt to get them all motivated the same. Do you
need a single person to do you a favor? Start by asking if you can help
them.

As you can see, there are several different techniques that must be used at
any given moment to help make your message more persuasive. However,
you must be able to figure out the best way to convince other people. You
can simplify the act of figuring out how best to convince someone to do
something into a few steps. First, you will start by identifying the target for
your persuasion. Then, you must figure out the nature of the persuasion that
you will be using—are you persuading someone as an authority that should
be listened to or as someone that is deserving of help? Next, you must
figure out how best to get whatever you are hoping to get, and lastly, you
must use the methods and techniques you have decided upon.
Create an Appeal to Needs

What drives you to act in your life to survive? We are not talking about
things that you enjoy right now, but rather, what compels you more than
anything else? The answer to this is a need—your needs keep you
motivated to act toward fulfilling them. You will always be motivated to
find food when you are hungry, for example, or to find shelter when you are
too cold. This is because you have basic human needs to meet that keep you
alive. Your needs can vary from physical needs to keep yourself alive all the
way to how to feel fulfilled, and ultimately, these motivators are incredibly
compelling.

Before delving into creating and appealing to needs, let’s stop and go over
the basic hierarchy of needs. Take a look at the pyramid below: As you can
see, at the base, you have the most important needs. These are the needs for
food, water, air, shelter, warmth, and reproduction. These are the bare
minimum needs to stay alive and to reproduce, as is the biological
imperative. In general, you must meet the bottom three tiers of needs before
you can begin to work on yourself.
Each of these categories manage different sorts of needs for you, and
ultimately, people are always striving to do better and move from one to the
next. These categories encompass needs such as:
Physiological needs: The need to survive and be healthy
physically—food, water, air, shelter, reproduction, warmth, etc.
Safety needs: The need to feel safe and secure, such as the need
for steady access to resources and health
Love and belonging needs: The need to feel like you belong
with others—this is friendship, intimacy, and a sense of
connection with others
Esteem needs: This is a need for respect and recognition
Self-actualization needs: This is a need to be the best person that
you can be
Ultimately, people are always striving for the top—self-actualization.
However, you cannot work toward self-actualization if you are hungry or
unsafe. You need to secure the bottommost needs before you can work at
the top.

When you want to create a need that you can use, you may find that
sometimes, identifying a previously existing need can be easier .However,
you can also create a sense of urgency to meet one of these needs. For
example, imagine that you are selling a car. You are really working to
persuade someone to get a very specific car, though you know that they are
not particularly interested in it. One way to create an appeal to a need is to
mention that the car that the people are interested in does not have the best
ratings in terms of safety. You point out that the car has been known to
underperform in accidents, and that the one that you are pushing for tends
to be safer simply because it is bigger and sturdier, or it has better safety
ratings.

By appealing to that need for safety, you are more likely to get them to
agree to buy that particular car. If they are not concerned about safety, you
can appeal to a need to belong—you can point out that other people also
tend to prefer that one car that you would like to sell over the one they are
interested in and provide the evidence to support that claim.
Loaded Words

Another commonly used method to persuade other people is through using

loaded language. This is the act of using words or language that has very
specific connotations in hopes of changing the way that the other person
perceives what is being talked about. Effectively, you are using words that
typically attract attention or are seen as particularly beneficial bonuses.

Imagine that you are trying to sell a new baby food brand. You have worked
hard to develop the image for the food, but you realize that people do not
usually buy a food that they know nothing about—they tend to go with
trusted brands that they know and can trust will be safe or deliver what they
wanted. You may be stuck trying to figure out how best to break into the
scene to actually get on the market and convince people to buy.

One such method of convincing others is through using loaded words and
images. You will want to make sure that you are constantly utilizing words
or images that are perceived as strongly positive. For example, think about
what it is that parents want for their newborn children. You may
acknowledge that most parents want to ensure that their children are happy
and healthy and that they are not exposed to chemicals or other additives
that may make them sick or cause a reaction. After all, babies are believed
to be incredibly fragile, and because of that, parents tend to go all-out in
making sure that their children only have the best.

You may, then, decide that you will be appealing to that desire for all-
natural products. You take your advertising campaign to emphasize that you
use natural, organic, non-GMO food products with the bare minimum
ingredients necessary. You push that your food is healthy and simple,
encouraging parents to be more inclined to buy simply because they know
that they can read all of the ingredients on the label.

Effectively then, when you want to use loaded language, you are appealing
to emotion. You are making someone feel like they are making the right
choice in deciding to go with whatever you are requesting that they use.
This means that you are better able to get people to see things your way and
better able to persuade simply because you know how to activate emotions.
You will always choose the loaded language that will activate the feelings
that you need present to play upon.
Anchor Biases

An anchor bias is a cognitive bias that ends up being incredibly influential.

Effectively, you want to make something seem like a good idea or plan
simply by making it seem reasonable in comparison to the anchor point.
When you do this, you are generally setting an anchor point that you use to
be a reference point for whatever you are trying to persuade someone else
to do.

This is best understood when looking at the negotiation of pay. You may be
asking for a raise during your next review at work. Perhaps you want a 10%
raise because of the productivity you have put in and the rate at which you
are able to retain valuable clients. You figure out exactly why and how you
want to argue for this particular number, but all that is left is the delivery of
the argument. You need to present your information in a way that makes it
seem realistic or reasonable.

In a negotiation, it is common knowledge that you rarely ever take the first
offer—you are usually able to counter-offer, and then meet somewhere in
the middle. This means that if you ask for that flat 10% raise right off the
bat, your chances of actually getting it are slim. However, if you are able to
make an anchor point that makes that 10% raise seem reasonable, you may
actually stand a chance.

The best way to do this is to always ask for more. You may go in and ask
for a 15 or 20% raise instead, knowing that the number will be cut down.
When you ask your boss for that raise, you will likely be shot down
immediately, followed by a counteroffer of 5-10% simply because your
original asking price was so high. This means that the other party is going
to feel more inclined to give what you initially wanted since it is still
significantly less than you originally asked for.

In the end, you get your 10% raise, all by asking for far more than you were
actually interested in. By shooting high right away, you make anything that
comes afterward seem reasonable.

You see this during sales pricing as well. Several different stores have
pricing strategies that involve marking up prices only to discount them back
to market value. This means that you see that you are getting a 20-30%
discount, but only because the prices were inflated 20-30% in the first
place. At the end of the day, you are paying market value, but you feel
better about it because the anchor point of full-price seemed like far more.
Ask First What You Can Do for the Other Person

Perhaps one of the simplest techniques that you can use to persuade
someone to do something for you is to appeal to reciprocity. People
naturally feel inclined to return favors when they have received them in the
first place, and you can use this tendency in order to influence other people
to do whatever it is that you want or need them to do. You may be able to
convince someone to take a shift for you at work just by covering their
extended lunch break, for example.

This is a popular technique for the emotionally intelligent leaders. They

make themselves sound entirely focused on making someone else feel
better about doing a favor by offering to do one first. You may find that you
have a friend that is always happy to help you or is the first to volunteer
when you voice that you have a problem. Emotionally intelligent leaders
make it a point to do this simply because it sets up a standard of
camaraderie—you make it clear that you are interested in the other person
simply by volunteering occasionally to help them out. Not everyone is
willing to help out when asked or needed, but if you are willing to do so,
even occasionally, other people will be more inclined to help you out when
you need a favor.

After having offered, you will then know that the individual that you have
helped will be more inclined to help you in the future as well. For example,
imagine that you know that you have a vacation coming up, and you do not
want to board your dog. You also know that you have a friend that will be
going on a trip just a week or so before you and your friend has cats. You
may volunteer to go and check on the cats several times during your
friend’s trip when your friend talks about having to look for someone to
come in and take care of them. They will need litter cleaned a few times
and will need daily food and water, but beyond that, they will be fine on
their own. Your friend graciously accepts and then asks you to let her know
if you will need any help in the near future. You reply that you actually will
need help soon and that you need someone to take care of your dog. Your
friend volunteers to keep the dog at her house for a few days while you are
on your trip, and you no longer have to worry about boarding your dog
because you know that your dog will be safe and happy with your friend.

This technique tends to be better for those who need help from a friend or
someone that they know personally just because it involves one-on-one
interaction. However, you can also see this play out on a larger scale as
well. Perhaps you are a manager, and your employees are all asking for an
increase in pay across the board. You take it to your higher-ups, and in
return, your employees all see that you have their back. They then make it a
point to always help whenever they are asked to do so and they are willing
to go above and beyond when requested.
To take advantage of this technique, you are best served by always asking
how you can help other people whenever it is not a strain on you or what
you need to do. If you are able to always ask other people what they want or
need, you can make sure that you are setting up good relationships with
other people, and with that good relationship established, you will be far
more able to get them to do whatever it is that you needed.
 Chapter 6: What is NLP?

Have you ever gone through the effort of trying to communicate with
someone else that does not speak the same language as you? Perhaps you
speak English, and the other person speaks Chinese. The person speaking
Chinese is desperately gesturing for something, but you are entirely unsure
what it is that they need. They gesture frantically, but you never figure it
out. You make many guesses—you offer a phone, and they shake their
head. You offer water, and they shake their head. No matter what you offer,
the other person becomes more and more annoyed or frustrated because he
or she cannot get through to you. Eventually, the other person storms off
without having ever gotten whatever it is that he needed and you are left
wondering what it was that was so desperately needed in the first place.

Now, imagine that same exchange, but you are both the English and
Chinese speaker—one half of you only speaks in English while the other
desperately tries to communicate in Chinese. Neither side is able to
communicate with the other, and both end up disjointed, frustrated, and
without any proper communication. This is actually what does happen in
your mind. Your conscious mind thinks in one way, and the unconscious
mind thinks entirely differently. You may want to be setting up a life to be
happy and successful, but in reality, your unconscious has never received
the message. As a result, you find that your unconscious continuously
sabotages you. Your emotions do not line up with your goals. Your body
language does not fit. You simply run into complication after complication,
despite the fact that you know what you want.
Keep in mind that your unconscious mind is not meant to be your
adversary. It is not something that needs to be tamed or controlled. Rather,
it is something to harness and work within tandem. However, this means
that you need to learn to communicate with it appropriately. If you can
figure out the right way to communicate with that unconscious part of
yourself, you can get it lined up with your conscious desires and
expectations. You can get it to help you achieve your goals. It is not a
matter of your unconscious being out to get you or subvert your attempts to
happiness; it is a matter of you do not know how best to communicate with
your unconscious mind to get what you want.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming

This is where neuro-linguistic programming comes in. NLP is designed to

help you facilitate getting the results that you want and need. It helps you
figure out how best to act in ways that are conducive to your success. Those
who practice NLP say that the unconscious mind is what drives you to
achieve your goals, so long as you are able to communicate those goals
effectively. NLP recognizes that both the conscious and unconscious minds
are important and serve their own roles.

NLP helps to bridge that gap between the two, acting as a sort of translator,
so your conscious desires are communicated to the unconscious mind in
order to ensure that your mind works together rather than against each
other. By working together, you will find that you are far more likely to see
your desired results simply because you are not running into the problem of
having the two parts of your mind clash.

Effectively, neuro-linguistic processing is a method of learning to

communicate with the unconscious. You are learning to become fluent in
your unconscious mind’s method of communication so you can finally tell it
what you want. It allows for that communication with yourself, but also
facilitates the communication with others as well. This means that you can
use the processes learned during the practice of NLP to also communicate
with the unconscious minds of others as well. You can implant thoughts,
facilitate behaviors, and encourage changes in lifestyles all by learning how
to tap into the unconscious minds of others.

While this may sound manipulative, you actually see people paying others
to give them the NLP treatment. People will pay practitioners to help them
overcome phobias or bad habits. People can be taught to overcome
emotions, create new coping methods, and more all by interacting with
someone fluent in NLP.

For example, imagine that you have severe anxiety because, as a child, you
went up to present something, but you really needed to use the bathroom.
You could not go before the presentation, and as you gave it, you
accidentally had an accident. Everyone laughed at you, and ever since, you
have been terrified of ever getting involved in presentations. Being in front
of a crowd became something that you could not possibly bring yourself to
do. You failed several assignments all through school because you simply
would refuse to present. You would do the work, but you would not go up
to present it.

Obviously, there are plenty of job choices during which you would never
have to be in front of a crowd, but if you happened to choose a job that
would regularly put you in front of people to deliver reports, you may find
that you struggle. You know that you are not a child anymore and that
realistically, you would not be wetting yourself again any time soon, but
you cannot get over that feeling of being laughed at and horrified.

As a solution, you may have spoken to an NLP practitioner. The

practitioner would have access to several tools that could help you process
that trauma in order to get past it. You could reframe the situation, learning
to laugh at it instead of feeling traumatized. You could learn to create
anchors that will have you begin to feel an entirely different feeling when
you go up to present. No matter the method, there are several tools that can
be used to help you get over that trauma.

This is just one example of a time that NLP can be used to benefit.
However, it can also be used in ways that are harmful. Manipulators love
the tools of NLP because they grant access to the unconscious mind. The
manipulator can use NLP techniques to create tendencies to obey almost
mindlessly. They can create tendencies to give the manipulator exactly what
he or she wants. The manipulator will be able to communicate with the
unconscious mind without ever tripping the alarms of the conscious mind.
Effectively, the manipulator is able to completely bypass the conscious and
tell the unconscious exactly what is expected—and the unconscious will
comply. Without any clear way to communicate, the individual will be left
frustrated, wondering why they keep behaving the way that they are with no
clear answer.
The Keys to NLP

For NLP to be effective, there are a few steps that need to be followed.
These are the keys to NLP that will help you figure out how to access the
mind. At this point, you are being shown a brief overview of what needs to
happen. There are techniques that will more or less use these steps on their
own and other steps that will seek to change things up a bit. However, at the
heart of things, these must happen. These three steps, the keys to being able
to practice NLP, are being able to examine and identify beliefs, choosing an
appropriate anchor, and then setting that anchor in an efficient manner.

If you can master these three simple steps, you will find that the more
specific techniques seem to fall into place with ease. You will be able to
convince people to do almost anything, simply by knowing how to get into
the other person’s mind. This is a strategic endeavor, but once you are able
to follow that strategy, you will find that the control that you can exert over
both yourself and others around you is far more than you had access to ever
before. You will become the master over your own behavior, while also
having the power and access to other people to be a master over them as
well. You can effectively use these NLP techniques and strategies to figure
out how best to win the long game.
Examine beliefs

First, you are figuring out the information at hand. This is where you start
to piece together what you or the other person think or feel surrounding a
certain event or situation. You may find that the other person is highly
anxious about socializing and being in front of crowds. When in front of a
crowd, they tend to melt down and freak out. You know this and
acknowledge it.

You will be examining beliefs to figure out why that is felt. In this case, it
may link back to that one incident of wetting herself in front of a crowd and
then being mortified any time she is under public scrutiny.

If you are attempting to use NLP on yourself, which is a valid technique

that many people will use, you may take this time to identify the emotion
that you have that you wish was not problematic. You may figure out that
you tend to feel angry during certain situations, and because of that anger,
you struggle to really communicate with other people effectively. That lack
of communication usually has the unfortunate result of causing problems in
your relationships.

As you identify those feelings, you will find that you can figure out where
the problem lies. In figuring them out, you can start to figure out how best
to target and destroy them. In NLP, this process usually involves the use of
anchors—points that are directly related to a certain event or feeling. An
anchor for your stress, for example, maybe you bite your nails out of habit,
but after a lifetime of biting your nails when stress, just the act of absently
biting your nails can make your anxiety begin to flare up.

Choose an anchor

Knowing that you will be under the influence of several anchors already,
certain situations or actions that cause you to feel a certain emotion, it is
time to figure out which anchors and emotions you can use to overcome the
problem. If you know that you have an anger issue, you may go through the
effort of learning how to combat that anger issue through triggering new
emotions instead. Whenever you would feel yourself getting angry, then
you would make sure that you trigger your anchor, and that would then
cause you to feel something else.

Effectively, if you are familiar with basic psychology, you are conditioning
yourself. You are effectively training yourself to act a certain way in
response to certain situations, and in doing so, you are able to make sure
that you can overcome the negative feelings that have been holding you
down. If you have bad habits in relation to your emotions, you can begin to
counter them. You can figure out how to create new, healthier habits that
trigger you to behave in new, healthier ways. You can figure out how best to
protect yourself from your negative emotions so you can heal and move on
in life.

Your new anchor can be just about anything. You could use an affirmation
or word that you repeat to yourself to help keep yourself under control. It
could be a movement or an action that you use to remind yourself to stay
under control, such as snapping your wrist with a rubber band whenever
you find that your anger is getting out of hand. It could be a scent that
makes you feel secure. It can even be a certain thought or memory that you
return to during times of distress.

When you choose an anchor, you want to make sure that it is something that
you can regularly access for maximum impact. You may be best served with
a short phrase that you use or a motion of your hands. That is something
that you can do subtly and at any point in time.

Set an anchor

Finally, you must figure out how to set your anchor. This is where you see
the most deviation in your behaviors and techniques. There are several
different methods that can be used in order to set a good anchor point for
you or for those around you, and how you decide to do so will largely be
dependent upon what you are hoping to do and how you are dealing with.
You may choose to use visualization if you are working with someone
intentionally, with the other person knowing what you are doing. You may
choose to use something more along the lines of mirroring and subtle
mimicry and emotional triggers if you want to be entirely unnoticed. You
may choose to do something like intentionally reframing a memory from
negative and traumatic into something funny if you want to change your
own way of thinking and your own emotional reaction. Ultimately, the
method that you choose will largely be subject to who you are attempting to
persuade and how you want to go about it.

If you want to make it a point to, for example, persuade a stranger to buy
something that you want them to, you may make it a point to trigger a
mirroring relationship—do not worry if you do not know how to do this. It
will be discussed in Chapter 8. From there, you can subtly influence him to
nod his head by nodding your own head, making the other person’s mindset
far more likely to be agreeable, and leading to the other person being
influenced to nod along with you without ever realizing that you had
influenced and encouraged that decision.

Whether you want to control yourself or someone else, you always want to
choose an anchor that is simple and easily implemented, but not so common
that it will be randomly triggered by strangers during the course of the day.
While you probably could trigger someone to make a certain face every
time you do a very specific and common movement, such as giving a
thumbs up, it would not be particularly kind or ethical to do so. You would
be triggering the other person in a way that will likely be distracting and
problematic. After all, no one wants to be grimaced at every time they give
a thumbs up to someone else.
The History of NLP

NLP, like nearly any psychological technique, has changed drastically from
creation to what you now know and see today. While the root is still the
same, there are different ways that the thoughts and techniques are
approached now compared to what was seen back when it was first founded
in the 1970s. This chapter will provide you with a brief overview of how
NLP has changed and what you can expect if you were to use NLP today.
Ultimately, you can think of NLP as what it was during creation and within
the four waves of NLP.

The Creation of NLP

Created in 1972 by two psychotherapists named Richard Bandler and John

Grinder, this process was originally designed to model several other
therapeutic processes at the time. In particular, it referenced and developed
from techniques such as gestalt therapy, hypnotherapy, and systemic family
therapy. All of these came together to create an approach that would address
two specific things: Why are psychotherapists special or skilled in
influencing others? How can that specialty be transferred to other normal
people without any formal training in psychology?

These two thoughts then triggered the beginning of the development of

NLP. IN particular, people were taught to look at each of the
aforementioned psychotherapy processes. Bandler and Grinder drew from
those different forms of psychotherapy and pulled out any processes or
techniques that they thought were critical in making the therapist so
powerful. They identified the patters in communication and attitudes and
were able to then create and build a list of techniques and beliefs drawing
from those forms of psychotherapy. Thus, NLP was born.
NLP as primarily existed within four specific waves, during which different
aspects were focused on or developed. These four waves are important to
understand in order to truly understand what NLP was and what it has
become.

Wave 1: NLPure: In the first wave of NLP, you see the original
NLP as developed by Bandler and Grinder. This is the purest
form, during which success and enthusiasm were the most
important factors that were pushed.
Wave 2: NLPt: In the second wave, you see NLP used as an
application in psychotherapy. It is commonly referred to as neuro-
linguistic psychotherapy, and it began in 1989. This was all about
making sure that people had a healthy and happy approach and
view of life.
Wave 3: NLPeace: This third wave, NLPeace, arose in 1992,
with a focus on spirituality. Instead of focusing on how to fix the
mind itself, it was focusing on how to find meaning in life and
figure out how to connect spiritually.
Wave 4: NLPsy: Finally, the fourth wave encompasses the use of
neuro-linguistic processing as a form of psychology. Beginning in
2006, this was used to being to identify psychological patterns. It
requires a master’s degree in psychology, for a qualification to
practice psychotherapy, and also an NLP master training
qualification. Effectively, when you see someone that practices
NLPsy, you know that they have gone through years of schooling
 in order to be as effective as possible when it comes to offering
treatment.
When you seek out NLP treatment from a professional, you will likely face
someone that is trained in fourth wave NLP. This is good—they are licensed
to help you and can enable you to be the healthiest you that you can be.
However, remember that NLP itself was designed to be accessible even to
the average person. While you are not qualified to diagnose people if you
have not gone to school to become licensed to do so, you will still be able to
develop an affinity for several NLP processes so you can use them
effectively and in ways that you know are beneficial to others around you or
to yourself.
 Chapter 7: NLP Basic Principles to Improve Life

Before really delving into the processes of NLP and how you can utilize
them, it is important to recognize that there are several principles that you
will have to keep in mind. When you want to use NLP, you must meet these
principles if you want to be able to be successful. After all, accessing other
people’s unconscious minds will require you to be patient, flexible, and
willing to spend the time to do so effectively. You will need to have a clear
plan ready for yourself so you can actively address and live by the rules that
you are seeking to make use of.

Think of these as your guiding processes that will help you to make sure
that you are able to use NLP. These will be your founding principles that
you will live by if you want to be able to tap into the unconscious. These
will guide you in being successful, whether you want to improve your own
life or convince someone else to do something specific. No matter what you
choose to do, you will be able to do so, if you keep these steps in mind.

In particular, the steps that will be addressed here are being able to know
your outcome, take action, maintain sensory acuity, have flexibility, and live
by a physiology of excellence. With these five principles, NLP will be
successful for you. This chapter will guide you through learning how to
utilize these principles in your own life. You will be able to help yourself.
You will be able to help others. Above all, you will be able to be effective
and successful.
Know your outcome

The first and most important place to start when you are attempting to live
with the utilization of NLP is knowing your outcome. This is effectively
figuring out exactly what you want, how you will get it, and why you want
it. If you do not know what the outcome you want is, how can you possibly
hope to ever achieve it? If you do not know that you want to be a lawyer,
for example, can you possibly reasonably expect yourself to go through law
school and build up all that debt, only to find out after the fact that law was
your passion after all? No—no one in their right mind would ever put
themselves through law school without ever knowing that they wanted to be
a lawyer or that their true goal in life was to be a lawyer. People may go
through law school because they have been told their whole life that they
should go to law school, but even those people grew up with the
expectation of being a lawyer. No one goes to law school without the
expectation or desire to become that person.

Just like no one would ever expect that you must know your own outcome
and desires if you want to succeed. You need to figure out exactly what you
want in life so you can figure out how to get it. Do you want to be rich? Do
you want to find love? Maybe you want to be a parent, or you want to
become a firefighter. No matter what the dream is, you need to know and
vocalize it to yourself if you want it to become a reality. If you want to be
rich, you can tell yourself that. If you want to be happy, you can tell
yourself that, too. What your goal is in life is not as important as knowing
what that goal is. That knowledge is power and will help you during your
process.
If you are using NLP for other people, you may want to know what your
end goal for that person is. Do you want them to be happy? Do you want
them to buy that car you are selling? Maybe you want them to break up
with their narcissistic partner. No matter what it is you want, you need to
know what it is if you hope to make it happen.

Once you know what you want, it is time to form it in a way that you can
act upon it. This is effectively just coming up with a way to structure your
desires so you can act upon them. When you do this, you must meet certain
specific criteria to ensure that the outcome is well-formed. This is a fancy
way of saying that if you want your goal to be actionable and attainable,
you need to word it in the proper manner. These criteria are critical to
making sure that you are able to act accordingly. These criteria are:

Positive-oriented: Your goal must be focused on what you do

want, not what you would like to avoid. For example, you must
state that you want to find love, versus you don’t want to be alone
any longer. Shifting this to a positive instead of a negative gives
you something to work toward instead of something to avoid.
Sensory specific: As we continue along the NLP path, you will
begin to see that every method of influence on someone else,
whether it is on yourself or on someone else, is sensory. You must
figure out which senses you will be targeting and how those
senses will perceive when you have been successful at achieving
your goal. Perhaps this will be that you can see that you have a
partner if your end goal is to find love. If you want to sell that car,
perhaps you decide that the sensory input will be having the
paperwork with the signatures in your hand. Try to address how
each of your five senses will interact with the outcome when it
has been achieved. This helps you be able to truly visualize what
you want.
Contextual: This involves making sure that you know the
context under which you will be successful. You are
acknowledging what has to happen if you want to be successful.
Where will it happen? When? How? Who will you be with?
When you know the context of what you are seeking, you will be
able to acknowledge what you need to do to set up the
environment properly to ensure that you do happen to get
whatever you are hoping to achieve.

Self-achievable: You must make sure that the goal you want is
one that you can set into action on your own without the influence
of other people. You may need to make sure that other people are
doing something, but can you do so? You must have access to the
resources that you will need to achieve your goal.
Ecological: This is as simple as asking three specific questions
for yourself: Is it good for you? Is it good for other people? Is it
for the greater good? Remember, NLP is all about bettering the
world and those who are using it. While it is often used as a tool
for manipulation and controlling others, that is not always the
intention.
Worthwhile: Finally, you must make sure that whatever the
outcome that you are trying to achieve is worthwhile. Is it
something that will actually be useful and positive to you? It does
not have to be useful on a daily basis, but you should be able to
see some good from whatever it is. You may have enhanced other
people’s lives, allowing your friend to no longer be terrified of
crowds, which indirectly improves your own life because your
friend is happier and healthier. On the other hand, you may
directly address a problem of your own in an attempt to better
yourself, and that is okay too. So long as it is effective, either
directly or indirectly, it is good enough.
Take action
The next step to making sure that you are able to be successful in using
NLP is to take action. This is something that may seem like common sense,
but many people entirely miss this step altogether. You must be willing to
act if you hope to see any results. If you want to ensure that you can
actually change your life or change the behaviors of someone else, you
must figure out reasons to work or do something.

Oftentimes, people fall into the trap 0f inaction—they feel like they cannot
possibly succeed, and therefore they fall victim to procrastination.
However, this is your mind’s attempt to avoid action in order to protect
yourself from failure. When you protect yourself in this way, it is easy to
make excuses and act like it happened for a reason- you may tell yourself
that you are too dumb to really make a difference, or that you will fail even
if you try.

Well, guess what: Failure happens. People fail all the time, but that is not
inherently bad. When you fail, you learn. When you learn, you become
better prepared for your next attempt. It is okay to fail, so long as you learn
from that failure and do not let it define you. Effectively, then, you want to
live through learning from that failure and not letting the fear of failure
keep you locked in inaction.

When you are practicing NLP, you must act. If you refuse to act, nothing
gets done. Nothing changes. People’s behaviors remain the same. You fail.
NLP is not passive—it requires constant action and effort, and for that
reason, you must be willing to go through the motions and make whatever it
is that you want happen.
Sensory acuity

Next, you must learn sensory acuity. This is effectively learning to cue into
all of the important body language that you will need to understand if you
hope to be able to use NLP. NLP is all about being able to look at someone
else, understand their mindset and processes, and then use those processes
in order to figure out how to influence the other person’s mind as well.

Stop and consider for a moment what body language is—it is unconscious
movements that are designed to convey very specific meanings. Your
unconscious mind is largely responsible for your body language—if you are
anxious, your body language will convey that. If you are happy, your body
language will convey that. This means that if you learn how to read the
body language of someone else, you will be able to read the state of their
unconscious mind.

This is because body language and actions are directly influenced by

thoughts. They exist within a cycle—thoughts influence feelings and those
feelings influence behavior. Effectively, then, you can learn to track the
thoughts by learning to identify behavior. You can also take this one step
further by learning to change thoughts by influencing behavior as well.
Effectively, then, sensory acuity is the ability to focus entirely externally.
Think about what happens most of the time when someone is telling you a
story. If you are not trained in effective listening, you may make it a point
to constantly be coming up with arguments that you can use to make a
certain point in response. You may feel like you are listening, but in reality,
your mind is also busy trying to come up with some sort of reaction or
counterargument. This is problematic—you are not paying close enough
attention to the other party, and you run some serious risks in doing so.
However, you can learn to defeat this. You can learn to focus entirely on
listening instead.

When you focus on sensory acuity, focusing on what the other person is
doing as they talk, you are paying complete attention. You see all of those
minute shifts in body language. You are seeing the other person change up
what they are doing in response to you. You are seeing those subtle signs
that may betray a lie, or that say that the other person is uncomfortable with
the line of questioning but is desperate to try to remain open in
communication.
Effectively, then, you must learn to always listen attentively. You must learn
how to recognize these aspects of body language so you can use them as
feedback for yourself. In learning to recognize that body language, you can
effectively allow yourself to respond appropriately, or to glean all of that
information that you will need in order to be successful with the attempts to
persuade with NLP.
Behavioral Flexibility

Another important aspect of NLP is flexibility. NLP is not an exact science

simply because no two people are the same. People are complex, and so too
are their minds. One person may be entirely comfortable with talking about
a personal issue while the other is terrified to mention similar issues. You
may find that some people are happy to comply without resistance, and
others are completely unresponsive to your best attempts to influence.
Because no two minds are the same, you must be willing to engage in a
little trial and error. You cannot simply decide that you will come up with a
one size fits all approach to accessing other people’s minds—you must be
willing to entertain several different possibilities and to change things up
when you hit a roadblock.

Oftentimes, people fail at this—they simply stubbornly refuse to ever

engage in anything other than what they have originally set out to do, but
the results never change. If it failed the first and second time, why do you
think that the same attempt would pass the next time? If you never try
anything different, the change will never arrive. You need to be able to
focus on change if you want to be successful at NLP. You need to be
flexible in your own behaviors. You need to be flexible in what you are
willing to try.

This helps beyond just learning NLP, too—when you use this, you are
effectively making yourself more flexible in general. You are teaching
yourself to cope with failure or the unexpected with ease. You will no
longer be afraid of failing or feeling like you cannot try anything else. It
helps you become more likely to succeed simply because you are willing to
step out of your comfort zone and mix things up when you need to. If you
are unwilling to make concessions or change your best attempts at dealing
with a situation, all you are going to do is keep yourself stubbornly rooted
in failure and control rather than looking at things as being a chance for
improvement.

Physiology of excellence

Finally, if you want to be successful in your endeavors with NLP, you must
be able to operate from a position of health. You need to be feeling
physically and mentally sound if you hope to operate at your best, which
means that you must be able to take care of yourself. You cannot take care
of others if you cannot take care of yourself, so you must be willing to
maintain that physiology of excellence.

Just as you are told that you must put your own oxygen mask on before
tending to your children on an airplane, you must be willing to take care of
yourself before you are willing to take on the world’s problems. You need
to ensure that you are healthy. This means that you must engage in self-
care. You must make sure that you are healthy. You must make sure that
you get the proper rest to maintain yourself.

In particular, if you find that your life is not giving you the excellence that
you need or that you are not as healthy as you could be, you should put in
the time to achieve it. You may need to use some of your own NLP
techniques to achieve this, such as teaching yourself to be more diligent
about your own sleep or exercise regimen or reminding yourself to eat
healthily. However, you owe it to yourself and to those around you that are
relying on you to keep yourself healthy. After all, you cannot possibly focus
on the other person if you are not feeling well.

Besides just being in your own best interest, if you are able to make sure
that you are healthy, you will rub off on those that you are with. If you
adopt your own healthy lifestyle, those closest to you are more likely to
begin to adapt some of those tendencies for themselves as well.
 Chapter 8: Mind Control with NLP

With that understanding of what NLP is and how it can influence you, it is
time to begin understanding some of the most common techniques that you
can use to control the minds of others. You may choose to control your own
mind, influencing your unconscious to behave accordingly to ensure that
you can get what you need, or you may be influencing other people to help
them instead. No matter who you are attempting to influence, you will be
able to do so with these techniques. Keep in mind that some of these may
require tweaking between using it for yourself and using it for someone
else.

As you read through this chapter, you will be introduced to NLP and mind
control—you will understand why it works at all. You will be shown how
NLP works in order to help control other people. From there, you will then
begin to learn how to exact that control over other people as well. You will
be guided through four distinct tactics that you can use that wield NLP as a
tool in order to influence others. As always, remember that NLP is one of
those tools whose value and intent chan entirely change the meaning. If you
use NLP from a position of wanting to help others, it is incredibly effective.
However, if you want to use it in order to manipulate or hurt others, you
will find that you can do far more harm than you may have realized. Keep
in mind that playing inside someone else’s mind, no matter what your
intention, is something dangerous. It is not something to take lightly or
simply do to mess with someone. You should be very deliberate in your acts
of controlling others. Free will and someone else’s mind are very personal
and private, and that privacy deserves to be respected.
NLP to Control Minds

Ultimately, NLP is one of the most effective ways to influence someone

else's mind. While you will not be able to simply tell someone to do
something and get them to do just that or to use someone else’s mind with
your own controller to gain absolute control, you are able to heavily
influence what someone is willing to do or what they are willing to say or
put up with, all by learning to access their minds and prime them to do what
you want. You will effectively be able to plant thoughts into their minds,
having them fit perfectly and neatly as if they were always intended to be
there.

Effectively, then, this is an incredibly powerful influence—it will enable

you to get other people to do almost anything that you want them to do if
you know what you are doing. You can dispel anxiety, or you can use it to
instill fear for a tighter grip over someone. You can use it to free someone
from stress or to make them feel entirely powerless. This is because you are
accessing the unconscious mind.

NLP is effectively a form of hypnosis—you are gently and covertly lulling

the other person into a state of suggestiveness, during which you can bypass
the conscious mind in order to install your own desires into someone else.
You can make sure that the other person is willing to think or feel whatever
it is that you want them to do just by making sure that you know what you
are doing. In fact, people have used these techniques to convince people to
do nearly anything. All you need to be able to do is lull them into a state of
relaxation and trust.

In fact, one of the most important parts of being able to install a sense of
trust in you. This is known as establishing a rapport with the other person,
and if you can do that, you can effectively gain access to the other person’s
mind. Ultimately, when someone trusts you, they will not be actively
guarding against you or what you might do. This is why developing that
rapport is so critical in NLP.

When someone practices NLP, they usually spend a period of time building
up that rapport so they will be able to tap into the other person’s
unconscious mind. You will be able to do this yourself if you are willing to
put in the effort.
Mirroring

First and foremost, you must build up rapport, as mentioned. The best way
to do so is through learning to mirror someone. Mirroring is the
unconscious mimicking of people that we are close to. Think about how,
when one person yawns, their friends or family member that are present are
likely to yawn as well—that is a form of mirroring. However, it does not
stop there. When two people are close to each other emotionally and truly
trust each other, you will find that their breathing rates will synchronize.
They will walk together with the same steps and pacing. They will naturally
take sips at the same time, or take bites at the same time if they are eating
together. They will make the same motions as one another—if one itches
their nose, the other will likely itch theirs as well. They may even take the
same poses as each other without thinking about it.

This is mirroring, and it is incredibly telling. When someone is mirroring

someone else, it is because they are able to recognize that they like or trust
that other person—that rapport has been built up and is being honored. If
you mirror someone else around you, you are likely to do so because you
feel like you can trust them. However, this can take a lot of time to build up
naturally. Unless you have happened to have an instant connection with the
other person, you are likely to need to go through the process of building it
yourself. You can do this with just a few simple steps.

First, you must build up a connection with the other person. You can do this
by making sure that you are looking directly at them—you want to be
making eye contact and directly acknowledging the other person. You may
make it a point to pick up on their own subtle cues—try to synchronize your
breathing with the other person as well. As you listen to them, you want to
make it a point to nod your head regularly—in particular, you want to do
the triple nod. The triple nod tells the other person three things: You are
listening, you understand, and most importantly, you agree. You should feel
the relationship build up naturally at this point.

Next, you want to pick up on the other person’s verbal cues. While you
could begin by mimicking their body language, that tends to ring more
alarm bells than simply picking up on speech patterns. You will want to
make sure that you are talking at the same pitch as the other person and
actively following their pace and enthusiasm. As you do so, you will find
that the other person will continue longer, especially if you acknowledge
them with the triple nod.

Finally, the last step in developing that mirroring connection is through

finding their punctuator. Everyone has one—it may be as simple as a
waggle of the eyebrows when you want to emphasize something. It may be
more complex, such as pumping a fist in the air or tilting the head and
smiling when you say something that you want emphasized. Nevertheless,
identifying this will require some active work on your end. You must be
willing to put in the effort to watch the other person’s reactions and
tendencies in order to figure out what their own punctuator is. You want to
know what they do so you can mimic it yourself.

When you figure out their punctuator, you want to use it back the next time
you feel like they are likely to use it. If you feel like they are gearing up to
waggle their brows at you, do it first. They may not notice it, but they likely
will smile and continue to engage with you. They will feel an instant
connection to you without truly understanding why, and that is okay.

Now, all you need to do is test the connection. You can do this simply by
brushing your own shoulder or actively doing something else in an attempt
to see if they are willing to copy you. You want to make sure that whatever
you choose to do is relatively subtle and that it will not seem out of place,
but it also has to be something that you think would not be coincidental. If
they follow along, you know that you have done your job well, and you can
move on. If not, go back to the beginning and try again. Sometimes, it takes
a while to really convince someone to trust you.
Anchoring

Once you have built a connection with someone else, you are ready to move
on to actually attempting to alter the mind of someone else. One of the best
ways to do this is through anchoring—when you are anchoring someone to
something, you are setting them up to have a specific reaction to a very
specific stimulus. This may be that you want them to actively change their
mood when you do something, or you want to figure out a way to make
them do something in particular in response to their own anxiety or
negative feeling. You can use this to make someone more likely to choose a
positive decision when they feel out of control, or you can do so in order to
get them to do something specific for you.

A common tactic of manipulators, for example, is to create a trigger to fear

from a very small anchor that is unnoticeable to most—they may use a
slight but distinct movement of the hand in order to make the other person
feel fear in order to keep the other person under control. However, it can
also be sued to prevent bad habits, such as smoking or drinking, or to be a
way to cope with anxiety at the moment.

Anchoring is quite simple once you are able to develop a rapport with
someone else. All you need to do is figure out the right steps and the right
feelings to anchor. There are five simple steps to getting someone else
anchored to a feeling. Keep in mind that these will take time—you cannot
simply expect someone to randomly anchor without much effort. You are
effectively conditioning someone, likely without them even being aware of
it, and that takes effort and energy to remain undetected. Without further
ado, let’s take a look at the five steps of anchoring someone else.
Step 1: Choose a feeling

You will start this process by figuring out what feeling you wish to instill in
someone else. For the purpose of this process, let’s say you want to make
your partner feel more confident, so she is not afraid to ask for what she
needs when she needs it. You know that she struggles with this and you
want to change it. Of course, this feeling could be anything. You could
choose to instill anxiety or relaxation. You could choose happiness or
sadness. Ultimately, you need to find a trigger that works for you and your
situation.

Step 2: Choose a trigger

This is a fancy way of telling you to figure out a way to install that
particular feeling to the other person. You may use storytelling for someone
else, telling them a time that brings back feelings of that particular feeling
that you want to install. If you want your partner to feel confident, you may
reminisce over a period of time during which she was quite confident,
describing it until you can see that she seems to be reliving that feeling.

Step 3: Choose an anchor

Next, you must identify the anchor that you will use. This can use touch,
sight, smell, taste, or sound. Most often, sight is the easiest one to instill in
someone else, but it still requires enough proximity that you can trigger it
when you need it. Figure out what works best for you and the other person.
Perhaps, in this case, you choose that you will use a touch to one specific
point inside the wrist that is not commonly touched.
Step 4: Trigger the feeling

At this point, you will be actively triggering the feeling that you are
anchoring. You may tell the story during which your partner was confident.
You may say things that will help boost your partner’s confidence, such as
offering lavish praise for the dinner that was prepared, or pointing out how
beautiful she looks that day. You want her to feel confident, so you can then
link it to the anchor. You may make it a point to do this several different
ways several different times throughout the day.

Step 5: Link the anchor

Finally, when you can see that the other person is feeling the emotion that
you are trying to anchor, you can begin to use the anchor that you want. If
you have chosen that quick touch to the inside of your partner’s wrist, you
will touch it then. If you have chosen a facial expression, you may make it.
As you do this, over time, you will find that your partner makes an
association between her confidence and whatever it is that you are
anchoring.

The trick here is to make sure that any time you trigger that feeling for her,
you must pair it with the anchor as well. This is critical if you want it to
truly be effective. Keep in mind that this will take time, but it will also be
incredibly effective.
Pacing and Leading

Commonly used in NLP is the act of pacing and leading. Effectively, this is
the ability to figure out how best to identify with the other person (such as
mirroring to get on the same page) and then guiding them into your own
mindset instead of allowing them to maintain their own.

As you read this, going over the words written here for you, you may find
that you are growing curious about what pacing and leading is and how it
can be used.
If you now feel curious about pacing and leading, then you have just fallen
for it—your current state was acknowledged, and then you were gently
guided to a different state—curiosity. This is an incredibly effective
technique for one specific reason: You start by mentioning something that is
true, acknowledging the state of someone else before actively mentioning
something else. It effectively disarms the conscious mind immediately after
telling the truth—the conscious no longer sees what is about to be said as
potentially threatening because the first part was not.

Sometimes, this can be quite overt, as it was in that first reaction, but you
can also see it happen far subtler as well. As long as you are able to match
the pace and then lead, you will find that this technique can be successful.
Of course, you must have that initial rapport built up—if you do not already
have a rapport with whomever you are attempting to pace, start with
mirroring and then move on to this technique.

Consider for a moment that you are in an argument with your spouse. Your
spouse is getting quite angry, and his voice is rising. You are also quite
angry but you do not want it to escalate any further. In this instance then,
you may make it a point to match the other person’s pace. This does not
mean that you should start yelling at your spouse. You need to find another
way to match pace. Instead of also yelling out your frustrations, perhaps
you return that same pitch and intensity with something slightly less
serious. You yell back that you are hungry instead of yelling back that you
are angry. Maybe you even mix it up and yell that you are hangry instead.
You then start to gradually lessen your own intensity, taking them and their
own intensity with you. The sudden change in pace may initially shock your
spouse, but you should find that your spouse will follow along with your
de-escalation most of the time.
This can be incredibly useful in many different settings—you may use it in
a business setting, listening to what your client has to say, matching pace,
and then leading into what you would like to discuss instead. You can use
this in advertising, acknowledging what people are doing, and then
directing them to ordering the product. You can even use it to gain interest
in something, as was done at the beginning of this section.
Learning to Read Body Language

Finally, one last technique that is regularly used in NLP is to learn how to
read and wield body language. Spending the time to understand nonverbal
communication means that you will be able to better read what other people
are intending. In understanding the intents of other people, you will find
that you can also influence and control situations far better as well.

When you are able to read body language, you develop the ability to
understand what they are thinking. However, when you learn to wield your
own body language, you can begin to figure out how best to interact with
other people in order to subtly change their own feelings.

Think back to mirroring—the other person is likely to follow your lead

when you are able to create that connection with them. What if you were to
begin to use your own nonverbal cues to help calm them down or change
their mindset during that? Maybe you are talking to someone who seems
hesitant to make a purchase—you can mirror the other person and subtly
nod your head in order to gently push them toward wanting to agree. You
can use this to sort of push people into making their final decision. If the
other person is still floundering about the idea after you have already
attempted to push for a yes, you should probably accept that no and move
on.

You can use this in several other ways as well. If someone seems annoyed,
you can mirror them to get your own rapport with the other person and then
use body language to begin to calm them down as well. This is effectively
an entirely physical version of the pace and lead, but it can be incredibly
effective if you know what you are doing and make it a point to use it well.
All you need to do is go through the process, and you will find that you can
constantly influence even minor feelings.
 Chapter 9: Improving Communication Skills

Considering just how social that NLP comes across with how much you
must be able to interact with the minds of others, it should come as no
surprise that good communication skills are critical if you want to be able to
use it. These can be difficult to develop if you do not know what you are
doing, but you can learn how best to develop the skills that will serve you
well if you are willing to put in the effort. In particular, communication
skills that are strong can provide you with a myriad of benefits, both within
NLP and persuasion and just in your general life. You will be able to
communicate with others to be understood better, meaning that you will not
run into conflict as much. You will be able to cope with struggles that you
may run into. You will be able to ask for what you need. You will be able to
better communicate with the unconscious minds of those around you. All
you need to do is develop the right skills to do so. It will up your own
confidence, and with that improved confidence, you will find that you are
much more likely to be happy in your life.
In particular, when you need to develop solid communication skills, the best
ones to learn are to be able to make meaningful eye contact without forcing
or faking it, being able to present yourself as confident and in control, and
being able to listen effectively. These, in particular, will help you become
far better at being able to communicate in a way that not only facilitates
your own understanding of what others want to convey to you but also to
make sure that you can tell other people what you need in a clear and
meaningful way. Effectively, you will be able to ensure that those around
you understand you and are able to respect what you want and need.

This chapter will provide you with the necessary information to address
those three specific techniques referenced above, providing you with the
steps to make these habitual, even if you find that you are intimidated by
the idea of making eye contact or trying to be confident. Just keep in mind,
whenever you feel doubtful about these methods, that you will be seen as
more trustworthy, and that trust is critical if you hope to be seen as reliable
by those around you.
Making Eye Contact

Eye contact is one of those skills that you need to develop to be effective at
communicating, but it is also one that people tend to struggle with. Eye
contact can make what you are saying more impactful and change how
people view you as you speak, but it can also be quite difficult to maintain.
If you want to be able to communicate clearly, you need to develop a
tolerance for making eye contact, or at least learning how to make eye
contact in a way that convinces the other party that you are looking at them.

Because so many arguments and conflicts can be linked to a communication

mistake, being able to communicate clearly and effectively is critical. With
good eye contact and solid communication skills, you will find that people
around you are far more willing to listen to what you have to say. They will
trust you more frequently and more willingly. They will be more engaged in
the conversation and exchange and be more likely to remember you fondly
and happily. The beginning of this all is eye contact. After all, if someone
does not make strong eye contact with you, you usually assume that they
are untrustworthy—it is a sign of deception, and that is not what you want
to be portraying if you want to be seen as honest and worthy of listening to.

When you use eye contact, you are telling the other person that you are
listening and interested. You tell the other person that, at that moment, your
focus is on that other person, meaning that they are free to continue.
However, people generally struggle with eye contact. If you want to better
your ability to make meaningful eye contact, try to follow the following
steps.
The 50/70 rule

At first glance, this may seem confusing since it does not add up to 100, but
it actually makes sense. You are looking for eye contact that is good,
meaningful, but not staring and uncomfortable. While we all want to
receive eye contact to know that we matter and that the other party is
actively listening, we also do not want too much eye contact. Too much
feels aggressive and uncomfortable, and for that reason, you need to find
that middle ground where you give enough eye contact to acknowledge but
not so much that you are staring at the other person.

This is managed by making eye contact 50% of the time when you speak,
and 70% of the time when you are listening. When people speak, they
naturally look away as they gather their thoughts. This is because thinking
is incredibly difficult to manage. Eye contact is mentally intensive and
exhausting, and for this reason, it can get distracting if you try to maintain it
constantly during a conversation. By making eye contact half of the time
when you speak, you tell the other person that you are talking to them
without coming across as rude or challenging.

When you are listening, however, you want to be seen as attentive to

encourage the other person to keep talking. This is where the 70% rule
comes in—you want to look at them more so they feel like they have your
attention, but you still want to avoid any actual staring as people generally
do not enjoy being stared at. It is distracting, uncomfortable, and can cause
problems.

Maintain 4-5 seconds of eye contact at a time

When you are making that eye contact, make sure that you take a break
every 4 or 5 seconds. Doing so breaks the eye contact enough to soften it up
without appearing flighty or distracted. By breaking your eye contact every
few seconds, you make it clear that you are not trying to be rude or
aggressive, and by returning back to the speaker, you tell them that they still
have your full attention.

Pay attention to where you look

When you are taking a break from eye contact, it can be easy to look down
or look off quickly. This, however, tends to make you look nervous, and
therefore not trustworthy. When you are breaking your eye contact, make it
a point to look to the side rather than looking down. Veering off to the side
or up and to the side implies thinking, but looking down makes you seem
uncomfortable or shy.

Immediate eye contact

When you want to talk to someone, make sure that you get eye contact
before you speak, and make sure that you meet eyes as you begin to speak.
You want that eye contact present as the speaking begins. Establish your
eye contact, talk, and then look away.

Look between the eyes

If you find that legitimate eye contact is too uncomfortable to maintain, you
can try looking in between the eyes at the bridge of the nose instead. You
can usually use this to fool the other person into thinking that you are
looking at them, though you are saving yourself from the discomfort of eye
contact. Of course, genuine eye contact is always preferred, but you can use
this as a crutch while you work on establishing your eye contact more
readily and regularly.
Listening Effectively
Along with making good eye contact, you must also be able to listen
effectively if you hope to make good progress with people around you.
Listening is another of those skills that many people take for granted—they
feel like being able to listen to someone should be easy since we have a
sense of hearing. All you need to do is hear, right?

Wrong.

Hearing is entirely different from listening. Hearing is passive, whereas

listening is active. When you are hearing someone, you are simply
registering that they are talking. You do not truly understand what is
intended or being said, even if you are able to more or less summarize the
point of what was said. When you hear someone, you are not necessarily
listening to them, but when you are listening to someone, you hear them.

Active listening is one of those skills that you can develop then to elevate
your hearing to listening. In doing so, you will find that communication, in
general, is greatly improved. If you can communicate and listen effectively,
you will get a better understanding of what was intended by that
conversation because you took the time to listen and inquire about it instead
of just making assumptions.
How to Listen Actively

When you are ready to listen actively, you will have to go through several
steps. You effectively want to ensure that you are in a position that is able to
listen and pay attention. You want to avoid distractions. You want to give
the other person your undivided attention. You want to really listen without
contemplating how you will respond to the other person.

This may sound simple in theory, but think about what your mind is doing
during a conversation—do you find that you end up spending the time
trying to figure out how to answer the last point made when the other
person is still talking? That is not active listening. That is hearing the other
person and then distractedly putting together a rebuttal that may be entirely
irrelevant by the end of the conversation, and that is not fair to the other
person. To listen actively, then, you will do the following:
 Step 1: Face the other person: This is where you give them your
undivided attention. No phones or screens present. You will make
sure that you are making eye contact and undistracted.
Step 2: Listen: When you are listening, make sure that you are
actively paying attention to what the other person is saying. You
are not trying to come up with a response during this period—you
are simply listening to the other person.
Step 3: Attentive body language: Remember how you would
nod when trying to build rapport? That comes back here. Make
sure that you nod and give affirmation that you are still listening
as the other person talks, but do not interrupt. You also want to
make sure that you lean in slightly as you listen to the other
person and keep your own body language open and receptive as
well. This means no crossing of the arms and paying attention
effectively.
Step 4: Ask questions: When you get to the end of the other
person’s speech, ask them a few questions. These should be
clarifying questions, not questions designed to poke holes in the
other person’s argument. Take the time to ask if you understood
properly.
Step 5: Form your answer: Do not begin to formulate your
response to the other person until you have gotten confirmation
that you do, in fact, understand what was said. At that point, take
a minute to put together a response, and then go ahead and give it.
When you follow these steps, you will find that you are actually far better at
understanding what people are saying than you initially thought. You will
begin to get more insight from other people. Others will trust you more in
conversation with them. They will be more inclined to listen to you as well,
and you will be more prepared for your own NLP journey. Remember, if
you want to be able to master NLP, you need to be able to listen effectively.
Confident Body Language
Finally, one last method that you can use to better your own communication
with others is to develop confident body language. This means that you
need to make sure that you do not close yourself off to contact other people.
If you are quite conscientious about your body language, making sure that
you portray yourself in a positive and attentive manner, you will find that
you are actually far more effective in communicating with others.

This section will provide you with several different ways that you can keep
your body language effective and confident in order to convince others to
show confidence in you as well. If you can attract confidence, you will find
that others are more receptive to your attempts to communicate with them.
Stand up tall: The best way to be seen as assertive and confident
is to keep your body language tall and open. The best way to do
this is to straighten your spine, keep your head straight, and make
sure that your legs are nicely spaced. You should stand with your
feet at shoulder-width apart—doing so makes it clear to other
people that you are confident and comfortable with yourself.
Use power poses: Some poses, such as standing calmly and tall
while your hands are behind your back, exude confidence without
being overpowering. If you are able to use your power poses, you
will not only tell other people that you are comfortable and
confident, you will also begin to feel more confident as well.
Keep track of your hands: Make sure you watch what your
hands are doing. It can be incredibly easy to offend someone with
a misplaced gesture or by hiding your hand in your pocket. Be
mindful of what you do with them to ensure that you show that
you are calm and in control.
Make good eye contact: This cannot be more important or more
emphasized—you need to be able to make good eye contact to be
deemed as confident.
Avoid fidgeting: People who are unconfident often find that they
are regularly caught up in fidgeting or other nervous behaviors
simply because they are uncomfortable. Their body betrays that
lack of confidence. Try to stand still and open when you are
communicating in order to be seen as confident.
Open body language: Make sure that you keep your body
language wide open. This means that you cannot be crossing your
arms in front of you or otherwise attempting to hide when
communicating. You want to ensure that the other person does not
see you as dishonest or unwilling to communicate effectively.
 Chapter 10: NLP for a Successful Life

Finally, we have reached the last chapter in this book. You may be feeling
like you have far more insight into how you can use NLP and influence
other people. However, you can also use it on yourself as well. Do you have
some sort of negative trauma that makes it difficult for you to function?
Perhaps you feel like you have been held back by your emotions or attempts
to get through life. Well, after reading this book, you now have several tools
that can help you feel better about who you are, what you want, and how
you live life. All you need to do is begin to utilize them.

NLP can be used upon yourself regularly enough to make yourself happier,
healthier, and more confident. In attracting happiness and confidence, you
will find that you are far more successful in your endeavors. You may
realize that you are able to better communicate and relate to people after
having defeated your anxiety or fears. You may find that you are able to get
along better because you can communicate easier. You may find that you
are simply feeling better without that concern over how people will see you
is gone.
When you are able to wield NLP for yourself, you can begin to defeat any
traumas that have lingered, holding you back for far too long. You will be
able to reframe those traumas, separating from that negativity and figuring
out ways to make those memories something far less traumatic. You will be
able to anchor yourself in a process that is incredibly similar to the one used
for other people, and with using this, you will find that you are able to
defeat negative habits. With those habits gone, you will feel far more
capable. You will be empowered. You will be successful. You will be using
NLP for its truest purpose—to wield to help others and yourself.

This chapter will guide you through three techniques that you can use to
wield the power of NLP on yourself. You will learn how to use dissociation
in order to distance yourself from feelings related to a specific traumatic
event or to remove a trigger between an event and a feeling. You will learn
to use reframing to change the way that you view an event or memory.
Lastly, you will be guided through how to anchor yourself with ease.
Dissociation

Anxiety can be debilitating, especially if it is an anxiety toward something

that you must face regularly. Let’s go back to the example of the woman
who had an accident in front of her class and could never get past it again.
She may decide, after reading through this book, that she wants to go
through the process of dissociation. She wants to figure out how to remove
that inherent link between her negative feelings and being able to go in
front of crowds once and for all.

This process involves three simple steps: Identify the problematic emotion,
focus on it and the cause, and then visualize and change.

Our friend may identify that she feels shame. She is ashamed that she
urinated on herself in class in front of all of her peers, and that shame
comes up regularly. She acknowledges that she feels that same shame every
time she stands in front of other people, such as her coworkers, or when she
has to go to an interview, and in the back of the mind, she is always afraid
that it will happen again.

Next, she must visualize the triggering event. In this case, she visualizes the
incident like it was yesterday—she stops and remembers how she felt when
she had to go to the restroom but was too afraid to raise her hand and ask to
go. She had been embarrassed that she was going to go during a
presentation, and she worried that those around her would be angry that she
did not hear the presentation that was given. She imagines elementary
school her going up to the front of the class, trying desperately to give her
own presentation, even though she really needed to go to the restroom. She
hears the sound of the rain pitter-pattering on the window in the classroom,
and she remembers the sensation of wet warmth spreading down her legs.
She remembers the sound of laughter that exploded within the room and the
embarrassment and tears as she ran to the bathroom, with urine squelching
in her shoes. She remembers this as vividly as possible, and she can feel her
face turning bright red in shame as she does.

With the memory firmly in mind, it is time to repeat that scene again, but
this time, trying to distance herself from the shame that she felt. It is time
for her to look at the memory in a way that reduces the negativity. Perhaps
she imagines that everyone wet their pants at the same time, and the
laughter was directed toward everyone, not just her. Maybe she imagines
that instead of urine, she had spilled soda or something else on her lap. She
wants to change the context, so it is no longer distressing and instead funny.

Over time, the negative emotions will fade away. It may take time and
repetition, but over time, the feelings of shame will be desensitized and fade
away.
Content Reframing

Another technique that can be useful toward yourself is learning to reframe

the content. You will effectively be taking the feeling that you want to
eliminate and reframing what has happened in order to change the result.
This is effectively attempting to tap into the cycle of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. For example, if you feel like you are a bad person, you are going
to act in ways that fail to show that you are a good person—you will be
nervous and flighty. This will lead other people to want to keep their
distance, only further reinforcing that initial thought of being a bad person.

When you are able to remove that initial negative feeling, so you stop
obsessing, you will see a change in behavioral patterns as well. For
example, let’s go back to the woman who urinated in class as a child. She is
so concerned with embarrassing herself in public again that she gets afraid
every time he knows that she has to perform or give a presentation. This
leads to nervousness, which leads to a failure to perform to satisfaction,
which further reinforces her fear.

In reframing, you will effectively stop focusing on the negative and instead
shift your attention to something else that will help, such as accepting your
own responsibility for your emotions. You may decide that you will no
longer worry about failing or making a mistake and instead focus on how to
ensure that your project is as successful as possible. In doing so, you will
actually shift your attention to something that you can fix. In the end, you
will perform better and teach yourself that the shift in attention is absolutely
necessary. You will find that life gets better and that you actually are not as
afraid of presentations as you initially were because you have begun to get
some positive experiences out of it.
Anchoring Yourself

Finally, the last process that will be discussed within this book is how to
anchor yourself. You will be able to use that anchoring process with all of
the benefits of anchoring that was discussed earlier and begin to apply it to
yourself as well. The only real difference in anchoring yourself versus
anchoring others is that when you anchor yourself, much more of the
process is internal. You do not have to try to trigger emotions in other
people—instead, you are focused on yourself and what you need to do.

This will follow the same steps as anchoring other people: You will still be
making it a point to identify an emotion, identifying a trigger for the
emotion, identifying an anchor, triggering the emotion, and then using the
anchor until it works. That stays the same. What changes are the methods
through which you are able to anchor other people? Instead of focusing on
how to trigger the feelings in other people externally, you must trigger them
within yourself.

For example, consider our friend who had the accident once more. Perhaps
she wants to stop feeling anxious and instead feel relaxed when she is
presenting. She declares that the feeling that she wishes to trigger is
relaxation. She then must think of a time during which she felt that emotion
incredibly strongly in order to use it. Perhaps she chooses a time on her
wedding night during which she and her newlywed husband watched the
sunset over the ocean to the sound of the waves lapping at the beach. That
time was particularly relaxing for her and she loved it. That memory
becomes her trigger for her emotion.
Now, she chooses a simple anchor—she decides to use a very specific
tapping pattern of her toes against the bottom of her shoe, as she knows that
it will be discreet, and she will be able to use it in public without anyone
ever knowing.

She thinks about that memory at the beach, waiting for the feelings of
relaxation to wash over her, and right as those emotions reach their peak,
she taps her toes within her shoe to the pattern she is linking to the memory.
Over the course of several days and attempts at this, she finds that every
time she taps her toes, she is reminded of that relaxing memory. She has
now anchored herself to that feeling and can use it any time she is in public
and feeling distressed, or whenever she has to present for someone at work.
She can use these techniques and find that her stress and anxiety simply
melt away.
 Conclusion

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of Manipulation and Dark

Psychology. Throughout this journey, you have been provided with several
different methods through which you could control other people’s mind,
whether through influence, manipulation, NLP, or persuasion. Each of these
tactics have their uses in certain contexts, and as you are ready to embark
on your journey beyond this book, you may even have some ideas of how
you wish to wield the information contained within.

Throughout this book, you were provided with advice that was meant to be
actionable. Whenever possible, you were given a step-by-step guide, and
hopefully, you have found this to be useful for you as you prepare to take
this advice into the real world. Remember, as you prepare to leave this book
behind that you keep any usage of the techniques within this book as
benevolent as possible. Remember, people have a right to their own free
will, and while it can be fun to think about the idea of taking control of
someone else just to see if you can, doing so is not kind or respectful to the
people around you. You must remember to use the information included in
this book respectfully and responsibly. After all, little is as precious to
people as their own free will and minds.

Now, you may be wondering what to do next with the information that you
have read. You may be itching to try some of these techniques, and that
makes sense! You may be curious to see how much of this book is actually
truthful. So long as you are willing to take responsibility for anything that
you do, you are free to do what you want.
From here, some places to go next may be to look into more about dark
psychology. You may be interested in other techniques that can be used to
influence other people. Another good place to go from here would be to
look into how to analyze people better. After all, so much of the skills
include within this book require you to be skilled at understanding the state
of mind of someone else. Perhaps you are interested in learning about the
people whose minds are prone to wield manipulation, such as the narcissist.
Maybe you want to see more about dark psychology and how else you can
slip into the mind of someone else completely undetected. Perhaps what
you really want to do is learn how to use someone else’s unconscious mind
against them.

No matter what you wish to do next, remember what you have been taught
here. Remember the importance of respecting the integrity of other people
whenever possible and to act in ways that are responsible and not abusive or
controlling. It can be easy to wield these tools like the manipulator and the
abuser, but then you have lowered yourself to their levels.

Thank you for joining me on this journey into the unconscious mind and
looking at how you can access and influence it in nearly anyone. If you
have found this book to be actionable, helpful, informative, or beneficial in
any way, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon. Your insight and
opinion is always greatly welcomed and appreciated!
 Dark Psychology Secrets

Techniques of Dark Psychology to Analyze

and Read People's Mind with Persuasion,
Hypnosis, Deception, and Brainwashing
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing Dark Psychology Secrets and thank you for

doing so.

Have you ever wondered why some of the most insidious people on the
planet are somehow able to charm everyone to fall for their every whim?
Think of serial killers like Ted Bundy—he was commonly believed to be a
handsome, charismatic young man that was able to quickly and easily win
the favor of others almost naturally, and yet behind the scenes, he was a
serial rapist and murderer of at least 30 homicides over a 4 year period of
time. How did he do it? How was he able to sneak past so many people
undetected for so long?

The answer is through dark psychology.

Many of the darkest personality types out there are quite capable of
seeming charming and affable, only to be hiding the monster underneath
their masks. This is a method they use to prey on other people, victimizing
those who dare to fall for their charm. Dark psychology delves into these
personality types, studying the underlying motivations for the behaviors at
hand. This is not only to understand what to look out for when you are in
the real world—when you learn to understand the minds of those with dark
personalities, you can begin to claim their own ways of thinking.

Dark psychology is a study of people with these dark personalities, but also
a study of the tactics that are used, why they work, and how they can be
adapted. You can use several of these tactics without becoming abusive or
using them in a harmful way. What if you were able to find ways to come
across as charming and persuasive to others, and you used those powers to
help yourself and others? Perhaps you, being charismatic and particularly
skilled in influence, were able to become a powerful leader within a
company—you could use the powers of dark psychology to keep morale up,
keep people motivated, and ensure that others are happy and willing to
move forward. You would be able to always find the perfect way to
convince other people to carry on. You would be able to ensure that
everyone under your charge was happy to help. You would find yourself
running a particularly successful business.

Now, what if you were in sales or politics and convincing people is what
you need to do best? Dark psychology can show you the ways that people
are able to slip undetected into the mind of another to plant ideas, convince
others to see things your way, and move forward. You could use these skills
in advertising or consulting. Despite the root in darkness and evil, dark
psychology techniques can be particularly useful, even under the most
innocent contexts, and this book seeks to show you exactly how they are
able to do that.

This book will guide you through an overview of dark psychology, allowing
you to get to know those dark personality types and how they work. You
will learn about manipulation and how to use it to control the minds of
others. You will learn to persuade with skill. You will understand the
insidiousness of brainwashing and how it can be used to completely
indoctrinate a person into a certain belief system. You will discover
deception and neuro-linguistic processing. You will learn to use hypnosis to
coax people into a state of suggestibility. Lastly, you will see the benefits of
dark psychology, learning how it can be used in daily relationships in order
to help all involved.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible, please enjoy!
 Chapter 1: Dark Psychology

Psychology at its root is something that is relatively simple to define—it is

the scientific study of the mind. It covers several different aspects, looking
into relationships, behaviors, thought processes, and more. When you are
looking into psychology, you are looking for the why and how of essentially
any human process form the mental side. You may be looking at
neurobiological processes, such as what happens within the brain when it is
actively controlling the body, or you may be looking at why that 5-year-old
child at the grocery store had a massive meltdown when told no to candy. It
studies all of that and more, but essentially, it is the study of who we are as
a species and as an individual. It studies what we do, what drives us, and
what causes us problems. It explains emotions and how they both function
and aid humans in acting. It explains why some people give in to pressure,
but others do not. It explains why empathy is so important.

Ultimately, psychology exists in several different classifications. Some

people are only interested in the physical aspect while others care about
development. Others still are interested in the divergences between typical
psychological development and the developments of people who may
become particularly hard to live with. It has several uses, both practical and
simply intellectual—if you understand human psychology, you are able to
see and predict how people will behave. Knowing those tendencies, you can
accurately figure out what will happen, and learn how to use those
tendencies to your own benefit.
Defining Dark Psychology
Dark psychology, in particular, will look specifically at the psychology of
people that have a very specific personality type. In particular, we are
looking at those who are Machiavellian, narcissistic, sadistic, and
psychopathic. These people tend to be among the most dangerous that you
can encounter, and they will have no qualms about using and abusing other
people. However, there is much to learn from this personality type—if you
can come to understand this personality type and the tactics that are
commonly used, you will be able to emulate them without the threat or
harm that may otherwise go along with them.

In particular, this book will be looking at the behaviors of those with dark
personality types. We will spend Chapter 2 looking specifically at the dark
side of psychology, studying what those particular personality traits are and
how they present themselves. From there, the duration of the book will be
spent studying the behavior of those specific personality types.

Dark psychology assumes that when people behave in abusive manners,

using techniques like manipulation and deception, it almost always has a
reason. We will look at those reasons and applications as well, learning
what it is that makes these tools so attractive to monsters in human clothing
that are willing to wield them. You will see exactly why people behave in
ways that are abusive or evil, how they come to the realization that they do
that justifies the abuse in their minds, and how they are able to overcome
the empathy and compassion that usually prevents people from behaving in
such abusive manners.

We will look at several of the most commonly used techniques of the

abusive personality types, and from there, we will spend time discussing
how several of them can be used in a wider context, allowing for their
usages during day-to-day interactions. Instead of manipulating someone to
abuse them, you can look into how to use the same skills to help persuade
and guide people toward whatever they need to do.

We will also look into how these particular tactics impact the person that is
being subjected to them. Some of these techniques work through instilling
feelings in other people, knowing that emotions are incredibly motivating.
Others work through accessing the unconscious mind, suggesting certain
behaviors. Others still work through acts of deception.

Understanding dark psychology will not only enable you to understand the
actions of personality types such as the narcissist, the Machiavellian, and
the psychopath but also be able to combat it. You will be able to avoid
falling for their tactics if you know what the tactics are. This means that
learning to think like the darkest personality types is imperative—when you
can think like them, you can identify them.
The History of Dark Psychology
Traditionally considered a field of applied psychology, dark psychology
begins with the study of the dark triad or the study of manipulation.
Considering that dark personality types have existed as long as history can
record, it comes as no surprise that those interested in understanding these
dark types have been scattered across history as well. In particular, it is
possible to find evidence of studies surrounding manipulation and abuse in
nearly every culture around the world. Humans have always victimized
other humans as long as they have been able to. You can read in history
books about how people used to take slaves, destroy other towns and
villages, and steal.

Ultimately, up until relatively recently in history, attempts to manipulate

and control other people were common, but not particularly controlled or
recorded. It happened on a regular basis, but without proper guidance and
logging that allows for it to be tracked. After all, even religious texts make
reference to manipulation, such as referencing Eve being deceived by the
snake.

In proper psychology, there have been studies to determine how

stimulations of any kind can change behaviors. These have studied aspects
such as whether fear can be conditioned and learned, or whether adding
certain situations or wording could convince people to act in certain ways.

Perhaps one of the earliest records of controlling the behaviors of others

comes in 1897 with Ivan Pavlov’s study of dogs and their behavior. He
learned that some of the behavior of dogs seems to be innate, such as
salivating in response to food. He also learned that innate behaviors can be
linked to other stimuli. Instead of the dog salivating at food, for example, he
conditioned the dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through what was
eventually called classical conditioning.

In classical conditioning, you are able to take unconditioned responses and

cause them with unconditioned stimuli. The food is the unconditioned
stimulus, and in response to seeing it, the dog will salivate in response. That
unconditioned stimulus gets paired with a conditioned stimulus, and in
response over time, you will see that the unconditioned response occurs
when exposed to the conditioned stimulus.

The concept of classical conditioning was strongly supported by

psychologist John Watson, who declared that he believed that classical
conditioning was involved in all aspects of human development and
psychology. He pushed the point in 1920 in an experiment during which he
conditioned a 9-month-old infant to fear anything white and fuzzy.

In particular, during this experiment, a child referred to as Little Albert was

provided access to several white animals in a neutral setting. He was shown
a rat, a rabbit, a monkey, and several other items. At first, Little Albert was
not afraid of any of them. He was unafraid of what he saw in front of him.
Eventually, the white rat was presented, along with the sudden loud bang of
a hammer on a steel bar just behind his head. While the rat itself was not
disturbing to the child, the sound was, and he cried. From 11 months on, he
was exposed to the rat with the loud noise occurring once a week for seven
weeks. Of course, the child cried each time. After the seven weeks, all that
researchers had to do to trigger the meltdown was to show him the rat in
question. Upon seeing the rat, even without the noise, he would cry in fear
and attempt to flee.

That was not all—Little Albert became phobic of anything that was white
and fuzzy. Whether a white dog, a piece of cotton wool or even Santa
Claus, the sight of something white and fuzzy was enough to send him into
a panic. While this behavioral response faded somewhat over time without
reinforcement, it was still readily triggered by repeating the creation of the
loud sound that went along with the rat.

This becomes a foundation for many different forms of manipulation and

influence. You will see this concept arise repeatedly when you look at
neuro-linguistic programming, during which you will see what is called
anchoring, a technique to trigger a certain behavior with a specific
emotional response. It can also be relevant in emotional manipulation as
well.

After the discovery and conceptualization of classical conditioning, the

concept of operant conditioning arose as well. Particularly in 1936, B.F
Skinner came up with the concept, drawing heavily from Thorndike’s 1898
Law of Effect, which posited that anything with a positive consequence is
likely to be repeated, while anything with a negative consequence is going
to be avoided. For example, if a child is given a piece of candy after
cleaning up his mess, the child is going to be more inclined to pick up the
toys in the future, thanks to the positive effect. Conversely, if the child yells
at someone and then gets a negative consequence, such as having to go to
their room, they are not as likely to repeat it.

This concept was reiterated within Skinner’s theory, and he added to it a

new concept—reinforcement. Skinner asserted that if a behavior is
reinforced, meaning that it is rewarded, it will be repeated or strengthened.
The person is likely to repeat those behaviors that are reinforced because
they had a good result. However, when reinforcement does not occur, that
behavior is going to be weakened or extinguished.

In 1948, Skinner reiterated these concepts with experiments. He created

what he called a “Skinner Box” which was a box in which an animal had
access to a lever, a speaker, and two signal lights. There was also an
electrical grid on the bottom that would generate a shock. The animals were
shocked when they pressed the lever with a specific light illuminated, but
when they used the lever with the other light illuminated, they were
rewarded with a piece of food.

Through this experiment, it was shown that there are three types of
responses that will follow a behavior: Neutral operands, during which the
environment neither encourages nor discourages the repetition of behavior,
reinforcers, which drive the individual to repeat the behavior and punishers,
which discourage the repetition.
You will see this concept when looking at techniques such as intermittent
reinforcement, during which a manipulator will give positive reinforcement
only sometimes. As you can see, much of behaviorism becomes incredibly
relevant to the study of dark psychology.

The 1960s came with Albert Bandura, another prominent behaviorist,

acknowledging and agreeing with classical and operant conditioning while
also adding two distinct and important ideas. He asserted that there are
processes between the stimuli exposed to and responses and that behavior is
a learned concept that develops via observational learning.

In particular, Bandura presented an experiment known as the Bobo doll

experiment in 1961. He argued that children, in particular, will pay attention
to the behaviors or their models—people that they are surrounded by—and
they will imitate the behaviors that they were exposed to. Think of how a
toddler may yell out something embarrassing in public, not realizing that it
is embarrassing because he has heard it from his parents: This is the perfect
example.

In Bandura’s experiment, he exposed children between the ages of 3 and 6

to violent behaviors toward a doll. First, children were studied to see how
aggressive they were as a baseline. They were then sorted into groups of
similar temperaments, in which some were shown an aggressive role model,
some were shown a non-aggressive role model, and some were given no
role model. The aggressive role model was aggressive toward a Bobo doll
—they were given a hammer to beat the doll with and threw the doll around
while yelling, “Pow, boom!” The non-aggressive model saw a model
ignoring the doll and playing with another toy quietly.

The children were then offered access to several other toys, which a
researcher told them were the best toys of all. Their behaviors were then
recorded. Children who had been exposed to the aggressive behaviors
tended to behave aggressively toward the Bobo doll that they had access to.
This shows us that children learn behaviors through observation—social
behavior is learned and influenced heavily based upon model, becoming the
basis for the Social Learning Theory.

This is further supported in several of the tactics used in dark psychology as

well. People are more readily persuaded by people similar to them, much
like how the children are more likely to mimic people similar to them.
People are also more likely to mimic others in unfamiliar settings as well,
which is displayed in tactics such as persuasion.

As you continue to read through this book, you will find that much of the

concepts that are innately used by the manipulators that are being studied

involve many of the concepts of behaviorism. It becomes recurring, and in a

way, it makes sense: Behaviorism is a study of how people act and how the

environment influences behavior. Dark psychology seeks to control and

change the behaviors of other people. As you continue to read, keep these

key processes in mind as they will be quite relevant.

 Chapter 2: The Dark Side of Personality

Imagine Anna for a moment: Young, finishing up her last year at college,
and single. She is out with friends at a bar, and her other two friends have
both already met people that they are animatedly chatting with. Anna,
however, is a bit more self-conscious. She does not feel like she belongs
there, and she sits between her friends, sipping at her drink. Then, she sees
him.

The man is handsome and smiling at her. He approaches and offers to buy
her a drink. He says his name is Ethan and that he has just graduated from
the same university Anna goes to, just last year. He asks a few questions
that are not too prying—is she a student? What is she studying? What a
coincidence—he also majored in business! Is she from the area? No way—
he grew up 30 minutes from her hometown. They seem like normal
questions to Anna—he is getting to know her, and it appears that they have
several major things in common. She chats with him, and soon, they are
talking about her past relationship and how it was incredibly messy, so she
isn’t looking for anything at the moment.

Instead of scaring him away, he nods sagely and acknowledges that he had
been in a relationship with a particularly abusive, narcissistic woman not
too long ago and he was just looking for someone to get to know as friends.
They spend the rest of the night in the bar chatting happily, and when Anna
and her friends are ready to go, he smiles, writes down his phone number
for her, and bids them good night.
Anna finds herself hooked—she cannot stop thinking about Ethan and how
much they had in common. Soon, she is texting him, and she finds out that
not only have their lives paralleled quite closely, they share very similar
hobbies. They both like to sit in and read with a nice cup of wine. They
both like to go on hikes in the nearby mountains. They both share a love for
playing video games—but the same type of obscure RPG, not the
mainstream titles that come out.

Soon, Ethan has slid into Anna’s life entirely. He is over at her apartment 5
or 6 days a week and stays the night at least half of them, usually falling
asleep halfway through a movie. He brings her flowers and lavishes her in
positive attention. He loves to listen for hours about everything that she has
gone through in the last few years and offer his own opinions as someone
who had been in a similar relationship before.

Anna tells herself that he is the one. He is different. He is kind and caring.
He knows how to listen. She soon finds herself head over heels in love with
him. They fall hard and fast for each other, and within three months, they
are engaged—after all, they are soul mates. Six months later, she is
pregnant. Nine months later, they are married. Shortly before the baby is
born, it is like a switch has flipped. He is mean and cold. He is constantly
disappearing overnight at the bar. He puts her down and when she cries, he
calls her hormonal. It was like the Ethan that she knew, loved, and married,
was nothing but a lie.
This is because he had lied. People with dark personalities have no qualms
about preying on other people. Just as the wolf does not think twice about
the feelings of deer, the dark personality type does not care about his
victims. Ethan had disguised himself precisely because he was hunting
Anna: He was intentionally trying to make himself attractive to her—he
wanted to be able to interest and attract her in order to gain control.

Oftentimes, people with dark personalities, with the propensity to

manipulate, hunt, and use other people, present themselves in four different
ways: They are Machiavellian, narcissistic, sadistic, or psychopathic. Some
people will have several of these traits, while others may have just one.
Nevertheless, these people are dangerous. They are not afraid of inflicting
extreme mental, and sometimes even physical, harm to other people in
order to get what they want or need. All that matters to them is that they get
exactly what it is that they needed.

People with these dark personality types are known as having dark cores—
they are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviors such as behaving
malevolently, stealing, cheating, or hurting other people. These are the
people engaging in dark psychology, and the more that you read through the
book, the more you will come to recognize the methods through which
these personality types choose to act.

Within this chapter, we will stop and take a look at four of the darkest
personality types—we will look at the Machiavellian, the narcissist, the
psychopath, and the sadist. We will go over the classical presentation of
each of these personality traits, as well as the motivators for each. While
each of them is their own distinct type, with very specific traits, they all
share similarities. In particular, each of these dark personality types lacks
empathy.
A Note on Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and feel other people’s emotions. It is
primarily responsible for facilitating communication between people,
allowing others access to the emotional states of those around them. In
particular, it allows for people to act compassionately—you can put
yourself in someone else’s shoes, so to speak. If you can see that the person
across from you is stressed out, you can relate. You can feel that sort of
stress yourself if you are particularly empathetic. In knowing the emotions
of someone else, you can then feel moved to help—you can offer to do
something to alleviate that stress.

In other instances, empathy allows for the regulation of your own

behaviors. If you can empathize with someone else, you can make sure that
you, yourself, are not the cause of their distress. Consider for a moment that
you are talking to someone and say something that offends them. If you can
empathize with them, you can see and understand that you upset them—and
you actually care. In being able to acknowledge that you have upset them,
you can then make it a point to change your own behaviors. This is why
empathy is so critical, and why lacking it can be so dangerous. It is what
usually acts as a deterrent to hurting other people needlessly.
Machiavellianism
The first of the personality traits that will be discussed is Machiavellianism.
Machiavellians are people who are highly manipulative by nature—they are
able to cheat people out of things without you ever knowing that it has
happened. This particular trait is named for Niccolo Machiavelli—a
diplomat and philosopher responsible for writing The Prince—a book that
discussed that strong rulers must be harsh on their subjects in order to keep
their rule. In particular, it is believed that the earning of glory and survival
will justify any means. Effectively, then, this is the beginning of the flawed
idea that the ends will always justify the means.

The people with this personality type, then, encompass that form of
thinking. They feel that they can be manipulative with little repercussions,
or that the repercussions are meaningless so long as they get their way.

The Machiavellian is focused on his or her own ambition—all that matters

is success, no matter what the cost. They will always prioritize their own
success, regardless of what their idea of success is. If they believe that
success is defined by their income, they will maximize that income, no
matter the cost, for example.

Of course, if they are willing to succeed at any cost, they are typically
incredibly exploitative. They will have no issues with taking advantage of
other people, their weaknesses, or even throwing people under the bus if
they think that it will be enough to get them the success, they believe that
they deserve. There is no such thing as going too far with the
Machiavellian, so long as the Machiavellian gets his or her way at the end
of the day.
These people tend to be incredibly calculating. They will constantly be
acting in their own best interests, even when people do not think that they
are. If they are kind and do a favor, it is because they know that doing that
favor is the best way to ensure that the other party is going to give them
what they want later. Nothing they do is without reason, and they are not
likely to help other people unless they can see some sort of legitimate
benefit to doing so. This makes it incredibly difficult to identify their true
intentions.

The Machiavellian, despite coming across as charming and flattering, is

usually incredibly cynical—he does not believe that anyone will ever do
anything for reasons that are not self-serving. To the Machiavellian, if
anyone does something nice to them, it is because they want or need
something and think that being ice will get it. In reality, they lack the value
of inherent human kindness that they typically take advantage of, and their
lack of empathy means that they do not care when they are taking
advantage of other people. They will actively and readily harm other
people, making other people fall for them without ever really committing to
legitimate relationships. However, because they are so skilled at reading
those around them and deceiving other people, they are commonly seen as
far more charismatic and caring than they actually are.
Narcissism
The narcissist, on the other and is far less intentional and calculating. While
the Machiavellian is incredibly meticulous in his manipulation, narcissists
do not make the intentional decision to be manipulative people. They also
lack the empathy necessary to regulate their actions regarding how other
people see them, but in terms of the motivations, the narcissist is
manipulative because the narcissist is delusional.
The narcissists are particularly exhausting because they have their own
grand sense of self—in fact, it is so grand, that most of the time, it is
grandiose. They are completely convinced that they are the best people out
there, and entirely perfect. Because they are so confident in their perfection,
they effectively believe that they are right all the time. There is no way that
they can be wrong because they believe that they cannot be flawed, and this
turns into them believing that when there is a disconnect between what they
expect to be true versus what is actually true, they tend to assume that their
own beliefs are the ones that are right.

This gets incredibly exhausting as people deal with them—they believe that
they are perfect and inherently deserving of more than those around them.
They think that they deserve special treatment and consideration and that
treatment and consideration means that they will do anything to get it.

Effectively, the narcissist’s manipulation and harm toward others comes out
of that expectation of being right all of the time, believing that their
grandiosity is justification of everything. However, the problem with the
narcissist is that he is so skilled in convincing other people that he is right
and deserving of special treatment that he will even gaslight himself into
believing it. The narcissist will absolutely believe his narrative of what
happens. If he tells someone that something did not happen in a certain way,
they have likely convinced themselves of that narrative to protect that
image of perfection that they are so certain about. They will always believe
that they are deserving of that perfection, no matter what.

Narcissists themselves crave the center of attention—while they are unable

to empathize with other people, they absolutely believe that they are
deserving of the adoration of others, and they require it in order to feel like
they are justified. They have a constant need to be admired, and if they are
not admired, they will do things to gain that admiration, even if it hurts
other people.
Psychopathy

Of the four traits that we are looking at, psychopaths are quite arguably the
worst of the four. These people have the greatest potential to be harmful.
When attempting to identify their personality tendencies, the psychopath is
someone who flags as highly callous, impulsive, manipulative, and
grandiose.

Effectively, the psychopath is someone who is not afraid of hurting other

people to get what he wants. He is willing to give in to those impulses that
would usually be disregarded quickly. If he has the thought that he wants to
hurt someone else or toy with someone’s emotions, he will do so as a game,
simply because he can. He believes that he is able to do this without regard
for the feelings of other people, and he will do it without thinking twice.

Like the narcissist, the psychopath thinks incredibly highly of himself—he

believes that he is smarter than other people and that he is skilled enough to
get away with whatever he wants to do. If he decides that he will become a
serial killer, he is convinced that no one will ever be able to catch him—he
is entirely of the belief that he is more intelligent, sneakier, and more
capable than any of the people who have attempted this manipulation before
him.

Despite the monstrous nature of the psychopath, they are actually incredibly
adept at social situations. Unlike the narcissist, who may struggle in social
settings if his grandiosity gets the best of him, the psychopath is even more
skilled at blending in. They are able to emulate normal humans with ease
and will do so to their own advantage. They see their skill at blending in as
a game and they will often try to convince as many people as possible that
they are trustworthy in order to take advantage again later.
Sadism

While the previous three make up the personality types commonly referred
to as the dark triad, there is one more trait that is important to consider here
when discussing dark psychology—the sadist. The sadist has all of the
callousness of the dark triad, but unlike them, they are not particularly
impulsive or manipulative. The sadist is someone who is entirely motivated
because he enjoys being cruel.

The everyday sadist simply wants to hurt people or watch people suffer. He
may make it a point to join the military or police force, allowing himself to
shield himself from any repercussions. Within those particular career paths,
he may feel like he can hurt people or be exposed to harm of others without
having to hide it.

Of course, if that sadism comes along with one of the other personality
types, such as paired with narcissistic personality disorder, it can become
incredibly problematic—the sadistic narcissist is one that genuinely enjoys
hurting people but may even feel like he has a right to do so. He will be
able to justify his actions without having to try very hard simply because he
knows that he is better than other people.
Dark Personalities and Abuse

Ultimately, these personality types lend themselves to abusive individuals

due to the increase in callousness when compared to the others. Because of
the callousness, none of the people discussed in this chapter have any
qualms about their abuse. This means that Ethan, in his relationship with
Anna, does not care about the pain that has been inflicted. He does not care
that he effectively trapped someone under false pretenses, creating an
indelible bond between the two of them forever. Even if she were to leave,
she would never be able to truly escape him thanks to the fact that they
share a child.

Studies have been done on the dark personality types that have shown that
these people will tend to choose to act in ways that inflict pain, especially if
they are quite sadistic. In this study, people were asked to choose from one
of several jobs—the study was disguised in order to make the participants
believe that they were looking at personality type and job preference. The
jobs were to reflect the type of dark behaviors that they would then be told
to do. Some of the jobs were to work in the cold, work in sanitation, or
being an exterminator.

Unsurprisingly, most of the sadists chose extermination. From there, the

scientists created what they called a killing machine—a coffee grinder that
was modified in order to make crunching sounds, and they were instructed
that they had to kill several bugs in names with cute names in an attempt to
humanize them. Throughout the experiment, the sadists absolutely did
choose to kill the bugs, and they were not disgusted by it. They were happy
to kill the bugs and enjoyed it, though compared to people without sadistic
tendencies, they enjoyed anything that they chose to do less than their non-
sadistic counterparts.

After these results, another experiment was performed—during this one,

people were sorted based on personality, and then were asked to play a
computer game. The people playing the game were told that they were
competing in order to blast a loud noise at the people in the other room. If
they won, they would be able to choose how long and loud the blast would
be. As an important note, the opponents never blasted back.

Half of these people would then have to work to be cruel—if they won, they
would then need to count before the blast of noise would occur, with the
interest of the study being how likely the extra work would deter the people
from being aggressive. Ultimately, only the sadists chose to work to hurt the
other party. While those with the dark personality types would all inflict
some degree of harm to the opponents when it was easy, adding the extra
layer of work was enough to deter the other personality types. Beyond just
that, the sadists also chose to raise the blast and make it longer just to hurt
the other team when they realized that there would be no retaliation.

Effectively, then, the sadists are the ones who are more likely to hurt other
people. Even the psychopaths, who will hurt or kill without feeling bad
about it, usually had purpose to drive them. The Machiavellians were too
calculating to risk the harm of other people unless they felt like the payoff
was right. The narcissists usually went out of their way to hurt others when
they were threatened. However, the sadists would hurt just to enjoy
themselves.
This means that, at the end of the day, it is the sadists that are going to be
the most manipulative. The narcissists will be aggressive and abusive in
response to the perception of a threat to themselves or their ego. The
psychopath will hurt to gain something or because he wants something. The
Machiavellian will abuse only when it seems like the best way to get what
he wants, and it will not be risky to do so.
 Chapter 3: Manipulation

Perhaps one of the most common forms of the usage of dark psychology is
via the use of manipulation. Ethan manipulated Anna as he made it a point
to get to know her, little by little in order to reflect back what he thought she
wanted to see. In an act known as narcissistic mirroring, he was able to
present himself as exactly what Anna wanted, allowing him to draw her in.
She was convinced that he was perfect in every way when in reality, it was
all a façade—he hid behind a very specialized mask in order to win his
prize: Anna.

Manipulation primarily exists in two forms—it can be covert, meaning that

it happens without the manipulated individual knowing about it, or it can be
overt and in everyone’s face, such as extortion or blackmail that involves
threatening and coercing the other person into obedience with them
knowing full well that they must either comply or suffer the consequences.
In particular, those within the dark tetrad tend to prefer the covert forms of
manipulation—they want to be able to do their jobs well and effectively
without worrying about the aftermath. They think that their attempts to
manipulate will be more effective if they remain hidden, and for the most
part, they are right.

When you want to understand manipulation, you must first learn to define
manipulation and how it works. When you understand that definition, you
can start to understand how it is used in order to be effective. Once you
understand the pattern of how manipulation is used, you can begin to
recognize several specifically manipulative tactics that are commonly used.
In recognizing the common tactics of manipulators, you can begin to
recognize the manipulator. Finally, in recognizing the manipulator, you can
defend against manipulation.
Defining Manipulation
Psychological manipulation is ultimately a form of social influence—that
means that it is attempting to succeed at one of three different end goals: It
will gain compliance, in which the people will agree to do something, even
if they do not actually believe it is the right thing to do, it will gain
identification, which will change the thoughts of the other person, or it will
gain internalization, in which it will cause a change in belief or behavior
that is also agreed with publicly and privately.

Effectively, then, manipulation seeks to change someone’s actions,

thoughts, or both to fit with whatever it is that the manipulator is
encouraging. In particular, though, manipulation tends to be indirect,
deceptive, or underhanded. It is designed specifically to change the
thoughts or behavior without the other person being aware of it while also
serving the manipulator in some way.
Most often, the manipulator has some sort of agenda that is being addressed
—that agenda becomes the goal for that manipulation attempt. Ethan
wanted to win Anna’s favor, for example—he made it a point to convince
her that he was someone he was not because he saw something that he liked
within her. A narcissist may manipulate someone because he wants to gain
that approval and acknowledgment that he needs if he wants to feel
comfortable in his own skin. The sadist may manipulate because he wants
to inflict pain. The Machiavellian may manipulate because he wants to be
able to achieve an end goal and manipulation is the only way it will happen.

In order for manipulation to be successful, no matter what the end goal of it

is, three criteria must be met. The aggression must be concealed in some
way, usually with the manipulator seeming like someone trustworthy or
worthy of respect and consideration. The manipulator must have some
working knowledge of any vulnerabilities that will be exploited,
understanding how best to move forward to manipulate. Lastly, the
manipulator must be ruthless enough to not care about lying and potentially
hurting the other person.

Think about how this relates back to Ethan for a moment. He came across
as perfectly charming in the beginning and Anna never suspected a thing.
He got to know her, noticing in particular exactly how she suffered from an
abusive relationship in the past, which he used to force a relationship. He
took advantage of that bit of knowledge and then encouraged her to
continue discussing anything and everything with her, which he then used
against her on a regular basis. Any time she told him about something
personal, he would remember and use it to continue to build the relationship
more and more. Finally, he was willing to hurt her, even though most
people would usually hesitate and avoid doing so.
Using Manipulation

Most of the time, manipulation occurs in very specific manners. In order to

manipulate someone, you must be able to meet one of five criteria to use as
the motivator. Think back to the discussion of behaviorism, particularly
with Skinner and the discussion of positive reinforcement and punishment.
This is where these concepts come back, but in terms of manipulating other
people to control their behaviors, most of the time, there are five distinct
manners of encouraging or discouraging behavior.

In artificially installing the desired behaviors with one of these tactics, the
desired behaviors become learned relatively simply. Ultimately, it will be a
matter of figuring out which the best particular tactic is for that situation.
The manipulator has a lot to consider—is the victim someone timid and
easily malleable? They may respond best to positive reinforcement or the
use of intermittent reinforcement. Are they more hard-headed? It may be
best to try utilizing a one-trial learning in an attempt to condition the
desired response.

The five distinct manners of controlling the victims of manipulators are

through the use of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement,
intermittent reinforcement, punishment, and traumatic one-trial learning.
Each of these are used in different ways to differing effects based on the
target and the desired goal.

As a quick note before continuing, remember that there is an inherent

difference between positive and negative, regarding both reinforcement and
punishment. When you are adding something, whether that something is
good or bad, you are said to be using positive reinforcement or punishment.
When you are removing or taking away something, you are using negative
reinforcement or punishment. This varies from the traditional understanding
of positive and negative in the more colloquial sense, in which people see
good things as positive and bad things as negative. We must step past that
misperception to truly be able to understand what is being discussed as we
continue.

For example, if your child pulled straight A’s on his last report card, you
may take him out for ice cream—this is an example of positive
reinforcement. If you find that your child has failed three classes, however,
you may give him extra chores until he has his grades up. This is an
example of positive punishment because you are actively giving him an
aversive stimulus in response to his misbehavior. Alternatively, taking away
your child’s video game system upon realizing that he is failing his classes
would be a form of negative punishment—you are taking away something
positive. Finally, if you are removing a negative situation, such as no longer
nagging at your child after your child has made it a point to turn in all
missing work is an example of negative reinforcement—you removed the
aversive stimulus to encourage the behavior you wanted.

In general, positive reinforcement is by far the gentlest of the forms of

manipulation. It will involve the use of creating or giving feedback to the
victim in some way to encourage a behavior. Effectively, when the use of
positive reinforcement occurs, the victim is rewarded for doing the desired
behavior. Think about how a dog that is listening during training is given a
reward—they are given a small treat to encourage the repetition of those
desired behaviors. This means that they are more likely to continue with
those behaviors in the future thanks to the fact that doing them became
enjoyable. Because the desired behavior gets associated with reward, the
behavior is more likely to be repeated.

Negative reinforcement is more or less the opposite: the behavior increases

because something negative was removed. Imagine that you are being
nagged at by your boss to finish up that assignment for work—you are only
alleviated form that constant nagging when you finish. In that case, you
were negatively reinforced simply because the removal of the aversive
situation happened.

Intermittent reinforcement uses reinforcement that is inconsistent. In

particular, it is most likely used in the occasional revocation of a negative
reinforcement. For example, imagine that Ethan expects Anna to clean the
house top to bottom and it is rarely good enough for him, no matter how
hard she tries. When she cleans up, she is occasionally granted with the
benefit of having him be pleasant, or at the very least, not as grumpy.
Occasionally, he chooses to reward her just enough to keep her hooked,
making sure that she does not want to leave. Instead, she fights harder
because she sees the occasional hope that the Ethan she fell in love with is
still there.

Punishment is the usage of the addition of something unpleasant in order to

dissuade someone from behaving in a certain way. When you are punishing
someone, you are usually causing a negative consequence of some sort as a
direct result of a behavior, or a lack of the proper behavior, in order to keep
the victim on track.

Finally, traumatic one-trial learning relates to the use of sudden, harsh abuse
that is meant to intimidate and traumatize the victim into no longer
repeating those tactics again in the future. Effectively, the victim does
something that the manipulator is unhappy about and the manipulator
drastically punishes him or her. If Anna were to have done something that
Ethan did not like, he may have decided to leave her on the side of the road
or threaten to take their shred child in order to strongly discourage her from
repeating that behavior. The sole purpose of this behavior is to make the
person so traumatized as a result that they will no longer repeat those
behaviors.
Recognizing the Manipulator
Identifying the manipulator is something that can be incredibly difficult to
pull off. It is tough to ensure that you can spot when someone else is
manipulating but being able to do so is incredibly beneficial. Knowledge is
power and power is a proper defense from being taken advantage of
needlessly. When you want to recognize and identify the manipulator, you
will basically be looking for several different traits and actions. If you want
to be able to know if the other party is, in fact, manipulating you, stop and
reflect on your relationship. As soon as you know what you are looking for,
you will find that they become far more transparent than they ever were
before.

Manipulators will undermine your ability to trust yourself.

One of the most common forms of manipulation is known as gaslighting—

they use this to convince you that what you think is happening around you
is actually all a figment of your imagination. Even if they have done
something in front of you, such as taking the last piece of pizza with you
right there, they will then deny it, saying that you must have eaten it. They
are so skilled at doing this that you may actually begin to believe them,
leaving you questioning your own sanity.

Manipulators say something different than what they are doing.

Rarely do the words and actions of the manipulator match up. When you
are being manipulated, you may find that the manipulator is actively saying
one thing but doing the exact opposite. Perhaps Ethan says that he has
Anna’s best interest at heart, but nothing he does actually reflects that.
Instead, he frequently does things that are arguably not in her best interest.
What he may say is to make sure that she does not eat unhealthy food is
actually little more than an attempt to keep her under his thumb, making her
feel bad and causing her to give in without actively trying to fight back.

You regularly feel guilty when around the manipulator, and you can’t
explain it.

When you are around the manipulator, you may find that guilt becomes a
common occurrence. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you cannot
help but feel that sense of guilt, despite your best attempts. You think about
things and cannot figure out why you would be guilty, and yet there you
are, feeling like you should have tried more, done better, or attempted
something entirely different altogether. This is not a fault with you—if you
are constantly feeling like you are guilty, it is time to reevaluate to
determine whether you are simply surrounded by people who are hurting
you or if you have actually been behaving in negative ways.

The manipulator is always the victim, and you are usually at fault.

The manipulator is particularly skilled at ensuring that you feel like

whatever has happened is your fault and that whatever it was is a slight
toward the manipulator. Even so much as accidentally forgetting to bring
your partner’s requested food home from the store will suddenly be spun
around, instead becoming a deliberate attempt to hurt the manipulator.

The manipulator pushes the relationship far too quickly.

Much of the time, the manipulator will make it a point to move the
relationship as quickly as possible. They will share more than they really
should in order to convince the other party that they are being truthful about
what they are doing. They will intentionally try to convince everyone
involved that what they need above all is to move quickly. They will love
intensely, push business relationships before proper trust is built, and use
their own feigned vulnerability to fool those around them into sharing and
making themselves vulnerable as well.

The manipulator will happily agree or volunteer to help.

But then it always turns into a martyr act. While he may have agreed
initially, he will show all sorts of reluctance. If you dare to ask him if he is
actually reluctant or points out that you will be fine without him, he is likely
to instead deny and make you feel guilty about even suggesting such a
thing. Instead, his goal is to make you feel like you are indebted to him for
future use.

The manipulator will always be one step ahead of you.

Whether for better or worse, the manipulator will always be further on the
spectrum. If you are having a bad day, the manipulator’s day is
automatically worse. If you just got into a great university, the manipulator
will be quick to remind you about how he went to a better school. They will
always simultaneously have it better and worse than you, no matter what is
going on.
Defending Against Manipulation
No one wants to be on the receiving end of manipulation—the problem
arises when so many people are victimized without knowing what the signs
of manipulation are. When you do finally learn what they are, however, you
are able to begin fighting back You can start to make the progress that you
will need in order to reclaim your life and keep the other party from hurting
you any further. There are several tactics that you can use to defend against
manipulation, ranging from avoiding the manipulator altogether to directly
countering what is being said to you. From here, we will go over three
methods that you can use to defend yourself from manipulation as it arises
in your life.

Know Your Basic Rights

Perhaps one of the best ways to protect yourself is through learning to
recognize your own inherent rights as an individual. As a human, you are
entitled to several basic human rights, and more often than not, the abuser
tries to get around them. When you recognize and defend your basic human
rights, you will be able to stand up for yourself—you tell the other party
that you are not willing to put up with such blatant disrespect and abuse.
Instead of being willing to lie down flatter and completely disregard the fact
that you have been treated poorly, you will be instead of making sure that
you demand the treatment you deserve. Some of these basic human rights
include:

The right to respectful treatment

 The right to be expressive of your own thoughts, feelings, and
desires
The right to say no for any reason without guilt
The right to get anything that you have paid for
The right to your own free opinion
The right to ensure that you are safe, physically and mentally
The right to happiness
The right to instate and enforce any boundaries
Each of these fundamental rights can strengthen your defense against the
manipulator. If you say that you deserve respectful treatment and demand it
without exception, you can make it clear that you will tolerate nothing less
than the utmost basic respect. You will not deal with name-calling, harmful
or hurtful behavior, or anything else that may keep you down. If you are
cognizant of the fact that you have several thoughts that are your own, and
you are entitled to those thoughts, no matter what anyone else thinks, you
protect yourself from mental manipulation. When you recognize that you
are free, physically and mentally, you can stop allowing the manipulator to
hold you back. Effectively, these boundaries become your shields with
which you fend off the narcissist or manipulator. With those shields, you
protect yourself from damage. However, the battle is not won simply by
wielding a shield—you need to be proactively able to protect yourself as
well. Protecting yourself is as simple as figuring out the best way to probe
back at the manipulator.

Probing to Defend from Manipulation

Questions such as wondering if the request seems reasonable to the
manipulator, asking if it sounds fair, and then wondering if you have a say
one way or the other are all ways that you can go out of your way to twist
things around and put the onus back upon the manipulator. For example,
imagine that Ethan tells Anna to run to the store as soon as possible to pick
up a very specific item. She is exhausted and does not want to drive across
town, but he is incredibly insistent that she goes. She could stop and ask
him if that seems reasonable to him. She may ask, “Are you really
expecting that I drop everything after having gotten two hours of sleep,
right after baby falls asleep, just to get you that special nacho cheese that I
can only get across town?” When she twists things around like that, it
suddenly seems far less reasonable for her to have to follow through with
doing what the manipulator has requested.

This works for a very specific reason—you are now twisting things around
and putting the pressure back upon the manipulator. When you are able to
redirect to the manipulator, you can effectively change the tactic—instead
of you being on the defensive, you are suddenly on the offense. Instead of
having to defend yourself, you make the manipulator have to defend against
you. Effectively, then, you can point out everything that is wrong with the
suggestion. You leave the manipulator with two choices: He can deny that
what he is saying is unreasonable, saying that he would absolutely go and
do what he is asking you to do, or he will be forced to admit that the
requests are too one-sided and are incredibly unfair.

Saying No and Enforcing It

The last method that is quite easy to use in order to disarm the manipulator
is to simply learn how to say no and mean it. So often, we make it a point to
let other people rule our lives. We are willing to put up with what other
people tell us to do and what they say simply because we are too afraid to
stand up for ourselves. However, think of the implication there—if you do
not stand up for yourself, you are going to find yourself struggling. You will
always be pushed around, left and right, expected to do whatever the
manipulators that want to take advantage of you determine is right.

When you learn how to say no, however, you take away that power. The
only power that the bully initially holds over you is the power to rule your
life. When you learn to say no and really mean it, you are actively telling
people that they cannot control you. You are saying that you do not consent
to being taken advantage of, and that is significant. If you can tell other
people no, then, you can follow through and avoid falling for the problems
that the manipulator wants you to.

Manipulators count on what is called the nice guy or nice girl syndrome—
they assume that you will say yes simply in the name of being polite, and as
soon as they know that they have an in somehow, whether through you,
your actions, behaviors, or anything else, they will not hesitate to take
advantage of you, over and over again without relenting. The only way to
end this is with your own boundaries.

This means that when you say no, you need to enforce it. If they continue to
try to pester you into something, you are within your rights to simply walk
away. You do not have to consent to being controlled, and in fact, you are
going to be happier and better off if you refuse to altogether.
Saying no does not have to be difficult either—all you need to do is
apologize, say that it does not work for you, and move on. There is no
reason to explain why it does not work, no matter how hard the other party
pushes for a reason—if you relent and give them the reason it does not
work, they will try to find a way to disregard what you are saying in order
to try to force you into agreeing. Simply responding with, “That doesn’t
work for me, sorry,” is the perfectly polite way to shut someone else down
without having to provide much information. Remember, an invitation does
not mean that you are forced to do something, and a demand is not
mandatory unless enforced by the law.

When your boundaries are ignored and continuously stomped upon, what
you must do is find a way to stand up for yourself. The best way to do so is
to keep your distance from the other party. While they may initially accuse
you of being manipulative or controlling, keep in mind that all you are
doing is choosing to not expose yourself to their ridiculous demands. You
are protecting yourself, and you should not feel guilty for doing so. Instead,
focus on the fact that you can get that distance that you needed while also
making a point to heal. If they try to convince you that you are punishing
them, remind yourself that you are simply giving yourself time until you
can see them again without being angry, whether that is in the near future or
never. You are well within your rights to choose who you associate with,
and even if they cry and complain and tell everyone that you are a horrible
person, you are truly only responsible for your own feelings and opinion.
 Chapter 4: Manipulation Techniques to Control
Minds

At this point, you should have a fairly decent understanding of the concept
of manipulation. You should see how it works and be prepared to identify it.
However, what can make this situation even easier to identify is learning
how to control minds yourself. Remember, the more you learn and the more
you are able to understand, the more likely that it is that you can protect
yourself.

The tactics that are going to be used here are quite dangerous in the wrong
hands—for people who have no qualms about hurting other people, these
can absolutely be weaponized into dangerous techniques that can truly
convince other people to do dangerous, horrible things. However, they can
also provide you with valuable insight into the mind of not only the dark
personality, but also into the mind of the people that they target. When you
look at how to control a mind, understanding the intricacies that go into
sneaking into someone’s thoughts, implanting your own, and then escaping
without ever raising any red flags, you are learning to really interact with
other people. What if you inserted good thoughts that helped people?

For the most part, many of the tactics of manipulation are not particularly
good for usage outside of controlling people, and the tactics that are being
discussed here make particularly potent weapons. While the ones that you
find here will largely not be good to use on other people without the intent
to completely and utterly control someone else at any cost, you will find
more actionable advice in the next few chapters with techniques that are far
more target-friendly than most of that of manipulation and mind control.
Remember, manipulation is a form of influence that is primarily dark. It is
primarily designed to be hidden, undetected, and drastic, and that is exactly
what you will see here. You will be provided with a guide to the most
insidious of the manipulator’s weapons here, from mind control to figuring
out how to isolate people.
Mind Control with Implanted Ideas
Ultimately, mind control is the ability to remove free will—you are
effectively systematically entering the mind of someone else in an effort to
get them to think or behave in a different manner than they have been. You
may be trying to convince someone of something such as to change
religions or to join a cult, or you could be simply trying to get your best
friend to agree that the band that you want to go see next weekend is
actually great, despite the friend hating them.

It is important to note before beginning that there is an important distinction

between mind control and brainwashing—mind control is far more covert,
whereas, in brainwashing, the prisoner or person being brainwashed is
aware of it. When someone is using mind control, they are befriending the
person, earning a position of trust, and using that trust in order to infiltrate
the mind of someone else in order to create a brand-new personality type
altogether. Effectively, then, this leads to several thoughts implanted in the
individual’s mind without the individual knowing where they came from. If
done successfully, there should be no way to really discern the thoughts
from those that were implanted unnaturally.
Mind control starts with the development of a relationship first and
foremost. When that relationship is developed, the manipulator is able to
get access to the other person’s mind. Of course, this takes time. The
manipulator has to wait patiently for the victim to open up and render him
or herself vulnerable. However, as soon as that relationship is built up, the
manipulator can begin to take advantage. The manipulator can make it a
point to engage in talking about topics, dropping just the right amount of
hints to begin to infiltrate the mind of the other person. For example, if you
really want your friend to like your music, you can spend the time to tell
him how great the band is. The next day, subtly mention something about
the band. Continue to do this, and after a while of hearing the same idea
over and over again, the unconscious mind becomes more impressionable.
You may then decide to play the music after a week or two of repeating that
they are so great to your friend and find that your friend is super into the
music. He may even ask you what the band is because it sounds so great.
That is when you can drop it on him that he has been listening to that one
particular band that you wanted to go see, and you can ask him to go with
you.
Using Mind Control

Effectively, mind control will come with several steps that you must
complete in order to be effective. You must first develop enough of a
rapport with the other person to be a trusted individual. This is the part that
takes the longest. The more genuine you can make the relationship seem,
the more potent your skills will become. This means then that if you want to
use this technique, you need to be in it for the long haul. Think about how
so many manipulators make it a point to rush through the honeymoon
stages at all costs—this is because they desperately want to be in that
familiar, trusted position of power with the other party. When they are, they
are effectively able to start working on the manipulation side quicker. Since
people that are trusting of the manipulator are more susceptible to long-term
manipulation, this is a preferred method.

Upon becoming trusted, you must begin to lower the other person’s self-
esteem somehow. People with higher self-esteem are harder to control just
because they are too trusting of themselves. If you want to take out
someone’s self-esteem, you must lead them to think that they should not
trust themselves. You want them to feel like their own thoughts are
inaccurate or not true to reality. You may find ways to subtly imply that the
other person is not particularly intelligent, skilled, or otherwise capable in
an attempt to make them feel like they should not even bother trying.
As self-esteem lowers, you should have an easier time starting to implant
your own thoughts into the mind of the other person. You may want the
other person to actively associate a specific emotion with a certain
consequence, and you can do that. You can condition the other person at
this stage as well, using what is commonly referred to as NLP anchoring,
which will be discussed more in Chapter 8.

After repetition of the thoughts that you wish to install, you may see them
beginning to take hold. Your friend may readily listen to that music that he
hated before. The person that you were trying to make more agreeable to
have a better shot at dating is beginning to feel more self-conscious and
therefore far more susceptible to any attention.

You may decide to install multiple thoughts or triggers to allow you to

better control the other person. No matter the techniques that you chose,
one thing is for sure—when you learn how to control the minds of other
people, you learn how to take control of who they are. You can implant new
interests. You can teach them to be loyal to you. You can convince them
that they have always been interested in certain political affiliations. You
can change who they are entirely, and they will have no idea how it
happens.

Effectively, you expose the other person to these changes so slowly over
such as a long period of time that they believe that the changes in their
thoughts are their own choices.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is one of the more dangerous tactics that those with dark
personalities employ. After all, what could possibly be more insidious than
teaching someone that they cannot rely on who they are as an individual?
When you are gaslighting someone, you are effectively teaching someone
to doubt their own sanity.

Have you ever found yourself in such a moment of self-doubt? Have you
ever found yourself crippled into inaction because you cannot be sure if
things happened the way you believe they happened or if you are
overreacting? Maybe you tell yourself you are imagining the way an
interaction went, or you think that there is no way possible that things
happened the way you think they did. The manipulator wants to latch on to
any doubt that you may have and take advantage of it. Over time, the
manipulator can effectively make that wound of self-doubt fester and grow,
slowly consuming your ability to trust yourself and eroding it away into
nearly nothing.

This process is incredibly dangerous—someone who cannot trust himself is

not going to be particularly effective in dealing with other people. Think
back to Anna—when she first started seeing signs of Ethan being someone,
she thought he wasn’t, she asked him about it. “Why are you so grumpy
now?” she may have asked at one point, only to be met with a quizzical
look and a quiet response of, “What are you talking about?” Being met with
something without aggressiveness, attention, or frustration is enough for
Anna to wonder if it was all in her head.

Along with those occasional attempts to derail her, he may also move her
keys. Never far or hiding them entirely—but he would shift them from the
pants she had worn that day to a pair that she had washed earlier in the
evening, only to toss that same pair of pants back in the dirty laundry pile.
She will go hunting for her keys, only to have Ethan say he thinks they are
in the laundry and have her find the pants that she could have sworn she had
hung up just hours earlier.
He may quietly correct her when she tells a story, reminding her that the
detail went a different way than she is reporting it. Did the story actually go
that way? Probably not—but he is trying to discredit her in her own mind.
That is all gaslighting is—it is a pervasive discrediting of the victim’s own
trust in reality.

Over time, the idea that Anna internalizes is that she is incapable of actually
ever trusting herself. If she is ever asked anything, she is quick to defer to
Ethan because she has taught herself that she is untrustworthy. This means
that Ethan’s control over her increases as he continues to tighten his grip.

In order to use this technique for yourself, you would simply start by
discrediting something particularly harmless. You may move keys or check
the mail early and pretend that your partner had checked it when they
hadn’t. You may make it a point to tell your partner that the oven was left
on when it wasn’t and more. Over time, you slowly up the ante. Over time,
the stakes of whatever is going on increase more and more. You point out
that your partner is driving to the wrong store and that you are going to one
on the opposite side of town when your partner turns into the store you had
agreed to go to. You may tell your partner that she forgot to pay all of her
bills and that you paid them all for her, even though she was up late the
night before doing so.

Eventually, gaslighting gets so incredibly powerful that the victim could see
a car go by and then you could deny that it had ever gone by. The victim
would be willing to accept that as the truth simply because she has lost faith
in herself.

Isolation
Another common manipulation tactic is isolation. People are social
creatures—we are primarily happier and more fulfilled when we have some
sort of interaction and relationships with other people. However,
manipulators frequently find themselves feeling threatened by the idea of
their victims having inner circles of friends and family members that cannot
be controlled. The manipulator wants to retain full control of the victim,
and as such, it becomes common to isolate the victim away from everyone
else he or she ever knew and loved.

It may start out as simple as voicing a displeasure about certain friends or

family members. Over time, it may strengthen into something far worse—
the individual may find that it is easier to cut off friends than it is to deal
with the jealousy or pushback. The manipulator may make up stories about
particularly problematic members of the victim’s inner circle, such as
declaring that the best friend of the victim has been trash-talking the
manipulator for the last week, even though the poor manipulator has done
nothing wrong. Over time, the victim internalizes all of this—the victim
begins to internalize this. If you are constantly told that the only person that
could ever love you is a person that has been abusive to you for years, you
may begin to believe that.

If the manipulator plays his cards right, he becomes the only circle of
support for the victim. This is intentional—if only the partner or spouse
works, the victim is stuck at home with the children simply due to the
prohibitive cost of childcare. If the victim wants to go out, there are always
a million reasons why that cannot happen. Ultimately, the end result is the
same—little to no support for the victim. Without support, the victim has no
one to help. Moving out can be intimidating, or even just impossible
depending on the situation.

Isolating people is commonly done by making problems between the victim

and those around him or her that the manipulator has facilitated. He may
make it a point to call out the victim, telling her that she cannot possibly go
out with those people because they are too promiscuous. The next time that
they are going to a bachelorette party and I was told, “Oh, you know what?
I feel really sick, and you’re going to need to take care of the baby.” There
is always a reason, and over time, the individual victim loses credibility.

Criticism
Remember how a basic tenet of being able to control the mind of someone
else was being able to damage their self-esteem? This is where you begin to
do that. You are effectively going to be attempting to damage the other
person’s self-esteem so much that they do not want to make choices for
themselves. The criticism that you shower them in is enough to deter any
decision making.

When you want to criticize someone else, you need to figure out what their
true weaknesses are. If they are commonly threatened by the idea of being a
bad parent, you may latch onto that, throwing it in the victim’s face as much
as possible. If you are working on a big project for school to get your
master’s degree, you may find that your partner is suddenly telling you how
dumb or stupid you are and that you will never make it. You may find that
actually being able to proceed is next to impossible if you feel strongly and
regularly criticized.

The more criticized that you feel as well, the more likely that it is that you
will fail. You will be distracted and all of your attempts to actually do better
will likely suffer as well. When you are too busy or too afraid to take the
leap in order to actually be successful. Your distraction will potentially cost
you your degree, and that is exactly what the manipulator wants. The
manipulator wants you to feel like being successful is an impossibility,
because if you believe that it san impossibility, you will not try to leave.
That means effectively, you are self-sabotaging without ever realizing it, all
because of the constant criticism fed to you.
Think back to Anna for a moment. Ethan criticized her regularly later in the
relationship after having originally gotten Anna in the first place. He chose
to behave poorly, telling Anna that she could never get the house clean like
he expected, even though he is home all evening without helping. She is
constantly asked why she cannot do anything right despite her best efforts,
and over time, that critical worldview becomes her own. All that needed to
happen was that Anna was repeatedly and ruthlessly exposed to the same
manipulative propaganda over and over again reminding her of just how
worthless she truly was.

Now, was Anna particularly useless? Not at all—she has taken care of her
child and also managed to work on school. However, she was not living up
to Ethan’s impossible standards and he was not afraid to make her pay for it
with his criticisms and sharp words.
Fatigue
Finally, the last manipulation tactic that we will discuss is fatigue. Have you
ever felt so tired that you were convinced that you would drop dead or pass
out at any point in time? Perhaps you stayed up extra late working on a
project and never got to sleep overnight. Or maybe you had young children
that woke up around the clock, indoctrinating you to the lack of sleep club
that every young parent is introduced to. No matter the cause, think about
how you felt after not getting enough sleep.

You probably felt like you were lagging and like you could not think
clearly. Despite all of the coffee that you had chugged throughout the day,
you could not help but feel like you were ready to collapse soon. You found
that you were far more ready to just go along with what your partner was
telling you—if he says that you need to run to the store to buy something,
you are willing to do so. If he decides that you need to clean up, you
begrudgingly get up and do it in your half-asleep state.

The reason that this happens is that over time, as you become more and
more exhausted, your mind’s own mechanisms of being able to fight such
influences begin to wane. It cannot defend itself if it is too exhausted to
function, effectively. Instead, those safety mechanisms, or at least, the
primary ones within your mind, malfunction. Instead of being able to fight
back, you find that you simply agree because it is easier. You do not see the
battle as being worth the little effort, so you agree.

Fatigue is a commonly used tactic afros the board. It has been used to
torture people into spilling information before. The studies of the brain have
shown that as soon as you have been kept up for just 20 hours, you are
already just as impaired as if you had drunk a beer or two instead. You need
to be able to rest to keep your mind sharp so you can protect your body.
When you are sleep deprived, then, you are susceptible to all sorts of
dangerous and insidious abuse.

All you have to do to make someone sleep deprived is actively prevent

them from sleeping as long as you can. Try to find techniques that can be
brushed off as being some sort of coincidence rather than intentional. You
may turn on a light and then apologize and say you thought the other person
was sleeping. Dose the other person with caffeine. Convince the other
person to stay up late with you for some reason—perhaps you will be
watching a movie together or something.
Ultimately, no matter the method that you choose, you will find that you are
able to gain covert control over the mind of others if you were to utilize the
tactics within a relationship or with someone else. You can weaken the
mind’s defenses. You can slip past them entirely undetected. You can
convince people to believe false realities and more. The power of mind
control is very real, but please remember that it is a dangerous ability that
should not be taken lightly.
 Chapter 5: The Power of Persuasion

Persuasion is incredibly powerful. When you can persuade someone to do

something, you can usually get them to agree with whatever it is that you
want them to do. If you want to get someone to go on a date with you, you
can persuade them to do so. If you want someone to hire them, you want to
be able to convince them that you deserve to be hired in the first place. If
you want someone to help you, you want to persuade them.

Persuasion occurs in nearly every aspect of life. It will be a prevalent aspect

of nearly every interaction that you have with other people. So much as just
suggesting to someone that you would like to go somewhere is a form of
persuasion—it is the attempt to socially influence. This means that you are
trying to get someone else to do something else, changing their behaviors in
some way.

When you can persuade someone else to do something, you have changed
their behavior in a way that did not involve coercion or forcing them
somehow. You effectively managed to convince them in a way that showed
them exactly why you are right. Now, whether the method that you used
was emotional versus being a legitimate attempt to logically convince
someone else is up for debate, depending upon whether you feel that
emotions are a valid justification method to use to convince someone else.

As you read this far, you may have questions: What specifically is
persuasion when referring to it in a psychological manner? How can you
truly be persuasive? Why does it matter? Are there specific methods that
usually or always work? Why do they work?
It is normal to have these questions going through your mind. After all, if
you now know that you can persuade people to do nearly anything, you
may be wondering exactly how that persuasion can happen, and possibly
even whether it is happening to you. The good news is that persuasion,
specifically compared to manipulation, honors free will. This means that
any attempts to persuade you are not necessarily coercive or threatening in
any way. Instead, they will place a particular emphasis on truly wanting the
other person to arrive at the solution on their own. That is what makes
persuasion so effective—it is guiding the other person to make a decision.
What is Persuasion?
By definition, persuasion is an attempt to change either attitudes or
behavior without duress. The persuasion usually comes in some sort of
communication. Keep in mind that many different aspects interfere with
behavior and attitude, which is why you can have some influential
techniques such as brainwashing or mind control, but then also have
persuasion. All are different forms of influence, and they all work in
different manners.

Keep in mind that not all communication is persuasive: In fact, you usually
communicate for one of three reasons. These reasons are to persuade, to
inform, or to entertain. Sometimes, you can sort of blur the lines between
the two, such as using the information to persuade or persuading someone
through humor to make the other person like you more. However,
persuasion is its own distinct form of communication that should be treated
as such.

Consider for a moment that you want to convince your spouse to agree to
take your annual vacation to Hawaii this year. You may be entirely
determined to go to Hawaii, but you know that your partner prefers to go
places that are far cooler. Keeping that in mind, you offer up all of the
reasons that you would like to go. You inform your partner that you would
like to get the sunlight to boost your vitamin D. You tell your partner that
you have always wanted to go to Hawaii, or that you know that it is
beautiful at that point in time. Your spouse eventually relents, though you
know that your spouse is not going to be particularly happy on the trip. Is
this a form of manipulation or persuasion?
The answer is persuasion—there were no threats. There were no attempts to
hide information. You were entirely forthcoming with everything, including
what you were trying to do. Manipulation usually involves some sort of
deception and covertness that you did not use when talking about Hawaii.
You were not dropping constant subtle messages in hopes of subliminally
communicating with your partner—you simply had an adult conversation
with your partner about why you wanted to go to Hawaii, and your spouse
loves you enough to agree, even if that means sacrificing what your spouse
wants to do the most.

This is normal persuasion and shows a normal sort of give-and-take in a

relationship. The normalcy of this persuasion would be further emphasized
if, the next time you are going on vacation, you consider what your partner
wants over what you want yourself.

Persuasion, then, becomes a valuable tool in many different contexts. It is

critical in attempts to communicate with other people in order to get what
you wanted or needed. It is beneficial when you are actively attempting to
convince other people what you would like to do. It helps you lead people
toward decisions that you believe will be helpful to them, such as if you are
a leader that needs to be able to manage the abilities and actions of other
people.

When you are going to be persuading other people, you are going to be
helping them make decisions, and this makes it powerful in advertising in
particular. In fact, persuasion is so readily recognized that the study of it
links back to the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, which you will be discussing
shortly, was commonly used and taught in the university, and was taught to
anyone who sought to become educated.

Now, without further ado, let us look at two of the most common sets of
persuasive techniques that you can find when you are trying to learn how to
convince other people of nearly anything at all: the principles of persuasion
and the art of rhetoric.
Principles of Persuasion
The principles of persuasion are commonly used, and you may even find
that you actively use them without ever being aware of it. These are six
common techniques that can be used in order to directly or subtly guide the
thoughts of someone else in order to ensure that their thoughts align with
what you want to push. This is not manipulative—it is taking advantage of
psychology in ways that can be persuasive and convincing to nearly
anyone. If the other person naturally makes the decision that they are
inclined to make after hearing the persuasion, that is not an act of coercion
and should be treated accordingly.

When you are looking at the principles of persuasion, you are looking at six
distinct techniques that can be used to persuade. These are social proof,
reciprocity, commitment and consistency, authority, scarcity, and liking
something or someone. These techniques can be incredibly convincing if
you know how to use them effectively.

At this point, it is time to delve into each of these techniques. You will be
guided through what the technique is as well as how to use it, with a short
example for each of the six.
Authority
Stop and consider for a moment: You have just gotten to your family’s
holiday gettogether. You brought with you your favorite mayonnaise-based
food, but in the rush and business of the kitchen, you realized that your dish
got left out on the counter. You got to the meal at noon, and you realized
that the food was still out at 5:30 when it was time to eat. Your great-aunt is
telling you that the food is safe, and everyone will be fine if they eat it.
Your brother, who is a professional chef, on the other hand, insists that it be
thrown out because it not only sat out in a hot kitchen for 5.5 hours, but also
however long it took you to get from your home to the potluck. Who do you
believe?

Naturally, you are going to lean toward believing the chef, who works with
food on a daily basis and is up to date on the most current food safety rules.
You are going to be inclined to believe the individual who has had to pass
classes on food safety simply because you trust him more on matters like
this. Have you ever stopped to consider why you would? The answer is
simple: You view him on an authority when it comes to food. This is only
natural—after all, he is a chef.
In general, people tend to believe the people that they believe to be
authority figures. While your great-aunt may have been an authority figure
in your life at some point, you also recognize that she has a tendency to
hoard and has a hard time throwing away any consumable, even if the use-
by date has come and gone. Effectively, you do not trust her to be an
authority on food.

This is one of the simplest uses of the principles of persuasion: if you want
to be persuasive, you need to make sure that you are an authority in some
way. People are naturally more inclined to agree with an authority over
someone who they do not see as particularly knowledgeable. This is natural
—we tend to defer to people that we believe know what they are doing.
This is exactly why we take the advice of doctors, lawyers, and mechanics
around the world: We trust that they know what we do not, and most of the
time, this is true.

Scarcity
Imagine that, at that holiday dinner, you all realize that someone has lost
one of the pies that were brought for dessert. When dessert rolls around,
you all realize that there is not enough pie to go around, even if you were to
cut pieces into small amounts. Everyone would, at best, get a sliver of pie
without much on their plate because of the lack of the pies that should have
been present.

Of course, now everyone is vying for one of the pieces of pie. They are
suddenly deemed to be far more valuable than they otherwise would have
been perceived for one reason: They are scarce. Not everyone can get a
piece of pie, or at least, not everyone can get a piece of pie that would be
satisfying, and because of that, everyone finds that that the pie must be far
more desirable than it otherwise would have been viewed to be.

This is the principle of scarcity. When something is in low demand, it is

suddenly deemed to be far more valuable. While pie may not be a very
high-ticket item to use as an example, the point still stands: The less is
there, the more it is wanted.

Consider instead that you are a car salesperson. You need to be able to sell
this car in order to get a bonus the following month, which is where you
make most of your money. Now, imagine that the person that you are
talking to does not seem convinced. They seem to feel like making a higher
down payment is in their best interest, which it is, practically speaking.
However, you really need to land that sale, so you offer a deal.

You tell the person buying that if they are willing to buy the car that night,
that they will get a steal of a deal—the deal that you are offering, however,
expires that night and they need to make a decision sooner rather than later.
The added pressure pushes the buyer over the edge from debating it to
agreeing to do so for one reason: That deal was made scarce.
People are risk aversive. They are far more likely to agree to something
with a guaranteed payout than risk not having such a good deal in the
future. The act of being able to save money now guaranteed seems far more
convincing than potentially saving more money in the long run if they were
to wait to have a larger down payment on their car, and they will use that
logic to guide their decision.

When you want to appeal to scarcity, then, you want to make sure that you
make the other person feel like they need to make a decision sooner rather
than later. They will usually err on the conservative side and take advantage
of the deal presented to them.

Social Proof
Do you remember how in childhood, you were often told not to do
something just because your friends were doing it? It turns out there is a
good reason for that suggestion—people are far more likely to make a
decision to follow the lead of other people if they do not know what to
expect or what to do.

In an unfamiliar environment or when under stress, people are more likely

to follow the lead of those that they can relate to in some way. This means
that if you need to convince or persuade someone to do something, you
want to make sure that their peers are available to show them what to do,
effectively.

Think about the holiday gatherings that you attended as a child: Did you
typically copy what the slightly older kids were doing? Did you pick up on
their behaviors? People learn through exposure, and that is what makes it so
powerful. Think about toddlers who will copy the swear words of their
parent, or the preteen who picks up smoking just because their peers are,
even if they are not particularly interested in doing so. It is not weakness
that makes us do these things, but rather the tendency of people to naturally
learn from those around them.

Imagine that you are still selling cars. You discover that people are far more
likely to agree to something if you tell them that their peers also often agree
to buy that one particular car for some reason. If it is a young family, you
may point out that many people with young children really like the features
such as being able to swing their feet under the license plate to open the
trunk, or being able to start their car remotely when they are inside,
finishing up the final preparations before leaving, all because it makes life
so much more convenient when you are already toting a couple of tiny
humans that inherently make everything about travel more difficult.

After all, when you are traveling with toddlers, you must consider whether
everyone has gone to the bathroom, if they are wearing clothing that is safe
in their car seat, whether you have their snacks and toys, as well as a change
of clothes present and so much more. You emphasize all of this, and you
find that your sales pitches become far more effective in the long run, all
because you make it clear that other parents also like cars with those
features.

Liking
Another common usage of persuasion is through the principle of liking
someone or something. We naturally tend to be persuaded more by those
that we enjoy simply because if we are going to be going through the effort
to help someone else, we are going to do it because we genuinely want to
help. This means then that if you want to convince someone to help you do
something, or to obey what you are suggesting, you want to make yourself
likable to you.

Making someone like you can happen almost instantly in several fashions.
You can make yourself quickly liked through simply making it a point to
mirror someone, similar to a technique common to NLP. You can also go
through the process of intentionally making someone like you through a
three-step process.

This three-step process is quite simple: You must make yourself relatable
somehow, you must offer a compliment, and you must make yourself seem
like team. This works for several reasons—when you are relatable, you are
automatically seen as more human than you were just a moment ago.
Consider just how many people you interact with on a regular basis: How
many of them are you able to actively remember? Can you remember who
helped you at the grocery store, or who you passed by at work? Unless you
have some sort of super memory, chances are, you do not remember.
However, if you can make yourself relatable somehow, you will be more
memorable and more persuasive. Because you see so many people
throughout the day, you tend to forget that they are people and not just blurs
that you pass. In changing that, you automatically want to give them more
attention.
When you compliment the other person, you make a specific association
between yourself and the other person: That you are a source of good
feelings. This does begin to toe the line into emotional manipulation for
some people—it is intentionally triggering the feelings of very specific
feelings for a very specific purpose, and for that reason, you should at least
make sure that whatever compliment you offer, it is a legitimate one that
you meant. If you did not mean the compliment and only said it to get them
to like you, you are likely to do the exact opposite: instead of being seen as
likable, you will be seen as manipulative, and poorly so.

Finally, you want to establish that you and the other person are a team. In
doing so, you trigger that camaraderie that is necessary for successful
persuasion. When they feel like you are on the same team, they are far less
likely to try to guard against you simply because they do not see you as a
threat. Because of this, you then become far more capable of persuasion.
Their minds will be more open and accepting because they do not think that
you will try to take advantage of them.

Now, go back to that example of selling something to someone. Imagine

that your next client walks in with a young child in tow. You settle down at
your dest to talk to the other person, and in doing so, you offer the child a
bucket of toys that you keep in a drawer for just that occasion—you know
that children get antsy when stuck at a desk for longer than about 2.5
seconds. You smile as you offer the toys and comment offhandedly that you
have a child about that age at home too and that it is always tough to get
through appointments, so you have made it a point to have your own toys
present just in case. You have now naturally offered a tidbit about yourself,
and that has made you more relatable.
Next, you wait a bit. After a little while of working, you make a comment
about how the child is incredibly well behaved and that the client has done
a great job with them. This makes the client feel good and they will be
happy.

Finally, you point out that you are happy to help them, or you tell them to
help you help them. This establishes that teamwork that you need in order
to convince them to do what you need.

Consistency and Commitment

The next principle of persuasion is consistency and commitment—people
are usually inclined to remain consistent to their commitments for one
reason: Being consistent makes you reliable. People want to be viewed as
reliable because being reliable is powerful—it is valued greatly and if you
can make people see you as reliable, they will continue to go back to you. If
you are a reliable salesperson, for example, other people will repeatedly go
back to you to make their purchases because they trust you. If you reliably
pay back your loans, your credit goes up and people are more likely to give
you loans in the future as well.

Because people want to be reliable, they will usually follow the same
pattern of answering and offering to help over and over again. For example,
if you ask your best friend to babysit your kids one night for the weekend
and they agree, you may find that they are more likely to continue to
babysit your kids regularly every weekend because they have already
agreed to do so once, and they want to continue to agree in order to be seen
as consistent. They will then continue to babysit when asked because they
do not see it as a strain or as a problem. Eventually, however, it seems less
like occasional childcare and more like it is happening daily and must
continue. That friend is going to likely continue to babysit without a
complaint until it becomes a problem because they want to be consistent.

All you need to do to take advantage of this principle is get someone to

agree with you on one point before asking for something else. A common
tactic for this is to ask someone for a pen to get them into a mindset of
saying yes instead of no, and they are more likely to continue to say yes in
the future.

Reciprocity
Finally, the last principle of persuasion is reciprocity. To understand this
principle, imagine how you feel obligated to offer someone else something
in return after they have given you something. If someone offers to help
you, you try to reciprocate in some way. For example, if your friend gives
you a birthday present, you feel like you are inclined to offer them a present
in return on their birthday as well.

This works for a very specific reason: People are inherently hardwired to
want to return the acts of altruism for them. Did your friend giving you
something or helping you actually benefit them in any way other than to
make them happy? Chances are, it did not, but them giving to you in the
first place can be enough to get you to continue to give to them in the
future. Effectively, they guarantee that you will make it a point to provide
for them if they were to need it because they have given to you.
When you want to use the art of reciprocation, think not what they can do
for you, but rather what you can do for them. Ask what they need you to do
before you go making demands and you may be surprised to see the result.
Rhetoric
Another line of thoughts surrounding the art of persuasion is rhetoric. This
is literally the art of being persuasive in the first place, and if you can
master this, you will be able to use these tools in general conversation.
These techniques have been passed down since the middle ages, and if they
have continued to be relevant, then they must be useful, at least in some
capacity or another.

Ultimately, rhetoric has several requirements. You must be able to control

language and know the culture within which you are working. Further, you
must understand the rhetorical situation, which will determine what you are
trying to do, your audience, the topic, how you will speak, and context. This
all combines together to create the rhetoric that you will be discussing.

The purpose for your situation will be acknowledging why you are writing
or talking. What are you trying to do? Then, you must figure out what you
are discussing—the topic. This should determine what you are trying to
inform or persuade about. You should be broad enough to be able to work
with this, while also being narrow enough that you have a very specific
purpose in doing so. Next, you must look into the audience—the person that
you are addressing. You may find that this is the hardest to work with, as
you will not be able to fully control the audience. You cannot possibly get
everyone to do what you want on a whim, and because of that, you need to
do your best to work with the audience that you have rather than the one
you want. Finally, you have the writer: This is the person doing the
persuasion. What are you bringing to the table? Why are you discussing
what you are discussing? How is it relevant to you?

With the situation identified, you are free to begin addressing the three
appeals of rhetoric: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

Logos
Logis is an appeal to logic. At its simplest, it is figuring out how to
convince your audience that there is no other option but to agree with you
on what you are saying. Oftentimes, this takes advantage of statistics or
other facts in order to get the point across. You want to make an argument
that is so strong, the audience feels no choice but to agree with it.

For example, imagine that you are trying to persuade someone to buy that
car you were really pushing for. At this point, you begin talking about all of
the statistics that mean that the car that you are discussing is safer. You may
pull up crash ratings, or how statistically they save more on gas than
compared to other cars. You are trying to bombard the other person with so
much information that it is undeniable—the best option available is to buy
the car, regardless of personal opinion.

Ethos
Ethos is an appeal to character. Unlike an appeal to logic, you are trying to
make yourself sound persuasive and trustworthy. In advertisement, consider
the fact that people tend to use celebrities in order to win people over. If
you see your favorite celebrity, who you personally admire, drinking a
certain type of coffee or wearing a certain kind of shoe, you are going to
feel more inclined to do the same simply because you want to identify with
that celebrity.

You may also do this to show that you are trustworthy on a science—
perhaps you make it clear that you have spent your entire life focusing on
that one particular study that you have finally accomplished. Emphasizing
that trustworthiness is a great way to make sure that other people will be
willing to listen to you as you talk.

Think of this as using an appeal to authority—you are listing out anything

about yourself that will make you seem trustworthy and worthy of being

Pathos
Finally, the last of the appeals of rhetoric is Pathos: An appeal to emotion.
When you are using an appeal to emotion, you are using emotion to drive
the individual forward. You want to make an emotional connection of some
way to actually get the audience to feel what you want them to feel.l When
you are able to claim and use their emotions, you will find that you are able
to convince them to do something.

This is for one specific reason: your emotions are meant to be motivating.
When you can use the emotions of other people, you can compel them to do
a lot. For example, if you are needing to get people to donate to your cause,
you mention some of the people that your cause will be helping. Perhaps
you tell success stories of people that have been helped by your foundation.
When you do this, people feel moved to act.

When you want to use pathos, you want to make sure that you identify the
emotional response that you want to take advantage of, and then you figure
out how best to trigger that emotional response in the other party. Doing so
can usually get the other person to do what you are aiming for. Think of
how commercials for charities will use photos of starving children and
puppies and kittens that look miserable. This is because these pictures are
sadness-evoking—they will trigger the individual to feel sad, and in feeling
sad, they can call for those donations that they want to see.
 Chapter 6: Brainwashing

Have you ever wondered why brainwashing got so popular in media? You
may see it in cartoons or as the plot point to an incredibly popular movie or
book for adults. It seems like it is commonly used as a device to scare those
that are consuming the media, as a sort of creepy, grotesque attempt to
make them feel compelled to keep reading while also being terrified.

While the concept of brainwashing is nowhere near as grotesque as it can

become in entertainment, sometimes involving serums, spells being cast,
possession, or other such tactics, it is still a very real occurrence in
psychology. In particular, brainwashing is commonly seen in situations such
as cults and prisoners of war.

This is not the kind of sudden triggering of perfect obedience that it may
seem to be in media, but rather something brutal and traumatizing. As you
read through this chapter, keep in mind that brainwashing is not something
that should be treated lightly. This is one of the most insidious methods of
control over someone else simply due to the harm that it can trigger. If you
are attempting to brainwash someone, you must remember that the only
ways that can utilize this technique are largely abusive and sometimes
illegal. If you choose to utilize these methods, you are acknowledging that
you are taking that risk for yourself. It is strongly recommended that you
avoid these techniques but understanding how it works is still something
that is important.
What is Brainwashing?
Brainwashing itself has a definition of creating new beliefs within someone
else that are typically radically different from the original ones. These
techniques almost always involve the use of coercion. If you were to
simplify this definition, you would say that it is the act of forcing people to
comply and internalize a new internal belief system through coercion. The
entire purpose of this technique is entirely to force people to change.

It involves the act of attacking someone else’s identity so thoroughly that

you are eventually able to systematically erase or repress it. This almost
always requires some level of traumatic abuse and guilt over an extended
period of time in order to truly get it to work. This is precisely why you
should avoid ever using this against other people—you would effectively be
intentionally and maliciously destroying a person’s very being in order to
create your own identity for that person. That is so incredibly harmful, and
you should make it a point to ensure that it does not happen.
Why Brainwash?
Brainwashing happens for several reasons. People will use the art of
brainwashing in order to indoctrinate people into cults. Typically, these dark
cults demand complete and utter obedience, and if you cannot gain absolute
control over someone, you are usually going to have a hard time getting
people to stick around long enough to actually actively be abused in any
way. In particular, one of the most well-known abusive cults that had
brainwashed and completely indoctrinated the members was the cult of Jim
Jones—he convinced his entire cult to drink cyanide and kill themselves
and their children.

Other times, it is commonly used during war—when militaries take

prisoners of war, they may intentionally brainwash them in an attempt to get
the people to break down and obey under any and all situations. For
example, during the 1950s, the Chinese made it a point to subject several
American soldiers to their processes of brainwashing before sending them
back to the US. The people then completely denounced their own cultures
and personalities, touting the importance and benefits of the world in China.

Even more often, you can see brainwashing in cultures such as North
Korea, through propaganda and attempts to keep everyone involved
compliant and willing to obey. When these people are subjected to constant
abuse with constant feedback about how their leader is the best leader and
that they must be perfectly obedient, they develop those beliefs as their
own.

What is important to note here is that these brainwashing attempts are not
hidden—the people involved will be entirely aware of what is happening to
them. However, what is unique is the fact that they still comply anyway. By
and large, when people do know that they are being coerced or manipulated,
they are usually able to distance themselves from it. This is not the case
with brainwashing—the new identity is typically taken simply because the
individual wants to stop some sort of egregious abuse that is happening that
is too painful or too much to bear. Rather than continuing to suffer, the
individual instead makes it a point to give in, allowing for the creation of
the new personality simply for survival.

This however also adds one extra facet—you can reverse brainwashing,
though the guilt will remain. Prisoners exposed to this sort of abuse do
eventually revert back to more or less who they were before—they may be
terrified of their identity at first, but over time, they become more and more
willing to accept who they are as an individual and renounce that old
personality created in brainwashing.
Steps to Brainwashing
Despite the fact that the art of brainwashing is so incredibly insidious, if
you are able to take advantage of this process, you will find that it is far
easier than it seems. It does not take much to entirely break down a person’s
mind, so long as you have no qualms about utterly decimating the
personality of someone else. If you are not afraid of destroying someone
else, you will find that with just a handful of steps, that person can be
destroyed and brainwashed. Of course, that does not mean that it is a quick
process—it does take a significant amount of time to truly dismantle the
mind of someone else. You will need to have the time, space, and blatant
disregard for the law and other human life to take advantage of this
technique.

Assault on Identity
Brainwashing is impossible if the individual that is being brainwashed is
not willing to let go of who they are as a person. This means that the first
stage of brainwashing is convincing them that they should not like the
person that they are. In particular, you will spend time assaulting their
identity in hopes of convincing them that their identity is problematic in
some way. Effectively, you want to make them fear who they are and
everything they value.

For example, you may ask someone what their name is. If they answer with
their name, you punish them severely and tell them that their name is
something else. For example, imagine that the person’s name is Bill. He
tells you that, and in response, you brutally beat him across the back with a
board and then tell him that his name is Larry now. Every time that you ask
him about his past, his identity, or anything else close to him and he answer
truthfully, you would then beat him in order to make him fear the truth. You
are effectively teaching him to fear the act of being honest with other
people about who he is and because he does fear it, he is not likely to
continue to repeat the mistake over and over.

Guilt
Next, it is time to instill guilt. As the other person is constantly being
penalized for who they are, they effectively must be convinced that the
abuse is their own fault. Maybe it was a fault of their culture or their family,
or it was simply them as a person. You want them to effectively feel like
they are responsible for their beatings and imprisonment, and you will get
this through repetition. You will add more onto their plate as well—you
may blame them for the fact that it is not sunny that day, or that something
unrelated to him has happened. You want to lay on as much guilt as possible
so the individual rejects themselves in favor of being able to reject the guilt.

Self-Betrayal
Soon, the guilt will build up, as will the fear of torture if they continue to
stand by who they are, and the individuals being brainwashed will find that
it is easier to simply betray their identities than it is to stay true to
themselves. They decide that they would rather break away from who they
are as people in order to protect their lives, as they have reached a point of
knowing that death will arrive if they are not careful. They would rather
betray themselves, satisfying the fact that they need to survive, and they
obey and submit.

Breaking Point
Upon denouncement of who they were as a person, the people being
brainwashed find that they have hit their breaking point—they feel like they
have lost all hope. They have accepted their new life and know that fighting
back is futile. This is the beginning of the adoption of the new life that has
been presented to them, as at that point, to the one being brainwashed, the
choices are to assimilate or die, and they have already rejected who they
once were. They officially give up at this stage and recognize that they will
have no choice but to accept the new thoughts or cultures if they wish to
survive.

Leniency
Next comes a ray of hope—someone that has been torturing the person
being brainwashed to the brink of death, when he feels like he cannot
possibly cope any longer, offers some sort of leniency. It may be a bit extra
food, or a cigarette, or even just a kind word. It is then that hope is dangled
in front of the individual and is seen as a legitimate option. The individual
will latch onto that trust, seeing it as proof that they can, in fact, survive, if
they play their cards right, and they latch onto that. The manipulator has
officially won the trust of the one being brainwashed, and they begin to
accept that all of the pain of torture will go away as soon as they are willing
to give in and comply entirely.

Compulsion to Confess
At this point, the guilt becomes too unbearable for the individual—he feels
like he cannot hold it in any longer and he feels that the only option is
confession. He is driven to let go of that previous life and let’s go of it all.
The manipulator, of course, encourages this, and soon, confessions are
flying for anything possible. Even things that are not the fault of the
brainwashed are confessed for in order to let go of all of that guilt.

Progress and Harmony

After that initial confession, the individual is slowly taught and assimilated.
This stage is the education of the new identity and culture. People are
encouraged to let go of the past. They agree to go along with what they are
being taught out of fear of being returned to the past, in which they are
treated poorly. Instead, they are given many basic human decencies to
encourage them to continue to make their positive progress in their life.

Final Confession
Eventually comes the final confession—this is the stage at which they
finally give up who they are for real. They are willing to renounce it all,
seeing the beauty in what they have been taught and finding that they
identify with the culture that has taken them in. They are willing to continue
to coexist in this new social bubble and are willing to get in as soon as
possible.
Rebirth
Finally comes the rebirth—at this stage, the prisoners are released. They are
no longer being manipulated, simply because they already have been.
Instead, they are indoctrinated and welcomed into the new society. While
they are usually eager to get involved with the new life and the new people,
they may be met with hesitation as people still see them as betrayers and
foreigners. There is no amount of naming and ceremony, after all, that
would allow the general population in that new circle to accept that they are
the new person. Despite all of the effort that went into brainwashing, the
general public still wishes to keep their distance, leaving the brainwashed
remaining just as isolated as before.
 Chapter 7: Deception

Have you ever felt the pressing need to lie to someone? Perhaps you felt
like someone in your inner circle was actively lying to you, but you lacked
the evidence that you needed to prove it beyond that sneaking suspicion that
whatever was being said was a lie. No matter how certain you were, no one
believed you and you were brushed off as being too sensitive or paranoid.

What if you could develop the ability to identify the signs of that deception
so you could call it out in the moment? Any time that you had those gut
feelings that something was wrong, you would be able to point out exactly
what it was that caused it. You would be able to tell exactly when you were
lied to, in order to point out to yourself that you were not, in fact, crazy.
You can end the constant self-gaslighting and instead work to eliminate the
deceivers that are hiding behind their masks, presenting you with one thing
while actually intending something entirely different.

What if you wanted to be deceptive? Sometimes, there is a good reason to

be, even if it is not always the most ethical option. Sometimes, it is a good
thing to convince someone else of something that is untrue, such as if you
want to surprise someone for their birthday. If you want to surprise them,
you can make it a point to know exactly how to skirt around the truth to
keep that surprise under wraps until the big day.

Keep in mind that while this chapter discusses deception in-depth, it should
never be used nefariously. It is incredibly unethical to be lying about what
is happening or why it is occurring, and the information provided here is for
informative purposes only in order to aid in the identification of lying.
There is no condoning of deception.
Defining Deception
Deception itself is a form of distorting the truth in some way. The truth is
often dramatized, avoided, or simply lied about to convince the other person
of what is being said, and in doing so, some sort of lie or deception is used
to disguise it. It can range from deliberately avoiding answering the
question or distracting from the question at hand, such as answering a
question with another question, and then answering that question. It could
be deliberately misconstruing the truth somehow, such as reporting
causation as correlation despite not having the evidence to support that
claim. It could even be simply saying something that is patently untrue.
What is true, however, is that deception is wrong. It can even be illegal in
several instances, such as in false advertising. If you are deceiving others,
you are putting not only yourself, but also other people, at risk.

Despite the unethicality of deception as a general rule, it is used in several

different contexts on a regular basis. It is regularly used in order to win
favor, such as in politics, for example. In particular, in politics, politicians
will regularly use ambiguity to avoid truly answering the question at hand
when they know that the answer to the question will be condemning in
some way, shape, or form.

Sometimes, people lie for abusive purposes. People like the narcissist will
lie about who they are as a person in order to win favor from their targets
with ease. They will pretend to be someone that they are not solely because
they know that it will help them in the long run. If they pretend to be
someone else, they are certain that they will actually attract the person in,
and they can continue to lie about who they are. They effectively create a
mask to wear to help themselves become the person that they need to be.

Other times, people use deception to hide something, such as making sure
that their partners do not find out that they are cheating on them. Ultimately,
people will lie if they think that it will benefit them. Despite the fact that so
many people are so willing to lie, it does not come as naturally as one may
think. Lying actually puts a huge strain on the individual at hand. When you
lie, your body is unhappy—it naturally releases stress hormones, and it
changes how body language is presented. This means that if you are able to
read those changes in behavior and state of mind, you can start to figure out
whether someone is lying or not at a glance.
Types of Deception
Deception comes in several forms, depending upon how the individual
needs to lie in the first place and what the truth that is being hidden is.
Ultimately, people will use whatever method works best for them, but at the
end of the day, there are several different forms that deception can take.
These forms are important to understand in order to both recognize the
deception as it happens, and also how to use deception as well. As you read
through the next several sections, keep in mind that you can use these
techniques yourself if you are truly certain that you would like to make use
of the deceptive powers that are shown to you.

Lying
Perhaps the most well-known form of deception is lying. When someone
thinks of someone else deceiving them, it is usually some sort of lie meant
to mislead someone. This is also the most blatant destruction of the truth. It
is the creation of a new sort of truth altogether—when you lie to someone,
you are creating a new narrative with a new truth that may or may not even
resemble the truth by the time it is spoken.

When you are lying, you are literally making something new up that is
unrelated to the truth. It is as simple as coming up with something new to
tell the other person. For example, imagine that you really want to go hang
out with your best friend who happens to be someone your partner is very
insecure about. You may tell your partner that you are going to the movies
with a completely different friend altogether to have an excuse to get out of
the house during the period of time that you will be with the friend that you
know your partner would be upset about. You have told a blatant lie in order
to avoid the fight that you know would otherwise arise.

Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you make your answers vague intentionally. You
are intentionally hoping that the other person will be so thrown off track by
the answers that you give that the truth will be ignored. This is commonly
used in politics in particular, in which the politician may answer an entirely
different question with wording that is just ambiguous enough to sort of
give the impression of giving the most favorable answer possible without
ever committing to that one particular answer. It is secretive in an entirely
different manner when compared to lying.

For example, imagine that you tell your partner that you are going out for
the night. Your partner then, naturally, asks you where you are going. You
say that you are going to watch a movie with a friend and leave it at that as
you walk ou the door. Your partner may think that you meant going to the
movie theater with someone, when in reality, you are going to that one
person’s house that makes your partner self-conscious and nervous. You
will still put on a movie at some point, so you are not lying, as you went to
watch a movie with a friend, but you were not forthcoming with pertinent
information that likely would have raised red flags for your partner.

Omission
Omission is the act of deliberately leaving out pertinent information that
should have been included in the original statement. It is designed to hope
that the individual does not press on that one particular issue in the hopes
that the person will instead focus on what was said instead of wondering
what went unsaid altogether.

Omissions are dangerous because not every person is going to think to

probe every line of questioning that needs to happen. Most people will
simply take things at face value, and that is exactly what this person is
hoping will happen. When information is taken at face value, the end result
is the deception going entirely unchallenged, meaning that it was
successful. Of course, it is always possible that the other person will probe,
meaning you would need to segue into another form of deception as well.

For example, the example for equivocation still counts for omission as well.
Not only is the information that was offered ambiguous, it was also
incomplete, leaving a massive hole to fill in. This is what makes it a lie by
omission—the left-out information would have been pertinent to making a
properly informed decision at the end of the day.

Overstatements
Sometimes, people use overstatements in ways that are intended to be
comical—they are tongue-in-cheek attempts to make fun of oneself and are
used specifically for fun. For example, someone may say that they were
dying after that long workout. Were they really dying? Nope—they added it
for dramatic flair, despite the fact that it is untrue.

However, sometimes, the overstatement is used in ways that are meant to be

deceptive. Typically, these deceptions are meant to play the victim or
martyr—the individual makes it sound like they did far more than was
asked of them and far more than was intended, and after that, they felt the
need to go out of their way to prove all of the ways that they did way more
than they needed to. As they talk about how exhausted they were, or how
much it interfered with their schedule, they are over-exaggerating to look
like the victim or the martyr that is deserving of favor.

Understatements
As a perfect opposite to overstatement comes the understatement. Just like
how overstatements can be used comically, so too can understatements.
However, sometimes, people will use the understatement to deceive others
as well. Typically, this is involving the amount that someone had to do with
something, such as someone not wanting to take credit for throwing a
birthday party at the office, or they want to make something seem like less
of a big deal than it actually was.

For example, imagine that you accidentally backed into a light pole when
you were driving—there is a massive dent in the middle of your back
bumper, and your partner is furious. You may understate the damage, saying
that it is fine and that your insurance will just cover the cost of the items so
you may as well just not bother fixing it.
Detecting Deception
Now, with all those forms of deception above, you may be wondering how
you can ever be certain of whether or when someone else is lying to you.
Luckily, there are some simple steps that you can follow in order to figure it
out. In general, you are going to want to practice analysis—discovering
what is going on in the other person’s mind through learning to recognize
all sorts of nonverbal cues. In learning those nonverbal cues, you will find
that understanding and learning what other people are thinking is actually
far easier than it may otherwise seem.
Keep in mind that this process does involve a steep learning curve, and if
you want to become a master at identifying attempts at deception, you will
want to take the time to learn more about analyzing behavior. In doing so,
you will have a massive amount of information to compare to in order to
figure out the truth.

Before you begin to identify whether someone is lying, you must figure out
what their base, honest behavior is. This is because people’s body language
will vary from person to person based on mood, temperament, and
environment, so you need to have a solid baseline to compare it to. For
example, people who are on the timid side may show that they are nervous,
but most of the time it is literally just nerves rather than any true reason to
be nervous, such as being deceptive.

With the baseline figured out, it is time to look for behavior that deviates
from that baseline as you talk. If you can pick up deviations and they fit the
bill for common behavioral clusters of people that are deceptive, you may
be on to something and you should absolutely spend the time looking into
things. If you do not recognize any lying behaviors, you may be better off
just rejecting the attempts to identify what is going on after all.

In general, there are several important cues to remember as nonverbal cues

to deception, such as:

Answering questions that were unasked

Answering questions with questions
Not correcting oneself during conversation out of fear of instilling
doubt
Faking a lack of memory
A report of what did not happen rather than a focus on what did
Figuring out some way to justify what has happened, even when
not necessary
Have some sort of exact alibi for exactly what they could not
explain otherwise.
Use less words than others
Describe actions weakly and passively
Focused on the weaknesses in others
 Chapter 8: NLP Mind Control

Have you ever interacted with someone before and found that, inexplicably,
you were beginning to have strange and powerful temptations about what to
do next? Perhaps you felt like you needed to do something that you would
ordinarily never bother with, or you find that your emotions seem to be
strangely all over the place, despite the fact that you should have been able
to manage them well enough.

There may be an explanation for this: Neuro-Linguistic processing. This is

a particularly powerful set of actions. Words, and behaviors in order to
trigger other people into obedience. Effectively, you will be able to access
and interact with the other person’s mind, quietly and subtly controlling
their mind in ways that were likely entirely unexpected.

NLP practitioners vary from people genuinely interested in helping

someone else in the world out to people with no other intention but to
manipulate and harm others. In particular, these techniques are incredibly
difficult to identify, and in not being able to figure them out, you may find
that more and more of your behavior changes over time. For that reason, it
is incredibly critical that you develop the ability to understand exactly what
NLP is and how it works. Not only will you be able to wield these tools
yourself if you so choose, you will also be able to identify ways that the
usage of these behaviors can be beneficial to everyone
What is Neuro-Linguistic Processing?

Ultimately, NLP is the ability to learn how to communicate effectively with

the unconscious mind of either yourself or of others. When you can access
the unconscious mind of someone else, you are effectively learning to
bypass all of the checks and balances in place to ensure that they are able to
retain free will. In particular, you are learning to become a translator
between the conscious and unconscious minds. The conscious and
unconscious mind both really struggle to interact meaningfully with each
other—one wants one thing, but the other cannot quite understand the
request. In the end, wires seem to get crossed, and no one is happy with
what has happened, how it happened, or what ends up being the end result.

However, with NLP, you can learn to speak that language of the
unconscious mind. NLP looks to identify the ways that you can do just that
in order to make sure that the unconscious mind is actively communicated
with in ways that are meaningful and important. This means that you will
be able to ensure that the conscious and unconscious mind are working in
tandem with each other.

This is important because, as is commonly said in NLP, the conscious mind

works out the actions and what is wanted while the unconscious mind is
tasked with ensuring that the goals and actions actually happen.

Stop and think about what the unconscious mind does for a moment—it is
responsible for taking care of any and all automatic actions throughout the
day. You do not think about driving—your unconscious mind does it for
you. You do not think about how to brush your teeth—your unconscious
does that too. Basically, your unconscious mind goes through all of the
motions, making sure that you are doing exactly what you need to get
through your day with the least amount of effort possible. It wants to
reserve valuable conscious mind real estate for issues that are actually
important, such as making an important decision on which job to apply for
or how to go about achieving that difficult goal that you have planned out.
Because there is only so much that can be fit into the conscious mind, the
unconscious takes over for you. It allows you to run on autopilot for all of
those tedious actions that you must get through during the course of your
day. Without the unconscious mind, you would find that you need to decide
and consciously focus on brushing your teeth, buckling up, and more.
NLP to Control Minds
If the unconscious mind is what takes care of all of your automatic, habitual
behaviors, then, you may wonder why that is what NLP seeks to target. This
is a great question—and there is a very simple answer. The unconscious
mind is responsible for emotions. Emotions are unconscious reactions to the
world around you. You do not choose to feel happiness or anger; it just
happens. However, emotions are incredibly motivating.

Your thoughts that underlie everything influence those emotions. Your

emotions then influence your behaviors. If you want to control behaviors,
you want to be able to alter emotions, and it just so happens to be that the
easiest way to alter emotions is through figuring out how to directly tap into
the thoughts of someone else.

When you tap into the unconscious mind, then, you are able to mess around
with that sequence. You can figure out how to create new thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors, all because you are bypassing the conscious mind and
interacting with the unconscious. Since the unconscious will almost never
actually be acknowledged by the conscious in the moment, this is the best
way to directly and simply interact with the other person to avoid raising
red flags.

When you use NLP, you are using a process that has been used for years
primarily in a therapeutic sense. Despite the popularity of it in recent years
when used in tandem with dark psychology and attempts to control people,
it was initially designed to be something that could be used regularly to
ensure that people were taken care of and healthy. It was meant to give
power back to the people, looking at what makes psychologists so qualified
to help other people when regular people are not. Effectively, NLP
techniques are ways to grant the powers of a psychologist to normal people
with little training. These techniques can then be used in ways that will
benefit everyone involved—you will be able to actively help other people
with ease. You will be able to alleviate doubt, create anchors to instill
confidence, and more, all because you have these skills.

Of course, there is still the possibility of using this mind control for more
nefarious reasons. Just as simply as you could use these techniques in order
to help other people, you can use them specifically to hurt others as well.
Instead of alleviating anxiety or traumatic memories, you can make
associations with fear and avoidance in order to push someone further under
your thumb.

Effectively, when you learn how to use NLP, you hold the mind of someone
else, their entire being, in the palm of your hand, and you will be able to
manipulate it at will.
NLP and Mirroring
Ultimately, before you can do anything with NLP, you must become a well-
liked individual. You must be able to develop what is known as rapport with
the person that you are attempting to influence, as without that rapport, you
have no entrance into the other person’s unconscious.

Your rapport with someone is effectively an accurate measure of just how

likely you are to be persuasive with that individual. If you want to be able
to impact the other person’s mind, you need to be able to access it, and the
best way to access it is to lower the other person’s guard.

Before understanding how to create that rapport, however, consider that the
unconscious mind is always watching. Even if your conscious mind cannot
possibly process everything that you are being exposed to, your
unconscious mind is still able to pick up on things. It recognizes even
subliminal signals, such as those included in advertisement that completely
subvert conscious understanding—and that subversion is what makes this
process so powerful. When you can subvert someone else’s mind, you can
take control of it.

Mirroring is just one way of creating that rapport and gaining access. When
you mirror someone, you are telling them something specific—that they
matter to you and that you feel some sort of connection to them. Mirroring
is what people naturally do as they grow to know those around them better.
Look at two best friends for a few minutes and you will see it—they will
both walk the same, talk the same, take drinks nearly in tandem with each
other, and more. They do this all for a simple reason: Their unconscious
minds have developed that rapport with each other. They are directly
communicating with the unconscious mind of the other person, saying that
they do like and appreciate that other person, and that the other person has
their utmost trust.

While developing a natural relationship will always be the best way to

create rapport, you do not always have time for that. In those instances, you
can create rapport with three simple steps: Create a connection, match the
other person, and then identify their punctuator.

Creating that initial connection is not particularly difficult—you will want

to make good, convincing eye contact, spend the time to listen to the other
person, and will the connection into existence. You effectively want to give
the other person your utmost, undivided attention in hopes of them realizing
that you do enjoy what they are talking about. During this stage, try giving
the occasional triple nod. This is when you nod three times in a row, usually
pensively, to communicate three things to the other person’s unconscious
mind. You will tell them that you are attentive, understanding, and agreeing
with the other person.

With that initial connection created, you will then make it a point to copy
the other person. In particular, you may find that the best way to do this is
through copying their vocal cues. While body language is always an easy
target to mimic, you also risk raising red flags simply because you are
mimicking them, and people generally do not appreciate when someone
else is copying them. Instead, concentrate on their verbal cues.
When you do this, you will usually start by matching the speaking speed
and intensity of the other person. If they want to speak to you animatedly,
return that right back to them. If they are speaking to you calmly and
quietly, you should do the same. In doing so, you are letting them know that
you are on the same page as them, even if the behaviors do not necessarily
line up quite right. Nevertheless, it is important.

With the verbal cues mimicked, try figuring out what the other person’s
punctuator is. The punctuator is something that all people do in emphasis
when they are talking. Some people may have a saying that they use
immediately after making the point that they want to emphasize while other
people may intentionally raise their eyebrows or make a movement of the
hand. What is true either way is that the punctuator is something that the
other person will have, and if you can identify it, you can use it.

Once it is identified, you should make it a point to actively use it. The next
time that you think the other person is likely to use the punctuator, mimic it.
In mimicking it, you will tell the other person’s unconscious mind that you
are someone that can be related to, and thus, you open up their mind.

Of course, you will want to test that connection before moving forward—
you want to ensure that the connection made is valid before you go
attempting to use NLP in other ways. All you need to do is move a certain
way to determine if the other person will move like you do. If they do, you
were successful. If not, then you have likely run into some sort of snag and
they are not going to be as likely to follow along.
NLP to Create Anchors
After creating that rapport, one of the simplest NLP techniques that you can
use when interacting with someone else is to create anchors. Anchors are
effectively a form of conditioning that can be wielded in order to control the
behaviors of someone else. Think about how Pavlov’s dogs were taught to
respond to the bell with salivating even if food is not around—that is
exactly what you are doing when you anchor someone, except you are most
likely using a technique that is far less humiliating.

When you want to start out, you must have a rapport built with the other
party. With that rapport built, you will want to ensure that you can actively
interact with the other person regularly. Since you will effectively be
conditioning the other person, you need to be able to do it with the freedom
to trigger and expose the other person.

Anchoring effectively requires you to follow a few simple steps: You will
need to figure out what the anchoring feeling that you want to use is. Then
you must identify a way for you to trigger that feeling. From there, you
must choose your anchor. With the anchor determined, you will need to
trigger the feeling with the chosen trigger, and then simultaneously use the
anchor at the same time. Over time of having the feeling and anchor
coincide together on a regular basis, the other person will, eventually,
become anchored—that is to say, the anchor will trigger the feeling that you
wanted to pair with it.
This process is actually far simpler than it sounds. For example, imagine
that you want to anchor your friend that has anxiety. He is always stressing
out about finals when he has them coming up, and as a college student,
those finals come up regularly. This means that he has no choice but to face
that fear regularly.

You decide that you would rather figure out how to alleviate that anxiety
with something relatively simple. You decide that you want to teach him to
feel relaxed when he is exposed to the scratching sound of a pencil. After
all, during a final, he is likely to hear the constant scratching of pencils on
paper.

Now, you have chosen a feeling and an anchor. What you missed, however,
was the trigger for that feeling. Perhaps you remember that your friend is
always super relaxed when he is listening to music. Something about it
soothes his soul, he always says. You then play the music as you are sitting
next to him and begin scratching away at some paper. You may actually be
writing, doodling, or literally just scribbling in circles, but the end result is
him beginning to relax as he listens to the music.
You repeat this process over time, making sure that it happens regularly as
you want to ensure that you really install that conditioning well. After a few
weeks, you find that just scribbling on your paper does, in fact, help him
calm down, which then enables you to trigger that calmness at will.
He never realizes what you did, but right around the next final, he tells you
that he is feeling strangely confident as he goes in—that he feels like he is
well prepared because as he had studied and took notes, he found himself
incredibly calm instead of freaking out like he normally is.
NLP and Pace and Lead
Similar to being able to anchor someone, another technique you can use
after being able to mirror and set up that valuable rapport with someone else
is the ability to pace and lead. When you can pace and lead, you are
effectively able to control the emotional state of someone else with two
simple steps: You first match what they are doing, and then you change the
tempo or intensity of it.

Remember, mirroring is usually a mutual occurrence—when you are

mirroring someone else, they are far more likely to mirror you as well, and
you need to remember to use that concept to your own advantage. When
you are mirroring someone else, then, and you can see them mirroring you,
you can begin to tap into their body language with your own. This means
that you can gently and quietly guide them into doing something else
without them ever actively thinking about it.

For example, imagine that you are talking to that same nervous friend. This
time, he is terrified because he wants to ask someone else on a date, but he
is too afraid to do it. He is nervously tapping his fingers against the table
and shifting back and forth, clear signs of his current anxiety. Instead of
leaving him to it without attempting to help, however, you stop and begin to
tap your finger on your hand subtly as you listen. You do not make it a point
to make it obvious, but you allow it to happen at the same pace as your
friend’s. After a bit, you slowly begin to slow down the speed that you are
tapping, and you shift your own body language to being relaxed and open.
You may slow down your own breathing in an attempt to impact his own
breathing rate.
After a while, you notice that his tapping is slowing down with yours. This

means that your technique is working, and eventually, when you stop

tapping your own fingers, you will see that he does, too.
 Chapter 9: Hypnosis

Finally, we have reached hypnosis—of the techniques for mind control that
you are learning, this will be the last. As you work toward the ability to
hypnotize people, keep in mind everything else that you have learned thus
far. The minds of other people are absolutely sacred and should be treated
as such. If you are going to be influencing other people, you should always
make sure to do it ethically. Remember, just because hypnotizing someone
for your own selfish gain is dangerous and not recommended does not mean
that hypnosis itself is bad. In fact, hypnosis has gained massive traction
lately. You see it used during labor, with women self-hypnotizing
themselves in order to avoid the pain of labor, focusing through the
contractions as a way to manage their own comfort. You see people using
hypnosis for cessation of cigarettes or other unhealthy habits. You even see
people using it to help them become more self-confident.

Ultimately, hypnosis has no shortage of usage or of people willing to try it.

If you remember to keep your control of other people ethical and
consensual, there is no harm in using these methods. However, you must
always emphasize consent above all.

Nevertheless, it is time to delve into the mysterious world of hypnosis.

Within this chapter, you will learn about how hypnosis works,
understanding that it is not the utmost control over other people that is
typically depicted in cartoons or movies—instead, it is a state of extreme
relaxation and suggestibility. We will go over a few positive uses of
hypnosis, such as in labor and delivery, and finally, we will look over the
steps on how to hypnotize someone else that is willing to be your subject. If
all goes well, you will find that influencing other people is far easier than
you may have thought.
How Hypnosis Works
Primarily, hypnosis works because it is cooperative—usually, one person is
willingly being relaxed into a hypnotic state, and the hypnotist then
encourages the thoughts and behaviors that are desired. In a therapeutic
situation, this may look like encouraging the individual to no longer care
about an ex that left or being able to resist those cravings of sugar and to
exercise more. Effectively, it allows for the implantation of thoughts in a
consensual way.

This means that the hypnotist is just the coach—they are there to guide the
way through the subconscious to create the results that the individual that is
being hypnotized wanted in the first place. The hypnotist effectively is able
to manage to walk the individual through the steps of hypnosis, and in
doing so, guides the individual to that state of extreme calmness.
Within the hypnotic state, it is often reported that the one being hypnotized
is convinced that they are asleep. They are so deeply relaxed that they feel
like they are entirely unaware of the world around them. However, that
could not be further from the truth—when you are in a hypnotic state, you
are actually incredibly aware and focused—but only on what the hypnotist
is saying. If the hypnotist is guiding you through breathing practices to keep
you calm, all you will focus on is what the hypnotist is saying. If the
hypnotist happens to be using any sort of prop or focal object, you will
focus on that. In being so incredibly focused on one particular moment or
instance, you will find that you are able to be readily and easily influenced.
This primarily works because of the divide between the conscious and
unconscious minds. While the two minds work together, the conscious mind
acts like a sort of filter between what the unconscious mind is being
exposed to and the mind itself. This means that the conscious is basically
the guard dog of the mind, and if it interferes, you are not going to be able
to get through to the more susceptible, impressionable unconscious, which
is where suggestions are meant to go.

When you encourage the conscious mind to focus entirely on one object or
action, whether breathing or the swinging of a pendulum, or anything else,
you distract the conscious. Think of what happens if you throw a dog a
piece of steak: They run after the steak and happily munch on that while
you are free to move forward. Effectively, with hypnosis, you throw your
conscious mind a steak by having it so incredibly focused on what is going
on.

As this happens, the hypnotist then makes several suggestions. They will
talk to the one being hypnotized, making sure that the unconscious mind is
able to absorb and internalize all of those thoughts nicely in order to ensure
that they do, in fact, become utilized and acted upon. Because the
unconscious mind is going to be the one driving actions without the
conscious paying attention, those behaviors become quite easy. They simply
happen because the unconscious mind does it.

Remember how in NLP, you are actively recognizing that the unconscious
mind is the one that controls everything? That is effectively what you are
seeing here. Hypnosis, like NLP, will make sure that the unconscious mind
is acting accordingly to ensure that the one being hypnotized is able to do
what was desired.
Why Use Hypnosis?
Now, with that in mind, you may be wondering why people are so willing
and ready to use hypnosis on themselves to the point that they would even
pay other people to help them with the process in the first place. The answer
is that hypnosis is incredibly powerful because the unconscious is
incredibly powerful. It should be used precisely because it does allow
people to tap into their unconscious minds to unlock all of the potential that
they needed to utilize.

When you use hypnosis, you effectively are making sure that you can draw
all of the benefits that your mind has to offer. It offers you benefits such as
helping cope with any phobias or anxiety triggers that you may have. If
your anxiety and phobia is rooted in your unconscious, what better way to
treat it than to directly impact it? It can help with pain management without
requiring medication, making it incredibly valuable for people that will
need pain medication but may find that they are at an increased risk for
addiction or abusing that medication if they have it. It can be used to fight
stress as well, working as a sort of grounding method for the individual
using it if they want to reach a state of relaxation.

It can also be used in more insidious ways—some people use hypnosis to

control other people. It is commonly used in brainwashing in cults, for
example, relying on the constant repetition of words or other methods that
are designed to tap into the unconscious mind in some way, shape, or form.

This means that hypnosis can be dangerous for those who are particularly
susceptible to its effects. Not everyone is, but the vast majority of people
are quite susceptible, and this means that these people could be subtly and
unknowingly controlled by strangers without ever realizing that it was
happening in the first place.

Using Hypnosis
Ultimately, hypnosis happens in several different ways—some people
utilize an utter bombardment of the senses in order to trigger that
unconscious state, while others will lull people into it with gentle
storytelling or guided meditations. Nevertheless, regardless of the method,
the end result is the same: The other person ends up being controlled
without being aware of it. We will stop and look at two simple methods of
hypnosis that can be used to trigger trances, which can then be utilized to
ensure that the one being hypnotized is entirely obedient.

Bombardment
Think of a time when you had a teacher or someone else that was
extraordinarily boring when they spoke. It didn’t matter what was being
discussed—their voice was simply so boring; you could not help but space
out when they talked. Though unintentional, that is exactly what this sort of
hypnosis accomplishes.

When you use bombardment, you are effectively creating a constant and
steady stimulation that drones on to lull the other person into a trance. It
could involve someone speaking rapidly in a flat voice or using someone’s
naturally unvaried voice in order to eventually bore the person into a trance.
The brain struggles with processing the information when it is all constant
and unending, which is exactly why it becomes so difficult to understand.
If you want to use this, then, you will want to start up a single topic and
stick to it for the next several minutes, making your voice as flat as
possible. You want to talk as much as possible during that time, not
relenting at all, even when you see that the other person is beginning to lose
focus. As the focus is lost, you can begin to talk directly to the unconscious
mind, making suggestions and encouraging certain behaviors.

Nonverbal Hypnosis
Another method is quite similar but is done in complete silence. However,
this one will require you to have rapport built with the individual that you
are attempting to hypnotize, as you are going to need to tap into their
tendency to mirror you if you want to be effective. When you use this
method, you are going to make sure that they are following along with your
own body language, and you will start to do something repetitive and
rhythmic that is still subtle, expecting the other person to follow suit.

When you use this, you are effectively having the same relaxing effect that
you have on an infant that calms down when swayed. Just as the newborn
calms down to the motion, so too do adults, even though they may not even
realize that they are still susceptible to actions like that.

Start by ensuring that you do have rapport with the other person. With that
established, you want to actively mirror the other person for a while until
you know that they are mirroring you back. From there, you will begin to
use several motions back and forth in an attempt to sway the other person
into a relaxed state. However, the key here is making sure that whatever you
do, you are making it subtle and easily followed without it seeming to stand
out at all when done around other people.
Perhaps you start by tilting your head back and forth ever so slightly. It does
not have to be particularly obvious—just gently and subtly move your head
in a rhythmic manner. Chances are, so long as you are subtle enough, the
other person will never notice that you are doing it—but they will pick up
on it themselves. As you do this, begin to use more of your body as well,
but make sure it is still just as subtle. Perhaps you slowly raise and lower
your shoulders ever so slightly along with the slight roll of your head. Then,
perhaps you also make it a point to rock back and forth on your heels as
well. You may also alter your breathing as well in an attempt to ensure that
the other person is breathing deeply and calmly.

With some time and effort, you will find that the other person is following
all of your cues, especially if you are a trusted party in the first place. As
they begin to relax, you will find that they are far more susceptible to what
you are saying, and you are more likely to be able to get them to internalize
information in this state than before. Make sure that you tell them
everything that you wanted their unconscious mind to know before you stop
the hypnotic motions, otherwise you risk them coming out of the trance too
early, mitigating everything that you are doing.
 Chapter 10: The Benefits of
Dark Psychology

At last, we arrive at the end of the book, and as we arrive here, it seems
fitting to stop with a brief address of reasons that you could use dark
psychology in ways that are not nearly as insidious as many that were
discussed within the book. Remember, while dark psychology may be based
upon looking at how the dark personality types prey on people, that is not
all that it is good for—it is incredibly important to understand these abilities
and skills. In understanding comes the ability to protect and prevent, after
all.

Nevertheless, as you have been exposed to several malicious usages from

several of these techniques, let’s go over the ethics of dark psychology, as
well as the benefits that may arise from it. Dark psychology does not have
to be the harmful concept that it has become because of the people that
wielded it—you can reclaim it.
Is Dark Psychology Evil?
For the million-dollar question: Is dark psychology evil? The short answer
is, no. It is actually neutral. It does not have the capability of being good or
evil in the same sense that gravity cannot be good or evil—it simply is. As a
force without free will, without any way to control itself, it cannot possibly
be labeled with a human construct such as good or evil. However, that does
not mean that it is necessarily safe, nor does it mean that it cannot be used
in hurtful manners.

While dark psychology itself is not evil, it can be used by evil people. Just
as it is not about the gun being evil, but rather the one wielding the gun that
determines how evil the situation is, dark psychology is entirely at the
mercy of those wielding it. If the individual who uses these techniques uses
it for evil purposes, taking advantage of these techniques to steal and abuse,
that is his own failure, and no one else’s. That failure is something that he
will have to address for himself and no one else, and that is significant.

Of course, that means that the inverse is true as well—it cannot truly be a
good force either. While dark psychology may not truly be good, it can be
used in ways that are beneficial to people, and throughout the book, you
were exposed to several. Is it really bad to influence someone to buy a car
that will truly better serve their own family? Is it bad to influence someone
to no longer have crippling anxiety at the idea of taking a final exam? What
about in hypnotizing someone to no longer have insomnia? You would be
hard-pressed to find anyone who would claim that any of those were bad
decisions or wrong, even though they all used techniques common to dark
psychology.
Remember, as dark psychology has been studied, people have gained access
into the minds of predators that are capable of far more than the average
person is. The average person is not going to be intentionally manipulating
and harassing people on the regular—he is going to be minding his own
business. He does not have any interest in preying on other people. So,
would that average person have a use for dark psychology? Quite possibly!
It can be used in ways that were discussed throughout this book, and those
can be beneficial to literally anyone that interacts with other people. Several
other techniques can be used on yourself as well. You can anchor yourself
to create your own coping mechanisms, for example, or you can choose to
self-hypnotize in order to help yourself build self-confidence. These are not
evil.

Ultimately, whether the art is good or evil, one thing remains true—it is all
about how it is used that determines how welcome the use of it is.
Reasons to Use Dark Psychology
There are several reasons that one may intentionally learn dark psychology.
They may want to use these methods to help themselves—perhaps they
were a victim of a dark personality type in the past and they want to
understand why. That insight is invaluable, and gaining the reasons why and
how someone was able to entirely and utterly dismantle someone’s
personality can be therapeutic in some way. In understanding how you have
become vulnerable, you can remove those vulnerabilities to figure out how
best to fight them off.

Some people may learn about dark psychology out of sheer curiosity—we
are fascinated by what scares us. After all, horror is a massive genre in
movies for a reason! You may find that learning how the insides of an evil
individual’s mind works is just as fascinating as it is terrifying, and for that
reason alone, you want to keep reading on how they do what they do.

Other people may read simply because they want to be able to fight back.
When you can recognize dark psychology, you can prevent it from being
effective. So much of dark psychology is all about being able to identify
vulnerabilities and exploit them, and if you know those vulnerabilities and
about the common exploits, you can simply side-step them. You can avoid
falling for them and instead work on strengthening your own skills to
protect yourself.

Effectively, dark psychology is incredibly flexible, as are the techniques.

The very same techniques that can utterly destroy someone else can also be
used in ways that actually better everyone involved. They can build self-
confidence and self-esteem. They can help cope with anxiety and other
mental health issues. They can make you more likely to be successful in
interacting with other people simply because you will have a better
understanding.

Above all, you will be able to protect yourself with ease. You will be able to
have peace of mind, thanks to learning about dark psychology. At the very
least, you will be able to rest easy knowing that the dark personality types
will be far less likely to pull a fast one over you simply because you know
what to expect.
The Insight of Dark Psychology
Now, as this book finally comes to an end, try to think about the ways that
dark psychology and the secrets that it holds may have provided you with
insight. What have you learned about the world that you did not know
before? What do you know about the mind and how it works? What secrets
have you learned that are invaluable?

Dark psychology is quite unique in the sense that it opens the window for
us to see through the eyes of the narcissist, the Machiavellian, or the
psychopath. In understanding how these techniques work, you can see
exactly what spurs these people to act in the ways that they do. You can
figure out why people want to behave these ways and what they stand to
gain by doing so.

While you may never want to manipulate others yourself, you may find that
the insight of understanding why is critical, especially if you are in the
position of healing from a relationship with one such person. When you are
able to understand the other person’s mind, you may be able to recognize it
for what it truly is—disordered.
Beyond just that, though, the insight provided in understanding dark
psychology allows us to see what made us so vulnerable to its grasp in the
first place. You will be able to see exactly why these problems arise. You
will know what it is that each of these techniques plays off of, and in
knowing what they use, you can figure out how to shield from them.

Consider that NLP directly influences the unconscious mind. When you
know that the unconscious mind is one of the most commonly attacked
parts of the mind when trying to influence someone else, you can remind
yourself to always do self-checks, understanding why you do what you are
doing at any time. You can ask yourself if the behaviors that you are doing
at that moment are your own, or if they are common for people that are
usually manipulated. You can figure out if the thought in your mind that is
driving you is your own, or if it seems out of place, or contradictory to a
though that you know that you have had for ages.

Effectively, when you are able to recognize the thought processes of

yourself in relation to dark psychology, you can figure out whether you
have been manipulated in the past. Knowing that is critical to recognizing if
you are actually a victim or if you are proactive enough to avoid
victimization altogether.

What is true, despite the insight that you have gained, however, is that, you
have earned knowledge. You have knowledge of what is possible in the
world. You have knowledge about the mind and some of its secrets. You
have knowledge about the predators that you may never have been aware of
in reality. That is invaluable. Knowledge is power, and if you can wield that
power bravely and proudly, you will be able to protect yourself.
 Conclusion

Congratulations! That brings us to the end of Dark Psychology Secrets.

Hopefully, as you read, you found the content to be compelling, interesting,
informative, and easy to follow. With care, this book was designed to guide
you through the world of dark psychology.

Dark psychology is the look into the minds of the most heinous, monstrous
humans that exist. When you are looking into the depths of dark
psychology, you are looking into the minds of those who are out to hurt
others. Serial killers, master manipulators, and abusers alike may share
these traits, and those traits make them particularly dangerous. What is
worse, however, is that these people understand psychology. They
understand exactly how they need to interact with other people in order to
be seen as charismatic and trustworthy enough to win a spot in the hearts of
their victims and targets. The dark psychology user is able to do this simply
by knowing how to manipulate their target in just the right way.

However, they can only hurt and manipulate you if you give them that
power. Remember, having the power to recognize and reject the abuse from
the dark psychology user will be your best shield and sword from them. Not
only will it help you guard against them and their attempts, you will also be
able to access their minds right back.

As you read through this book, perhaps the most important takeaway from
it all is to remember that dark psychology itself is neutral—it is neither
good nor bad. While the original wielders may have been malevolent, that
does not make their weapons inherently bad as well. Remember that being
able to understand dark psychology grants you a special access to the mind
of someone else and you should always be mindful of how you use that
access. It should not be abused in any manner.

Finally, as you finish up, remember to always keep your own use of dark
psychology ethical. Always ask yourself if you really need to tap into the
mind of someone else. Ask yourself if the other person is the primary
beneficiary if you do happen to tap into their mind. Ask yourself if they will
be happy to have the end results of you tapping into their mind. If you can
answer that they will be benefitted significantly and they will appreciate it,
then it may be an acceptable time to use your arts.

Nevertheless, as this book draws to a close, you may be wondering what

comes next. Ultimately, that depends upon you. You have learned some of
the basics of dark psychology. Do you want to learn more about the natural
users? Do you want to learn how to fight it? Do you want to learn how to
become a better user? What is your end goal?
No matter what that goal is, you may find that there are several options for
you to pursue from here. You could make it a point to learn how to become
emotionally intelligent. This goes hand-in-hand with being able to persuade
others with ease. You may decide to look into the process of cognitive
behavioral therapy—doing so may provide you with more resources to
protect yourself and heal from any manipulation that you may have
identified in your life. You may decide that what is right for you is to look
into the narcissist himself, learning how he abuses in order to better
understand him. You may even choose to delve into psychology in general
—there are several different topics that you may find to be interesting and
useful in your journey from here on out.
No matter what you choose, however, keep in mind that it is up to you.l No
matter what anyone else tries to convince you, you deserve free will. You
deserve to be able to protect that free will. You deserve to have that free
will honored. As you go through the next chapter in your journey, good
luck. Hopefully, you have found what you needed within this book, and you
will find what you need in the future as well.

Thank you for allowing me to join you on your journey through dark
psychology, and good luck as you continue. Finally, if you have found that
this book has been compelling, useful, or even just generally informative,
please feel free to leave a review on Amazon. Your feedback, whether good
or bad, is always welcome to ensure that these books are always improving.
Emotional Intelligence & Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Secrets and Techniques to Improve Mental,

Cognitive, Emotional, and Relational
Abilities. Overcome Depression, Anxiety,
Phobia and Negative Thought
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing Emotional Intelligence & Cognitive

Behavioral Therapy and thank you for doing so.

If you have ever felt like no matter how hard you have tried in life there
always seems to be something going wrong, you are not alone. Whether
you find that you are a negative person, that you suffer from anxiety,
depression, or a wide range of other problematic moods, or you simply feel
like your thinking is not as efficient as it could be, you may be feeling like
what you need above all is to find some way to protect yourself or how to
correct how you approach the situation.

Many people believe that if they do suffer from anxiety or depression, the
only treatment option for them is medication. While medication itself is not
something to look down upon, there are also several situations during which
you could choose to treat the issue behaviorally instead. Instead of
assuming you have no option but to use medication, you may consider
attempting to work on yourself instead.

Of course, you should make this decision in tandem with your primary care
provider, especially if you would have to discontinue the use of a
medication in order to begin focusing solely on the behavioral aspect. You
should always continue the use of your medication as directed and only
wean off as directed and with a doctor’s approval.

Ultimately, there are several ways that you can begin to treat yourself for
issues like anxiety, depression, anger issues, and insomnia through attempts
to change your behavior instead of attempts to change biology. Some
people prefer traditional psychotherapy, in which they sit and talk to a
therapist for an extended period of time to get to the bottom of whatever
issue they are having. Other people like to use eye movement
desensitization and reprocessing in order to help, especially if they find that
they are suffering from forms of anxiety related to unprocessed trauma.

This book, in particular, will address two specific forms of self-help:

Emotional intelligence and cognitive behavioral therapy. With the skills and
knowledge within each of these processes, you will begin to develop the
skills to tackle nearly any issues related to emotions. All you need is time,
effort, patience, compassion for yourself, and a guide--such as this book--to
give you all of the critical information you will need.

As you read this book, you will be given a guide to both the topics of
emotional intelligence and to cognitive behavioral therapy. Emotional
intelligence will help you build up the skills and awareness you will need to
be effective in a social setting, which can help mitigate anxiety and
depression symptoms. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can help you begin to
restructure your thoughts from the ground up—literally. You will be able to
change your unconscious thoughts in order to impact how you think and
feel about situations. In particular, you will look at techniques that will
guide you through tackling the symptoms of anxiety, depression, insomnia,
and uncontrolled anger. Finally, you will be given a list of several social
skills that you will find can actually help your chances of achieving your
goals.
Before you begin this book, remember, if you ever feel like you are a
danger to yourself or others, you should always reach out for help. If you
feel like you have urges to hurt yourself or to intentionally inflict harm
upon others, you should consider this as a legitimate medical emergency.
You do not have to feel that way, and recognizing that those feelings are
wrong is only the beginning of protecting yourself.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible; please enjoy!
 Chapter 1: Emotional Intelligence

Can you think of a person that you interact with regularly that does not
seem to understand normal social conventions? No matter how often you
interact, you may find that he is still just as clueless about basic standards
and how to interact with others, and it becomes somewhat of a drain.
Imagine your friend, Eric. He is someone who struggles to actually speak
his mind with other people. He frequently volunteers for far more than he
can actually comfortably accomplish. He tries his best to actively meet his
obligations, but to no avail—he simply overcommits and it always comes
back to haunt him.

Of course, he then gets incredibly frustrated and tends to lash out at other
people in response, despite the fact that it was his fault. He always finds a
way to blame other people for his own shortcomings, and they are never his
own fault. Even if he had dropped a plate out of sheer clumsiness, he is
likely to blame it on the floor or on his shoes, or even the way that the sun
was glaring in his eyes.

This is the picture of someone lacking self-awareness: A basic component

of emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is a skill set that is critical to success, particularly in

any setting that requires group interactions. In fact, employers will
frequently choose to go for the less-qualified, but still more-emotionally
intelligent individual over the smarter, but less emotionally intelligent
individual when hiring, specifically because of all of the benefits that
emotional intelligence brings with it.

When you are emotionally intelligent, you are generally far more pleasant
to be around, and that is something that even the best-built resume cannot
guarantee. You may have gotten a degree at Harvard, top of your class, but
if you are not emotionally intelligent, you are going to be excruciatingly
difficult to work with in any capacity. Think about Eric for a moment—he
was incredibly draining to interact with simply because of the fact that he
could not hold himself accountable.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
You may be wondering, then: What is emotional intelligence? You can
understand that it is an important skillset, but why? The answer is relatively
simple. Emotional intelligence is commonly defined as the ability to be
aware of and control one’s own emotions while also maintaining the ability
to manage relationships with others in a way that is fair and empathetic.

Now, that is a bit of a mouthful. However, it can be broken down into three
distinct points:
It involves the ability to understand one’s own emotions
It involves being able to avoid falling for gut reactions and
emotional impulses with self-regulation.
It involves being able to manage relationships with others in ways
that are fair, empathetic, and beneficial
Effectively, it is your ability to make sure that you are not reacting to the
world like an angry preschooler. Think about how a preschooler is prone to
react to almost any situation: If you take away something that a preschooler
was playing with, the child may yell and scream in frustration, or try to hurt
you in response. This is primarily because the preschooler is not able to
self-regulate. He is impulsive because the parts of his brain that are needed
to manage them are not yet developed.

When you are highly emotionally intelligent, you are able to remain in
control instead. You are more likely to react in ways that are intelligent and
strategic rather than giving in to whatever your most recent emotional
impulse was. If someone does something that angers you, you are not going
to decide to run them over with your car or get back at them, simply
because you know that, while anger has a specific purpose and place, it is
not what you should use when managing your relationships with others.
Anger is motivating, but rarely is the destruction that anger can encourage
worthwhile.

People naturally flock to those with emotional intelligence for one specific
reason—they are far easier to deal with than those who are not. If you can
make sure that you do not give in to your impulses, you are making
intelligent, informed decisions on how to react. Instead of screaming that
your order was delayed and will be late, you shrug it off, apologize to the
intended recipient and file away in the back of your mind that you will be
making it a point to order earlier next time to avoid the same problem from
happening again in the future. You learn from the past and move on without
letting it get you down because that is the most well-adjusted manner to go
about your life and motivators.
In general, emotional intelligence can change from person to person, and
people usually have differing amounts of emotional intelligence that has
developed naturally. Some people are simply more inclined to be
empathetic and self-disciplined, and because of this, the picture of
emotional intelligence is always different. It can present itself differently in
one person over another, but what is important to remember is that it is a
skill. Anyone can learn to be emotionally intelligent if they know and learn
how to approach the situation, and in learning to be emotionally intelligent,
you will find that you are far happier within your relationships. You will
find that other people are kinder to you when you are able to regulate your
own emotions and expectations, and you will find that you are more likely
to be favored over someone who does not have emotional intelligence. That
benefit alone makes learning the process and skillsets that much more
critical.
The History of Emotional Intelligence
Despite the fact that the concept of emotional intelligence itself is a
relatively new concept, it has always existed in some capacity. You can see
it across species, with those that are highly empathetic being among the
most effective leaders. In fact, oftentimes, in primates, the leaders show just
as much, if not more, empathy than the females of their species.

When you think about what it means to lead, this makes sense: When you
are empathetic, you are able to understand the feelings of others: You can
tell how the emotions of other people are impacting them and those around
them. You can tell what people need because you understand their feelings.
When you can understand their feelings, you are able to help them better:
You feel motivated to help people more than before simply because you
know how they feel and you can relate.

However, in relatively recent years, this understanding of what makes a

good leader a good leader has become more and more focused upon in
research. The usage of the term, “emotional intelligence,” occurred for the
first time in locatable history in 1964, coined by a psychology professor
named Michael Beldoch. He may have named the topic, but it did not
become mainstream until 1995.

In 1995, with the book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman managed to

push the concept of emotional intelligence into the limelight with his claims
that it was crucial if people wanted to be successful in life. According to
Goleman, upwards of 66% of what creates a successful individual can be
directly related and attributed to emotional intelligence. When you think
about it practically, this makes sense: Emotional intelligence determines
how people are able to interact with others. It is how people are able to get
along and solve conflicts, as well as how to build relationships. In this life,
it is next to impossible to live without any interaction from other people,
and this is exactly why emotional intelligence got so much support.

However, despite the fact that Goleman was responsible for pushing it into
popularity. There was research happening long before him. In particular, the
psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer began to study emotional
intelligence well before Goleman. They used the term with the definition
that you learned above with slightly more specific language: IN particular,
they defined emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize and
understand the emotions of both oneself and those of others, while also
being able to discriminate to decide upon which feelings should be used and
which should be avoided, while actively using that ability to discriminate
against emotions in interactions with others.

Effectively, they were the ones who came up with a solid definition that
made emotional intelligence what it is today. Salovey and Mayer, in
particular, studied how to understand the concept of emotional intelligence
as a whole, seeking to find out if it is necessary. Eventually, they came up
with what is known as the ability model. The ability model states that there
are four distinct skills that are necessary to understand emotional
intelligence and to behave emotionally intelligently. These skills are:

The ability to perceive emotions, such as through nonverbal body

language and expressions
The ability to reason with emotions, using them in order to
promote thinking
 The ability to understand emotions, learning to interpret
emotions, even in difficult situations
The ability to manage emotions, such as being able to respond in
the most appropriate manner, even when it is not the way you
would like to behave.

Not too long after Salovey and Mayer came up with their definitions, the
rise of Goleman’s model quickly rose to popularity, referred to commonly
as the Mixed Model of emotional intelligence. In particular, Goleman
identified five components that are responsible for emotional intelligence.
These five components come together to create the ability to behave in
ways that are emotionally intelligent, and they are:

The ability to use self-awareness

The ability to use self-regulation
The ability to keep yourself motivated
The ability to be empathetic
The ability to use social skills
Finally, in more recent history, a psychologist by the name of Konstantinos
V. Petrides has been dabbling in his own interpretations of emotional
intelligence. In fact, he came up with what was known as the Trait Model.
Within the trait model, it is assumed that the perceptions of a person’s own
abilities determine how people approach a situation. Effectively, if you
think that you are patient, you will respond patiently far more often than
someone who thinks of themselves as hotheaded.
The purpose of this final model is to recognize that people will usually find
that they are prone to very specific behaviors, and in learning that those
methods are how they usually respond to situations, they will use that
thinking to determine future behaviors. This is how people get stuck into
the same actions over and over again: If you believe that you are an angry
person, you are more inclined to behave angrily because you already see
yourself as angry anyway. When you then respond angrily, you prove to
yourself that you are, in fact, angry in general.
Chapter 2: The Purpose of Emotional Intelligence

Imagine that you are ready to go on a date with someone that you have been
wanting to ask out for months. You finally built up the courage to approach
the other person and ask for a date, but as you approach, you find that you
completely stumble over the words. With your cheeks flushing in
embarrassment, you need to figure out what to do next. You could yell in
frustration, something that you strongly feel the urge to do. You could leave
and refuse to speak to the person you wanted to ask out again because you
are so embarrassed, but doing so is only going to hurt. You could try any
number of different things, and you need to figure out what to do next, and
quickly. How do you do it?

This is a decision that will be made with your emotional intelligence in

mind. If you are not particularly emotionally intelligent, you are likely to
reject the idea of actually making any sort of scene that would be
problematic to your chances of getting a date. You are also not likely to do
something that would be embarrassing. You are more likely to choose to
regroup yourself and try again because you are invested in the relationship
working out. However, how likely are other people going to be to do the
same?

Emotional intelligence impacts everything. Because emotions drive nearly

everything that we do, lurking in your subconscious mind with our minds
telling us what to do and not to do through impulses, emotional intelligence
is vital to every decision you make. Are you likely to behave impulsively?
You likely do not have very good self-control or self-regulation skills,
which are an important component of emotional intelligence. Are you likely
to try to be the people pleaser, even though it means that you do not meet
your own needs? You may be inclined to say that would be incredibly
emotionally intelligent, as helping other people could be seen as having
empathy, but this is actually another sign of lacking it: You are too timid to
strive toward having your own needs met and choose the discomfort of not
having your own needs met over the discomfort of having to face a
potentially difficult situation.
Emotional Intelligence in Real Life
In real life, emotional intelligence has several practical uses. It actually
shows up in literally every interaction that you have with other people.
Even when you are by yourself, emotional intelligence is directly related to
how you handle any problems that arise or the way that you view yourself.

Imagine for a moment that you are in a relationship with someone else. You
are quite emotionally intelligent, but your partner is not. You and your
partner disagree about something, and while you are willing to disagree and
move on, your partner seems wholeheartedly offended about the
disagreement and claims that if you cannot change your own mind and
figure out how best to assimilate with your partner’s views, then your
partner does not think that the relationship is viable long-term. This is an
example of the difference between how someone with low and high
emotional intelligence would handle that situation—the one with low EQ
thinks of the situation as entirely worthless. They are driven by their
emotions, and if their emotions tell them that they cannot be in a
relationship with someone who disagrees with them, then they refuse to do
exactly that. They will not be in that relationship simply because they
would rather serve themselves than the other party. They need absolute
harmony in order to feel like their relationship is secure. Is that realistic?
Not really—relationships are never perfect. There are no two people in the
world that will ever have a perfect marriage without any conflict at all.

Emotional intelligence includes several very important skills in order to

function as well as it is supposed to. In order to be emotionally intelligent,
you must be able to be self-aware. The partner in the previous example was
simply not. The partner was unable to recognize that it was emotions
clouding the situation and that the relationship was not deserving of being
dropped just because of one small disagreement. When you are self-aware,
you know when you are behaving in an emotional manner rather than a way
that should be conducive to success and happiness.

Beyond that, emotional intelligence encompasses empathy—this means that

you will be using emotional intelligence every single time that you relate to
someone else around you. You will be spending that time with other people
and wholeheartedly expecting that the situation would be fine because you
can relate and communicate. However, that relationship and communication
ability comes directly from your ability to be emotionally intelligent.

Consider all of the social skills that you use on a regular basis outside of
self-regulation and empathy. Your ability to persuade others is a trait
common to emotional intelligence. Your ability to recognize the differences
between people as inherently good is a sign of emotional intelligence.

Essentially, if you are a good person and people genuinely enjoy being
around you, you are probably emotionally intelligent. That will come back
to help you in your relationships, at work, when dealing with conflicts, and
even just when you are at home and got some disappointing news. In being
emotionally intelligent, you are more likely to be happier, comfortable, and
successful in most aspects of life.
The Practicality of Emotional Intelligence
This obviously makes emotional intelligence incredibly practical—if it
determines the success in nearly every aspect of your life, it must be
practical in some ways, right?

That is exactly right.

Emotional intelligence allows you to do several things. You will be able to

express yourself without worrying about what other people think—consider
how usually, when met with resistance from other people, it can be difficult
to express your disagreement. When you are emotionally intelligent, you do
not worry about it because you trust that you have the tact to handle the
situation smoothly and effectively. This is a practical use—you do not have
to worry about uncomfortable conversations.

You are likely to be more resilient when you are emotionally intelligent as
well—think of the benefit of that for a moment. This means that you can
cope with disappointment and problems without immediately freaking out.
So many people these days cannot handle the stress of something changing
or plans having to be altered, but if you are emotionally intelligent, beyond
that initial worry, you will find that change is not so scary after all. In fact,
you welcome change. If that change came because something you have
done has failed, you would see it as the perfect opportunity to attempt to
learn from whatever went wrong the first time. This means that you will
legitimately be learning from your mistakes instead of feeling like they are
the biggest disappointment in the world.
Perhaps the most practical skill of all, however, is not the ability to
communicate, or the ability to cope with change and failure, but rather, to
be a good leader. Emotional intelligence creates fantastic leaders that are
able to weigh everything into consideration in order to figure out how best
to approach a situation at hand. This means that if you are a good leader,
you will be able to make good, clear judgments that are in everyone’s best
interest, even if it is not necessarily the path that you would have chosen
yourself. This is okay—it means that you are actively thinking ahead about
your people, and that is what makes you such a good leader. You genuinely
care about those that work with you, and you want to ensure that everyone
is taken care of.
Traits of Emotional Intelligence
Now, let’s take a look at exactly what it is that makes someone emotionally
intelligent. What are the traits that can be used to identify whether someone
is actually emotionally intelligent versus simply good at faking
relationships?

People who are highly emotionally intelligent find that they are often quite
competent when it comes to anything related to emotions. They can
understand their own emotions, while also recognizing the emotions of
others. They are able to relate to other people and use their own feelings to
help them understand, but at the end of the day, they do not give in to their
feelings. They are ultimately in control, despite the fact that their feelings
may be incredibly compelling.

These people are also incredibly motivated and driven—they have an

intrinsic drive to them that is rare otherwise. They know that they can
accomplish nearly anything, and they will always seek to better themselves.
Success is rarely the endpoint for these people, and they will always strive
for better, but also recognize that perfection is an impossibility. Effectively,
they are chasing after practical betterment without ever aiming for an
impossibility the way that some people without emotional intelligence, such
as the narcissist, may do.

Finally, one of the best skills of all is actually a series of skills. The
emotionally intelligent individual is incredibly strong in regards to social
skills. They are able to regulate themselves with ease around other people,
and able to communicate like it is second nature to them—because it is.
While it may have taken time to build that emotional intelligence up, with it
present, it becomes like second nature to always ensure that they are able to
communicate and interact with ease. These people are so good at interacting
with others that they seem to make friends and develop a following no
matter where they go. Everyone wants to acknowledge them and get to
know them, and their own charisma seems to attract people that want to
help with ease.
 Chapter 3: The Pillars of Emotional Intelligence

As touched upon earlier, emotional intelligence comes in the form of four

distinct pillars: Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and
relationship management. Each of these pillars contain several other skills
within them that come together, and when you are able to assemble them all
in one person, you end up with someone who is emotionally intelligent.

You can learn to develop each of these skillsets over time, manually
working with them until you are able to be just as emotionally intelligent as
those who were born with that flair naturally. Keep in mind, however, that
as you develop this skill, you consider the fact that it does take time and
energy. You cannot simply do two or three quick activities and suddenly
declare that you are emotionally intelligent. Emotional intelligence is the
culmination of the development of these skills, and that culmination only
comes if you are able to actively exercise those emotional intelligence
muscles.

You can then think of your emotional intelligence as your body: If you do
not work on it for a while and feed it nothing but junk, it is going to begin
to fail you. You will become unhealthy. However, that does not mean that
you have to remain unhealthy. Just as you can exercise your body in order
to lose weight and build muscle and heart health, you can exercise your
ability to be emotionally intelligent. Even skills such as empathy can be
developed with relative simplicity if you are willing to put in the work to do
so.
Now, we will take the time to go over each of the four pillars of emotional
intelligence, what they entail, and the most common skills that are regularly
bundled with them. As you read through this chapter, try to think about
yourself and where you play out in this all. Are you emotionally intelligent?
If not, what can you do to bring yourself to that level? Can you figure out
where you are lacking? Try to self-analyze as we go through this process,
and if it helps, use a notebook in order to write down anything that comes to
mind.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness encompasses your ability to know what is going on with
yourself at any given moment. Effectively, it allows you to know your own
current state with a quick check-in. In particular, you will need to be able to
identify your own emotional state—knowing exactly how you are feeling at
any given moment. Remember, you should know the emotion more
specifically than just saying that you feel good or bad—you should be able
to tell if good or bad is actually happy, angry, annoyed, disappointed, or
anything else.

Beyond just emotional self-awareness, you must also be able to perform

what is known as an accurate self-assessment—this is the ability to
understand your own strengths and weaknesses at any given moment and is
a critical skill to have. When you can accurately self-assess, you are
declaring that you are well aware of your own shortcomings and aspects of
your life in which you may need help. Remember, it is okay to need help
sometimes—but you need to know when to ask for it.

Finally, self-awareness also encompasses the skill of self-confidence. You

need to be able to trust yourself, knowing that you are capable. In being
capable, you must be willing to put your best self forward. Understanding
your own abilities and how well you think that you can do them, you are
able to make proper judgments on what is doable for you and what you
cannot do. It does not lack self-confidence if you turn down a job for
legitimate means—if you do not understand how to do the job, the self-
confident thing to do is to reject the job altogether because you know that
you are not the right fit for it and you are not ashamed to admit it.
Self-Management

The second skillset involved in emotional intelligence is known as self-

management. This will encompass all of the skills that determine how well
you manage or control yourself, including how well you stay on task or if
you are able to ever get anything done in the first place.

Those with high self-management are quite self-controlled—they recognize

that their own emotional maturity is critical and are able to control those
feelings and express them in appropriate manners in appropriate settings.
This is critical—it means that you are actively making it a point to make
decisions that will keep you from behaving impulsively in any way.

Beyond that, you are also quite goal-oriented as well. In knowing that you
need to achieve things, you are able to make sure that you are always
working toward them. You understand the value of goals and actively take
advantage of them whenever possible. This skill is invaluable—it means
that you are regularly able to keep yourself on track and organized enough
to figure out how to get there.

Further, that goal-orientation also comes along with the ability to be

motivated. You have the initiative to keep yourself moving forward, even
when you are not required to do so. You will move forward simply because
you want to continue to better yourself in any way possible.

You are also quite transparent when you are a self-manager—you are honest
with everyone around you, even when that involves telling people that you
have actually failed. You will always err on the side of honesty rather than
trying to avoid annoying other people with lies and half-truths meant to
disguise your own failures. You would much rather take the fall when you
need to in order to make sure that you act with integrity. This, however, also
brings with it a sense of optimism. When you know that you are going to be
honest with your work and with those around you, you can admit when
things are going wrong and act accordingly. Because you are motivated to
keep working and moving forward, you find that the optimism comes easy.
Social Awareness

The third pillar of emotional intelligence is social awareness. This is your

ability to understand other people’s emotional states just as you were able to
learn your own. Effectively, it is self-awareness with some empathy
sprinkled in for good measure to allow those feelings of understanding to
extend to other people as well. After all, emotional intelligence is a social
skill.

The primary skill of social awareness is empathy. It is the ability to create

connections with other people in a way that allows you to understand the
emotions of others. More specifically, at this stage, you are developing a
sense of emotional and cognitive empathy—this means that you are able to
develop an understanding of what it is as a concept while also being able to
relate to the feeling as well.

People with high social awareness also tend to develop what is commonly
referred to as the service orientation. This is almost like being a people-
pleaser but without the negative connotation. When you are able to develop
this service orientation, you will find that you are always happy and willing
to help contribute. You want to ensure that those around you that would be
reliant on you in any way for anything at all are cared for. Think of how
when you go to a restaurant, the waiter’s job is to ensure that you have
everything that you need—he facilitates your ability to enjoy a good meal.
He seats you and takes your orders. He brings you drinks and delivers your
orders to the cook. He ensures that you get all of your orders and makes
sure that everything is exactly as you wanted it to be, and finally, he helps
you pay and cleans up the mess afterward. That is a service orientation—he
is there to serve. When you are emotionally intelligent, you develop a
similar disposition toward helping other people. You find that helping other
people comes naturally and that you want to always facilitate other people’s
success as well. You will do whatever you can in order to ensure that other
people are well taken care of and happy.

Finally, when you have a solid sense of social awareness, you are inclined
to recognize organizational awareness. This is your ability to accurately
judge the people with whom you are talking to and scale your own usage of
language appropriately. For example, imagine that you are going to be
talking to people about road safety. You are going to have a very different
conversation with 5-year-olds about road safety than you would have with a
group of adults, and for a good reason—when you have that conversation
with children, not only is their understanding of safety entirely different
simply because they are younger, they are also not going to be driving a car.
A talk to children about road safety would primarily encompass a
discussion about ensuring that the children stay out of the road and do not
cross the road without an adult or parent to facilitate. With adults, however,
you may go into talk about what to do in inclement weather—many people
do not know how to drive effectively in the snow, for example. You may
inform people that what they need to do is get chains or snow tires or to
explain that in certain weather, it is totally acceptable to slow down
significantly to ensure that you are safe on the road as you drive. The ability
to understand how to scale your speech to your target audience is critical.
Relationship Management
The final pillar of emotional intelligence is relationship management. This
is effectively your ability to manage and facilitate the relationships between
other people. You will effectively recognize these skills as the ideal leader
skills in someone else. When you are effective as a leader, these tend to
come naturally as a result.

The first subskill of relationship management is becoming an inspirational

leader. This can take several forms—just because you are inspirational does
not mean that you have to be in the most authoritative role in the hierarchy.
You can achieve this skill simply by modeling proper behaviors. You show
that you are a good mentor that people can come to when they are in doubt
or worried that they do not know what they are doing, and you can help
facilitate them.

Beyond that, you are also bound to be quite influential. In particular, you
will be incredibly skilled when it comes to influence and persuasion without
actively manipulating others. You will have such a way with words that you
are able to efficiently and clearly motivate those around you just with your
words alone. You do not need to make major promises or attempt to
convince everyone else of what you want them to do—you can just get
them to do it.

On top of the ability to motivate with ease, you find that you also become
incredibly skilled at mitigating conflicts. You are able to stop them before
they can begin, but also to help settle any disputes that do arise. Because
you are so skilled at looking at other people and how they interact with each
other, you are able to figure out how best to improve relationships as well,
and you are quite skilled at putting together teams of people that
complement each other quite well.

While you are solving conflicts, you may also run into situations in which
you need to create change, and you are willing to do exactly that. In fact,
you are more than happy to do exactly that, and you do so on a regular
basis. If you feel that change is warranted, you will strive to make it
happen, even if it is an unpopular opinion or if other people seem to look
down on you for having that opinion in the first place.

Finally, you are skilled at managing and leading teams. You are able to not
only see how best to help others come to the realization that they can and
should be working together to really see the best benefits, you also now
recognize that there are ways to assemble your teems that will bring out the
best in everyone. Not only that, you are willing to work with them as well.
No job is beneath you when you are emotionally intelligent, and you are
willing to do just about anything if it needs to get done. You are always
happy to be a team player.
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy

While not one of the four key pillars of emotional intelligence, empathy
deserves its own section for proper recognition. When you are empathetic,
you are effectively quite capable of understanding and relating to other
people with ease. You find that you have no struggles with figuring out how
best to reach out to other people and find that you are regularly motivated to
help. That motivation to help comes from empathy.

Within empathy, when you become capable of both emotional empathy and
cognitive empathy, you usually develop what is known as compassionate
empathy. Compassionate empathy is your own ability to recognize what
other people need and feel the need to help meet that need, if at all possible.
Effectively, if you know that someone else is struggling around you, you are
able to relate to them. It doesn’t matter what the struggle is; you feel like
you can relate, and because you can relate, you want to help them in some
way. That help may be giving food or money to the homeless person you
see on the side of the road. It may be calling up a friend and offering to
babysit for the weekend because you can see just how overworked she is at
the moment. It could even be arranging for a fundraiser and meal train for
someone going through a major medical event without them knowing about
it.
When you have compassionate empathy, you do not care what you have to
do—you simply want to help other people, and you use that gift of empathy
to do just that. This is a defining feature of being highly emotionally
intelligent. In the lower pillars, it can be common for people to understand
somewhat what someone else is feeling or why their feelings are important,
but it takes true emotional intelligence for compassionate empathy to begin
to develop.
 Chapter 4: Emotional Intelligence and the
Narcissist

Now, if high EQ is so incredibly beneficial, what happens when there is

little to no emotional intelligence in someone? Ultimately, the individual
without much emotional intelligence often suffers from several important
symptoms that can cause a serious upheaval in his or her life. Lacking
empathy and basic social skills, they cannot relate to other people. Without
any emotional regulation, they are quite impulsive.

Now, before we continue to paint this picture of the individual lacking

emotional intelligence, let’s stop and consider the narcissist for a moment.
When most people hear the word “narcissist,” they assume that it is little
more than a buzzword meant to generate clicks. However, that could not be
further from the truth. Despite the fact that the name is derived from a
myth, the actual disorder is a very real occurrence.
What is NPD?
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder that is
primarily characterized by a strange, distorted sense of reality. The
individual suffering from NPD believes wholeheartedly that he is the best
person present in the world. He acknowledges that out of everyone around,
he is the best there is. He is perfection personified—no one can possibly be
better than him. Since he is the best person in the world, according to him,
he wants to be lavished in attention. He wants other people to acknowledge
that he is the best and that no one can say otherwise.

Of course, he says this with little expectation to prove it. He is so entitled

that he believes that everyone else must just give him what he wants
because he is that special. Ultimately, NPD is an incredibly destructive
personality disorder that wreaks havoc on those suffering from it. If you
suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, there is a good chance that you
lack empathy, you are grandiose, you assume that you are deserving of
attention, you believe that you are perfect and special, and you are going to
manipulate anyone that gets in the way of any of those truths.

Anyone who is on the outside looking in, however, knows the truth. Despite
the fact that the narcissist’s overinflated ego is fed by his own entitlement,
he is not actually deserving of that attention. He is likely not anyone like he
attempts to present himself as.

Ultimately, NPD is no joke. These people are manipulative, abusive, and

will pretend to be someone that they are not simply because they want to
get what they want. They will not stop at anything to get whatever else they
have decided to get from other people. They are so self-absorbed that it
does not matter what happens to anyone else.

In particular, someone who suffers from NPD will present with several
distinctive traits—they will lack empathy. They will be exploitative and
manipulative in order to ensure that they always get what they want in the
situation. They will make it a point to always focus on perfection. They will
believe that they are uniquely special in the world and cannot identify with
anyone else. They will have a grandiose view of themselves. They will be
obsessed with power, and they will feel entitled to getting that power, no
matter whether they earned it or not.

Effectively, the narcissist is the antithesis of someone with emotional

intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence and the Narcissist
If the person with high EQ is capable of empathizing heavily with other
people, the narcissist is not. The high EQ individual is empathetic and
giving by default, whereas the narcissist is demanding and selfish. The
narcissist does not care what has to be sacrificed for him, so long as the
sacrifice desired actually happens.

If high EQ brings with it leadership skills and admiration, both things that
the narcissist desperately wants, unfortunately, the narcissist lacks in both
departments. The narcissist may strive to have those two end goals, but at
the end of the day, his pervasive lack of empathy makes that impossible. He
cannot make proper, real relationships with other people simply because he
is incapable of relating to other people.

Now, you may be thinking, emotional intelligence is the solution to

narcissism, right?

Unfortunately, that is a bit of a complicated question. When you are

narcissistic, you believe that you are perfect and always right. Part of the
personality disorder is the inability to recognize when you are at fault for
something. Instead of being able to admit fault and move on with the
attempts to try to better him or herself, the narcissist instead doubles down
and insists that nothing is wrong with him. He believes that he is fine the
way he is.

However, remember that a major portion of the most basic functions of

emotional intelligence were self-awareness and self-regulation. The
narcissist has none. The narcissist does not accurately self-assess and does
not see anything as a weakness—everything must be a strength at all times.
The narcissist does not regulate emotions—if anyone angers him, he will
lash out at anyone around without holding back.

The narcissist is, effectively, almost untreatable because of these pervasive

beliefs. In order for emotional intelligence to be effective, the narcissist
would have to admit that he had a problem in the first place, and anyone
familiar with a narcissist would know that would never happen. The
narcissist is never going to admit fault or admit that something as
fundamental as his personality was flawed with a disorder.
Imagine for a moment that you are friends with a narcissist. You may be the
most emotionally intelligent individual in the world, but if the narcissist is
not willing to work with you, even your own empathy is not enough in the
long-term to cope with the stress of the narcissist. The narcissist will always
be so caught up in his own ego, demanding attention and support from other
people and expecting lavish acknowledgment anywhere he goes, he will
never be willing to put other people first.
At some point, it becomes a matter of needing to move on past the narcissist
without allowing it to bother you any longer. If you can do this, you will
effectively allow yourself to step away from the disaster sooner rather than
later.

Yes, if you are emotionally intelligent or empathetic, this will go against

any instincts that you have, which may be actively directing you toward
helping the narcissist, but remember that helping will not do any good for
someone who does not want to be saved. You can lead a horse to water, but
you cannot force it to drink, and at the end of the day, the narcissist will
never drink from any water that is meant to bring him back to earth. He
would rather force the world to fit into his own method of thinking,
expecting everyone else to make things easier for him rather than him
having to change. He assumes that he is so incredibly valuable that people
would do anything to keep him.
 Chapter 5: Intro to Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy

Emotional intelligence itself can be an incredibly valuable skill set to

develop, but what happens when you run into roadblocks? What if you feel
like you cannot possibly continue to move forward in your attempts to
become emotionally intelligent because your emotional state is too out of
whack? Maybe you find that your self-confidence is so incredibly poor that
you cannot manage to even convince yourself that people actually
genuinely like you. Maybe your anger keeps you down and you cannot
figure out how best to regulate it.

If you find that emotional intelligence becomes too difficult to push

through, there may be an issue with your way of thinking. Luckily for you,
you can fix that. All you will need to do is work through what is commonly
known as cognitive-behavioral therapy. CBT is a technique that is regularly
used in several different aspects now, sort of as a cure-all for many mental
health disorders. People have seen improvements in several mental health
issues with the use of CBT, ranging from depression and anxiety to even
seeing a decrease in distress caused by schizophrenia.

Even better, CBT is brief—the average session only lasts about 10 office
visits, and then you are off on your own to keep managing yourself. Does
this sound too good to be true? Despite how sweetly impossible that this
sounds, it is legitimate and recognized by even the United States Military as
a treatment plan for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. This means
that CBT is an effective way to treat several different disorders while also
being incredibly brief, making it a dream come true to many people that do
not want to spend their lives in therapy.

Within this chapter, we will go over the most basic features of what
cognitive behavioral therapy is, how it works, and why it is frequently used.
Try to reserve judgment until the end of the chapter—despite the fact that it
does sound like it is too good to be true, it is legitimate.
What is CBT?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy. This means that it
is primarily talk-based in order to get to the root of what is going on in your
mind. However, it differs greatly from what you may be used to thinking of
when discussing therapy. Unlike how in traditional psychotherapy
appointments, you may be sitting there, discussing random aspects of your
life for weeks or months on end, CBT instead encourages you to make a
handful of appointments to learn how to cope with whatever is bothering
you.

Effectively, CBT cuts out the middle man—instead of having the therapist
figure out what the problem is and how to solve it, the therapist teaches the
patient how to figure out that information for himself. The therapist will
provide the patient with information on how best to recognize the signs of
whatever may be suspected, as well as guide the patient through several
coping mechanisms that are meant to help deal with the negative emotions
in order to end problematic behaviors.
CBT is so incredibly effective for three specific reasons: It is brief, action-
oriented and focused on the present rather than looking at past problems.

Despite being brief, the patient is taught plenty of actionable information to

help him or her cope with what is going on in life. They are taught to
identify emotional states, understand what those states mean, and then learn
to discredit those emotional states until they pass to avoid falling for any
sort of impulsive emotional behaviors that could lead to problems later on.

Along with being brief, it focuses specifically on actions. In CBT, you

identify what the most problematic aspects of your life are and then you
figure out how best to handle them. This may be through figuring out how
to fend off anxiety, for example. If you are an anxious person, you may find
that you are better off learning to treat that anxiety. That anxiety will be
treated through methods like graded exposure or attempts to create
affirmations or roleplays to eliminate the fear.

Instead of essentially talking about the feeling until it no longer hurts ,CBT
seeks to figure out how to remove the power from the feeling altogether. In
removing the power, it can no longer be harmful in the future, meaning that
the problem is solved. However, the methods that are taught in CBT are
open-ended—just because that one anxiety problem is over does not mean
that anxiety will never plague you again in the future, and for that particular
reason, the actions that you are taught are never assigned to one particular
behavior. If you are anxious, you may find use of that affirmation
assignment, but what about if you were frustrated? Would that affirmation
still help? Maybe if you wrote new one about your frustration, but that
would be a fantastic idea. They are meant to be useful in several contexts in
order to maximize usability.

Finally, CBT really only focuses on present-tense problems. While it would

be foolish to believe that those suffering from anxiety have only had anxiety
as a recent issue with a recent trigger, it is important to note that those who
are suffering from anxiety should also be able to treat their current triggers
without trying to figure out when it all started. After all, if the end goal here
is to create strategies to cope with a specific symptom, does it matter when
that symptom started? Does the cause of the broken bone really help the
doctor re-set your bone or make sure that it heals, right?

Of course, it would be foolish to completely disregard the past—the past

can provide important information that is incredibly insightful into the
situation, but at the same time, it is imperative to remember that solving
past traumas is not always more important than figuring out how to prevent
new ones. When you allow someone to develop a strategy toward healing,
you are making it clear that they are able to cope in the moment. You make
sure that if that person has a panic attack, those CBT techniques are there
right then to help them out of that panic attack. Figuring out the direct cause
and start of the panic attacks is not as important in the short-term, and CBT
takes exactly that stance.
How CBT Works

Ultimately, CBT works primarily because it takes a close look at how

behaviors and thoughts are innately related to each other. While it may
intentionally hone in on behaviors, that is more because behaviors are far
simpler to observe than any other forms. You can tell what someone is
doing at a glance but you cannot always tell the emotional tone of someone
just by their glance.

This cycle between behaviors and thoughts actually has one more point—it
is the thoughts-feelings-behaviors chart. Effectively, our thoughts influence
our feelings. If you think that you are useless, you will feel like you have no
self-confidence. Without self-confidence, you will not be willing to apply
for that job that you really need. If you do not apply to that job, you
obviously never get that job, and you are once again caught up in how
horrible you are and how much you wish that you could change yourself
into someone else.

That means that the cycle has officially come full-circle. You thought that
you were useless, felt like you were useless, were useless as a direct result
of those thoughts, and then continued to use that as evidence of how useless
you are.

This is exactly why negative feelings can be so incredibly difficult to leave

implanted in someone else—when they are there, that other person is going
to have to work incredibly hard to get those negative feelings out in a
process that is known as cognitive restructuring.

Cognitive restructuring is effectively the backbone of CBT at this point—it

is the ability to stop, analyze your own thoughts, and then change your own
thoughts with other techniques. In doing so, you may find that it actually
does, in fact, work. The reason it works is because it breaks into that cycle
mentioned above—if negative thoughts make negative feelings, which
makes for negative behavior, what happens if there is a shift to positive
feelings instead?

For example, what if you replaced the thought of being useless with a
thought about trying hard to change your tendencies as a negative
individual? If you were to change that particular thought, you would need to
somehow get it implanted into your brain and then figure out the best way
to constantly be reinforcing it.

At first, that positive thought is in your mind, but you find it difficult to use.
This makes sense—It is a difficult subject to approach and yet approaching
it is the only right choice. So, after insisting that you are trying your hardest
in life and seeing the girl from the bar that you failed to strike up a
conversation with despite your desires to do so, you build up that resolve
and approach her. Of course, just approaching, something you were terrified
of doing, is enough to help you start to feel a little more confident and
successful.

Your thought processes begin to help you become successful. You find that
the more positive language that you use, the more positive you feel. The
more positive that you feel, the more likely you feel to actually behave in a
positive manner. Effectively, then, you are able to defeat key issues in your
life, one at a time.

Do you have anxiety? You can figure out how to eliminate that anxious
response from the internet or a book like this one. Are you lonely and want
to find a date? You can do that too, so long as you actively go out of your
way to try to do so. No matter what your mental health issue is, there is
almost always a way that you can use CBT to better cope with it in some
way or another.

It is important to note, however, if you are going to be using CBT, it needs

to be reinforced regularly. You want to ensure that it remains effective, and
the best way to do so is to repeatedly flex the muscles that you would use
involving CBT in the first place. This means that if CBT helps you with
anxiety, use it with your anxiety symptoms as much as you can. Even if you
feel like the symptoms are not that bad, try to use them. You will find that
you are able to reinforce them better and more effectively simply by using
them on the regular.
Why CBT is Used

Ultimately, CBT is used for several important reasons. At its root, what it
does is identify and change negative thinking patterns and with that in
mind, it is important to recognize just how powerful that is. Negative
thinking patterns spread negativity throughout your life. The more
negatively that you think, the more negativity you will find infesting your
life.

This is perhaps the primary use of CBT. However, think about all of the
areas in your life in which negative thinking may hurt your behaviors?
Imagine how you feel when your anxiety flares up—is there a negative
thought behind it? Most likely. Do you have anger issues? There may very
well be some negative thoughts underlying those as well. At the end of the
day, the only way to know where the negative thoughts are is to figure out
how to identify them—and CBT does that.

Negative thoughts can cause all sorts of problems. You may find that
negative thinking causes an eating disorder or a phobia. It could cause drug
or alcohol misuse, or lead to struggles with all sorts of personality
disorders. Effectively, however, the best way to figure out whether a
negative thought is at the root of any reason that you are struggling is
through plenty of self-reflection.
Negative Thinking and CBT

Negative thinking is typically quite rigid—you cannot change it despite any

efforts that you make to do exactly that. No matter how hard you try, you
may find that you are caught up in the negativity. Unfortunately, however,
recognizing negative thinking is something that is incredibly difficult if you
do not understand what you are doing. You need to be able to recognize
your negative thoughts if you hope to ever have a chance to help eliminate
them.

When there are negative thoughts in your life, you may find that rather than
actually recognizing the negativity, all you recognize is that life is going
wrong somewhere for you. You do not see that the thought is at the root—
just that nothing seems to work out. You may find that you are repeatedly
rejected from job interviews, or find that you constantly struggle to get
people to hang out with you. In the end, you find that you feel all alone with
no clear idea of how to fix it.

Finding the negative though in your life is probably the best, most clear-cut
method to ensuring that you can identify the reason everything seems to be
going wrong. The process to do this can take a while, but it is absolutely
worth doing.

To start, figure out when the last time that you were incredibly upset or
angry was. Do you remember what caused the feelings? Write down as
much as you can about the situation on the paper. Perhaps you remember
that you were upset over the fact that your friend would not hang out with
you again, after having already cancelled on you twice in the last week. It
left you feeling incredibly upset and worthless, and in response, you
spiraled into all sorts of negative thinking. You told yourself that you failed
as a friend, and that is exactly why your friends keep bailing on you. You
told yourself that you are impossible to get along with and that those around
you will never want to. You may have told yourself that you hate who you
are, which only pushed you deeper into negativity.

Now that you have that out on your paper, ask yourself to summarize that
entire paragraph written down to one sentence: “I am a bad friend.” With
that thought in mind, can you figure out why it matters? What makes that
thought so powerful? Why does it matter so much? The answer is likely
something about how you feel like you are a worthless person or something
along those lines. Ask why that matters, and continue to reduce down your
realization over and over again.

You want to keep asking yourself what that previous sentence says about
you until you reach the point of having a sentence that is entirely about you:
“I am a bad person,” for example. That right there is a core thought.

A core thought is a thought that you have that underlies everything else. It
is effectively the unconscious bias about a situation or setting that pushes
you to behave in a certain way or to think in a certain way. In this case, your
thought of being a bad person pushed yourself to think that your friend
hated you, wanted nothing to do with you, and would have been happier
with you gone forever. Was any of that actually true? Most likely not, and
yet you could not help but think it anyway.
Nevertheless, with that thought process in mind, it is important to write it
down. Record that core thought and keep it close for now. You are going to
be analyzing it to determine whether it is negative or simply problematic.

Negative automatic core thoughts are effectively some of the most

destructive that you can have, and if you are able to identify them, cognitive
restructuring is always the way to go. You can do the restructuring in the
process that is provided in this book, or you can attempt to do so with the
help of a therapist. Ultimately, all that matters is that you succeed in
eliminating the automatic thought once and for all.

Now that you have your core thought written down, it is time to figure out
if it is a negative thought or not. You can do this by simply running it
through a checklist. This checklist will be your sort of cheat sheet—it will
contain the most common forms of negative thinking patterns so you can
cross-check your own core thought to determine if it is problematic. If it is
problematic, you will want to change that thought as quickly and as
effectively as you can without risking waiting too long.

There are dozens of negative thinking patterns, but for the most part, they
will fall into one of ten categories. These categories are all or nothing
thinking, focusing on the negatives, pessimism, need for approval, negative
self-labeling, catastrophizing, dwelling on the past, mind-reading, focusing
on the should, and disqualifying the present. Each of these serves its own
purpose. Let’s take a short look at each of these ten negative thinking
patterns to get a good idea of what they are in action.
All or nothing thinking involves you telling yourself that you must do
things one way and anything short of that one perfected manner is a failure.
If you do not get 100% on that test, then you have failed it. Effectively, this
is perfectionism written into a thought.

Focusing on the negative involves putting an excessive amount of effort

into the bad part of a situation. If you had a date and it rained, for example,
you may focus on all of the negativity—it rained, so you couldn’t go for
that romantic walk. Your shoes got all wet and dirty and now you need to
scrub them. The whole day and date were a complete failure. In reality, the
other person was thrilled to spend the time with you and would have
happily described the date as good.

Pessimism is quite similar to focusing on the negative. Unlike how

focusing on the negative was looking at the past, pessimism focuses on the
future with a negative outlook. If something goes wrong, you constantly
think that something bad is going to happen in response. If anything is
successful, you believe it is for sure, only going to be temporary before
falling apart as well.

A need for approval is a definite sign of low self-esteem or major personal

damage. When you need approval from other people, you feel like the only
value you have is tied up in how other people see you. If you are not liked,
you are not worthy of anything.

Negative self-labeling is the act of telling yourself that you are something
that is negative or bad. You may tell yourself that you are a waste of space
or that you would even waste space in the garbage can and that your only
value would be in disappearing. This is usually incredibly disparaging
toward yourself and is incredibly harmful.

Catastrophizing is the act of telling yourself that it will always be the

worst-case scenario that happens. Things will never go well—you will
always fail.

Dwelling on the past is quite similar to focusing on the negative, but the
difference is that when you dwell, you are actively telling yourself that the
problem is in the past and that you cannot fix it. Instead of looking toward
the future and seeing that there are solutions for you out there, you are
actively avoiding making any real progress. Instead, you say that you may
as well continue to beat yourself up over that mistake so you can eventually
feel better.

Mind reading is the mistake of deciding that you know exactly what is
going through the minds of others. Instead of seeing that other people have
privacy to their own minds and that there is no way you could ever figure
out what is going on inside it without asking, and even then, you cannot
guarantee anything, you decide that you know exactly what the problem is
—you are the problem. You do not need any evidence for this; you simply
decide that you are the problem because you know it.

Focusing on the ‘shoulds’ involves getting so caught up in the fact that life
should be fair and people should have access to the same basic amenities.
However, life is not fair. It has never been fair. Some people win and some
lose, and ultimately, you need to accept that. It sucks to not get what
someone else gets, but that is life.
Disqualifying the present is the exact opposite of focusing on the past.
When you do this, you actively trap yourself into telling yourself that you
will take care of yourself or do something for yourself in the future after
you have already had the chance to figure out what was going on at that
moment.

With that list of negative thoughts, it is time to start figuring out how likely
your own thought fits into one of the listed categories. If you say that you
are a bad person, you are likely falling for negative self-labeling at the very
lest. You are telling yourself that you are something that you are not. No
one ever said you were a bad person. You also fell for the negative thinking
of mind reading. Your friend never said why they canceled, and you
assumed that it was because of you being a bad person and that it always
happens that way.

Effectively, the more time that you spend dwelling and trying to figure
things out, the more negative thought patterns that you inadvertently dig up
just through realizing that they qualify.

In identifying that negative thought, however, you do make it clear that

what you need is cognitive restructuring to destroy it.

The cognitive restructuring process has several steps and does take time,
but it is absolutely critical to beginning to defeat those negative thought
processes once and for all. You can do it if you are willing and able to go
through the effort.
Begin by calming yourself down—you want to make sure that you are able
to relax. You can do this through meditation or a breathing exercise if you
want to, or you can simply wait until you are calmed down enough to begin.
You can skip the next two steps if you have already gone through
identifying negative thoughts. If you are skipping the identification of
negative thoughts prior, you can continue.

With a state of calmness, identify what caused the negativity in the first
place. What happened? What triggered the negativity that you are feeling
right at that moment? Write it all down for yourself—you want to figure out
the moods that you had so you can begin to reflect on it later. After all,
emotions are incredibly powerful. In this case, you may write down that the
problem is that your friend stood you up and you feel angry, lonely, and
embarrassed that you are constantly being canceled on.

Next, it is time to identify your automatic thoughts. This was the step in
which you made it through your natural chain of events with the argument
with yourself. You told yourself that you were not good enough and
eventually arrived at the conclusion of not being good enough.

At this point, it is time to begin again if you have already worked on finding
negative thoughts earlier in the chapter.

You will be finding any evidence that supports the negative thought that
you had. If you are such a bad person, how can you prove it? You will need
to look at the situation entirely objectively and figure out how best to prove
that thought to yourself somehow. Do your best to do this. You may write
down that if you were left out, you were obviously not wanted by the group
to begin with, along with some other comments that are meant to support
whatever you have declared.

From there you need to figure out if there is any contradicting evidence.
What can you do to prove that thought wrong? How can you prove that you
are not a bad person? This is important—this is where you start to
acknowledge that the negative thought is wrong or flawed. You may tell
yourself that your evidence is that people always say hi to you when you
get to work, or that your cubicle neighbor brought you mini cupcakes and a
balloon on your birthday. You may remind yourself that your friends do
usually make time for you, but it is a busy part of the year, and you had
admittedly canceled a few times as well simply because the business was
just too much to keep up with at that point in time.

As you write these thoughts down, compare them to the list of thoughts that
you had set up for yourself as evidence of your negative thought. How
much actually fits there? Was it actually fair to yourself to tell yourself that
you are not liked, wanted, or that you are a bad person? Ultimately, it is
incredibly unfair to you to put that standard on you, but you will arrive at
that conclusion shortly.

Now that you have your two lists, it is time to weigh them. Which side
seems to be more accurate? In all honesty with yourself, you would have to
agree that the thoughts being discredited seemed more rational, reasonable,
and honest.

At this point, you should feel a little bit better. You are able to remind
yourself of exactly how the thoughts that you initially had were wrong or
negative and should be avoided. At this point, it is time to try to help
yourself continue to feel better. Write down what you have done and the
end results of your process of self-reflection. See how you feel after doing
that. Remind yourself that the balanced outlook was far better for you. Ask
yourself how to avoid falling down that chain of negative thinking again in
the future, and then remind yourself that it is important for you to offer
yourself some compassion every now and then.

Finally, to help reiterate your newfound viewpoint of the situation, it can

help to create some affirmations. These affirmations will exist as your sort
of reminder that things are not as bad as they may initially seem and that
you can keep your thinking in the positive if you work at it enough.
Affirmations will be addressed in-depth later in this book in Chapter 8:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques to Eliminate Anxiety.
 Chapter 6: Cognitive Therapy and Behavioral
Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy acts as a sort of bridge between both

cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy. Drawing from both, it finds ways
to understand and influence behavior in methods that would not entirely be
possible without them both. Effectively, when you are using cognitive
behavioral therapy, you are using one of the most powerful, influential
forms of therapy for the time. It takes the best of cognitive therapy,
recognizing that we are a sum of our thoughts and that our thoughts
influence our behaviors. It also recognizes that our thoughts are directly
influenced by the environment around us, one of the facets of behavioral
therapy.

When you are using CBT, you are effectively getting all of the benefits of
both therapies at the same time, and the result is incredibly effective. It is
difficult to argue with statistics that strongly support the effectiveness and
veracity of CBT as a therapy—it is active and effective, allowing for the
reconstruction of both thoughts and behaviors. In the end, in tackling both
perspectives at the same time, people get a treatment method that is able to
handle nearly anything.

The best way to understand CBT, however, is to look at each of its

components. Within this chapter, we will seek to understand both cognitive
and behavioral therapies, allowing you to see what the main purposes of
both of them are. In seeing the expectations and tendencies of both
therapies outlined for you, you may realize that CBT is the sort of perfect
blend between the two, and that is what makes it so incredibly powerful.
Understanding Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy itself is best understood by the idea that the individual’s
thoughts are influential to the individual’s feelings. Within this perspective,
the emotional response felt is typically a direct response to a situation at
hand. Effectively, your feelings are usually caused by your thoughts on a
situation.

Imagine that you are greatly afraid of dogs. You were bitten as a young
child and never managed to overcome the overwhelming fear that washes
over you when you see another dog that is larger than a Chihuahua. In this
instance, you have just found yourself exposed to someone walking a Great
Dane down the road .The dog is perfectly well behaved, but you cannot
seem to tolerate the sight of it.

Your heart starts to race. You feel your breathing grow shallow and rapid.
You look around you and there is no clear escape from the individual
without dipping into someone’s yard and trying to get into an alleyway. You
are effectively trapped. You can keep walking toward the dog, or you can
walk in the same direction as the dog, but either way, you are going to be
stuck in close proximity to it.

Now, if you had randomly felt those symptoms sitting around and doing
nothing, you may have been concerned that there was something wrong
with you medically—it is always distressing to have that racing heart and
the shortness of breath. However, in this instance, you are well-acquainted
with the feeling—anxiety. You are feeling anxiety at the situation because
you are afraid of the dog.
In cognitive therapy, the therapist asserts that the reason that you are afraid
is not that dogs are inherently scary, but rather because your thoughts about
the dog make it scary. Effectively, your thoughts are directly swaying your
feelings. You have negative thoughts surrounding dogs, stemming from the
attack that you suffered, and despite knowing that, you can still never seem
to overcome your phobia in any meaningful way. You still feel that same
sense of panic when approached by a dog.

Effectively, cognitive therapy states that the thoughts that you have
surrounding that dog is biased and, therefore, not particularly suitable for
functionality. You then build up your own negative thoughts surrounding
the situation, and those thoughts color your emotions. This means, however,
that you can tackle that fear relatively easily—all you need to do is figure
out how best to address the situation. You can learn to process your
thoughts in order to free your feelings once and for all.

When you are in cognitive therapy, you are directly being taught by your
therapist to develop new skillsets to help you. The skillset in particular that
you will be learning includes several abilities and concepts familiar to
anyone that knows their cognitive behavioral therapy.

You will learn how to tell the difference between thoughts and feelings,
which will enable you to remove the power from many of those negative
thoughts as they arise. When you can tell the difference between the two,
you can acknowledge that you are not actually frightened of the dog, you
are frightened because you think the dog is scary.
You discover the cycle in which thoughts, including automatic thoughts,
influence feelings, and how that can be problematic if the thoughts that you
have driving your feelings are negative. These negative or distorted
thoughts can be incredibly problematic in nearly any context. They will
make it next to impossible for you to actively manage the situations at hand,
and correcting those thoughts is crucial if you hope to be able to manage
your emotions.

You will discover how to critically evaluate your automatic thoughts in

order to determine if they are accurate or biased. In knowing that some of
the thoughts that you are having are biased, you can begin to overcome
them, defeating them with the reminders of their biased nature. Effectively,
this teaches you to figure out how to interrupt and restructure your biased
thoughts as they arise, allowing you to better your emotional state.
Understanding Behavioral Therapy
Behavioral therapy, on the other hand, seeks to identify how any thoughts
that you have get rewarded or reinforced over time, even if by accident.
Within the behavioral therapy perspective, you are able to acknowledge that
sometimes, we accidentally reinforce negative thoughts and biases, and in
reinforcing them, we make them that much more likely to continue.

For example, let’s go back to being afraid of dogs—you are terrified of the
dogs that you encounter from day to day. This is typical. However, every
time that you respond in a manner that is afraid of dogs, you avoid a
negative interaction with the dog. This then leads to your fear of being
reinforced. You may also run into the problem of reinforcing your fear
every time you read an article online about how dogs have attacked or
maimed people in your general vicinity. Overall, you constantly find
yourself struggling to interact with dogs, and the longer your fear lasts, the
longer you reinforce it.

A slightly different version of this is in recognizing the ways in which you

can run into a problem with children. For example, imagine that you have a
child that regularly throws temper tantrums when he wants something. You
do not want to give in to what he wants and you do your best to avoid it.
However, occasionally, you feel like it is not worth the battle and you
simply give in to the boy instead, feeling like it is preferable to the option of
simply refusing and dealing with the headache surrounding standing your
ground. Although you may see this as attempting to avoid a tantrum that
you simply do not want to put up with because you are tired, your child has
just been reinforced. You made it clear that if your child threatens to throw
a fit, he gets what he wants. His behavior just reinforced his thoughts.

When Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy Collide

Now, consider what this means for CBT—you can see aspects of both
cognitive and behavioral therapy in what has formed with CBT. In
particular, you recognize that the cognitive therapy concept of thoughts
influencing feelings being involved. You see that therapy is meant to be
actionable and designed to restructure thoughts in order to change the
feelings. When you restructure thoughts, you are actively engaging in one
of the primary principles of CBT—you are making sure that you tackle
problematic negative thoughts and turn them instead into something
functional.

Now look at behavioral therapy—in particular, you see the idea that
behaviors reinforce thoughts. This is the last half of the cycle in CBT that
involves thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. When you are able to
acknowledge this cycle, you can begin to engage in all of the processes that
CBT boasts as being it’s most effective. The behavioral portion of CBT
encourages people to try new things, allowing for the creation of positive
associations, such as through acts like goal-setting and behavior activation,
in which you are able to actively begin to create new behavioral patterns
and reinforce them, allowing them to become as automatic as the negative
ones.

Essentially, CBT wanted to combine the two, bridging the gaps and making
use of all techniques and possibilities. Within CBT, you see that people are
taught to restructure their own thoughts, but they are also taught to avoid
reinforcing negative thoughts. You are able to ensure that you are actively
working toward bettering who you are, what you want, and how you will
get it all because you will be tackling the problem from two different
perspectives to ensure that the end results are as effective as possible.
 Chapter 7: Anxiety

Imagine that you are sitting at home, minding your own business when your
heart starts to race. You had been just fine moments prior and now you
cannot help but feel that sense of panic and dread within you—you cannot
shake the feeling that you are being followed, watched, or being threatened,
and no matter how much you walk yourself through the logic of why you
are safe and not needing to worry, you find that the feeling of dread will not
pass. You do your best to mitigate it, and yet you cannot help but feel like
you are stuck. Your best attempts do nothing and you begin to wonder if
you are actually dying, in danger, or otherwise threatened or compromised.

In reality, you are perfectly okay, physically. You are feeling the sensation
of anxiety. This is your body’s natural response to stress, during which you
are actively afraid of what is to come. Your anxiety triggers could be
anything—arguing, bills coming due, or even an offhanded comment
toward your partner about something entirely irrelevant to everything. What
is true and constant, however, is the overwhelming, terrifying sensation that
you are in real danger.
When you are anxious, you are suffering from a mental health disorder.
This does not mean that you should feel ashamed—you cannot help that
your body is reacting in this way. However, you can reclaim your body and
begin to treat it. This chapter will guide you through understanding anxiety
as a disorder, walk you through the most common disorders there are, and
then discuss how CBT is a valid solution for those suffering from anxiety.

In the next chapter, you will be provided with three techniques that you can
use in order to begin taking back your life and fighting off that anxiety once
and for all. While it can be intimidating to try to figure out how to help
yourself, know that you are doing the best that you can by making an effort
to heal who you are and change the patterns through which you will live
your life. You will be able to heal yourself and ensure that you are able to
be happy and healthy once more.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is, first and foremost, a feeling. It is the feeling of apprehension
and fear of what is going to come next. You fear what will happen and react
accordingly. Effectively, your mind is on overdrive, feeling like there is a
threat, even if that threat is imaginary. In response to that threat, your body
has several options. It can choose to fight, it can choose to flee, or it can
choose to freeze. Typically, when you are suffering from anxiety, your body
has chosen flight as its proper response—it wants to get you as far away
from the situation as possible by making you as uncomfortable as possible.

Essentially, anxiety is a state o nearly constant vigilance. When you are

afraid for your life, you are not going to be able to rest—you will actively
be searching for any signs that you were correct and that there really is a
threat to your safety present somewhere nearby. When you are able to
remain vigilant, you are effectively making it a point to defend yourself
from all angles.
However, keep in mind the massive amount of stress that this would put
anyone under. When you are stressed out about how to approach people, or
even just how to live life, you are not going to be very happy. You are going
to struggle in nearly any interactions, constantly worrying about whether
this will be the one to trigger your anxiety or make continuing on with your
life impossible. Very quickly, that anxiety spirals out of control, and you
find that it is impossible to remain clearheaded and capable.

Of all the mental health disorders that you could ever have, anxiety is the
most common. It is pervasive—it arises over the course of several different
interactions and in several constant situations. It is problematic—it makes
normal functioning impossible. Finally, it is also debilitating. It is possible
for those who suffer from anxiety to find that instead of being able to
protect themselves and ensure that they are taking care of themselves, they
are going to be suffering from those feelings of fear and trying to escape it.

Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety exists in a multitude of forms. You can have panic disorder, in
which certain stimuli actively trigger you to panic and act as if your very
life is being threatened. You can have a phobia or social anxiety. Ultimately,
at the end of the day, the end result is still the same: You are still afraid of
what is going to happen and you are still struggling to figure out how best
to cope. When you are actively afraid of what is around you, you can hardly
expect to function effectively.

This section will help you identify several of the most common anxiety
disorders. As you read, however, keep in mind that the information included
in this chapter does not substitute for a proper, licensed medical
professional’s diagnosis and opinion. If you think that you may be suffering
from anxiety, the best course of action is always to make sure that you get a
proper diagnosis from a medical professional who has had the opportunity
to both understand your symptoms through interacting with you, but is also
able to supervise over the process of treating you. While it is great to use
this book as a guide, it is even more beneficial to your treatment plan to
seek professional medical advice from someone that can see the whole
picture and interact to create something tailored to you specifically.

Panic disorder is a common anxiety disorder in which people experience

repeated panic attacks entirely unexpectedly. These attacks are sudden,
powerful, and incredibly draining, leaving the individual feeling like he or
she may be dying when in reality, their anxiety is creating symptoms that
are incredibly reminiscent of cardiac arrest. People who suffer from panic
disorder find that they suffer from at least one panic attack per month, and
they are beginning to be fearful of the idea of having another panic attack.
Effectively, knowing that there is an opportunity for another panic attack is
enough to trigger more anxiety. These panic attacks show up without
warning, with symptoms such as heart palpitations, struggling to breathe, a
sensation of choking, lightheadedness, dizziness, and chest pain, among
others. These symptoms usually arise with no discernable reason and occur
in ways that are incredibly powerful. They leave the individual functioning
in fear of another attack.

Phobias are another form of anxiety that manifests as an irrational,

excessive fear of one specific trigger. This trigger could be something
physical, such as a specific animal or person, or it could be a bit more
abstract, such as the fear of a thought or the fear of a feeling. In fact, some
people even find that they may end up living in fear of leaving home,
something else that can be incredibly problematic.

When you suffer from a phobia, you are not just slightly afraid of whatever
is happening—you are deathly afraid of it. For example, consider the
scenario of being afraid of dogs. If you are so afraid of the dog that you let
it control your life, intentionally and deliberately avoiding the dog by
crossing the street or changing your routine, you may suffer from a phobia.
Most of the time, these phobias do directly impact your ability to function.
They interfere with your ability to recognize situations in a healthy manner.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is what most people usually think about
when they think of anxiety—it is characterized by random bouts of feelings
of anxiety that are oftentimes unpredictable, while other times being quite
obvious. When you suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, most of the
time, you cannot help it. You cannot figure out how best to function and
cannot shake the feeling without help. Thankfully, that help is available to
you. If you feel like you suffer from a constant overarching feeling of
anxiety that you cannot explain, you are not alone, and you do not have to
suffer endlessly. You can treat this problem.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is the development of severe anxiety

symptoms in direct response to some sort of trauma. It is not known exactly
what causes PTSD to arise, as not everyone who has suffered a trauma goes
through it. When you suffer from PTSD, you find that you have an intense
avoidance of anything even remotely reminiscent of whatever trauma you
have experienced. You may suffer from intrusive thoughts, such as
flashbacks or nightmares related to the trauma, or you may find that, despite
your best attempts, you cannot shake the need to obsessively avoid anything
reminiscent of the trauma in the first place. Keep in mind that, while
commonly associated with the military, you do not actually have to serve in
the military to suffer from PTSD- -any trauma, ranging from sexual assault
to surviving a major accident can result in the symptoms.
CBT and Anxiety
Ultimately, CBT is an incredibly effective method through which you can
treat your anxiety. When you use CBT to tackle your anxiety issues, you are
tackling the issue from two ends. You spend time identifying problematic
thoughts that may have become distorted over time, and you also spend
time actively attempting to reinforce positive behaviors.

If you are actively suffering from anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy is

one of the best therapies you can choose in order to alleviate the symptoms.
Through CBT, you will learn how to act accordingly—you will be given
several tools for managing those feelings of negativity and anxiety to
remove the discomfort and distress that goes along with them. For example,
if your anxiety tends to express itself through the massive feelings of panic,
a racing heart, and a fear of dying, CBT can help you eliminate the distress
behind those symptoms.

Effectively, CBT would teach you that it is okay to feel that way, but
ultimately, your anxiety is little more than feelings to begin with. This
means that if you want to treat it, there are several options for you. You can
choose to use affirmations to remove the discomfort, reminding you that
you are safe. You can choose to expose yourself to your triggers in hopes of
desensitizing yourself form the symptoms altogether. You can even choose
to spend time practicing through several worst-case scenarios in order to
figure out the best possible approach to your symptoms.

No matter what you choose, however, there will always be the option to
revisit another method if necessary. You will be able to choose to instead
behave in other ways and slowly habituate those new behaviors. Over time,
you will see relief. While it may have been difficult to first begin the
process of treating your anxiety, you should always remember that it takes
real strength to treat a mental health disorder and that you should not be
ashamed under any circumstances. Rather, you should be proud of yourself
to be willing to give yourself a chance.
 Chapter 8: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Techniques to Eliminate Anxiety

Once diagnosed with anxiety, you may wonder what comes next. Luckily,
what comes next is effectively just skills building. You will be spending the
time to learn new skills that you can use to claim and tame your anxiety
once and for all. These three methods of treatment, the ability to create
affirmations, graded exposure, and using what-if roleplays will all be
particularly effective in ensuring that, no matter what the situation, you are
able to tame that anxiety. Even if you have not yet been diagnosed, but you
feel le you are probably well on your way to getting that diagnosis, it can
really help to begin to process of tackling those anxiety triggers early on.

From here on out, it is assumed that you are already familiar with the art of
identifying problematic thoughts—this ability to use introspection will be
crucial to your ability to succeed. Since this process was introduced in
Chapter 5, you should already have a general idea of how best to identify
these thoughts. When you know what your problematic thoughts are, you
can begin to tackle them.
Affirmations
Affirmations are little more than short statements that you repeat to yourself
during a moment of weakness. Effectively, your affirmation should directly
counter a negative thought that you are suffering from in a way that helps
you to stay focused on what you want and grounded to your truest emotions
instead of just trying to squeak past the sensation of anxiety in the first
place.

In particular, affirmations are one of the simplest methods that you can use.
All you need to identify is to ensure that it meets three simple requirements.
You must make sure that your affirmation is positive—it must be something
that is written in a way that it will not further sink your thinking into the
negative.

Your affirmation must also be present-tense—it needs to address something

in the here and now in order to help you in the present. For example, if you
are afraid of dogs, you need to make sure that your affirmation addresses
that you are safe right at that minute when you are reciting your affirmation.
In ensuring that you know this, you are able to recognize that the
affirmation is true without denying it on some sort of grammatical
technicality.

Finally, your affirmation must be personal. When your affirmation sari

personal, you can make them come true. When they are not personal,
however, and they are actively about other people, such s telling yourself
that your friends or family members love you, you can begin to doubt that.
That is not to say that your friends and family do not love you, but rather,
you have no way to verify the mind of someone else, and in the moments
of doubt, when your mind is already lying to you, that would be an easy
topic to lie about. You would be able o tell yourself that no, you do not
believe that your friend loves you because you cannot prove it, and
suddenly, your perfectly crafted affirmation falls apart.

When you would like to use affirmations, you must simply make sure that
your statement lives up to those three requirements. If it does, you are ready
to move on to the next step—using your affirmation.

When you are ready to use the affirmation, you must make sure ultimately
that you repeat the affirmation regularly. It is a common form of
manipulation to effectively insert thoughts into the mind of another with
ease, with the only requirement being that you need to repeat it so much
that it becomes the truth. This means that if you actively repeat the same
positive message to yourself over and over again, you should be able to
convince yourself to sort of absorb the knowledge to use it.

The best way to do this is to pair your affirmation with an activity that you
are already doing regularly. Perhaps you decide to repeat whatever your
affirmation si every single time that you wash your hands. After all, you
likely wash your hands on a regular basis throughout the day and you need
to make use of that.

When you wash your hands, you must then repeat that affirmation to
yourself at least ten times. Every time you wash your hands, you then repeat
that affirmation. Over the days, weeks, and months, you find that you are
constantly repeating it to yourself and over time, it becomes reflexive.
Every time that you wash your hands, your affirmation is repeated to
yourself out of habit, despite not thinking about it. That is when it really
begins to work—it has infiltrated your unconscious mind and will then
begin to act accordingly.

On top of the repetition in order to internalize everything, you must also

make it a point to use your affirmation during moments of weakness. If you
find that you are afraid of a dog, you recite it to yourself in order to remind
yourself that the fear that you have is unwarranted or unnecessary. Over
time, you do begin to believe it.
Graded Exposure
Graded exposure refers to essentially what is commonly known as exposure
therapy. In graded exposure, you are making it a point to slowly expose
yourself to whatever it is that you are afraid of in hopes of slowly removing
the fear that you have. You do this through incremental increases in your
exposure to the item or stimulus, getting closer and closer to the stimulus
over time. For example, you start out by looking at photographs of big dogs
playing outside to start.

As you go through graded exposure, you are going to slowly acclimate to

each exposure level, and in doing so, you will eventually be able to tolerate
that level of exposure. Every time that you find that you can tolerate the
exposure, it is time to up the increment to the next level, allowing you to
then push your limits and continue to become more and more comfortable.

For example, you start with those photographs of dogs. You are to view
them regularly until the simple sight of a dog is not enough to send your
heart racing. Then, you must move on to looking at videos of dogs. This
should bring back more of your anxiety as it is slightly more realistic than
actively looking at a photograph. In looking at the videos, over time, you
will find that you are able to comfortably tolerate it. You are then ready to
move up another level.

You may then choose to hold a stuffed animal dog in order to sort of expose
yourself further to the stimulus. Doing should still be uncomfortable for
you, but the more you go through this process, the more smoothly you will
find each of the stages to be.
After the plush dog, you then move on to seeing actual dogs in action.
Perhaps you stand on the other side of a fence from a small dog that is calm
and well-behaved so you know it will not be charging at you in an attempt
to get you to do something or to harass you. After a while, you are able to
move on to actually approach the dog, and eventually, you may even find
that you are comfortable petting it.

From there, it may just be a matter of exposing yourself to larger and larger
dogs, slowly working your way up to having a dog that is quite large in
your presence without the triggering of your anxiety symptoms.

If you do this the right way, you will eventually find that you can, at the
very least, tolerate the presence of a dog. You may never be fully
comfortable around the dogs in your life, but that is okay. What is important
is ensuring that you are not living your life in hiding because you are
terrified of being around other people’s pets. Ultimately, whether you like it
or not, dogs are incredibly common and you must be able to put up with
their presence in the real world.

When you use graded exposure, you are effectively teaching yourself that it
is okay to be afraid, so long as you can be comfortable in your fear. Usually,
graded exposure is used in tandem with other techniques such as grounding
in order to add a level of security. With techniques such as grounding, you
will find that you are able to better cope with all of the negativity that
otherwise threatens to overwhelm you. In being able to cope with the
negativity, you will find that you can actually combat and counter your
phobias through this technique.
What-If Roleplays
Finally, the last technique for mastering anxiety involves figuring out what
the worst-case scenario in a situation actually is. From there, you must role-
play it out in order to figure out if it is actually as bad as you may initially
be convinced. For example, imagine that your anxiety surrounds ordering
drinks at the café. You know that you need the drink, but you are too shy to
order, fearing that other people will judge your taste in drink. Because of
this, you tend to avoid cafes altogether, despite having a massive caffeine
addiction.

When you use a what-if roleplay, though, you are effectively asking
yourself probing questions that are designed to identify whether you can
actually trust your judgment. You may be thoroughly convinced that the
idea of ordering a coffee is the worst thing possible because you just know
that you will mess up their special schema of how they size the drinks and
everyone will laugh at you.
Effectively, your anxiety tells you that you cannot possibly order a drink
because it will flare up your social anxiety. It is then your job to ask
yourself what the worst-case scenario is. You would likely identify the act
of everyone laughing at you as the worst-case scenario and then move on to
say that everyone around you only wants to use you for entertainment.

Now, in trying to figure out what-if, you must now ask yourself what that
would matter. Does it matter why the people may laugh? Does being
laughed at really matter? Ultimately, no, not really. While being laughed at
is distressing, it is not distressing enough to warrant rearranging your entire
life to accommodate for it. In this instance, then, you find that you are far
better off moving forward with desensitizing yourself.
 Chapter 9: Depression

Along with anxiety, depression can be a debilitating mental health issue.

Commonly known as major depressive disorder, depression tends to
encompass the feelings of hopelessness and despair that would otherwise go
along with the feelings of inadequacy that an individual may be suffering
from.

Imagine that, no matter how comfortable your current home, job, or life,
you cannot feel any joy. You find that the day is largely meaningless to you
and that the night is not much better. You know that you should have
energy, but all you want to do is spend your time lying in bed and refusing
to do anything at all. You are far happier just left to your own devices in bed
without doing anything.

Depression is harmful. It causes people to struggle with motivation as well

as finding hope and joy in life to continue moving forward. When you feel
depressed, you struggle with anything and everything to do with other
people and with yourself. Most people tend to think that depression is one
of those willpower things—all you need to do is pick yourself up by your
bootstraps and continue on. However, remember, the root of being able to
pick yourself up from your bootstraps was meant to mock an impossibility.
Just as you cannot literally pick yourself up from your bootstraps, you
cannot just will yourself out of depression.
What is Depression?
Depression is an intense sadness, with feelings of worthlessness and
hopelessness. It is characterized by at least five symptoms within a two
week period of time. These symptoms are primarily a lack of energy, such
as being depressed during the day, especially in the morning, or feeling like
you lack energy. Other symptoms relate to how you feel about yourself—
when you are depressed, you tend to feel like you are worthless or guilty
regularly. It also had several physical aspects as well—you may struggle to
sleep regularly, or you feel like you sleep too much, or you feel like you are
slow and sluggish, or you start to see changes in your weight. There are also
aspects such as suddenly having a frequent thought about death or even
suicide.

Ultimately, several of these symptoms come together when diagnosing

depression, and they are incredibly problematic. These symptoms leave you
feeling restless and like life is no longer enjoyable. You may find that you
are suffering from several physical symptoms, such as being uncomfortable
in your body, having headaches, struggling with digestion, or generally just
hurting. You may find that things that once brought you joy, such as
hobbies, enjoyable food, and sex are no longer of any interest to you, and
you would much rather withdraw from the world rather than facing anyone
head-on.

This is problematic. When you are able to fall into depression, your quality
of life plummets and you are at an increased risk of thoughts of self-harm or
suicide, both of which are incredibly dangerous. In fact, because self-harm
thoughts are so common with depression, you must be ready to recognize it
for what it is—a medical emergency. Any time that you feel like you may
be a danger to yourself or other people, you should always contact
emergency services to ensure that you get the care that you need to survive
and thrive.

Keep in mind that depression, while it is valid, is different than sadness or

grief. It is possible for sadness or grief to eventually turn into depression,
but noting that difference early on is critical. You must be able to recognize
that oftentimes, depression begins with the arrival of a negative event of
some sort. You may have lost a family member or gone through a messy
divorce. In response, it is normal for you to feel sadness. In fact, sadness
and grief are entirely normal human emotions. However, it is not normal for
grief and sadness to be entirely consuming. At some point, grief transforms
from something normal into something that is directly hindering your
ability to function in the world around you. You may have lost someone
dear to your heart, and that can be incredibly crippling, but you must not
lose your ability to function in society as well.

While grief does not follow a timeline that determines a normal amount of
time to heal and a normal diagnosis for depression, it does become
problematic when, even a month or two later, your mood is still so poorly
impacted that you struggle to interact with those around you. Instead, you
find yourself withdrawing and refusing to engage, and that can be
incredibly problematic. If you find that your grief seems to be changing into
something all-consuming instead of something that is meant to be part of
your healing process from a point of negativity into positivity, it is time to
speak to a professional. Help is out there if you are willing and ready to
reach out a hand.
Remember, even if you are suffering from depression, it can and will get
better. There are plenty of treatment options for people suffering from
depression, from medical to therapeutic, to even making lifestyle changes.
If you work closely in tandem with a doctor or other medical professional
that is familiar with you and your case, you will find that you are able to get
the relief that you need from your depression. It may take you time to
develop, such as waiting for the medication to build up enough to help, or
to make sure that you actively have enough therapeutic skills to actually
make use of, but you will see improvements in your life, little by little.
Types of Depression
Depression is not a one-size-fits-all diagnosis. In fact, there are several
different depressive disorders that exist, and understanding the different
ones is critical to recognize what is going on in your life and ensuring that
you are able to treat yourself. In particular, let’s take a look at unipolar
major depression, dysthymia, and postpartum depression to get a better
understanding of how depression can and does present, and what can be
expected from it.

Unipolar Major Depression

This is the form of depression that most people think of—it is the
depression that is heavy and overreaching, clouding over everything in your
life. It may last for a shorter period of time, such as a few weeks to months,
or it can happen intermittently in life. You may have periods of calm, during
which you do not have very many symptoms, but you will also commonly
find that you run into having several symptoms all at once, making it major.

Dysthymia
Dysthymia refers to mild, persistent depression that lasts for years. It is
always overshadowing your life but generally presents itself in manners that
are far less harmful than unipolar major depression. Still problematic for
sure, it is not something that you should overlook, but generally, it is
considered less severe. When you live life with dysthymia, you are
chronically mildly depressed. Anything that you do or say will constantly
be shadowed over by your depression, and while you may not be majorly
depressed or suicidal on the regular, you are likely to still feel quite down
on yourself, low on energy, and unwilling to get moving on a regular basis.

Postpartum Depression
Believed to be brought on due to the influx of hormones that women go
through right after giving birth, postpartum depression is incredibly
common. In fact, it has become a regular part of screening at women’s
postpartum exams precisely because people tend to develop it and it is
easier to ensure that you are screening everyone early on rather than waiting
to see how other people report their feelings. Unfortunately for the women
that suffer from PPD, what should be the best time of their lives, welcoming
their newest bundle of joy, becomes overshadowed with low emotions,
sadness, inadequacy, and feelings of hopelessness that can be
overwhelming. Postpartum depression is commonly treated with medication
and therapy during the postpartum period, but this form of depression
usually goes away before the infant born during this birth leaves infancy.
Depression and CBT
Depression is commonly treated with CBT. Because much of depression
does exhibit itself in a behavioral manner, it is quite possible to effectively
create good habits that can and will motivate an individual into successful
functioning. While this will not eliminate the negative feelings per se, it can
act as a way to bridge the gap, allowing the individual to begin acting in a
better-adjusted manner.

Through behavioral activation, new habits can be developed and learned.

These get the individual back into a routine, and with the development and
enforcement of the routines, it becomes clear that the habituating to action
once more can really help allow for that initial push over the lack of
motivation. That is critical in ensuring the actual activation of new habits.

Depression is also commonly coped with in figuring out if there are any
negative thoughts that are holding the individual down. It is possible for
someone with depression to think about himself in manners that are
incredibly negative. This, of course, does nothing to help the individual do
any better. It is incredibly difficult to feel good about yourself if you are
actively telling yourself that you are a terrible, worthless person and then
acting upon those thoughts, and for that reason, CBT seeks to identify and
defeat any of those negative thoughts before they can truly corrupt the
individual’s mind.

In correcting these mindsets, it is possible that the individual can start to see
some improvement in their own mentality as they progress through CBT.
They can develop more and more skills that enable the individual to cope
better with issues that arise. They can help the individual begin to
reacquaint himself with these actions that are critical to success.

If you feel like you are suffering from depression, one of the best things that

you can do for yourself is make an appointment with your primary care

physician to identify whether you may actually be suffering from the

impacts of depression. If you are, there are ways that you can begin to help

yourself, and doing so will help bring joy to your life once more.
 Chapter 10: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Techniques to Eliminate Depression

With that said, it is time to address three of the most common cognitive
behavioral therapy techniques that you can use in order to directly begin to
alleviate your symptoms of depression. Please remember, if you are
currently taking any medication for depression, do not stop suddenly and do
not change the regimen of your medication until you have spoken to your
doctor about your proposed changes. Changing medication can be
incredibly finicky, especially if you have already discovered several
methods that are working for you, and you deciding to change that routine
that you already have can to more harm than good.

Nevertheless, within this chapter, we will address three techniques that are
used in treating depression within cognitive behavioral therapy. We are
specifically addressing successive approximation, goal setting, and activity
scheduling. Remember, while many aspects of CBT focus on changing
thought processes, what is often the most effective for those suffering from
depression is to use techniques that specifically target behaviors. If you can
directly challenge those behaviors, you can begin to better cope with the
situations at hand. You can essentially take advantage of the fact that people
are creatures of habit and that your body will naturally want to shift into a
series of habits that you are actively making use of.
Successive Approximation
The first method that will be discussed is known as a successive
approximation. It is quite similar to the act of exposure therapy. However,
the primary difference is that instead of being designed to create tolerance
of a specific stimulus you are trying to create and trigger specific behaviors
in someone else. You effectively want to make sure that you are building up
to a certain behavior while also rewarding yourself for the successes that
you do have.
Effectively, this will involve you starting out with a goal. With that goal in
mind, you break it up into several manageable steps. For example, say that
you want to be able to run 3 miles without feeling like you are dying. You
may start with a goal of running ½ a mile without stopping. You work on
this, and every time that you succeed, you give yourself a treat. That treat
should be something that is incredibly motivating for you—perhaps you
promise yourself that if you can run the mile, you can spend some time
actively playing on some video games that you have and that if you get to
the 3-mile goal, you will buy that new game that is coming out soon.

That week, every time you run ½ mile, you reward yourself. Eventually,
you will find that your body is adjusting. Running that ½ mile no longer
seems so intimidating or impossible, and that is when you know that you
are moving your goalpost further toward your goal. Now, you must run ¾
mile before you are willing to give in to your reward. Eventually, that
becomes easier as well, and you will continue to shift your goal until you
finally do achieve the 3-mile limit that you have set for yourself. Upon
arriving at that 3-mile goal, you reward yourself with that game.
The entire purpose behind successive approximation is to get yourself
moving in the right direction. This is like rewarding your new puppy when
she approaches her new leash on the floor when you are trying to accustom
her to it, and you slowly move the milestone until she is happily prancing
about next to you on the leash. Yes, this means that you are effectively
training yourself into obedience—but if it is good enough for most animals,
why not for humans as well? Besides, it cannot be that bad if you are
actively training yourself. You are simply relying on several of the tactics
that are commonly recognized by the behaviorist perspective in psychology
and that is not necessarily wrong or problematic—you are making sure that
you are bettering yourself.
Goal Setting
When you are able to set good goals, you may find that your goals suddenly
become a whole lot more attainable. Setting goals, then, is not as simple as
just saying that you are going to do something and then making it a point to
do so. For example, you cannot say that you are simply going to get a job
paying $100,000 a year without ever coming up with a goal that spells out
exactly how you would achieve that in the first place. It is imperative that
you are able to figure out exactly why and how you will do something
beyond just stating that you will do something; otherwise, it becomes
incredibly difficult to actually find the motivation to stick to your guns and
follow through.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to set goals that are actionable and can be
achieved is the use of SMART goals. Standing for Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Relevant, and Timed, these are goals that are specifically
designed in a way that takes out the vast majority of your planning. After
all, little can be as intimidating as having to come up with a solid action
plan when you are trying to achieve something. Having a plan that you feel
is not quite secure or proper is not always the most motivating way to set
your goal, and for that reason, we will take a look at SMART goals.

When you set a SMART goal, you are looking to set a goal that meets each
and every one of the checkboxes next to specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant, and timely. This means that you may need to put a bit of thought
into how you will achieve your goal, but if you play your cards right, you
can do so in a way that is beneficial to everyone involved.
Specific goals are exactly what they sound like—goals with a well-defined
purpose. You know exactly what you are doing when you set a goal to be
specific. For example, imagine that you are actively trying to run more
often. You may say, “I want to run,” as your goal, but is that very specific?
It does not tell you much more about your goal other than you simply want
to make sure that you are running at some point. However, it does not tell
you much about ever actually achieving that goal of running. When you
make it more specific, though, you say, “I want to be able to run 3 miles
straight without stopping.” Now, you have an ending point—you know
where your goal wraps up and you know that you should be able to make it
happen.

Measurable goals are goals that have some defined ending. They usually
exist in some manner that you can measure to check your progress. In this
instance, your goal of running three miles already included a measurable
aspect—you have set it up in the distance that you would like to run.
Sometimes, however, it is not quite so clear-cut. If you want to stop being
angry, for example, you may need to set a goal so you are eliminating a
certain portion of blowouts per day or some other way to shift your goal
from something relatively vague into something measured. However, by
and large, you will find that most of your goals will become measured by
the nature of setting the goal in the first place.

Achievable goals are goals that are actually possible for you to achieve. It
does not matter so much here whether you want to achieve the goal but
rather looking at your own capabilities. Do you want to climb Mt. Everest?
Do all of your body parts work properly? If you have a problem with an
ankle or your back, for example, you may want to overlook the idea of
going on that trip to climb the mountain because it is not actually as
achievable as you may like.

Relevant goals are goals that you actually care about. These goals are the
ones that truly matter to you for some reason. A common way to check
whether your goal is relevant or not is through asking yourself if you
actually want to achieve whatever it is that you are setting out to do. If you
are entirely uninterested in the goal, then it is likely not very relevant to
you. For example, if you already run 6 miles a morning, running a 3-mile
morning does not seem like a stretch or an accomplishment—all because
they are in her norm.

Timed goals are goals that have an end somewhere. They have some sort of
cut off that determines whether or not you were actually successful in
achieving your goal. For example, you may give yourself two months of
practice to be able to run that three-mile track, and if you do not do it by
that two-month mark, then you forfeit the challenge and prove that you
cannot do it. When you have reached the end of the timeline that you have
set out to achieve, you need to be able to determine whether or not you
were actually successful.

In following these steps, you will find that your goals are actually far more
reachable. It becomes far easier to actually achieve your goals when you
know how to structure them for success. Effectively, then, you are setting
up so you know that you are able to approach a situation in a manner that
enables you to be far more successful in your life. It may be a pain to work
on your goals initially, but you will find that doing so is imperative to your
ability to actively work on what you are trying to work on.
Activity Scheduling

Finally, activity scheduling refers to the art of intentionally scheduling

activities throughout your day to do. You may, for example, decide to
continue working on being able to run those three miles. In this case, you
would actively schedule in time to work on your running at the regiment
that you have set up for yourself. You will effectively be doing your best to
schedule those activities in and meet them. When you do meet your
activities that are scheduled for the day, you will then be able to use any of
the extra time that was not used up to achieve your goal for the day to do
something that you enjoy.

This method is quite similar to the method of successive approximation, but

in this case, you are rewarding your progress toward achieving a goal. You
are ensuring that other people are likely to want to follow your lead
because, as you begin to use this, you find that being organized is actually
far easier than you may think it will be otherwise.

To do this, all you must do is come up with some sort of schedule and
follow it. If you can do so, you are pushing yourself to develop good time
management skills, and that will also help you bolster your own emotional
intelligence as well.
 Chapter 11: Insomnia

Despite the fact that children everywhere hate the idea of sleep and reject
the idea of taking naps whenever the option is presented, adults all around
the world wish they could go back to those days where sleep was not a
limited commodity. With how busy the world is, how several aspects of life
are now 24/7, and how much work gets crammed into such short periods of
time, people everywhere find that they are not getting enough sleep.

However, what about the people who, despite how much they may wish to
sleep, cannot manage to do so? These people may desperately want to fall
asleep, spending plenty of time in their beds as they toss and turn, wishing
for sleep to take over, but it never comes. These people suffer from
insomnia. No one ever wants to be on the receiving end of insomnia, but
when it strikes, it can be incredibly frustrating. When you are desperate to
be able to get a few extra hours of sleep, lying in bed without any luck can
be one of the greatest slights of the universe.
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia is a sleep disorder—this means that it is characterized primarily
by disordered sleep patterns that cause significant issues to the individual
suffering from it. When you suffer from insomnia, you may either struggle
to fall asleep, or you may struggle to stay asleep. This means that either
way, you are missing out on incredibly valuable sleep. After all, the average
adult needs at least 8 hours of sleep a night to remain functional. When you
do not get that sleep, you run the risk of all sorts of health issues, as well as
the risk of falling asleep intermittently throughout the day. In fact, you may
even fall asleep at the wheel in your car, which can be incredibly dangerous,
not only for you but for everyone around you as well. When you fall asleep
at the wheel, you can cause fatal car accidents for everyone involved.

Ultimately, insomnia can be summed up as four symptoms, with at least one

needing to be present in order to warrant a diagnosis of insomnia. These
symptoms are struggling to fall asleep, struggling to stay asleep at night,
waking up too early, or feeling tired, even after sleeping. With these
symptoms, you will find that you are constantly exhausted and dragging,
and no matter how hard you try, you struggle to function. People are not
designed to function without sleep—in fact, losing even just four hours of
sleep in a night can have the same impact on you as having a beer before
driving. You need to be getting proper sleep if you want to be properly
functional, but for those with insomnia, that is an impossibility.

Forms of Insomnia
Ultimately, there are two distinct forms of insomnia—primary and
secondary. These are determined quite simply. Primary insomnia refers to
people that are struggling to sleep without any associated physical cause.
Effectively, nothing physical seems to point toward the reason for the lack
of sleep. Secondary insomnia, on the other hand, is typically caused by
something else. It can be caused by physical ailments, such as a physical
issue like cancer or arthritis making it impossible to sleep.

The difference between the two is primarily whether insomnia is the

problem or a symptom of a larger problem. When insomnia is the problem,
insomnia itself can be treated. However, when the insomnia is a symptom
of another problem, sometimes the best course of action is to treat the
symptom.

Insomnia can further be classified into either acute or chronic insomnia

based upon how long it has lasted. When you are suffering from acute
insomnia, you have had it short-term. Effectively, it lasts for anywhere from
one night to a couple of weeks. However, it quickly becomes chronic, or
long-lasting, when it is recurring for at least half of the week for longer than
a month.

Causes of Insomnia
In understanding the causes of insomnia, you can begin to understand how
best to treat it. If there is an environmental cause of insomnia, for example,
you can treat the environment to best figure out how to fix the problem. If
the problem is behavioral, you can change those. If the problem is due to
medication, those can be changed as well. Effectively, there is usually some
sort of cause to the insomnia that people feel—it is simply a matter of
figuring out what that cause is so it can be addressed somehow.
Acute insomnia is usually caused by something short-term and
environmental. For example, a significant stressor can cause insomnia—a
trauma, a loss, moving, or anything else that drastically uproots your entire
life can then lead to insomnia. The discomfort of being sick can also lead to
short-term insomnia, especially if you are suffering from being unable to
breathe and struggling to avoid hacking out a lung. Other times, physical
discomfort can make it impossible to sleep—perhaps you are in bed with
your two toddlers and they have you jammed against the wall with your
neck bent funny so you cannot possibly get comfortable enough to fall
asleep. The environment can also directly impact your ability to sleep in the
short-term—if your neighbors are loud or your power is out so your heater
is off and it is cold, you may struggle to fall asleep. Much more harmlessly,
you can also see insomnia as a direct result of jet lag—just getting home
from a trip to the other side of the world can cause you to suffer from
insomnia.
Chronic insomnia, on the other hand, is typically linked to more persistent
causes. You may be suffering from chronic stress that keeps you up at night
—perhaps you cannot quite make ends meet, or you are getting through a
cancer diagnosis. Maybe you are depressed or anxious and find that you
cannot quiet your mind enough to fall asleep. When these occur, treating the
insomnia becomes a bit more difficult—you must be able to alleviate the
suffering in some way. If you are stressed, you need to figure out a way to
manage it. If you are in pain, you should find a way to manage that as well.

Treating Insomnia
Despite how tempting it may be to reach for that bottle of wine or beer
before bed to help you relax enough to sleep through your insomnia, this is
ill-advised—firstly, treating yourself with drugs is never healthy. Secondly,
all this will do is worsen the quality of the sleep that you do get. Even if
you are desperate to get some much-needed sleep, you are far better off
looking at other methods to get it, such as figuring out how to meet with a
doctor to see if you need a prescription.

Generally, unless your insomnia is becoming so problematic that you are

starting to struggle to function, you are better off trying to figure out how to
use good sleep hygiene to help yourself get that sleep. However, if you are
finding that your functioning has been impaired, you may find that you are
best served by taking some temporary sleeping pills that can help you fall
asleep quickly. This is generally the advice for acute insomnia.

For chronic insomnia, you must first figure out what the underlying causes
are. It is always possible that there is some physical reason for that
insomnia to be so problematic, and if it is found to not be a physical cause,
you may be referred to behavioral therapy.
Insomnia and CBT
In particular, CBT can be incredibly effective at teaching exercises that will
aid in the falling asleep of those who otherwise would struggle. There are
several techniques that can impact the behavioral side of your mind in order
to trigger you to finally be able to begin falling asleep regularly again. If
you have always wanted to get back into that ability to sleep again,
speaking to your therapist would be a fantastic starting point. Within the
next chapter as well, we will look at three different techniques common in
CBT that will help treat insomnia. These teach behaviors that are designed
to promote better sleep hygiene and help you fall asleep.
 Chapter 12: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Techniques to Eliminate Insomnia

While sleep aids are always an option for those suffering from insomnia,
many people prefer to avoid them. They may dislike the impact of the
medication that they take, disliking that they feel groggy when they wake
up, or they may find that they end up doing things that they regret the next
morning, such as going on an online shopping spree for random items that
they do not actually want nor need. When this happens, the individual can
be quite stressed out and embarrassed—what if they spent money that they
need to have refunded? What if they sent messages to other people that
shouldn’t have been sent?

If you feel like you would like to sleep better and more soundly but without
the impact of sleep aids, there are options for you. You can instead learn
how to eliminate insomnia with behavioral therapy training that can really
aid you in figuring out how best to address your situation. You can learn
how to be cognizant of how to get to sleep while also focusing on doing so
without having to make any major dietary or medical changes to your life.

In particular, this chapter seeks to introduce you to three techniques

common in CBT that can help you eliminate the impact of insomnia in your
life. First, you will learn about stimulus control. Then, you will take a look
at sleep restriction, and finally, you will learn a relaxation training method
to help you relax into sleep when you feel like you otherwise will not be
able to fall asleep. With the help of these techniques, you should find that
falling asleep begins to come easier than ever, allowing you to once and for
all settle back into your comfortable routine and enjoy those good nights’
sleep that you have missed out on for so long.
Stimulus Control
When you look at the world through the behaviorist’s eyes, you are seeing
things through the belief that everything that you are exposed to directly
impacts what you are doing at any given point of time. Effectively, your
own behaviors are constantly just reflections of your surroundings. When
you are able to recognize this, you will see just how important controlling
your surroundings can be to sleep.

When you are struggling to sleep, the first place to check is often your sleep
hygiene. What are you doing before bed? Are you using a regular schedule?
Are you using caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol before going to sleep? Are
you eating food that can lead to indigestion? Is your bedroom simply not
conducive to sleep?

When you seek to use stimulus control, you are effectively becoming
incredibly strict with what you are willing to expose yourself to in the last
half of the day. You may refuse to drink soda or have any sugar or caffeine
after 2pm in hopes of everything that you had consumed being out of your
system by the time that you are ready to sleep. You may make it a point to
exercise during the day in order to help your nighttime sleep.
The most effective form of stimulus control of all, however, is developing a
proper sleep routine and making sure that you have a comfortable sleep
environment that is designed to be conducive to sleep. In order to do this,
you must first be willing to cut out all caffeine, spicy food, and blue light in
the last half of the evening. Blue light comes from your screens, such as
your cell phone, tablet computer, or even your television—the light can
prevent you from being able to fall asleep because it directly interferes with
your own body’s mechanics that are designed to help you wind down to
sleep. You must make it a point to cut off all blue light at least one hour
before bed and set a rule that no screens will be used in the bedroom.

During that hour before bed, make sure you expose yourself to stimuli that
will be relaxing. You will effectively condition yourself to fall asleep by
teaching your body that those are the predecessors to bedtime, so when you
begin that bedtime routine, your body will begin to produce the right
hormones to help you fall asleep. You may decide to take a warm shower,
read a book, and then settle down in bed in the dark, free of screens, while
also making sure that your room is cool and comfortable.

If you are willing to restrict the stimuli that you expose yourself to, you will
find that sweet sleep coming in no time. It may take a few times to get your
body on the same page, but as soon as it is, you will not be able to deny the
difference—just being able to fall asleep will be a huge improvement.
Sleep Restriction
Sometimes, what you need to do in order to help yourself get back on
schedule is what is called sleep restriction. This is exactly what it sounds
like—you will restrict your ability to sleep during certain times to
effectively teach yourself to sleep at night when you should be. This can be
particularly draining and difficult, however, because you will have to be
making it a point to staying awake even when the need to sleep threatens to
overwhelm you because you need to stay awake until it is your proper
bedtime.

When you begin sleep restriction, you will start by limiting your time in bed
to only the hours that you are currently asleep, making sure to log your
sleep patterns. You are allowed to spend only those sleeping hours in bed at
first. If you are only sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night, then you are only
allowed to spend time in your bed during those 3 or 4 hours.

From there, you must set a wake time and bedtime based upon your current
sleep time. If you are only averaging 5 hours of sleep in bed and you
determine that you must be awake by 6am every day, this means that you go
to bed every night at 1am. No matter how much sleep you have gotten, you
must always get up at 6am for the next several weeks, while also going to
bed at the same time. Even if you feel tired before 1am, you must stay
awake until then for the training to work.

You will then follow this schedule for at least two weeks. After the two
weeks, you can start getting in bed 15 minutes earlier on a nightly basis
until you are comfortable with how much sleep you are getting. Over time,
you will find that you will either figure out how much sleep you need to get
and find a nice equilibrium point between how much sleep and when you
get that sleep.
Relaxation Training

Finally, sometimes, you cannot fall asleep no matter what you try. Within
CBT, there is thankfully a type of training that you can use in order to begin
relaxing in order to fall asleep. This is known as relaxation training. You
will effectively be triggering to the brain that it is time to relax based upon
the cues that you are sending. In manually making it a point to relax your
own body, little by little, you will eventually trigger your body to also want
to relax on its own and fall asleep. This will effectively override any
feelings of danger that are keeping the brain on overdrive and potentially
preventing you from being able to fall asleep.

To begin, you will want to get yourself comfortable in bed. Make sure that
you have spent an adequate amount of time following your sleep routine
and making sure that you have prepared accordingly. As you get into bed,
make sure that your room is dark, quiet, and suitable for sleep. Find your
comfortable spot and take in a deep breath as you do so. Feel the breath
travel through your lungs and fill your body with life-giving oxygen.
Exhale and then focus on the top of your head.

Do you feel any tension? If your scalp feels tense, try to release it. If not,
slowly scan down your body starting from the top. Anywhere that you find
tenseness, you must manually encourage relaxation. Perhaps you find that
your jaw is clenched because you are stressed. With a deep inhale, relax the
jaw and allow yourself to settle down deeper into the mattress.
Keep scanning your body. Every place that you notice tension, gently
release it, allowing each part of your body to relax, little by little. As you
work your way through your body, calming anywhere with tension, you will
feel the progress. You will feel the sensation of relaxation within you.
Continue to release the tension all the way down to your toes, and when it is
all gone, remain motionless in bed.

While you lay there, focus on your breathing. Take in a deep breath for four
seconds. Hold it for a moment in your lungs before slowly exhaling as well,
allowing yourself to release the air from your chest and begin to relax.
Continue this process while focusing entirely on your breathing. Any time
that you notice tension building again, release it and continue. You want to
be as relaxed as possible. If your room is conducive to sleep, you should
find that you fall asleep soon.
 Chapter 13: Anger

Everyone feels angry from time to time. It is a normal human emotion with
a very good purpose—it seeks to defend us. However, anger is also perhaps
one of the most destructive emotions that people can have. It is entirely
possible for people who are angry to fly into a blind rage, utterly losing
control of themselves and behaving in ways that are incredibly dangerous.
People have been known to eve kill during these periods of time, so
incredibly blinded by their all-consuming rage that they did not realize what
they were doing until it was too late.

Ultimately, anger is useful in moderation. If it is not in moderation, it

typically errs on the side of destructive and problematic, and for that reason
learning to cope and control your anger is one of the best skills that you can
learn if you hope to be a positive influence that is capable of interacting
with other people, no matter what the capacity.

Within this chapter, we will address anger as an emotion—we will look at

its purpose and why it is commonly triggered. We will also take the time to
understand what happens when anger becomes problematic and the signs
that you or someone you know may have an anger management problem.
What is Anger?
Nearly everyone feels anger at some point—that boiling, white-hot fire in
the chest and the sudden need to fight back. Anger itself is one of the
primary emotions that humans have—it is an emotion that is rooted entirely
in protection. When you are angry, you are going to behave aggressively,
and for a good reason. Do you remember the discussion of emotions as
motivators for various functions to aid in survival? Anger is one such
emotion, and it is one of the most powerful of them all.

Anger is primarily defined as feeling negatively toward someone or

something that you have perceived has wronged you in some way. It is
essentially your way to protect and enforce your own boundaries to ensure
that people do not take advantage of you. In moderation, it does exactly that
—it can be a proper alarm bell to key you in to the fact that you are being
taken advantage of or otherwise used. You will be able to tell that
something is not quite right if it brings you to anger without you having to
do a thing. You simply feel infuriated. If you do not know what the problem
is, it is time to do some close introspection to figure out what is going on.
As a primary emotion to help ensure survival, your anger is critical to
protecting you in certain situations. In fact, you are likely to be angry if you
feel like your needs are not being met in some way. If you are hungry, you
are more likely to snap, or if you feel like you are threatened, you may feel
that inclination to snap at other people.

Ultimately, however, every person deals with anger in a different manner.

Some people are incredibly patient to a fault—no matter what happens to
them, they are able to remain calm and level-headed. In particular, this is a
skill set that is strongly valued in emotional intelligence—the ability to self-
regulate is critical if you want to be able to manage yourself and other
people, after all.

Other people, on the other hand, find themselves enslaved by their anger,
always giving in to whatever impulses they have. This can be incredibly
problematic, as we will discuss shortly.
Anger and Motivation
Anger is a form of motivation—it motivates us to protect. Effectively, when
you are angry, you recognize that there is something threatening about your
situation and you seek to fight it. You know that you are facing some sort of
injustice or threat—perhaps someone took advantage of you and ran away
with your belongings. Maybe you were trusting your best friend to help you
with something, only for your friend to cancel on you again. You feel like
you are betrayed, and that sense of betrayal leads to anger.

Anger is effectively your fight response—if you feel the impulses of anger,
it is usually because you are angry at someone or something and you are
trying to figure out who or why.

Your anger, when it is expressed, is usually in body language. When you are
angry, you will look the part—you will stare threateningly and you will not
likely back down if challenged. Effectively, you are preparing for a fight
and you expect the other person that is threatening you to as well.

While anger may have initially been a basic instinct to help protect oneself
and family, it has become more. We are no longer threatened on the regular
with a need to fight to the death, but the feeling of anger when we are
feeling betrayed is just as strong as ever.

When you are prone to anger, you may find that you have several common
triggers that you cannot escape. Even if you know that your anger or
frustration is illogical or unwarranted, you cannot help but feel angry. Some
of these causes can range from feeling grief and sadness after losing
someone to feeling like someone around you has done something that is
less than respectful.

Of course, anger can also arise due to stress, a lack of control, or even
unmet physical needs. Needs like the need for food, sex, or water can lead
to anger and short tempers within people, leading to them being far more
likely to lash out at other than they otherwise would be. It is important to
recognize that people can feel angry for a wide range of reasons, and if you
find that you have angered someone, it may be worth the effort to figure out
where the communication disconnect is. If you cannot identify the
disconnect, you may need to instead focus on how best to step back from
the situation until the other party can calm down. Especially if you or the
other person is known to have an anger problem, it may be smart to engage
in all conversations when everyone’s anger has subsided.
When Anger Becomes Problematic

Ultimately, like with most areas in life, anger becomes a problem when you
are no longer able to control it. If you find that your anger causes you to say
or do things that you regret, you may find that you have an anger problem.
Unfortunately, uncontrolled anger s surprisingly common, and it is also
surprisingly unhealthy, both physically and emotionally.

When you are angry, your body automatically gears up for a fight due to the
fact that anger is the primary emotion behind the fight response. This means
that your breathing increases, your sensation of pain goes down, and your
heart rate and blood pressure skyrocket. You effectively prepare to fight to
the death, even though what you may be upset about is actually completely
trivial at best. You may be getting all worked up over a joke, for example,
or the fact that someone else got to the parking spot you had been eyeing
while waiting for a woman and her children to cross the road.

Ultimately, if you want to determine if you have anger issues yourself, you
may want to focus on some serious self-reflection with the following
questions to consider in mind:
Do you often feel like you are angry?
Is your anger often out of control, despite your best attempts to
manage it?
Do you think that your anger is hurting your relationships with
other people?
Do you find that your anger causes you to hurt other people?
 Do you regret what you do when you are angry once you calm
down?
Do you have a tendency to hurt other people, physically or
emotionally, when you are angry?
Answering yes to any of those questions can be incredibly telling that there
is, in fact, some sort of anger issue going on in your life. As devastating of a
realization as that may be, it also means that you can figure out how best to
address the world around you from then on. If you know that you struggle
with your anger, you can begin to treat it and work on techniques that you
can use to help eliminate that struggle.
 Chapter 14: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Techniques to Eliminate Anger Issues

Once you have identified that you may be struggling with your anger, it is
time for you to begin understanding what comes next. In particular, you
may be wondering how best you can cope with those feelings of anger as
they arise? What can you possibly do to help the situation around you? How
can you prevent your anger from getting worse when you do feel it?

Because oftentimes, when people are angry, they are not thinking clearly, it
becomes critical to figure out how best to address the situation when you
are calm. If you can put together a plan to help you manage your anger
when you are calm, you will often find that following that plan gets
infinitely easier when you are in a situation that calls for it.

In particular, this chapter will introduce you to three methods common in

CBT to helping manage anger issues that may arise. Remember that
ultimately, the method that you use to control your anger is your own—all
you need to do is find the one that works best for you. The best anger
management is the anger management that does its job well.

Also, remember that just because you still feel angry sometimes even with
the implementation of these tools does not mean that they are not working.
Keep in mind that anger is a very real, very normal emotion and you should
consider the fact that it is normal for people to feel. You do not need to be
ashamed of feeling anger—what matters is that you know how best to
control it to avoid running into any issues later.
the three techniques that you will be addressing within this chapter are
anger disruption, cognitive change, and an attitude change with an emphasis
on forgiveness and acceptance over the situation at hand.
Anger Disruption
When you are angry, you usually struggle to recognize it in the moment.
Sure, you may be aware of the sensation, but you are rarely cognitively able
to remind yourself, “Hey, I’m feeling angry—I better not do that right
now!” Instead, you find yourself swayed by the need to continue with the
yelling and the demanding despite knowing that it is not the best possible
way to move forward. If this sounds like you, you are not alone.

This is why many people take advantage of anger disruption. Anger

disruption is the ability to effectively interrupt your anger in some way,
shape, or form. Usually, this is done by removing yourself from the
situation and avoiding the stimulus that is frustrating to you at that moment.
Some people may call this running away, but keep in mind that choosing to
temporarily remove yourself in order to calm down is not cowardly or
running away—it is choosing to avoid escalation. It can be good to discuss
this technique with those that you are close to beforehand so they know
what you are doing in the heat of the moment. After all, if you are angry, it
is quite likely that they are also frustrated to some degree and they may
want their own sort of resolution to the situation.

There are several different ways that you can manage this technique. For
example, you can avoid the distressing stimulus altogether. If you are
fighting with your spouse, walk into another room and pick up something
else to do. Perhaps you choose to fold some laundry or do the dishes—you
chose something neutral to do while you wait for the feeling to pass.
You may also have an internal method to remove yourself emotionally from
the situation, such as telling yourself that you will always take a deep breath
and count to ten before responding when you are angry. Yes, this may draw
out some conversations, but it will allow you to weigh your options and
what you are saying well before you say it.

Keep in mind that while removal is a great way to manage your emotions in
the moment, it does nothing to fix the problem or help you gain more self-
control over yourself in the future. You may still be just as readily angered
as you have not done any work on what has been angering you at that point
in time. This is very rarely a strategy that can be used alone—it must be
used in tandem with other aspects, such as cognitive restructuring in order
to come up with some sort of method of addressing those negative feelings
that you have. In addressing those negative feelings, you may find that you
are actually able to protect yourself further.
Cognitive Change
Sometimes, the best thing that you can do when you are angry is find a way
to manage and shift your mindset away from anger and onto something that
is far more productive and useful to you. For example, if you are angry, you
are going to be so caught up on what is and is not fair that you are not likely
to think very clearly when you are being walked through why you did not
get the result you were looking for on something. Maybe you are angry
because the store was sold out of the specific item you wanted after you
saw someone else walking away with that particular item that you had set
out to buy.

When you get upset by a situation like this, it can be incredibly easy to find
yourself caught up in the fact that things went wrong. Instead of seeing that
you were simply unlucky, you somehow turn it into some sort of grievous
insult against you—you were intentionally left out of getting that item and
that it must have been your bad luck again. You may even go so far as to
insult the person who bought the last of the item because you are being
driven by your anger and feel the need to scream and yell your frustrations.
Your mind is caught in the loop of negativity, and you need to figure out
how to best push your mind out of that angry, negative perspective toward a
perspective that is far more rational and calmer.

One such way to change your cognitive state is to use silly humor in some
way. You may not laugh initially, as no one enjoys laughing at themselves
or making themselves feel dumb or silly. However, this type of cognitive
change seeks to make the situation humorous in some way, shape, or form
in order to sort of shock the mind out of that angry state of mind and into
one that will be able to handle the situation better.

For example, imagine that you are frustrated over not getting that last item
at the store. Under your breath, you mutter that the person is a selfish pig as
you walk away in frustration.

The other person must have heard you because she turns around shrugs, and
says that her name is, in fact, Portia, which means pig, and she is quite
happy to keep her item, thank you very much.

The absurdity of the situation gives you pause as you realize the irony of it,
and the sudden shock is enough to help you shift from that moment of toxic
anger into one that is mildly amused by the way the universe played that
situation out. In the end, you apologize for calling the lady a pig and go on
your way.
Acceptance and Forgiveness

Finally, let’s talk about both acceptance and forgiveness. Stop and think for
a moment about what it is that makes people angry. Usually, either it is
some sort of inconvenience, or it is because they are causing some sort of
problem for you some other way. When you learn to accept the situation for
what it is and move on, however, you may find that the anger melts away
almost effortlessly.

For example, imagine that your child ran through the family room with a
glass of milk, something that is against the rules of your home, and spilled
milk all over the carpet and sofa. However, instead of telling anyone, he
snuck away and pretended like it never happened—until the smell of rotting
milk was a dead giveaway.

You may immediately feel angry—you now have yet another mess that you
have to clean up that you would much rather not deal with. You are
frustrated at your child for not listening and wishing that they would have
listened to you all along, or at the very least, that they would not have
hidden what they were doing from you. They could have asked for help to
clean up the mess before it had a chance to fester.

One way that you can stop that anger, however, is to stop, remind yourself
that it was not intentional, and move on. You are basically accepting what
has happened for what it is—an unintentional accident that was handled
poorly and moving on. You are effectively moving away from the idea that
your child had intentionally ignored your rules or dumped the milk to spite
you, which you may have initially felt. Instead, you focus on the accident
and move on.

When you do this, you effectively put an emphasis on understanding the

other person’s perspective. They may have done something that triggered
your anger, but why did they do what they did? If you are able to stop and
consider things from their perspectives instead of from your own, you may
find that you are actually far more likely to accept and put up with it. You
are more capable of moving forward simply because you are able to
recognize the other side and show some compassion that you may hope
would be shown to you if you had made a mistake as well.

When you use acceptance and forgiveness, then you simply let go of those
feelings of anger and frustration. You know that what has happened has
happened and effectively let go of the temptation to dwell on the past.
 Chapter 15: Social Skills

Finally, we have arrived at the last chapter of the book! Within this chapter,
it is time to address several social skills that people have. As both CBT and
emotional intelligence seek to help you become a well-rounded individual
that is capable of handling nearly anything, it is important to stop and
recognize the importance of some of the most basic social skills that you
may need.

When you master these social skills of mirroring, empathizing, making

good eye contact, listening actively, and learning to analyze other people,
you will find that your own abilities to be emotionally intelligent will
increase dramatically. Effectively, you will be able to manage yourself and
those around you. Imagine how much easier communicating with other
people would be if you could understand their body language or if you
acknowledged their own feelings at the moment? How much easier would it
be to relate to people if you knew what to look for to know that they are
interested in you? What if you are able to listen actively in order to better
understand those around you?
Mirroring
The first technique that we will look at was drawn from neuro-linguistic
programming but has become incredibly popular. This is the skill of
mirroring—when you can mirror someone else, you are effectively able to
make sure that you and the other person have a working connection with
each other. Commonly used to make yourself more relatable or more
persuasive, using mirroring allows you to actively relate to the other person
through tapping into the other person’s unconscious mind in order to
convince them to be willing to interact with you.

When you are mirroring someone else, you are acting upon the idea that the
closer two people are to each other, the more in-tune they are with each
other. They typically mimic each other’s movements without even realizing
it—they will actively follow the lead of each other in their conversations
and even in their body language. If one crosses their arms, so will the other.
If one takes a drink, the other one will, too. Effectively, then, you can tell
how close people are in general by looking at how similarly and in sync
they move.

However, you can also trigger this in other people—you can effectively
convince them to follow your lead in order to reap all of the benefits of
them actively feeling like they can trust you. Think of when this could be
useful—particularly if you want to be persuasive with emotional
intelligence, you need to be able to prove that you are trustworthy. This is
one such way to do so.
To mirror other people, you will follow three key steps—you will make
sure that you feel some sort of connection to the other person, you will
match their pace somehow, and then you will identify their punctuator. In
learning these, you will be able to convince even strangers that you hardly
know that you and they are closer than either of you actually are. This is an
incredibly important social skill—you can use it to facilitate a relationship
that you feel is not properly developing quickly enough, for example.

When you go to make a connection, you effectively want to figure out how
best to present yourself in the situation to make yourself seem like you are
actively listening. Of course, you will be actively listening, but you really
want to emphasize it for the other person. You do this by facing the other
person, making solid eye contact, and nodding your head as you listen. As
you do this, you should feel the makings of the beginning of a relationship.

You can continue through matching the pace of the other person—you
effectively want to pick up on the other person’s enthusiasm and speech
patterns. If they are speaking rapidly, you, too, should speak rapidly. If they
are calm, you should approach the situation calmly as well. In doing this for
a while, you should find that they also are matching your own speaking
pace as well.

Finally, you must figure out what the other party’s punctuator is—this is
how they really emphasize what they are saying at any given moment. Most
commonly, you see this in people who may punch the air or make a certain
hand gesture, such as chopping on their palm when they really want to
emphasize that point they are making. Upon identifying it, you must then
figure out when they are going to use it next—and then beat them to it. You
want to use the punctuator before they do in order to make sure that you
actively are able to trigger that mirroring connection.

From there, all you need to do is test if you were successful. If you were,
you will find that they will unconsciously mirror your own subtle
movements as well.
Empathizing
While empathizing does not come naturally to everyone, it is critical to
know how to do it. Many people will find that they naturally empathize
with others without trying to, but if you are not in that lucky group that
learns to empathize without much effort, you may find that you need to
make it a point to learn.

Remember, empathy is critical to your own ability to relate to other people.

If you cannot naturally empathize, you must figure out how to cognitively
empathize so you can, at the very least, understand other people and their
emotions as well.

When you want to begin, you will start quite simply—imagine yourself in
the other person’s shoes. If you are annoyed that your friend is irritated that
you were late to something, perhaps you should consider how you would
have felt if your friend had been late to meet you—you likely would have
been annoyed.

While that is a simple version of how to imagine yourself in the shoes of

someone else, this is exactly what you will be doing. You are looking at the
other person’s situation and trying to figure out how their situation would
make you feel. You are going to want to consider as much as you can when
you do this—where they grew up, what do they have available to them, and
anything about them that is relevant to this situation. Are they annoyed
because they feel like you have grown up too sheltered from consequences,
perhaps? Or maybe because they feel like you, just like everyone else, do
not respect them for some reason.
With that idea of how they are feeling, you should then take a moment to
investigate any of the underlying feelings that may be guiding the other
person. Now that you recognize that your friend is annoyed at you for being
late, for example, you are able to ask questions for further understanding to
figure out why it mattered in the first place.

In developing this understanding of what they feel and why you are able to
begin empathizing with the other person. Over time, you may find that this
process becomes quite automatic—you no longer have to think about it.
That is a good thing and it is a sign that you are naturally becoming more
emotionally intelligent.
Making Good Eye Contact
Making good eye contact with other people is a critical skill. When you can
make good, healthy eye contact, you are effectively allowing yourself to
acknowledge the other party. You are telling them that they matter to you
simply because you are actively looking at them.
Making good eye contact is actually surprisingly simple—when you need to
make eye contact with someone else, you should follow the rule of making
eye contact 50% of the time when you are speaking and 70% of the time
when you are listening. This allows the other person to see that you are
attentive and interested in them, while also reminding them to continue
speaking to you.

If you find that making active eye contact is too difficult for any reason at
all, you may find that looking at the bridge of their nose fools them too. As
far as the other person will be concerned, you will be making eye contact
with them, and you are able to avoid it if you find that direct eye contact is
uncomfortable or too much for you to manage. However, even the illusion
of eye contact can go a long way.
Active Listening
Another crucial social skill, especially if you wish to be emotionally
intelligent, is being able to listen actively. Too many people make the
mistake of listening with the intent to reply to what is being said rather than
to actively listen to what is being said. When you listen actively, you are
effectively ensuring that the speaker feels acknowledged and like you truly
care.

If you wish to be emotionally intelligent, you are focused on trying to make

that a priority. Effectively, then, you will be actively attempting to listen
with the intent to understand. Doing so is not as difficult as it may seem. All
you need to do is start by making eye contact as the other party speaks. As
you listen, you should always be paying your undivided attention to the
other party. No distractions should be allowed during this phase. Make sure
that you are actively listening and nodding your head to show that you are
listening.

The most important part, however, is to remember that as you listen, you
should be focused on listening only. There should be no attempts to come
up with your own responses to the other party—you should simply be
making it a point to hear and understand.

When the other person finishes speaking, before you reply, you must try to
recap what was said. In your own words, offer a brief summary of what you
believe was said and then ask to make sure you got it right. If they agree,
then you can take the time to figure out your reply. If they inform you that
you are wrong, however, you must ask clarifying questions to make sure
that you do get a solid understanding.

Only after you have that understanding are you able to finally put together
your reply to ensure that you have actively listened.
Understanding Body Language
Finally, one last skill that will not be instructed, but is strongly
recommended that you check out is the ability to read and understand body
language. Effectively, when you learn how to read the body language of
other people, you are enabling yourself to better understand them. You are
learning how best to understand those around you when you learn to read
their nonverbal communication. If you wish to be emotionally intelligent
and are ready to move on to skills beyond what has been included in the
book thus far, moving on to analyzing people is probably the best place for
you to go.
 Conclusion

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of Emotional Intelligence &

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy! At this point, you have taken a look into
both emotional intelligence and CBT, two methods of self-improvement
that are readily actionable without requiring the instruction of a
professional. Hopefully, your journey of reading through this book was
informative and pleasing for you. Every effort was made to ensure that what
you read was something that you could act upon, relate to, and readily
understand.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this book, above all, is the fact
that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are intricately related to one another.
Remember the fact that your thoughts will always influence your feelings,
which will always influence your behaviors, and use that understanding to
really push your own social interactions forward. You will not only be able
to control yourself better in knowing these cycles, but you will also be able
to predict other people’s behaviors as well, allowing you to begin to
develop that propensity for relationship management that is so important
within emotional intelligence.

As you read through this book, you were guided through a solid
understanding of what emotional intelligence is. You learned about the
purpose of EQ, as well as the pillars that help build it, along with the
primary skills within each pillar. From there, you took a look into cognitive
behavioral therapy, another process that can help you learn to self-regulate,
which in turn, makes it valuable to emotional intelligence.
From here, you have plenty of options. You may decide that you wish to
study more about emotional intelligence and CBT—both are valid options,
as this book only scratched the beginning of both deep fields. You may
decide that you want to learn more about empathy and how to wield it to
become successful in social interactions. You may even decide to take the
advice in the last chapter and focus solely on learning about how to read
other people. Remember, being able to analyze body language consciously
can be one of your biggest assets, especially if you are striving for
emotional intelligence and excellence.

No matter where you choose to go, however, what holds true is that you
now have the skills and several techniques to help you handle many
different self-regulation problems. There were several techniques that were
provided for you to help you work through depression, anxiety, insomnia,
and anger. These techniques may be incredibly valuable to you as you begin
to practice them.

Thank you so much for allowing me to join you on your journey to mental
wellness. Whether you suffer from anxiety and depression or whether you
have simply been looking for methods through which to better yourself, this
book should have provided you with plenty of actionable advice that will
aid you in all of your endeavors.

No matter where you go from now, remember that the techniques of both
emotional intelligence and cognitive behavioral therapy can be incredibly
influential and incredibly beneficial to you as a person. As you master these
skills, you will find that your own interactions with others will change.
Finally, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon if you have found this
book to be useful to you. It was designed to provide you with plenty of
information in the most understandable way possible, and if you have found
it to be useful, do not hesitate to hop on over to the Amazon page and let
me know. Your valuable feedback is always greatly appreciated! Thank you
and good luck on your journey.
 Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse
Recovery

A Guide to Understand Emotional

Narcissism, Identify the Narcissist and
Escape from Narcissistic Techniques. Use
Empathy to Recover from Narcissistic Abuses
 Introduction

Congratulations on purchasing Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse Recovery,

and thank you for doing so.

Have you ever had that feeling of dread when you look at the clock and
realize that someone will be home soon? Maybe it was a parent, or perhaps
it was a romantic partner. You know that they are on their way, and you
immediately dread it. Instead of being at ease, you find yourself stressed out
and on edge. You may find that you dread being around the other person,
and any time you know that you will have to see him or her, you cannot
help but feel your own anxiety spike, even if you have no reason that you
can think of to be so uncomfortable.

If you know that feeling of dread that comes when you face seeing someone
that you know, you may be suffering from narcissistic or emotional abuse.
Now, you may be thinking that the person that you are afraid of has never
laid a hand on you, or that you cannot possibly think of a time during which
the other person was abusive. However, not all abuse leaves a physical
mark. In fact, some of the worst abuse that a person can endure never leaves
a physical mark at all. It is possible that you have been suffering from
emotional or narcissistic abuse without being aware of it. Your unconscious
mind may recognize that what has been happening is not right or normal,
causing you to feel afraid or anxious without reason. If you are not aware of
the signs, it can be easy to miss them, and you may instead entirely
overlook the true cause as being unnecessary anxiety that needs to be
medicated or treated in some other way. However, this abuse is very real,
and the effects of the abuse hurting other people are real as well.
This book is your guide to identifying emotional and narcissistic abuse. You
will be able to tell if you are, in fact, suffering from one of these invisible
types of abuse, and if you are, you will be given the tools that you will need
to handle it. You will be instructed on what to expect in abusive situations,
how to recognize them, and how to heal from them, allowing you to reclaim
your life once and for all.

Remember, no one should feel like they have to live life in fear. Being in
your home should not be a source of anxiety, nor should you ever have to
feel like you must constantly interact with someone that makes you
uncomfortable. When you read through this book, you will discover how to
recognize several types of abuse, some of which you may have never
realized were abusive in the first place. You will learn how to recognize and
recover from emotional abuse. You will then be introduced to recognizing
the narcissist—a particularly insidious personality type that usually leads to
manipulative, coercive, and abusive treatment of those around them. You
will learn how to recognize the narcissistic abuser, as well as the narcissist’s
favorite tactics to abuse. You will learn how deeply the narcissist’s abuse
can hit, even if you are not ever harmed physically. Finally, you will be
introduced to the empath, a personality type that, due to the kind nature and
desire to help others, usually ends up taken advantage of by manipulators
and abusers everywhere. You will learn about the empath’s greatest strength
—empathy, and how that power of empathy can help overcome the abuse
that has been faced.

As you read through this book, it is with the utmost hope that you will find
it to be helpful, instructive, and provide you with an actionable advice that
you can follow and use in order to protect yourself from abuse, or if you
have already found yourself abused, it will point you in the right direction
to healing. Keep in mind that you do not have to suffer through abuse, and
if you ever feel like you are in active danger, please consult with your local
domestic violence hotline to help you. You may have access to more
resources than you realized to help you live the life you deserve: A life free
from abuse.

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for
choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much
useful information as possible; please enjoy it!
 Chapter 1: Abuse in Relationships

When people think of abuse, they typically think of the kind that leaves
noticeable evidence behind—physical and sexual abuse. However, abuse
comes in all shapes and sizes, with different effects and results. Would you
consider being yelled at to shut up abuse? What about being called names
while yelling? Throwing something at the wall? Punching a door? Not
providing you with the access you need and deserve to familial funds?
Threatening to take custody of your children? All of these are different
forms of abuse, and not a single one of them ever involved laying a finger
on the other person.

Abuse is dangerous—not only can it cause serious physical or emotional

harm, but it can also cause serious mental health issues, or even lead to
death, substance abuse, or self-harm. Abuse is nothing to ever be ignored,
and if you ever suspect that someone is being abused, reaching out to them
in private can be the right thing to do. If you are the victim of abuse, you do
not have to suffer any longer—you can take a stand and leave once and for
all. It may be intimidating or seem entirely impossible to leave, especially if
you are financially dependent upon the abuser, but you can make that call to
leave if you choose to do so.
What is Abuse?
Consider for a moment the definition of the word “Abuse.” If you were to
look up a definition online or in a dictionary, you would be provided with
something along the lines of misuse of an item, or to treat with cruelty or
violence. Abuse can be used to refer to the misuse of, for example, alcohol,
during which the one drinking frequently drinks far too much, whether due
to addiction or due to some other factor. Abuse of power can happen when a
judge passes a judgment that is entirely designed to benefit the judge or
push an agenda rather than making the right call. You may even hear people
say that items are abused, such as saying that a child’s favorite toy has
really stood up to a lot of abuse. This means that, despite rough usage, the
toy has held up.
Despite the wide range of how the word itself can be used, within the scope
of this book, we will be focusing solely on the definition of abuse is
relevant to the mistreatment or harm to others. More specifically, we are
going to add one extra element when discussing abuse within this book—it
must be intentional.

Effectively, then, abuse will be defined for the duration of this book as the
intentional act of harming another person for reasons other than self-
defense. The only justifiable act of harming another person or animal is to
either consume after humanely hunting or slaughtering or in self-defense
during which you were not the aggressor. This means, then, that any time
that someone hurts you intentionally, no matter how you were hurt, you
have suffered abuse.

Of course, abuse will vary in severity. You could be slapped on the bottom
by some random stranger walking down the street, which would obviously
be distressing, but not necessarily life-changing. You could also be forcibly
held down and violently assaulted. Both are still abuse, and both are still
wrong, but on the spectrum, there is a vast range of differences in severity.

One thing still holds true—you deserve to live your life free of abuse. This
is a message that you will see repeated throughout this book because it is so
critical to hear. You deserve to be treated with kindness, not abused.
Who is Abused?
However, though you and those around you deserve to be treated with
kindness, you are far from alone. Abuse runs rampant around the world.
Especially in the United States, the statistics on abuse are extreme. It is
believed that 1/3 of women and 1/5 of men have been abused either
physically, sexually, or psychologically, at some point in their lives. This
abuse happens to people of all ages. Babies and young children are common
targets. 1/3 teens have reported already having experienced violence and
abuse during their own relationships.
Effectively, anyone can be the victim of abuse. Rich or poor, young or old,
abuse can happen to anyone. In fact, every single minute, 24 people are
raped, abused, or stalked by a domestic or intimate partner within the
United States alone. 48% of adults within the US have found themselves on
the receiving end of psychological abuse within their lifetimes

If you are the victim of abuse, do not be afraid to reach out—you are truly
not alone, and other people can relate to you and your struggles. Just
because abuse is so rampant and prevalent does not mean that you need to
take it without fighting back, nor should you simply accept it. You can
choose to leave. You can choose to stand up for yourself. You can choose to
escape. It is not always easy, but you can do it.
Reasons for Abuse

First and foremost, it is important to acknowledge that abuse is never

justifiable. It is never acceptable to intentionally hurt someone else, no
matter how angry they have made you, nor how much they refuse to obey.
People are not designed to be puppets, and no matter the relationship that
you have, you always have free will. You can choose when to be sexually
intimate and when you do not want to. You can decide what you will eat
and what you will refuse. You decide who you talk to and who you will
avoid. No matter what you have done, even if you have been unfaithful or
done something that your partner is disapproving of, you do not even
deserve to be intentionally harmed.

Ultimately, most abuse endured is because one person desires power—they

want to be in control, and the best way to do that is to force the other person
to submit. They may believe that they own their partner, or that they have
some say in what their partners are allowed to do, especially in marriage.
However, this could not be further from the truth—you can choose who you
want to associate with if you so choose.
Other times, abuse is endured because the abuser believes that his or her
needs come first—they want to feel like their partner should always
prioritize their needs and will use abusive tactics to make it happen. They
will intentionally remove the idea of equality within the relationship,
making it clear to the victim that the abuser is dominant and more
important. In doing so, the victim often eventually internalizes that he or
she must always make the other person happy.

Effectively, then, abuse is a power play. It is done to assert control over the
victim to ensure that the victim feels powerless. In feeling powerless, the
victim believes that he or she has no choice but continue to endure the
abuse without argument or question. This is part of the reason why so many
victims refuse to leave—they feel like they cannot.

Abuse on its own is learned—people are rarely just abusive without having
ever been exposed to it before. It may have been learned during childhood
when abusive tactics were used growing up, such as a son growing up
around an abusive father and naturally behaving exactly the same way
toward his own partners and children in adulthood. It could have been seen
on television or other forms of media and slowly internalized over a
lifetime of exposure that has normalized abusive tendencies.

What does not cause abuse, however, is the victim, and if the abuser ever
tells you that it is your own fault that he or she acts that way, then they are
in denial or trying to convince you of something that is not true to keep you
under their thumbs for longer. Drugs and alcohol also do not cause abuse—
someone who is intoxicated may be abusive, but it is because those
tendencies are already present. Stress does not cause abuse, either. Someone
who is not abusive will not see abuse as an option at all.
Types of Abuse
Abuse of all kinds is traumatic, no matter who it was that was abusive to
you. While people tend to have an easy time recognizing physical abuse
thanks to the literal marks it can leave on someone else, people often
struggle to recognize other types of abuse as well. Despite the fact that
abuse is as rampant as it is, people do not tend to recognize most kinds, and
this chapter aims to change that.

Reading through this section can be incredibly valuable to you. As you do,
you can become capable of identifying and recognizing several of the more
insidious forms of abuse that can usually slip under the radar. For example,
some people may strongly feel that it is impossible for a husband to
sexually abuse a wife—that is not true. When you know about some of the
more obscure or less apparent forms of abuse, you will be in a far better
position to resist that abuse or recognize when it is time to exit the
relationship.

Remember, no matter how much that your abuser tells you that you are
stuck, or that you have no choice but to submit, remember that there are
options out there for you. All you need to do is reach out. You do not need
to live with abuse, and you can make a plan to leave. There are people who
work on domestic violence hotlines that are ready and willing to help you.
They can help you find resources in your local area and help you come up
with a plan to help, no matter where you are or what your situation is. You
do not deserve to live with any form of abuse.

Primarily, abuse comes in several forms. We will look in particular about

six of these right now: Emotional, financial, physical, sexual, spiritual, and
narcissistic. Each of these happen differently, but they all have the potential
to be harmful. You can be hurt by every single one of these forms of abuse,
and just because you are not being touched physically does not mean that
your abuse is not that bad. Please do not downplay your abuse or try to
compare it to the abuse endured by other people.

Emotional abuse

Emotional abuse, also commonly referred to as psychological, verbal, or

mental abuse, is a form of abuse during which the abuser uses mind games
and emotions in order to gain control. The abuser wants to be able to
manipulate your emotions and your mind in order to make sure that you do
not feel secure enough to escape or to make you feel like you are incapable
of escaping. This form of abuse is particularly insidious because it never
leaves physical marks on the victim and is next to impossible to prove.
When you are the victim of emotional abuse, you feel entirely incapable.
You feel like you are stuck, but also left doubting whether you are actually
being abused or if you are simply too sensitive about the situation.
Emotional abuse is real and is wrong, and even though it may not leave a
mark on you, it will impact your emotional state severely.

Financial abuse

Financial abuse is exactly what it sounds like—keeping finances away from

the victim or somehow exerting control over the victim. Especially in a
marriage, both parties should have equal access to finances, as marriage is
generally approached as a team. Unless agreed to prior to that point, if one
partner suddenly commandeers all control of the finances or restricts access
to the finances, there may be financial abuse occurring.

During financial abuse, one party’s access to the funds or to making money
is restricted or hurt. Because finances and access to money are necessary to
survive, restricting access to these funds can make it impossible to get out
of a negative, abusive relationship. Along those lines as well, it is next to
impossible to find a home if credit is destroyed. By damaging financial
security, the abuser makes it, so the victim is far more reliant on the abuser,
meaning that the victim lacks power. It may also encompass one’s credit as
well. This is effectively anything that threatens the financial wellbeing of
the individual being discussed, whether that is racking up debt, destroying
credit, restricting access to money, or even threatening the workplace of the
victim.

Physical abuse
Physical abuse is perhaps the easiest of them all to identify. Physical abuse
is particularly known for being painful. It is physical attempts to restrain,
subdue, or abuse the victim. In general, if you are being threatened
physically or put into a dangerous situation, you are physically abused. One
such form of this that people may not realize is kicking the victim out of the
car in a dangerous area or leaving him or her locked outside, particularly if
it is hot or cold. People have a right to shelter and intentionally interfering
with that, making you stay outside, which is a form of physical abuse.

This is perhaps the most immediately threatening of the forms of abuse that
you can suffer. If you feel that you are at risk for physical abuse, or if you
have been hit, you do have rights and repercussions. Please reach out for
help and do not tolerate any physical abuse at all. This abuse has a tendency
to continually get worse and worse as time goes on, and it is believed that a
staggering three women per day are killed by their intimate partners just
within the US alone. This is a terrifying number and is all the more reason
that the instant a relationship turns physical, it should be ended.

Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse is something that people think is cut-and-dry, but actually has
some nuances to it. You may feel like you have not been sexually abused if
you do not know that certain occurrences are actually considered abusive,
but the effects are undeniable. Even if you were unaware that you were
sexually abused, you might find that what you have endured may actually
be classified in this manner. You do not have to be violently raped by a
stranger for your abuse that you have endured to be considered sexual abuse
or assault. In fact, you can be assaulted or abused sexually by a partner or
even a spouse. Marriage is not a license for free, uncensored access to the
other person’s body. Even being pestered for sexual intimacy is a form of
sexual abuse—if anything other than your enthusiastic and consensual yes
to sexual activity is pursued, you may find that your partner is attempting to
intentionally coerce or browbeat you into giving in. Remember, even in
marriage, you retain full rights to your body and you are under no
obligation to engage in any sort of sexual contact that you wish to avoid.

Spiritual abuse

Spiritual abuse is another of those forms of abuse that is particularly tricky

to identify, but once you know what it is, you are able to point it out a bit
easier. This is any time that an abuser attacks a victim’s choice in religion.
It can happen to people from any religious type, and anyone can suffer from
it. It is done to directly attack one’s religion, which is oftentimes one of the
most intimate, innermost parts of their own belief system. To attack their
belief system is to truly attack the individual, and it can be incredibly
distressing. It can happen during a relationship, especially in contexts such
as one person intentionally berating the other’s religious choices or
preventing the victim from being able to practice. Sometimes, the abuser
may even use their own or your own religious texts to justify the abuse,
pointing to lines that are being misconstrued, such as allowing the man to
lead with the woman falling back and obeying at all costs.

Narcissistic abuse
Finally, the last form of abuse that is being discussed here is narcissistic
abuse. Narcissistic abuse refers to any abuse that has occurred by a
narcissist. This book will spend several chapters discussing the narcissist
and narcissistic abuse as it progresses.

In particular, narcissists are particularly insidious with their abuse. They

tend to be abusive simply because they do not see any reason for them not
to get their way. They have a distorted view of reality around them, and
because of that, they tend to try to browbeat everything into fitting their
own views on the world. This is quite problematic—when they are actively
trying to make everything else conform to their delusions, they end up
harming several people in the process.

More specifically, however, the narcissists are masters at manipulation and

abuse. They are skilled in making the abuse that they are dishing out seem
like it must be the fault of the victim, and they will not acknowledge
anything beyond that as being the truth. In fact, they are so certain about
their own viewpoints, that they will claim that anyone else’s perception of
the truth is false. For now, all that matters is that you know that narcissistic
abuse exists in its own category and that it encompasses all types of abuse.
We will delve into this topic in-depth later.
Effects of Abuse

When you have been the victim of abuse, you may find that you have begun
to change. You may not be able to notice it at first, but eventually, you
notice that you are no longer the person you used to be. In particular, you
may find some of the following effects are present in your life. These are
effectively your emotional injuries in response to the harm that you have
endured. Remember, some abuse can happen without ever leaving a
physical mark, but the emotional scars that are there remain potentially for a
lifetime. Some of these effects are:

Anxiety (including post-traumatic stress disorder): When you

have been the victim of abuse, you are likely constantly living in
a state of hyper-vigilance. You are afraid of what is going to
happen if you remain in the relationship, but you are afraid of
what will happen when you leave as well. Post-traumatic stress
disorder is also a common anxiety disorder that many abuse
victims suffer from, and this will be discussed in depth in Chapter
7: The Effects of Narcissistic Abuse.
Depression: When you are constantly afraid for your life or sense
of self, it becomes incredibly common to suffer from depression
as well as you lose your ability to enjoy life. You may struggle to
actively enjoy what is happening around you or feel like you
cannot get out of bed. You may suffer from a lack of energy and
lack of motivation to take care of yourself, your responsibilities,
and your home.
Risky behaviors: When you have been abused, you may find that
you spend more time than usual acting out. You may, for
example, speed or drive without a seatbelt. You may engage in
risky, unprotected sex with others. You may use or abuse drugs.
Ultimately, you do not care about what will happen to you, so you
do not take the necessary precautions that would be used to keep
you safe.
Substance abuse: You may even decide to self-medicate through
drugs and alcohol, or find that your abusive partner encourages
you to feed your addiction. You find that drugs or alcohol serve as
a sort of release and escape from the abuse and this can very
quickly spiral into abuse of the substance, and potentially even
addiction or overdoes if you are not careful.
Self-harm or thoughts of suicide: Another common coping
mechanism is self-harm. You may intentionally hurt yourself to
provide some feelings of control over the situation that you have
found yourself in. While unhealthy, you feel like you are able to
control when you hurt, and that can make you feel like you have
reclaimed some power. If you are having thoughts of self-harm or
suicide, it is important that you reach out to a licensed medical
professional, as this is considered a medical emergency and you
will be able to get the help that you need.
Low self-esteem: When you are constantly being told that you
are undeserving or unworthy, you will eventually internalize it
and believe that it is true. This does not mean that you are weak
or make it true—it just means that you have heard it so often that
you believe it. However, lacking self-esteem can then mean that
you do not trust yourself and that you doubt your ability to get
yourself out of the relationship.
Avoidance of relationships or other triggers: If you have been
abused in the past, you may choose to avoid relationships
altogether. Especially if you have suffered on more than one
occasion, you may just feel like it is simpler to avoid the
relationships altogether than it is to try to find a healthy one.
The Cycle of Abuse
Before we address the rest of this book, there is one important concept that
must be remembered—abuse exists in a cycle. Not only is this cycle
generational, meaning that children who grew up in an abusive environment
grow up to create abusive environments themselves, but also in the sense
that abuse within a single relationship tends to occur within a very specific,
predictable cycle during which things are sometimes comfortable and
happy, but other times, abuse is highly prevalent. People often take those
honeymoon periods, the periods during which the abuse is absent, as signs
that the relationship is worth salvaging, but consider this for a moment: If
the relationship were only abusive all of the time, would anyone want to
stay? No one would want to put up with nonstop abuse—there has to be
some sort of good there as well to keep the individual interested in staying
and motivated to continue to return to the relationship.

The cycle of abuse occurs in four distinct stages: Tensions building, an

incident, reconciliation, and the calm.
During the first stage of tensions building, there is a tension present in the
relationship. You may feel like communication is breaking down or that you
and your partner are simply constantly annoying each other. The victim
may feel like they are heading toward another incident of abuse and try
anything to try to please and placate the abuser in hopes of avoiding it.
Communication will continue to degrade, and there may be frequent
arguments or disagreements during this period.

The second stage, known as the incident stage, is when the abuse happens.
Usually, there is a big blowout—it may be physical abuse, or it may be an
argument or an attempt to control or coerce the victim. The abuser may yell,
call names, threaten to leave, intimidate, attempt to force sexual intimacy,
or attempt other forms of violence or abuse. This is the big, scary event that
the victim was trying to avoid.

After the incident, the abuser realizes that the abuse has occurred and
moves into damage control. In particular, he will aim for reconciliation,
which refers to the name of this stage. They will often apologize, but that
apology is generally insincere and meant to simply placate the victim. The
victim is oftentimes blamed at this time, or the abuser will deny that abuse
has happened at all. It may also be downplayed in order to convince the
victim that things are not as bad as the victim may see them. Also common
at this stage is an apology with a promise to do better, seek counseling, or
work somehow on the relationship. However, these efforts to better the
relationship rarely, if ever, actually occur.
Finally, after reconciliation is complete comes the calm in the storm—this
is the brief respite during which the victim is reminded of all of the reasons
he or she fell in love or was pulled into the relationship in the first place.
This is the stage known as the honeymoon period. During this time, the
relationship seems fine—the abuse is forgotten or forgiven, and the abuser
is often found showering the victim with affection and gifts. During this
period, the victim is reminded of why he or she wants to remain in the
relationship.
The Challenges of Escaping Abuse

At this point, after reading through the struggles that so many people face in
abusive relationships, you may have a single question going through your
mind—why do they not just leave? After all, it would be as simple as just
walking out the door and not returning, right?

While it is always a possibility to leave, there is a lot more to unpack with

that. It is a complicated issue—yes, leaving is the right move when you are
in an abusive relationship, but there are often outside factors beyond the
fact that abuse is present that needs to be considered. Remember, abuse is
about exerting power and control, and when you try to leave an abuser, you
are directly taking back that power. Thus far, in that relationship, the abuser
has used abuse to retain that power, and leaving will not change that.
Oftentimes, leaving is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship—
the abuser is likely to retaliate and make leaving as difficult and painful as
possible to force the victim into submission.

Beyond the danger of leaving, there may be several other factors that come
into play within that particular relationship, such as struggling to leave
because children are involved. When children are present in the
relationship, leaving is no longer as simple as packing up and disappearing,
especially if the children are shared. The abusive parent still has rights to
the children that cannot simply be revoked without court permission, and
that revocation rarely happens. Victims may instead choose to stay in the
relationship, so they have access to their children instead of having to share
their children with the abusive parent for long stretches of time.

Another common challenge and roadblock that people hit is that of their
culture or religion. Many cultures and religions reject the idea of divorce
or separation, and others still expect subservience of women to the men.
When you are told that you must be obedient to your husband and that your
husband is in the right to hit or hurt you, you are going to feel like you
cannot leave. You are going to be so caught up in what is right by your
culture and in your relationship that escaping becomes incredibly frowned
upon. If you know that you cannot divorce in the eyes of your religion, or
that you risk your culture rejecting you for giving up on your relationship,
you may find that you are happier keeping your current community, even if
that means tolerating the abuse.

Some people simply do not have the physical capacity to leave due to an
illness or disability They may not be mobile enough to live on their own, or
they may require help for basic day-to-day survival, and they feel like their
best chance is staying in the relationship and dealing with the abuse. They
may even have significant health issues that prevent them from being able
to take care of their children, so instead of leaving the relationship, they
stay to continue to live with their children in an effort to protect them.
Other people may find that they are too embarrassed to reach out for help
because of the stigmas surrounding abuse. If you have been the victim of
abuse, it can be difficult to reach out to others. Especially if your partner
has spent the relationship telling you that everything is your own fault, you
may feel like you will be harshly judged for your own victimization, despite
the fact that the victim is never deserving of abuse.
Sometimes, fear holds the individual back. Perhaps your partner has
threatened suicide or to hurt you if you leave, or you worry about how you
will be able to support yourself and your children without another person
helping to pay for household necessities. You may be afraid that your
abuser will not go without a fight and that the abuse will escalate if you
attempt to leave. In particular with regards to fear, in many cases,
immigration status can also play a significant role as well if the victim is
not documented within the country, they oftentimes feel like they have to
put up with it, as if they go to court, or if the victim reaches out for help, the
victim will simply be deported. Especially if the individual has children that
are citizens of the country that the victim is undocumented within, the
victim may remain silent in order to avoid being deported and separated.
A significant lack of resources can also leave someone suffering from
abuse of any kind feeling entirely trapped in a bad situation, and the abusers
know this. This is exactly why they will take advantage of financial abuse
to make leaving harder. You may not have the money to pay for a home for
yourself and your children. You may not have a car to drive away in. You
may not have access to the finances in the family, and even if you are
actively contributing to them, you may not have access. If you simply do
not have the resources, you may be afraid to try, especially if you are
pregnant or have children.
Sometimes simply not having support from friends or family can make
you feel trapped and alone. Without access to other people to talk to, you
may find that you cannot discuss what is happening, nor do you have
anyone to reach out to when things get bad. Without a sort of sounding
board in someone else, you may find that you do not see the relationship as
being as bad as you may initially think, especially if it has been a slow
escalation up to that point. Alternatively, you may find that your friends and
family members do not see the abuse that you are enduring, and they often
try to downplay it or ask if it is truly as bad as you are saying.
Of course, one of the most compelling reasons that people find to stay in
their relationships despite the abuse is love. They truly love their partners,
and that is enough to make sure that they are staying in their relationships
that they otherwise would have left. Other times, what can hold you back is
love. After all, if you did not love your abuser, you would likely not be
willing to put up with the abuse at all. When you love your partner, you
may hold onto hope that the abuser will change, as promised, and you will
give chance after chance, hoping that you can get the person that you have
fallen in love with back.
One final reason that you may find that people are likely to stay behind is
that the relationship and the abuse has been normalized. This means that it
seems entirely normal to you instead of as something that may be a huge
red flag. Think of how, in some cultures, it may be entirely fine to make eye
contact and smile, but in others, eye contact is seen as disrespectful and
rude—eye contact is not normalized in those countries and cultures. If you
have grown up around abuse and it has simply become normalized, you will
not see the problem. If you grew up in a household where the parents
regularly yelled at each other, you might feel like yelling is entirely normal
when mad. You feel like these unhealthy coping mechanisms are nothing
but passionate expressions of feelings and do not acknowledge the abuse
because you do not recognize it.
 Chapter 2: Recognizing
Emotional Abuse

For the next several chapters, we will be specifically addressing emotional

abuse. You now know what it is, at least on the surface—you know that
emotional abuse is a form of psychological control and just how dangerous
it may be. However, do you know how to recognize it? Do you know how
to label several of the most common abuse tactics? This particular form of
abuse tends to be incredibly covert—it is designed to be hidden in plain
sight, and in reading this chapter, you will learn how to identify it.

If you can stop and think of a time during which you felt like you were not
good enough, like your partner was doing you a huge favor by staying with
you, it may be time to reevaluate your relationship. If you have ever come
to the realization that the voice that you were using to talk about yourself as
the voice of someone else instead of your own, you may have suffered from
emotional abuse at some point.

Emotional abuse is commonly referred to as verbal or psychological abuse,

and it is designed to make you feel bad about yourself. It is meant to make
you feel like you are not worthy, that you are not deserving of respect, and
that you are not in control. The whole purpose of emotional abuse is that
dominance over the victim, designed to grant the abuser free reign over the
individual. The more emotional abuse one has endured, most often, the
more subservient they become. They stop trying to fight back and slowly do
begin to believe that they were deserving of the abuse.
This chapter will guide you through learning to recognize the signs of
abuse. You will learn how to identify the most common behaviors exhibited
by the abuse victims, as well as the long-term effects of suffering from
emotional abuse. From there, you will be guided through several common
and favored emotional abuse tactics designed to keep the victim on edge,
out of control, and subservient.
Signs of Emotional Abuse within the Relationship
It can be difficult to spot an abusive relationship, especially if you are in the
outside looking in. However, an emotionally abusive relationship typically
looks drastically different from a healthy one, and if you are able to spend
enough time around someone in an emotionally abusive relationship, you
may find that you are able to identify several of these signs on a regular
basis. Take the time to familiarize yourself with these common signs of
emotional abuse within a relationship.

If you notice that a friend or family member has a relationship with several
of these signs, you may want to consider reaching out to ensure that
everything is okay and offer your own support if it is needed. These signs
can be incredibly stressful for both the one suffering from the abuse and the
one who may be witnessing such abhorrent behaviors.

If you have felt like a relationship that you have been exposed to seems like
it is not quite right, it may be that it is manipulative and abusive in nature.
In these instances, many people feel like turning away is the right thing to
do, but if you see someone struggling in a relationship with several red
flags, such as the ones that will be discussed in a moment, the kind thing to
do is reach out.

Identifying an emotionally abusive relationship can be quite concerning and

nerve-wracking, especially if it is your relationship or the relationship of a
loved one. However, if you can identify it, you can help the other person
escape. You can offer your support. You can understand that the behaviors
of isolation and avoidance are probably not coming from the victim but
rather forced by the abuser.
Generally, identifying an abusive partner of one of your friends or family
members can be quite obvious—while the victim may be unwilling to admit
it, everyone knows when they are having to walk on eggshells. However,
oftentimes, when people have to deal with their friends or family members
being abused, they feel like they must choose between either begrudgingly
tolerating the abuser, despite being incredibly concerned about the behavior
out of fear of being cut off if they do not, or they do say something, only to
have the abuser freeze them out. After all, the only way that you can truly
help someone get out of an abusive relationship is if they truly want to
escape it. If they are not interested in that escape, you are not going to be
able to do much other than offer support until that time during which they
do decide to leave.

Now, imagine that your best friend, Cara, has a boyfriend named Austin.
Cara is the sweetest young woman that you know—she was never
particularly self-confident, but she was so kind that no one was bothered by
the lack of self-esteem. They simply gently reminded her that she was a
well-loved member of the social group and always happily invited her over.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Cara met him—Austin was a man a few years
older than her, but she did not mind. She was happy because he showered
her with lavish attention and love. He was always wanting to spend time
with her, sending constant messages to her and checking in on her. If she
did not answer a text message within five minutes of it being sent, however,
he would call her, and whatever he was saying was leaving Cara visibly
distressed. When she would get off of the phone, she would apologize and
leave, saying that he was demanding that she get home, or he would not be
there later that night.

Over time, as Austin grew more and more comfortable, you and your
friends noticed several red flags in the relationship. You saw how he would
yell at Cara on a regular basis, both in public and out of public scrutiny. She
would recount times during which he would scream and berate her to her
face at home, and when you tried to point out that she did not deserve it, she
simply shrugged and said that she deserved it because she was not
particularly smart and she was lucky to have him.

Soon, it seemed like even your social nights grew affected by the presence
of Austin—he would not allow Cara to go to those hangout sessions any
longer simply because he could not be there as well. In fact, she slowly was
only allowed to go to places that he was present at as well, claiming that she
was promiscuous and would be cheating on him if she were left to her own
devices. You noticed that when he was around, he seemed to have
knowledge of private conversations, and it became clear that he was
monitoring her text messages. Soon, her social media accounts disappeared
altogether.

Over time, you noticed that Cara was becoming more stressed out. She
seemed to withdraw from the group more and more, until one day, she
broke down and told you that he had been threatening to kill himself if she
left him, and though she wanted to leave so badly, she felt like she had no
choice but to stay. She described the look of absolute, unadulterated fury in
his eyes when she said that she wanted space and told you that she was
certain he was going to seriously injure her. It was only when she shook off
her interest in leaving as a joke and that she wanted to see how much he
loved her that he seemed to settle down.

Stop and see what problems you can identify within that short passage
about your friend Cara and Austin. What was Austin doing that was
problematic? Which behaviors would need to be entirely cut for the
relationship to retain any sort of semblance of healthiness? Would it be
possible for that to become a healthy relationship at all with how far it had
flown into an abusive relationship?

If you took the time, you may have noticed at least six distinctive red flags
about Austin’s behavior that would be considered abusive. He spent a
significant time yelling at her, for one. He would intimidate everyone with
how loudly his voice would carry, and it constantly kept Cara down. The
yelling was constantly joined by insults and berating that were so extreme
that Cara herself was convinced that she must deserve it.

There was no sense of privacy within the relationship, and it seemed like
Austin was fully convinced that Cara needed some sort of chaperone to be
able to involve herself in any group activities. You knew that she was not
the kind of girl to ever fall for infidelity, but he was convinced that she was.
She had to check in on a regular basis—yet another red flag, and eventually,
she was required to take him anywhere that she wanted to go to make sure
that she was not getting caught up in any funny business.
Identifying Emotional Abuse Toward Yourself
Now that you are becoming confident in recognizing an emotionally
abusive relationship for other people, you may be wondering whether your
own relationship is emotionally abusive. You may already know the answer
to this or knew that it was abusive before reading this book, or you may
suspect that it is abusive, and if this is the case, you may want to pay close
attention to these signs.

Let’s take some time to delve into Cara’s perspective on her abusive
relationship in order to really see the victim’s perspective. These signs that
are coming up are all huge red flags that Cara should have acknowledged,
but she was far too afraid to. She may have been blinded by her love for her
partner, or she may simply have been caught up in the idea of how great it
would be to be in a relationship, and she was willing to put up with the
beginning of the abuse.

Ultimately, the only way that you can really identify emotional abuse will
be through looking to find how you are feeling at any given point. You must
be able to recognize your own emotions, developing that self-awareness of
your own current states. There are several patterns for how the victims of
emotional abuse usually feel, and while the victim may acknowledge that
he or she is unhappy, it can be difficult to really articulate how they feel if
they do not know how to convey it.

Reading this section through Cara’s perspective is an attempt to remedy

that. We will look at how Cara has been feeling, self-reflecting on whether
she is in an abusive relationship. From the outside looking in, you may
already be confident that she is being abused—because she is. However, it
is much harder from the victim’s side to identify this.

Firstly, Cara realizes that she is not happy. She knows that, but she is
struggling to identify exactly how she is not happy or why she is miserable.
She has a general understanding that the behaviors she has been exposed to
are problematic, but she does not quite know how to articulate it. She is not
sure if she is just overreacting or acting like things are far worse than they
actually are—and then she realizes it. She feels like she cannot trust
herself.

A favorite tactic of the emotional abuser is called gaslighting—it will be

discussed in greater depth later, but for all intents and purposes, it is meant
to make you feel like you cannot trust your own perceptions of reality. It is
designed to make you feel like you are always wrong about how you see the
world, or that you are always overreacting, when in fact, you may be right.
This is because you will likely rely on your partner if you feel like your
own perceptions are wrong, and the abuser is counting on this.

This is exactly what happened with Austin—she constantly felt like her
own emotions were wrong. She internalized the abuse and blamed it on
herself because she was parroting what he had to say, not what she truly
believed about herself. This is incredibly powerful to acknowledge—it
means that she understands the root of her problem. She has lost trust in
herself.

In losing trust in herself, she feels like she is out of control, and for good
reason. She has no real control over her life, what she does, or where she
goes. She is constantly told what she can do and why she cannot go see
other people. She has found that she has fallen into compliance simply
because it was better than dealing with the alternative—his threats of
suicide and his anger outbursts that would leave her afraid of her partner.

Being afraid of him is yet another problem. After all, you should never feel
like you have to be afraid of your partner or what he will do. If you feel like
you are afraid of your partner, you may need to reevaluate and figure out
what is going on to make you feel afraid. You may find the answer
relatively simply, or you may realize that it is an unconscious sign that you
should be more careful or distrustful of your partner. Unfortunately, Cara
had spent so long listening to her fears that she was struggling to escape.

His threats of suicide left her feeling three different ways: she was afraid to
care for herself because trying to do so constantly angered him. In his
mind, she was meant to shower him with what he wanted, and her needs
were entirely meaningless. She was constantly feeling guilty due to his own
manipulative techniques. Though she could never quite articulate it, she
always found herself feeling guilty for everything. It really beat down her
sense of self-esteem, and she struggled to come back from it. Finally,
between wanting to avoid the fear and the guilt, she found herself preferring
to walk on eggshells around her partner. She was happier just keeping
him happy and complying with whatever was asked of her because
compliance meant that she did not have to worry about him being angry or
having an outburst. It was easy to just placate him and keep him happy.

Further analysis and self-reflection would help Cara realize two more
important aspects of her life that were major red flags: She constantly
apologized, even when whatever happened had nothing to do with her.
Despite the fact that she was not at fault, it was easier to apologize in an
attempt to placate an unfortunate side effect of walking on eggshells on a
regular basis.

She found that, despite loving Austin with all her heart, she no longer
craved intimacy with him. This is a massive red flag—people who love
each other typically want to be intimate. They do this to get as close as
possible to each other and do so from a position of trust and love. However,
when you no longer feel safe or trust your relationship, you instead find that
you are constantly panicking instead. People need to feel safe to be
interested in intimacy, and people being abused rarely feel that safety
necessary.

Amidst this all, however, perhaps the most confusing thing of all for Cara
was that she felt an intense need to protect the abuser. She felt like she
would have to rationalize away his behaviors and tell everyone around her
that he was not so bad because she loves him. She wanted to be able to
protect him precisely because she does love him.

These are all incredibly common realizations that guide people from
realizing that they are, in fact, in an emotionally abusive relationship. They
realize that their own lives have become so relatable to the account of our
fictional friend, Cara, that they are shocked. They may realize just how
dangerous the relationship actually is, and in realizing that, they can begin
the process of healing as they continue to progress.
Effects of Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse has all sorts of negative effects that last far longer than the
relationship. You may find that you carry these signs with you well after
having ended the relationship, and in some cases, they will not go away
without any attempts to get therapy or seek some other way to treat it.
These are effectively the scars of your abuse—you may not have ever
received any physical ones, but the emotional ones are just as real and just
as enduring.

A Damaged Sense of Self

If you have survived an emotionally abusive relationship, there is a good

chance that you have had your own self-esteem damaged in some way. The
emotional abuser’s tactic is to make you feel like you are not good enough,
and they are frequently quite good at this. The end result is that you
frequently see yourself as damaged or not particularly valuable, and you
may not even realize that you do this.

You may put your needs last or simply ignore your needs altogether. You
may find that you regularly tell yourself that you cannot do what you want
to. You may self-sabotage or procrastinate because you do not feel like you
are capable.

Alexithymia (an inability to identify emotions)

This is a fancy word for an inability to accurately identify or feel your own
emotions. Effectively, you become impervious to your emotions and instead
live a life of numbness. You may have emotions, but you are entirely
unaware that they are happening. Even though your body language will
show your emotion, if someone asks you, you will deny it, saying that you
do not actually feel that emotion. After so long of being emotionally abused
and feeling your emotions, you have sort of disconnected from them.

Depression

Depression is a common long-term effect of living in an emotionally

abusive relationship simply due to the fact that you are not going to find
that you are enjoying life and what you are doing if it is constantly
shadowed by the abuse. Even after escaping, you may feel like you cannot
find enjoyment. This may present itself as a sort of hopelessness in your life
like things can never get better, or that you will always be miserable in your
life.

Struggling to Concentrate

Another common effect of prolonged emotional abuse is the inability to

concentrate well. This is often a side effect of depression and anxiety—you
are too busy worrying about other things to actually concentrate on what is
in front of you.

Struggling to Sleep, or Sleeping too Much

Commonly associated with depression, emotional abuse can leave you

feeling too on edge to sleep at all, leading to insomnia, or it can lead to you
sleeping more than you should be as a form of escapism to avoid facing
reality.

Anxiety

A common side effect of living life feeling like everything that you do is
being scrutinized is anxiety. When you have walked on eggshells for so
long, your body naturally transitions to being in a default state of arousal
and anxiety. This means that you are far more likely to suffer from it, even
after escaping the situation.

Chronic Pain

A life lived with anxiety and depression often causes all sorts of physical
problems as well, and you may find that you very quickly end up living
with chronic pain. Even after going to doctors and getting testing, you find
that there is no particular reason for the pain that you are feeling and it gets
lumped in with your depression and anxiety.
Emotional Abuse Tactics

Emotional abusers have all sorts of tactics that they like to pull from to keep
their victims firmly under their thumbs. These tactics can seem like they are
not anything at all, such as finding ways to make disparaging comments
under the guise of a joke, or they can be truly harmful, such as directly
telling someone to hurt or kill themselves. These different forms of
emotional abuse are all dangerous in their own ways, and you should be on
the lookout for them whenever possible.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is particularly insidious as a form of emotional abuse. It is

designed to make you feel like you cannot trust yourself, making you feel
like you are unstable, untrustworthy, and like you are going crazy. It is one
of those techniques that usually takes plenty of time to set up, but once it is
set up, you feel like you cannot escape it.
When someone gaslights you, they deny that what you are saying is true.
They may start out by telling you that you were wrong about something
little or unimportant, such as saying that you are misremembering some
small, insignificant detail about something. Over time, the details become
more significant, and the abuser eventually denies the thing that happens
right in front of you, and you feel like you have to believe them. Especially
because at that point, there is a perceived pattern of always getting things
wrong and feeling like you cannot possibly know what you are talking
about, you simply take what your partner says at face value. Because you
inherently trust your partner, you do not think that he or she would be trying
to intentionally lie to you.

Emotional Manipulation

Emotional manipulation is the act of making you feel a certain emotion

deliberately in order to get you to act accordingly. If they want you to do
something for them, they will find some way to make you feel an emotion
that is conducive to their desired response, and they then get their way. For
example, if your partner does not like your sister, your partner may make it
a point to tell you that your sister did something unforgivable to get you
angry. With your anger, you then pick a fight with your sister to defend your
partner, and you end up severing ties. Did that event that your partner said
ever happen? Probably not, or at least, not the way that your partner made it
sound, but your partner did get you to end the relationship without him
having to be the one telling you that he wants you to.

FOG
FOG stands for Fear, Obligation, Guilt. It is a common form of emotional
manipulation that keeps you feeling one of those three emotions to keep
you under control. Unlike general emotional manipulation, however, when
you are kept under FOG, your partner is doing something to maintain it.
Your partner must have something held over you to make you feel obligated
so that he or she can make you feel guilty in order to get the desired
response from you. Because this is a bit more intensive, it is typically
reserved for relationships like parents to children, simply because it is easy
to lord over someone else that you birthed and raised them. However, a
romantic partner or friend may not have something similar to hold over
their victim’s head.

Character Assassination

Character assassination is the art of making you feel like you are a flawed
individual in order to keep power over you. It may involve making it a point
to control you via means such as telling you that you are always so difficult
or that you never get anything right. It could involve telling you that you are
worthless or useless. It could involve telling lies about you to other people
as well. Ultimately, character assassination is done to make you seem less
competent or less well-liked. Especially if you are ending the relationship
with the abuser, you may find that he or she will tell everyone around you
that you are irrational, on drugs, or otherwise doing something that is
incredibly frowned upon.
 Chapter 3: Fighting Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is terrifying. No one wants to feel like they are less than
significant or that they need to constantly walk on eggshells. If you are
being emotionally abused, you may find that you are longing for the days of
being happy, if you had ever felt that way in the past. You may have found
that the abuse is terrifying. You may feel broken, beaten, or hopeless. It may
seem like escape is impossible and that this will be your life forever.

Remember, there is hope out there for you.

It may take you time and effort to get out, but you can do it. You must
remember that you will be playing the long game and acknowledge that the
hard work will be worth it when you are finally living a life that you enjoy.
You can attain that happiness that you deserve, and most of the time, you
can cut off contact with your abuser in some way. Unless you share minor
children, upon splitting ties or divorcing from the abuser, you have no
reason to remain in contact. Yes, even if that relationship is with a parent,
your own adult child, or another family member, you can break free and
leave the relationship for good.

However, that will take time. This chapter seeks to get you stabilized before
you are able to begin getting out. Think of this chapter as your sort of safety
floatation device—it is your first line of defense against drowning in the
ocean of abuse you have been stranded in for so long. Hold on just a little
bit longer, and you will find safety.
Within this chapter, you will be provided with nine distinct methods that
you can use to cope with your abuse in the moment. It is oftentimes
impossible to simply up and leave for many people, and that is exactly why
this chapter sets out to make sure that you are able to cope with the abuse
before you can escape. It will be a process, but using these methods will
help you find some sort of solace in the midst of the abuse. You will be
actively protecting yourself, your psyche, and your future by planning to
leave and using these methods.

Keep in mind that these methods are specifically meant to combat

emotional abuse. If you are suffering from physical abuse, you absolutely
need to get out as soon as possible, and you can usually do so with the help
of local law enforcement. If there is physical abuse, you should be able to
file for a restraining order at your local courthouse or press charges at your
local police station. Physical abuse can very quickly go downhill, so it is
important that it is immediately met with an escape and any and all legal
help that you can attain.

When you are fighting emotional abuse, there is not typically a threat to
your life or physical health, and these techniques will help you retain your
emotional health. Emotional abuse requires you to react to it, so if you
refuse to engage, distance yourself from the abuse, and have your own
methods to sort of combat it as you get all of your legal ducks in a row, you
can usually avoid the brunt of it. If you know that your partner is abusive
emotionally and is telling you that you are useless from a point of wanting
to manipulate you, you may be able to remind yourself that this is just your
abuser being an abuser and that it is not true, or you can point out the ways
that you are not worthless for yourself to acknowledge.
Now, without further ado, let’s begin to address several ways that you can
use to protect yourself. In arming yourself against the abuse, you may find
that it stops being as distressing as it occurs, though it still may bother you.
Identifying and Acknowledging

The most powerful thing you can do is name the abuse for what it is. This
means that you need to be able to acknowledge what it is and recognize it
for what it is. In labeling the abuse what it is, you are able to distance
yourself from it. It is no longer a matter of you causing problems or not
being good enough—now your problem is that you are in a relationship
with someone who is abusive. However, that has a relatively simple
solution: Leaving. While leaving itself can oftentimes be quite messy and
involve its own slew of steps to complete, especially if you are married or
have children, being able to acknowledge that the problem is not you, after
all, can be incredibly freeing.

In acknowledging that you are not the problem or that you are not flawed,
you are able to remove the blame from yourself. You are no longer at fault
for the pain that you have suffered, and you are able to accurately point that
blame firmly where it belongs—with the abuser. Think about the
implications about that and the relief that many people would feel in
acknowledging that they are not actually useless, unlovable, or whatever
else the abuser has tried to convince them.

With the blame removed, you may find that you are able to actually find
some newfound confidence in yourself—if you are not the problem, then
you have no need to fix yourself at that moment. What you need to do is
leave the problem because you are not responsible for anyone else. No
matter how well-intentioned you may be, you cannot change other people in
any way. You cannot convince your abuser to be the loving person that you
thought he or she was—all you can do is know when it is appropriate to exit
the relationship altogether.
Preparing to Leave

As soon as you have acknowledged the abuse in your relationship, it is time

to make your long-term plans. What are your end goals? What do you hope
to accomplish? What do you want to do with yourself? There is a whole
wide world out there away from your abuser, and the world is your oyster.
You can do whatever you want without worrying about what the abuser
thinks and whether the abuser would agree or ridicule your decisions.

Setting that goal for yourself, that long-term picture of success, can help
yourself to stay motivated. In moments of weakness, and there will be
moments of weakness during which you consider that things would be
better if you forgave and forgot, you can remember this goal—this picture
of what you want in life. That can be the guiding light that keeps you on
track.

Leaving the relationship is going to be the most dangerous part for you, and
for this reason, it is going to require meticulous planning, especially if you
have anything joining the two of you together legally. Children will almost
always create legal complications during which you will either have to
agree to custody or fight over custody, and you will then be looking at
interacting with your ex for the rest of you children’s childhoods, as well as
during major events in their lives if he happens to take an interest in them as
well. For this reason, it is recommended that you spend enough time
gathering your evidence. You are planning for the worst while hoping for
the best.
In particular, leaving has a lot of different nuances that need to be followed
that would be incredibly difficult to properly cover in a subchapter, so while
preparing to leave is absolutely a step in fighting emotional abuse at the
moment, it will also get its own chapter later within the book. Chapter 9
will be dedicated to making sure that you know how to leave the
relationship, guiding you through the most critical parts and what you need
to make sure that you have.
Avoid Triggering Abuse

While you are present in the same home with the abuser, it is important to
go through the effort of actively avoiding triggering any abuse. While it is
normally never okay to expect the victim to accommodate the abuser, in this
case, it can help you slip through the next weeks or months while you
gather up everything that you will need and make your case just a bit easier.

This means that you will need to understand what your partner’s triggers
are. That can be a bit difficult to identify and may take a significant amount
of time, but if you can do so, you avoid having to deal with as much of the
abuse. If you wish to figure out your partner’s triggers, you will need to
think back on all of the times that you have seen your partner explode on
you. What has caused the explosion? Why did they do it? Can you see a
pattern in constantly exploding with specific stimuli? Figuring out what
tends to trigger the abuse can be enough to help you avoid most of the
iterations of it.

Perhaps the best way to avoid it is to simply be very agreeable. Do what is

expected of you without argument. Think of it as keeping the peace until
you can escape, treating it as a part of your long-term plan rather than as a
weakness on your part. There is nothing weak about being willing to accept
what you are being told, no matter how degrading it is, in order to escape.
Doing so is the epitome of strength, showing your true dedication as a
survivor. You will survive the abuse, even if it means lowering yourself and
being willing to not fight back for a short period of time.
Stress Management

Of course, being willing to take that abuse means that you will likely be
quite stressed out as well. After all, having someone tell you that you
cannot do anything right can be incredibly stressful. You may feel like you
have done your best, only to have the narcissist or abuser come by and
laugh in your face. Think of how a child feels after having spent an hour
building a sandcastle, only to have it immediately kicked down by a bully.
This is similar to the feelings you may have when you are actively trying
your best, only to find that your abuser is willing to disparage your
attempts.

Of course, the narcissist or abuser just wants to get a rise out of you—if
they are able to goad you into a response, telling you that you are terrible
and that you need to stop trying because your attempts are never going to be
salvageable anyway, they can then use your anger against you. You will
play right into their trap rather than refusing to play the game at all.

The best way to avoid having an outburst of your own in response is

developing several stress management techniques that will work for you.
Ultimately, this will involve discovering what works best for you. Do you
do best with working out or going for a jog after being stressed out? Maybe
you want to meditate? Do you enjoy art? All of that can help keep you cool
over time.

However, when you are in the moment, what you really need is a grounding
technique that will help you stay present. Doing so can help you delay
yourself and your behaviors just long enough that you will be able to avoid
doing something that would potentially be dangerous. In particular, we will
take a look at a simple breathing and grounding technique that will involve
you utilizing all of your senses.

When you are feeling stressed, you will want to identify several different
sensory stimuli from your surroundings as you take deep breaths. Doing so
can help you calm down enough to avoid lashing out.

Start by taking in a deep breath. When you do this, you want to inhale for
five seconds and exhale for five seconds to make sure that you are calming
your body down. With your next breath, identify five things that you can
see and acknowledge each consciously. You may see a houseplant, a toy
that your child left on the floor, your cat, a chair, and the light that is on in
the hallway.

With the next breath, you will identify four things that you can hear around
you. Then, it will be three items that you can touch. Two items that you can
smell in the air, and lastly, one taste that is either in your mouth or lingering
in the air.

Going through these steps can help you calm yourself—it will distract you
from the immediate surge of negativity that you have in response to abuse
and allow you to keep a level head. Practice it on your own in private
several times before you try to use it to keep yourself calm in the moment
when you are actively being manipulated or abused.
Self-Care
With all of the toxicity and negativity swirling around you as you endure
the abuse, you may feel like you are dragging. What can help you is to
actively engage in regular self-care as a response. When you are constantly
in survival mode, you will exhaust your body. You will constantly find
yourself suffering from the negative effects of anxiety and stress hormones
that constantly keep you on edge. When you never know where danger will
strike next, it can be incredibly difficult to keep yourself safe.

Create a routine that you can use to take care of yourself, even as stress
feels like it may become insurmountable. When you do this, you are
actively making it a point to care for yourself, as your partner has made it
clear that he or she has no interest in helping you to heal or be a healthy
individual. You will want to make it a point to do several things during your
self-care routine: Make sure that you get enough sleep regularly. This can
be difficult, but make sure that you try to sleep at the same time every night,
no matter how stressed you are about life. You want to be able to remain
healthy. Keep yourself motivated to actively exercise on a regular basis and
eat as healthily as you can.

Beyond that, try to find time to care for yourself as well .Routine will be
your friend, and actively scheduling in time for yourself, especially to do
things that you enjoy, will be critical in keeping you on track and able to
cope with the abuse that you may be enduring.
Refusing to Engage

When you do find that you are being caught in an actively abusive situation,
such as your partner deciding then to begin berating you, the most
important thing that you can do is refuse to engage. Simply try to tide it
over as quickly as possible and agree if you have to. Just tell him okay to
get him off your back and then go on with your life. Again, this is not a sign
of weakness—you are making it a point to protect yourself from future
abuse. You are actively guarding yourself and telling yourself that you are
not willing to tolerate it. This is a good thing—you are showing true
strength.

While most people will usually advocate for a lie being left unchallenged
becomes the truth, that is not necessarily true with the abusive partner. The
lies are being told whether you are around or not anyway, and you are safer
in not attempting to counter them at all. It becomes easier to simply agree
and move on until you are free to escape. If you are not wanting to tolerate
the abuse in the first place, you need to make it a point to focus on
surviving long enough to escape. We are not talking about someone
jokingly telling everyone that you happened to be the one who ate all of the
cake in the workplace overnight or something else foolish—you are
considering being berated and told that you are not worthy as an individual.
Agreeing and moving on may get your abuser off your back sooner.
Avoiding Personalization
Of course, despite the fact that you are agreeing, you must keep in mind
that you are avoiding actually internalizing it. Known as personalization,
you may find that sometimes, it is hard not to take what the manipulator or
abuser is saying personally. However, keep in mind that despite the fact that
the abuser is saying this and despite the fact that the abuser is someone that
you likely love, and it can be hard to hear your loved one telling you that
you are nothing.

Try to approach hearing this abuse the way that you would hear a child
snapping at you—if your 4-year-old child called you a butt-face because
you told your child to eat his veggies so he could go to bed, you would not
live life believing that you actually have a butt for a face. Instead, you
would probably shrug it off, roll your eyes about it behind your child’s
back, and move on without actually taking any offense.

Of course, an abuser is going to be flinging far worse insults most of the

time. He may tell you that you are ugly, worthless, unlovable, or damaged
goods. He may try to tell you that you are incredibly lucky that he has been
so willing to look past your flaws to be with someone like you. You are
lucky that he has actively been willing to put up with you when you are so
dumb, incompetent, or careless. He will say this in a matter-of-fact tone that
may have you tempted to believe it. However, remember that he is lying.
He does not care about you. He does not want you to be happy—he wants
you to be controlled, and he will use any methods necessary to get that end
result.
The best way to combat this is to simply stop playing. Let him say what he
says, but then remind yourself that it is not true. Reject what he has to say
and label it for what it is—an attempt to manipulate you and nothing more.
If you can reject it as little more than an attempt to manipulate you, you will
be able to avoid much of the stress that goes along with it. His emotional
manipulation attempts become infinitely less powerful as soon as you
remove the power away from them by refusing to allow them to upset you
any longer. It will be tough. It may even hurt, but refusing to play and
refusing to take it personally when the abuser spews his lies means that you
will be able to escape and heal.
 Chapter 4: Recovering from
Emotional Abuse

When you have finally pulled the trigger and acknowledged that you have
been in an abusive relationship, it can be hard to know what comes next.
You may feel afraid or unsure of how to proceed. You may realize that you
are broken inside, or that you have some serious healing to do. This is okay
—you have just endured some serious emotional harm, and that takes time
to recover from. First and foremost, once you have taken the plunge to
leave an emotionally abusive relationship, you should celebrate your power
—leaving a relationship is never easy, and even when you have been
abused, you likely still have very real feelings for your ex. This is only
natural. However, over time, you may feel like you are ready to branch out
—that you want to find a new relationship and a new meaning to life.

You may find at first that, without proper processing of your abuse, it will
constantly come back to haunt you. You may find yourself struggling to
trust other people, or feeling like the other shoe is going to drop at any time.
You may suffer from anxiety or PTSD—you may suffer from flashbacks or
insomnia. You may be sick and tired of the suffering, but not know how to
stop it from continuing.

When you have suffered from all of this abuse, you may feel like there will
be no end to it. However, that end does exist—all you need to do is find it.
You can reclaim your life and begin to heal those wounds that you have
accrued from your time with an abusive partner. It is not necessarily quick,
nor is it easy, but there are actions and steps that you can take to help you
recover from emotional abuse, little by little.
You may find that it helps to think of this process one day at a time. If one
day seems like it is too much to process, try thinking of it like one hour at a
time, or even one minute or second at a time if you find that you are feeling
particularly sensitive at that point in time. You will inevitably feel moments
of weakness during which you want nothing more than to give in and go
back to your abuser. This is common—it may be easier to be with the
abuser. It may be more familiar and therefore, more comfortable. It may
even be that you find that you miss your past and the times during which
you and your partner were happy. However, steel your resolve and keep
moving forward. You cannot stop an abuser from abusing.

This chapter will act as a guide for you to begin to recover from the abuse
that you have suffered. Little by little, if you can implement these
techniques into your life, and you can follow the steps, you will find that
your wounds slowly begin to heal. They may leave their scars, but the
injuries will no longer be festering.
Take Time to Grieve
It can be disconcerting for abuse victims to realize that they do truly miss
their abusers even after having suffered at their hands, whether physically
or emotionally. However, this is normal. You are grieving the loss of a
relationship. You are effectively giving up on the relationship that you
thought that you had. You are giving up on the person that you thought you
loved, who you may still deeply love, but who did not love or respect you.
This can be one of the hardest things you will ever do—you find that you
cannot possibly live your life healthily and happily if you do not leave your
partner, but you know that leaving your partner will also hurt.

It is appropriate to take the time that you find that you need to grieve.
Spend the time acknowledging the hurt that you feel and the pain that you
have endured. It was not your fault, nor did you deserve it, but that does not
make the process any easier.

Grief comes in seven distinct stages: shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger
and bargaining, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction, and finally,
acceptance. These stages are not all linear—you may make progress only to
find that a significant event or an anniversary passes and sends you right
back to denial or anger. This is normal, and remember that no two people
grieve the same way. What remains true, however, is that if you find that
your guilt is so overwhelming that you cannot function properly or get
through your days, or you find that you are coping unhealthily, it may be
time to seek help from a trusted friend or family member, or from a
professional that can take the time to talk to you and help you get the tools
that you will need.
Reclaim Your Life
Because emotional abusers so frequently try to take over your life and turn
it into their own, making sure that you are obedient and willing to do
whatever it takes to please them, you may find that you have lived much of
your life losing your time and your life. This means that you have spent
weeks, months, or even years sacrificing your time, your desires, and things
that you may have wanted to try, all in the name of the relationship.

A healthy way to begin to heal from that, from having to sacrifice yourself,
your desires, and your happiness, is to reclaim it. Reclaim your time—
spend it doing what you want to do. Eat that cake that would have gotten
you a disapproving look. Spend time with that friend that your ex hated.
Chase after that passion that you had thrown aside after your ex had told
you that it was a pipe dream.

This may tough to do, especially if you have found that you really suffered
within your relationship or if you were regularly punished for doing
anything for yourself. However, the best way to ensure that you can reclaim
your life for yourself and begin to heal is simply by doing it. Flex those
self-care muscles and get back into your hobbies. Reach out to those friends
and family members that were cast aside. Find new ways to live your life
for yourself, and follow through. While it will be difficult at first, you will
very quickly fall back into the habit of reclaiming life for yourself and
loving every moment of it. Now, this does not mean that you will
necessarily be entirely stress-free, or that you have healed completely, but
you will start to undo those strings installed that told you that you cannot
possibly live for yourself.
Create Your Boundaries—and Enforce Them
Oftentimes, those who are abused feel like they cannot have boundaries, or
they do not know how to enforce any boundaries that they do set. They may
have always been entirely disregarded, so you feel like they do not matter
anyway, or you may have been punished or made to feel crazy any time that
you attempted to set a boundary, so it became simpler to instead reject the
idea of having those boundaries at all.

However, boundaries are healthy. They are normal and expected in most
normal relationships. These boundaries are your way of marking that you
will only tolerate certain behaviors and that anything beyond those
behaviors will be deemed inappropriate and not welcomed by you. For
example, a normal and healthy boundary to have is to not accept name
calling. You may have a boundary of not being called names, and if anyone
were to call you names, you would take a step back and reevaluate that
relationship altogether. That is a healthy response to such abuse, and no one
would bat an eye at it.

However, your abusive ex may have made you feel like setting a reasonable
boundary like that is problematic to your relationship or that it means that
you do not trust or love your partner. This is not true—even marriages have
boundaries, and those boundaries keep the relationship healthy.

When you set your boundaries, you are telling other people that you respect
yourself enough to not tolerate disrespect. You tell those around you that
you care about yourself and that you will not be made to feel less
significant or unworthy. You declare that you will protect yourself and not
let yourself fall for abuse again.
What is important here is that you set those boundaries and enforce them as
well. Put distance between yourself and those who want to break your
boundaries. If people want to repeatedly stomp all over those boundaries
that you have set, then you are probably better off without those people in
your life.

Even if the person that is constantly breaching your boundary is a family

member or a loved one, you are well within your rights to end the
relationship and take a huge step back. Remember, if those around you truly
loved you, they would respect your boundaries, and anyone who is willing
to stomp all over what you want or need does not truly care for you.
Forgive Yourself

No, this does not mean you should forgive your abuser. However, you are
deserving of forgiveness from yourself. What you went through was not
okay, and you never should have had to live a life being abused. You did not
deserve what happened to you. However, do not waste your time feeling
guilty for remaining in that situation for too long. Instead, put your energy
toward forgiving yourself.

Remember that forgiveness and forgetting are not the same things—you
have absolutely learned from the past and just through reading this book
right now, you are putting in the effort to do better in the future. You are
making it a point to learn how best to protect and defend yourself, and in
doing so, you promise yourself that you will take better care of yourself.

However, you still deserve to forgive yourself. You did not ask to be
abused. You did not know that the relationship would end up the way that it
did. You did not know that your partner would slowly become a monster
wearing his mask, nor did you ever want to be in that position in the first
place. No one wants to be abused, and it is incredibly easy to overlook
those early warning signs, reminding yourself that you love your partner
and that it must have been a one-time deal. You tell yourself that it will not
happen again, and then you find yourself trapped in the cycle of abuse.

Nevertheless, you have committed to living a better life. You have left the
relationship, and that says that you are committed to bettering yourself. Let
go of the guilt that you have been feeling toward yourself, and forgive
yourself once and for all. You are not disregarding or forgetting the abuse—
you are simply choosing to no longer let it rule your life. You are
acknowledging that you did not deserve it. You are acknowledging that you
did not ask for it. You are acknowledging that your ex was the one with the
problem. Above all, you are acknowledging that you have broken free and
making a promise to yourself that it will never happen again.
Reclaim Your Narrative
When you were in the midst of your relationship, you likely found that your
relationship and your ex were constantly changing the narrative that you
lived by. Not only were you constantly being told that you were wrong
about what was happening, but you were likely also blamed for the abuse
that you endured on a regular basis. You may have been told that you were
to blame when the abuser lost his or her cool. You may have been told that
you are a magnet for the abuse. You may have been told that whatever
happened was not abusive.

Now is the time to reclaim that narrative. No longer do you have to live by
the abuser’s doctrine. You can determine what has happened for yourself
and make sure that you tell yourself the truth. You are no longer bound to
do whatever the abuser has told you to do. You no longer have to make it a
point to agree with the abuser just to make sure that you do not suffer
further.

When you finally reclaim the narrative, you are able to define what has
actually happened. You get to tell the story from your own perspective,
acknowledging that you were abused and that you never deserved it. You
can point out all the ways that your ex tried to force you to give in to the
narrative that the abuser tried to tell everyone, and you can finally tell other
people the truth.

When you reclaim your story, you are effectively taking back the power.
You are telling yourself that the abuser no longer has that control over you.
You are making it clear that your life’s story is your own and that what
happened was horrendous, but you are able to protect yourself further. You
can correct the record. You are rejecting the abuser’s attempt to keep you
silent, and you are rejecting the constant gaslighting.

This is perhaps the most personal of the steps toward emotional recovery—
you are acknowledging what has happened for what it is. You are choosing
to make it clear to yourself, and to anyone that you choose to share it with,
that you did not deserve what happened. Remember that this is your own
story, and you do not have to share it if you chose not to. While some
people find it empowering to share that story with others, you may choose
to keep it to yourself, and that is okay.
Seek Professional Help

There are very few people in this world that would not benefit from some
sort of guidance from a licensed psychologist at one point or another in
their life. If you have been suffering from abuse, you may find that getting
this help is actually imperative to your healing. When you get help from
someone else, you are able to be given the coping mechanisms that you will
need to truly begin to heal from abuse.

There is nothing inherently wrong with seeing a therapist, though there is

still quite the stigma around it. You are not going out of your way to find a
crutch, and you are not necessarily seeking out medication. However, what
you are doing is figuring out how to move forward in life and heal. Would
you judge someone with a giant gash on their arm for going to the doctor
for stitches? Would you tell someone with a broken foot to walk it off and
stop being such a wimp? Probably not—and you should look at a mental
health issue in the same way.

If you have just escaped an emotionally abusive relationship, there is no

doubt about it—you likely have emotional injuries. These wounds cannot
begin to heal until you clean them out, and therapy can provide the skills
necessary to do exactly that. You can learn how to better cope with your
emotions, how to undo the emotional damage, and how to begin to better
yourself. All of this comes together, and you can begin to heal once and for
all.

There are several different types of therapy that you can try in order to heal
yourself. You may choose to seek out a therapist that is of the same religion
as you. You may choose to investigate traditional psychotherapy, in which
you talk over your feelings and thought processes over an extended period
of time to try to come to some sort of resolution. You may choose to try Eye
Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a type of therapy
that is commonly used to help veterans with their PTSD over a relatively
short period of time.

A commonly used therapy that you may find beneficial is cognitive

behavioral therapy. This is a therapy that seeks to combine the best of
cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy into a form of treatment that
addresses both your thoughts and your behaviors to help you heal. Within
this therapy type, you will be given several different tools to help you
identify, restructure, and change your ways of thinking in order to directly
influence your behaviors. This works through acknowledging the cycle of
thoughts, influencing your feelings, which influence your behaviors. When
you change just one in that cycle, you are able to create a domino effect that
changes it all. Through providing actionable coping mechanisms, such as
creating affirmations, learning the process of cognitive restructuring, and
other similar tools, you will be prepared to handle nearly any problem with
the tools provided.

This means that you will not only be able to finally address your own
trauma associated with the abusive relationship; you will also begin to heal
whatever made you vulnerable to that abuse in the first place. You will learn
how to prevent yourself from becoming a victim in the future. You will
learn to be the best you can be.
 Chapter 5: The Narcissistic Abuser

Addressing the emotional abuser is always a struggle, but at the very least,
the emotional abuser is usually aware of his actions. The narcissistic abuser,
on the other hand, can sometimes be even more persistent, more dangerous,
and more insidious than the emotional abuser. The narcissist is driven to
abuse by a personality disorder, whereas the emotional abuser may not be,
and that is one of the major differences there

Emotional abusers tend to abuse because they want to be powerful. They

abuse because they want to be strong. They abuse because they want
control. The narcissistic abuser, on the other hand, is different. The
narcissistic abuser is driven by personality shortcomings and simply not
being able to help himself. He cannot help the fact that he has a tendency to
abuse, and even worse, his personality type prevents him from ever
acknowledging that he may have been the root of the problem all along.

Narcissistic individuals are incredibly needy. They demand attention and

conformity at all times, and the mere notion that they may not get what they
had originally wanted. What is interesting is that narcissistic abuse tends to
follow the exact same patterns, no matter where you go. It may even seem
that people that are subject to narcissistic abuse feel like everyone has read
the same books. Two people who have suffered at the hands of two separate
narcissists can almost always come together and nod sagely as they listen to
what the other has to say about their experience.

While emotional abusers are capable of change, and people of all kinds can
show signs of emotional abuse at some time, such as yelling at someone to
shut up in the heat of the moment, the narcissist does not. The narcissist is
someone that can never change due to their personality type. They are
disordered by nature—that is to say that they never think about the world in
the way that an ordinary person would. There is too much lacking in the
narcissistic personality type to allow for meaningful change or even the
acknowledgment that the narcissist’s victim was even human enough to
matter.

At the end of the day, the emotional abuser is, at the very least a real person.
As you are about to see, the narcissist is not. The narcissist hides behind a
mask that is used to shield his true self from ever seeing the light of day,
and this can add a whole new level of struggle to recovering from the
emotional abuse that the narcissist naturally emanates. He does not mean to
do this—it comes naturally to him.

However, knowing that it was a natural intention of a disordered individual,

little more than a delusional attempt to draw the victim in, does nothing for
the victim in terms of healing. In fact, learning that the individual that the
victim loved and knew was a lie all along can be particularly traumatizing
on its own.

Within this chapter, we will walk through what narcissistic personality

disorder entails in order to get a complete understanding of what it is. We
will look at how the narcissist tends to present himself to the world,
particularly looking at the difference between the covert, over, and
malignant narcissists and how they all interact with each other. We will take
the time to go over what it is that the narcissist looks for in a target, and
finally, we will begin to unpack the unmitigated disaster of disorganization
that is the narcissist’s mind and abuse.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Narcissistic personality disorder is named for the myth of Narcissus, who

was said to fall in love with his own reflection after having rejected the
advances of a young nymph named Echo. She was so devastated by his
rejection that she faded away, giving us the source of the echo that you
would hear if you were to yell something in the mountains. This gives most
people the impression that the narcissist is someone vain and self-loving,
but not particularly dangerous. Narcissistic tendencies can be seen in
annoying characters in media, for example, who dote needlessly over their
own image. However, there is far more to NPD than simply admiring one’s
reflection.

Those suffering from NPD typically present with several traits that come
together to create someone that lacks empathy strongly considers his or her
own self more important than others and typically requires a constant and
excessive need of admiration to feel validated and like he matters. He is not
comfortable in his own skin unless he is able to gain the attention and
admiration from others.

NPD is known as a cluster B personality disorder—these are disorders that

directly impact one’s ability to interact socially and is found alongside those
with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and
antisocial personality disorder. All four of these types of disorders are
particularly known for their dramatics and unpredictability. In particular,
they are usually quite emotional and difficult to manage, and because the
very way that they see the world has been so incredibly skewed, they
struggle to ever actually recognize that they may actually have some sort of
problem.

With NPD in particular, you will see several symptoms, of which five must
be present to be clinically diagnosable. These symptoms must arise in
several different contexts over several different times, showing that they are
pervasive in both recurrence and situation. The symptoms in particular that
you can expect the clinically diagnosed narcissist to show include: a
grandiose sense of self-importance, self-esteem that must be validated by
the actions of other people, exploitative behavior, hurtful behavior, a lack of
empathy, a focus on power and success, the assumption of being unique, a
sense of entitlement, and a fixation with perfection.

NPD exists with people who assume that they are perfect, with delusions on
how they deserve respect and power, and they then go out of their way to
exploit others to get that power. They are entirely convinced that they are
entitled to anything and everything that they want because they are so
unique and perfect. They feel like no one around them can possibly relate to
who they are or understand the struggles of being as incredibly high-class
as the narcissist, and because of that, they typically spend as little time as
possible with people that they deem to be beneath them. They would rather
only associate with people that they see as their equals, meaning that
anyone beneath them is only meant to be used and abused.
The Narcissist

What makes the narcissist so incredibly dangerous then, is the fact that the
narcissist is not interested in interacting with other people unless they are
his equal. Any relationships that he fosters will either be with people that
he, himself, admires, or that he feels like he can use in some way.
Effectively, either way has the same result—he is able to gain something
out of his relationship. He sees the relationship as purely a stepping stone,
drawing from traditional Machiavellian logic, but unlike the Machiavellian,
the narcissist is likely to make mistakes. The narcissist believes that
because he is so perfect and always right, that he does not have to be as
careful as the other people. While still meticulous, he is going to ultimately
do what he wants, when he wants, because he feels like he is entitled to
doing exactly that. He would prefer to be able to act in ways that he sees to
be beneficial to him. He wants to use people to his own enjoyment or to fill
his excessive need for attention, something known as the narcissistic
supply.
At the end of the day, the narcissist will seek out valid forms of supply from
other people, and depending on the type of narcissist that you are dealing
with, you may see very different iterations of how they will go out of their
way to get what they want.
The overt narcissist is the one that everyone thinks of—he is grand and
loud, demanding, and expectant. He feels that he is entitled to anything that
he may want, and he will get it in any way necessary to ensure that he is
satisfied. This is the one who believes that he is the best gift to mankind,
even if everyone is just barely tolerant of him as an individual. He does not
care about whether or not he is liked—all that matters to him is his success
and the admiration that he wants.

The covert narcissist is almost the exact opposite in many ways—the covert
narcissist wants to be legitimately liked. He genuinely wants to be the best
that there is, rather than simply believing that he is, but he struggles with
his own emotional regulation. While the grandiose narcissist knows that he
is the best, the covert narcissist needs that validation from other people in
order to get it. The covert narcissist’s self-esteem is entirely dependent upon
how other people around him see him at that moment, and if he is not being
showered in attention, he feels unworthy and will oftentimes play the victim
role in order to get that attention that he desires.

Finally, the malignant narcissist is the scariest of them all. Unlike the other
two, who simply want to be validated and admired, the malignant narcissist
just wants attention. He is typically quite sadistic as well, meaning that he
enjoys watching other people suffer in misery. This means that he may find
great joy out of intentionally setting up situations that will end in disasters,
just to watch it all play out. He enjoys hurting people just for fun,
intentionally making relationships fall apart, taking challenges such as
convincing someone to fall head over heels in love with him before
discarding them like garbage, and more. All he cares about is enjoying
himself in any way.

Recognizing the narcissist, no matter what the form, can generally be quite
difficult for one reason: The narcissist’s personality is constantly changing.
If you have ever seen a narcissist go from person to person, it can be
incredibly eerie just how differently the interactions become from person to
person. The narcissist may be a fun sports-loving personality with one
person, only to shift into reserved and analytical with the next. The finesse
with which he can shift personalities with ease is incredibly daunting.
However, this is what makes his abuse particularly painful to tolerate.
The Narcissist’s Target

Before discussing the methods of abuse, however, it is imperative that you

understand the various personality types that become the narcissist’s
preferred targets. Just as the narcissist has a set type of behaviors that seem
to occur no matter who the narcissist is, they all tend to share an incredibly
similar personality preference for their long-term victims. The victims that
are going to be pursued for long-term relationships are ones that are going
to e relatively easy to subdue. Narcissists are particularly lazy when it
comes to their relationships with other people, and because of that, they will
choose the path of least resistance wherever possible. They will
intentionally decide to work toward a relationship with someone who they
think will be easy to manage just so they always shave easy access to the
narcissistic supply that they desire.

In particular, there seem to be five distinct personality traits that attract the
narcissist, and the best way to sum them all up into one word would be to
call the target codependent. While the target may not always be
codependent, they will show several signs of codependency and have
enough of the features that the narcissist will not have to work too hard. The
traits that the narcissist seems to favor most of all are people that are
empathetic, who has had a rocky upbringing, are caregivers by nature, are
conflict-avoidant, have low self-esteem, and are naturally people-pleasers.
These five traits come together to create a person that is well-suited to tend
to the narcissist’s every whim and need.

An empathetic individual is going to be able to relate to the narcissist or

think that he or she can, and in relating, the empathetic individual will feel
more inclined to help. They will want to help the narcissist, seeing someone
that is broken, but who can be fixed with compassion and care. The
empathy of the individual typically goes hand-in-hand with the caregiver
nature of the narcissist’s target. Because they want to help other people at
any cost, they will diligently put in the time and effort to tending to the
narcissist’s needs. This leads the narcissist to getting that supply fix that he
wanted, even though over time, it becomes too much for the empathetic one
to take.
By ensuring that the natural target of the narcissist is also conflict-avoidant
after having grown up in dysfunction, the narcissist is able to net a target
that is far less likely to notice the red flags in their relationship. Abusive
tendencies, such as emotional manipulation, will not seem as alarming
when the individual that is being manipulated has grown up around similar
abuse. Effectively, the empathetic target has never built up a solid boundary
between abuse and a healthy relationship, and because of that, met with the
fact that the target is likely a people-pleaser that wants to avoid conflict, the
target will simply take the abuse without a word.

Targets like this are commonly deemed codependent—a term that implies
that they are enabling the narcissist’s abusive tendencies. The codependent
is effectively the opposite of the narcissist: He or she will have a need to
feel needed, in perfect contrast to the narcissist’s need for admiration. If the
narcissist wants to feel wanted and the codependent wants to feel needed,
you would think that the two are a natural match made in heaven. However,
there is one particular problem with this match—the narcissist will continue
to take until the codependent eventually burns out.

The codependent is so entirely dependent upon the relationship for any sort
of validation in life that she may not realize just how much she is giving up,
or recognize that the harm being done is truly problematic. The narcissist
should not be able to override any and all needs for the codependent, and
yet that is exactly what happens. The codependent’s need for feeling like
she is helping other people then prevents her from ever actually taking care
of herself.
The codependent tends to be someone who has already grown up with his
or her needs being marginalized in favor of someone else—this means that
she is not likely to care or notice much about her own needs being forgone
in favor of the narcissist. She will simply see it as life as usual and continue
on her way without a second thought.

While the codependent and the narcissist absolutely do meet those needs for
each other, this is perhaps one of the more toxic combinations of personality
types—the narcissist is effectively enabled, allowing for further justification
of the abuse and control that he feels the need to exhibit. The codependent
continues to define her own self-worth as being entirely dependent upon the
narcissist’s need of her. In the end, the two bring out the worst for each
other by meeting their most desired need in a way that is harmful for all
involved. They become a toxic relationship, in which they are both
incredibly dangerous toward each other. These relationships rarely actually
pan out particularly well as they end in burnout and further abuse.
Identifying Narcissistic Abusers

Narcissistic abuse harms everyone involved, and because it is so incredibly

harmful to people, it is imperative that you understand what to look for in
order to know what to avoid. Narcissistic abusers, however, are notoriously
difficult to identify. Because they are commonly able to shift from
personality to personality, changing their presented personas more often
than teenage girls change their outfits, it can be incredibly difficult to keep
track of who is the narcissist and what they look like.

Thankfully, there is a method that you can use to identify the narcissistic
abuser once you have had some time to interact with the other person.
Because narcissists can be so incredibly persistent and are so dangerous and
difficult to deal with as the mask comes off, avoidance is usually the best
policy, but it is not always easy to avoid someone if you do not know what
you are doing. Because of this, it is important that you learn to identify the
narcissist early on. In learning to identify the narcissist, the next time you
believe that someone may be one, you can instead choose to avoid them
altogether instead of attempting to interact with them.

The method that you will be using to identify the narcissist involves three
simple steps—you will look at how they talk to you, you will look at how
what they say makes you feel, and then you will identify how they are
behaving. Each of these steps, if you spend the time to look at each, will
help provide that valuable insight into whether or not they are a narcissist or
other incredibly negative personality
What they say

When you are paying attention to what the narcissist has to say, you are
going to be looking for words that either come across as far too positive or
far too negative. Either end of the spectrum bodes ill for the individual’s
status as a stable individual. If you hear strongly positive words, you may
be showered in affection and praise—however, this praise will be far more
than is considered normal. It will err on the side of excessive, such as
telling the victim that they are the center of the narcissist’s universe, or that
the narcissist promises to make the victim his queen. This excessively
positive, lavish speech is a warning to you that he is building you up. While
it is normal to hear words of affection and admiration from a partner, if they
can go on and on about how loved you are, they may simply be trying to
win you over for their own gain. This is known as love bombing and will be
discussed further in the narcissist’s tactics.

On the other hand, strongly negative words imply that the individual is
quite negative—they may talk down about other people around them, or
point out that their boss is a terrible person. They act as though they are
better than everyone that they are discussing. This should be treated as a red
flag—if you were ever to stand up against the narcissist, you would be
lumped into this category as well.

Sometimes, the words of the narcissist show that there is no empathy

involved—they will talk and act like you are not there, or respond to your
own struggles. If they seem entirely impervious to emotions or relating to
you when you talk about having a tough time, you are likely to struggle in
future interactions and conversations.

Finally, one last common tactic of the narcissist’s words is to use words that
paint them as a victim—while the narcissist is convinced that he is superior
to all, he will also inevitably suffer from what is referred to as a narcissistic
injury—this is when the narcissist’s idea of perfection is challenged in some
way, such as the narcissist not getting that promotion he was gunning for.
When this happens, they are suddenly the victim—they will make it sound
like it was an intentional slight rather than something that was decided upon
because the person who was hired was actually competent and deserving.

What you feel

After having spent the time to listen to their words, you want to know how
they make you feel as well. This will involve you identifying how you tend
to feel when exposed to the other party, such as wondering if you happen to
feel normal. Sometimes, the narcissist will intentionally make you feel
either incredibly positively or incredibly negatively—usually, it will
oscillate between the two. What is incredibly common, however, is the
feeling of a lack of control. In the presence of the narcissist, the narcissist
controls it all. They choose what they do, how they do it, and how you will
feel. They will micromanage everything in order to get their own desired
results, and if you attempt to fight them on it, they will do everything in
their power to make you as miserable as possible. This is because they feel
like they deserve to be right and respected—they want to be in utter control
of everything around them.
When you realize that you often feel like you are floating on cloud 9, you
may be in the presence of a narcissist. While it is great that you feel so
good, it is also worth wondering if the endless flattery and affection that
you are getting is designed to hurt you. Sometimes, it is legitimate, but far
more often, it is malicious and deliberate in order to control you.

On the other hand, if you find that you regularly feel like you are not good
enough or like nothing you do will ever be good enough, it may be time to
wonder if the other person is a narcissist. They will often spend so much
time talking about themselves, their own achievements, and how they
would like to reach their own goals, they usually unintentionally put you
down instead. They compare you and them without thinking about it—but
the narcissist thinks he is the greatest gift on earth, so of course, he is going
to sing himself high praises while simultaneously brushing you off as
mediocre at best.

What they do

Finally, you want to figure out the narcissist’s behavioral habits as well. The
narcissist is rarely ever actually considerate of the time of anyone other than
the people that the narcissist believes are his equals or superiors. Anyone
else can wait, and it does not matter how annoyed the other person is. They
will usually end up quite insensitive and rude, but if you ever try to call out
the behaviors, you get shrugged off like it does not matter.

This is the nature of the narcissist—he does not care about other people. He
will make a quick excuse or will attack you if you try to call him out, as
narcissists tend to be particularly volatile when they are interacting with
someone else, and they will then blow off their responsibility. They will
find some way to be the victim, whether because you so rudely accused
them or because they do not care about what they have done and how it
impacts others.

At the end of the day, if you find that the person seems to behave like a
narcissist, using extreme words, triggering extreme feelings, and constantly
quick to anger and willing to deflect blame, you may find that you are better
off running in the other direction as quickly as possible. While it may be
tempting when you see how charming that the narcissist comes off as, or
when you hear the flattery that the narcissist gives you, remember that it is
never worth the hassle, and you are generally better off giving up and
avoiding the situation altogether. You will be happier without wasting your
time trying to keep up with the mind games.
 Chapter 6: Narcissistic Abuse

Finally, with that image in mind of how the narcissist presents himself and
why the narcissist does what he does, you will be able to better understand
the abuse that the narcissist is willing to inflict on other people. It will
become important for you to recognize not only the warning signs of
narcissistic abuse, which are a bit different than those reserved for
emotional abuse, but also make sure that you are able to recognize several
of the most common narcissistic abuse tendencies.

This chapter will focus solely on teaching you about narcissistic abuse. You
will be given guides to what the abuse is, how it works, why it is harmful,
and why it is favored. More about fighting the narcissist’s abuse will
happen in Chapter 8: Disarming the narcissist, in which you will be given
several strategies for countering the narcissist in the moment in order to
avoid allowing the narcissist to walk all over you any longer than he will
otherwise try. With the successful understanding of these methods of abuse,
you will be able to recognize when the abuse is occurring, allowing you to
combat it if you have found yourself in a situation in which you cannot
simply cut off or avoid the narcissist, which will always be the easiest, most
efficient method of avoiding the harm that comes along with them.
Signs of Narcissistic Abuse
Narcissistic abuse is particularly insidious. It is designed to control and
coerce, much like many of the emotional manipulation tactics, but beyond
that, narcissistic abuse is powerful because oftentimes, the narcissist is not
even aware of the abuse as it occurs. They simply go about their lives
without self-awareness or social awareness to understand what they are
doing or how it impacts others. They are effectively slaves to their
emotions, making them particularly dangerous. If you are constantly giving
in to your emotional state, you are likely going to be making some
particularly dangerous decisions that can absolutely ruin your chances of
success as you wish to see it.

When you are being exposed to narcissistic abuse, you will feel like your
whole world has been turned upside down. It will be like nothing makes
sense anymore, and like you cannot tell right from wrong. Imagine that you
have just been spun over and over again until you are dizzy, and then you
are thrown into the water with a blindfold. How do you figure out which
way is up or down if you cannot touch the bottom of the water?

The answer is, you can’t.

The same thing happens with narcissistic abuse. Without guidance and
understanding the signs of abuse, you can feel like that person in the water
without any visual input or sensory input to help guide them to the surface.
Of course, if they mistakenly swim downward instead of upwards, there
may be some serious problems that could be fatal. While narcissistic abuse
is not particularly likely to kill you, as it is primarily psychological in
nature, it can leave you doubting yourself, your reality, and everything that
you know.

In particular, when you want to identify that you are actively being
victimized by narcissistic abuse, it will once again be time for self-
reflection. While narcissistic abuse itself can get tricky to identify, the signs
of the abuse in the victim are much more prominent, and if you know what
you are looking for and can identify them, you can say quite confidently
that you have been victimized by emotional or narcissistic abuse.

As before, you will need to think about yourself as you go through this
section. See how much of the signs of emotional predation from the
narcissist seem to resonate with you, and if you find that you can strongly
relate to the signs being provided, it is time to begin looking long and hard
at your relationships to find the narcissist hiding in human clothing.

Dissociation and Narcissistic Abuse

One such symptom of narcissistic abuse is the experience of dissociation.

This is effectively your mind’s way of separating the abuse from yourself—
you will feel emotionally, and sometimes even physically detached from
your body and mind. This is essentially the experience of a traumatic event
—your mind tries to cope by separating away from the abuse and trauma in
order to survive, or at the very least to no longer suffer.

It is common knowledge that prey animals will suddenly freeze and stop
moving when they are hunted and caught—this is likely quite similar in
response. They freeze and dissociate so they do not suffer, and in doing so,
they are detached from what has happened. When you have this happen to
yourself, you may find that you are largely numb as an individual. Your
emotions do not seem so important or meaningful to you anymore, and
instead, you feel nothing at all.

Of course, this is no way to live your life. You should be able to enjoy your
life, which means you must be able to get rid of the traumatic aspect.

Unmet Needs

Another common sign that you are suffering from narcissistic abuse is that
you lack the ability to meet your needs, or you chose not to. If you find that
you have several unmet needs and wants building up, you may want to
consider if these are unmet simply because you have not had time or
resources, or because you have instead chosen to stop attempting to achieve
what you have always wanted in favor of making sure that you cater to a
narcissist in your life.

Your Physical Health is Failing

The mind and body are closely linked, and if you are suffering from anxiety
or depression as a direct result of the narcissistic abuse that you have been
enduring, you may find that your body itself may begin to get sick as well.
Your body is effectively being flooded with stress hormones from the
constant turmoil, and that constant stress leads to your body wearing down
as well. That stress puts unnecessary wear on your heart and keeps you
from sleeping, which wears down your immune system as well.

If you find that you may be getting sicker more often than you used to, it is
possible that a narcissist is to blame, especially in tandem with several other
of the symptoms within this section. If you are getting sicker, do not try to
brush it off as unrelated—your mind and body work together, and just
because the narcissist may never lay a hand on you, his abuse can still cause
significant physical harm.

You Distrust Everyone

As your body fails you and you find that you are largely miserable most of
the time, you may also realize that along with the numbness comes this
sense of not being able to trust others—you feel like you cannot trust that
other people will not also be trying to hurt and abuse you, especially after
coming to the conclusion that you are being abused in the first place.
Knowing that someone that you loved was actually a monster in disguise
can be incredibly earth-shattering for the individual going through it.
Effectively, you are not only dealing with the fact that you were lied to and
abused, but you are also suddenly mourning the loss of a person that you
thought you knew that never existed in the first place. That is particularly
traumatic, and if you do not address that trauma, you are likely going to
continue to struggle with trusting other people.

You Protect the Narcissist Without Knowing Why

And the fact that you do it may drive you insane. You do not know why you
are protecting the narcissist, but it feels natural. This is because those in
abusive relationships tend to rationalize, minimize, and then deny the abuse
that was endured. Though you may be cognitively aware of the abuse that
you are enduring, you must also recognize that the abuse is also leading you
to protect the abuser.

It is incredibly common for abuse victims to tell themselves that the abuse
and abuser are not so bad—it is the only way that they can cope with the
abuse as it occurs. If they admitted that the abuse was as bad as it truly was,
they would be stuck with the cognitive dissonance of not getting out when
they need to as they continue to be abused. It becomes easier for the mind
to simply push away the abuse and pretend that it was not as bad as it
actually was.

However, think about the implication there—if you are minimizing the
abuse, you are delegitimizing your own experience. You are saying that you
are okay taking the abuse because it was not abusive in the first place. You
are effectively burying your head and pretending that everything is fine
because you cannot see what is happening, though it is clearly happening,
and you are, at least to some degree, fully aware of it. Ask yourself, though,
if you would tell your son or daughter to do what you are doing. If it were
your child in your position, would you encourage your child that the abuse
was not so bad or would you tell your child to break free and enjoy life?
When you must identify whether or not you have been enduring the abuse
of the narcissist, you are going to want to consider each of the previously
listed traits. Do you feel an incessant need to protect the narcissist? Do you
feel like the abuse is not actually as bad? Do you find that your health is
worsening, or that you are living with constant anxiety? Are you simply
numb constantly in between those bursts of numbness?

This is a particularly painful realization to come to, knowing that you have
been victimized, but it is so incredibly important. You need to be able to
acknowledge if you have been hurt so you can prioritize healing. In
knowing that you have been abused, you can start making an effort to
prevent it from happening again in the future. You will be able to fight
back, cleaning up your life, and finding the best way to work toward the life
that you know that you deserve. You will be able to achieve that life with
ease if you give yourself the time to do so.

Now, it is time to delve into the narcissist’s favorite tactics to use and abuse
other people. As you continue reading from this point on, you will gain
special insight into what and why the narcissist does what he does. In
particular, we are addressing some of the most prevalent manipulation
tactics that the narcissist will make a part of his own toolkit. You will be
walked through mirroring—the art of the narcissist changing who he
presents himself as in order to win favor. You will then see how the
narcissist is able to keep those relationships with love bombing and
devaluation. You will look at gaslighting, the art of convincing people of
things that are not actually true. You will see projection and how the
narcissist loves to deflect his own flaws onto other people. You will see
how the narcissist is able to so expertly reverse roles and somehow always
end up as the victim—but only the best victim that has had it way worse
than anyone else in the history of victimhood.
Mirroring and the Narcissist
You may have heard the term mirroring before—usually, it is used in the
context of discussing neuro-linguistic programming. However, here, we are
talking about an entirely different type of mirroring. The narcissist has a
special kind of mirroring, during which he is able to project exactly which
personality he thinks will be necessary to win favor from the person that is
meant to be manipulated one way or the other.

When the narcissist is going to be mirroring someone, he first focuses on

who his target is. Let’s say that we have our narcissist, Ned, and his target, a
young woman named Talia. Ned sees Talia and immediately decides that
she will be his next target. He goes over to her, the perfect picture of
charisma and charm, and begins to talk. He makes a quick judgment call—
based on her clothing, she is into country lifestyles, and he discusses how
he has been dying to go horseback riding.

It turns out that his guess was exactly right. She begins to talk about how
she used to go with her late fiancé and discusses how her fiancé had been
the kindest, gentlest soul she had ever seen. He then decides that what she
needs is someone kind and gentle. Ned is constantly feeding off of the cues
that Talia is giving, putting together the perfect picture of what she seems to
want and need. He appears to be sensitive and interested in listening,
despite the fact that he does not actually care about her or what she is
saying—he pays only enough attention to make sure that he has enough
information to use later on.

Effectively, then, Ned will create a persona—a sort of mast that he uses to
present himself to Talia, over the course of the introduction and interaction.
He figures out what she wants, becomes that person, and executes it
perfectly. He will wear this mask for a while—he wants her to become
attracted to him and be interested in more.
Love Bombing and the Narcissist
With Talia officially hooked, Ned moves on to his next tactic—love
bombing. This works entirely by Ned showering her with the lavish praise
and attention that has been discussed as being too good to be true—because
it is. He is doing this for a very specific reason. People are quite motivated
by very specific factors in life, and one such factor is whether they have
created a positive association between whatever it is that has their attention
and what they will be doing. In this case, Ned wants Talia to put together a
positive association with spending time with him. He wants her to feel like
he is the greatest person ever, and he will do whatever he can in order to
continue to win her over.

With the constant showering of praise, pushing the relationship to move

quicker, and the façade of being the perfect man for her, he is able to
effectively convince her to fall in love. All it took was a few gifts, plenty of
kind words, and learning a bit about her. At this point, he wants to facilitate
her to fall in love with her as quickly as possible, and he will continue to
ride on the honeymoon period for a while.

After some time, though, as the newness of the intense relationship begins
to fade away, he begins to let his mask slip a bit. He stops being perfect for
her all the time—after all, he believes that his true self is perfect. He may
even use what is known as devaluing—he will effectively suddenly and
unexpectedly knock her off of the pedestal she has become accustomed to.
In knocking her off, she will effectively be left to scramble desperately to
reclaim her position. She will try as hard as she can to get back to that spot,
meaning she will do anything that he asks in order to regain favor.
This is because the good feelings of the love bomb stage are intoxicating.
They feel good and addictive, and as soon as you no longer have them, you
desperately crave them once more. You will do whatever you can in order
to reclaim that love and attention, as Talia has done. As soon as she does
win his favor back, she feels more comfortable in her position again.
However, Ned will repeat this cycle over and over again at varying lengths,
all because he wants to make her feel unstable. In feeling unstable, she
cannot accurately predict what will happen next. She will constantly be
scrambling to remain on his good side, meaning that he has someone that is
always at attention to give him whatever it is that he wants at that moment.
Gaslighting and the Narcissist
Beyond the cycle of convincing someone to fall in love with him, however,
Ned has all sorts of other tactics up his sleeve. One such tactic is gaslighting
—when you use gaslighting, you are effectively convincing the other
person that they are insane. This is particularly heinous when used by the
narcissist for one reason: He believes his gaslighting wholeheartedly.

Most of the time, the manipulator will intentionally gaslight, knowing that it
is a lie because that lie will serve a purpose that is important. It is important
to go through the effort because it is seen as necessary. However, the
narcissist gaslights for a slightly different reason—his narrative is simply
that distorted. Unlike the manipulator, the narcissist’s perception of reality
is skewed—he believes that he is the best person around. He believes that
he is absolutely entitled to anything that he asks for or strives to achieve. He
believes that he does deserve to be recognized as superior. However, as the
normal person looking in knows, these are nothing but delusions.

These delusions are incredibly powerful, however, and the narcissist

believes them wholeheartedly. When he uses gaslighting, then reciting his
narrative of what he believes has happened, he believes what he is saying.
He believes that he is the victim because that distorted belief is better than
the alternative, which would have been to acknowledge that he is not as
perfect as he attempts to be. If he were to admit that, he would let go of
everything integral to who he is, so instead, he convinces himself that his
narrative is the right narrative. Of course, that then means that the narrative
that everyone else gets is just as skewed.
However, the narcissist’s narrative is harder to discern from the truth. With
manipulators, you can usually pick up on signs of deception, but with the
narcissist, they believe what they are saying. That makes this dangerous—
they may entirely believe that the person that got the promotion did so in
order to get back at the narcissist. They may believe that the person that
broke up with them did it so they could sleep around and hurt the narcissist
—so long as the narcissist is the victim within the gaslighting, the narcissist
will continue to sing that narrative.
Projection and the Narcissist
As a sort of contrast to the act of mirroring, narcissists are also adept at
projection as well. They will take their own traits and assign them to other
people in accordance to whether they want to scapegoat out the other
person or make them favored. In particular, you see this sort of behavioral
tactic play out with narcissistic parents toward their children—the favored
child will be referred to as the golden child for this section, and is the child
that can do no wrong. The narcissist usually identifies very closely with the
golden child and will allow the golden child to do anything. They see the
golden child as the extension of all things good about themselves.

The scapegoated child, however, is given all of the negatives. If the

narcissist believes that he is, for example, someone with low self-esteem,
which some narcissists are, the scapegoat will be treated as a sort of effigy
for all of that negativity. The narcissist will funnel all negativity about
himself onto the scapegoat and take it out on him or her.

If the scapegoat wants to have friends over, he is punished. If he wants new

clothes, he is given hand-me-downs while his younger brother gets to go
out and shop at the name-brand stores. The scapegoat is effectively
victimized and taught to take the abuse. If anything goes wrong, it is always
the scapegoat’s fault, with no exceptions.

This, of course, is an incredibly damaging dynamic. The golden child never

learns consequences and usually winds up being quite narcissistic himself,
while the scapegoat instead gets attacked with all of the negativity and
taught to be quite codependent instead, as her needs are never met, and she
is taught that she must always please the narcissist and the golden child.
The scapegoat will be begging for any scraps of affection and kindness,
which are only occasionally shown when the scapegoat has put the
narcissist’s needs first.
DARVO and the Narcissist

The final tactic that we will discuss with the narcissist is his skilled ability
to reverse nearly any argument or problem. Even if he is the attacker, he
will find a way to spin things around if you are not familiar with his method
known as DARVO.

Standing for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim, and Offender, DARVO is an

incredibly powerful technique. If you do not know what you are looking
for, it is next to impossible to accurately notice and evade. You need to be
able to recognize that the narcissist is intentionally trying to derail the
argument instead of actually making a good point.

For example, let’s go back to Ned and Talia. Talia is crying because she
feels like she was taken advantage of. She tells Ned that she is furious and
that she wishes he had never bothered coming around because she would
much rather have been able to grieve the loss of her fiancé without his
negative presence.

Ned, then, points out that she has always held her fiancé over his head and
that she has always made him so incredibly pressured to try to live up to
this dead man’s idealized image. He points out how difficult it is to win out
over a man that is dead, gone, and will only ever be remembered fondly,
and in response, he points out how she is even doing it right now.
Let’s pause for a moment and consider what just happened—did Talia ever
actually say anything about Ned not being good enough? No—she said that
she wished that she had never put up with such a negative presence. She
never compared the two and instead only made it a point to mention that
she would have rather been able to avoid Ned and all of the narcissistic
toxicity that he brought with him. However, Ned was able to spin it around,
and suddenly, he was the poor victim that needed sympathy.

He was the one who was made to feel not good enough, in his narrative. He
was the one held to an impossible standard. Notice how he effectively
flipped the narrative, all by denying what Talia had first said, then attacking
her to put her on the defensive.

With Talia on the defensive, she is going to be so busy attempting to protect

herself that he is able to get away with the argument. He has completely
distracted her from her initial anger and instead put her on guard, meaning
he now has the complete advantage.

This is the power of DARVO—it is an important tactic to remember

because if you can identify it when it happens, you can effectively stop it
from occurring. All you need to do is refuse to give in to the attempt to
attack and reverse—for example, instead of taking the bait, Talia may
mention that Ned’s description of things never happened and that his own
feelings on what she was discussing are entirely irrelevant at that point in
time as she was addressing something unrelated to her fiancé. She simply
wanted to be given the freedom to grieve without interruption, and she felt
like Ned had stolen that chance from her.
 Chapter 7: The Effects of Narcissistic Abuse

Now, you have seen a bit about what the narcissist can do if they are given
the in. You have seen how they are able to manipulate with ease, and how
they have several tactics that can make them particularly dangerous when
interacting with other people. However, so far, other than looking at a few
of the signs of abuse within relationships, what has not been addressed and
truly discussed is the impact that the abuse of the narcissist can really cause.

Narcissistic abuse is different from traditional emotional abuse—that much

has become glaringly obvious. However, the abuse that the narcissist uses
seems to leave far deeper emotional scars. Perhaps related to the fact that
the narcissist is able to betray the most sensitive, intimate parts of you—
your heart. More often than not, the narcissist is able to convince you to
believe in the existence of someone who never existed, convincing you to
fall in love with someone who was little more than a figment of the
narcissist’s imagination.

Talia was so angry, not because of Ned himself, or because Ned was not
good enough, but rather because Ned had lied. Ned had made her fall for
someone that she thought would bring her happiness, and he did, for a short
while. Of course, that happiness very quickly was destroyed altogether,
leaving Talia reeling as she tried to cope with the sudden realization.

Ultimately, some of the effects of narcissistic abuse can be worse in some

ways than the abuse of emotional abusers, particularly because of the
betrayal and demand for utter obedience from the narcissist. Within this
chapter, we will go over five of the potential side effects of narcissistic
abuse that many people in recovery must go through. We will take a look at
echoism, the impact of narcissism on self-confidence, the development of a
codependent personality, common mental health issues that arise, and
finally, post-traumatic stress disorder, a very serious, very debilitating form
of anxiety.

As you read through this chapter after having come from an abusive
relationship, do not be afraid, and do not let your feelings get the best of
you—remember, you are going to be learning how to overcome these side
effects. You are well on your way to healing if you have taken the effort to
read this far into this book, and you will be able to succeed in healing.
However, you must be aware of your injuries before you can treat them. As
painful as it can be to stop and look at all of the ways that the narcissist in
your life has hurt you, whether through damaging your self-confidence,
causing anxiety, or leading to echoism, you can heal. You can reclaim your
life. Repeat that to yourself—you can and WILL reclaim your life, one step
and one day at a time.
Echoism
The first significant impact that we will look at is echoism. If you are
familiar with the myth of Narcissus, you know that a young nymph named
Echo had fallen in love with Narcissus. He rejected her, and she faded
away. Appalled at the rejection, Narcissus was punished, cursed to stare
into a puddle of water at his reflection until he, too, died. All that remained
of Echo after the rejection was her voice, a mere shadow of who she once
was before Narcissus refused her.

When we are talking about echoism with humans, then we are looking at
how people tend to respond to narcissists and the abuse of narcissists. In
particular, echoism is a trait—this trait, in particular, measuring as a fear of
becoming a narcissist. The echoists, then, are afraid of their own needs.
They are kind, but terrified by the possibility of burdening those around
them. They wish to support others without acknowledgment and praise,
preferring instead to remain in the background and blending in. They
usually struggle with praise and attention, feeling like they cannot voice
what they want, even if they know whatever that is.

The echoist, then, is like the anti-narcissist. While the narcissist needs
attention, the echoist fears it. While the narcissist thrives on control and
determining what will happen, the echoist would rather be told what to do.
When the narcissist becomes abusive, the echoists blame themselves for the
problem.

Ultimately, then, the echoist is able to help other people meet their own
needs, but struggles to ever acknowledge and meet their own. They are
constantly hiding in the backdrop. While of course, some people have this
personality type naturally, even without ever suffering at the hand of an
abuser or narcissist, others develop it seemingly from their abuse. They
grew aversive to needing their needs met, learning that any attention is
uncomfortable because it means that the narcissist will be turning his
greedy, jealous eyes on them soon after. It becomes easier when your life is
overshadowed by a narcissist, to simply let it all pass you by while you hide
in the background. Praise then gets dismissed as luck or saying that it was
just really easy. However, anything negative is automatically the fault of the
echoist.

Typically, after so long of being made inferior and taught to help the
narcissist rather than take care of themselves, the echoists become willing
to just do exactly that. Similar to the codependent, they feel like their only
purpose in life is to make sure that everyone else is cared for, and in doing
so, they struggle. As needs pile up, completely unmet, they grow
unhealthier. They find themselves miserable, and they often feel stuck.

If you are afraid that you may be an echoist, do not fret—just as with all of
the other negative aspects of discovering that you have been a victim of a
narcissist, you can heal this one as well.
Losing Self-Confidence

Another common side effect of a relationship with a narcissist is the loss of

self-confidence. Even the most confident person in the world will
eventually be worn down around the narcissist without the proper
protection, so if you happened to find that the narcissist destroyed what was
once a confident individual, you are not alone. The narcissist’s tactics
usually sneak by completely unnoticed unless you take the time to learn
them, and if not, you may find your own self-confidence waning.

Self-confidence is critical for people—it is how you learn to trust yourself

to take care of yourself. When you are self-confident, you trust that you are
capable of doing the right thing, and you inherently trust your own
decisions and judgments. You are certain that you will always be behaving
in ways that are beneficial to you and you trust that you will be successful.

Self-confidence is not the same as grandiosity in the sense that the narcissist
is grandiose—self-confidence is usually healthy. It is good to be self-
confident, so long as your self-confidence is accurate and warranted, taking
time to acknowledge that you do, like everyone else around you, have
certain weaknesses that must be accommodated for.

Because the narcissist is so quick to tell people that they are less than the
narcissist in any way possible, always downplaying any achievements, it is
only natural that over time, that self-confidence would wane. After hearing
the narcissist tell you that you are stupid enough times, you will naturally
internalize it, simply because people tend to be more susceptible to beliefs
that they hear on repeat over and over again. The narcissist’s abuse
eventually does this to your self-confidence overall, leaving you a shell of
your former glory.
Becoming Codependent

Codependency has already been touched upon within this book so far, and it
will be addressed once more in a bit more depth here, as it is an important
consequence of narcissistic abuse in several situations. When you are
exposed to a narcissist, you are commonly given two choices: Give in or be
abused. The narcissist will attempt to browbeat almost anyone into
submission, and in the event that submission is impossible, the narcissist
then rejects the other person under the guise of having wanted to do that all
along.

When you are browbeaten into submission threatened with being forced
into submission, you very quickly learn to fear the narcissist. Especially if
you were a child that grew up under a narcissistic parent, you may find that
any time you had needs, they were always overshadowed and rejected
altogether. You were not allowed to have needs without punishment, or
having those needs barely met at all.

Codependency eventually develops then when someone has been forced to

give up their own needs in favor of other people’s over and over again on
repeat until they no longer tried to meet those needs anymore. For example,
imagine that you grew up with a narcissistic father and a codependent
mother. You were likely constantly taught from a young age to put your
father’s needs first. Your mother would feed your father first—specifically
what he wanted. If you were crying because you had gotten hurt, but your
father was going off on some tirade about something, your mother would
attend to him. It was even so bad that the time that you fell and broke your
arm, your mom stopped and fetched your father his dinner and beer before
helping you, despite the fact that you were crying in pain.

This sort of constant neglect eventually taught you that trying to meet your
needs was pointless—they would never have been met anyway. You would
not be able to get them met no matter how hard you tried, and the message
that you internalized early on was not to have needs. They did not get met,
so why bother wasting time thinking about them? You may have learned to
forget about your hunger or thirst, until you would stand up and get dizzy,
realizing that you had not eaten or had any water in a while. You would
frequently forget to make sure that you dressed appropriately or that you
were prepared for events and outings simply because you never had to
bother with your own needs.

Growing up or being forced into the shadow of a narcissist will cause

people to become incredibly codependent. They will find that their self-
esteem drops, something closely related to the drop in self-confidence.
They will become people-pleasing, feeling like they must take care of
everyone else without complaint. They will struggle to create any sort of
boundaries at all in relationships, believing that they are unimportant or
should not be enforced. They identify closely with the caretaker, meaning
that they must constantly be engaging with other people and taking care of
them to find any real value in their lives. They must maintain some sort of
control, whether on their own behaviors or feeling like they are in control of
the narcissist, usually in the form of taking the blame for everything that
happens. They are dependent upon the relationships that they are in,
terrified of being rejected, and they will obsess over their relationships and
the anxiety surrounding being rejected.
Ultimately, the codependent becomes someone hardly capable of
functioning in a healthy capacity in real relationships. Because the
codependent is so set upon making sure that all needs are met without fail
and making sure that they take the blame for any behavioral issues within
the relationship, there is always an unhealthy dynamic in a codependent’s
relationships, and for that reason alone, codependency must be defeated.
Mental Health Issues

Ultimately, narcissistic abuse causes mental health issues, as well. Aside

from echoism and codependency, you can see very real, diagnosable
disorders as well. The victims of abuse may go on to suffer from
depression, and with that depression, they often feel like they will never be
able to get out. The narcissistic relationship can be a constant drain on any
healthy thoughts or hope within the individual, eventually resulting entirely
in depression. The depression can be long-lasting and pervasive as the
victim finds themselves isolated, alone, and abused on a regular basis.
Rather than being able to escape, they are stuck, alone, and with nothing but
abuse to show for it.

Anxiety is another common mental health issue that arises. The victim may
find themselves feeling anxious at just the thought of the narcissist, or the
displeasure that they are certain will be problematic in the future. They
know that the narcissist is abusive and they fear that abuse. However, they
also find themselves powerless to stop it. Instead, they find themselves
constantly living in a state of heightened stress.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a very specific side effect to the

abuse that the narcissist tries to dish out. Those suffering from PTSD often
struggle in life—even little things that are vaguely reminiscent of the
narcissist can be enough to trigger the victim to find themselves in the midst
of a panic attack, and that is something that no person wants to have to
endure.

Post-traumatic stress disorder arises from the mind trying to cope with
trauma. The exact cause is not yet known, though psychologists are leaning
toward it being related to the brain’s ability to process memories. If the
brain of the individual with PTSD is unable to properly process the
memories, it is quite likely that the individual will then suffer further from
the negative side effects. They will have recurring nightmares about the
abuse or about the narcissist, or they will find that they are largely unable to
protect themselves from any flashbacks that may arise in response to
triggering stimuli.

If you find that you are suffering from PTSD, you are going to want to
speak to a doctor or other licensed medical professional. There is only so
much advice that can be given through a book without being able to directly
speak to the individual suffering from symptoms, so the best thing that you
can do is to get a diagnosis from a proper medical professional and begin
treatment with therapy and possibly medication.

While you can attempt to treat the symptoms of PTSD at home, the
management without guidance is not always effective. It can help, but if
you want to truly find relief, you are going to want to make sure that you
have that guidance and personalized advice that you can only get in a one-
on-one interaction.
 Chapter 8: Disarming the Narcissist

Narcissists are notoriously difficult to get rid of, even if you try. More often
than not, if you want to get the narcissist to go away, you need to figure out
how to do it in a way that makes them think that going away was their idea
altogether. You want them to believe that they were in control, so they do
not take your attempt to avoid them as a way of subverting their perceived
control over the situation. Remember, the narcissist is convinced
wholeheartedly that he or she is entirely responsible for everything. They
believe that they control everyone around them, struggling to see anyone
else as a legitimate human being deserving of respect or care.

When you find yourself stuck interacting with a narcissist and trying to get
rid of them, or at the very least, removing their ability to hurt you, there are
several tactics that you can use that have not yet been discussed within the
scope of this book. You can make it a point to cut off the narcissist and
disappear completely, potentially moving somewhere that the narcissist will
never be able to find you, but that is not always practical or possible. For
that reason, this chapter will guide you through five ways to remove power
from the narcissist.
Of course, the most effective way to disarm the narcissist is to avoid contact
completely, and this will be the first topic discussed. Depending on the
relationships with the narcissist, you may be in a position in which you can
cut them off altogether, and allow yourself the space you need. Beyond that,
there are techniques such as being able to set up a boundary that is
enforced, or becoming what is commonly called the “grey rock” in order to
make the narcissist think that you are boring.

What is consistent no matter what the method you choose, however, is to

make sure that you are firm in whatever you choose. If you cut off, you
must stay cut off. If you are willing to take advantage of boundaries, you
must always enforce them and the consequences of not respecting those
boundaries. If you are to relent on your attempts to manage the narcissist,
even just slightly, you will encourage the narcissist—the narcissist will be
aware of the discovered weakness, and that means that the narcissist will be
able to take advantage in the future, as well as encourage future attempts as
well.

As you read through these methods, keep in mind that you will want to
make sure that whatever you choose works for you. Narcissists are not a
one-size-fits-all situation, and you will have to figure out exactly how will
work best for the narcissist in your life. Some are relatively trainable—with
some reinforcement and constant use of boundaries, you may be able to
maintain some sort of a distant relationship with them. In other instances,
you may be best served by cutting your losses and moving on.
Cut Off Contact Completely

The first tactic is by far the most effective, but it is not always practical. If
you are able to cut off the narcissist, please do so. You will find that, after
the initial extinction burst, life becomes far more peaceful. You will be so
much happier without the narcissist controlling your life and making it
impossible for you to find enjoyment in anything.
If you will be cutting off the narcissist completely, you can do so by stating
your boundary, such as saying that you are no longer interested in a
relationship and asking that the narcissist does not contact you again. From
there, you simply ignore any attempts to contact you. If they show up to
your house, you can call the police and have them told to leave or risk
trespassing charges. If you find that they are particularly persistent, you can
always try moving, changing your number, and moving on, especially if
they live rather close to you. If they are long-distance, just blocking
numbers may be enough, though they may try to show up again at some
point in the future.

When you are cutting off a narcissist, you are likely to be met with
resistance—after all, the narcissist will not be ignored on anyone else’s
terms, or at least that is what he thinks. You may receive phone calls from
family members, asking how you could be so cruel as to cut off poor
Grandpa Frank, never mind the fact that he has been abusive for the last
several years. What matters here more than anything, however, is that you
must remain firm.

If you ever give in to the demand for contact, you have rewarded the
narcissist. You have taught the narcissist that if they push you exactly that
much, they can get you to relent, and they will use that tactic again in the
future. Just as a toddler throwing a temper tantrum should never be
rewarded, you want to keep your distance from the narcissist as well.

Keep in mind that if you cut off, you are going to expect what is known as
an extinction burst—this is essentially how the narcissist will behave in
response to the fact that you have suddenly stopped rewarding his attempts
to control you, as you always have. You are suddenly working in a way that
is not normal, and that does not compute to his mind. Think of how if you
were to go outside, only to find that your car did not start, you would try
again and again, growing increasingly more frantic for a few minutes as you
desperately tried to crank the car. After a few minutes, you would probably
give up and call the mechanic. However, the narcissist will not—he will
repeatedly crank and crank and crank until something gives. Remember, the
narcissist is rarely able to see the world rationally and is more likely to be
guided by his own skewed and distorted worldview than anything else.

In this case, however, your obedience and attention would be what he was
seeking instead of a car starting, and he will try over and over again. In
particular, you will see the demands ramp up exponentially over a short
period of time, and it is imperative that you do not ever give in—if you give
in during this time, it will be far more difficult in the future. Let the
extinction burst die out. It will be rough for a short while, but after you
make it clear that you will not respond, there is a good chance that the
narcissist will simply declare that they did not like you and that they cut
you off, and he will be on his way.
Become the Grey Rock

Another technique that is a bit more realistic if you cannot cut off for some
reason, such as if you share children with a narcissistic ex, is to become the
grey rock. Think about the last time you took a walk outside. Maybe you
went through your yard, or maybe you went hiking. Can you remember any
of the rocks you saw?

Chances are, you cannot. And this is normal. The rocks are so mundane and
irrelevant to your daily life that you have no reason to focus on them in the
first place. Looking at the rocks does not matter to you because they are
boring, and you do not commit any of them to memory.

You want to channel that with the narcissist. If you can channel the
boringness and mundaneness of that rock, you can bore the narcissist out of
bothering with you in the future. All you need to do is ensure that you are as
plain as possible in any and all interactions with them.

Let’s say that you have children with your ex, and this is why you cannot
simply cut them off. If he asks you how you are doing, you would simply
ignore the question. If he asks you about the children, you answer shortly
and with as little detail as possible. If he has any demands for you, instead
of arguing about how they are ridiculous, you can say, “Okay.” And leave it
at that if you are going to give in, or ignore them if they are not acceptable.

Just as with the cut off method, you will find that the narcissist will ramp up
in an attempt to get you to reply, but keep on ignoring it. You do not need to
acknowledge anything irrelevant to children or other shared endeavors. This
means that anything that does not require a response will not get one, and
over time, the narcissist will get bored with being ignored. There is little to
gain out of being entirely ignored, and the narcissist knows that.

In the end, the narcissist will likely lose interest and leave you alone, just as
with the cut off method.
Take Advantage of Time

Another common method that you can use, preferably in conjunction with
the grey rock method, is to learn how to use time to your advantage. The
narcissist is likely used to you jumping any time he asks you to. This means
that he absolutely expects that behavior to continue. He will assume that
you will jump any time he send that message to you. If he asks you for help,
he assumes that you will drop everything and come to his aid.

What you can do to eliminate that particular assumption is make sure that
you actively end it. Set the narcissist to silent on your phone if you can so
his messages do not bother you as they all come flying in, and do not
respond. You should set some arbitrary amount of time to get back to him,
if at all, simply because there is no reason for you to respond at his beck
and call. If you are busy, then you are busy, and your phone is for your own
convenience, not for the convenience of those around you.

Start by pushing out your responses for a few hours for a while. Maybe
decide that you will wait to read the narcissist’s messages for an hour after
they arrive, and then enforce another hour during which you are debating
how best to approach your response. This means that there would be a bare
minimum of two hours between noticing the message and responding if you
felt it warranted a response.

This will be difficult at first, especially if you have been trained to respond
to the narcissist any time he asks you to do something. You will find it hard
to overcome that programming that makes you feel like you have no choice
but to immediately reply. However, that is exactly what the narcissist wants,
and you need to figure out how best to overcome it once and for all.
Overcoming it is possible if you put in the effort, and while it will be
uncomfortable, it will be well worth it.

Over time, you will destroy that expectation that the narcissist has that you
will be readily available at any moment if the narcissist determines that you
should be. You will find that the narcissist will message you less and less,
and that is absolutely okay with you.
Create and Enforce Boundaries

When you are in a healthy relationship, boundaries are expected. If you are
going to be enforcing boundaries, you want to ensure that you are setting
ones that are meaningful for you. Your boundaries are basically the laws for
respect for yourself—they are the line you draw that marks behaviors that
you will not tolerate.

For example, a very common boundary that goes unspoken in most

relationships is that there will be no physical violence. This means that both
parties are well aware of the fact that everyone expects a complete lack of
physical violence within the relationship, and both parties are willing to
recognize and follow that boundary

Narcissists are not fond of boundaries for good reason—they stand in the
narcissist’s way. When the narcissist wants to control someone, they cannot
exactly manage that if someone has a boundary specifically about wanting
to be free to make decisions on his own. The narcissist then sees that
boundary as a sort of challenge—the narcissist wants to take it down and
prove that it does not matter. After all, the narcissist is special, remember?
He believes that he is deserving of the honor of being able to stomp all over
it without consequence simply because of his uniqueness and superiority.

Of course, that is not the case. You absolutely can and should set
boundaries, no matter what the narcissist says, and if anyone tries to
completely steamroll those boundaries, then you know that they are not safe
or respectful people to have in your life. If they are going to willingly throw
away your boundaries without regard for how you feel, you cannot trust
them at all, and that is a problem. You should be able to trust the people in
your life.

When you do set a boundary, you should make sure that you state that
boundary explicitly to the narcissist, as well as pair it with a consequence.
For example, you could tell the narcissist, “If you are going to continue to
belittle me, I will end this visit until you are willing to talk to me like a
respectful adult. The next time that he belittles you, and he will belittle you
again to test that boundary, you must end the visit. You can simply stand up,
pack your belongings, acknowledge that you are not okay with that
behavior, and leave, telling him that you can try again when he is ready to
be respectful.

Most likely, he will whine and throw a fit about how you are so cruel for
punishing him for his misbehavior, but think about it this way—you are not
punishing him, you are protecting yourself. You are setting a reasonable
boundary—to not be called names or belittled, and it is not punishment for
the name-caller for you to put distance between them and yourself. Would
you call it punishing the snake if you refused to touch it because you knew
that it would bit you? No—it is protecting yourself.

You can try the interaction again after whatever period of time that you said
would happen between the next disregard of boundaries, reiterating the
boundary that you have for yourself and the consequence to ignoring it. The
trick here is that you must follow through every time you put out a
consequence. You need to be able to tell the narcissist that you will honor
your own boundaries to protect yourself, whether he likes it or not, and do
so to protect yourself. His comfort is not your responsibility, and if he really
wanted to continue with the visit, he would not have caused you so many
problems or ignored your very reasonable boundaries.
Create Some Distance

Sometimes, the best approach to a relationship with a narcissist is to create

a slow fade away from how often you contact them. Effectively, you will
slowly take more and more time to contact them in between normal
intervals, stretching out the time between the frequency of contact when
you begin and where you would like to be.

For example, imagine that you have a narcissistic father. You love your
father, but he is incredibly exhausting to deal with. Presently, he tries to call
you every day at least twice, and you are finding that it is putting a huge
strain on your own daily life. After all, you have your own life and children,
and while you can understand a father wanting to communicate with his
grown child, you also know that you are too busy for two hour-long
conversations out of your day, amounting to a whopping 13% of your
waking hours. That is time that you could spend with your children, tending
to yourself, keeping up with housework, or just sitting and enjoying the
silence. After all, between work, school for the children, housework,
homework, and making sure that everyone is ready for the next day, you
feel like you only ever have a few minutes of peace to yourself.

In this instance, you could make it a point to create some distance slowly
with your narcissistic father. You would slowly stretch out how often you
reply or get back to him. Perhaps you start by ignoring that first phone call
every couple days—that is already significant and gets you a few hours of
your time back per week. From there, you may decide to let your father
know that you are busy when he calls and that you will give him a call over
the weekend when things are less stressful.
Over time, you would go from two phone calls a day, to a phone call every
few days, to eventually once every week or two. This process takes time
and patience, but eventually, you are able to stretch out the visits. Expect
some pushback, as with all other narcissistic strategies, as the narcissist
hates change that is not on his own terms. The fact that you are changing
his schedule and expectations is a huge slight to him, and he will not be
happy about it or respecting it, despite the fact that it is in your best interest.
 Chapter 9: Leaving the Abusive Relationship

At this point, you may realize that your relationship is ruined. It is damaged
beyond repair, and you know that you need out. However, leaving is always
easier said than done, and especially if you cohabit and share children, all
sorts of legalities must also be considered in order to safely exit without
trouble. After all of the insight that you have gained through reading this
book so far, you may now recognize that the abuse in your relationship is
not going anywhere—it is there to stay. That is terrifying for most people
and not something that you necessarily want to put up with. However, that
is exactly why this guide exists. You can leave. This chapter will tell you
how to leave, detailing what you should prepare. You can free yourself from
the abuser’s grasp once and for all, breaking those chains and freeing
yourself from the life of torment and abuse that you otherwise would have
to endure.

When you are sure that you are ready to leave, remember three things: Your
partner will not change. You cannot help your partner to change. Your
partner will promise and beg to keep you, but this is because he does not
want to lose control. Ultimately, he is not ever going to put in the long-term
effort to change, especially if he is a narcissist because the narcissistic
personality disorder that he suffers from prevents him from ever
acknowledging that he is the problem in the first place. This means that he
is going to remain the abusive person that he is, no matter how much you
may want him to change. That is not your fault, and it is okay to grieve for
that relationship that you have lost. However, do not let that grief hold you
back from breaking those chains and finding freedom and health.
Get Your Ducks in a Row
As cute as this imagery may be, getting your ducks in a row is your ability
to get everything in line and ready to go. You are going to be actively trying
to make sure that everything that you will need in your exit is in one place
and prepared.

This stage will involve anything legal that you may need to do. Do you
share children? Start looking into custody and what you will need to do to
file for emergency custody. It is possible that if you have documentation to
prove abuse, that you can get emergency custody of your children. In some
states, if you are unwed as a mother, you retain full custody, even if your
child’s father is on the birth certificate. Make sure that you consult a lawyer
to double-check on the legality of these things and ensure that you do not
make any missteps that will damage your fight for custody.

You will also want to make sure that all-important documentation is lined
up. Do you know where your legal paperwork is? Do you have your social
security card and birth certificate? How about all paperwork for the car,
insurance, joint property, and anything else relevant to you? Make sure that
you gather up all important legal documents as well as making sure that you
gather anything for your children as well. You want to make sure that you
have the paperwork declaring custody if it is already worked out. If you are
going to be filing for a restraining order and emergency custody, get all of
that as well.

With the paperwork lined up, you need to make sure that you also have all
of your sentimental, irreplaceable items in one place that is easy to grab.
Make sure that you have computers, hard drives, photo albums, and
anything else that you would be devastated to lose if the narcissist decides
to get destructive to punish you for leaving. You will want to put this all in a
bag that you can carry out quickly, placing it with all of the legal
paperwork. These are your go-bags—they are there for you to take and
leave as quickly as possible if the need should arise.

Make sure that the go-bag also has chargers—you want to have a spare set
of car keys, some money, your phone and computer charger, anything that
you will need for children if you do not have time to stop and gather things
otherwise, and anything else that you know that you would need for a trip
that is a few nights long.

Remember, ultimately, your physical belongings can be replaced, and while

you should put in the effort to protect your belongings if you can, if you
cannot, do not bother. Focus on making sure you and your children and pets
are out if you can.
Create a Safety Plan
Leaving the relationship is perhaps the most dangerous time in an abusive
relationship, and because of that, you need to have a safety plan in place.
Think of this as a contingency plan just in case anything goes wrong—you
never want to use it, but you want it to be there just in case.

This safety plan should involve you identifying several safe areas in your
home, as well as the best paths to get there. You will want to make sure that,
if you notice that your abuser is starting to escalate, you can make sure that
you are not trapped .This means that you should avoid areas with small
spaces or that can have you blocked in regularly. You will also want to
make sure that you avoid a room such as a kitchen, which is full of all sorts
of easily weaponized items.

Include your children in the safety plan as well—as much as you may be
hoping that they are protected from the abuse, they most likely know that it
is happening. Have a code word that you use to tell your children to get to
your side or get to a safe spot immediately and without argument. In
particular, you will want to make sure that you practice this several times,
such as turning it into a game. Maybe your code word is “Sticky Tape!” and
as soon as your children hear it, they all must run to touch you as soon as
possible and stick to you like tape. This is a good way to remove some of
the fear while still having it readily remembered for your children.
Create an Escape Plan

Now, with your ducks in a row, your belongings ready, and your children
and yourself prepared with a safety plan, it is time to put together your
escape plan. The safest may be to attempt to leave when your abuser is not
present at home, such as during the workday, if at all possible. If not, you
can try in the middle of the night. If your partner is home, you are always
welcome to call for a police escort to get yourself and your children out of
the home safely and without incident.

Make sure that your escape plan involves where you will go, how you will
get there, and how you will protect yourself. Can you go to stay with family
that will help keep you safe while you stabilize? If not, consider a domestic
violence shelter, as those ware well-protected and can keep you and your
children safe during this dangerous time.

When it is time, make sure that you do not hesitate—go as soon as you said
that you would to protect yourself and your children and remember that you
are doing the right thing.

This is not an easy process—leaving is never easy, especially if you do not

have any money on you or access to the money. However, be proud that you
are not willing to let yourself be held down, unable to live your life in peace
and safety. You are choosing to move forward toward safety and happiness,
and that is quite noble on its own.

When you are ready to escape, keep in mind that your technology can be
your worst enemy here—if you are trying to leave, you need to ensure that
your abuser cannot possibly track you. If you have a smartphone, consider
leaving it behind and buying a new burner phone if you can get away with
it. Make sure that you log out of all iterations of family tracking and GPS
monitoring that may exist on your phones, tablets, and computers. Beyond
that, you will want to ensure that you change your passwords on all
accounts as well, so your abuser cannot log in and track you or who you are
talking to.
The Aftermath

Right after you have left, it is critical that you make sure that your
information is kept as private as possible. You will want to make sure that
you use a burner phone or a new phone number, which you specifically
want to remain unlisted. You do not want anyone being able to track your
number to your name.

While most of the time, when you are moving, you make it a point to fill
out a forwarding address with the post office to ensure that you get all of
your mail, consider having it all forwarded to a PO box instead. This will
mean that the only notification that your ex may be able to get is that you
are using a PO box in a certain area.

As you are setting up your new life, you will want to make sure that you
disconnect from any and all bank or credit accounts that are shared—make
sure that you speak to a lawyer about ownership beforehand if possible, as
that can change from state to state, depending upon marital status and
several other factors as well. You will absolutely want to avoid using any
cards that your ex has access to, as your ex will be able to see where you
are making transactions, and that can be enough information to piece
together a general idea of where you are, something that you likely want to
avoid.

If you do happen to remain in the same city or town due to jobs, school, or
other obligations, change up your routine. If you have children in school
and daycare, you may want to consider reenrolling them elsewhere, as your
ex, assuming he is their father, would likely be able to pick them up without
any protest if they wanted to. Changing up as much of your routine will
help you avoid being easily tracked. Keep in mind that your charged cell
phone should be on your person at all times, and you should never hesitate
to call for help if you need it.

Once again, remember that you are doing the right thing in freeing yourself
from the relationship. Following these steps can be helpful, but if you are
unable to get access to the proper funds or necessities, or you do not have a
mode of transportation to get out of the home, you can call your local
domestic violence hotline. They should have resources that can help you
remove yourself and your children from the home.

As a benefit, domestic violence hotlines and shelters will have access to

several benefits that can really help you get out of the abusive relationship
and free yourself once and for all. You will have access to lawyers, shelters,
financial help, counselors, and more, all of whom will specialize in helping
and working with people in situations like yours.
 Chapter 10: Staying Free

Once you are finally out of the relationship, you may find that after some
time, you miss it. You will miss your ex, and while he may have been
abusive or threatening, you still spent a portion of your life with him and
feel like you want that back. It is only natural to miss those that you care
about, but ultimately, you must have the self-confidence and self-discipline
to remind yourself that you made the right decision to leave.

In particular, you may find that you miss the good times, and that is natural.
If your relationship had been nothing but negative, it never would have
progressed beyond the initial date—the narcissist had to be able to win you
over somehow, and that usually involves some sort of façade and persona.
Nevertheless, it can be incredibly difficult to avoid the feelings of wanting
to go back to the abuser, even after you have finally escaped once and for
all.
Keep in mind that if you have just escaped your relationship and feel like
you want to go back, you are not alone. On average, it takes at least seven
attempts for a person to break free from an abusive partner. However, just
because wanting to go back and knowing that other people regularly go
back does not mean that you should simply decide to go back because you
miss your ex—you should try to resist. Retain that freedom that you fought
for so hard and make sure that you stay free.
In particular, this chapter will take the time to provide you with some
advice designed to help keep you from returning to your abusive situation
despite the temptation and desire you may have to do exactly that. Even if
you are depressed where you are, or feeling like your home would be better
than the room in a shelter that you are in, resist. Any time that you feel like
you are wishing that things were different or when you tell yourself that you
are struggling due to your own failures, remind yourself that abuse is not
your fault. It is not your fault that you were targeted by a narcissist. You
were preyed upon by the abuser, and that had nothing to do with who you
are or what you deserve. You could never have known that everything
would play out the way that they did. That is not your fault, and it never
will be.
The road to recovery begins with you no longer taking blame for the
narcissist’s actions. This means that you must reject the idea that you are
somehow at fault for everything that happened. The abuse lies firmly with
the narcissist, and you need to remind yourself of that. Remind yourself that
no one deserves to be abused in your moments of weakness, and remind
yourself that you may not be where you had hoped to be, but at least you
are free. You have left that cage once and for all and you are finally free to
stretch your wings and learn to fly.
Now that you are away, it is time to stay away. You can do it.
Find Support

The first way that can help you strengthen your resolve during those
moments of weakness is to find support. Find friends or family that you can
turn to if you need to talk during those moments, knowing that you will be
fully and wholly supported by them when you do so. Make sure that you
primarily surround yourself with people that you know and trust, or find a
support group for people with similar stories to you.
If you have gone through a domestic violence shelter, you may already have
access to this by having access to all of the resources that usually follow the
shelter. They likely have support groups held for those living at the shelter
at any given time. If they do not have a support group, they can surely point
you in the right direction toward finding one that will be beneficial to you.
You are very likely to find that being able to talk to other people will
actually be incredibly beneficial to you—when you can talk to others, you
are free to hear other stories .Just knowing that other people have lived
through what you have been through can help you find comfort in those
moments of loneliness when you are wondering where you went so wrong.
You will be able to branch out and make new friends who have been where
you are. They will know how to help you simply because they will have
been there before, and their advice can be absolutely critical to keeping you
afloat during such a dark time.
Write Down Your Reasons for Leaving
Another way that may help you fight off all of the tempting feelings of
going back to the narcissist is to write down every reason that you left.
Spend the time when you are safe to go over what made you finally pull the
trigger and leave. For Talia, it was that the Ned she knew was a lie. She did
not appreciate being fooled into falling in love for someone who never
existed in the first place. For you, it could be that you are sick of the abuse.
You finally acknowledge that you deserve better, or that your children
deserve better.
If you do have children, look at them. Do they deserve to grow up in a
home full of dysfunction? Do you really want that life for them? Most
parents would never want that for their children, and for them, leaving
would be the obvious choice.
Of course, just because you know that you would want better for your
children does not mean that your feelings will just stop. Your feelings are
just that—feelings—, and they are not to be believed.
After having written down all of the reasons that you can think of for
leaving, you can return to the list any time that you are feeling week. Are
you thinking about that one date that you had that was entirely romantic,
next to the beach? Remind yourself that it was probably a lie and that the
narcissist most likely felt nothing for you and read over your list. Are you
realizing that your birthday is coming up, and you are going to have to
spend it without an adult to talk to? Read over that list again and remind
yourself why it is so important to you.
Consider also writing down any and all instances of suspected gaslighting
that you can think of. Think about all the times that your ex told you
something was wrong or that you were not remembering things properly.
Think of how you felt, feeling like you were slowly losing your mind, and
latch onto that anger. Tell yourself that you are not going to accept that
treatment again, and you are not willing to return to being treated like you
cannot possibly understand what is right in front of your face.
Find a Hobby
Perhaps one of the least specific pieces of advice that you are ever going to
receive consider finding a hobby or something else to keep you busy during
moments of weakness. Just having something else to do to occupy the time
can help the feeling pass, even when you are feeling tempted to return back
to the narcissist for any reason at all.
Have you ever wanted to try something new or learn a new skill? This is the
time to go for it—figure out exactly what it is that you have been wanting in
life and go for it. If you have always dreamed of learning to draw without
being mocked or laughed at for whatever you have chosen as your medium
or subject, now is your time. Do you want to make it a point to learn how to
knit? Take some extra cash if you have it and go get a beginner’s kit. You
have nothing but time on your hands that used to be filled by the narcissist
—take it back and do something for yourself.
This does two things: Not only are you keeping yourself busy, but you are
also doing something to better yourself, and bettering yourself may help
you feel better about yourself. Boosting your self-confidence as you
succeed at a new skill is always a huge welcome bonus.
 Chapter 11: The Importance of Empathy

Empathy is one of those buzzwords that you hear thrown around a lot in
modern psychology and self-help sources. You may hear the empath
discussed, especially in regards to narcissism. You may hear people say that
they are an empath at heart, or that they are incredibly empathetic.
However, do you know what is meant by calling someone an empath?

Empaths are people who are highly in tune to their surroundings and those
within them. In particular, they are usually able to sense the feelings of
others with ease. This is a skill known as empathy, and this is a critical skill
for people to master. Empathy is the skill that the narcissist does not have—
he cannot empathize, and because he cannot empathize, he cannot
effectively manage to relate to other people.

How about you? Are you empathetic? Do you have a good idea of what
empathy is? Do you want to be more empathetic? What can empathetic
behavior help you do, and how can it be beneficial?

All of these are fantastic questions to ask if you are unfamiliar with the
concept of empathy itself. Even if you are unfamiliar, do not fret—this
chapter is focused on empathy and how you can use it to protect yourself. In
particular, we will delve into looking at what empathy is, what the types of
empathy are, and how empathy can be used to help you better yourself. You
will see how empathy can fight narcissism, as well as how you can use it to
become less susceptible to narcissism as a whole.
What is Empathy?
Empathy, at its simplest, is the human capacity to relate to other people.
You use empathy to help facilitate communication, for example, in order to
better understand those around you. It allows you to understand what those
around you are feeling in particular, allowing you to essentially step into the
shoes of the other person by relating to them.

Imagine for a moment that you are walking down the street and you see a
homeless person sitting out in the rain. You feel sad for the person because
he is stuck out in the rain and it is cold. You understand what it means to be
cold and wet, something that you have been before, though maybe not
within the same context, and you feel empathetic for the man. You know
that he is likely suffering, and that makes you feel sad and hopeless.
Effectively, you take on the feelings of the other person in order to relate to
him.

It serves a secondary purpose as well: It allows you to regulate your own

behaviors appropriately. For example, if you can see that you are making
your child upset as you yell, you are likely to stop, feel those feelings that
your child is in response to your yelling, and use that knowledge to regulate
your own emotions. You then make it a point t0 avoid yelling because you
know that it was causing problems in your relationship with your child.
When you do this, you effectively are using your empathy in order to
regulate yourself and your behavior, and that is a critical social skill to have.

You know that the narcissist not having this ability is a major reason that he
is unable to relate to those around him, and that is what made him more
likely to be abusive, after all. Empathy then has two very serious functions:
Communication and regulation.

When you are able to communicate your emotional state to other people,
you are effectively able to make sure that you are actively broadcasting out
your needs. After all, emotions are closely linked to needs that must be met,
so when you are having your emotions read by someone else, they are
effectively learning what your needs are. If they see that you are sad, they
are likely to know that you need support, simply because that is what
sadness conveys—a need for support. If they see that you are afraid, they
are going to know that what you need is safety, as something present around
you is frightening you.

Empathy then allows for nonverbal communication. It allows for people to

tell others exactly what they need at that given moment without them
having to ever say a word. Think of how effective that is—how long would
it take if every time that you had a feeling, you had to verbally express that
you were happy or sad? You would spend an awful long time talking about
your constantly fluctuating emotions, especially since emotions are not
particularly stable in the first place. Emotions are constantly fluctuating;
sometimes, every few seconds, and empathy allows for their
communication easily.
Types of Empathy
Empathy primarily exists in three forms that are important to understand.
These three forms are cognitive, emotional, and compassionate. Each serves
a slightly different purpose, but it is only when you are able to be
completely empathetic that you become truly capable of using everything
that empathy has to offer you.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand emotions. It is entirely
cognitive, with nothing to do with emotions or feelings. This is your ability
to look at someone else, see a smile, and understand that they must be
happy. You do not have to actively be feeling that happiness—you just
know that is what is being felt simply because you know that smiling is a
sign of happiness.

This form of empathy is quite simplistic, but it has its own uses. You can
still make good inferences on the emotional states of others and, therefore,
their needs that they have at that moment if you are able to read how
someone is feeling. This means that you can tell what is going on without
really feeling compelled toward anything.

Emotional empathy goes one step further. When you are able to empathize
emotionally, you are able to feel the emotions of the other person. You see
that person smiling, and feel the need to smile yourself as well. That smile
becomes entirely contagious, and you cannot help but feel the need to smile
as well. This is also incredibly important to understand—when you can
empathize emotionally, you better understand the mindset of the other
person. You are more likely to relate well if you can feel the other party’s
feelings as well. For example, you are more likely to feel like you should
relate. If you see someone that is scared and you feel that fear just by
looking at the other person, you are going to be more likely to want to help.

That brings us to compassionate empathy. This form of empathy is

entirely about combining other forms of empathy. You are essentially taking
over the cognitive and emotional empathies and recognizing what each
brings to the table. In recognizing the cognitive state of the other party, you
get a good idea of what is going on in the other person’s mind. You can start
to piece together why they feel the way that they do. With the emotional
empathy added in as well, you find that you are more compelled to help.
You can feel how they feel and you want to make sure that the other people
are taken care of as well. This means that you can use your empathy to
ensure that anyone that you are surrounding yourself with is able to make
sure their needs are met at any given time.

Compassionate empathy is what should be striven for. It allows people to

take care of each other, coming together to ensure that everyone’s needs get
met. As a social species, we are strongly dependent upon each other to
ensure that we can actually engage with other people. We are actually able
to make sure that we can take care of each other simply because we actually
relate to each other.

When everyone feels compassionate empathy for each other, people are
happy to help simply to help. They understand that if they help their
neighbors, their neighbors are also likely to help them when they have a
time of need as well. This is incredibly important—when you are able to
rely on your neighbors, the survival of the species is more likely.
Of course, nowadays, we do not need to depend on others for as much
survival. You no longer have to worry about planting enough food to last all
winter—you can just go to the store. You can call people and pay them
money to help them. You no longer have to foster these close, neighborly
relationships, but that comes at a pretty significant cost—you are no longer
making those bonds that were once commonplace.
Empathy to Fight Narcissism

When you are trying to deal with a narcissist, you may find yourself
struggling immensely. You find that it is next to impossible to approach the
situation and figure out how to convince the narcissist that they are wrong
—because they are hardwired to deny the idea of being wrong. They have
to be right at all times, even if that comes at the cost of hurting other
people. While people can try to teach the narcissist to behave and to take
into consideration the feelings of others, it is not likely to get particularly
far. Instead, what may be the best way to handle the narcissist is to
approach the narcissist with empathy.

When you approach the narcissist with an empathetic approach in mind,

you are not doing it to have your actions reciprocated—you already know
that the narcissist will not do that at any point in time. However, you can
use your own empathy to acknowledge what is going on with the narcissist.
Just because the narcissist does not empathize on his own does not mean
that you cannot remove some of the threats by approaching the narcissist
with an empathetic perspective.

This does not even mean that you have to approach the narcissist at all—all
you need to do is be willing to consider the fact that the narcissist is simply
hardwired differently and that his attempts to control should not be met with
anger and frustration.

Think about it this way for a moment—if the narcissist were a snake, would
you really fault him for biting you? The answer is probably no—you would
expect it to bite you, and therefore, you would take the necessary steps to
keep your own distance. This is exactly what you will be doing with
empathy and your approach to narcissists. If you can identify someone as a
narcissist, just leave them be. Give them their peace and their space and
simply refuse to engage. If you can do this, approaching the situation
pragmatically and empathetically, you remove much of the danger. The
narcissist is going to have a hard time inflicting emotional harm if you have
already discredited and disregarded him.

What if, instead of feeling like the narcissist were truly evil, you looked at
why he was the way he was? You may stop and consider that you, too, feel
grandiose sometimes—such as when you are successful at something.
Perhaps you felt that little flare of grandiosity when you finally escaped.
This is not a bad thing—that feeling has a very good reinforcing purpose.
However, the narcissist is incredibly grandiose to a fault and to a point in
which it can actually be annoying and problematic. He causes issues with
his grandiosity because his grandiosity is unchecked. However, is that his
fault, or is that because of his personality disorder?

Now, while you will never be told that you absolutely must treat the
narcissist as your best friend, you should remember to empathize with him
from time to time. Remember that empathizing is not the same as
forgiveness, nor is it saying that you are willing to give him another chance.
More than anything, it is your ability to recognize what the narcissist is
capable of and why he is the way that he is. After all, if you chose to
disregard your ability to empathize with the narcissist, would you be any
better than he is? The narcissist does not empathize because it just does not
come naturally to him. However, if it comes naturally to you, should you
automatically approach the world with that empathy?
Many people would say yes, that empathy is kind and compassionate and
will make the world a better place. Overall, it will be up to you whether you
want to use empathy with the narcissist, but it should be strongly
considered.
Empathy to Increase Self-Awareness

Beyond just to understand people, empathy is actually quite useful in the

development of other social skills as well. In particular, empathy is a great
segue to self-awareness, and that self-awareness can really help you to fight
off the tendency to fall into aggressive or abusive relationships. When you
are self-aware, you recognize yourself. You know what your true abilities
and feelings are, and that your self-awareness is accurate. In particular, self-
awareness is necessary if you want to be able to regulate your own
behaviors, thanks to knowing your limits.

When you are not particularly self-aware, you run into a lot of the same
problems that the narcissist suffers from. You will find that you cannot
regulate yourself effectively, and if you cannot understand your own
feelings, you are not going to be able to understand the feelings of others,
either.
However, if you already have a base of being highly empathetic, you can try
to use that empathy to really help you understand other people as well. If
you can see what someone else’s body, language is saying.

Ultimately, your self-awareness and ability to empathize are far closer

related than you may have thought, and the more empathy you have, the
more likely you are to make it a point to regulate what you are saying. That
regulation of understanding what is going on is what will help you with the
development of self-awareness. If you know that your actions are upsetting
other people, for example, you are coming across in a way that is clearly
inappropriate in the eyes of other people. This means that other people are
entirely unhappy with how you are presenting yourself, and you will need
to figure out why.

Your empathy then allows you to start figuring out why they were unhappy.
What did you do that caused it? If you see that in particular, people seem to
be annoyed with your insistence to do something a certain way, you could
assume that your desire to complete whatever it was is the problem. Perhaps
you were coming across as pushy.

Now, you are able to acknowledge that the people were annoyed with you,
and then figure out exactly why. When you are aware of what you are doing
and how it is impacting those around you, you are far more likely to be
cautious in the future. You will then be more self-aware.

Effectively, then, self-awareness is regulated by empathy, and that makes

the two quite powerful when used in tandem.
Empathy to Build Self-Esteem

Just as empathy and self-awareness are closely related, you must also be
able to acknowledge the fact that empathy and self-esteem share a similar
bond. Self-esteem is critical to how we see ourselves. Your own self-esteem
is largely the way that you view yourself in the world. Are you happy with
who you are, or do you feel like something about your personality is
inherently flawed? Do you feel like your ability to help other people is so
incredibly stunted that you are not particularly valuable, or do you think
that you are a good person?

Think about self-esteem for a moment and what the words may mean. You
are literally creating an estimate of yourself. You are effectively defining
your value, as seen in your own eyes. If you have a high self-esteem, or a
healthy self-esteem, you view yourself quite positively. Some people’s self-
esteem may be too high, such as the narcissist—but in moderation, self-
esteem is critical to being successful in the world around you. If you have a
healthy self-esteem, you have your own boundaries and limits for yourself.
You are effectively able to say that you respect yourself and put a line on
where that respect is. You can tell what you think about yourself by looking
at that line.

Low self-esteem, however, implies that your image of yourself is quite

negative. You feel like the image that you present is problematic or flawed,
or you feel like the person that you are is inherently negative. When you
have a low self-esteem, you do not trust yourself. You do not think that the
person that you are is worthy of respect or love, or you may even feel like
you are a waste of space and time in the world.
Self-esteem is one of those traits that you want in moderation in order to be
healthy, and empathy can help you achieve exactly that. Consider, for a
moment, the effect of mutual empathy.

For example, imagine that you and your friend are able to empathize with
each other. You are able to respect each other and show each other how
much you care about each other. You can make sure that you are able to
show the other person your own assessment of their own worth. You value
them, and you are able to show that through relating to their feelings. The
more you empathize with someone, the more you value who they are, what
they like, and how you see them.

Now, if you just empathized with your friend, how do you think that made
him feel?

The answer is that he probably felt pretty good—he was justified by you
acknowledging his position and his own feelings, and that was something
that he truly appreciated. You effectively showed him that he cared, and in
response, he was happier than he had been in a while.

Now, consider that the empathy is mutual—he empathized with you when
you were talking about the problem with the narcissist that you have
recently escaped from. You feel validated and supported, as well.

When you feel like people validate and support you, you feel like other
people are hearing who you are and actually caring about what you are
saying. This means that you are able to see that other people are, in fact,
acknowledging you, your feelings, and your likes and dislikes. You are
seeing that, unlike how the narcissist told you, you do have inherent value.
The narcissist may have damaged your self-esteem by refusing to
acknowledge your values and emotions, but you can begin to heal from
that. You can draw from the empathy of others to begin to heal those
wounds.

Empathy reminds you that others in the world do, in fact, care about you.
They do care what you think about the world. They do care how you are
feeling and whether you can claim that all of your needs have been met.
They want to ensure that you are able to take care of yourself, and they are
able to help.

If even random strangers that you do not know can empathize with you,
then what does that tell you? It tells you that your self-esteem should
improve. It tells you that your narcissistic ex’s attempts to belittle you and
bring you down were little more than tools to keep you easily subdued, and
without the narcissist present, you should be willing to acknowledge this.

This means then that without the narcissist to continue bringing you down
you should be able to begin healing more and more. You can make sure that
you are actually beginning to feel better, and acknowledging that you do
have an inherent value that other people see. Empathy will remind you to
heal that inherent value. It will help that damaged; wilted self-esteem begin
to blossom and flourish once more, nourished upon the love and empathy
from other people. If other people can see your value without knowing you,
then you must have some.
 Chapter 12: Protecting Yourself Against Future
Abuse

Finally, you have made it—this is the last chapter within the book.
Congratulations on your journey, and good luck as you begin to enter the
chapter dedicated to bettering yourself! While it is in no way your fault that
you were abused and manipulated, you may be wondering what you can do
in the future in order to avoid finding yourself victimized again. The answer
is that there is no true way to never be the victim of an abusive relationship
again unless you simply never get into a relationship. However, that is an
incredibly unhealthy way to live life. People crave the closeness and
intimacy of their relationships, and you deserve to acknowledge that need,
even if it is tough to do so.

While you cannot exactly create a foolproof guard against abuse, what you
can do is make sure that you have chosen a way to sort of shield yourself.
You can armor yourself into becoming someone who is a less attractive
target for emotional and narcissistic abuse. Think for a moment about the
narcissist’s favorite target—how many of those traits did you have? If I had
to guess, I would say that you actually had several—and that is okay.
However, you will need to make sure that you are actively bettering
yourself in order to remain as protected as you can be. If you lack self-
confidence, learning to be confident is the natural next step. If you feel like
the problem is something inherent with you, you may find benefit from
therapy. You may decide to develop your own emotional intelligence in an
attempt to better protect yourself in the future, or you may create
affirmations to help you build up some self-esteem and self-worth. No
matter what you choose to do, you will be able to acknowledge that you are
bettering yourself in some way to help yourself remain safe in the future.

As you read through this chapter, do not feel like you are limited to what is
discussed. If you want to build confidence, but have a different method that
you would like to use, then go for it. Trust yourself and your own judgment.
After all, you are your own free person now, and you can choose what you
will do and where you will do it. You do not need the permission of a book
to make sure that you can get the build up and protection that you want!
Building Confidence

Let’s start by defining confidence once more—it is your ability to feel like
you can rely on yourself. If you are confident, you feel like you are
trustworthy and that you will protect yourself in some way. You will
effectively make sure that you are able to trust your own judgment if you
are confident, allowing you to resist the urge to fall for any future
gaslighting attempts.

Remember, the reason that you were likely so susceptible to many of the
abuse tactics was a lack of confidence. That confidence is perhaps your
greatest shield that will protect you from an emotional manipulator.
Because confidence will mean that you trust yourself, your thoughts, and
your perceptions inherently, you remove the power of being able to
convince you that you are wrong. The narcissist needs someone that is not
particularly confident specifically because keeping someone that is not
particularly confident is keeping someone who is very easily manipulated
and controlled. This means that the best targets are those without the
confidence to trust themselves and respect themselves to leave any sort of
abusive situation.

When you want to develop your own confidence, you are effectively going
to be teaching yourself to trust your judgment. This means that you will be
doing several little trust exercises to ensure that you are actually able to
remain safe. Thankfully, confidence is not fixed—it is a skill that you can
develop over time through practice. It will be a matter of finding aspects of
life that will help to bring you confidence.

Do you like sports? Perhaps you join a martial arts class aimed toward
domestic abuse survivors to help foster a sense of self-confidence. Do you
like video games? Pick a new one and get good at it. No matter what you
do, the important part is that you must choose something to dedicate
yourself to doing, allow yourself to follow through, and then make sure that
you acknowledge to yourself that you did do whatever it was that you set
out to do.

Over time, you will find that your confidence will build. You may find that
social interactions with people grow easier because you are not as ashamed
of yourself. You may do better at job interviews because you feel better
about who you are, or that you have a higher value than before. No matter
the technique that you are going to use, just make sure that you stick to it
and continue to acknowledge yourself and your abilities over time. All you
will need to do is ensure that you are able to be the person that you are
trying to be. Putting in that effort and actively striving to be the best will
help you see the best results.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

If you were easily victimized by the manipulator or the narcissist, it may be

worth spending some time in cognitive behavioral therapy. In particular,
this therapy is quite skilled at making sure that you are able to protect
yourself. You will be able to learn several skills that will be able to help you
be as successful as you desire to be.

In particular, CBT focuses on how to teach you how to become able to cope
with any problem that you face. Is your self-esteem low? With CBT, you
can learn to identify why your self-esteem is slow in the first place and then
figure out how to begin restructuring those thoughts into something that is
more productive, beneficial to everyone, and capable of helping you
become happier. CBT is all about cognitive restructuring, figuring out how
to identify those thoughts that pose the biggest challenges to us and then
becoming capable of correcting them in order to ensure that we are better in
general.

Think about the difference between CBT and a traditional therapy for a
moment—a traditional psychotherapy is going to focus on you being able to
talk through your problems. It may help you solve that one problem that has
been driving you insane, but is it really going to make sure that you are
actually fully capable of solving problems on its own? No, it won’t.

CBT seeks to teach all sorts of different coping mechanisms that can be
used to help better yourself. You will have techniques for defeating phobias
and for learning how to change your thoughts. You will learn how to cope
with stress and how to make yourself that much stronger of a person. You
will be able to do it all, thanks to the fact that you will be able to learn skills
that are vague enough to be used in nearly any setting.

That is the magic of CBT and why it is so effective—it is tool-based. All

you will do is figure out how to use the tools that will help you get through
the process of coping with stress, and that is powerful. Think of the
expression of being able to teach a man to fish and feeding him for a
lifetime. CBT is effectively teaching you to fish, and you will be able to
reuse them over and over again. So long as you are willing to continue
using those techniques, you will find that you are able to continue to see
effects over and over again.

Keep in mind that there is no shame or harm in therapy. You should never
be made to feel like you are less than capable because you have gotten help
coping with your problems. In fact, being willing to admit that you need
help is far more admirable than refusing to ever go. If you were willing to
put in the effort with your own skills, learning to cope with your own
problems, you deserve that recognition.

Even better, doing so will help you protect yourself from the narcissist once
and for all. You will be able to patch up all of those traits that that narcissist
enjoys, so you are not so susceptible. You will be able to tell yourself that
you can develop self-esteem. You will be able to figure out your
codependency problem. You will be able to figure out exactly why you
were so willing to put up with all of that abuse for so long and how you can
finally overcome it. You will learn how to figure out the best way to boost
your self-confidence and self-esteem, as well as how to use your empathy
effectively, all with the help of this therapy that you may otherwise have
chosen to avoid out of fear of stigma.
Emotional Intelligence

One other skillset that may be beneficial to protecting yourself as well is

learning to be emotionally intelligent. Emotional intelligence is defined as
the ability to understand and identify your own emotions, as well as
regulate them. You will also be able to identify and regulate the feelings of
other people as well with this skillset.

In particular, those who use emotional intelligence recognize that there are
four distinct skillsets that go into it: There is the skillset of self-awareness,
the skillset of self-regulation, the skillset of social awareness, and the
skillset of relationship management. Each of these are useful in their own
different ways, but when all four come together, you can create skilled
leaders that are empathetic, persuasive, well-liked, and confident.

Self-awareness in emotional intelligence is a focus on how to understand

your own emotions and abilities. You will effectively look at how you are
behaving and feeling. You will also be taking a closer look at how
accurately you can identify your strengths and weaknesses. You need to be
able to understand your weaknesses and strengths if you ever hope to better
yourself and make sure that you know what you are capable of. When you
know what you are capable of, you can make only the commitments that
you know that you can do, and if you know where you struggle, you can ask
for help without worrying about how you will fail if you attempt to actually
go through with trying to work within your weaknesses.

Self-regulation focuses on your ability to control yourself. You will be

understanding how to avoid responding to those emotional impulses that
you feel that push you toward behaviors that would otherwise be
problematic, such as actively making it a point to avoid yelling, despite
wanting to yell incredibly badly. When you can self-regulate, you avoid
hurting other people through carelessness.

Social awareness refers to your ability to empathize with other people and
understand the emotions of other people. When you are able to empathize
with other people, you can directly understand what they are feeling and
thinking, which provides valuable insight to needs and motivations. With
your ability to empathize in emotional intelligence, you are able to begin
figuring out how to regulate the behaviors of others as well.

When you learn to regulate the behaviors of others as well, you are learning
the skill of relationship management. You are learning to accurately
determine what people are capable of, see how they interact with other
people, and figure out how they are able to best benefit everyone involved.
Effectively, then, you are able to begin to influence the behaviors of others
with ease as well. You do this through watching how your own behaviors
influence the emotional states of others in order to figure out the best
approach.

Developing emotional intelligence does not need to be difficult—all it takes

is some patience and willing to read books, not unlike this one. If you think
that you could benefit from emotional intelligence, it is a highly
recommended technique and segues away from understanding abuse and
the reasons behind abuse.
Affirmations
Finally, the last technique that you will be given to help yourself is how to
create an affirmation. This is an incredibly common technique that can be
used to help you change your mindset little by little. When you use an
affirmation, you will effectively be able to make sure that you can tell
yourself something short that reminds you to change the way that you are
thinking in that moment. Commonly used to combat negative thoughts, you
may find this particularly useful if the narcissist has really done a number
on your self-worth.

To create an affirmation, you must simply follow three specific rules: It

must be positive, it must be personal, and it must be present-tense. Let’s go
over why each of these points are important:

When you make a positive affirmation, you are making sure that it is
keeping you in the right mindset. After so long being talked to in the
negative by the narcissist, it is time to break away once and for all. This
means that you will need to figure out how best to word whatever you wish
in positives. For example, if you want to not be so negative, you may
instead write your affirmation to focus on thinking positively instead.

When you make a personal affirmation, you make sure that it is something
that you have control over. You can control yourself, so you want to make
sure that your affirmation is aimed toward yourself. When it is, you can
ensure that it is something that you can regulate effectively enough. For
example, you can tell yourself that you are going to think positive thoughts,
but you cannot tell yourself that you will make the narcissist think
positively. This is exactly why your affirmation has to be personal—so you
can regulate it.

Finally, when you make sure that your affirmation is present-tense, you are
asserting that it is true right at that moment. If it were worded in the future
tense, you could arguably say that you would not start to work on it until
sometime in the future, meaning that it is not actually true that moment, and
likewise, if it were oriented in the past tense, you could deny that it was
actually true right at that minute. For that reason, it must be present-tense.

So now, you have three requirements: it must be personal, positive, and

present-tense. To figure out your affirmation, figure out first what you want.
If you want to feel more confident, for example, you may set up so you
repeat notes of positivity to yourself. You tell yourself that you are good
enough exactly the way you are with a statement such as, “I am happy with
who I am today.” Notice how it is present-tense, it is positive, and it is
personal. This means that it is effective.

From there, the affirmation is then used any time you feel like you need a
little extra push toward the positive mindset you are trying to maintain. If
you are trying to keep that positivity, you may make sure that it is repeated
any time you start to doubt yourself. Any time that you feel like you are less
than thrilled with yourself, you remind yourself that you are happy with the
you that you are that day.

On top of that, affirmations are particularly effective when they are used on
the regular while you are doing something else habitual. Maybe you repeat
your affirmation every time you buckle your seatbelt in the car or every
time that you stop for water throughout the day. In repeating your
affirmation throughout the day, you make yourself more likely to finally
internalize and believe it over time. Just as the narcissist was able to insert
negative thoughts into your own mind with repetition, you can create your
own positive thoughts with your own repetition as well.
 Conclusion

Thank you for reaching the end of Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse
Recovery. This book was designed to give you a full portrait of who the
emotional abuser and narcissist are as people, understanding exactly how
cruel and insidious they can be, as well as how to recover yourself.

As you read through this book, you were provided with several reminders
that abuse is never your own fault. When you are abused, someone else has
made the choice to hurt you, and that does not reflect on who you are as a
person. You must remember this—you cannot be held accountable for the
fact that someone else has abused you. Nevertheless, you can choose how
to handle that abuse.

Within this book, you were shown exactly how you should treat the abuse
that you have faced if you have spent your life with a narcissist. You were
guided through how to identify whether you have been abused in the past,
how to identify the abuser, and how to begin to heal. You were walked
through the kinds of abuse that are common with narcissists, as well as how
you can fight back.

Ultimately, as you have finished up this book, it is with the utmost hope that
you have found this book to be beneficial and informative. Every effort was
made to make sure that it not only packed plenty of information about
understanding the narcissist and the abuser but also how to combat that
abuse in a way that is actionable. In reading through this book, you should
have found at least some techniques that would help you.
From here, your best bet is to continue working on yourself. If you have
been caught in a narcissistic relationship, take the time to heal and work on
who you are. Build up that self-esteem and self-confidence little by little.
Learn how to combat abuse and manipulation, more specifically. You may
decide that you want to spend the time to become more emotionally
intelligent to help you build that confidence and empathy, and that would be
a fantastic starting point. Cognitive behavioral therapy would be another
stellar place to go from here.

Nevertheless, as you wrap up this book, please accept my heartfelt

appreciation in being willing to take this journey. Remember that you did
not deserve to be abused, nor should you ever tolerate the abuse that you
have endured in the past. You deserve to be treated with love and patience
and to find someone that loves the person that you are. If you can find that
person, you will find that life gets so much better.

Remember the signs that were given for the narcissist and narcissistic abuse
as you continue on your journey, and finally, if you have found that the
book provided has helped you in any truly meaningful way, whether
through the insight provided, in the tools given to you, or in the
understanding of the narcissist, please feel free to move over to Amazon
and leave a review with your honest opinion. Feedback from readers is
always greatly appreciated and encouraged. Your feedback will help the
next book be even better!

Thank you and good luck once more—You can do this!