Resisting Manipulation
(remember October is DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH . Abuse can be verbal, emotional, online, mental or financial, too!) by Kathy Krajco ... A suggestion for how to keep narcissists and other psychological manipulators from controlling you. Never think to outsmart them or out-manipulate them. You might as well think to beat Roger Federer at tennis. But straight thinking can help immensely. Keep clear on this point: Your feelings are not under your control. Your conduct is. Do not let your emotions control your conduct. If you don't, you won't be manipulated. Like a novelist, a manipulator manipulates your feelings. A novelist knows how to make you happy, sad. He knows how to put you on tenterhooks. He knows how to make you side with a certain character, even a villain. He knows how to make you desperate to see the hero get what she wants. There are literary formulas for achieving all these things in the mind of the reader. So, con artists, narcissists, and psychopaths aren...