BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

(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...

by Kathy Krajco It seems to me that a malignant narcissist can't help his or her temptations, predatory urges. Maybe they are the fruit of a lifetime of twisted thinking and therefore the narcissist's own fault ultimately. Maybe not. For example, if you are addicted to heroin, your desire for it today is the end of a path you chose to take and never repented from. We should understand how strong your temptation is, and we have no right getting up on a moral high horse with respect to you, because we don't have to resist such a strong temptation. But that's where understanding ends. You COULD quit. Many people do! Look how many people quit smoking for the minor reason that it became politically incorrect. Millions quit drinking annually. Multitudes give up a drug habit. Often without treatment or any 12-step program. So your addiction is your fault. Moreover, if for the money to get your next hit of heroin you murder somebody for the cash in their wallet, your temp...