By Good looking, impeccably dressed and a high-flyer, Dave Mebude is the “poster boy” for good genes, high fashion and career success. Yet, he has dark personality traits – his “best kept” secret.
Wait for it, Dave is a Narcissist! Yet all the bosses love him. He is the ultimate lap dog and suck-up artiste. He makes sure he takes the credit for anything good while he finds a scapegoat for every error; and when there is none, it must be manufactured.
As a supervisor, he has made life hell on earth for his colleagues with many exiting their well paying job to stay at home. Those who strive to endure his cruelty are either depressed or struggling with hypertension.
What’s the problem?
Dave Mebude blames others for his own bad behavior always. If he is lying, he accuses others of lying. Dave never takes responsibility, and it’s always someone else’s fault.
He ascribes undesirable character traits to his direct reports while attributing good characteristics of others to himself. His Team is filled with losers and fake people who do not measure up to his track record of success…
There are hundreds of thousands of Daves out there making life hell for family, friends and colleagues. They are classified as narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. They think that others are stupid while they are very clever — and truly, they can be quite cunning.
However, if you are familiar with their behavioral pattern, you will see through them and would cease to be part of the unfortunate people that for their dark tactics.
Abusers like Dave naturally prey on the weak and confused, and so the stronger your sense of self is, the less susceptible you are to their different forms of manipulation.
Manipulation Tactics
1. Deflecting: By deflecting focus from their own wrongdoings, the manipulator expects that others will forget about them and will ignore or even forget about what happened. It can be illustrated by the following:
2. Aggression: Instead of addressing people’s concerns, admitting fault, or examining their own problematic behavior, the manipulator attacks others. By doing so, they hope to do two main things: deflect attention from themselves and make themselves look better by making others look worse.
3. Lying to Look Better: Narcissistic manipulators try to make themselves look better by putting others down. They also talk explicitly about themselves in an exaggerated and unnatural manner. Narcissistic tend to brag a lot about how much money they have, how good at their job they are, how much better than others they are, how everyone is jealous of them, how everyone loves them, how great of a person they are, and so on. The main mechanism here is lying, or at least gross exaggeration.
4. Playing the Victim: Narcissistic manipulators are fake, fragile, and they are cowards. They pretend to be strong, call others weak and sensitive, bully and abuse people, but if you challenge them about their lies or stand up for yourself, they immediately start playing the fragile victim.
Conclusion
People with strong narcissistic traits are unwilling or unable to reflect on their shortcomings and destructive behaviors. As a result, they project, blame, and manipulate others to cope with their low and shaky self-esteem.
Manipulation tactics include deflecting, attacking and putting others into defense mode, lying about others being worse and themselves being better, victim-blaming, and playing the victim.
By resolving your own trauma and developing a stronger sense of self, you can become less prone to manipulation and narcissistic abuse.
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