There are vicious people out there who are skilled manipulators and pathological liars. These social predators hunt their prey by using all sorts of lies and manipulations to overpower them and make them submissive to use them for their own needs. These people don’t have any compassion, remorse, or guilt feelings. They abuse people without a second thought. And everyone, regardless of how smart and brilliant they are, can fall into their trap.
First, they idealize the victim. They shower the victim with compliments, constant attention, admiration, and they worship the ground the victim walks on. They immediately make the victim feel as though the connection with them is special and genuine. By idealizing their prey, the manipulator wants to present themselves as a good person that has only good intentions towards the victim.
When their relationship or friendship is established, the manipulator starts devaluing the victim. They start criticizing, shaming, calling them names, and utterly diminishing their value and self-confidence. Toxic people criticize and put down their victims by using snide comments and hurtful remarks often disguised as sarcasm and humor so that the victim will be oblivious to what is happening. Whenever the victim reacts to the evil comment, the abuser will quickly say that they were just joking.
They do this to shake their victims to their core so that they will become addicted to their abuser and do anything to bring back the “nice” side of the manipulator. This idealization-devaluation tactic enables the abuser to find the weak spots and the insecurities of their victim and then plays on them.
The abuser’s favorite lines are “You are overreacting,” “You are too emotional,” “You should be ashamed of yourself,” “How can you be so…”, “How can you believe I would do something like that” and so on and so on. These sentences are guilt-ridden and are predisposed to destroy the victim’s self-confidence and question their reality.
The abuser makes the victim responsible for everything that happens in the relationship, thus making the victim feel like it is a gift that the abuser is with them because they don’t deserve him or her. That’s how the abuser manipulates the victim into believing that they are too good for them. But no matter what the victim does to keep their abuser satisfied, they can never succeed because the abuser has new expectations that are impossible to meet. The abuser does this to keep their victims feeling like they are not good enough and they will never be.
Toxic people and manipulators confuse and control their victims by claiming the victim is forgetting things, or the things the victim saw with its own eyes are not true. The manipulator claims the victim is delusional and they have gone “crazy.” After some time, the victim will eventually start believing the words of the abuser and start thinking that they are indeed losing their mind and sanity.
Sometimes, the toxic person will bring another person into the equation who is supposedly “on their side.” They will say something along the lines of “Even my friend John thinks that thing you did was stupid.” They do this to make the victim feel as if they are causing the drama and conflict in the relationship, not the abuser.
Also, toxic people tend to casually mention an ex who just can’t forget them so that they inflict doubt on their victim’s heart and make them fearful of losing the abuser. In this way, the manipulator covertly distracts the victim by making them jealous so that they don’t focus on the red flags and see the abuser’s true colors.
Toxic people also isolate their victims from the people close to them, their family and closest friends. They do that in order to make the victim completely focused on them so that they can abuse in whatever way they see fit. The victim will eventually start walking on eggshells because they will be scared of losing the abuser since the abuser has become their only human contact.
And if the victim chooses to leave the abuser, the abuser will then admit they were wrong and say it will never happen again to bring the victim back. The abuser will do anything to suck the victim back into their life by empty promises of change. The abuser will swear they will change, and if the victim decides to forgive them, they will start behaving in a good way, but after some time they will be back to their old manipulative and abusive self.
If you find yourself in this situation, dealing with a toxic person, stop playing their game and remove yourself from their influence! They will never change. They will slowly ruin your life if you decide to stay with them. Walk away from them and never look back. Cut them off because these people are the absolute worst.
