100 Traits & Behaviors of Personality Disordered Individuals

Every relationship between a Personality-Disordered Individual and a Non Personality-Disordered Individual is as unique as the DNA of the people involved. Nevertheless, there are some common behavior patterns.

The list below contains descriptions of some of the more common traits of people who suffer from personality disorders, as observed by family members and partners. Examples are given of each trait, with descriptions of what it feels like to be caught in the crossfire. Read more…


See also:

Why the Disturbed Characters in Your Life Don’t Seem to “Get It”

By Dr George Simon

You might want them to see the self-defeating and other-harming consequences of their behavior, but the fact is many disturbed characters already see, they just disagree.

Because I’ve made a career of understanding and dealing with responsibility-challenged people and have written about them extensively, I get an enormous amount of mail and email from folks weary from their ordeals with the disturbed characters in their lives. And it never ceases to amaze me how often I hear these folks lament that they wish the problem character they’ve been dealing with could “see what they’re doing,” or understand how self-destructive their behavior is. The assumption is, of course, that the disturbed character lacks insight into both the nature of their behavior and the other-harming and self-defeating consequences of it.

Read more…

Psychopath Resistance

The Imperative of Understanding Psychopathy

What elephant?

From the article by Bernhard Guenther:

Marianne Williamson and the Elephant in the Living Room

“Nothing will change fundamentally until we educate ourselves about psychopathy and political ponerology and how it affects all of us. The virus of psychopathy will infect any new system, community or change in power until it is brought to awareness and looked at for what it is. Then the solutions will present themselves based on the knowledge and understanding we have gained. Educating ourselves and others about it is the best we can do for ourselves and future generations. It is vital knowledge in this day and age.”

Read more of this outstanding article!

charofpsychopaths


How do they get away with it?

By ologsinquito

Gossip & Divide

Anyone who has been around a malignant narcissist knows how much discord one person can sow. A fog of confusion descends, and the environment seems to become more toxic by the minute. That’s because people with disordered personalities thrive on drama and division, which they create by spreading false rumors, sometimes with a little bit of truth mixed in to make the story more plausible.

They also recruit flying monkeys, whom they artfully manipulate to carry out their agenda. A target is chosen to be driven out of their job or social circle. After a short breather, another target is selected.

Meanwhile, because the air has become poisoned, no one is happy. However, it’s very difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on. That’s because an adult with a character flaw, serious enough to bully another, knows their number will be up if they don’t use a lot of smoke and mirrors to deflect attention away from their own misdeeds. One tried and true trick is to blame everything on their target. Then they need to convince everyone else that things will improve if this person is banished.

Are conservative values psychopathic?

New study finds sexist beliefs are associated with narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism

by Katarina Skelin April 9, 2020 in Social Psychology

(Photo credit: dundanim)

(Photo credit: dundanim)

The dark triad is a combination of three negative personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. It is more common for this set of traits to be found among men, and it can be spotted through characteristics like selfishness, impulsivity, and opportunism. Those who gain success at the workplace without regard to getting along with others are likely to score high on measures of the dark triad.

How does one develop these traits? Continue reading…

We are NOT all the same.

According to Bullock, Hitler was an opportunis...

Psychopath?

All too easily, we mistakenly assume that everyone else is honest, intelligent, and trying to do the right thing, just like us. In reality, some people are outright evil.

Similarly, a psychopath thinks that everyone else is evil like himself. When a psychopath sees an honest and intelligent person asking questions or giving logical explanations, he believes that it is an evil manipulation trick.


The Age of the Psychopath
(secondarywounding.wordpress.com)

The Dark Triad

Quote

 

The Dark Triad

DarkTriad

The dark triad is a group of three personality traits: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Use of the term “dark” implies that these traits have malevolent qualities:

  • Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
  • Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interest and deception.
  • Psychopathy is characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness.

All three traits have been associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style. A factor analysis carried out at the Glasgow Caledonian University found that among the big five personality traits, low agreeableness is the strongest correlate of the dark triad.

Dark triad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


A Game of Destroying People

Psychopaths blame their victims for what happened and have no concern about the consequences.

games people play

The mocking and controlling behavior of the psychopathic mind is motivated by a sense of entitlement and a claim for submission. It’s a power trip. The submission brings them feelings of excitement and superiority. They enjoy what they consider to be a game of destroying people. It’s amusing to them.


psychopath

Don’t miss this excellent article:

A Game of Destroying People

Evil people are often busy building for themselves various fronts for disguise to further their ambitions. “They are likely to exert themselves more than most in their enduring effort to obtain and maintain an image of high respectability.” Evil does not reveal itself as the bad. Evil will very rarely expose itself to public light. It must hide. And it almost always hides under the pretext of something virtuous.

In fact, rather than hiding in the shadows dressed in black, it disguises itself in uniforms of holy men or suits and charitable organizations, which allow it to deceive us into thinking it’s our savior. This enables it to cause far greater damage.   Continue reading…

psychopath

See also: Narcissistic Personality Disorder

It amuses toxic people to see how much control they have over you.


The Authoritarian Personality

authoritarian_personality

Research shows that authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and—to top it all off—a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

Authoritarian, sociopathic, and narcissistic personality traits have many similarities.

autocratic


leaders

BlindFaithThink+for+YourselfTW

IMG_0489


The Apath

The Empathy Trap:
Understanding
Antisocial Personalities


by Dr Jane McGregor
and Tim McGregor

IMG_8952

Excerpt: Apaths are an integral part of the sociopath’s arsenal and contribute to sociopathic abuse. Sociopaths have an uncanny knack of knowing who will assist them in bringing down the person they are targeting. It is not necessarily easy to identify an apath; in other circumstances, an apath can show ample empathy and concern for others—just not in this case. The one attribute an apath must have is a link to the target.

How apaths, who might otherwise be fair-minded people, become involved in such destructive business is not hard to understand, but it can be hard to accept. The main qualifying attribute is poor judgment resulting from lack of insight. They might be jealous of or angry at the target, and thus have something to gain from the evolving situation.

At other times, the apath might not want to see the ‘bad’ in someone, particularly if the sociopath is useful. Or they might choose not to see because they have enough on their plate and do not possess the wherewithal or moral courage to help the targeted person at that time. Usually, be it active or passive involvement, the apath’s conscience appears to fall asleep.

Read more…

IMG_8952

See also:
Flying Monkeys
Sociopaths Recruit Minions
Once a flying monkey, always a flying monkey…
‘Common Knowledge’:
The Sociopath’s Method of Recruiting and Arming Minions.


 

Does Maslow’s hierarchy apply to psychopaths?

By Athena Walker: Psychopathy is present from the first breath one takes, to the last.


maslow-pyramid

It doesn’t. That applies to the needs of neurotypicals. The bottom of it applies to survival; of course everyone has that. The rest to us is nonsense and unnecessary.

Read more of the article Does Maslow’s hierarchy apply to psychopaths?


tinydots72c

MaslowsHierarchyOfNeeds

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—Wikipedia

tinydots72c

The Authoritarian Personality

Authoritarian, sociopathic, and narcissistic personality traits have many similarities.

authoritarian_personality

Research shows that authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and—to top it all off—a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

autocraticleaders


Can psychopaths tell who’s another psychopath?

2psychos

Answer by Jay Jones:

Yes. I am a high scoring psychopath, I can recognise others, as well as sociopaths (secondary psychopaths), many other disorders and brain/personality variations. Besides being able to recognise others of a very similar ilk, we are very tuned to working others out. I can spot police, many school teachers, depression, ADHD, mental illnesses, personality flaws, people’s conscious fears, strengths and weaknesses, all sorts of things the average person doesn’t pick up on.


Psychopaths — Vengeful Beyond Measure

framed

The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.

version-2

Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her…   Continue reading…

screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-1-46-02


Twisting of Meanings and Verbal Traps

Cover of Verbal Behavior by B.F.Skinner verbalabuse “Twisting of meanings is a clue to psychopathy. They’re masters of doublespeak*, creating verbal traps and impossible situations that leave non-psychopaths bewildered.”

 
Harrison Koehli Red Pill Press,
Publisher of Political Ponerology
 
*Doublespeak = Evasive, ambiguous language
that is intended to deceive or confuse.

DARVO—Role Reversal

 

A strategy common to all abusers is called DARVO.

divider

D.A.R.V.O.

divider

Deny the abuse, Attack the victim, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender.

This is roughly how it can be done (ad absurdum for emphasis):

You are stupid.

Are you accusing me of being stupid!?

You are accusing me of making accusations!

…but what you said was rude and untrue.

More accusations! And you are calling me a rude liar!
You are hostile and name calling. Leave me alone.

Why did you call me ‘stupid’?

You are harassing me.

I want an explanation. Was it something
I said that sounded stupid?

I told you to leave me alone! Stop harassing me! Look, everyone, I am being victimized by that evil person for no reason!

Do you recognize this scenario?
Please leave a comment and share your story!

DARVO

Cold and Callous

coldattitude

Steve Becker, LCSW:
“You don’t have to be a sociopath to stonewall. Plenty of non-sociopaths stonewall. But many sociopaths are stonewallers, and the act of stonewalling itself contains the cold, callous attitude of the sociopath.”

Read more about stonewalling or the silent treatment.


• • •

The Psychopathic Child

From No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges:

innocent child

squiggle5a

Michael’s problems started, according to his mother, around age 3, shortly after his brother Allan was born. At the time, she said, Michael was mostly just acting “like a brat,” but his behavior soon escalated to throwing tantrums during which he would scream and shriek inconsolably. These weren’t ordinary toddler’s fits. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m frustrated’ — the normal things kids do,” Anne remembered. “His behavior was really out there. And it would happen for hours and hours each day, no matter what we did.” For several years, Michael screamed every time his parents told him to put on his shoes or perform other ordinary tasks, like retrieving one of his toys from the living room. “Going somewhere, staying somewhere — anything would set him off,” Miguel said. These furies lasted well beyond toddlerhood. At 8, Michael would still fly into a rage when Anne or Miguel tried to get him ready for school, punching the wall and kicking holes in the door. Left unwatched, he would cut up his trousers with scissors or methodically pull his hair out. He would also vent his anger by slamming the toilet seat down again and again until it broke.

When Anne and Miguel first took Michael to see a therapist, he was given a diagnosis of “firstborn syndrome”: acting out because he resented his new sibling. While both parents acknowledged that Michael was deeply hostile to the new baby, sibling rivalry didn’t seem sufficient to explain his consistently extreme behavior.

By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm — a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. “You never know when you’re going to see a proper emotion,” she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. “I said: ‘Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you’re done!’ He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?’ ”

Continue reading: Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?
No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges.

See also: How can I reach a child who’s a Sociopath?

squiggle5a

How evil are you?

(Credit: Adam Proctor)Artwork: Adam Proctor

From BBC Future, 3 December 2015
By David Robson

Do you have a ruthless streak? Psychologists believe the “dark triad” of personality—Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy—might help you succeed in life. To measure your own dark side, click on the link below and choose how much you agree or disagree with 9 simple statements—and we’ll tell you how dastardly you actually are.

The questions for this quiz were inspired by questionnaires developed by Delroy Paulhus and Daniel Jones (Assessment, vol 21, p 28). Our quiz was designed solely for entertainment, and the results should not be considered a scientific measure of your personality. If you would like to learn more about Paulhus’s personality research and his serious explorations of the dark triad, read the BBC profile “The man who studies everyday evil”.

How evil are you?

BBC – Future – How dark is your personality?


Good Deeds by Bad People?

gooddevilDo psychopaths ever experience empathy or compassion? Are they ever inclined to help someone in need—without an ulterior motive? Are there psychopaths who do more good in the world than your average apath or bleeding heart empath?

Read the article by James, psychopath:
Doing something nice for no reason

at No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges


The Corporate Psychopath: Workplace Bullying

workplace monsters

“Often these monstrous individuals are initially charming, displaying false empathy to the point that even when their victims instinct senses danger they ignore this feeling as irrational. These people have a natural talent for manipulation and are self-absorbed individuals with no conscience or feeling for others and for whom rules have no meaning. These depraved manipulators can appear unstoppable. Their non physical violence against innocent victims appears to be planned, purposeful and emotionless. Any attempt at reason will fail as these people appear to operate outside the code that governs normal, rational behaviour towards others.”


Read the article: The Corporate Psychopath: Workplace bullying | What’s it all about anyway?

psychopath resistance

See also:

psychopath resistance

Word Salad and Narc Speak

Quote

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Dana in Explaining Narcissists

Your Fault

Word Salad, also often referred to as Narc Speak, is a nonsensical mix of words, phrases, or conversations and is traditionally (and clinically) associated with a person who has Schizophrenia, Dementia, Logorrhea (a communication disorder of the brain), Schizophasia, Receptive Aphasia, or brain injuries.

manipulative word salad

In the context of Narc Speak, the word salad is a combination of intentional manipulative conversational techniques that are designed to frustrate, confuse, and erode the sanity of the victim by getting them to question their perceptions of events, as well as their own judgment in general. Narc Speak most commonly happens when the victim confronts the Narcissist with their behavior, although if the Narcissist is using these techniques to gaslight*, word salad can happen at any time.

Narc speak

*Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted, spun, or selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.

Narc speak


See also:

7 Signs The Narc Is Serving You A ‘Word Salad’
Tactics Manipulators Use To Control And Confuse You
Verbal Manipulation
Gaslighting definition (Urban Dictionary)

Psychopath Free—Now Available!

Quote

PsychopathFree

Psychopath Free
(Expanded Edition)
Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People
by Jackson MacKenzie

View All Available Formats & Editions

Emotional Abuse

Have you ever been in a relationship with a psychopath? Chances are, even if you did, you would never know it.

Psychopaths are cunning charmers and master manipulators, to the point where you start to accept the most extreme behaviors as normal…

Even if it hurts you.

Psychopath Free
More info:

Psychopath Free (Expanded Edition): Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People by Jackson MacKenzie | 9780425279991 | Paperback | Barnes & Noble


You could be a psychopath if you don’t yawn.

By ANTHONY JOSEPH for MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 11:55 EST, 15 August 2015 | UPDATED: 13:38 EST, 15 August 2015


Want to see if someone is a psychopath or not? Try yawning at them. If they yawn back, you’re okay and proceed to befriending them if you wish. If they don’t, perhaps steer clear—they could be distinctly anti-social.

Scientists reveal that people with low empathy levels don’t copy the gestures of others. 

  • Scientists have found that the more psychopathic characteristics people have, the less they are affected by ‘contagious yawning’
  • Researchers from Baylor University tested 135 students for anti-social traits
  • Those who scored highly on ‘cold-heartedness’ were less likely to yawn when shown video clips of facial expressions

Most people will yawn if someone around them yawns. Normal mammals are said to be unable to resist ‘contagious yawning.’

US President Barack Obama yawns during the East Asia Summit plenary session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2012US President Barack Obama yawns during the East Asia
Summit plenary session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2012

The researchers from Baylor University in Texas published their findings in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Read more: Psychopaths don’t yawn study

See also: