Topic for Dec. 5. ( Thur )

[Alex !]

Pity Play.

Pity. No matter what, whenever the Gay Narcissist put on his “oh, poor me” act, it worked. Always. Every. Single. Time.

Sociopaths are deceptive and highly manipulative individuals. It’s often difficult to pick up on his or her true character—a character that will absolutely ruin your life if one passes through your defenses.

A sociopath’s true character is the absence of conscience.

Four percent of the total population is sociopathic, so you have a chance of running into one sociopath out of 25 people—yikes. (Worse, some of her colleagues suspect the estimate is too low.)

One defining tactic employed by sociopaths to keep people under their control is the “pity play.” This is the closest you will come to finding a scarlet letter branding someone as a sociopath.

What exactly should you be looking out for?

If someone is shallow, manipulative, and they simply take and take from you with little regard for anything else (let alone your wellbeing), you better sit up and take notice.

Most of us do, even if we are quick to explain it away with out own rationalizations.

Eventually you might have enough and start pulling away. A sociopath won’t put up with this, so he or she will appeal to your sense of generosity, forgiveness, and understanding by pleading for pity.

Get ready for a laundry list of all the woes, troubles, and hardships that have assailed the sociopath throughout an entire lifetime.

In the words of Martha Stout from The Sociopath Next Door:

Never fall for it.

It’s an act.

There’s a reason why narcissistic and sociopathic behaviors overlap.

Personality disorders are a group of personality disorders characterized by dramatic, emotional, and erratic behavior.

Borderline Personality Disorder:characterized by unstable moods, relationships and self-image, as well as impulsive behavior.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration.

Histrionic Personality Disorder:characterized by attention-seeking behavior, exaggerated emotions, and a need for approval.

Antisocial Personality Disorder: characterized by a disregard for the rights of others, a lack of remorse, and/or a history of criminal or impulsive behavior

we can see that narcissism and sociopathy overlap and present in similar ways.

The key word is behavior. 

Individuals with these pervasive patterns of dramatic, emotional, erratic, and callous behavior act out in ways that sometimes send people running.

So, tools are used to pull those people back in. And the pity play is something anyone with a manipulative and selfish personality will use, regardless of what that person might or might not be diagnosed as by a clinician.

What’s always important to remember is this: how do the behaviors of a person make you feel?