When many of us think of malignant narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, the image of a self-centered megalomaniac comes to mind: extremely proud, boastful, arrogant, vain, self-centered, and even violent, depending on how much we think he might be psychopathic. Yet many of the most conniving and dangerous manipulators are not overt in their tactics – and their violence does not leave visible scars.
Predators who fly under the radar are able to do so because they hide their tactics behind false modesty, a convincing façade, and an arsenal of deceptive tactics intended to keep their victims guessing, gaslighting, and seeking to regain the approval of their aggressors. Here are seven ways in which malignant narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths differ from their more overt counterparts.
- They apologize strategically to keep you hooked.
It is a common misconception that those with narcissistic or even sociopathic tendencies never take responsibility for their actions. While it is true that more overt narcissists bristle at any slight and suffer narcissistic injury, covert manipulators are able to keep their contempt in check if it means maintaining a relationship or furthering an agenda. For example, an abusive relationship partner may still apologize and acknowledge their wrongdoing if they find that more appropriate than disagreeing.
However, they will not actually change their abusive behavior. Their apologies, accompanied by crocodile tears or pity tricks, are offered only to maintain an image of accountability, not to follow through on their promises of change or improvement. As Dr. Shari Staines (2017) notes, when a narcissist apologizes to their partner, “they’re not really sorry; He manages your relationship and his appearance to others. He doesn’t care how his behavior affects you, and he never will. He just knows that by apologizing he seems to care, and he now has a trump card or get out of jail free card to use if you try to hold him accountable for his behavior.
This is why the cycle of abuse can continue for so long – victims find it difficult to understand the true intent behind the hidden aggression of their abuser. As manipulation expert Dr. George Simon (2008) writes:
- They revolt in secret, and engage in acts of sabotage and insult.
Master manipulators are sophisticated in how they get angry. They choose when and where to become angry (usually without witnesses) in order to further isolate the victim. They also choose who to mistreat. Unlike overt narcissists who rage randomly, malignant narcissists typically choose their most intimate partners and loved ones to drop their mask behind closed doors (Golston, 2012). Although they still leave behind a number of victims, these victims are less likely to be believed simply because covert malignant narcissists know how to run the room and trick the public into believing their false mask.
Covert narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths prefer to get angry through their actions rather than outright outbursts. If they perceive that you are progressing without them, superior to them in any way, or daring to be independent from them, they will strive to regain control. Even though they appear calm, calm, or happy to you, they will try to sabotage you behind the scenes and systematically and devilishly interfere with your health to meet their own needs. They may pretend to have your best interests in mind, all while sadistically plotting to undermine you.
Related : Signs a Person with Narcissism Is Playing Games and Why
It is common, for example, for these venomous species to spoil a big celebration, deprive their victims of sleep before an important interview by causing chaos beforehand, or rain down someone’s parade out of morbid envy. They prefer to condition you over time to associate positive events with their punishment so that you are no longer able to feel satisfied or happy while pursuing activities that make you independent of them.
The conniving manipulator also spouts covert insults, chronic degradation, harsh comparisons with others, and harsh remarks to keep you walking on eggshells and demanding validation and approval. This is done in a much more subtle way and the effects are long lasting due to the level of cognitive dissonance this provokes. The victim is forced to sift through the fog of gaslighting and confusion until she determines whether she is being abused at all.
Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent and expert on dangerous personalities, describes how these covert criticisms diminish the victim’s sense of self, reality, and self-worth:
- They elaborately prepared their victims, rigging the game while dangling the carrot.
Malignant narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths see everything as a competition and a game, and they rig the game ahead of time so that they appear to be the winners. Hanging a carrot is one way they maintain control and ensure they come out on top. If they can make their victims believe they are in a fantasy relationship or business partnership, they can meet their own needs without having to fulfill their part of the bargain.
Everything they prepare for their victims is an elaborate trick to get them invested in a relationship or partnership with them before pulling the plug or the rug from under their feet. They engage in frequent hot and cold push and pull behaviors in order to maintain control over their targets. “They hurt to save” – to get you addicted to their validation and comfort after incidents of abuse.
This is why narcissists in relationships bombard their victims with love and passion early on, take their victims out on lavish dates, promise their victims the world, and plan their dream vacations, only to sabotage those plans later, abandoning and devaluing their victims. Victims become so addicted to crumbs and promises that they overinvest in the narcissist, hoping for a positive return. Instead, what they suffer is huge losses as the secret narcissist happily rides off into the sunset.
Related : 7 Ways Narcissists Make You Feel Inferior
To add salt to the wound, it is common for sociopaths to taunt their victims by giving everything they promised them to another target they are wooing – simply to rub it on their faces in a sadistic way. First, they dangle the carrot, then give it to someone else to make you feel like you are the defective person. This is a form of “triangulation” that increases their sense of power over the harems of men and women they keep to empower them.
This “carrot dangling” can also occur in contexts outside of intimate relationships, such as the workplace. Corporate psychopaths dangle the carrot of a potential promotion, raise, or opportunity to make you work harder to achieve a result they never planned to achieve. They may instead reward someone else to make you feel like you were the problem all along. These trivial manipulations would never occur to the minds of normal, empathic beings, but they are all part of the complex mental chess games in which malignant narcissists thrive.
These predatory species are always looking for their own self-interest at the expense of everyone else’s needs or basic rights. They set their victims up for failure, always moving the goal posts so as to leave their victims disoriented and unable to fight back. These elaborate tricks are all just a trick to get inside your head, plant seeds of self-doubt, and terrorize and traumatize you.
- They are convincing pathological liars.
Secret predators are capable of lying and deceiving with alarming ease, some even going so far as to pass lie detector tests. However, their lies are not as easily discovered as those of your garden-variety manipulators. This is because these types lie with a nugget of truth with enough truth to keep their victims off balance and questioning their reality.
Predatory narcissists also feel the pleasure of deception when they are able to fool their victims’ eyes—some of them lie for no other reason than the pleasure of being able to deceive someone (Ekman, 2009). As professional gas workers, they lie with convincing conviction and feigned emotion. Their lies are often perfectly tailored towards what they know their victims will want to hear and want to believe, which is why they get away with their lies for long periods of time.
- They hide their double lives more easily and without sympathy.
It was revealed that killers Chris Watts, Philip Markoff (the Craigslist killer), and Scott Peterson were living a double life that no one would have suspected they were living otherwise. They all seem eerily “normal.” Emile Cellier attempted to kill his wife twice, and it was also revealed that he had affairs with other women, even to the point of planning a new life with one of them. His wife expressed shock that he would go so far as to plan to kill her. By all accounts, these predators appeared to be in happy relationships and were able to deceive society with their attractive public image.
This is common with wolves in sheep’s clothing; They can be pillars of society, upstanding citizens, and loyal husbands or wives up to the point where their most violent crimes are exposed.
However, the prolonged deception involved in these cases will come as no surprise to those who have lived and been married to covert malignant narcissists. The secret life of secret sociopaths consists of numerous affairs, crimes and lies that have accumulated over time and that do not come to light until their most terrible deeds are finally revealed.
The tendency to a double life is central to their disorder. Psychopaths are prone to boredom and have a great need for stimulation. The psychopathic brain has been studied to show structural and functional abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, parts of the brain responsible for moral reasoning, empathy, and guilt as well as anxiety and fear (Motskin et al. 2011).
The lack of moral qualms, the absence of fear, and the constant need for excitement are a very dangerous combination when it comes to a psychopath. Extramarital affairs, dangerous activities, and risky behaviors are all food for the hungry, voracious psychopath who needs greater and greater risk in order to feel satisfied. Their levels of sexual depravity and unscrupulous behavior know no bounds because they simply have no boundaries holding them back.
- Its facade is very convincing and alluring.
Hiding secret psychopaths is one of the most convincing tools they use to enhance their public image and escape accountability for their actions. The most secretive sociopaths are able to engage in a great deal of glorification and virtue signaling to create the persona of a good-natured, humble, caring, and generous individual in order to mask their true contempt and malice. This allows them to get away with their crimes more easily in public. They can even infiltrate fields such as counseling or religious and spiritual leadership in order to reach a larger number of victims, disguising themselves as competent professionals or teachers while hunting prey.
Their superficial and flamboyant charm is not only part of their diagnostic criteria, it is the driving force behind what makes them so attractive to potential targets of their schemes.
Their devil-may-care exterior actually works for narcissists, not against them, when it comes to initial attraction, ironically even for those looking for long-term mates. Research has indicated that even women with significant romantic experience and desire for marriage (including those with knowledge of narcissistic personalities) still prefer narcissists as romantic partners. According to researchers Haslam and Montrose (2015), this is due to their ability to acquire resources, and they are cheerful and confident. These traits are attractive to females in relationship contexts.
- They use pity rather than physical force to break through their victims’ defenses.
The pity trick is perhaps the most dangerous weapon in the secret sociopath’s arsenal. Dr. Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, writes that the most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fear. “It is, on the contrary, an appeal for our sympathy.” Stout points out that if an abusive and toxic person repeatedly tries to make us feel sorry for them after chronically terrorizing us, that’s a sure sign that we’re dealing with a sociopath.
Compassion disarms us and makes us vulnerable to exploitation. Exploiting our empathy, conscience, and compassion is a common maneuver for unscrupulous, sophisticated, and covert manipulators, because it enables them to bypass our defenses. It appeals to the part of us that wants to help these individuals, nurture them and return them to emotional health.
This is why covert abusers often bring up their traumatic past to justify their current violence, use excuses related to life-threatening illnesses, work-related issues or emergencies to divert the focus from their harmful behavior, and tell sad stories about their crazy early experiences. Initially to manipulate their victims. They use their capacity for cognitive empathy to evaluate our vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities, and desires in order to turn to people we trust and believe in—the same people we want to help (Wai & Tiliopoulos, 2012). At the same time, these malignant types themselves lack emotional empathy and empathy for their victims – depending on where they fall on the spectrum, they often feel nothing other than sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain.
Secret manipulators know how to bypass our logic and logic by appealing to the most vulnerable parts of us for our compassion and empathy, qualities they themselves do not possess. This is what ultimately makes them so dangerous that they can pretend to be sheep dressed as wolves, without anyone being the wiser to their intentions. As Stout also eloquently wrote: “I’m sure that if Satan existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”
