Skip to main content

About Karli McClane

My photo
Karli McClane
In sharing some of her experiences and observations, Karli's goal is to help others who have had to endure abuse from psychopaths, sociopaths, personality disordered individuals (narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial), and other emotional vampires that thrive on inflicting harm and causing misery.

All Predators Operate In The Same Manner

 


Sex Trafficking

I was reading an article about sex trafficking (I removed the old, broken link but was unable to find the original article again), and I couldn't help noticing how the abusers got into the victim's head in Brianna's story. Psychopaths, sociopaths, predators, whatever you want to call them, they all follow basic patterns for victimizing others. It starts by asking seemingly innocuous, friendly questions. What they are really doing is gleaning personal information from you with the intent of using it against you later. In Brianna's case, the predator used personal knowledge of her likes and dislikes so that he could cast a younger predator in the role of her Prince Charming. The one portraying her "dream guy", then made her feel special and forged a superficial bond with her, thus making it easier to manipulate her into doing what he wanted.

Predators Know How To Get Into Your Head

It's important to notice these patterns, because anyone is a potential victim for a sociopath. If you have something they want - sex, money, power, access to information, anything really - they will try to charm you into giving it to them. And it's not only naive teenagers who are fooled by these toxic manipulators. Even seasoned mental health professionals have been known to fall for the lies of psychopaths.

People should be aware that not all inquisitive strangers are simply friendly and curious. Some of them are predators, and the questions they ask are to help them assess how potentially useful you could be to them, how gullible you are, how compliant you will be and, ultimately, how to get into your head. There's no need to be suspicious of everyone you meet, but, if you are an especially open, talkative person, it's prudent to guard the personal details of your life a little more closely. In other words, make strangers gradually earn your trust as you get to know them, as opposed to just giving it to them freely and without question.

Educate yourselves about psychopaths and other abusive personalities, so that you'll know what red flags to watch for. Make sure your teenagers are aware that such malicious characters exist. There's no reason to teach them to distrust others, but rather how to protect themselves and their peers from predators.

Photo Credit: Pixy.org


Protected by Copyscape

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Narcissistic Mother-in-Law Has No Respect for Personal Boundaries

Blatant Disregard For Personal Boundaries In a previous post, I talked about giving some insight into what it was like living with my narcissistic mother-in-law during the time my husband and I had to do so out of necessity. The following is an example taken from one of my personal journal entries from about five years ago. We had been there for several months, so we were noticing patterns in her cycle of abuse, and we were constantly on edge. This happened on a day when my husband (then-fiance), Tim, was working and I was off. I was in our room, sitting cross-legged on the bed with my laptop. I'm an extremely introverted person; my personal space is important to me, and since the in-laws were also at home, I kept the door to my room closed. They (my NMIL and her flying monkey) were in a bedroom adjacent to mine where they had their computer set up. I knew they were both in there, because I could hear both of their voices, and I heard Maude lower hers in a conspiratorial tone. Sho...

Same Blog, New URL

  New Blog Recently, I was considering deleting my blog, but ultimately I decided to switch over from WordPress to a free account instead. I felt like I wasn't reaching anyone; I wasn't getting much traffic, and it felt like I was writing just for myself which is something I can do in a private journal. So when the time came to renew my fees or cancel my blog, I was about to delete the whole thing. Then, I got an email from someone thanking me and encouraging me to keep writing. From time to time I get those, and it is nice to know that that my information was helpful to someone. It's why I started blogging. Abused By A Narcissist I started my original blog because, prior to coming to the realization that I was being psychologically abused by a narcissist , I felt like I was losing my mind, that no one understood, even when I tried to explain. It's like I was trapped with no way to express what I had to deal with on a day to day basis. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it...

Getting Back Into Blogging

  Scatterbrained When I first created this blog, I intended to chronologically recount my story of narcissistic abuse . There are a few reasons the blog has remained stagnant for so long. One, my brain works in a more random way, not so much chronological. At this point, I'm thinking of writing a book (or two or three), that way I can keep adding events to the correct chapters as I remember them. Two, and this is more of an excuse than anything else, is life happened. I got busy with work and other things. Because I already felt overwhelmed at trying to recount my tale, it was easy to use "I'm just too busy" as an excuse to avoid writing about what I'd been through. Three, and probably most importantly, is that I realized shortly after I created my blog that my significant other (now my husband) had been through the same thing I had but to a far worse degree. At the time, he was still in touch with his abuser who was actively trying to destroy his life. This was c...