What is a psychopath? A narcissist? A sociopath? They are manipulative people that are devoid of empathy. They manipulate compassion and exploit sympathy. They have a pattern: Idealize, Devalue, Discard. This book, PSYCHOPATH FREE, by Jackson MacKenzie is a wonderful, educational, eye-opening book. 

It will unravel your deepest insecurities, leaving you with a lingering emptiness that haunts your every breath. But ultimately, it will heal you. You will become stronger than you could ever imagine. You will understand who you are truly meant to be. You will learn to trust your intuition. You will walk this world with the wisdom of a survivor and the gentle wonder of a dreamer. 

You will never again censor your spirit for fear of losing the “perfect” relationship. 

And now it’s time for your adventure. 

Your strengthened intuition is the greatest defense against a manipulative person. It is a skill that can never be exploited- and once learned, it will serve you a lifetime. 

RED FLAGS:

• Gaslighting & Crazy-making: they blatantly deny their own manipulative behavior and ignore evidence when confronted with it. They become dismissive and critical. Toxic people condition you to believe that the problem isn’t the abuse itself, but instead your reactions to their abuse.

 

• The ultimate hypocrite: “Do as I say, not as I do”. They have extremely high expectations for fidelity, respect, and adoration. They will cheat, lie, criticize, and manipulate.

 

• Pathological lying and excuses: Even when caught in a lie, they express no remorse or embarrassment. 

 

• Focuses on your mistakes and ignores their own: You might begin to adopt perfectionist qualities, very aware that any mistake can and will be used against you. 

 

• Selfishness and a crippling thirst for attention: They drain the energy from you and consume your entire life. No one can fill the void of a psychopath’s soul.

 

• You find yourself playing detective: You’re seeking answers to a feeling you can’t quite explain. 

 

• Slowly and steadily erodes your boundaries

 

• Covert Abuse: The abuse is not so obvious; you likely won’t even understand that you were in an abusive relationship until long after it’s over. 

 

• Backstabbing gossip that changes on a whim:  They plant little seeds of poison, whispering about everyone, idealizing them to their face, and then complaining about them behind their backs. 

Psychopaths are parasitic, emotionally stunted, and incapable of change. 

 

When you do the work to heal, you will enable yourself to reclaim you- the self that was trampled on, beaten down, and transformed into a shell of who you once were. 

You will find that they lash out as you become happier. They perceive your progress as a threat to their control. They want to keep you in a perpetual state of dependency. They do not want you to seek help from anyone except them.

You already have everything you need to know- from your own feelings. You felt horrible around them. During the relationship, why wasn’t that enough to confirm that they should have no place in your life? Because you were groomed and idealized. You were tricked into falling in love- the strongest of all human bonds- so that your feelings could  be more easily manipulated. Toxic people condition us to ignore our intuition and we must learn to trust it again. When we start to focus on our own feelings, this is where the healing begins.

You’ll be ready to ask the most important question of all: Shouldn’t I feel this same kind of peace with everyone in my life? Absolutely. 

The Manufactured Soul Mate: Perhaps most insidious of all the psychopath’s evils: their relationship cycle, during which they gleefully and systematically wipe out the identity of an unsuspecting victim. Cold and calculated emotional rape. 

The psychopath trains you to become the perfect partner.

The 3 key components to this process: idealization, indirect persuasion, and testing the waters. They’re observing you, mirroring your every emotion, and pretending to ride this high with you. Because the higher you rise, the lower you’ll fall. Idealization is the first step in the psychopath’s grooming process. Also known as love-bombing, it quickly breaks down your guard, unlocks your heart, and modifies your brain chemicals to become addicted to the pleasure centers firing away. The excessive flattery and compliments play on your deepest vanities and insecurities- qualities you likely don’t even know you possess. Looking back, you’ll see how insane the whole thing was. So how did they do it?

They will emphasize six major points during the idealize process: 

1. WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON: this is all an act! The amplified, mirrored, qualities are nothing more than a facade. They are able to offer a superficial and flattering copy of their victim’s personality. Their copycat personalities are hollow and empty. You will eventually come to think that they’re the only person you’ll ever meet who’s so similar to you. And you’re right. Because it is flat-out impossible (and creepy) for two people to be identical in every way.

 

2. WE HAVE THE SAME HOPES AND DREAMS: What you might not notice until later is that these plans always seem to involve some sort of sacrifice on your end- never theirs. 

3. WE SHARE THE SAME INSECURITIES: psychopaths see insecurities in a very different way- as a tool for manipulation and control. 

4. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL: they focus on superficial qualities. By showering you with compliments, they know they can expect the adoration to rebound shortly. They do it so that you will return the flattery. Your self-esteem begins to rotate around their words and you spend more and more time improving your appearance to keep them impressed.

5. I’VE NEVER FELT THIS WAY IN MY LIFE: psychopaths do not actually feel the love and happiness that they so frequently proclaim. They oscillate between contempt, envy, and boredom. Nothing more. 

6. WE AR SOUL MATES: the psychopath was NEVER your soul mate, and they never will be. To be your soul mate, they would-of course- need to have a soul. You may feel angry with yourself for falling for this duplicity. “How could I be so stupid?” you might ask. But please, don’t beat yourself up. You weren’t targeted because you were stupid. On the contrary, you were chosen because of so many good qualities you possess. Without the missing puzzle piece, it is only logical to assume that this “soul mate” existed at some point, and might return again with enough love and care. This person never existed at all, it was a mirror image- a carbon copy- of everything we wanted in a partner. 

 

INDIRECT PERSUASION: they’re ready to begin conditioning your behavior. The psychopath has come up with a checklist of human traits and emotions that bother them, and now they’re planting the idea in your mind: don’t express these things, or else. It’s a strategically ambiguous way to influence your behavior. 

Psychopaths cannot provide compassion during difficult times. This is why their “support” will always feel hollow and mechanical at best. 

By making you question your own sanity, the psychopath is able to take the spotlight away from their own abusive behavior. 

Psychopaths are eternally bored and incapable of human bonding. 

What’s not normal is when an ex’s name comes up so frequently in a new relationship that you begin to feel like they’re actually a part of your relationship. 

There are subtle digs about your intelligence, abilities, and dreams all along. 

Like sandpaper, the psychopath will wear away at your self-esteem through a calculated “mean and sweet” cycle. Slowly, your standards will fall so low that you become grateful for utterly mediocre treatment. Like a frog in boiling water, you won’t even realize what’s happened until its far too late. 

You didn’t even know you were in an abusive relationship! 

Victims are often prone to believe that they can understand, forgive, and absorb all of the problems in a relationship. 

“You find yourself explaining things like EMPATHY and FEELINGS and BEING NICE. Normal adults do not need to be taught the golden rules from kindergarten. They know how to be kind and good, but they find it boring. 

You are disappointed so frequently that you feel relieved when they do something halfway decent- they condition you to become grateful for mediocre treatment. 

You unknowingly formed a bond with a con artist. 

You will reclaim your sexual freedom- I promise. 

Statistically, most victims in an abusive relationship with a psychopath return to their abusers seven times before they finally realize the treatment is unacceptable and leave for good.

You were perfect for what they wanted at the time: attention and admiration. YOU are a truth seeker. They need to be with someone who won’t catch on. Ever. 

If you’re dealing with a psychopath, it’s given that they will make unfounded accusations about you at some point. Essentially, they provoke your anger, and then calmly use it to prove their own point. 

They attack the things you value most, because those are the things in life you will defend most passionately. 

The psychopath is constantly provoking drama, rivalries, and competitions. What separates them from everyday drama queens is their ability to appear innocent in all of it. They make subtle suggestions, then sit back and watch as others go down in flames for them. This is where the “covert” part comes into play. They plant little seeds of poison, whispering to everyone else, idealizing them to their face, and then insulting them behind their backs. Psychopaths paint themselves as victims. 

Manipulators will always seek to triangulate. They provoke rivalries and jealousy by manufacturing competitions. 

You’re all just movable pawns in the game the psychopath plays for attention and drama. They keep each target far enough apart that you can’t compare notes, but close enough that you’re always on edge and unsure of where you stand. 

It was never you and your partner against the world- it was only your partner against you!

Psychopaths, like most predators, seek power and control. They love-bomb you with attention and flattery in the beginning of the relationship. The relationship provides them with the perfect opportunity to consume you by manufacturing the illusion of love. You were tricked into falling in love, which is the strongest human bond in the world. Psychopaths know this. 

Seeking attention, sympathy, and solace from people who are not you is a very common tactic of the psychopath. They will strategically post ambiguous statuses, songs, and videos that suggest you might be “losing” them. 

They are grooming others as they erode your identity- two birds with one stone. 

Psychopaths are also expertly skilled at surrounding themselves with givers-insecure people who find self-worth in taking care of others. 

Psychopaths are cunning, cold, and very aware of their own behavior. 

When dealing with liars and manipulators, we often find ourselves playing “detective”. This is your intuition telling you that something is deeply wrong with the individual you’re investigating. Their actions never seem to match up with their words. The detective rule is simple. If you find yourself playing detective with someone, you should remove them from your life immediately.

They despise your empathy and love- qualities they must pretend to feel every single day. 

Everything that comes out of a psychopaths mouth is manufactured garbage.

Remember, it feels good to have our egos stroked, ignited by all of this public praise. 

Anyone who treated you with such venom and contempt is not capable of suddenly loving another human being.

By trying to destroy your sanity and intuition, they are telling you that these qualities of yours are currently too strong. 

Healing from psychopathic abuse is a long journey. It is neither linear or logical. You can expect to swing back and forth between stages, perhaps even inventing a few of your own along the way. It is unlike the traditional stages of grief, because you have not truly lost anything- instead, you have gained everything. You just don’t know it yet. 

You don’t yet understand how the abuse destroyed your confidence and identity- because you don’t even know to call it abuse. 

Psychologically, you are extremely raw and vulnerable from the identity erosion, but at this point you aren’t even aware that your identity was eroded. You don’t yet understand the extent of the emotional abuse you have suffered. 

Looking back, you will be unable to remember most of the details during this phase. Almost like an out-of-body-experience, your mind will have blocked out many of the unbearably painful and embarrassing memories. A part of you shuts down in order to protect your spirit. 

Cognitive Dissonance is a psychological phenomenon of a state where your intuition is telling you two competing things. 

From the mirroring to the love-bombing to the identity erosion to the triangulation to the eventual abandonment. You feel disgusted. You realize you were never loved-just another target in a never-ending cycle. You start to see that you’ve never behaved like this in any other relationship, and it wasn’t because they were special. It was because they were actively working against you from the moment they chose you. 

You will notice a short “observation” period, during which they enthusiastically declare how similar you both are. During this time, they are simply listening to you describe your hopes and dreams, and then producing an exaggerated mirror image of everything you’ve shared with them. They use this manufactured “connection” to build immediate trust, quickly leading you to believe that you’ve found your perfect soul mate. 

Half the fun for them is watching people suffer. They pick up on insecurities and vulnerabilities in a heartbeat, and then make the conscious choice to exploit those qualities. 

Imagine the time and planning that go into mirroring someone else’s hopes and dreams. The psychopath spends months-sometimes years-playing the role of a completely different person. All for one end: your destruction. They did not feel even a small amount of love for you, even when they claimed you were the only one who ever made them feel this way. No, the entire time they were just closely observing you, patiently waiting for the fun to start. 

Most survivors tend to share a variety of common personality traits, 2 of them being open-mindedness and susceptibility to suggestions. These 2 qualities are actually great strengths. 

Instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt, you suddenly have trouble trusting. 

How many others things have become easier to cope with because of this whole experience? Most survivors find better friendships, healthier relationships, self-respect, boundaries, and a broader connection with humanity. 

The Universe has different plans for you. Remember, there are others who are permanently barred from any access to the spiritual world. Psychopaths have no place there, and it is why they hate empathetic beings. You are a nagging reminder of something they will never find. They will die here in the material world, with no deeper connection to this great universe. 

This journey is about you, and it always has been. Once you discover this, you are finally ready to fly free. 

You were manipulated, insulted, degraded, belittled, and neglected. Full responsibility for this goes to the psychopath. It does not matter if you were vulnerable or insecure- no decent human being should ever take advantage of another. None of it was your fault. 

You may still be stuck in a place of insecurity, not trusting your judgment, thinking that you were blind enough to fall for a psychopath and worried that you cannot trust yourself to make good decisions moving forward. 

Sympathy for the devil: this is where your empathy kicks in. You’ve done it all your life: you see someone feeling inferior, and you know how to make them feel better. You want to heal them. And so you put all of yourself into raising someone else up.

This is likely the way you’ve dealt with people throughout your life: when others have no self-confidence, you try to build it for them. Psychopaths see them as a way to manipulate and control. Empathetic people, on the other hand, seek to cure insecurities with love and compassion. 

You are not just getting over a romantic encounter; you’re rebuilding your self-worth from scratch. 

It can be helpful to take a personality test. Each personality test is composed of 4 letters, with each letter belonging to a category having 2 possibilities:

1. I (Introvert)/ E (Extrovert)
2. S (Sensing)/ N (iNtuitive)
3. T (Thinking)/ F (Feeling)
4. P (Perceiving)/ J (Judging)

*INFP- have pretty intense mood swings every once in a while, where suddenly all of our bad memories come creeping back and make it feel like we’re never going to be happy again. I rarely share these moods with others and instead seek out alone time to work through the feelings on my own. 

In a matter of months, even weeks, a psychopath will effectively destroy all of the harmony and trust you’ve spent your entire life building. They walk into your life, charm you into trusting them, engineer paranoia and panic, and then watch intently as you fall from grace. 

Now you have a much better measure of who deserves your light. This will bring you joy for the rest of your life. 

Psychopaths are fascinated with human emotion and are forever honing their craft of mimicking ‘normal’. Empathetic people have the full spectrum of emotions, so it’s like a master class for them. Also, psychopaths can suck out of these people the life force they lack. Giving and trusting, empathetic people make perfect targets. 

This is when you begin to discover all of your strengths. Many of these qualities you always possessed but never valued. You realize that your compassion, empathy, and love are not weaknesses; they are the most incredible gifts in the world, when applied to the right people. You start to understand who you’re truly meant to be. It took the psychopath’s cruelty to make you see exactly who you never want to be. You laugh at their earlier mirroring, when they told you that the two of you are so much alike, because you realize you are nothing like them. You begin to explore your creative side, and you stop caring what others think of you. Old friendships may also start to change as you change and become more confident. Your boundaries are returning, or perhaps being formed for the very first time. 

If you naturally tend to be agreeable and friendly, toxic people will sense this and latch on to you. 

You should always feel comfortable sitting down with a friend and mentioning a concern. Normal people are receptive to suggestions for improving themselves, especially if they’re phrased kindly. Empathetic people should be especially invested in making sure they haven’t hurt your feelings. But toxic people will instead blow up, turning the conversation back on you.

The problem was never your kindness; your problem was those who manipulated it. Love and empathy are what make a dreamer’s life so fulfilling. It’s what gives us this unique connection with the world and people around us. Don’t throw that away because you’ve been hurt. Instead, throw away the people who hurt you to begin with. Save your gifts for those who can truly appreciate and reciprocate them. Your constant is probably an example of one of these people. Abusers, on the other hand, manipulate your greatest qualities and make you doubt yourself.

 There are people out there who seek to exploit kindness, which ultimately results in our spirits being reduced to rubble. 

All you’re doing is protecting your spirit. This means perceiving with your brain instead of your heart. Your heart will always be ready to trust and believe the best in others. But your brain will provide you with a logical, objective assessment of the situation. 

You were not stupid; you were innocent. The psychopath is a master of deception. You are a loving, empathetic person. You were never taught that emotionally crippled human predators are out there! You did not know that they walk among us, many of them seemingly normal, law-abiding citizens. 

You’re weaknesses AND strengths were exploited. You may feel that the ways in which you were used by the psychopaths only showcase your shortcomings. You may believe that you have unique problems that make you a psychopath magnet. You were too trusting, you lacked boundaries, you  did not love yourself enough, and so on. It is certainly trust that your weaknesses were exploited. But your strengths were also exploited. The ability to love is a strength. The ability to trust is a strength. The ability to cooperate is a strength. The ability to be kind and honest and empathetic is a strength. 

The psychopath mirrors your values and all aspects of your personality- including your positive qualities- in order to make you believe that he or she is just like you, when in fact he or she is the opposite. 

Dreamers become trapped in relationships with parasites. 

As we work to become our most genuine selves, psychopaths continue their cycles of abuse forever and always, like twisted clockwork. 

The Cluster B disorders are disorders of emotion, conscience, empathy, and feeling- arguably some of the most important human qualities. So why are we not taught about these disorders in school? How have they received so little public attention? Again, more than 15% of our population is made up of people with a severe and incurable emotional disorder- and yet, due to the hidden nature of their symptoms, we know practically nothing about them. Usually by the time someone decides to learn about personality disorders, the damage has already been done. 

If you would like to get a copy of this book, you can do that HERE. 

 

 

 

 

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