It doesn’t matter how well you guess. It is the perspective that matters. You can see strangers as words, bodies, and faces to respond to. Or you can see them as stories waiting to speak. That viewpoint lets you pick up on details that otherwise slip past you. Things people say, or don’t say. The way they control, or respond to others. Their body language. How their friends act. Whether they appear alone, or part of a group. Whether they keep trying to get your attention, or not.
When you see strangeness, and you will, try to document it. Make a mental note and if you can, keep a journal. Anything that seems unusual. Over time you’ll start to see patterns emerging. Many will be familiar from this book. You will start to see pain and hurt. You’ll see through the many acts people play. You may now and then see Mallory, when she’s not paying attention to you.
Emotional Awareness
One of the core techniques to learn is emotional control. This is essential to escaping a relationship with a psychopath. It is also a useful skill in a broader social and professional context.
Like motivations, our emotions form an identifiable core set. These are universal across cultures, and live in our genes. The psychologist Paul Ekman proposed six original universal emotions. These were: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. He seems to have missed jealousy, loneliness, despair, and self-pity and a few others. Later he added others including guilt and shame. The full list I explain in The Dance of Emotions runs to about fifty emotions.
The emotions evolved to coordinate our bodies for actions like fighting, or running away. They also evolved as a language that expresses on our faces and bodies. This is a universal language that babies can speak before they can form words. They live in the areas of our brain also responsible for empathy. These are the anterior insula and the amygdala. These areas also process our sense of smell. In humans this sense has strong ties to emotions.
Psychopaths do not have the same wiring in these areas of the brain. It’s not clear yet what their anterior insula and amygdala do. Perhaps emotional mimicry that drives facial expressions. In any case, they do not experience the same range of emotions as non-psychopaths. Their emotional range is limited, as I’ll explain in The Dance of Emotions. They have limited empathy. They have no disgust at mutilation, visible or imagined. They have a different sense of smell.
As a social human, we cannot control how our emotions display. If we feel an emotion, it shows. This is their value as social signals: they are honest. To fake or suppress an emotion takes training, or psychopathic talent.
While emotions are powerful social signals, they also affect our senses and behavior. If we feel a strong emotion, that affects how we see others. If we are happy, we see others in a positive light. If we are sad or anxious, we see others in a worse light.
Since they affect our awareness, emotions also make us vulnerable. If Mallory makes us happy, we like him more. If Mallory makes us jealous of someone, we start to hate that person. If Mallory makes us afraid, we will do what he demands.
To see clearly, and to resist Mallory’s attacks, we must control our own emotions. Controlling your emotions is as hard as faking them. I’m sure there are many techniques. I call my technique "grounding." It works by identifying and resolving emotions one by one. I’ll explain grounding in detail in The Dance of Emotions. For now, here is a summary.
The basis for grounding is that emotions are distinct, yet trigger in chains. Fear of being alone may trigger jealousy of others. That may trigger anger, which in turn triggers shame. The result is a soup of emotions, dominated by anger and shame. We can learn to identify the strongest emotion, shame, and sense what triggered it.
We can then work backwards until we come to the root emotion. The root emotion rests on a belief that we can negate. That fear of being alone is baseless. Doing that, the fear disappears. And then the whole chain of emotions is gone.
One of my sons is angry with his brother. I can see the small jealousies that provoke it. Those come from insecurity. Rather than ask them to stop bickering, I cuddle them both. The insecurity and jealousy and anger disappear.
To fake an emotion you do the same in reverse. Start with a belief or hypothesis that generates a strong emotion. Let this trigger other emotions. Express these emotions. It can be a useful skill if you need it. For one thing, Mallory does not expect it from others.
Grounding works in real-time, when you are in a difficult situation. You do not need peace and quiet. It does take practice, for most people.
It can help you deal with people who antagonize you, in real life and on line. A common root belief is, "feeling and expressing this emotion will get them to behave better." That is false with trolls and psychopaths.
Situational Awareness
The focus on others is a form of active meditation. Mallory likes you to listen to her and think of yourself, so she can push your buttons. That only works if you are unaware and lost in your own thoughts. It is good to search for others' motivations. It is also good to understand the situations you find yourself in.
This means active listening and watching. Even among strangers, the most valuable data about a person comes from other people. It is a good question to ask: "how long have you known each other, and how did you meet?" When you observe how one person affects a group, you can tell a lot about them. This is much harder when it’s just the two of you.
So situational awareness is social awareness. Each person tells you their stories, and you build small theories of each person. Other people add weight to these theories, or falsify them. You throw away the theories that break, keep the ones that work. This sounds like a lot of effort. Yet it’s just a set of small habits you can teach yourself, over months and years.
Once you are good at this, you can understand the dynamics of dozens of people, in a short time. You can respond in ways that deflect conflict, and absorb shotgunning without effect. You can start to see psychopaths by reflection off others.
It is wise to stay alert, sober, and with friends when possible. Alcohol and fatigue make it harder to stay aware of the people around you.
Contextual Awareness
Finally, situations are not context-free. The question is, how much of the context do you know? You will always be safer in a place that you are familiar with. You will know the kinds of people who come there, and why. You will know the economics of the place. In an unfamiliar place, you have to guess these, and you will often be wrong.
This doesn’t mean avoiding the unknown. It is only by exploring the unknown that we can learn. This applies to people and places alike. The point of context is to know that we’re out of our depth. If you are in an unfamiliar place your first goal should be to understand it.
You can look at a place in several ways. One perspective that you can try is that of the hunter. What are they looking for? Are you being that person? If so, what can you change to regain control of the situation.
For example, I’ve traveled and worked a lot in Africa. A non-African always attracts interest, for various reasons. Much of this interest is constructive and benign. Some is life-changing in the best way. And a lot is predatory, pure and simple. The best way to escape the stream of predators is to stay away from other non-Africans. This either means staying locked up in a hotel room, or making local friends. The second strategy is by far the more pleasant.