Transcription
Have you ever looked back at your relationship and thought, "He saw exactly what I needed and used it against me. Like he'd studied you, like he knew your vulnerabilities before you even fully knew them yourself." If that thought has ever crossed your mind, you're not paranoid and you're not being dramatic. Because in today's episode, I'm going to show you exactly why that gut feeling is correct and what dark psychology actually tells us about how predators choose their targets. Let's talk about it.
Welcome back to Restoring Resilience. [music] I'm Chelsea Brooke Cole, psychotherapist and author, helping you learn to trust yourself again after narcissistic abuse. Today's episode might be one of the most important ones we've had on this podcast. So today we're talking about dark psychology, specifically how predators identify, study, and select their targets. Now, if you're hearing that and it kind of sends chills up your spine, I get it. I mean, that's exactly how narcissists leave you feeling. I have often described it myself and heard clients talk about it as if you've been in the presence of evil. Like, they have that dark look in their eye and you're just it gives you goosebumps sometimes to be around those people or or to think about how they move about in the world. But this episode is not designed to scare you. It is designed to empower you because the more you understand the system that's used against you, the more you can protect yourself going forward and the more you can finally stop blaming yourself for what happened, which a lot of times is what's keeping us stuck.
So let's just start here. What do we actually mean when we say dark psychology? So dark psychology is the study of how people use psychological principles like persuasion, manipulation, coercion, emotional exploitation to deliberately influence or control others. So unlike psychology in general, which assumes that people are using these tools ethically, dark psychology is about the intentional weaponization of these principles against other people. So, for example, think about the difference if somebody's trying to influence you to give to a charity versus if somebody's trying to influence you because they want to be able to control you and intimidate you and bully you to get their way.
Now, here's something I really want you to sit with. When we talk about narcissists, especially the ones who find their way into intimate relationships, we are often talking about people who are extraordinarily skilled at dark psychology. Whether or not they've studied it formally, most of them haven't. Whether or not they would even be able to name what they're doing, they're often very intuitive masters of it. They have been running this playbook for years. That's why a lot of times survivors are like, "Is there some kind of narcissistic or predator playbook?" Because across countries, across spans of time, and different relationships, they're extraordinarily similar in how they systematically abuse people. Sometimes they've been running this playbook for years, for decades. So, they've learned what works. They've learned how to get what they want from people and they've developed what I'd call a predatory skill set. And the scariest part is that most of them do it without you ever realizing that it's happening.
Now, before I walk you through how they select their targets, I need to address the biggest lie that survivors often tell themselves. And I know this lie well because I've told it to myself, too. And the lie is this. I was chosen because there's something wrong with me. And maybe you can relate. Maybe you've said something like, "I must have been weak. I was too naive. A stronger person would have seen through them. They wouldn't have got themselves in these situations." And I want to challenge every single one of those thoughts today. Because here's what research actually shows and what my over a decade of working with survivors can confirm, too. Predators do not target the weak. They target the warm. They target the kind people. They target people who lead with empathy, who extend trust, who want to see the best in other people. They target people who are emotionally intelligent because emotionally intelligent people make the most rewarding targets. They're responsive. They're engaged. They try to make things work.
Think about everything that you did in that relationship. That's because you were using skills you already had of emotional intelligence and communication or you worked so hard to develop that and you just didn't realize that you were pouring it into a predatory relationship. But that is what allowed you to become so engaged, so responsive, so committed to making that relationship work. And that's exactly what a predator wants. So the first thing I need you to hear today is this. You weren't chosen because you were broken. You were chosen because of the light in you. And here's why understanding that matters so much. Because it changes where you direct your energy in healing. Because if you believe you were targeted because of a flaw, because of something that's wrong with you, you spend your recovery trying to quote fix yourself. But if you understand you were targeted because of your strengths, because of everything that was right with you, you spend your recovery learning to protect those strengths. And that is a completely different path.
So let's talk about how predators actually choose their targets because it's not random. It's a process and it happens in three stages. Stage one is the scan. So before a predator even approaches you, they've already been watching. Survivors often describe this when they look back like he seemed to know a lot about me really quickly or I felt seen in a way I'd never seen before. It's like she was seeing into my soul. And that feeling of being seen so completely, so fast. A lot of times we mistake that for intimacy, but that's actually reconnaissance. It's them seeing something in you that they want to use. Predators are scanning for specific signals. They're looking for people who demonstrate what psychologists call agreeableness. That personality trait where you tend to be cooperative. You really don't like conflict. You want to maintain harmony. They're looking for people who seem nurturing, caregiving with how they interact with the world. Like they see how much you care for your family, how much you care for your friends, how you drop everything for the people that are important to you. They're looking for that visible openness, the warmth that signals empathy. And that means they know you're going to care about how they feel. And they can use that caring to condition you to put their needs first.
I'm going to give you a personal example here. So, one of my ex said repeatedly how he prayed for a therapist because a therapist would understand him. And so, he said things like, "I'm so glad you're not like my ex who would just judge me for this. You understand me because of your psychology background. I know that's why you're not going to hurt me." So he was subtly making me responsible for taking care of him and his emotions and sacrificing myself and setting up the expectation that if I expected him to take responsibility for his feelings, then I would be being like his ex, being like other people who let him down, who hurt him, I would be being mean. I would treat him be treating him like everybody else who had disappointed him in his life. Later on after we got married, he admitted that he married me because he thought I would always take care of him. Basically, he wouldn't have to do anything for the rest of his life. So, if you ever have had one of those moments where a a a predator has actually admitted what they're doing, like like talk about that chills up your spine that this is these are the moments and this is how we know. They know what they're doing.
They're also scanning for vulnerability signals. And I want to be clear here. This is not about you being vulnerable like you're broken or necessarily in a crisis. A vulnerability signal can just look like going through a major life transition. Maybe it's a divorce. Maybe it's just a loss, a new job, a move. Predators know that people in transition are more willing to form new connections quickly because it's uncomfortable to be in that transition phase. You're looking for stability. You're maybe trying to heal from grief. You want to fit in in a new place. You want to quiet down your insecurities. You want to feel like you belong somewhere, like you're you're you're creating roots somewhere. So, you're more likely to make decisions quickly and take more chances on a new relationship. So, that's stage one.
Let's talk about stage two, which is the test. Once a predator has identified a potential target, they move into the testing phase. And this is where it becomes very calculated. So, as we're going through here, I want you to think back to your relationship with the narcissist, with those predators. Think about what this phase looked like for you because they do a few things here. They are literally testing you to see if you're worth basically continuing to invest and if they can they can get more from you. They'll do things like push your boundaries, see what you do. They'll make a small seemingly harmless request and they'll watch how you respond. Do you comply? Do you overexlain your hesitation like why you don't want to do something? Do you apologize for saying no? Do you make make a bunch of excuses? Every one of those responses gives them information. So, they are testing what are you going to do if I push back on something. Even if it's not something they really care about, they just want to know how you're going to respond. How are you going to respond to they're disagreeing with you or they're pushing a boundary or they're trying to get something that you've already said you don't want to do.
They're testing your consistency. So, they present themselves in a slightly inconsistent way. A flash of irritability here followed by charm followed by an apology. and they are watching how you respond to their inconsistency. Do you explain it away? Do you say, "I know you had a stressful day. You've got a lot on your plate right now. Don't worry about it. I'm fine." Do you give them the benefit of the doubt? Do you minimize the red flag? Because if you do, you've just checked off the box for exactly what they're looking for. They will also manufacture emotional intensity early. So, they move fast. They compliment you in ways that feel very overwhelming. They create this sense of urgency around the connection. I've never felt this way before. I've never told anyone this. And they watch how you respond to that intensity, too. Like, are you open to that? Do you set a hard, firm boundary? Do you immediately pull away and distance? And they can't really push anymore into the relationship, or do you kind of continue to allow that intensity to grow? Because intensity can feel like chemistry, especially if your past has taught you that love looks like chaos.
So if you grew up in a chaotic home, you know, maybe there was lots of emotions, there was lots of lots of intensity, but you also felt loved. Like there were these big highs, maybe big lows, and you just kind of felt like, all right, you developed a schema, a mental map of like this is what it's like to be in relationship, in marriage, in a family. like there's going to be big highs and big lows and that's just part of it. So all of that chaos or that intensity just feels like love. Just feels like what a relationship is. Or maybe you've been neglected. Then you might decide that you've just never known what love is. And so this intensity that's coming to you. It's like, wow, this is what love is. This is what true love feels like that I've never felt before because of my past neglect. So ask yourself, did they seem to know you too quickly? Did that connection feel almost too right too soon? Or did it just feel very intense very quickly? Even if a part of you maybe was a little uncomfortable with the speed, a lot of times we'll look back and we'll realize we had that gut feeling like something just doesn't feel right here, like it's too much too fast, but almost like we don't want to question it because we so desperately want whatever it is that we think we're getting with that person. Like finally love, finally a relationship, finally I found, you know, my person. And that's such a seductive idea. And so, you know, just thinking about how quickly did the relationship move and progress and that gut feeling that you had a lot of times some we can make that mean we're just meant to be. We're soulmates. But really what that is telling you is that you passed their quote target test and they have gotten what they want from you. They've scanned. They've tested. Now they know you're the kind of person that is going to stay committed, stay loyal. They're going to try to exploit all of those wonderful agreeable traits that you have.
And after they do stage one and two, they're going to move on to stage three, which is the mirror. This is the most dangerous stage because this is where they really, you know, sink their teeth in, if you will, and make you feel like you're choosing them when in reality they're shutting the door behind you and locking you in. So once a predator has identified you as a valuable target, they've tested your responses. They move into what's called mirroring. Maybe you've heard that term, but I want to go deeper on it today through the lens of dark psychology because I think it changes how you see how everything happened and why it happened. So mirroring at its most basic level is when somebody reflects back to you who you are. They like what you like. They believe what you believe. They seem to want exactly what you want. And it feels so good. It's like when you meet a new friend and you're going back and forth on hobbies and interests like me too. I love that too. I thought that too. And so you start to develop this connection with them. You feel like you're close to them even if you've just met because they've resonated with you because they've mirrored you. Feels like you've met somebody who finally just gets you.
But here's what's actually happening. Mirroring in predatory relationships is not a genuine connection. It is a manufactured mask designed to bypass your defenses. When you're with a skilled predator and they mirror you, your nervous system registers familiarity. So this there's something about this person that's like pulls you in that feels familiar. And what do we know about things that feel familiar? They feel safe, at least initially. Familiarity says, "This person is like me. I can trust them." And for many survivors, particularly those who grew up in environments where love was conditional or unpredictable, that feeling of being finally completely seen, it's almost indescribable. It can feel like relief. It can feel like coming home. But that is by design in a predatory relationship. Because while you're feeling that relief, while you're thinking, "I finally met my person. I finally met somebody who gets me." While you're opening up, while your nervous system is saying, "Oh, wow. This is finally safe." The predator is filing away that information. They're learning your fears. They're learning about your wounds. They're learning about your childhood. They're learning about what you've been longing for. And they are building a map of all of these things that they're going to try to use against you later. And this is what makes narcissistic abuse so devastating to recover from because it's not just that you were hurt. It's that you were hurt by somebody who first made you feel like you were finally fully loved, maybe for the first time. And that's exactly what makes it so hard to trust yourself again, too.
However, that does not mean you will never trust yourself again. And here's why. Because part of learning to trust yourself again is getting the full picture of how you were targeted and betrayed and exploited in the first place. So fully seeing that it was intentional. It happened underneath the surface. You were not even aware of it. You were not trying to participate in this exploitation that was happening of yourself. This happened without your consent. You did not consent to the things that happened in this relationship because you didn't even know what kind of relationship you were in. You have been lied to from the start. So any decision you made with false information, anything that happened doesn't mean you were naive or stupid or weak. It reflects their intentional effort to pull the wool over your eyes from the start.
And I want to pause here and address something directly because I can already hear some of you thinking, "Okay, so my empathy is a liability. My openness is a liability. Being warm and trusting is working against me. I must that I have to be something else." No. No. That is not the takeaway. Your empathy is not the problem. Your empathy is one of the most valuable and beautiful parts of you, of who you are. It's what makes you a good friend, a good parent, a good partner, a good human. The fact that a predator exploited that says everything about them, nothing about you. So, here's what I want you to hold on to. The problem wasn't that you were empathetic. The problem was that you were empathetic without knowledge of what predators look like. Now, you have that knowledge and that can change everything going forward. So, I like to think about it this way. Empathy without knowledge is vulnerability. Empathy with knowledge is protection. Because once you understand the system, once you recognize what that mirroring looks like, what the testing phase feels like, what love bombing is actually designed to do, your empathy becomes a tool, not a target. You start to feel when something is off because you are the kind of person, if you allow yourself to tune in, to slow down, to trust your body, you knew something was off. I don't know anybody who hasn't looked back at their relationship and go, "Something just didn't seem right here. I couldn't put my finger on it. I didn't know what it was, but I felt like something was off." And when you have this knowledge and this awareness and you start to realize that trusting your gut is the single most best thing that you can do to protect yourself, then you're going to be able to protect yourself so much more because you're going to start to notice when that connection feels too fast, too intense, too quickly. You're going to start trusting that feeling in that in your gut instead of explaining it away and dismissing it. So everything that you're learning here and who you are, your empathy, your agreeableness, your kindness makes you a good person, makes you a good human, and now you're getting the knowledge to learn how to protect those things.
And then before I keep going, I want to mention something else quickly. If what we're talking about today is really resonating with you, you're listening, you're starting to recognize the strategies that were used against you, I want to invite you to my free master class, the narcissist playbook. Again, it's free. goes even deeper on the tactics that narcissists use to dismantle your sense of self, including the mirroring, the love bombing, the slow erosion of your self-rust. So, you can grab that link in the show notes.
Okay, so let's keep going. I walked you through the three stages of target selection. Now, I want to get even more specific because research on predatory behavior combined with what I've consistently seen from survivors shows that there are four traits predators most reliably look for when they're selecting a target. Let's talk about those.
Trait number one, empathy. So, we've talked about this already. People who lead with empathy tend to to extend the benefit of the doubt. Minimize red flags and feel compelled to help and heal even people who hurt them. And predators know that empathy creates loyalty even in the face of harm and they will exploit that again and again.
Trait two is a tendency to overexlain or overjustify. If you notice that you routinely overexlain your decisions, you apologize quickly, you feel responsible when other people are upset, even if you didn't do anything to cause it, even if you didn't mean to. Like I said, when you've done nothing wrong, a predator reads that as this person is going to absorb the blame. They're going to be more likely to blame themselves. They're really not going to hold me accountable. They're going to look in their own mirror and think that it's them rather than thinking that it's me.
Trait three, unresolved wounds, especially around not being enough. I definitely relate to this one. Predators are extraordinarily skilled at identifying what you most longed for. Whatever your biggest core wound is from childhood or core need, something you needed that you didn't get to be chosen, to be enough, to be safe, to be seen, and they present themselves as the fulfillment of that need. This is what makes lovebombing feel so different from anything you've experienced before because it doesn't just feel like attraction. It can feel like healing, like somebody who finally gets it, somebody who gets me. And that feeling is on purpose. Love bombing is like the Trojan horse hiding their true sinister intentions.
And trait four is a strong sense of responsibility and a discomfort with conflict. People who take their commitments seriously, who hate to give up, who are like, "No, maybe this. Maybe let's try this. We can we can do this." Who want to make things work. These are the people who are going to try harder when things go wrong in that relationship or when you have that gut feeling instead of leaving. And predators know this. They bank on it every time. They push you to the breaking point. They push your boundaries and you stay. They've confirmed that you're going to tolerate more than you deserve. and then their behavior escalates accordingly.
Now, if you're like me and you're like most survivors, you probably just recognize yourself in one or all of those four traits. And if that's you, what I'm about to say next is directly for you. Those are not character flaws. Those are good, genuine qualities that were weaponized by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. So, how do you protect yourself? How do you make yourself the wrong target going forward for a predator? How do you actually repel them instead of looking like an attractive target?
First, trust the speed. Anytime somebody is moving very fast with the intensity of the connection, with the intimacy of what they're sharing, with the future they're building with you, pushing sexual boundaries, pushing any boundaries, slow down. Not because something is always wrong, but because speed is a tell. Healthy love builds steadily, and healthy people are fine taking it slow. They want to respect your boundaries. They understand that connection is built over time. You can't know somebody immediately. Predatory quote love has to move fast because it can't survive scrutiny because they know if if you really slow down, you're going to pick up on what they're doing. If you slow down, you're going to start to see the holes in their story, the things that don't add up, the inconsistencies in their lies, and ultimately you're going to see the truth.
Second, notice how you feel in the testing moments. So pay attention to how you feel after difficult moments early on. Do you feel confused? Do you feel like you must have misread something in the conversation? Do you walk away from a conversation wondering how you ended up apologizing? How you ended up taking the blame for something when you were actually going to them to talk to them about something that hurt your feelings? This is information. And that old version of you might have explained it away. The version of you today who's listening to this podcast has has to decide. I am not going to explain away my intuition anymore. If something doesn't sit right, it doesn't sit right. And you don't have to know exactly immediately right now what to do with that. But give yourself permission to acknowledge how you feel, even if that means the possibility of losing that connection. Because if a relationship ends when you honor your gut, that was never a safe relationship in the first place.
Third is to protect your wounds intentionally. And I don't mean hiding who you are or what you've been through. I know as a INFJ myself and I know many other survivors, we want to go deep. We want to have meaningful conversations. So I don't mean hide who you are. But in the early stages of a relationship, the depth of what somebody knows about your wounds is not intimacy. It's exposure. Let people earn access to you. Let them build knowledge about you and your history slowly over time as they show you that they're going to be consistent. They're going to be trustworthy in their behavior. So, somebody who pushes hard in the early stages, tell me your greatest fears, tell me your greatest insecurities, what are the moments that broke you, what have you been through, they're not trying to be emotionally connected. They're gathering information. So again, I want to say to my fellow INFJs, to the people who love having deep conversations, who it's so important for you to be authentic and and going deep is a way to be authentic. I love that and I totally go there with you. However, respecting yourself means making sure that the person you're going deep with is trustworthy and isn't going to use that knowledge against you. So think about it this way. The depth of your conversations should mirror the strength of your trust in them. So, I'll say that again. The depth of your conversations should mirror the strength of your trust in them. The more you trust them, the deeper your conversations can go. But the more you're like, "This is getting really, you know, really deep really quickly and I don't even really know them that well," that's a sign. But the more you trust them and you have proof that you can trust them, the deeper your conversations can go. But if you're trying to have deep conversations before you've really built that foundation of trust, that's leaving yourself vulnerable to become a predator's prey.
And fourth, rebuild your agency. The more you build your agency, which is means the sense that what you do matters, then the more firmly you believe that your instincts are worth listening to, that your gut is reliable, and that your needs are worth protecting. If you can do that, then a predator is tactics, you're going to become less effective because a person with a strong sense of their own worth and their own judgment, like I trust myself. I know what I think and why I think what I think and I know how I feel about things. That kind of person is harder to manipulate because you're willing to hold boundaries. You don't overexlain. You trust your gut. You don't need need all of that external agreement to know what's true. Like if somebody else says, "Well, I don't necessarily see it that way." You don't immediately crumble and think like, "I must be seeing it wrong." A person with agency and and selfrust says, "I'm going to go away and think about that." Like, "I I don't know yet." You give yourself the same value that you give others. You believe yourself, too. You don't just believe other people and believe that they always know better. A predator really senses if somebody has self-rust, has self-worth, has agency, like that they're going to believe themselves. A predator can sense that quite quickly and they move on to somebody else because honestly, they don't want to work hard. They want to that's why they're doing the scanning. That's why they're doing the testing. They want to see who can I just quickly start leeching off of essentially. So, your healing is not just about recovering from the past. It's about becoming someone who is genuinely harder to target going forward. And that is exactly what we're building here today.
And if you want specific steps to rebuild your agency, your sense of self, listen to one of my previous podcasts, how to stop feeling powerless even after years of abuse because that's where I give you simple, practical, step-by-step directions to rebuild your confidence.
So before I wrap up today, I want to offer you a reframe. And this is probably the most important thing I'll say in this entire episode. You didn't just survive a relationship. You survived a system, a calculated, methodical, psychologically sophisticated system that was specifically designed to exploit the best parts of you. A predator studied you, chose you, tested you, mirrored you, and then used everything that you had opened up and shared all of that trust, empathy, and hope against you. And you know what? You are still here. You're still asking questions. You're still seeking to understand. You're still choosing to grow instead of becoming closed off. And that is one of the most extraordinary things I witness in this work because the very qualities that made you a target, the empathy, the loyalty, the willing, the willingness to trust are also what's going to build your most meaningful life going forward. Not in spite of what happened to you, but because of what you learned from it. You're not broken. You're not naive. You're not weak. You were targeted by someone who is very skilled at identifying and exploiting goodness in others. And I encourage you to sit with that and to finally let yourself off the hook for what happened because it was truly never ever your fault.
So, let me bring this full circle with what we covered today. We talked about what dark psychology is and why narcissists are often intuitive practitioners of it. We talked about the three stages of target selection, the scan, the test, and the mirror. We talked about the four specific traits predators look for. empathy, a tendency to overexlain, unresolved wounds, and a strong aversion to conflict. And we talked about four things you can start doing today to make you the wrong target for a predator going forward. And if there's one thing I want you to take from this episode, it's this. You were not chosen because of anything that's wrong with you. You were chosen because of something right about you. And now your only job is to love, appreciate, and protect those beautiful parts of you.
So, if today's episode resonated with you, I'd be so grateful if you shared it with somebody who needs to hear it. If you haven't yet, please remember to subscribe to the podcast so you'll get notified of new episodes. Plus, it really helps the show grow and reach more survivors who need to feel like they're not alone and that there is a path forward. So, until next time, remember that no matter where you are on your healing journey, resilience can be restored. And we're going to keep building it together. I'll see you in the next episode. Heat. Heat.