NONs Info & Support
Education of Professionals and the Mainstream for the Purpose of Proactively Preventing Further Individual & Global Devastation by Psychopathy and Better Protecting Past, Present, and Prospective Targets
Beware the Pity-Play
Think you’d know one when you see one? Think again. While many psychopaths are where we’d expect them to be, where they make up a disproportionately large segment of the prison population, commit the greatest variety of and most prevalently violent crimes and boast the largest recidivism rate, many are masters at skating by the system, even when they’re caught. That means that there are many scattered among us, perpetrating horrendous violations against scores of people like you and me.
Is there someone you know who seems to be the most charming, eloquent, sensitive person you could imagine? Someone who appears almost overly kind, meek, and compassionate, but who is always in need of help? Does s/he purport to be a revered or underrated expert in a certain field, but you notice – and probably quickly dismiss – clues that s/he may not be the expert s/he proclaims to be? Is there someone you know whom you seek to protect, rescue, fight his/her battles for him/her, help in any way possible, even to your or others‘ detriment? Do you find yourself constantly feeling sorry for this person, feeling compelled to help him/her, even going further beyond in self-sacrificing than you’d ever thought you would for anyone in order to do so?
Because psychopaths are not able to feel love for others, and any other emotions borne of love, they hone in on manifestations of those feelings by keenly observing others who possess them, becoming extremely adept at mimicking them to great effect. They portray themselves as the sweetest, most innocent, persecuted victims, when in fact they are predators, often of the very people whom they malign, and are failsafe in their defensively preemptive tactic to project their character deficiencies on their targets, rendering those targets virtually powerless to defend themselves.
While many notorious murderers are psychopaths, many psychopaths are not killers…yet. Not all psychopaths choose serial killing as their mode of operation, however, any psychopath may resort to taking the life of another if it will serve him/her better than not killing. Those who make it through their whole lives not ever having caused the death of another human have likely taken lives of other living, feeling creatures, and have assuredly caused momentous harm to large portions of the general population.
That is a significant inspiration for this site, precisely because most people, including smart & savvy people, from all walks of life, cannot fathom the mindset of such dangerous individuals and cannot imagine that such seemingly lovely people can harbor such ugly behavior. Most good & decent people believe that everyone has a heart, and that it can be brought out of the seemingly most heartless with enough love and understanding. People who do feel find it unbelievable that there are some who don’t. Psychopaths count on that, knowing full well that by the time their targets finally catch onto them they have long since bled them as dry as possible of their resources, sometimes of their lives, leaving devastation & destruction, sometimes of whole families at a time, in their wakes.
This site is intended for the purpose of exposing psychopaths and the red flags they wave, and raising public awareness, both so as to help prevent them from getting each and every one of us, and to increase understanding so that those targeted by them may be believed when they attempt to protect and defend themselves.
What can you do if you suspect that someone may be a psychopath? Strip away the words, and examine the behaviors. Is there ever an end to his/her needs? Has s/he sacrificed anything for the sake of another, without expectation of it benefitting him/herself? Do you find yourself questioning your own reality if it differs from that told you by him/her? Did s/he get very close to you in a very short period of time, bypassing and breaking through your usual protective barriers? Does s/he have any close, long-term, healthy, loving relationships? Is s/he assassinating the character of someone without presenting hard evidence to substantiate his/her claims? Do his/her actual actions contradict his/her verbal expression? Have you noticed an almost imperceptible difference in how certain people regard and treat you whom s/he’s talked with when not around you? Is everything bad that happens to him/her a result of everyone’s actions but his/her own? Do you find yourself hating someone you may not even know based upon his/her accusations against that person? Does s/he take far more than s/he gives? Does your gut tell you that something’s wrong, you just can’t put your finger on it?
According to Dr. Martha Stout’s “The Sociopath Next Door” (page 107):
After listening for almost 25 years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle give-away. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.
Quote at the beginning of Dr. Robert Hare’s book, “Without Conscience, The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us”:
Good people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then too, the normal are inclined to visualize the psychopath as one who’s as monstrous in appearance as s/he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get… These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the perfect original from which it had been modeled.
~ William March, The Bad Seed
