EXPOSING THE PROCESSES OF TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SOMEONE.
Projecting yourself as an inattentive character leaves you vulnerable and puts you at a higher risk of being exploited. It is important for you to identify and neutralise the tricks that certain people use to infiltrate into your life and take advantage of you. The following unscrupulous means of taking advantage of someone are often employed by some people:
They identify a need or a challenge and offer empty promises and shallow empathy. The solutions that they offer come with dark ulterior motives that may elude you if you are not vigilant. They also try to lull you into inattention by expressing interest in the things you like. It is wise for you to make data-based attributions to the people in your life. You must assess people’s motives based on their actions rather than on what they say. Blind and childlike trust should be set aside for data-driven considerations. The incidence of taking advantage of someone will be greatly reduced when one puts himself or herself in this vigilant mode.
Research has shown that we tend to like and believe those who like us as well. Thus, taking advantage of someone may creep along in the manner of another deceptively making you feel liked by him or her. To soften you up for the strike, they will flatter you, laugh at your jokes, agree with your positions and support your efforts non-stop. Be cautious if all you ever hear is what you want to hear. Pay attention to all the nuances of body language; they separate the genuine from the fake.
Beware of people who popularise the sport of gossiping and foster conspiratorial relationships, relationships that tend to band two people against others. They often resort to baiting you with seemingly intimate life details and experiences in order to trick you into doing the same. Taking advantage of someone is often done with the confidential information revealed to an individual with insincere motives. People who allow their emotions to resonate to one extreme of the emotional continuum that pairs with attitudes like being your new best friend forever, your most passionate ally, your greatest supporter, your biggest fan and conspiratorial confidant, frequently change their mind and drift to the opposite emotional extreme. Do not take the hero worship too seriously; it should bear in on you that the roses could easily turn to daggers.
Taking advantage of someone is akin to one desperately seeking for another’s approval for the purpose of using it to selfishly validate one’s position at a later time. Be wary of people who desperately seek your approval.
From their lips come syllables geared to gather data and build a file on you so they can use the information against you to selfishly bolster themselves. Most of their interactions have the ulterior motive of looking for flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, that they can exploit to their advantage. Not to genuinely engage with a person is often a prelude to taking advantage of someone.
They are in the habit of steering a conversation to an irrelevant direction in a bid to confuse their interactant. Not responding directly in any discussion that requires them to take a personal position, not being specific about their past, not making substantive self-disclosures and not making a commitment that could narrow their options and prevent them from selfishly vacillating here and there, are things that stand out with them. They also tend to answer questions that weren’t asked.
Always short of taking responsibility for anything of negative consequence they target the people in their lives for blaming. To change and hold oneself to a higher standard, one must learn to take responsibility for any unpleasant shortfall. Blaming others for every unwelcome situation is a red flag that accompanies taking advantage of someone.
Committed to lying, they will stick with the lie religiously until some serious damage is done to another. They inject a veritable element of truth into their untrue stories to mask them with an air of credibility.
The pattern of taking what they want, not earning it, is typical of them. They do that by stealing and claiming false competencies. A nasty way of taking advantage of someone is by using lies to mislead and control the person.
At certain times, taking advantage of someone begins by a process to isolate the person, to cut off the person’s contacts and support system and to prevent him or her from getting a reality check. They will use lies and gossip to alienate the person from others. To them, creating an imbalance in a relationship by overdoing things is their way of roping people into their debt and controlling them. To buy into their lie that you cannot get by without them is to leave yourself vulnerable to their threats, intimidation and control. They demonstrate a lack of empathy and an inability to feel remorse when abusing others.
To continue with, they will prey on you with your vulnerabilities to undermine your confidence and make you look inferior. Personal information should be shared only in situations overshadowed by a vibrant interpersonal climate that boasts of strong mutual trust. Taking advantage of someone often goes with inducing undeserved guilt in the person’s mind with threats of suicide and other acts of emotional extortion.
They remember only details of the past that serve them and use lies to make up the rest. Thus, selfishly applying selective memory and revising the past to achieve some egotistic ends are grand schemes aimed at taking advantage of someone. Keeping before you a picture of how a true friend will behave will help you to identify those who are rearing to take advantage of you.
