If you are a coach, consultant, or other service-based business owner and you work 1:1 or 1:few with people, this is an important episode. Trigger warning: I speak candidly about the dark triad personality cluster and the ways it can manifest. If you start to feel overwhelmed by this, please turn this episode off!
Key topics:
✔️ What is the dark triad personality cluster and why is it important to understand?
✔️ Protect yourself. This applies on every level: emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically, etc.
✔️ Narcissists and ego-maniacs are out for themselves. Your well-being or even an overall sense of the Golden Rule does not factor into their decision making.
✔️ The key is not to be paranoid, but simply to be aware.
✔️ TRUST YOUR GUT!
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
If you are a coach, consultant, or other service-based business owner and you work 1:1 or 1:few with people, this is an important episode. Trigger warning: I speak candidly about the dark triad personality cluster and the ways it can manifest. If you start to feel overwhelmed by this, please turn this episode off!
Key topics:
✔️ What is the dark triad personality cluster and why is it important to understand?
✔️ Protect yourself. This applies on every level: emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically, etc.
✔️ Narcissists and ego-maniacs are out for themselves. Your well-being or even an overall sense of the Golden Rule does not factor into their decision making.
✔️ The key is not to be paranoid, but simply to be aware.
✔️ TRUST YOUR GUT!
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting Podcast. I'm your host Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. Today I want to talk about the dark triad and fair warning. I will be getting into some dark, intense subject matter in this episode. So if at any point you start to feel triggered or overwhelmed in some way, turn this off and don't come back to it. Go listen to some positive, uplifting music. Go outside and walk in the sunshine. Do something other than listening to this come back for the next episode. I promise you it will be something lighter but don't listen to this if you feel yourself getting upset or overwhelmed by it. So the other day, I was doing some channel surfing and I got sucked into this TV show against my better angels. You know, after I saw what the show was about, I was like, I should probably turn this off, but I just I couldn't look away. It was disturbing. And it just it was the kind of program where like, how do people like this exist? Like what what is going on that they are that given over to evil? It just sometimes it boggles my mind. And I want to talk about this in the context of protecting yourself, whether we're talking about intimate relationships, or we're talking about people who have a service based business where they're really working one on one or one to few with clients. If you have a business where you're just selling widgets, or someone walks into your store and then you never see them again, or Hey, I want to sell 500 copies of my $7 ebook every week, and I don't care who downloads them. This is not something that would really be relevant to you in your business. But for those of us who offer any kind of work in coaching, anything that's healing or spiritually based, anything that's energy based, this is absolutely something that I just want you to be aware of. So I was watching this program and this kid, a 14 year old kid, had created a journal about how he wanted to be a serial killer, how we idolize certain serial killers who he considered to be famous and good at what they did. He written down ways that he wanted to torture and murder people and it was just sickening. And unfortunately, he was able to murder one victim, and he was caught and when he was apprehended and the police were questioning him, he had no remorse at all. It was--he was-- his tone was flat. And he was describing this murder of a classmate with the, the just a total lack of passion or a lack of any emotion or remorse or anything. It was like going into a paint store and saying, Yes, I think I want cornflower blue instead of surlyn. I mean, just no empathy, no remorse, no sadness, nothing. It was it was so disturbing. And they followed up with the case when he was like, I guess years later, after he had been in prison for a while he was eligible for parole or had some kind of re sentencing. And while he was in jail, as somehow, he managed to find a girlfriend who I think was as diabolical and and sick in the head as he was, and they they were having these jailhouse phone calls and she was like, Well, I guess you should probably teach yourself how to cry I guess you should try to pretend to be remorseful and he's on the phone laughing about well, I guess I could hurt myself. I mean, I'm I'm trying to figure out some way to sit there and appear sympathetic and cry but I'm you know, I don't really regret what I did. It was it was absolutely horrifying. And they were also on the phone laughing about his techniques, you know, he had certain things that he was going to do to his victims as a calling card, because he wanted to make sure that he got and I do quote your credit for any of the murders that he committed and I I'm like, Okay, well, I'm not going to sleep tonight. I mean, it just sometimes I swear to you, it boggles my mind. The people that live among us and be I guess just the lack of conscience, the ability to just completely and totally give yourself over to evil so that there's no goodness there's no light left in you... I mean, if I talk about it too much, I'm going to have nightmares all over again. Of course, there were analysts and commentators on this program in psychology and forensic psychology discussing, what does it actually mean if someone is a psychopath or a sociopath, and this got me to thinking about people we interact with in a business context, as well as the romantic relationships that we may attract into our life. There is something called the dark triad. And what this refers to is narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. And I think as I start to describe these characteristics to you, especially if you are a service based business owner or you work in anything related to spiritual healing or energy work, you're going to go Oh, yeah, I completely understand why I need to watch out for this. Now, a word of caution. First, from a mindset perspective, do I want you to fixate on this? Do I want you to be paranoid about it? Do I want you to think that danger is lurking around every corner? Like a supervillain in a comic book? No. What we focus on expands. So I do not want you to sit and dwell on this and think that if someone even minorly inconveniences you They must be a narcissist or they must be up to something hateful and diabolical. That's not true. There is a difference between being aware, being prepared, taking good care of yourself versus being paranoid, anxious and hyper vigilant. It's like the old phrase, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So I want to encourage you to exercise good judgment and good discretion. If we use the analogy of a velvet rope around the nightclub, you know this day and age, it might be better to say I not only have a velvet rope, I also have, you know, a big, muscular bouncer that stands outside with a metal detector, like, I'm going to be very, very careful and mindful about who I let into my practice. It's so important. We may think that narcissism is simply selfishness. It's just somebody that self centered and self absorbed most of the time. But it goes a bit deeper than that. It's really about pursuing your own ego and its gratification, being vain. And thinking that you're better than everybody else, you're entitled to more. If we think about Animal Farm, well, some animals are more equal than others. That's how the narcissist feels. These rules are really not for me, you know, I'm better than the average person. I'm smarter than the average bear. So I just I deserve a bit more. Machiavellianism is of course, named after Machiavelli, this kind of succeed by any means necessary, be calculating. If you need to deceive somebody, for your own purposes, do it. If you need to manipulate somebody if you need to coax them and cajole them and wiggle around to make sure that you get what you want, even if it's not in that other person's best interest, if you don't give a damn about them, it's all about making sure that you come out on top at the end of the day, and that it can also be marked by hyper competitiveness, the zero sum game mentality, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose and by God, I'm going to be the one that wins. psychopathy is being antisocial, callous, not caring about someone else's thoughts or feelings, not having empathy, not being able to really put yourself in the other person's shoes and have any compassion for their pain. It's like all of these things sort of unite together to make an absolutely terrifying human being. I once heard an explanation that psychopaths and sociopaths have to imitate what they see from other people. Like in the story about the wannabe serial killer Well, I guess I'm gonna have to teach myself how to cry. I'm gonna have to pretend to my way through this because they're not feeling any genuine sympathy or remorse. They have to look at what they see other people do alright, I'll cry. And, and one of the scary things about it too is that because they are talented liars and manipulators, they may be able to convince the person they want to victimize that they are genuinely sorry, when in fact they don't feel any emotions like that at all. I want to give you some food for thought, potential things that you can be on the lookout for as you're interacting with prospects as you're thinking about onboarding new individuals into your practice. Especially if you are going to really like hitch up your wagon, you're going to help this person you're going to be in an intimate business type of relationship with this individual for a certain amount of time. You want to know who you're interacting with. Now you can't know everything. There's no possible way that you can fact check and possibly know every skeleton that might be in this person's closet and you don't want to do anything discriminatory either. You will you just want to be judicious about not inadvertently letting some dark triad psychic vampire emotional turmoil, evil ugly person into your practice or into your life. So what are some things that you can be on the lookout for? A number one, trust your gut. I can't tell you how many times in life not only myself but close friends and family members. You just have that sixth sense about somebody, a place a thing, a situation, just something in your gut that's like, Oh, this just isn't right, this this something is off here. I may not, in a logical way be able to exactly like point ABC line at out on a flow chart, but I know that something is wrong. always trust that instinct. If it sounds too good to be true, or you, you feel like someone is manipulating you, they're lying to you. They're trying to obscure the truth from you in some way. For the love of God. Please trust that gut instinct, don't talk yourself out of it and wind up regretting it later. The second thing is make sure that you have a good tried and true intake process. If you're in the early parts of your business, where you're still testing and beta testing, you may be refining that out and make determinations, you could be in your sifting and sorting and learning phase and that's okay, we all have to go through it. But as time goes on, you want to make sure that you have some type of good way of separating the wheat from the chaff. If you get any kind of vibe that this person is manipulative, they're extremely cynical. Everything that's ever happened to them is somebody else's fault. They, they need more than other people. They're better than other people, they have a right to be arrogant. You need to really pay attention to what they're saying. Another good rule of thumb is, you don't always listen to what somebody says. You watch what they do. Actions really do speak louder than words and individuals who are slick manipulators and talented liars can take any of us in. So be willing to pay attention to the things that they do and not only the things that they say. The third thing is you need to remember that you are not God. You're also not the Messiah. There is no way for you to help or heal everyone that you meet. It's just simply not possible. And sometimes people will get into relationships, whether it's a romantic relationship or a business relationship, a friendship, and they will think I can change this person. I know he's rough around the edges now or I know she is selfish and tends to think she deserves the earth, the moon and the stars, but that's okay. You know, once this person falls in love with me, they'll change or once this person gets some good coaching or some good spiritual healing for me, I know they'll change they'll see things differently. No. Get out of this Messiah, complex God complex mentality, things that are going on with someone and like a DNA cellular level, or things that are going on from like a spiritual oppression or maybe even demonic possession level are not things that you are going to come in and fix in a six week program or a six month dating romance. It's just not going to happen. The fourth thing, and perhaps the most important thing is protect yourself. If you ever feel like you're in a situation that's highly dangerous, call the police. Don't sit back and talk yourself out of well, you know, I have this fight, fight or flight reaction going on. I guess I should probably ignore it. Maybe I'm being hysterical. Or maybe I'm being silly. I would much rather be silly and feel like well, maybe I misinterpreted something later and be alive, then to not be alive because I didn't trust my instincts. I read a story of a woman who was the victim of identity theft and it was like the cases and the trouble just kept coming. I mean, she her bank accounts had been drained, her credit cards had been maxed out, anything bad that could happen to this poor woman surrounding identities that had happened. And the police were working on it. I think she had one of those services, you know, like lifelock involved and they were all trying to figure out who did this. And at the time, she had a live in boyfriend who was very supportive. He was doing everything he could seemingly to assist the police and he was very sympathetic or seemed to be to her situation. But the identity theft and the problems just kept happening. And as you can probably guess, from the way that I'm telling you the story, in the end, the perpetrator the identity thief was him. Okay, so even though he was verbally telling her Oh, this is so terrible, you know, I let me help you. We're gonna catch this terrible crook. Like he was a terrible crook. Common sense has to prevail. If someone if these situations are occurring to you, and there's someone close to you who could potentially be the culprit doing it, if you ever have that gut instinct of like, I wonder if I can trust this person. Like, listen to that instinct. Don't just say, Oh, well, this guy that I've been dating for six months says he's going to help me. He says everything's peachy keen. Well, I mean, don't don't be afraid to just take care of yourself and ensure that you are being safe not i'm not saying wholesale clear your life out of people, everyone that you meet everybody that you date, every new client that comes down the pike, in some psycho that means you harm Absolutely not. I'm talking about a select group of the population that I just want you to be aware of, again, not being paranoid, not being hyper vigilant, but just being aware and really tuning into your instincts. Sort of a parting thing that I want to say is that some, some psychologists and analysts think that there might actually be a dark tetrad. So a fourth potential component to this evil is what they call everyday sadism. enjoyment of cruelty. Like when when somebody loses out on something, or when when they see someone else getting hurt or harmed in some way, or even like being an internet troll, like getting on somebody's website or their Facebook page and saying heinous things to them and watching them suffer, be aware of these signs and signals. The truth is not everybody in the world deserves access to your time or your energy. Not everybody deserves to be in a relationship with you. If you are a service based business provider where you are going to be working one on one or one too few, you want to use good solid judgment and who you onboard. It's not all about the money. You might make fantastic money and be miserable. You might make money and realize that you have saddled up with somebody who means you harm and then what? So it's better to prevent those things as much as you can and to just be aware, not paranoid, but aware. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please share it. If you haven't already, take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai