Four Steps to Freedom
Undoing Mallory’s damage is a slow and delicate process. I’ll break it into four steps to make it easier to understand. These steps are: Diagnose, Observe, Inhibit, and Terminate. You can remember these steps with the acronym DOIT:
❂ Diagnose: where you ask the question, "am I dealing with a psychopath?" and come to a "yes" answer if that is the case.
❂ Observe: where you learn to observe Mallory and keep notes. The goal is to decode his behavior and understand how he has been controlling the situation. You move away from cooperation, and towards passive resistance.
❂ Inhibit: where you learn to recognize and block Mallory’s patterns of control. Mallory depends on you to keep repairing the cup. You stop enabling him, and then move towards active resistance.
❂ Terminate: where you take back control of the relationship, and then end it on your own terms. You understand that there is no cup, and never was.
Before we start, please realize: this takes time. You need to make time to repair your life. It takes time to learn and understand new ideas. It takes time to apply these to your relationship with Mallory. It could take six months, a year, two years, or longer. It depends on how deep the damage is.
Let me explain what you have to abandon, as possible outcomes:
❂ You will not get sincere remorse, ever. If you need this to move on, learn to stop needing it.
❂ You will not get the love, money, power, or whatever else Mallory promised you.
❂ You will not get your money or time back. Accept the losses, and look ahead, not back.
❂ You will not get a deal, or compromise, or negotiated settlement. Every deal is a lie.
❂ You will not change Mallory, nor help him, nor cure him, nor punish him.
And what you can expect to achieve:
❂ You can change Mallory’s behavior towards you or a group, by changing how you or a group treat Mallory.
❂ You can force Mallory to leave you or a group alone, by making it expensive and risky for him to stay.
❂ You can staunch your losses of money, time, and resources, by refusing to give in to Mallory.
❂ You can take full control of your relationship with Mallory, by seeing it for what it is.
❂ You can block and disable Mallory, even to the point where he cannot hurt others.
❂ You may be able to salvage pieces of whatever projects you were investing in.
❂ You can learn deep and useful lessons about your own and others' psychology.
❂ You can externalize your story and understand what happened.
❂ You can help others move through the same process as you.
Be explicit in defining your goals, both to yourself, and to others. Once you write down your goals, you can measure your progress over time. This will help you during the many moments when you doubt yourself.
We covered Diagnose in Hunting Mallory. Now I will explain the other steps.
Observe and Record
A main goal of every abuser is to teach the victim that there is no abuse. "This is normal," goes the refrain. "And if anyone is crazy or abusive, it is you." From the outside, to accept this seems insane. For the victim, trying at all costs to make things work, it is rational. Take the blame, apologize, and keep trying to fix that cup.
So asking the question, "Am I dealing with a psychopath?" is a major step in itself. Yet what comes next is delicate. If you recognize yourself as the victim, then you have the right, even an obligation, to free yourself. You cannot wait or hope for a formal diagnosis of "psychopath" from a psychologist.
Yet outsiders will not leap to your understanding. They will see you as unstable. First you insist the relationship means everything to you. Then you accuse the other person of being mentally ill, or worse. "Psychopath" is only one step away from "serial killer" in most peoples' minds.
Mallory always deflects blame onto his victims. He does this well. He ensures that they look guilty, angry, and unreliable. In any situation of conflict, people are likely to trust his explanations. They will absorb his stories and reject those of his victims. The facts don’t matter unless there is video or paper proof. I cannot stress this enough. It catches even professionals who deal with psychopaths every day.
If you are Mallory’s victim, telling people "he’s a psychopath" will tend to work against you. It is like pulling out a knife in a gun fight. If you are trying to help someone else, the same applies. It is far better to document events as they unfold, and let others draw their own conclusions. Sooner or later, careful documentation always beats charismatic story telling.
You’re looking for:
❂ Evidence to disprove your insight. If the hypothesis is wrong you want to know as soon as you can. You want to find the real culprit, if any. You want to find other ways of dealing with the situation. For example, if someone is mentally ill, they need help. If they are a psychopath, their victims need help.
❂ Material evidence that you can use in a conflict. Such evidence must hold up in court. What that means depends on where you live. Video is good, audio recordings often less so. Phone calls and emails are usually good. Police reports and witness statements are good. You can talk to a private detective. They deal with a lot of psychopaths, and know the laws for evidence gathering.
❂ Insights into what Mallory is doing, and how. I’m not suggesting you bug his email and mobile phone to track his location and chats. That is most often illegal unless the phone is yours, and you install an "anti-theft" app. Yet if you do, it can be enlightening.
❂ Observations about Mallory’s behavior, for your own benefit. To confront and beat him you must know his game. You must understand every one of his moves, and know how to respond in each case. "Confront and beat" sounds dramatic. Yet Mallory never takes a holiday. Every time you interact with him he is pushing you.
I’ll discuss evidence collection later. Let’s focus on the last aspect first, which is to learn Mallory’s moves. This takes time yet is easier than you might think. Psychopaths all seem to work the same way. If you watch one, you are watching them all. If you can understand one, you can understand them all.
This is why hunting Mallory is so valuable. Every time you cross paths with a psychopath, if you are alert, you learn something useful.
Observing Mallory is like watching wildlife[86]. You choose your place and time, and do your research. Dress right, and blend in to your surroundings. Be calm and still and wait. Approach your subject with care, or view from a safe distance if you can. Identify behaviors as you observe them, and note behaviors that are new to you. Above all, use a journaclass="underline"
Note the types of creatures you see and their characteristics, and jot down what they are doing and where. Make sketches or take pictures and paste them into your journal. Once you return from the field, review your journal and do some more research to answer any questions that came up during your observations.
You can observe Mallory from different angles: