Dark Psychology: The Practical Uses and Best Defenses of Psychological Warfare in Everyday Life How to Detect and Defend Against Manipulation, Deception, Dark Persuasion, and Covert nlp

PART FOUR:
RECOGNIZING AND IDENTIFYING YOUR
REALITY
ACKNOWLEDGING THE LIES WE TELL
OURSELVES
Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie
comes to the point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him,
or around him and so loses all respect for himself and others.
And having no respect, he ceases to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
There are so many forms of lies we hear every day.
Sometimes, the lies are told to protect you from something. It could
be something as trivial as keeping the knowledge of something you
are not ready to know for example a surprise birthday party.
Sometimes, the lies are more complicated but not told entirely out of
malice like the telling a person about their cheating spouse. The
point is, for good for or bad, we all tell lies, but no lie is more
grievous than the lies we tell ourselves. There is more danger from
the lies we tell ourselves than the lies that other people tell us (this
would be discussed extensively in the next chapter) and here is why.
In the previous chapter, I talked about the body's biological defense
when the brain senses danger or situations that threaten us. These
impulses however irrational they may seem are meant to protect us.
Lying to yourself deadens those instincts and opens us to possible
dangers. It is like seeing a speeding car coming down the highway
and making up your mind to run across the road anyway.
Instinctively, your body knows that this situation is precarious. A
slight miscalculation could result in a fatal accident. But instead of
waiting for the car to pass, you convince yourself that you are faster
than the car or that the car is farther away than it looks, or it is not

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speeding as fast as it appears to be. These are the kind of lies we
tell ourselves. 
Self-deception occurs in many forms. But the most popular form of
self-deception is denial. We convince ourselves that the threat is not
real or imminent, so we make risky choices that we quickly come to
regret. Denial is not always a clear-cut case of admitting that
something does or does not exist. Sometimes, it is masked as
optimism in the face of a very dire situation. And in some cases, the
very opposite happens. You are in a good situation but choose to be
pessimistic and deny the possibilities. According to a school of
thought, humans are more susceptible to self-deception because we
choose to hold on to certain beliefs. Say for instance, you meet this
amazing person who seems to match all of your criteria in dealing
with such a person. But underneath that layer, you can sense a
withholding or even know outrightly that you are being deceived but
rather than act on that instinct, you choose to act on the hope that
people can be what they appear to be. 
We hear of the expression wolf in sheep clothing all the time.
There is no doubt that the wolf may be really good at disguising
himself for the sheep just as there is no doubt that the sheep on
some primal level were aware of the wolf in their midst but chose to
deny the existence of the threat because they wanted to believe that
the wolf was one of them. We can all imagine how that story played
out. This pattern of behavior over time would dim the alarms bells
that go off in our senses whenever a crisis arises because of what
we tell ourselves.
Next to denial is rationalization. Denial and rationalization are
tools of the same trade. They work handily together in self-
deception. Rationalization is essentially how you explain away the
situation. I have had female friends (and some of my male friends
too in the same boat) who are in a relationship that isn’t really
healthy for them but rather than end things by taking themselves out
of the equation, they somehow always seem to come up with more
reasons why they should stay put in that relationship. Women in
abusive relationships know that a man raising his hand against you
is displaying the highest form of disrespect. But I have heard these

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violent men been described as affectionate and their occasional
violence being just one of their ways of showing the woman that they
care. This behavior does not only apply to relationships.
People have found themselves working at a place they know
exploiting them. But, they tell themselves how jobs are difficult to find
and how they would not be able to pay the bills if they leave. And so,
they continue to work under those terrible conditions refusing to even
protest because they have come to accept the situation as normal
thanks to their rationalizations and denials. Whether in our career or
in our normal relationships, a lot of us a leading sad and unfulfilled
lives because we have convinced ourselves that we cannot do
otherwise, and this is our fate. Some people even go a step further
and say they deserve what they are getting because of some
misdeed in the past. In other words, they have chosen to open the
doors to their own prison cells, lock themselves in and then proceed
to act as jailer. Self-deception is a mental prison of some sort but
there are merits to it too.
When confronted with challenges that threaten to overwhelm
us, a little bit of self-deception can help to bolster your confidence
and even the playing field. You may choose a more positive phrase
other than self-deception to describe it, but it doesn't change what it
is. People like to call it perp talk, getting psyched or giving yourself a
morale boost…whatever you choose to call it, it still boils down to
you convincing yourself about something that you are not. A man
wanting to approach a very beautiful woman who he feels is out of
his league has to convince himself that he is all that. He acts more
confident than he actually feels in order to convince himself that he is
indeed confident. So, you see, the self-confidence thing can swing
both ways. But to avoid falling victim to people who use elements of
dark psychology to get their way, you need to recognize the truth for
what it is.
If your instincts are kicking in, rather than deny it, ask
questions. Find out why you feel the way you do about the person
and try to get more answers. When you learn to trust your instincts,
you are better able to protect yourself. If a situation is not working
out favorably for you, rather than choosing to be powerless about it

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(because yes, it is choice), you should actively look for a way out of
the situation. Don’t lie to yourself. The truth may not be what we
want it to be, but you should not have to live out a painful lie just to
deny it. Recognize the lies you tell yourself for what they really are.

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