Malignant Narcissists Groom Their Prey For Maximum Exploitation

I like this image of the Big Bad Wolf because it is right on point with what the malignant narcissist predator is all about. The Wolf is dangling a bare bone while gripping a fork. This is exactly what the MN predator does; they toss their prey a “meatless” bone to lure them in, so THEY can feed. The bone may as well be rubber because what the malignant narcissist uses to bait the victim is worthless, it’s FAKE, there’s no substance to it, it’s all on the level of pretense, and it’s called “Grooming” - a predatory act of maneuvering prey into a trap.

I came across a description of “Grooming” on Out of the Fog and was amazed at how perfectly it describes the predation of malignant narcissist/psychopath sister AND MN mother on my N dad. But before we get to the description, let me begin with my experiences of being “groomed” by a narcissist.

Done. I have none. Grooming doesn’t work on me. Why? Probably because I was raised in captivity with three narcissists, I was out numbered, and I had to carefully study how the eco-system of the narc jungle functions in order to survive. If I fell prey to manipulation tactics such as grooming, I would have been chewed-up and spat out before I reached my teens.  

I recall one New Year’s Eve, I was home watching TV, and at the stroke of midnight malignant narcissist sister and her friend grabbed a bunch of pots and pans from the kitchen and went out onto the street and banged the living shit out of them. When malignant narcissist mother discovered that her pots and pans were dented and chipped she was furious. MN sister couldn’t pin this one on me because my parents came home while she was making a racket throughout the neighborhood and they caught her walk through the door pot handed. What happened next was something my 15 year old self put in the narcissist behavioral data bank.

Initially MN mother became angry at MN sister and bitched and moaned about her precious pots and pans, but that wasn’t the end of it. The next day, MN mother did some role reversing and tried to employ a divide and conquer technique. She “acted” as if my sister was invisible and went into full-on grooming/engulf mode with ME. Normally she didn’t acknowledge my existence, but now she was doing the human version of a picking through my hair. Because this was so out of character for her, I immediately recognized that she was working an angle – all this doting was to make my sister jealous. I was merely a pawn in her sick little game. It was almost laughable how she timed things. For example, MN sister would walk by, or enter the room I was in, and like magic, MN mother would appear and ask me in a sickly syrupy voice if I needed anything. This was quite a departure from her evil glares, hissing and threats to annihilate me. It was truly cringe worthy. Eventually MN mother realized I wasn’t taking the bait and she defaulted to her regular MN mother position – ignoring, neglectful, resentful.

I saw the hypocrisy and bizarre connections in MN mother’s actions. MN sister could bash me all she wanted and no one would care, but heaven forbid MN sister bash-up something of value, like a pot or a pan, then MN mother was going to make her pay by lavishing me (the human version of the dented object) with all kinds of contrived attention. From what I remember, that was the only time MN sister ever received anything resembling “punishment” but it had no effect on her, especially since MN mother’s show closed after only one performance.  

I learned at a young age not to trust smooth talking hustler types. I learned to experience effusiveness as off-putting. I have a few other experiences in life with narcissists who tried to lure me in this manner and failed miserably, BUT I have many many more experiences with narcissists who were critical, indifferent, neglectful, completely self-absorbed and made me feel “not good enough” who succeeded with me. 

Grooming is an extremely predatory act, so it’s the very dangerous among us (the evil) who employ this tactic. Both my malignant narcissist mother and malignant narcissist sister are predators: they go out of their way to find vulnerable prey to exploit/feed on. My father is a narcissist, bordering on malignant, but he is not a predator. In fact, my father has been preyed on repeatedly by malignant narcissist women. If you think all narcissists are immune to the predatory tactics of highly malignant narcissists, think again. Being a narcissist with an addiction to narc supply is a big button.

In his book Without Conscience, The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among us, Dr. Robert. D. Hare describes how these predators seek out our buttons to press.

If you have any weak spots in your psychological makeup, a psychopath is sure to find and exploit them, leaving you hurt and bewildered. The examples below illustrate the uncanny ability of psychopaths to detect our vulnerabilities and to push our buttons.  

In an interview, one of our psychopaths, a con artist, said candidly, “When I’m on the job the first thing I do is I size you up. I look for an angle, an edge, figure out what you need and give it to you. Then it’s pay-back time, with interest. I tighten the screws.” 

The callous use of the lonely is a trademark of psychopaths. Psychopaths have no hesitation in making use of people’s need to find a purpose in their lives, or in preying on the confused, the frail, and the helpless.

One of our subject carefully studied newspaper obituaries, looking for elderly people who had just lost a spouse and who had no remaining family members. In one case, posing as a “grief counselor,” he persuaded a seventy-year-old widow to give him power of attorney over her affairs. His scheme fell apart only because an alert church minister became suspicious, checked up on the impostor, and learned that he was a convicted swindler out on parole. “She was lonely, and I was attempting to bring some joy into her life,” said our subject.

Malignant narcissist mother has been mentoring MN sister in the black art of predation her entire life. I can just imagine the dialogue during one of her “grooming” coaching sessions. MN mother blows her whistles, gets up in MN sister’s face and says firmly, “Make sure you are a part of your father’s life, especially as he gets older. You need to stay close to him because you never know who will try and take advantage of him.”

Translation: “Take advantage of your father’s vulnerabilities in old age. Make him dependent on you, take away his freedom, isolate him, control his mind and bleed him dry before he dies.”

The years MN sister has spent plotting, scheming and “grooming” N father have all been leading up to that moment where she gains absolute power and control over him – that time has come. And I’m convinced MN mother and MN sister view enslaving N father and draining the life out of him as justified as opposed to murdering him. Even in the animal kingdom the prey doesn’t need to be dead to be fed on. 

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Outwardly it would appear that MN sister is succeeding at her assignment. She obtained POWER of attorney over N father, shoved him in a tiny assisted living home, and took everything he had away from him, including his freedom and his dignity. She’s squeezed him hollow and filled him with herself. Every aspect of his life is under MN sister’s control. She watches, monitors, intercepts and blocks his communication and has him so brainwashed and psychologically feeble that he needs her to tell him what to do.

MN mother must be gloating. It’s been her life work to train her malignant daughter to imprison her father and exploit him. My parents have been divorced for 30 years, but MN mother is still out to dominate N father and control him till his last dying day. The fact that MN sister is carrying out her will is of no consequence – they (MN mother and MN sister) are one person. MN mother uses MN daughter to abuse N father, MN sister uses N father to abuse normal sister (me). I’ve watched with fascination as history has repeated itself. The same shit that went down at the end of my Narcissist parent’s marriage, is the same shit that is going down at the end of their lives. The big shark eats the smaller shark, the smaller shark eats the smallest shark, the smallest shark eats the fish.  

What’s interesting here is this: MN mother would NEVER hand control of her life over to evil frankendaughter. No way! She knows better – she trained her vile daughter to look out for number one, and win at all costs. It’s a case of the master training the pupil, and the pupil becoming more dangerous than the master. Even though MN mother and MN sister are thick as thieves, there is NO honor among malignant narcissist thieves. They don’t trust each other, and why should they? They BOTH have a strong need for psychological and physical control over others, and they both know what the other is capable of. They are both highly skilled manipulators and predators who “groom” their prey for maximum exploitation. MN mother groomed MN sister to a life of bondage, and now MN sister has imprisoned N dad and groomed him to be a puppet on her string. 

Grooming - Grooming is the predatory act of maneuvering another individual into a position that makes them more isolated, dependent, likely to trust, and more vulnerable to abusive behavior.

Description: Grooming is an insidious predatory tactic, utilized by abusers. Grooming is practiced by Narcissists, Antisocial predators, con-artists and sexual aggressors, who target and manipulate vulnerable people for exploitation.

Child grooming is the deliberate act of establishing an emotional bond with a child, to lower the child's resistance. Child grooming can result in the minor falling victim to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, or specifically, to manipulate children into participating in slave labor, prostitution, and/or the production of child pornography.

Adult grooming is correspondent to child grooming and applies to any situation where an adult is primed to allow him or herself to be exploited or abused. While it is a common assumption that grooming is only practiced on the very young, identical emotional and psychological processes are commonly used to abuse or exploit adults, the elderly, and those with compromised mental facilities.

A predator will identify and engage a victim and work to gain the target’s trust, break down defenses, and manipulate the victim until they get whatever it is they are after.

The hallmarks of grooming are overt attention, verbal seduction (flattery / ego stroking), recruitment, physical isolation, charm, gift-giving, normalizing, gaslighting, secrecy, and threats.

• Abusers who groom their victims often claim to have a special connection with the abused. The so-called connection might be emotional, intellectual, sexual, spiritual, or all of the above. This is often backed up by the predator echoing back part of the target's own background or story, altered to fit the groomer’s back-story, in order to confirm the connection.
• In order to abuse or exploit another person without fear of discovery, a sexual predator or con artist will frequently condition their intended victim to keep secrets for them. When building this bond of trust, an abuser may share seemingly personal or private information, and then swear the victim to secrecy. The victim is made to believe that they are being trusted with something of value, before being asked to share something of value with his/her abuser.
• Abusers use shared secrets to bind their victims to them. By degrees, the target is gradually lured in to revealing private information, giving up money, property or sexual favors, or permitting /engaging in inappropriate, unsafe, or illegal behaviors.
• The victim is often drawn in to being a "co-conspirator” (also known as forced teaming) with his or her abuser.
• Eventually, the bond of secrecy is nearly always reinforced with threats, shaming and guilt to keep the victim silent about his or her shared crimes or misdeeds.

Who are the victims of grooming? Men. Women. Children. Young adults. The middle-aged. The elderly. The lonely and the emotionally compromised. Those whose defenses are down. Anyone with soft boundaries. In short: There is no prototypical victim. Almost anyone can be vulnerable to grooming. Predators are practiced, and extremely good at what they do. Those who are not, tend to get caught. Those who get caught, tend to learn from their mistakes, and refine their techniques. You don’t have to be especially gullible to fall victim to grooming, but if you learn the signs, you can successfully identify a potential abuser, and avoid exploitation:

• Predators work in the shadows, and have something to hide.
• Predators claim to feel a "special connection" with their targets, even if they've only just met.
• Predators recruit co-conspirators (forced teaming) to fight their battles and do their bidding.
• Predators draw their victims in by sharing private information then swearing them to secrecy.
• Predators practice divide and conquer techniques in order to manipulate others.

Examples of Grooming:

• An individual who lures lonely or vulnerable people into a relationship in order to position themselves for monetary gain.
• An adult in a position of authority who uses their status to entice minor children into engaging in sexual activity.
• Anyone who manufactures a (false) bond of trust in order to extract promises or favors from another.

What it feels like:

Grooming can feel exhilarating – at first. The predator employs attentiveness, sensitivity, (false) empathy and plenty of positive reinforcement to seduce their victim. For their part, victims can be so enthralled with, or overwhelmed by the attention they are receiving; they will often overlook or ignore red flags that might alert them that the person who is showering them with that attention is somehow “off”.

Little by little, the abuser breaks through a victim’s natural defenses, gains trust, and manipulates or coerces the victim into doing his/her bidding. The victim finds themselves willingly handing over money or assets, engaging in inappropriate, illegal or morally ambiguous actives, or acting as a proxy for the abuser, fighting the abuser’s battles, and carrying out their will.

The victim often feels confusion, shame, guilt, remorse and disgust at his or her own participation. Equally powerful, is the panic that comes with the threat of being exposed for engaging these activities. There may also an overwhelming fear of losing the emotional bond that has been established with an abuser. The victim becomes trapped, depressed or despondent.

“The victim becomes trapped, depressed or despondent.”

"Predators recruit co-conspirators (forced teaming) to fight their battles and do their bidding.”

“Eventually, the bond of secrecy is nearly always reinforced with threats, shaming and guilt to keep the victim silent about his or her shared crimes or misdeed.”

“Predators work in the shadows, and have something to hide.”

MN sister’s relationship with her dad is identical to his marriages to cruel, greedy, controlling, manipulative, mentally deranged women. She’s like a combination of both ex-wives on steroids. The whole thing is very creepy. What is MN sister hiding? Same thing she has always been hiding – financial exploitation, that’s the socially unacceptable crime. But what’s the more insidious crime here? Elder abuse would be the obvious answer, but that’s not it. What is MN sister really hiding? I believe it’s her twisted fixation to control, dominate, and enslave another human being. MN sister is a pervert with the same psychological mindset as a serial killer or a pedophile. Absolute power over another is MN sister's secret vice. Her monkey Lloyd, though mutually parasitic, is bound to a life of captivity, and now so is my dad.  

I have watched this horror show unfold from a distance, and everything listed in the description of grooming, I have seen play out. I have to say, things are looking pretty bleak for the narcissists, maybe not at first glance, but I believe there is something at work and it’s NOT something I have any control over.

My father has been reduced to nothing, and my sister has total power over him. He is being exploited by MN sister, her flying monkey, and his ex-wife. It’s a disturbing relationship between four disturbed individuals. Whether N father realizes it or not, he has been lured into a trap and this is the most horrific position for someone who is vulnerable to be in. But vulnerability is what makes the malignant narcissist’s fangs come out. It’s at the height of the victim’s vulnerability that the MN predator goes in for the kill and wages the final assault.

It would appear he was lured and trapped by MN sister because he’s a slave to his narcissism. He craves narcissistic supply and she provides it. He’s an addict, she’s a pusher. It may even appear that he was blinded by his narcissism. I mean, did it ever occur to him that his greedy, manipulative, evil malignant daughter who HE enabled to blatantly abuse me, and who he plotted, schemed, and conspired with to betray me, wouldn't turn around and do the same thing to him? It’s the story of the frog and the scorpion. MN sister is a dangerous predator – that’s her nature. 

After 17 years of no contact with her, there was a brief period of telephone contact and during one of our conversations she remarked, “Dad has a dark side. It’s SO easy to use the power of suggestion on him.” OK. That is partly projection, but there’s also truth in that statement. It’s the case of an evil person recognizing a “dark side” in a weaker person and exploiting it for her own gain. So is it an accident that my dad handed over his life to his evil daughter, and boarded a slow boat to hell?  

In Anna V’s article Dancing With The Devil, she had this to say about adults who enter into relationships with evil:

“Peck (author of People of The Lie) asserts that adults do not accidentally end up in close relationships with evil people. He uses the term “willing thralldom.” (note the word “enthralled” is used to describe the victim’s reaction “grooming”).

Peck relates his experience with a very disturbed (and disturbing) couple -- Sarah and Hartley. In the context of this story he states:

"We do not become partners to evil by accident. As adults we are not forced by fate to become trapped by an evil power, we set the trap ourselves." pg. 118

Referring to Hartley:

"Theoretically he could have just walked away from Sarah. But he had bound himself to her by chains of laziness and dependency, and though titularly an adult, he had settled for the child's impotence. Whenever adults not at gunpoint become victims of evil it is because they have--one way or another--made Hartley's bargain." pg. 119-120

The bargain was to settle into a type of slavery because his moral laziness and dependency was a larger part of his character than not. 

"He entered into a submissive relationship with evil precisely because he was partially evil himself." (footnote pg. 118)

Anna states that adults who enter into relationships with evil have a part of them that is “comfortable” and “at home” with the evil. She goes on to say:

“It is not always possible for someone outside a relationship to know how the two parties are mutually benefiting from the relationship. Outwardly we may conclude we are seeing two opposites. We have to avoid this kind of simplistic acceptance of outward appearances when we observe a relationship between adults who have chosen to be together and who hang together tenaciously. One person may appear to be evil and the other "in thralldom" to the partner's evil. We must accept the reality they are both evil though likely not equally so.

No adult stays "in thralldom" to evil except by a choice of the will.

Don't make excuses for yourself or for others for staying in close relationship with evil people. Recognize the dynamic of symbiosis that is occurring. Unless an adult is physically being held hostage, that adult has a choice as to whether or not to stay in association with an evil character. Knowing this to be true, do not attempt to "rescue" someone who is dancing in lock-step with a narcissist. They must be avoided along with the narcissist because they are morally compromised. Whether due to laziness, psychological dependence, greed, shared power...adults stay in relationship with evil people because they choose to. They feel they have something to gain by the association. Acknowledge to yourself this reality and live accordingly.”

I believe my dad has been played, groomed, hustled and conned and used as a receptacle to contain and eject MN sister and MN mother's hatred of me. But I also believe he has chosen - despite his conscious awareness of all of their wrongdoing - to stay in collusion with the evil bitches and low-life thug monkey because it makes him feel powerful. Narcissists see kindness and compassion as weakness. So, who who do you think the narcissist is going to team up with at the end of their lives when they themselves are weak, frail and vulnerable? Remember; narcissism is about power and control and superiority and dominating and INTIMIDATING others. There's your answer. A sick, dying, immobile, vulnerable narcissist will choose to surround themselves with bullies, thugs, monkeys and parasitic minions every time. At the end of the narcissists's life, he is as morally degenerated as he will ever be, and as a result feels comfortable and "safe" around fellow moral degenerates. I would go as far to say, the anxiety and fear the narcissist has of impending death may in fact be quelled by surrounding himself with fellow abusers, exploiters, liars and the conscienceless. 

Narcissists don't want to be around "good" people when it comes time to meet their maker because that will make them feel "bad" by comparison; delusions and denial are just a temporary fix - a Band-Aid - to cover the reality of the narcissist's true self and they take a hell of a lot of energy to maintain. So when reality surfaces, what the narcissist needs more than ever is a strong hit of narcissistic supply. The amoral, parasitic lackeys are more than happy to provide it. In the end, the narcissist has only mutually parasitic relationships - they subsist on narc supply that is 100% fake while being picked clean by human vultures.   

I predict my Dad will continue to avoid me because I reflect back to him who he really is. Besides, I'm much more useful to him and his fellow abusers at a distance and as a defenseless scapegoat. I am without excuses for him and will not attempt to “rescue” him. He still has free will. He can pick up the phone and call me. The “choice” is his. Though I doubt I will ever hear from him because narcissists don't like to have their illusions shattered, especially at the end of their lives when they are running scared and working overtime to avoid reality and dodge the demon at the door.   

Dear Narcissists, 

You can't continue dancing with devil and wonder why you end up in hell.