What do misbehaving toddlers, out-of-control rock stars, and sleazy online vendors all have in common? They’re all depending on the same psychological principle to keep themselves in the limelight.

Dr Simon’s series continues with the eighth of ‘ten commandments’ of character development: managing your aggressive instincts thoughtfully and constructively.

When it comes to relationships with aggressive personalities, you can never give the green light to the conductor of a locomotive that has no brakes.

This “okay, okay!” tactic is the disturbed character’s attempt to get you off their back by insinuating that they understand what you are asking and are willing to accede to it while they actually have no intention of changing their stance.

Neurotics hate to think of themselves as the injuring party and would rather carry the burden of abuse than see themselves as an abuser. Disturbed characters know this well. So, when they want to take advantage, a good one-two punch is to play the victim and then vilify the real victim.

Most of the time, when the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other party to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim, and otherwise impression-manage the real victim.

Disturbed characters often think they’re so smart, so clever, or so “special” that they can do what most others wouldn’t dream of trying and somehow get away with it. They see themselves as “legends in their own minds.”