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.

Feigning ignorance is an effective tactic that manipulates the person confronting the behavior into having doubts about the legitimacy of the issue they’re trying to bring to the other person’s attention.

Side-stepping and misleading: rather than being accountable and responsible, what the issue-dodger and subject-changer really wants is to advance their own agenda at the expense of yours, while simultaneously managing your impression of them.

Disordered characters don’t want you to know what they’re all about or what they’re up to. Lying helps keep them one-up on you and a step ahead of you.

By habitually blaming others for his own indiscretions, the disturbed character resists modifying his problematic attitudes and behavior patterns.

Neurotics try hard not only to project a positive image, but also to do the right thing. Disordered characters know this very well. So, when the person with a disturbed character wants to manipulate a good neurotic, all they have to do is somehow convince them that they’ve done wrong or behaved in a manner they should feel ashamed of.

When he uses the tactic of minimization, the disturbed character is attempting to convince someone else that the wrongful thing he did wasn’t really as bad or as harmful as he knows it was and as he knows the other person thinks it was.