Control Disguised as Care: The Patterns Nobody Warns You About

In my previous article Chibi Mode Activated: The Hidden Selves We Only Share With a Few, we talked about how people use a different face depending on whom they are talking to. However, what if the person uses different faces with bad intentions? That is what is discussed in the book Narcissistic Traps: Breaking Free From Abuse, Gaslighting, Trauma Bonds, and the Patterns that Keep You Stuck by Sharelle Ellis.

The book explores how abusers hide their inner nature to get their prospective victim to trust them. They pretend to be interested in their targets’ interests and strengths and then proceed to use those things against them. The scary thing is that the abuse is not always visible. It starts as off-handed comments played out as jokes, questioning your judgement briefly, and ramps up to where it becomes constant, monitoring your movements, saying they are concerned, and isolating you from friends and family because they don’t understand your relationship. They do this because they want control. Victims don’t often realize what is happening to them until they are fully in the midst of the storm.

The book is presented as a survival guide. It gives you advice on how to know if you are in a toxic romantic relationship, how to leave and protect your boundaries, and how to rebuild your life after the trauma. It doesn’t promise that the process will be easy, but that it is possible to survive. I was hesitant about reading this book. Not only was this outside my normal genre of books I tend to read, but I have never been in a romantic relationship. How would I find this book helpful? The thing about abuse is that it doesn’t just happen in romantic relationships.

I was reminded while reading the book of a friendship that I used to have in school. There were warning signs that I thought were weird at the beginning of the friendship. They knew my class schedule even though I never told them, and were always waiting for me after class. Then, they would want to spend several hours on the phone every day. I told my parents this, but they didn’t find it concerning. Then, the friend started getting mad because I had started making other friends at school. Their response to that was to badmouth me to my new friends and run them off.

I realized that I was being isolated and argued back with the person, but then they would send notes saying how lonely and depressed they were, and they didn’t want to lose my friendship. I always fell back in line even though I was finding the situation scary, because I was basically responsible for a person’s happiness. Fortunately for me, they made a pivotal mistake. We went to a religious school, so we often said prayers during class. One day, I found multiple people that I didn’t know coming up to me and asking if I was okay. After about the tenth person, I asked what was going on. I was told that my so-called friend had done a prayer solely about me being deeply troubled and needing guidance. I believe this was an attempt to shame me, but it had an opposite effect. I don’t like it when religion is used to weaponize people. I find prayers sacred, and that attempt at shame finally gave me the courage to break away.

I wish this book were around back then. It would have saved me from a manipulative person and having to start over with making friends the following year. This book can be used in any relationship you have, including friendships, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc. If you believe you are in a toxic relationship, give this a read. It can help you see the red flags in your current relationship and even help you see why previous relationships have gone wrong.