Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Madeline Laughs
This post shared with us on Facebook from Stop Bullying in the Workplace describes exactly what a serial bully/sociopath is.
“The serial bully is a convincing, practiced liar and when called to account, will make up anything spontaneously to fit their needs at that moment. He has a Jekyll and Hyde nature – is vile, vicious and vindictive in private, but innocent and charming in front of witnesses; no one can (or wants to) believe this individual has a vindictive nature – only the current target of the serial bully’s aggression sees both sides; whilst the Jekyll side is described as “charming” and convincing enough to deceive personnel, management and a tribunal, the Hyde side is frequently described as “evil”; Hyde is the real person, Jekyll is an act.
The serial bully excels at deception and should never be underestimated in their capacity to deceive. He uses excessive charm and is always plausible and convincing when peers, superiors or others are present (charm can be used to deceive as well as to cover for lack of empathy).
He is an arrogant, haughty, high-handed know-it-all.
He is mean-spirited, officious, and often unbelievably petty.
He is mean, stingy, and financially untrustworthy.
He is greedy, selfish, a parasite and an emotional vampire.
The serial bully often fraudulently claims qualifications, experience, titles, entitlements or affiliations which are ambiguous, misleading, or bogus.
He is glib, shallow and superficial with plenty of fine words and lots of form – but there’s no substance. He is possessed of an exceptional verbal facility and will outmaneuver most people in verbal interaction, especially at times of conflict. He is often described as smooth, slippery, slimy, ingratiating, fawning, toadying, obsequious, and sycophantic. He relies on mimicry, repetition and regurgitation to convince others that he or she is both a “normal” human being and a tough dynamic manager, as in extolling the virtues of the latest management fads and pouring forth the accompanying jargon.
The serial bully is unusually skilled in being able to anticipate what people want to hear and then saying it plausibly. He cannot be trusted or relied upon
fails to fulfill commitments.
fails to fulfill commitments.
He is emotionally retarded with an arrested level of emotional development; whilst language and intellect may appear to be that of an adult, the bully displays the emotional age of a five-year-old. He is emotionally immature and emotionally untrustworthy.
The serial bully exhibits unusual and inappropriate attitudes to sexual matters, sexual behavior and bodily functions; underneath the charming exterior there are often suspicions or hints of sex discrimination and sexual harassment, perhaps also sexual dysfunction, sexual inadequacy, sexual perversion, sexual violence or sexual abuse in a relationship. He is incapable of initiating or sustaining intimacy and holds deep prejudices (eg against the opposite gender, people of a different sexual orientation, other cultures and religious beliefs, foreigners, etc – prejudiced people are unvaryingly unimaginative) but goes to great lengths to keep this prejudicial aspect of their personality secret.
The serial bully is self-opinionated and displays arrogance, audacity, a superior sense of entitlement and sense of invulnerability and untouchability. He has a deep-seated contempt of clients in contrast to his or her professed compassion.
He is a control freak and has a compulsive need to control everyone and everything you say, do, think and believe; for example, will launch an immediate personal attack attempting to restrict what you are permitted to say if you start talking knowledgeably about psychopathic personality or antisocial personality disorder in their presence – but aggressively maintains the right to talk (usually unknowledgeably) about anything they choose; serial bullies despise anyone who enables others to see through their deception and their mask of sanity displays a compulsive need to criticize whilst simultaneously refusing to value, praise and acknowledge others, their achievements, or their existence.
The serial bully shows a lack of joined-up thinking with conversation that doesn’t flow and arguments that don’t hold water. He flits from topic to topic so that you come away feeling you’ve never had a proper conversation. He refuses to be specific and never gives a straight answer. He is evasive and has a Houdini-like ability to escape accountability.
He undermines and destroys anyone who the bully perceives to be an adversary, a potential threat, or who can see through the bully’s mask. He is adept at creating conflict between those who would otherwise collate incriminating information about them. He is quick to discredit and neutralize anyone who can talk knowledgeably about antisocial or sociopathic behaviors and may pursue a vindictive vendetta against anyone who dares to hold them accountable, perhaps using others’ resources and contemptuous of the damage caused to other people and organisations in pursuance of the vendetta.
The serial bully is also quick to belittle, undermine, denigrate and discredit anyone who calls, attempts to call, or might call the bully to account, He gains gratification from denying people what they are entitled to and is highly manipulative, especially of people’s perceptions and emotions (eg guilt). He
poisons peoples’ minds by manipulating their perceptions and when called upon to share or address the needs and concerns of others, responds with impatience, irritability and aggression.
poisons peoples’ minds by manipulating their perceptions and when called upon to share or address the needs and concerns of others, responds with impatience, irritability and aggression.
He is an arrogant, haughty, high-handed know-it-all.
He often has an overwhelming, unhealthy and narcissistic attention-seeking need to portray himself as a wonderful, kind, caring and compassionate person, in contrast to his behavior and treatment of others; the bully sees nothing wrong with his behavior and chooses to remain oblivious to the discrepancy between how they like to be seen and how they are seen by others.
He is spiritually dead although may loudly profess some religious belief or affiliation.
He is mean-spirited, officious, and often unbelievably petty.
He is mean, stingy, and financially untrustworthy.
He is greedy, selfish, a parasite and an emotional vampire.
He is always a taker and never a giver.
He is convinced of his superiority and has an overbearing belief in his qualities of leadership but cannot distinguish between leadership (maturity, decisiveness, assertiveness, co-operation, trust, integrity) and bullying (immaturity, impulsiveness, aggression, manipulation, distrust, deceitfulness).
The serial bully often fraudulently claims qualifications, experience, titles, entitlements or affiliations which are ambiguous, misleading, or bogus.
He often misses the semantic meaning of language, misinterprets what is said, sometimes wrongly thinking that comments of a satirical, ironic or general negative nature apply to him or herself.
He knows the words but not the song and is constantly imposing on others a false reality made up of distortion and fabrication.
The serial bully sometimes displays a seemingly limitless demonic energy especially when engaged in attention-seeking activities or evasion of accountability.”
Related articles
- Bullied At Work (jobmarketmonitor.com)
- Bullying At Any Age Is Wrong (whatithinkblog.wordpress.com)
Oh my!! This is so dead on, I have to share it all over the place!
Oh please do! This is vital information and needs to be spread like wildfire. Thank you so much!!!
Reblogged this on One Hot Mess(age) and commented:
From my friend over next door, yet another wonderful portrayal of the sociopath, this time as seem as the serial bully. I have one caveat, not all of them are especially good with words. My sociopath was not—not at all.
Wow……..dead on. I worked with one of these people for 10 years……note the past tense and you can guess who one of her targets was.
This is my demon. Not just because I need to beware of these kinds of people, but also because I am in constant danger of being this sort of a person. There are few things I hate in myself more than falseness, officiousness and manipulative behavior.
Well, I don’t know if I would call you false or even manipulative. What I’ve observed is more like over exaggerated politeness. You don’t want to disappoint anyone so you say what they want to hear and skip the difficult reality in favor of making them like you. In the end of course this back fires when they find out and are not only disappointed but also angry and betrayed.
The fact that you feel bad or think you are doing it wrong tells me you are not a sociopath. You have a conscience. And you have feelings. Don’t be so hard on yourself, everyone makes mistakes.
That’s true…the overly polite and not letting someone know I’m checking out of the friendship has sure caused me some problems. That’s one of the reasons I have to change the way I deal with situations. The magazine/trashy talk show lady is finally on Facebook and she sent me a friend request. I blocked her. One thing I’m certain of is that friendship will never be redeemed. That situation taught me to never check out quietly. I wonder how different that would have been if I had just told her I didn’t want to be friends with her anymore.
It’s hard to say. but usually things go better if you give people an out. If they have an opportunity to bow out gracefully without conflict they may take it. If you engage their defenses and pride gets bruised then they get locked into reacting, and can’t see a way out. Maybe if you talked to her about it you could have gotten around the wall and out the door unharmed. Maybe not. I like that you are examining it, and looking for different solutions to apply if it comes up again. That is always helpful in my mind, that attitude of being open to learning better ways to do things.
Madeline and Regyna, I have been trying to express myself more genuinely to people, even if it means that I have to be more direct and less certain of my own politeness. It’s a little scary sometimes, but I find that sometimes it also brings good results.
Thank you, Regyna.
I have always found you to be very gentle with your expression of self LoCal. Let us know how your new path of expression progresses and check back for more of my own processing in how I deal with people. This has been a long journey for me, but everyday I wake up with less and less anxiety as I weed out the toxic people I’ve allowed to take up so much space in my life. It’s a good feeling :)
Thank you, Madeline. For me it’s not so much weeding toxic people out of my life as weeding out toxic thoughts out of my head. I do my best in this endeavor.
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Reblogged this on Coherent Picture Individual Differences.
Thanks for the re-blog! Cheers!