Hooking Prey: The Sociopath's Real Job - true love scam recovery

Sociopaths, even though you
might be calling them “narcissists”,
must hook prey.
They’re constantly baiting…
Casting a “line” in order to hook prey.

Hooking prey is a user’s full-time job, no matter if you call them a sociopath or a narcissist. They hook prey with bait. Every time they open their mouth they’re tossing bait. Pretty much everything single thing they say or do is bait.

They’re fishing, as in casting bait in order to hook prey. They must make the initial hook and then maintain the hook throughout the run of the so-called relationship.

They bait and hook prey. Here’s the kicker: just like an ordinary fisherman, they never really know if they’re going to get a bite. Baiting and hooking prey is never a sure thing. If you catch my drift there: they aren’t geniuses. And when they hook you, as much as they gloat they’re also surprised it worked.

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We Feel Like It’s Love

Though we feel we’re embarking on a relationship they are in fact doing one thing only from millisecond one: they test the success of their bait and monitor how deeply we’re reeled in.

That’s as complicated and as intimate or personal as they get.

What they need to know is if we’re still hooked, if we’re sucked in and blind to what they truly are. Are we still twisting and turning, dangling from their line? We’re the catch of the day and they take great pride in the effectiveness of their fishing trip – that pride shows up in the sociopath’s smirk.

Hooking Prey is Love Bombing, Hoovering and Gaslighting

We want them to know they can trust us above all people after the horrible childhood abuse they suffered. – They were not particularly abused, but they all tell that story. It’s useful in hooking prey.

I understand we all think we were in relationships… or maybe still are in them. Though this is normal, and we feel this because we’re normal, and since we look at the world through the eyes of normal… this is part of what keeps us hooked as prey.

Throughout the length of a true love scam, pathological users without conscience and connection to others are assessing where we stand. Where they stand in our hearts and minds.

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This is Their Normal

This is what that person you think is a narcissist is doing as well. They have zero interest or ability to love, connect or care for others. They care tremendously, only for their own safety and satisfaction.

Everything They Say Is a Hook Hidden in Bait

With every text message, Facebook message, social media post – no matter it’s content – they are busy, busy, busy hooking prey.

Throughout the arc of the scam and beyond it a sociopath – that “narcissist” you’re escaping – must be sure of where we stand in relation to them.

When they say, you’re going to divorce me, aren’t you? they’re monitoring the level of our rising awareness of how odd they are and what that means to them. They do not want any scam to end, though they know it will.

They prefer that we’re still hooked prey and are not a threat to their safety. If they could, they’d like to keep all people they’ve made use of in reserve if possible for future use.

They need to make sure most of all that we aren’t going to blow their cover or blow up their world of lies and wives and fiances and boyfriends and sources of money, sex, drugs, and whatever else they like. And here’s the thing: they are never sure if it will really work.

Sociopaths, Narcissistic Users Must Keep Tabs on Us

It’s very important that a hoovering, boomeranging hunting, bait tossing sociopath (narcissist) keep tabs on our commitment level. Our response to heir bait demonstrates their success and safety. Here’s what they’re always wanting to know:

How deeply hooked are we?
If we’re catching on to what they really are
How much time they have before it’s over
How much they can still take and get
If we’re about to expose them to others

Session for coercive control and narcissistic abuse recovery Jennifer Smith

Hoovering, Love Bombing, Baloney

They test us with things they say out of the blue. This is monitoring, they need to know if we’re still “caught” and they need to reel us back in if we’re slipping. They might one day say, you still love your ex more than you love me.

This is hooking prey… It isn’t gaslighting from our normal emotional point of view. To them, it’s merely their work; their job, and this is how they do it. They must be successful at hooking prey and keeping us hooked and it’s our emotions that hook us – along with their bizarre influence… that mysterious insidious coercive control.

Our Emotions Keep Us Hooked

If our response is, how can you say that?! I love you!! well, then we just demonstrated to them that we’re still hooked. We think they’re insecure, jealous, and they love us so much they can’t take it and are heartbroken that we might love someone else more… at the same time, we think this sounds nuts.

And so, while under the influence of the coercive control, anyone hooked gets busy to prove to them that we do love them.

We want to squelch the inexplicable (scary, weird, odd) outburst about our ex we then proceed to buy them clothes, take them to dinner, give them head, buy them a car. They learn this kind of line gets of them more of what they want – so they use it repeatedly. – Until it doesn’t elicit a favorable response.

The testament to their success in hooking prey with their bait is seen by them within our response. As another example, our tears signal their success. And that’s when we see the narcissists, the sociopath’s smirk again.

They are never, ever, ever saying something “just to make us cry”. Whenever they speak it’s to monitor how hooked we or to keep us hooked. That’s it, folks. Nothing more.

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Gaslighting is Simply Monitoring and Rehooking

When we ask questions about where they’ve been or why they were late, they deflect our probing and interrogating (often their word for it) with rage or with more promises.

In this world, there is only nice or mean to influence someone else; this is no different for the parasitic sociopath (aka narcissist for some of us).

These creatures from the dark side just simply need us to shut up and stay “in” so they can continue to take and to make use of us and get away with it.

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound, The Podcast

Our Response Lets Them Know If We’re “In” or “Out”

When we finally respond to the “you love your ex more than me” idiocy with, what are you talking about? What a weird thing to say.

…Well now they know: this doesn’t get me what I want anymore and she’s beginning to see what I am. So guess what? They change the line.

Or ramp up the anger into violence. Or make another or bigger or better promise. Nice, mean, nice mean, bait, hook, bait, hook. It’s all about themselves and their safety.

Keeping Us Spinning in Our Own Emotional Soup is How They Get the Things They Need

These narcissistic beasts test out new oddities and comments until they stumble upon the next thing that will keep us spinning and hooked.

Sometimes it’s back to sweetness, sometimes it’s the silent treatment, sometimes they take off for a few days, sometimes it’s violence.

Paradoxically, since we bore them out of their gourds – as does everything and everyone else – they sometimes force the end.

No matter how many fake tears there are in their eyes, they’re checking how hooked we are. There is no master plan. Their plan is to carry out for as long as they can covering what thye do, getting away with what htey do and making use of others. It’s all improv with a few signature tricks.

Some may be smarter than others in some sense, but the bottom line is: they simply have no conscience fueling their very simplistic and narcissistic, myopic, silly mind.

Sociopaths Learn a Few Tricks Along the Way

The doo-doo-pants-monster-freak who hijacked me one day said in complete delight, giggling and smirking: women love houses. They do anything for a house.

This was one of the odd things uttered that landed on the growing pile of odd things he did or said that gave himself away.

After all, it’s a no-brainer that anyone wants a house and a home, so not so genius. Pathological predators possess from birth a simple primal instinctive ability to realize and key in on what normal people value.

It’s critical for any sociopath’s (or narcissist’s) survival to understand what normal people want. His words were the snake-like slithering give-away the offer, the promise of a house was his go-to bait used in hooking prey.

Sociopaths (“Narcissists”) Reveal What They Are

This little tidbit of what he considered insight into women sent him into ecstasy. He’d learned a little trick. He’d inadvertently tripped into observing that women trusted him when he talked about planning their future together, which included the fulfillment of every normal human’s deep primal desire: to have a home, a house that you own.

The all-important added effect of this is usually securing themselves a home. Hooking prey is how sociopaths aka narcissists survive.

Hooking prey is what’s behind and what motivates the things we call gaslighting, love bombing, hoovering and the silent treatment. Nothing more.

Sociopaths or “Narcissists” If You’re Calling Them That – Are Simplistic

Inside their brains are two simple things: take whatever I want. And: do not get caught. So, with their bait used in hooking prey, they boldly reel out promises of a future together – or threats of losing one – or the little sighs and claims of being afraid to trust.

Male and female sociopaths are all alike so insert “she” for “he” wherever appropriate. – They’re all essentially genderless.

All this is equally motivated by their need to get what they want and need. With it, they’re hoping to discover the answer to their only concern, is this idiot getting close to finding out what I am? How much longer do I have to use her? When is it time to disappear?

I imagine you’ve experienced that their promises and their anger have the effect of bringing us deeper in. Of drawing us to them to prove how much they mean to us. To make it clear we’re on their side.

That we’re better than the last woman who betrayed them. We want them to know they can trust us above all people after the horrible childhood abuse they suffered. – They were not particularly abused, but they all tell that story. It’s useful in hooking prey.

Our Normal Adds Up to Their Dinner

Unless we realize what they truly are and what that means we are in for a long long time. We also don’t recover fully without this knowledge and wisdom. When around them we eventually feel like cr@p.

People will go through a lot of poop for people they think they love – that, my friends is normal. Relationships are the most important part of our lives.

Also – sociopaths have a ridiculous power of influence beyond the average. They want to see if we’re still under their spell. So – they go fishing.

Sociopaths Have Specific Traits

There are lists of traits describing how these characters operate. Here’s a famous such list: Dr. Robert Hare’s checklist of sociopaths’ behavior.

All of this crazy behavior is rooted in the endless, circling hamster wheel their brain filled with nothing but want, take, and fear of getting caught. Everything they do or say is motivated by the need to fulfill this perpetual grinding wheel in their heads.

They cannot function in any other way. It’s time to stop giving sociopaths so much credit as if they were brainiacs. It can seem like they’re brilliant (they aren’t).

Sociopaths Have no Conscience

Existing without a conscience allows for a lot of outrageous behavior that can seem like they had a master plan… They have no plan or motivation other than to take as much as possible, use someone for whatever they want, and get away with it.

Male and female sociopaths are all alike so insert “she” for “he” wherever appropriate. – They’re essentially genderless.

There is one significant difference though – and it’s big because it involves our children: female sociopaths use their kids as lunch money and a cash cow. As a way to gain property and have a home. Even sociopaths need somewhere to live – it’s primal to every species.

Sociopaths are Dependent on Us: We Have the Power

They only work from a mindset of “want” and “avoiding being caught” which is based on having no conscience. This makes for boldness we can’t imagine – so we think of it as intelligence – it is not.

They affect us to the degree – in part – that we take in what they say through our human emotional mind. It’s natural to take what they say as genuine and viewed through “normal”. We need to see what their real intention was amidst all their love bombing and their attempts to keep us reeled in.

Look at all the moments with the maniac as they come to and from their minds, rather than from our gorgeous, human, emotional-with-a-conscience, loving hearts and minds. Everything will fall into place. – This is how we swim free.

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.