Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Recent events here at the house have got me reading up on manipulation techniques like lying, playing the victim, and blaming. I've discovered Dr. George Simon, author of "In Sheep's Clothing" and "Character Disturbances.". The quotes below are from his blog at www.drgeorgesimon.com. More fascinating reading can be found at http://counsellingresource.com/.

"Manipulators are often quite skilled in the various ways to decieve, con, and otherwise lie.  One of the most subtle but yet effective ways to lie is lying by omission.  A very skilled manipulator might even recite a litany of very true facts but then (possibly unbeknownst to you) deliberately leave out a key detail that would shed an entirely new light on the reality of a situation.  All of this is done for the purposes of impression management and outcome manipulation."

"The problems associated with disturbed characters might be so engrained that they occur “automatically,” but the disordered character is fully conscious of them.  He knows exactly what’s going on, what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, and even why others consider his behaviors problematic.  Lying is one of the more common of his problem behaviors.  Sometimes the disordered character lies so “automatically” that he lies even when the truth would have done just fine.  That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know he’s lying.  He knows – he just does it so often and readily that he does it without even thinking about it.
   
A fair amount of the time, when disturbed characters are confronted about why they did something hurtful, they will reply:  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”  In my experience, this is most always a lie designed to manipulate and impression-manage others as well as to evade responsibility.  “I don’t know” doesn’t  really mean that the disordered character is oblivious to his motivations (i.e. has no conscious awareness of his intent).  Instead, it often means “I’ve never really thought about it;” or “I don’t want to talk about it now;” or “I don’t want to tell you because they you’ll have my number, the con game will be over, and you’ll start holding me more accountable.”