Identifying toxic/abusive people who are stealthy & complex

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I also created that topic. IMO there are two major sides to this for people dealing with issues with toxic, abusive, troublemaking people:

1. Identifying the toxically abusive people, even/especially when they make efforts to avoid easy identification. Easiest solution is whenever possible simply choosing not to include such people in our lives. Refusing to speak to such people. cutting contact, leaving social group if necessary, depending on severity perhaps moving away or seeking restraining order. Getting another job perhaps if this stuff is entrenched in your workplace.

2. Understanding their strategies: The simplest form reduction of what they do is that they create feedback systems/feedback loops that cause adverse psychological effects for the intended target. We cannot always easily avoid or otherwise remove such people from our lives so there might be situations where we'll want to understand and potentially mitigate such strategies. Maybe they're your boss and it isn't a simple matter to be able to get another job elsewhere.

I wish to counter such strategies however possible. If I am unable to leave a situation I assume that the inability to leave on my part is already known by them and is considered by them as a calculated factor. What's generally always true is that the targeted individual is viewed in a dehumanizing context therefore they can fully disregard morality.

They even seem to be here in the forum.

There are lots of people on the spectrum who are toxic, manipulative and abusive.

For example, I happened to have a crush on a guy for a long time who was also on the spectrum who was all of the above for the following reasons.
1. He graduated from a top engineering school and couldn't hold onto his two jobs in his field along with struggling to pass an interview
- Everytime I would turn around, he was talking about how his "Autism" let him down in that he couldn't pass an interview. Yet, he never told the whole story about how he thought he was above his employers because he was the smartest guy in the room
-He tried to fix other people while he didn't bother to help himself because he was he's too autistic to function
- He was only nice to me whenever he wanted something but if that wasn't the case, he ignored me and told other people that he didn't want to lead me on and that I was annoying and got on his nerves.
-He was always putting me down and criticizing me about things and then when I tried to call him out, he accused me of being "Too fragile" and that I am the one who needed to learn my lesson.

Interesting, can you link to examples? I am unaware if it would be frowned upon under the rules but if not it could be helpful for learning purposes. Studying gaslighters/abusers will make it easier to detect them in the future and in a forum setting there's the potential for discussion about it.

Specifically I view their tactics as largely being rooted in smoke & mirrors so anything we can do to dispel their illusions will be very helpful.

I have succeeding in repelling one IRL by purposely changing my behaviours due to the knowledge that I was being predicted as a result of them observing my behaviours/patterns. I speculated that they pre-plan their tactics based on these assumptions and when their assumptions were proven false it appears to have made their game fall apart. I'd say more but I think it'll just turn into an enormous wall of text that will bore people.


Do you happen to know if his "Autism" was real or not, is it possible it's entirely fabricated to be his excuse?

My thoughts are that he could simply be a gaslighter who fabricated most everything and chose "Autism" to try to further shame you. An extreme ego can also cause issues keeping a job and passing interviews as well as other things like poorly disguised Dark Triad traits. Seems to me like he has a big ego, flamboyant personality as well as possibly Dark Triad traits due to his impulse to harm others.

I've only been thinking about these sort of people recently but I think I notice that they tailor their strategies around specific targets. Like they'd tell me BS like they're scared of me cause they knew Asperger's Spectrum people who were unbelievably violent by nature and extremely dangerous. And because of this they believe ASD people are legitimate dangers to the public like as if we're all Adam Lanza.

No Preston, he is on the spectrum because he covers his ears when anyone shouts and wears earplugs. The problem is his ego because he went to this exclusive college where he got a bachelor in mechanical engineering. However, he was really mean.

For instance, he compared me to my ex-friend who I was talking about in prior posts in this thread. Basically, it was, "Well she's calmer than you are and doesn't get on my nerves even if the conversations aren't deep forms of intelligence."

Flamboyant? No not at all, but more high strung and had a personality like Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon, combined with Inuyasha.

I have known NTs that were raised thinking they were better than everyone else. These people tended to not last long in jobs and they annoyed everyone around them. These people can't handle any kind of criticism because they have been told their whole lives that they are better than everyone else. These people like to dominate everything and they don't respect the pecking order in any situation whether it be school, work, or church. They love talking about themselves constantly.

Lady Elaine- They also tend to push the buttons of others and then the other person gets annoyed at them by
1. Swearing at them
2. Sometimes hitting
3. Even kicking them out

Then it's the other person's fault.

"Look what they did to me."

Anyway, I called that guy out who I liked several times whenever he tried to run to me after getting into trouble with other people for trying to prove that he was right that everyone else was wrong.

I told him that he seemed to think he was better than everyone else along with seeming to think he was superior to him while he was just a bum living in his parents' house on his computer all the time.

It was "You don't live in my head and you are reading me wrong. Actually, I am lower functioning than you are and I have been really depressed but I know one thing, I am very smart."

Probably because they see us as a danger to ourselves and others.

I just wrote a really long reply here and lost it. I admit defeat.

I don't think it's against any rules necessarily, but there's still the pretty likely outcome of being blamed for instigating or creating drama, etc etc. Try scanning through PPR and the LD forums, there's a lot going on in those two.

This is one of those threads that deserves to be bumped every now and then. Sociopaths and serial bullies can appear anywhere, even in online ASD forums.

I just saw that they brought this up and I read what you said, the guy who I wrote about fits your description to a tee. When his parents discovered what became of their "Superstar son," I don't think they knew what to do with him. The other issue is that he didn't seem to have any good guidance.

That relationship took a big toll on my emotions