Ok so…..although I'm not a medical professional or therapist I must say that customer service prepares you for the art of reading people. And owning a business forces you to get good at it because not doing so could be detrimental to your business.
I know of many people who suffer from depression. Some express their sadness to me verbally & others attempt to hide it while I play "ignorance to said fact". I've recently had an epiphany. Some people are so severely depressed that it's ingrained in everything they do. They wake up miserable so in their mind if your outward expression of happiness is effortless, it angers them to the point of jealousy. Jealousy due to the fact that your sweetness comes to you naturally and theirs is forced. They gotta work hard to keep up that happy and/or sweet facade while you whisk through life unconsciously genuinely displaying yours by default.
What I have found is that there is a differentiation of actions in severely depressed people. It is between those who have a conscience & those who don't. In this article, I'll address the ones who don't. Oftentimes those people (without a conscience) find little spurts of joy that result from them lying &/or tricking others to get whatever they want. So they spend all day causing mischief (intentionally & unintentionally) with the goal of receiving so many little spurts of happiness that it fills up the entire day with a false sense of happiness no matter how many casualties result in the aforementioned plans. This is partly because they have surrendered to the notion of the perceived fact in which that false sense of happiness is either (1) all they've deserving of or (2) all they're capable of receiving.
The tricking doesn't always have to end in tangible results. Sometimes it can be your job position they want to trick you out of or to cause a rift in your personal relationships with others. All I know is, they find joy in "the tricking" not solely because your angry reaction is hilarious to them, but simply because their inadequacy is camouflaged in the delusion that they are smarter than you because of said trick. The reality of the situation is they're not smarter than you and they know it. They're just so engulfed in these disturbing behaviors that it's literally become their personality by default.
In my opinion a conscience is an inner voice (or feeling) of sorts letting you know if you've done something wrong. But if you by default trick everyone to get what you want, that conscience disappears (if it ever existed). Because you've convinced yourself "I gotta do what I gotta do".
Whether it's using their neighbor's car, crashing it then telling them "I didn't do it" , blaming a spouse when they were the ones caught cheating or another example is cheating on a test. By default they tell themselves "I had to do what I had to do".
So if they don't have a conscience, how do they regulate themselves? By bouncing their actions verbally off of others (via stories) and watching their reactions. So in essence they live vicariously through others' opinions of them. Thus the infamous "False self" or "mask" so many know about that results in Narcissistic traits.
I've been self-employed for over two decades. I have to study people deeply in order to know how to promptly react efficiently. One wrong reaction could dismantle my entire business structure. There are so many moments when I sit & watch people. After a while & after much research I've come to realize that I'm not encountering just plain old "crazy folk". I'm encountering people exhibiting cluster B personality disorders. To "check" these people is an art. They CAN be checked. They CAN be out talked. You CAN get them to disperse from you. It's called customer service.
So just like how them folk trick EVERYONE everywhere they go…..you have to be READY to check them everywhere you go. Sometimes "checking" is literally no reaction & only "going off" when forced to. But, be ready for that ambush. Be ready. Because contrary to public belief, they're predictable. Predictability means "EASY TO STOP".
