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Character Disturbance, Defective or Absent conscience, Manipulative people, Sociopaths, Psychopaths.
BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People, Their Hostile Emails, Personal Attacks and Social Media Meltdowns
by Bill Eddy. Written by president and co-founder of High Conflict Institute, Eddy created the BIFF response to protect you and your reputation by responding quickly and civilly to people who treat you rudely — while being reasonable in return. BIFF stands for Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. This little book gives over 20 examples of BIFF responses for all areas of life — plus additional tips to help you deal with high-conflict people anywhere.
Character Disturbance: The Phenomenon of Our Age
by George Simon, Jr. Any abuse victim reading this book is very likely to say “he is describing my situation!”
Coercive Control
by Evan Stark. Founder of one of America’s first battered women’s shelters, Stark shows how ‘domestic violence’ is neither primarily domestic nor necessarily violent, but a pattern of controlling behaviors more akin to terrorism and hostage-taking.
How Did We End Up Here?: Surviving and Thriving in a Character-Disordered World
by George Simon Jr. He answers questions such as: Can he (she) really change? Is there a chance for us? Should I stay or do I go? What do I do about the lies, deceit, and manipulation?
How He Gets Into Her Head: The Mind of the Male Intimate Abuser
by Don Hennessy. This book uncovers the layers of covert tactics which men employ to establish and maintain control over their intimate partner. By deepening our understand of what is going on the author suggests that we can develop a more efficient and consistent response to the issue.
How He Wins: Abusive Intimate Partners Going Free
by Don Hennessy. Excerpt from the back of the book: In this challenging book, Don Hennessy offers advice to women experiencing coercive control, and presents powerful first hand testimony from a number of these women. He pays particular attention to the impact of domestic violence on the target-woman’s wider family. He examines our practices and procedures, our attitudes and beliefs in relation to those he terms “psychefiles”, and argues that we have made few inroads in this area – either into the prevalence of male intimate abuse or in relation to the tactics that support the ability of the abuser to establish and maintain his control.
In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
by George Simon, Jr. Simon understands the mentality of the sociopath. In this book, he deals with covert abuse and its tactics.
The Judas Syndrome: Why Good People Do Awful Things
by George Simon Jr. Has a more overtly Christian tone than Simon’s other two books.
Olympia Gospel Mission Bible Studies on Domestic Abuse
This is a PDF created by Olympia Union Gospel Mission. This workbook includes ten biblical studies which focus on understanding the basic dynamics of domestic violence relationships, including verbal abuse.
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak. Researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare have long studied psychopaths. Hare, the author of Without Conscience, is a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, and Babiak is an industrial-organizational psychologist. The two came together to study how psychopaths operate in corporations, and the results were surprising.
The Sociopath Next Door
by Martha Stout. Stout introduces us to the reality that conscienceless people are far more numerous than we realize, and she helps us learn to recognize their mentality and tactics, and how we must deal with them.
Steps to Freedom: Escaping Intimate Control
by Don Hennessy. From this post: “Controlling behaviour, particularly of men towards women, is far more common in all walks of life than we have been led to believe. In this easy-to-read guide, best-selling author Don Hennessy offers practical advice to all those dealing with violent or controlling behaviour in their own lives, based on his experience of dealing with hundreds of such people in a therapeutic setting. Most important, he explains to the reader how they can throw off the shackles and live lives free from fear and intimidation.”
This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang
by Christa Brown. From the back of the book: One of TIME’s Top 10 underreported news stories of 2008, the Southern Baptist Convention’s unwillingness to protect its children deserves scrutiny. In sharing her painful history, Christa Brown shines a light on the patterns of Baptist clergy sex abuse and the collusion of Baptist leadership.
The Baptist “good ol’ boys” network is exposed as a web of power and manipulation, centralizing nearly everything except responsibility for informing congregations about predator pastors who commit unspeakable crimes and church-hop with ease.
God, Scripture and faith become the pedophiles’ weapons for gaining victims’ submission. God, Scripture, faith, hush-money, and intimidation tactics then become the church leaders weapons for silencing victims.
A must-read for anyone concerned with the safety of children and the abuse of power in evangelical churches.
Why Does He DO That: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
***IMPORTANT NOTE: While we endorse Lundy’s writings about the dynamics of domestic abuse, we do not recommend anyone attend the “healing retreats” Lundy Bancroft offers or become involved in his “Peak Living Network“. See our post, ACFJ Does Not Recommend Lundy Bancroft’s Retreats or His New Peak Living Network for more about our concerns.
by Lundy Bancroft. This book will take you far in your journey to wise up to the deceptions of abusers. Note: Bancroft’s books contains some vulgar language because he quotes abusers. An excellent review of this book can be found here.
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
by Robert Hare. Robert Hare is a leader in the field of criminal and abnormal psychology. He has designed the most reliable tool used for testing for psychopaths.
A Cry For Justice 