When I use the word “grooming”, I’m not referring to personal hygiene habits, rather a cautionary tale of emotional abuse inflicted in a stealth and sneaky manner.

    Grooming is a form of emotional abuse inflicted to condition and teach a person how to behave for an abusive person. It’s also about control, submission and is quite sadistic. The worst part of being groomed is most people do not even realize it’s happening to them. Yes this despicable and cowardly tactic is both stealth and sneaky. Make no mistake about it this is a form of emotional abuse.

    This emotional abuse tactic is a favorite amongst narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths but is not limited to just the personality mentally disordered.

    First off I want to tell you that if you have ever been targeted and/or abused it really was never your fault. To elaborate on that an abuser targets a person most times because they themselves are severely lacking as a person and you are not. The best way I can describe it is you are enough and the reason why someone wants and tries to make you feel like you are not enough is because they are not enough. It’s like a moth being drawn to a flame.

    So you’re probably wondering what to lookout for and how does the grooming occur. Well I can tell you from not only experience, experiences shared by others and numerous articles out there some of the more important red flags and a behavior pattern to lookout for.

    Let’s start with the red flags that will lead to the behavior pattern of grooming. The person you are dealing with will typically present themself as all the good things and well liked, but in a sense alittle too perfect and at times trying too hard to be all the good things. This does make it difficult to recognize and weed out an abusive personality.

    Down the road a bit and with more interaction with them is where their mask will start to slip. You may catch things that make you wonder and find the subtle things you start catching here and there as off or odd. But because they have put up the appearance of a good person you will ignore your slowly growing suspicions and may even feel bad for thinking it.              

    Some examples are lying about silly things, liking everything you like, needing constant or a lot of attention from both you and others, having predominantly “friends” of the opposite sex, hiding their social media friends list. Here’s my personal favorite their ex is a bad person, they were the victim and they are so heartbroken over it, yet they will disclose to you at a later date that they started dating someone new immediately after their devastating breakup. They may even return to their ex briefly and breakup with the new person. Look at the playing the victim role but also the back n forth with people. See what I mean here?

    A few other examples are going from acquaintances to an accelerated pace of them getting or trying to get close to you. Another would be an increase in communication from them straight to daily basis and multiple times a day. Another giveaway and you should find anyone who says this out loud as it can be an unusual declaration is they want to be around only “positive” people.  The reason for this is not only are they easier to manipulate due to sometimes exhibiting weak boundaries by seeing the “good” in everyone, but also because they can feed off of their energy and all the attention that will stroke an abusive personalities fragile ego. If someone who is presumed to be a positive person but catches on that something isn’t adding up and starts asking questions, that person will be perceived as an “angry” and “negative” person aka they can’t get away with abusing them. This in actuality is a “projection” of who the abusive person is themselves, because they feel shame they project their stuff at and onto you. They will also start friending and following your friends on all your social media accounts and replying to your friends comments on your posts. And both you and your friends will receive both hearts on all your photos as well as charming and overly friendly comments on both photos and posts including the recycling of emojis. This one especially is a red flag.

    All of these things are basically phase 1 you are starting to be lovebombed. When it moves to phase 2 the devaluation is where the grooming and conditioning  tactics will start to be thrown at you.

     Grooming tactics to lookout for during being devalued are ghosting, silent treatments, stonewalling, gaslighting, passive aggressiveness, disappearing acts, manipulations, cold shoulders, hot n cold, assorted mind games, triangulation to cause jealousy, actions not matching words and the grand finale is being blocked everywhere unexpectedly.

    I suggest you lookup each and every term I just shared. It doesn’t end here after the blocking weeks, months or even years later that person will return except not as the wonderful person you once knew. Also remember those friends of yours that they friended and were being overly friendly too? Well they will also serve a purpose to the abuser eventually if and when needed.  Occasionally you will get a glimpse of the “good” person and you will mainly be on the receiving end of not only hot n cold but also all the odd behaviors of the devaluation phase. It’s a constant switch between the wonderful person you once knew and this new cold person who has returned. This is intentionally done to disorient and confuse you. This is apart of the grooming and conditioning. This is all also being intentionally done to you to form a trauma bond to trap you and to bind you to the abuser.

    By doing and repeating all these things including and especially the leaving and coming back you are now being groomed and conditioned to learn how to behave for an abuser the way they want you to behave just for them and so they can take control over and of you. This is all emotional abuse.
All of it.

    Outsiders looking in on this emotional abuse that is occurring right in front of them will not recognize it, they will not see it nor what is being directly done to the real victim, unless they have experienced it themselves. And if you tell anyone who knows you both they will either be skeptical or not believe you.

   If you experience anything I’ve shared in this article or you recognize these things starting to occur run like hell as fast and as far as you can from this person.    

An important thing you need to do here is you need to block this person everywhere, go complete no contact and stick to it. This person will never change, you can’t fix nor change them. If you cave, the cycle of emotional abuse will restart over and over again and can go on for years, damaging you unless you walk away and protect yourself.