Dark Cognitive Behavioral

Dark Cognitive Behavioral Therapy How to Stealthily Use CBT Methods to Influence and Manipulate Anyone’s Mind By Michael Pace

Copyright 2017 by Make Profits Easy LLC [email protected]



Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: What is Dark CBT? Chapter 2: Cognitive Distortions, Schemas, and Self-Beliefs Chapter 3: Setting Goals and Solving Problems with CBT Chapter 4: Using Cognitive Distortions and Schemas to Your Advantage Chapter 5: Change People with Dark CBT Chapter 6: Using Dark CBT to Get People to Like You Chapter 7: Dark CBT for Relationships Chapter 8: Brainwashing with Dark CBT Chapter 9: Healing People with Dark CBT Chapter 10: Use Dark CBT to Improve Yourself Chapter 11: Use Dark CBT to Become Successful Chapter 12: Dark CBT for Parenting Conclusion

Introduction

What is Dark Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? In short, it is the most powerful mind control and brainwashing technique known to man that you can try at home. It is not some secret CIA tactic that requires mindexpanding drugs, truth serums, hypnosis, and other complicated methods. It is not some illegal method that will land you in jail. It is a simple yet incredibly powerful psychological therapy technique that you can bend to your own uses to manipulate, persuade, control, and heal yourself and others. Dark Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is based upon the popular therapy technique known as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT for short. CBT is popular because it actually works. Psychotherapists and home self-help gurus alike love it because it is an incredibly effective way to alter someone’s thinking and thus someone’s personality. CBT has been used to correct unhelpful thinking, depression, anxiety, and even character disorders. Many therapists turn to it as a go-to method for healing their patients. Recently, home CBT has exploded in popularity, and there are now phone applications and journals that people can use to change their own thinking and heal their mental ailments without even going to a therapist.

Dark CBT takes popular CBT methods and takes them to the next level. Built upon the foundation of well-known CBT methods, Dark CBT allows you to change yourself and others as you see fit. It enables you to influence peoples’ thinking to your own purposes. You can use the concepts of cognitive distortions, questioning, framing, and leading to achieve your own personal goals. Now the term “dark” may deter some people. But don’t let the name scare you. “Dark” in this case does not mean evil. “Dark CBT” simply refers to way of using CBT clandestinely and stealthily, without the knowledge or consent of others. You can use Dark CBT to manipulate and lead others in mental directions that suit your personal needs. You don't have to use Dark CBT for evil. In fact, my sincere hope is that you use it for good. However, understand that Dark CBT is very powerful and that you can destroy someone with it. Use it with caution. Dark CBT is great because it is very adaptable. You can use it to influence and persuade those around you. You can use it for brainwashing and personality alteration. You can even use it on yourself to make yourself into the person that you want to be. Dark CBT is great for healing, self-improvement, and improving the lives of your loved ones. It can make business, family, friendship, and romance much easier for you because it enables you to get people to do what you want. Once

you learn how to use Dark CBT, you will be limitless! Keep in mind that thoughts make a huge impact in emotion and action. People are ruled by their thoughts, whether they are aware of it or not. CBT (and Dark CBT) operate on the premise that changing someone’s thinking changes the person. In the following pages, you will learn how to change someone’s thinking and thus influence his moods, actions, and feelings toward you. You will learn the secrets to getting inside of peoples’ minds and changing them as you see fit. Don’t abuse this incredible power. Use it for good and use it to create the results that benefit you the best. There is absolutely no reason why you cannot get what you want from others. This is your life. You should make it what you want without guilt or shame. Often, though, other people are the only obstacles in your way to getting what you want. This book shows you how to peacefully, legally, and effectively deal with these people, removing them as obstacles from your life. You don’t have to stoop to ugly manipulation, violence, or other harmful methods that will destroy your relationships and possibly even land you in jail to get your way. You just need to use Dark CBT. Sometimes, the only one standing in the way of your success is you. You should not be your own worst enemy. You can use Dark CBT to gain power over yourself, change your thinking to be more helpful and

positive, and get rid of the insecurities or bad habits that hold you back. The problem with many self-help methods is that they do not effectively address your deep-seated thinking habits. Dark CBT, on the other hand, does. Using Dark CBT will truly enable you to change yourself and become the person whom you want to be. You will love yourself more and enjoy more success in life if you start to apply Dark CBT to yourself for self-improvement. Stop waiting for success to come to you. Stop dealing with difficult people or holding yourself back. Instead, work on becoming the most powerful and successful person alive by applying Dark CBT concepts to your life and your relationships. By the end of this book, you will know how to completely revolutionize your life, yourself, and those around you. So let’s begin by learning about the basic premises of CBT and how you can use them for your own purposes.

Chapter 1: What is Dark CBT?

To understand Dark CBT, we first must understand basic cognitive behavioral therapy and its approach to mental health and healing. Dark CBT is founded on the tried and true CBT principles employed by therapists everywhere. That is why it is guaranteed to work. Learning about CBT and then applying them as you see fit to unknowing subjects makes you very powerful. Gain a thorough understanding of how to use CBT and maybe even use it upon yourself for practice. From there, you can begin leveraging Dark CBT as a clandestine healing method or weapon on those around you. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the best and most powerful therapy techniques known to psychologists today. Therapists and psychiatrists love CBT because of its effectiveness in correcting their patients’ thinking. The name itself suggests the way CBT works: it changes behavior by addressing the subject’s cognition, or thinking. It believes that changing someone’s thinking will directly affect his behavior and mood. And countless empirical studies, therapist-patient success stories, and self-help guru clients alike all attest to its effectiveness. History of CBT

CBT was first developed by a psychologist named Aaron Beck in the 1960s. Beck noticed that his patients had internal monologues, where they spoke to themselves in the privacy of their own minds. He realized that this monologue really influenced how they processed events, made decisions, and developed emotions regarding situations. Beck also realized that people engage in a lot of automatic thoughts, which are thoughts that seem to pop into the mind uninvited and trigger an emotional response and a subsequent reaction. He began to wonder what led to these automatic thoughts and how he could correct automatic thoughts that made his patients feel bad and make poor decisions. Beck began to have his patients analyze their automatic thoughts and report them. As his patients became more conscious of their thoughts, they began to realize how these thoughts could make or break their success. Some thoughts made them make poor decisions, or drew them to untrue assumptions that made them feel bad for no reason. Other thoughts helped them overcome problems and feel better about themselves. By gaining awareness of their thoughts by reporting them verbally to Beck or writing them down throughout the day, his patients were able to gain more control over their thinking. In time, Beck was able to teach his patients to harness their thoughts and become more self-aware. He taught them to think

differently to feel better. He noticed that changes in thinking led to changes in behavior and emotions. Correcting poor thinking was what helped his patients heal faster. Since Beck’s initial observation, CBT has grown by leaps and bounds. It is now better understood and has become a major part of psychotherapy. All therapists are aware of CBT and most therapists employ it to some degree in their practice. There are many forms of CBT, but they all have the same premise and the same goal, putting them under the great Cognitive Behavioral Therapy umbrella. Now we have developed Dark CBT. Dark CBT operates on the same principles as CBT. However, it is more clandestine. Rather than using CBT on yourself or on a willing psychotherapy patient, Dark CBT is something that you can use on anyone without their awareness. You are able to apply CBT concepts to change someone’s thinking to suit your needs. You can also use it on yourself, with an emphasis on becoming successful and achieving what you want in life. Dark CBT goes beyond simple healing and instead gives you the power to shape your life and your relationships as you desire. Your interest in using Dark CBT may be purely altruistic, as you seek to help others who won’t help themselves. Or you may have a more nefarious interest in using it to get your way and to manipulate others.

How you use Dark CBT is up to you entirely, but the wealth of opportunity that Dark CBT provides you with is astounding. Dark CBT is a relatively new method. It has not been applied to many study groups or researched extensively. Therefore, there is room for growth and experimentation in Dark CBT. As you use the methods in this book, you may find new applications or new ways of performing Dark CBT that are previously unheard of. This is a new field that you can certainly expand and make your own. Supplement your Dark CBT with real CBT methods and experiment with trial and error. You may just find your own type of therapy that works really well for you, based off of the incredible methods included in this book and in basic CBT. The Basics of How CBT Works: CBT in a Nutshell In this section, we’ll go over CBT in a nutshell. We will go into much more detail in the following chapters. Thoughts are the most important function of the human brain. Thoughts drive emotions and emotions drive actions. Even people who claim that they have control over their minds or feel no emotion actually do in their subconscious minds. People often do not realize how the smallest thought, perhaps a fleeting automatic thought that they are barely aware of, can affect their entire mood and how they perceive a situation and decide to act. Since thoughts are so important and play such

a huge role in someone’s life, it is essential to make sure that thoughts are healthy and helpful. Bad thoughts can be incredibly detrimental to someone’s success. Aaron Beck found that his patients would think fleeting thoughts such as, “Beck is very quiet. He must be mad at me.” This single thought would cause them to get nervous and to even refuse to disclose everything with him, making therapy difficult and less helpful. Most often, he wasn’t even angry with the patients who thought this. Their automatic thoughts caused them to make decisions based on a simple assumption that was incorrect. These fleeting thoughts had lasting consequences, however, since they made the patients act in certain ways that influenced how successful therapy sessions were. Consider this on the grand scale. If you have a lot of detrimental automatic thoughts flying through your brain throughout the day, you naturally will act out in unhelpful ways. You can create a lot of lasting problems by thinking in a way that is not helpful in your current situation. CBT seeks to address that issue and make you think in ways that are healthier so that you create fewer problems for yourself and solve the problems that you already have in life. The basic premise of CBT is to challenge a subject’s thoughts about a situation, person, or thing. When the subject begins to see that his

thinking is not helpful, he will then be taught new thinking styles that are more conducive to his goals. He learns to apply these new thinking styles until he breaks old thinking habits and develops a new way of looking at the world. This new style of thinking will help him feel better and tackle problems in a more efficient manner. CBT believes that people tend to engage in cognitive distortions, which are erroneous ways of looking at the world and handling problems. We will go over what these cognitive distortions are and how they are detrimental to one’s success and mental health in the next chapter. It is very important to identify when a subject is using a cognitive distortion and correcting that distortion with a healthy form of thinking to bring about change. Distortions are essentially bad habits that a subject must break in order to handle life in a more helpful way. CBT also believes that people tend to think in unhelpful ways because of schemas, or self-beliefs, that they hold at the core of their identity. These schemas are often developed in childhood and are so much a part of one’s identity that they may appear hidden. But they are always lurking in a subject’s subconscious, forming his thinking and making him behave in certain ways. Schemas are often responsible for negative thought habits and even psychiatric conditions. It is possible to isolate, identify, and change these schemas that are not helpful or

healthy. One can replace negative schemas with positive beliefs that lead them to greater success and happiness. Usually, CBT is short-term. This means that the CBT therapist likes to focus on a single goal at a time. One goal at a time makes it easier for subjects to achieve success and it avoids overwhelming a subject. Often, while working on one goal, other issues will appear that need to be addressed, creating more goals for the therapist and the subject to set and tackle later on. It is like a Domino effect, creating ripples of change throughout the subject’s being and life. He will find that once he completes one goal, other goals are easier to achieve. He may also accomplish multiple goals at once just by defeating one ugly cognitive distortion habit that he holds or eliminating a schema that holds him back in life and causes him to hate himself. Typically, in a CBT session, the subject sets goals for selfimprovement and life betterment. Once a goal is completed, the subject has learned valuable skills to apply to other goals as they become necessary for his success. Over time, CBT becomes a healthy habit. The subject will continue to engage in the helpful thinking taught by CBT until it is simply how he thinks all of the time. He will change his schemas so that he believes the best about himself and feels content with who he is as a person. With time, CBT thinking can replace more unhealthy styles

of thinking and negative self-beliefs completely. When the subject successfully adjusts his thinking and his self-beliefs, he is able to solve his problems in a healthy and effective way, and to achieve success in all of his goals. Naturally his confidence will grow from the small wins he achieves in life and he will feel better about himself. This can cause his mental illness symptoms to evaporate and his happiness and contentment in life to increase exponentially. He can make huge, positive changes. It is also possible to achieve the opposite effect with Dark CBT. You can cripple someone’s personality and make him create problems for himself by teaching him to adopt cognitive distortions and negative schemas over time. You can essentially train him to destroy himself. This is the evil, malignant side of Dark CBT. While this side of Dark CBT is certainly useful, it should not be abused. You don’t want to actively ruin the lives of others by teaching them to defeat themselves with bad thinking and poor self-esteem. Nevertheless, Dark CBT’s dark side can be a helpful weapon in brainwashing and psychological warfare. Why Use CBT? There has been much success using CBT to treat difficulties in people’s lives, ranging from depression to alcoholism to drug dependency to relationship problems. It can help people quit bad habits and feel

better about themselves. It can also help people learn how to cope with the symptoms of their mental ailments in order to feel better. Even people who are not mentally ill can benefit from using CBT thought processes to tackle challenging problems in their lives, such as marriage difficulties, problems with communication, anger management issues, and even financial struggles. The great thing about CBT is that it is possible to use on yourself. With the help of a CBT journal, you can document your thoughts and emotional reactions to events in your life or emotional wounds that you are trying to overcome or bad habits that you are trying to break free of. Then, you ask yourself questions that lead you to changing how you look at the situation, wound, or habit. You write down your new mental approach and new emotions now that you are using different thinking, and you will notice a drastic improvement in your emotions and outlook on life. Suddenly, you won’t have so many difficulties in life and your problems will become so easy to solve that they will practically disappear before your eyes. Dark CBT is incredibly useful for two reasons. The first is that Dark CBT is focused on personal gains and success. Rather than just healing your annoying thinking habits, you learn to become a giant success at anything that you wish. You can make yourself invincible if you teach

yourself to believe that you are capable of anything. You can also create a monster by teaching someone else to feel the same way. The second is that Dark CBT is sneaky. So even if someone is not interested in changing his thinking, you can still use Dark CBT on him to achieve the results that you desire. You will enjoy success and he won’t even know what has happened to him. You can fix people who refuse to get help or change people who stand in your way. No one will guess what you are really doing. You simply seem to be an interested friend or loved one, trying to help someone think more realistically or positively. What Separates Dark CBT from Regular CBT? We already talked about this a little bit. But we want to stress that Dark CBT is the same as regular CBT. Its uses and applications are a little different, however. That is the only thing that separates the two types of CBT. Regular CBT is used in therapy or by individuals who are actively interested in changing their thinking. People use CBT knowingly and willingly. Their desire to change can make CBT very effective. You will find that you can use CBT on yourself to correct your problems, or you can visit a therapist who will set goals for you and help you adjust your thinking. The entire process is transparent and known to all parties. Dark CBT is more opaque, hidden by a veil of subterfuge. The

subject of Dark CBT most likely is not aware of what is going on. Dark CBT is effective because it is subliminal and it makes someone think that there is something wrong with him so that he strives to change it. You never reveal that you are the therapist here. You are also never asked to perform Dark CBT on anyone. This can be unethical, but again, you are using Dark CBT at your own risk. Dark CBT is not evil in and of itself. It can be used for evil, but that is your call. The altruistic and positive applications of Dark CBT can be especially useful if you choose to make someone better through Dark CBT. You can help people who can’t help themselves and who are resistant to getting help. You also create your own success, furthering your own goals and getting ahead in life. You don’t have to become a monster and use Dark CBT to hurt people in order to gain from it. In fact, using Dark CBT as a way to help others can really improve your own life because it will heal your relationships and make people like you more. People will associate you with feeling better and liking themselves more, so they will want to spend more time around you. And everyone knows that being liked by people gets you what you want. Even if you do choose to use the darker applications for Dark CBT, you won’t ever get caught. People will not be aware of what you are doing. Therefore, you won’t hurt your subjects or destroy relationships. You also

won’t get into trouble because you are not doing anything illegal.

Chapter 2: Cognitive Distortions, Schemas, and Self-Beliefs

The topics of this chapter are what make up the core of CBT. Cognitive distortions and schemas are two things that you must know all about in order to start effectively using Dark CBT. Once you understand different cognitive distortions and schemas, you can start figuring out how to apply that knowledge to your clandestine use of Dark CBT on others. You can also start using it to improve yourself and increasing your chances of success in life. Schemas Schemas are underlying beliefs about one’s self that affect how someone views the world and reacts to situations. These beliefs often drive someone’s perspective and behavior. Someone’s attitude and actions are often based on things that he believes about himself. These beliefs often develop early in childhood and become deeply rooted in someone’s psyche. They are stubborn and not easy to remove. They can also create a lot of issues if they are not healthy. Unfortunately, most people have at least one unhealthy schema that causes them endless life problems. The problems caused by schemas cannot be solved until the

schema itself is addressed. The interesting thing about schemas is that people are fiercely defensive of them. A subject may not even be aware of his schemas, yet his brain is aware of them. His brain will do anything to prevent these schemas from being challenged. Since the brain relies on these schemas for its operation and identity, it likes having them around. Without them, the brain does not have a guide for how it should act. So even if a schema is unhealthy and contributes to life problems, the brain still holds into it passionately. The brain even seeks supporting evidence and warps it to keep a schema going. Let’s say that someone believes a schema that he does not deserve happiness because whenever he is happy something bad happens. This schema is totally unreasonable because happiness is obviously not the direct cause of bad things happening to him. Nevertheless, his brain relies on that schema to form its identity. Whenever a situation arises that may lead to the subject’s happiness, the brain makes a decision to keep the subject unhappy. This is because the brain is used to being unhappy and is uncertain of how to handle happiness. It believes that it is protecting itself from bad things happening by keeping the subject miserable. Every time something bad happens in his life, his brain uses that as a confirmation that the schema is protecting the subject and it

feeds the schema. Here’s another example. A woman thinks that no one will love her because she is gross and fat. That belief is caused by a schema created by rejection by her parents and perhaps a bad experience when she first started dating. Now she is secretly afraid of being hurt by love, so she uses her weight as an excuse to never pursue love. Whenever someone rejects her, her brain tells her that it is because of her weight, even if her weight has nothing to do with it. When she walks by a group of people and they start laughing at a private joke, she assumes they are laughing at how fat she is. She teaches herself to believe that she is undesirable and un-datable because of her weight. She may also cling to her weight and overeat in order to continue to be able to make this excuse and protect herself from that scary thing called love. Drug addicts are perhaps some of the most schema-addled people in existence. They have a variety of schemas that keep them miserable. They use drugs to numb the pain caused by these schemas, but their drug use also deepens their self-hatred as they alienate themselves, push away their loved ones by stealing money from them, make bad friends who don’t love them, and fail at life in every aspect. They look to drugs to help them when really drugs are only deepening the problem. Most likely, drug addicts believe that they are unlovable because of abuse, rejection,

and exploitation or molestation that they experienced as children and so they are eternally lonely. They think that drugs help them connect with others, since it is easy to make fake friends in the drug lifestyle. They also believe that they can protect their hearts from rejection if they rip people off for money to get their fixes, and so they drive away their loved ones and don’t appear to be guilty at all. For this reason, schemas become stronger and stronger over the years. People work so hard to keep their schemas alive and reject all evidence that their schemas are false. Yet their schemas cause them more and more problems. Once people start to address their schemas and let them go, they will feel scared, but they will also make huge advancements in their well-being and happiness. Let’s explore some common schemas that many people suffer: Mistrust/Abuse In this schema, the subject was probably abused as a child and may still be abused as an adult. He refuses to see how others can help him. He assumes that everyone is unstable and out to hurt him. He can’t form trusting relationships and he panics when he gets close to someone. Everything that people do, he perceives as abuse. Forming trusting, healthy relationships is hard for him because he does not believe others will stick around.

Abandonment/Instability This schema is often caused by lack of parental support and affection. He expects that others will abuse, shame, or humiliate him in some way. He is terrified of being abandoned, causing him to be overly clingy and insecure and even jealous. When others hurt him, he believes that it was intentional, even if it was accidental. He may also believe that he is destined to always get the bad things in life or to always attract bad people into his life. Defectiveness/Shame In this schema, the subject thinks that he is somehow defective and incapable of being loved or wanted by others. He is haunted by a sense of shame just for being alive. He may try to make up for this by being overly confident or narcissistic. He is often hypersensitive to criticism and very defensive because he thinks that if his inferiority is exposed, no one will love him. He may strive to appear perfect. Emotional Deprivation This schema makes the subject feel as if no one can ever meet his emotional needs, so he is quick to give up on others. He thinks that people won’t be able to meet his needs in emotional support, protection, or understanding. He thinks that no one can understand him. He often isolates himself because he thinks others can’t handle him and he may

think of himself as a needy mess or a complicated person. Social Isolation A subject with the social isolation schema believes that he is too different from others to ever fit in. He is often isolated and alone and doesn’t belong to any groups. He doesn’t have many friends. He avoids close relationships because he feels they will fall apart because he is unable to be around others. Dependence and Incompetence People who are dependent have no sense of independence and rely too much on others. They fear that they cannot care for themselves and that they are incompetent. They may have had helicopter parents who never gave them space to do things on their own, so now they are scared and needy. Vulnerability to Harm or Illness This schema is often the underlying cause of hypochondria. It may have been brought about by an overprotective parent. This subject thinks that he is extremely vulnerable and is terrified of getting hurt or sick. He fears death and treats the slightest injury like a severe incident. He is afraid of getting sick or hurt so he avoids a lot of great opportunities in life. He may also be paralyzed by fear that a catastrophe or disaster will

strike at any time and he obsesses over and over-prepares for terrible events that will probably never happen. Failure to Achieve This person think that he cannot get anything right and that he is prone to failure. He won’t take chances. The slightest failure upsets him because it reinforces his belief, so he might not even bother to try to succeed at anything. Probably his role models were too harsh when he was little, making him feel that he is not good at anything. Now he doesn’t believe in his own abilities and often appears helpless or powerless. He lacks motivation and strength to venture out of his comfort zone. Entitlement/Grandiosity An entitled subject believes that the world owes him something. When he doesn’t get it, he throws a fit. He doesn’t go after what he wants and he doesn’t work hard; instead, he expects the universe and other people to give him what he wants. He also believes that he is superior to others and can do whatever he wants and lives above the rules. When reality slaps him in the face, he may get violent. Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self A person with this schema has never been able to be on his own to

make his own decisions and find his own source of emotional fulfillment. He is overly attached to someone, such as his parents or significant other, and relies on them for all emotional support, decision making, and validation. He can’t be alone because he feels that he can’t survive without someone else. He is prone to co-dependent relationships and allowing himself to be abused and controlled. Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline This person fears his own inability to control himself. He may be impulsive and prone to addictions. He doesn’t think that he can ever get well because he can’t control his impulses and he doesn’t even try. He will do anything to avoid discomfort and won’t take control of his own emotional pain or problems. Probably this schema started because he was not taught how to exercise impulse control and solve his own problems as a child. Subjugation In this schema, someone surrenders his control to others and feels coerced by the smallest things. He is terrified of displeasing others, most likely because he suffered severe consequences for displeasing others when he was a child. He will suppress his own needs for others so as not to make other people angry. He is easy to control and manipulate, and will let others take advantage of him. However, in his heart, he feels that

this is wrong and he will let his anger build up until he snaps. Then, watch out. He might get violent because of the sheer volume of suppressed emotions pouring out of him. Self-Sacrifice This person was probably required to make a lot of sacrifices as a child and was never taught to set limits or protect his assets. Now he gives himself up to others at his own expense and allows himself to take the short end of the stick in life. He thinks that others will only like him if he goes out of his way to help them or give things to them. He lets himself be used for the “greater good,” even if he is doing nothing but hurting himself. He is very empathetic and hates seeing other people in pain, so he tries his hardest to help everyone and takes on the world’s problems without tending to his own. He may be viewed as needy because he has to please everyone and help everyone at all times. Emotional Inhibition This person is constantly ashamed and hates the disapproval of others or failure, so he inhibits everything. He is not good at showing emotion because he probably never learned how or was punished for being emotional as a child. He strives to appear stone cold and can’t give love and affection easily. He won’t do spontaneous things out of fear that it will not go well. He bites his tongue a lot and doesn’t communicate

well. Often people can’t get close to him because he is so inhibited and uptight. Pessimism A pessimistic person believes that life is crap and will always be crap. He takes a negative view of everything to protect himself from disappointment. He thinks that optimism is for pansies and he thinks that pessimism will protect his feelings. Being around him makes you feel gloomy and depressed. He dwells on his problems and feels that there is no hope, so he never tries to further himself or fix the things that are wrong in his life. He believes that if he treats others harshly, they will do what he wants and never fail. Instead, he tends to drive people away or make people scared of him and he earns a lot of enemies in his life. Approval-Seeking The brownnoser in your office is most likely a sufferer of this schema. This type of person thrives on the approval of others and will bend over backward for validation and praise. He bases his life on what others think and won’t take risks that may earn him disapproval. He is dependent and needy for authority and requires constant approval to thrive. He may be narcissistic, bent on getting the approval of others and impressing others at all times. Perfectionism/ Hyper-criticalness

This person is perfect to a fault. He believes that if he isn’t perfect, the world will come crashing down. He criticizes himself harshly, often in the same voice that his parents or other adult role models used on him as a child. He is never happy with himself or what he does and he won’t give up. He is often seen fixing things that aren’t broken because they do not meet his exacting standards. He may be overly critical and have unreasonable expectations of others, too, holding people to the same standards that he holds himself. When people disappoint him, he is ruthless and mean in his criticism. Punitiveness Dictators and prison wardens are often sufferers of this schema. A punitive person believes that harsh punishment is deserved for any and all failings and flaws. He is unforgiving and harsh and totally lacks empathy. He will come down on people with a vengeance and appears mean and heartless. Underlying Assumptions An underlying assumption drives how someone approaches a situation. Assumptions may or may not be true; usually they are not. Yet people treat their underlying assumptions as if they are holy testaments that they must never break. They make a lot of mistakes when they base their behavior or decisions on underlying assumptions.

There are no set underlying assumptions. You simply must get to know a person well to figure out what assumptions he is operating off of. Underlying assumptions vary from person to person and situation to situation. For example, someone might have the underlying assumption that you don’t like him because you didn’t say hi to him at an event where you saw each other. Now he acts very stiff around you, giving you the impression that he doesn’t like you. He avoids you and fails to make a valuable connection with you. He may even act out at you or yell at you because he is so full of frustration because of his assumption. When he is offered a partnership with you at work, he turns it down, or he behaves nervously and therefore inhibits himself and doesn’t perform well on the project you two have together. Irrational Beliefs An irrational belief is a little different from a schema, but it works in the same way. Basically, an irrational belief is an erroneous belief about life, other people, or one’s self that a person clings to for dear life. He bases his actions and decisions on this irrational belief. There are countless irrational beliefs. For instance, someone might be a racist and holds the irrational belief that foreign immigrants are dangerous. Therefore, he refuses to speak to immigrants, will not hire

them in his company, and may even act out violently toward immigrants. His viewpoint is so biased that he misses out on great friends, workers, and allies by refusing to associate with foreigners. He may even commit hate crimes that land him in prison. A woman might have the irrational belief that rain is bad for her health. So she won’t go outside when it is raining, even in the case of an emergency. She plans her whole schedule around the weather, meaning that she misses many important events and appointments just because of rain. She may refuse to be there for her daughter’s labor or graduation just because it is raining, so she hurts and drives away her family. A man might have the irrational belief that anything good that happens to him will quickly turn bad. As a result, he turns down great job opportunities, won’t buy a nice house, and refuses to acknowledge the positives in his life. He is always in a depressed mood. Other people don’t like him because he is so miserable and depressing to be around. Irrational beliefs drive people to do things that are not founded on any real evidence. There is no reason that their beliefs are true. Yet people will cling to these beliefs and work their lives around them. Cognitive Distortions Cognitive distortions are common thinking habits that many people buy into. These thinking habits are called distortions because they are

examples of distorted, incorrect thinking. Thinking along these lines can create all sorts of problems for people. CBT works to teach people not to adopt cognitive distortions but to instead look at the world in healthier ways. Black and White Thinking Everything is great. Everything is horrible. People with depression often engage in this kind of thinking. Either they are gloomy and fail to see the good side of things, or they set themselves for disappointment by assuming that nothing bad will happen. They fail to take a balanced view of life. Psychologists advise people to see life in shades of gray and to acknowledge that there is both good and bad to every situation, person, and thing. Seeing both the pros and cons can help someone feel better. Pessimism This is a dark way of thinking where everything is bad. People with a pessimistic schema will probably have this cognitive distortion. Pessimism makes someone unpleasant to be around. It also prevents someone from taking on challenges or being encouraging and supportive. Dwelling Instead of focusing on solving problems or letting go of what cannot be changed, this person dwells on his problems. He makes himself

miserable by obsessing over what is wrong in life. He is generally helpless and antagonistic to himself or others. Learning to solve his problems would be helpful for him. Discounting the Positive Someone who discounts the positive refuses to admit that there are good things in life. When you present him with something positive, he finds a way to make it negative. He is probably afraid of being happy because of whatever schema he holds onto, such as pessimism. Teaching someone to be grateful and to notice the good in life is helpful here. Discounting the Present The present may be great, but someone is focused on how bad the past was. Or he focuses too much on the future. He fails to see that what he needs in life is right here, in front of him. He overlooks a lot of opportunities and is not proactive because he is not based in the present. Teaching him to stay grounded in the present with mindfulness can be helpful. Assuming We are all guilty of this. A person who assumes will jump to conclusions. Then suddenly he’s upset and you have no idea why, or he makes a snap decision based on no evidence. Assuming is never good.

One should gather more evidence before reaching any sort of conclusion or decision. Overgeneralizing A person who overgeneralizes thinks that everyone and everything is the same, based on some small past interaction that he had with someone or something. He refuses to see that things can change or be different. He does not base his decisions on the current situation, but rather on what he assumes to be true based on the past. As a result, he alienates a lot of people and makes mistakes by refusing to let life guide him. He needs to realize that words like “everything,” “everyone,” “always,” and “never” are unhealthy and that life can vary. Catastrophizing A person who catastrophizes will make a mountain out of a molehill. He will freak out over a small thing and act like it is the end of the world. Catastrophizing often leads to stress and mental disorders like anxiety or panic disorder. Learning to look at situations and evaluate how serious they really are is a helpful skill to end this kind of thinking. Personalization A person who does this thinks that everything is about him. When someone says something, he assumes that it is a personal attack on him.

He reads too much into others’ body language and eye contact or lack thereof. He also compares himself to others constantly and is never content because he is not like others. Most likely, he is an approval seeker or a perfectionist and he may suffer from paranoia. He needs to learn to validate himself and he needs to realize that maybe other people aren’t even thinking about him. Fallacy of Fairness A person who thinks he can judge what is fair in life is sure to be constantly disappointed. He will fight for what he thinks is right and when it doesn’t work out, he gets extremely touchy and upset. Everything will seem “unfair” to him and he might pout like a little child when things don’t work out the way that he thinks they should. Control Fallacies There are two control fallacy: the fallacy of external control and the fallacy of internal control. A person who feels externally controlled believes that he is the hapless victim of fate and others’ decisions. He is powerless and doesn’t take control when he should. He should learn that he has more power and can solve problems on his own. A person who feels internally controlled believes that everything is at his control and that he is responsible for everything that goes wrong. He puts undue pressure on himself. He needs to learn that some things in life happen

beyond his control and he just has to accept those things. Blaming A person who blames others for his problems and pain never takes responsibility for them. He is irate at the world for treating him unfairly and he plays the victim all of the time. He never realizes that he is the key to his own happiness. On the flip side, he may blame himself for all of his misery and think that he is defective and unable to ever succeed. He may have a defective schema, or a schema of failure. He needs to believe in his own goodness and abilities more and turn to others for help more. When someone hurts him, he shouldn’t blame himself for being stupid enough to let that person into his life, but instead he should get mad at the person who inflicted pain on him. Should Thinking Everyone has an idea about how life should be and how things should go. Many people fall into the habit of getting upset because things are not as they should be. Others may disagree with them on their ideas of how things should go, which angers them and creates conflict and relationship problems. One should let go of “should.” Instead, he needs to accept life as it is and work with what he has to make things right to his satisfaction. Sometimes you can’t get your way so it’s time to let go and move on.

Global Labeling This is the cognitive distortion where someone makes an assumption about himself based on one or two small experiences that he has in the world. For instance, if he fails at a business venture, he will label himself “a giant failure” and he will think that everyone thinks about him. He will hate himself and bring himself down. He also won’t take risks because of the label that he operates under. For instance, if someone labels himself a loser because of a few humiliating incidents in high school, he will believe that and he will refuse to approach that pretty woman who might become his wife. He needs to learn that the world probably doesn’t judge him as harshly as he judges himself and that a few experiences does not indicate what the world thinks of him. Fallacy of Change A manipulator will buy into this fallacy. He believes that he can change people as he sees fit if he simply works them the right way. His happiness is dependent on how others act, so he seeks to change people. He must learn that people have free will and he must work with them rather than against them. Emotional Reasoning Someone who engages in emotional reasoning assumes that his feelings are always true. For instance, if he feels like he is ugly, he

assumes that he is ugly. He then acts on this belief and makes decisions based on his emotions rather than logic. Understanding that emotions can be false and fleeting and that logic is a far more accurate thing to base life off of is essential for success and higher self-esteem. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy A person with an entitlement schema will probably engage in this fallacy. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy is where one expects his hard work and his every altruistic act to pay off with great rewards. When he doesn’t get a reward for what he does, he feels cheated and bitter. He has a sense of entitlement to being thanked or blessed because he does the right thing. Always Being Right A punitive person or a perfectionist may buy into this cognitive distortion. This is where one always thinks that he is in the right. His every word is true, his every action is justified, and he is never to blame for anything. He fails to see where he messes up, so he can’t improve himself. He also acts hyper sensitively to criticism and hates being told that he is wrong. He would rather lose his significant other than admit to being wrong and apologize, so he creates a lot of enemies and bad relationships.

Chapter 3: Setting Goals and Solving Problems with CBT

So now that you know all about schemas and cognitive distortions, as well as underlying assumptions and irrational beliefs that drive behavior, you are in a great position to begin changing these unhealthy beliefs and thought processes. You can change your own thinking or the thinking of others. You can do it honestly and in the open, or you can do it on the sly. Changing thinking by manipulating one’s schemas and cognitive distortions is the cornerstone of Dark CBT. The main goal to CBT is to make someone change their thinking. People often are not capable of doing this consciously. They need some sort of help. The most common way people get this help is by going to therapy. Some people choose to skip the therapist and help themselves by using a CBT journal and outlined questions to guide themselves in thinking in healthier ways. Either way, to make CBT work, it is necessary to use some sort of tool to get someone to see how he is thinking improperly and how he can change his thinking to solve his problems and feel happier. In Dark CBT, you are that tool. You are a hidden, unknown

therapist, having secret sessions with your patient. You are using talk therapy but he does not know that he is in for a session. Using conversation or even writing, you can communicate with him in a way that teaches him to think differently and believe different things about himself. Set a Goal Goals are the key to CBT. CBT therapists use goals to encourage their patients to make changes in small steps. Each goal that a client achieves boosts his confidence and snowballs into more change. Letting people fix their own problems and reap their own rewards is a great way to teach them to continue to progressively fix their issues and achieve what they want in life. In Dark CBT, you should set a clear goal for your subject. Your subject should not know about this goal. This goal should be something important that you want. But it should also be realistic and achievable. It can be useful to break big goals down into smaller parts to increase your subject’s chances of completing them. Then you want to work on achieving the goal each day. Never give up or slack off on it. In Dark CBT, it is crucial to keep progress moving forward. Failing to do so can make you lose a lot, if not all, of your progress. People tend to build upon their previous successes, so you want

to create a lot of momentum for your subject and keep pushing him toward the goal that you have set for him. Questioning The best way to get someone to want to change his thinking is to make him doubt the validity or helpfulness of his current thinking. And the best way to do this is to ask him questions that in turn make him start questioning what he believes or says. Usually, just by asking “Really?” in a doubtful way, you make him start to doubt himself. He may get defensive, but you have just planted the seed of doubt in his mind. You have started to get the ball rolling just by making him wonder if the way he is thinking is appropriate. From there, you want to lead him on a line of questions that really make him start to question his thinking. Influence him to take on different types of thinking. Usually, if you are healing someone, you want to have him replace a cognitive distortion with a different typing of thinking. But if you want to be more manipulative or harmful, you might teach him to replace a positive style of thinking with a more negative cognitive distortion. These instructions may seem vague so we will apply them to some real-life applications. Your subject is guilty of frequent overgeneralizations and lives a very sheltered, secluded life because he

holds the same negative views about everyone. He tends to exaggerate things, exclaiming, “Everything is horrible!” So you challenge his thinking by simply saying, “Is everything really horrible?” When he says yes, you can go on to say, “That’s pretty bad, if everything is horrible. I’m sure there must be something that is going well in your life.” Just these few sentences can make him shift his thinking. Your subject tends to catastrophize. So you ask him, “Do you really think that this will matter in a few days, a few months, or even a year?” He will start to calm down as you force him to realize that an issue is probably not as huge as he makes it in his mind. Studying how therapists talk is a great way to learn how to use Dark CBT. You want to be like a therapist. Don’t give someone explicit advice or tell them what you think of their lives and problems. Don’t offer any personal insight or personal stories. Simply focus on them by asking a series of questions designed to make them come to their own conclusions. You want to guide them through questions. Remember that CBT takes time. So you might make progress on one small thing, only to notice your subject slipping back into the same thinking next time. It takes a while for CBT to stick and actually change a person’s personality. But we cover making changes that stick more in the chapter on brainwashing.

Journal Thought review is an integral part of CBT. A CBT journal is a powerful tool that individuals can use to identify their cognitive distortions or schemas, and then work them out and replace them with more positive thinking. You can use a journal to create a thought review and keep track of every step of the process or review it later to cement the lesson. CBT therapists often have their clients use these journals or workbooks to achieve their CBT goals. You can find thousands templates and worksheets available online for free that you can use as a basis for how you organize a CBT journal. Then you can use these templates to help yourself or another person. Using a template or workbook of some sort with another person is not very stealthy though, is it? If your subject is willing to work on his thinking with your guidance, then that is great. You two can collaborate together to improve his thinking and get better. That is basic CBT, not Dark CBT. It is very effective and can really help you bond with someone as you effect change in his thinking style. You can also use these templates or workbooks on yourself to change your own thinking for the better. But Dark CBT involves operating behind closed doors. Your subject is not supposed to be aware of what you are trying to do. Therefore, you

can download a template and memorize it for ideas on how to talk to your subject. He won’t know what you are doing, but you know the effective lists of questions and exercises that will help you help him. You can also keep a journal to keep track of his progress, without him knowing of course. Write down the results of your clandestine sessions with him and outline what he accomplished with your help. Here is an example of what a CBT journal template is like: What is the situation that you are feeling bad about? What happened? How does this event make you feel? Have you engaged in any of these cognitive distortions? (followed by a list of common cognitive distortions)? How can you change your thinking? (change black and white thinking to gray thinking, for instance) How do you feel about the event now? How will you handle this event if it happens again in the future? Or a template might look like this instead: What problem do you have? Why is this a problem? How does this problem make you feel?

How do you think about the problem? What would be more helpful ways of thinking about the problem? How will you handle the problem now? How do you feel about the problem now? Some templates are more goal-oriented. You should turn to these types of templates if you are trying to change someone’s behavior or end a bad habit. What is your goal? What small step can you take today toward your goal? What thoughts are holding you back from taking this step? How can you think about the goal so that you can take this step? How did you take the step? How do you feel now? What did you learn? What small step toward your goal will you take tomorrow? See how you can apply these same questions to your subject. You can ask him these questions, or you can attempt to ask him through email

or some other form of written communication. Often, writing has an even more profound effect on the brain and leads to greater memory retention of subject matter than speaking. You may make more of a difference if you can get your subject to somehow write down the answers to these questions that are designed to lead him to changing his thinking and solving his problems proactively. Behavioral Modification CBT is not just about cognitive reconstruction, or changing thought patterns. It also entails changing behavior. Encouraging your subject to engage in more healthy, constructive behavior can help cognitive reconstruction take hold in his mind and make permanent changes to his personality and well-being. In traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapist may have his client find a few healthy or fun activities to engage in during the week. Then he will ask his client, “How did these activities make you feel?” at the next session. The activities are usually aimed to reduce a client’s stress and improve his joy in life. Some examples of such activities include going for a walk instead of sitting on the couch watching TV, or getting a massage instead of drinking a beer for stress relief, or confronting someone in a peaceful way to bring about conflict resolution instead of starting a fight or suppressing his emotions. Writing in a

journal or talking to a loved one are also common activities. Therapists often encourage their clients to get out and become active in the community or to engage in a fun hobby, as well, in order to teach them that life is worth living and stress can be relieved in a healthy and fun way. Now in Dark CBT, you may not be able to get someone to do an activity without giving away what you are trying to do. Your subject may resist any sort of activity because he is depressed or set in his ways. But you can manipulate him to get him to do things that will get him out into the world. You can use guilt as one form of manipulation. Make him feel bad for not helping the neighbor. Or tell him that he owes you for a favor, so he needs to do something. You can make something sound too good to turn down. Really sell it to him. Convince him that he is missing out if he doesn’t go do it. Telling him that people will lose respect for him if he doesn’t do something can also be very effective. You can use his reputation to get him to do things. Finally, you can find out what he really wants. Maybe he wants to lose weight to impress a girl, for example. Tell him that he can get the girl if he goes to this exercise event. This will goad him to get out of the house

and do something with himself. His depression will lift if he gets physically active. There are endless ways to get someone to get active. But activity is really important to healing. Getting someone to change his behavior and try something different will help him start to transform who he is and how he handles life. It will help him really learn to change himself. Affecting Mood in Other Ways There are little subliminal ways that you can change someone’s mood. His mood will influence his thinking. Mood influence may not create lasting changes, but it can be helpful in therapy. It can also create associations in his mind so that he comes to think a certain way when he smells a certain scent or sees a certain color, for example. You probably know your subject well. Knowing him well can really help you achieve your goals with Dark CBT because you are able to understand what his triggers are. You know what makes him mad, sad, and glad. Use this knowledge to your advantage to influence his thinking and behavior. Play a song that makes him feel upbeat when you need him in a happy mood. He will be more likely to do things that you want and say yes if he is in a genial mood.

If you want him to confront a person, you might first expose him to a news story that will shock and anger him. Or expose him to the color red a lot. Red tends to trigger anger in people. Yellow also has that effect on some people, and yellow works well for triggering anxiety as well. If you want to make him open up to you, start by sharing a little about yourself. Create an atmosphere of sharing and trust. Serve him a warm drink to inspire the sense of warmth in him. Maybe have open symbols, like pictures of open doors, around to make his subconscious mind think about opening up. This can be conducive to a good talk session where you affect a lot of change on his thinking.

Chapter 4: Using Cognitive Distortions and Schemas to Your Advantage

Now we’re getting into the really good stuff. We are about to teach you how to manipulate people using what you have just learned about schemas and cognitive distortions. This chapter holds the key to the power that Dark CBT can give you over others. Usually, CBT is used for healing. But Dark CBT can be used for whatever you want. You can use it to your advantage however you see fit. It may behoove you to heal someone’s bad thinking, at least about you or a situation. Or it may behoove you more to hurt someone and make him think in unhealthy ways. You need to figure out what will benefit you the most and base your Dark CBT goal on that. Then you can start influencing someone toward your goal until you reach success. You may need to be patient, but Dark CBT is incredibly effective. Your efforts will pay off and you will get what you want. You can use the knowledge you now possess about schemas, irrational beliefs, and cognitive distortions to your advantage. Find ways to twist someone’s current schemas and cognitive distortions to your liking. Heal people to make them do what you want. Teach someone a

new schema or cognitive distortion to change their personalities and behavior and make them dependent upon you. Gain Control Just the very act of using Dark CBT on someone gives you significant control over him. You have control over his thinking because you know how to change it to your liking. You hold more control than most people with the knowledge contained in this book, and you can use this control to get what you want from anyone. But sometimes you may desire true control. You want to bend someone to your will so that he does whatever you want. Basically, you want to make him unable to resist your commands. You can do this by breeding certain schemas in your subject. The way to breed a schema is to suggest a belief to someone. He may not believe it at first. But then you keep showing him evidence that supports the schema. For instance, if you want to make him a more dependent person, you can easily make him feel that he is helpless. Then, whenever he fails, point that out. Bring up times in the past when he failed and how you could have helped him succeed instead. He will quickly come to believe that he is incapable of succeeding without your help and guidance. He will become dependent upon you and will do what you say because he no longer believes in himself.

Determine how you want to control someone. Figure out which schema is best for that goal to become reality. Then start breeding it in someone. You will be able to change his personality and make him do whatever you want if you make him believe a schema that is helpful to your goal. You can also control someone’s thinking by encouraging him to adopt or drop a cognitive distortion. Find the cognitive distortion that benefits you or the one that you want him to stop engaging in. Then use questioning to challenge his thinking and drive him to adopt the thinking that you want. Perhaps he doesn’t believe in himself, so he refuses to make an investment in your business because he fears risk. He uses global labeling to label himself as a failure and a loser. You can make him believe in himself and focus on the positive by always encouraging him and pointing out ways that he is not a loser. Teach him that he is not a loser and that you believe in his abilities to be successful wholeheartedly. Express constant admiration for him and his intelligence. Eventually, he will catch on to your enthusiasm and he will be more willing to take a risk on your business. Or maybe your subject overgeneralizes things, so he assumes that you are a horrible person and a manipulative cheater because you are a

female. He bases this belief on a few bad experiences he had in the past and his ugly relationship with his stepmother. You want him to date you. You can challenge his overgeneralization and ask him what makes him think that you are terrible when you have never done anything bad to him. Try to heal his hurt from past female relationships by talking through things with him and showing him that you are better than the females he knows. Your subject may have an obnoxious habit that you want to change. For instance, you may be dating him and you love him to death but you can’t stand the way he smells because he smokes. Even kissing him is unbearable. So you start to use Dark CBT to get him to quit smoking. On the other hand, perhaps you want him and he is dating someone else who can’t stand smoking, so you expose him to cigarettes and make him feel stressed so that he smokes and drives that partner away. You can use Dark CBT to break habits or make them. Just go through the process of exposing someone to a goal every day until he achieves it. You can muddle someone’s progress on his own goal and sabotage what he has worked for. Or you can push his success and make him achieve what he wants more easily. Do whatever it takes to make you reach your own goal. Make Someone Depend on You

Manipulators like control. So if you are manipulating someone, you want to gain control over him. You want him to depend on you so that he relies on you for instructions on what to do. When a person relies on you completely, you have the ultimate control. But how can you make someone depend on you? The first way is to be his source of emotional support. This means that you can use CBT questions to guide his thinking down more positive tracks. He will feel better and he will attribute that to you. All he knows is that for some reason, you seem to make him feel good and you always have a fresh perspective on life for him. So he comes to rely on you to feel good about himself. But from there, the true manipulation sets in. You can’t just make someone feel good all of the time or he will get bored. His confidence will soar and he will go after someone else. Instead, you need to throw in an emotional roller coaster to confuse and unsettle him. Shake up his sense of identity. Randomly, when he’s feeling happy, ask him questions to poison his mind with doubt. Say things like, “Do you really think you can succeed at that? I like to encourage you, but I don’t want to see you fail.” Make him doubt himself and question his abilities. Also make him look to you for approval of what he does by sometimes approving and sometimes disapproving. One day be

absolutely full of encouragement, and the next day ask him, “Why are you doing that? Do you think that’s the best thing to do?” while wearing a dubious expression. He won’t know what to expect since you are always one way or the other, so he will wonder why he can’t please you all of the time. Keep him guessing. He will strive more and more to get your gratification every time he asks. This makes him strive to please you. But it also makes him lose part of his identity as he is not sure which way is up. Finally, start to work on his schemas. Plant schemas in his mind, while tearing away other ones. Make him feel better about himself and his chances of being successful in life, for instance, but also plant the need to gain approval in him. Let him know that there are severe consequences and he might lose you if he doesn’t please you so that he develops an approval-seeking schema regarding your relationship. Constantly challenge his thinking. If he likes a dish at a restaurant, for instance, ask him why when there are better dishes. When he asks if he looks good, tell him he looks better than usual to both flatter him and make him wonder why he doesn’t look good most of the time. Try to challenge each of his cognitive distortions or encourage him to adopt certain cognitive distortions, such as mind reading or assuming, so that he makes some bad decisions. Mess with his identity by completely

changing his thinking. Soon, he won’t know who he is or what to expect. Then he is dependent on you to tell him who he is. You can mold him from there into what you want. There is another rather insidious way to make someone depend on you, as well. This is where you get someone to think that no one else likes him. You use various cognitive distortions to make him think that the world is against him or that people know about bad things that he has done. Then he will feel that you are his only friend in the world and he will rely on you more. This technique is technically emotional abuse and should only be used when absolutely necessary. You might try using it in psychological warfare against your enemy, for example. First, be his friend. Be loyal and faithful. Always be there for him. This makes him rely on you. Second, point out how other people don’t seem to like him or repeat nasty rumors that people spread about him. Tell him, “You see how she looks at you? She must not like you.” This will inject paranoia into his brain and he will start trying to read others’ minds, globally label himself, and even grovel for the approval of others. He will become uncomfortable around the people who don’t seem to like him, and so he will put them off with his weird behavior.

Third, when he is upset about it and wonders why no one likes him, ask him, “Why do you think?” This will make him think of all of his insecurities. He will become certain that people do not like him because of something that he doesn’t like about himself. He will reach his own conclusion on this matter. You don’t need to say anything negative to him at all or offer him any kind of explanation. Be sure to reassure him that you like him no matter what. Tell him that his insecurities don’t bother you like they bother other people. Make it seem like you are a special person and he would be a fool to give you up. Also show him that you two are a team and it’s the two of you against the world. This final stroke will make him totally dependent on you as he becomes alienated from everyone else and develops a very negative schema about himself. Make Someone Feel that they Deserve what You Do to Them Guilt is one of the number one tools that manipulators use to gain control over others. It also makes you look innocent and makes your subject feels as if he deserves the mean or shady things that you do to him. You want to make your subject feel guilty so that he accepts your treatment and never questions what you do to him. Even when he gets mad at you, you can tell him that he deserved what you did so that he can’t argue with you anymore.

Dark CBT is excellent at triggering emotions in someone. You can subtly make someone think and feel a different way with just a few comments or questions. So to inspire guilt, you want to lead him on a line of questioning that reminds him that he is guilty of something or triggers guilty feelings in him. You can do this by asking him about something bad that he once did and asking him how he feels about himself. He will start to feel guilty on his own, and you don’t have to do anything else to inspire his feelings of guilt. In the future, all you have to do is bring this event that he feels bad about up and he will flood with guilt. Once he feels guilty, you can do something to him and he may not say anything about it. He will naturally feel that he deserves it. But let’s say he does get mad. All you have to do is ask him, “Why do you feel angry about this?” He will probably tell you why. Then say, “Is this not similar to when you….?” As he begins to succumb to his feelings of guilt, inform him, “I’m sorry to hurt you the way that you hurt me/someone else. I won’t do it again.” You make him feel guilty while apologizing. In this way, he feels that he deserves what he gets and he can’t harbor any resentment against you because you apologized. You can switch this up and encourage him to use mind reading.

“You did that to so-and-so? I bet he really hates you.” He may argue that this person has forgiven him, so ask him, “Do you really believe he could have forgiven you for what you did? If it were me, I never would have forgiven you. I bet he’s just pretending.” Make him second guess his assumption that he has been forgiven so that he begins to doubt his relationship with the person he once wronged and so that he begins to act differently around that person. You can use this guilt as a tool to further your own aims by bringing it up now and then to justify what that person does to him. He will start to take things that this person does personally and will feel that he deserves it. Make Someone Say Yes You can even use Dark CBT for persuasion! Making someone feel proactive and getting him to say yes to you is a goal you can set with Dark CBT. Then work toward a yes answer by leading him in that direction. First, you want to question his reasoning for saying no and suggest that he is making an error in thinking. Find a possible cognitive distortion or schema or bias to explain why he said no. Then suggest that he may enjoy better results in life if he actively tries to change his thinking and maybe say yes for once. Always point out different ways that he can look at a situation so that he will see how he may benefit from saying yes. For instance, point

out that he is saying no because he may feel afraid of what others will say. This is because he has an approval-seeking schema. Suggest that he tries impressing people by saying yes. Or ask him, “Do you really think that people will disapprove? How do you know that for sure?” A lot of people will choose to say no because they overgeneralize and assume that things will not go well based on bad experiences from the past. They’re operating on the cognitive distortion that “nothing will work out” or “everything is always the same.” You can play therapist and ask him what happened in the past to sour him toward similar experiences. Really listen as he speaks and offer sympathetic nods and emotional support. When he is finished talking, ask him, “What makes you believe that this will be the same? What evidence do you have that this will go the same way as it did in the past?” Or ask him, “Do you remember when you took a risk before and it turned out differently? Sometimes, things aren’t always the same.” You can even keep it simple and adopt a neuro linguistic programming technique called Meta-modeling. When someone says “always,” “never,” or some other similar word that suggests that he is overgeneralizing, you can just repeated back to him with skepticism, “Always?” “Never?” Just this simple one-word question will help him realize how silly his overgeneralization sounds and how he is wrong.

Another reason people say no is because they have a global label that reflects an internal belief that they will fail, no matter what they do. You can challenge this schema by uplifting someone and providing him with lots of compliments and encouragement over a period of time. Build up his ego. Then, when you need him to strike out and take a chance, he will be in a prime position to do that because you have groomed him to believe in himself. Again, never forget that you can use the positive implications of Dark CBT to achieve more clandestine goals and benefit yourself. You don’t always have to harm people to manipulate them into doing what you want. A common schema that makes people afraid to say yes and venture out into risky territory is undeveloped self. A person who has never learned to be out on his own and to make his own choices will naturally be frozen when it comes to taking a risk. He will only do it if he gets the approval of the person on whom he is dependent, such as his mother. You can do a few things here to get a yes. One thing you can do is gradually replace his mother or other authority figure by acting the same way so that he becomes dependent upon you and will jump when you say jump. Be careful with this, as you will create a co-dependent and potentially toxic relationship where he looks to you for all of his emotional support and approval and needs you 24/7. Alternatively, you can persuade his mother or authority figure to tell him to do it, and he will do it for you.

Make Someone Say No Now maybe you want to do the opposite of getting someone to say yes. You will benefit if he says no to a project or person. How do you get him to say no? The best way is to convince him to adopt cognitive distortions that cause him to feel negatively about the opportunity that he is presented with so that he backs out. There are a number of cognitive distortions that can really help you get someone to say no. Really, any cognitive distortion listed previously can make someone react negatively toward a situation and make a negative decision. You might try suggesting mind reading. When a person offers your subject an opportunity for something that he wants, you should suggest that that person’s intentions are nefarious or that he thinks badly about your subject. “I bet he thinks [insert bad thing] about you.” “I bet he has something up his sleeve.” “He can’t possibly mean well for you. What is his secret motive?” You can suggest overgeneralizing. “Doesn’t this remind you of that time before when you got burned by someone with a business opportunity?” “Doesn’t she remind you of someone? I see your ex when I look at her. I’d hate for her to treat you the same. Don’t you think that all women are the same? I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

You can reinforce a global label that he already possesses. “She actually wants to date you? That’s surprising, since everyone else in class thinks that you are a loser. Are you sure she doesn’t think that too?” Blaming is a great way to make someone feel like a victim. “It’s his fault that you ended up in this position in the first place, isn’t it? Why is he trying to help you now? Should you really trust him?” Suggest how life should be. “Things shouldn’t be this hard.” “Things shouldn’t be easy. Be suspicious.” “Shouldn’t you get more money?” “She should come to you if she really likes you. You shouldn’t have to go to her.” “You should get more out of this.” Should thinking sets people up for disappointment, so if you encourage it, you can make him grow disenchanted with an offer or opportunity so that he turns it down for better. Better may never come, but should thinking does not let its sufferers see that fact. Filtering is a great way to make someone notice only the negative in a situation or offer so that he rejects it. Have him discount the positive by pointing out only the cons. Make it seem that this offer is far from ideal and that he would benefit by turning it down. Don’t let him see the positive, and when he mentions something positive about the offer, tell him a negative thing that discounts that positive. Black and white thinking is a good way to make someone see only

the negative, too. People who use black and white thinking tend to think that everything will be peachy if they make a change. Or they assume that everything will be terrible and they fill themselves with dread. Use this psychology against someone to get him to say no. If he is psyched about something, tear it down and make it seem like it is an entirely gloomy prospect. If he is already feeling negative about it, ask him why he wants to do it. Suggest that he would be happier and suffer less stress if he just says no. Use Someone’s Underlying Assumptions against Them Earlier we covered underlying assumptions and irrational beliefs. These biased forms of thinking can really limit someone’s lucidity and clarity when making decisions. Sometimes this is a bad thing, but in some cases, it can actually serve you. If someone has an underlying assumption or irrational belief about the world, it would behoove you to find that out. Keep that knowledge in your back pocket for when you could really use it. In some cases, you might find that a person’s assumptions and irrational beliefs keep him from doing what benefits you. In that case, you want to encourage him to adopt a more open and positive belief. Try to prove to him that his belief is not true with all sorts of evidence. Don’t ever actively argue with him or tell him that he is wrong, as this will put him on the defensive and make him cling to his belief all the more

fiercely. Instead, just casually show him proof that his beliefs are erroneous. You might be able to influence a racist to change his beliefs by introducing him to a person of a minority group and showing him how honest, nice, and hardworking this person is. However, in some cases, his beliefs might benefit you. They might drive him to say no to an opportunity that would somehow hurt you or end your goals, for instance. So you can stoke up his bias with evidence that supports it. Leave this evidence around in plain view. Let’s say someone you know has an irrational belief of going outside. You may want to leave an article in a magazine lying around her place with a disturbing story about how someone was murdered right outside of her front door. She will get scared and refuse to go outside.

Chapter 5: Change People with Dark CBT

The purpose of CBT is to use both cognitive reconstruction and behavioral modification to change someone’s personality so that he is happier and better adapted to life’s situations. Therefore, you can certainly use Dark CBT to change someone. But it takes time. The methods that we have covered to get people to do what you want are usually short-term and work on changing someone’s thinking and behavior regarding one specific situation. They are quick methods that don’t usually stick. To affect permanent change, you have to use Dark CBT over a period of time and apply it to a variety of situations. It can take a while to bring about permanent change to someone’s personality, so you must be patient and you must persevere at your goal. However, it will work if you stick with it. When you want to change someone’s personality, you must first ask yourself why. Is this person really worth all of the time and effort that it takes to restructure his thinking and behavior totally? If you are using Dark CBT to change a lover into your ideal partner, you might want to consider leaving the person and finding someone else who is closer to what you are looking for. If you are trying to change a loved one so that you have a better relationship, you might simply want to skip to Chapter

7 and find out how to positively change your relationship dynamics instead of actually changing the person himself. You should not try to change people that you love or you essentially lose your loved one. You should only try to change someone if it really benefits you. For instance, you might try to change a bully that you are forced to work with to be a better person, so that your workplace becomes more bearable. Or you might try to change the parent of your children so that you can have a more peaceful co-parenting experience and so that that person becomes a better parent. You might try to change a drug addict you know so that he gives up drugs and becomes a healthier person who doesn’t try to hurt himself or his loved ones with his recklessness. Your reasons for changing someone need to be good because it takes a lot of time and effort to change someone’s personality. Your project should be important enough to motivate you and justify the amount of work that you must do. Also, understand that you can’t completely change a person inside and out. You will be able to drastically change his personality and his outlook on life and how he treats you, yes. But there will still be some core things that make up his identity that you cannot get rid of. Unless you imprison someone and spend all day every day manipulating his mind and teaching him new behavior CIA-style, which is not ethical or legal or even feasible, you cannot change everything about him and

shatter his core identity. He will still have other influences from the outside world acting on his behavior and thinking, and he will still cling to parts of himself that are in his DNA or embedded in his psyche from early childhood. All you can really do is bring about changes in how he thinks and acts. That is still very significant and can be worthwhile if it matches your goal. Over a long enough time period, you can teach him a whole new way of thinking, which will cause him to very much change as a person. Set an Ultimate Goal You can’t expect to change someone if you don’t know exactly how you wish to change him. It takes a definite goal to make him become what you want. Observe him over time and learn what makes him act in the way that you find undesirable. Identify his cognitive distortions based on how he talks and identify his schemas based on the patterns that his life follows, the decisions he repeatedly makes, and the stories he shares from his childhood. Get a good read on him. From there, form a goal about what you want to tackle to bring about change in his personality. Once you set your goal, your every interaction with this person should be set up to serve that goal. You want to work on it every chance that you get. Your conversations must be centered around redirecting his thinking. When you do things together, you want to have him engage in

behaviors that are more desirable to you and you want to reward those behaviors. Try to have deep conversations about what he believes about himself and teach him better. Constantly set a model for how he should start thinking and acting by thinking and acting that way yourself or exposing him to role models that you want him to follow. You may want to keep a journal to document your progress. Putting everything down on paper can help you keep better track of what you accomplish with your subject. It can also help you spot areas where you can take action, such as correcting a certain reaction he has to a situation. You can analyze his behavior and determine schemas that you may not have noticed before. You may also be able to find out where you are not succeeding so that you can come up with a different approach. Get to Work on His Schemas and Biases The underlying biases and schemas that make up his identity drive his behavior and thinking. Even if he is not aware of what these biases and schemas are, they have a shockingly huge influence on who he is. You want to make working on his schemas a priority at all times if you want to change him as a person. Look for clues about his schemas in his life. If he repeatedly breaks up with great girlfriends, hides from good opportunities, and doesn’t have a lot of friends, he might have a social alienation or abandonment

schema. If he has no confidence and hates to try new things, he might have a failure schema or an emotional inhibition schema. Being unable to make choices on his own indicates that he is dependent. Doing everything for others and letting people treat him like crap suggests that he has a subjugation or self-sacrifice schema. The mistakes that he repeats often offer very clear clues about the deep-rooted beliefs that shape who he is. Now how can you possibly get to work on changing someone’s schema? It is a big job, but it is very possible. Most people like to protect their own schemas using avoidance of evidence that challenges the schema, maintenance of the schema by seeking evidence to support it, and overcompensating by doing what seems to be the opposite of what the schema tells one to do. So for instance, a narcissist is actually a very insecure person who uses a large ego as a form of compensation for his schema of self-loathing and dependence. A person who fears failure or has an incompetence schema will do anything to avoid failure and he will avoid doing anything to show himself that he can be successful. And a person who has a deep mistrust of others will use every bad relationship, conflict, and slight rejection as an excuse to continue avoiding getting close to others. Therefore, it can be hard to get at someone’s schema since he probably has a maze of psychological walls in place to keep his schema protected.

You basically want to spot his schema. Then, when you notice that he is using avoidance, maintenance, or compensation, use the opposite tactic to get inside his mind and shatter his schema. Let’s go back to our previous examples. When a narcissist erects his façade of a large ego and grandiosity, you can confront that with evidence that he is not all that and a bag of potato chips. He will hate you for it, but you will be able to break down his compensation strategy and force him to feel his insecurities, at least for a minute. Show him that his façade does not fool you. Now let’s go to the next example, about someone with a failure schema. When he tries to avoid seeing evidence, force him to face it and continually tell him how great he is. The person who maintains her fears of relationships can be goaded into accepting that some people are pretty nice and she can trust some people by being there for her when she is trying to avoid you. Don’t let her get away from you but instead keep coming after her and never letting her down. Challenge her when she finds evidence not to trust you and ask her if she really can’t trust you. You will need to continually work on someone to break down his or her schemas. It is not something that will happen overnight. And you might make progress only to lose it, so be patient. Challenge His Thinking Time and Again It is an ongoing project to change someone’s thinking. We already

covered how to challenge someone’s cognitive distortions and encourage him to think differently by asking him questions that lead him down a different mental path than the one he originally chose to take. You need to continually do this. Every time he starts to use one of his cognitive distortions, you must challenge it. Over time, you will make him change his thinking for good. Get Him to Engage in New Behavior Behavioral modification is the other side of the CBT coin. To change someone’s personality, you must make him change his behavior. Of course changing his thinking will accomplish this in part. But getting him to do new things and take different steps toward his goals will further cement the process and bring about complete personality change. You want to get him to do things that are unusual for him to bring about change. A person who avoids confrontation will need to engage in more confrontation and better conflict resolution. A person who mistrusts others will have to start bonding with people more and talking to strangers without fear. Someone who thinks in black and white will have to try writing down both the pros and cons to every situation in order to make a balanced decision. A pessimist needs to try one exercise in positive thinking and hope a day. Goad your subject to try something new. He will be resistant at first.

You can either leave him no option and force him to do something, or you can manipulate him into doing it using some of the methods covered in the last chapter. You can make things seem dire or fun to increase his chances of doing them. If you want to get him to confront someone and develop a backbone instead of suppressing his feelings, for example, you might encourage him to confront someone by showing him how dire it is to his reputation and sanity at work. Show him that a confrontation really won’t kill him and that he will feel better when he overcomes his fear of confrontation and actually earns some respect. When your subject tries a new behavior, you must offer him an immediate reward so that he forms a positive association with the desired behavior and a reward. You might use praise, sex, a nice gift, or even just an ice cream parlor trip as ways to reward him. Most people operate on the approval of others, so a few nice words of encouragement can really go a long way. Find what he really wants and offer it to him when he takes on new behaviors that you want to encourage. Repeatedly Expose Him to Models of What You Want Him to Be People are strongly influenced by suggestion and this works when you use a model. A model is a suggestion of how someone should behave. You can use a model to set an example for your subject. He will start to

adopt the model’s behavior over time if he is repeatedly exposed to it. It will make him start to think of this behavior as normal and he will desire to copy it. Of course, it can take a while to condition someone, but a model’s behavior will rub off on him eventually. You can be this model if you want. You can influence someone to start acting like you if you spend a lot of time around each other. The opposite will also happen, however, and you will take on some of his behavior. You have to guard yourself against this if you don’t want to end up acting and talking like your subject. Or you can pretend to really like or admire someone. If your subject loves you, he will get a bit jealous. He will feel inadequate compared to your role model and will try to emulate your role model’s behavior to capture your admiration for himself. You can also just repeatedly expose him to the behavior through media such as TV and the Internet. Show him the behavior that you want him to take on all of the time. Talk about how much you admire it. Don’t tell him, “I wish you were more this way” or you will end up alienating him and losing his cooperation. Don’t Allow His Bad Behavior If you are trying to change someone, then he probably possesses undesirable behavior patterns that you want to get rid of. He may have

bad habits like shirking commitments, lying, smoking, using drugs, gambling, or being abusive. He may be optimistic when you want him to be pessimistic, or vice versa. There are many things that you may spot in your subject that you want to change. Label these behaviors as “undesirable” and train him to think of them as undesirable too. When he engages in one of these behaviors, it’s your job to point out what he is doing. You don’t want to come off as overly critical. If you make something a big issue, he will probably feel more pressure to continue doing it. He will get defensive and cling to this habit to preserve his sense of self and freedom. Instead, you want to causally mention things that you don’t like. You also want to show him how his bad behavior is not helpful to the goal that you are trying to reach with him. Show him the negative consequences of what he does wrong. When he does one of his bad behaviors, you can withhold affection. If he asks why you’re mad at him, ask him, “What did you do today that you know I don’t like?” Quickly he will come to associate his bad behavior with an ugly consequence and he will feel more inclined to drop the behavior. Set a behavioral goal for him each day. Then walk him through the steps, as if you were doing a CBT worksheet with him. Ask him, “Did you do this today? Why or why not? How do you feel since you didn’t do it?”

Use these questions to get him to see how he benefits by doing what you want and how he suffers when he engages in the undesired behavior. It is often better to focus on rewards and gain rather than punishment and loss. So it is better to offer him positive reinforcement when he does what you want than to come down on him with anger when he does what you don’t want. Offer him praise and other rewards to keep him interested in pleasing you. When asking him to change a behavior, avoid telling him stuff like, “Don’t do this anymore!” Instead, suggest something that he could do in place of his bad behavior and say, “I would love it if you did this next time.” It can also be helpful if you thank him for doing what you want before he even does it. This makes him feel that he needs to please you because you expect it of him. He also feels that you believe in him, which causes him to want to earn your further approval and not let you down. So let’s say you want to make sure that your partner never cheats. Tell him or her, “Thank you for being loyal and faithful” instead of saying “Don’t ever cheat on me.” Keep it a Secret People resent being worked on and changed, especially without their prior consent. So when you use Dark CBT to achieve personality change, you want to make sure that you keep it top secret. Never give

away what you are doing. If you do, your subject will get upset and probably resist changing for you. He may even stop talking to you. Your power will evaporate along with your anonymity. You want to go through the steps of Dark CBT without ever overplaying your hand. Don’t ever tell your subject what you really want. Don’t ever tell him that you are trying to change him or even that you want him to change. Just keep challenging his thinking and making him change without revealing that you intend to do so. Should your subject ever suspect what you are trying to do, you should play the innocent card. Vehemently deny trying to change him. Make him feel bad by accusing him of trying to change you and find false evidence that proves your point. Or simply lie and tell him that he is imagining things. Then you may want to scale back on your efforts and find a way to be more discreet and sly. If you are ever caught doing Dark CBT on someone, you can bounce back. Simply claim that you were trying to help him feel better and that you picked up some ideas from CBT guides and pop psych books or articles on the Internet. Never mention “Dark CBT” to him. Should he find this book and ask you if you are using these methods on him, laugh and tell him that this book is nothing serious to worry about. You don’t want him to ever have a confession or other hard evidence to prove what

you are trying to do.

Chapter 6: Using Dark CBT to Get People to Like You

Success is often achieved on the backs of other people. Other people will carry you to success if you take advantage of the opportunities they provide and the work that they have already done. They can lay the groundwork and you can climb up to the top. But you can’t do this if you don’t have a large network of people who like you. You need lots of friends to be successful. You also will feel better about yourself and have a more fulfilling life if you get people to like you more. When people like you, they take care of you. They don’t work against you. They share opportunities with you and talk about things that might open doors for you in life. They defend you from others. They support your ventures. And finally, they make things easier for you just to be friendly. When people are friends, they basically create a mutual symbiotic exchange where they do things for each other in order to ensure that they can receive favors in the future. It’s a balance of reciprocity. The affection of friendships is also gratifying in itself. Therefore, having friends is important. Some people are born just brimming with charisma. They make

friends left and right easily. Other people are not so lucky. But if you are one of those people who are not so lucky, that is OK. Dark CBT is a great way to influence people to like you and to do things for you. Use CBT to Improve Yourself We cover this in more depth in Chapter 10. But basically, you want to use Dark CBT on yourself to improve yourself and heal yourself. The more secure and confident you are, the more people will feel drawn to you. The more positive you are, the more people will want to spend time around you and have you in their lives. Using CBT helps you become more likable. When using CBT on yourself, you want to focus on your confidence. Banish thinking and schemas that cause you to reject people or push them away. You want to get rid of schemas such as social alienation and mistrust by reminding yourself that you need people in your life and that there are good people out there. Work through the experiences that made you start to push people away and find ways to open yourself up to others more. If you have a schema that makes you think that you are somehow inadequate or that you will be abandoned, remind yourself that someone special is out there and you need to give people chances to find that special friend or lover who never abandons you. Think of the people who have remained by your side over the years. If you are an entitled person,

understand that your grandiosity can repel a lot of friends and that no one owes you anything. This will make you a more pleasant person to be around and more people will like you as a result. With cognitive distortions, you might have a few that make you unpleasant to be around. If you are pessimistic or discount the positive, you may be a Debbie downer and of course no one wants to be around you. Work on being more optimistic and upbeat and keep a smile on your face. You may repel people if you are imbalanced and dramatic, such as a person who engages in black and white thinking. Try to become more neutral emotionally and take a more balanced view of the world. You also want to set a few goals and achieve them. Start small. The most victories you experience, the more your confidence will soar. You can start to believe in yourself. The more confident and successful you are, the more attractive you are to others. So push yourself and let your newfound confidence shine through. This does not mean that you need to become egotistical or overcompensate for your insecurities. Just appear to like yourself and to be content with where you are in life. If you are not really content, then work on making changes that will make you content. Abandon the belief that you must be perfect for others to like you. No one is perfect. You don’t have to achieve every goal you set and banish every bad habit you possess to make friends. The more comfortable and

accepting you are with yourself, the more attractive you are to other people. So you might still have some imperfections and bad habits, but you will still be attractive to others if you appear to like yourself. Being imperfect actually makes you relatable. Stop being your own worst critic and start to love yourself. Others will love you for that. Appear to Have Lots of Friends Keeping up the illusion that you have lots of friends, even if you don’t, is a good way to make other people want to like you. If you appear well-liked, other people will be more comfortable befriending you and liking you. Go out with as many people as you can. Surround yourself with people. This makes you look popular. Others will be more likely to speak to you if you do not appear alone. When you talk about your friends, you might only have one friend. But if you are vague and just say “my friend did this,” whenever you tell a story, it sounds like you are talking about different friends. This makes you sound more popular. People will want to talk to you since you seem to have so many friends. They will want to join the party. Make an effort to be social and to meet people. Go out and do new things. Join clubs or partake in activities that you enjoy. You will be less alone. You will also put yourself in a position to meet people who share

similar interests with you. When you share things in common with others, you create a bond that can easily lead to friendship. Also, appearing to be active will give people the impression that you are a positive person who likes to have fun and do things, which will make you more inviting socially. Always seem to be busy. Even if you are not really busy, make it sound like you are working on some project or going to some party. A busy social calendar makes you seem more popular. Then others will want to join in and become part of your whirlwind social life. They will feel valued when you are able to clear some time for them. Better than pretending to be busy, actually be busy. But don’t let yourself become so swamped with work or other commitments that you don’t have time to go out and meet people. Leave plenty of time on your schedule for social engagements and work hard to fill those time slots with parties, mixers, hobbies, family events, group classes, and other such social events that allow you to meet people and appear like you have tons of friends. Boost Those Around You Become a beacon for self-esteem and boost the egos of those around you. People will like you if you are able to make them feel good. Use Dark CBT tips to challenge people when they think badly about themselves in order to get them to think more positively. Show people that you think

highly of them and that you believe in them. Listen to them as well as a therapist would and help them solve their problems. They will become addicted to how good you make them feel. Then they will turn to you more and more and want to keep you around. This also applies to finding things in common with people. By asking lots of questions about them and listening well, you find things that you share. Share a little bit about yourself and show how you two are similar. If you have differences, make it fun to debate and agree to disagree. Sometimes opposites attract and find common ground on talking about the things they disagree on in a civil manner. Your flaws can actually be grounds upon which you attract friends. If you own up to your flaws, others will find you more relatable. If you are overweight, for instance, you might still act confident about your appearance and make jokes about how you love to eat. Others with weight problems will admire your confidence and find your acceptance of your overeating relatable. They will feel comfortable being themselves and having their flaws around you since you are so accepting of your own. Challenge People to Like You If someone does not like you, you can challenge them through CBT questioning as to why. Get them to drop whatever thinking or schema they use to filter information about you and decide that they don’t like

you. Usually, if a person has a problem with you, that problem is actually an issue he has with himself. By challenging that issue and making him think about it in a different light, you can get him to change his mind about you. You want to challenge his assumptions and beliefs about you and prove him wrong. This will make him decide to like you. Find out what problem he has with you and then encourage him to ask himself why he has this problem. Point out that he does not know you but he should give you a chance. He will start to doubt his decision to dislike you and he will ask himself why he doesn’t like you if you ask him why. Then he will peel back layers on his assumptions and biases and possibly choose to drop them because they are clearly false. Also, show people who don’t like you what they are missing by refusing to be friends with you. Do not clabber for their approval or affection, or you’ll seem desperate and annoying. Instead, act like their dislike of you does not bother you. Ignore them when they are mean and smile at them all of the time. Show them what a great person you are as you do nice things for others and smile and laugh with your friends. Go out to social events with your friends and invite them along even though they are never nice to you. Eventually, they may decide that they are missing out too much and they will want to hop on the bandwagon and

become another fan of you. Offer People Incentives for Being Your Friend People love rewards. So if they receive some sort of reward from being your friend, then they will want to hang out with you. You don’t want to do nice things for people all of the time or they will start to take advantage of you. But you do want to have something that they want. By being around you, they hope that they will vicariously get what you have. This is why rich people and famous celebrities tend to attract friends out of the woodwork. The glamor of their lives make others want to be around them just to live through them vicariously. One way to do this is to be successful. Success is a magnet to people. People will want to be near your success, in hopes that it will rub off on them. They will admire you and put you on a pedestal. Become a role model for success. Another thing you can do is achieve what they want. Perhaps you lose weight so others will admire you for that and want to spend time around you. Perhaps you were able to kick a lengthy drug habit so you can inspire others in NA to want to be your friend and achieve your success. Having a great relationship can be a source of envy for others. They will want to know you to know why you are so successful in love and they

will want to be near the harmony and peace of your relationship. You can also be a truly good person, who is giving, kind, independent, and sweet. Others will enjoy being around you and they will wonder at how you are such a nice person. Keep up the mirage that you are just a great person and others may find that attractive. While being perfect is not possible, appearing to be perfect outwardly can sometimes hook people and lure them in.

Chapter 7: Dark CBT for Relationships

Your relationships and your thoughts and feelings about them make up a huge percentage of your life. Your relationships form who you are and influence how you feel about yourself. You can use Dark CBT to improve all of your relationships drastically, from your business relationships to your romantic ones to your friendships. The work starts with you. Once you achieve a better mental state, the rest should fall into place and you will influence your partner to become better as well. You can also use some Dark CBT to start influencing your loved ones and coworkers to drop cognitive distortions and treat you better. Work on You First Every relationship is a two-way street. Often the most important factor to change in a relationship lies in you first. When you make an effort to change for the better, your entire relationship will change. Your actions will influence the other person to treat you better and you will be able to diffuse conflict, cut down on misunderstandings, and prevent issues from continuing or growing. Most people make the mistake of thinking that it is the other person who has to change. But really, change starts with you.

Dark CBT, when used on yourself, emphasizes breaking down limiting self-beliefs and really striving to become your best. This applies to improving yourself in your own life and your own self-image, but it also applies to relationships. If you want to see change, be the change. The rest will usually fall into place. And if it doesn’t, well, we will cover that in the second half of this chapter which talks about making others change in your relationships. But first start working on yourself. Greater Presence How distant are you? You may think that you are very present in your relationship. But you most likely spend a lot of your time with the other person lost in the clouds, focused on your phone, or otherwise distracted. The cognitive distortion of discounting the present can have a huge detrimental effect on your relationships. By being fully mindful and present, you make your partner feel validated and valued, which can greatly improve how he responds to you and treats you. It also enables you to see exactly what you are saying and how you are acting so that you can prevent misunderstandings and watch how you treat your partner. It is time to set aside distractions, such as your phone or the TV. Be fully aware of your mood, thoughts, actions, and words. Notice everything that you do and everything your partner does. When automatic thoughts pop into your head that lead you to react to your partner, think about

them first and ask if they have any truth to them. Improved Mood Cognitive distortions can cause you to feel awful. But no one wants to be around someone who is always in an ugly mood. If you are always negative, depressed, anxious, or otherwise unpleasant to be around, of course your partner will assume that you have a problem with him. He will get irritated or depressed right back at you. Then you both are unhappy and you may start fighting. You may also start making assumptions about how you feel about each other. It is best to improve your mood and think in a more positive way that makes you smile more. Without a doubt, we all have our bad days and a good partner will stick with you through the turbulent times and cheer you up when you are down. But you can’t expect your partner to love being around you if you are always in a foul mood. The happier you are, the more pleasant you are to be around. Your partner will enjoy spending time with you more if you are in a good mood. Try to be more optimistic. Don’t make assumptions that bring you down. Don’t look at things in black and white and assume that everything is awful or get upset when things are not as perfect as you thought that they would be. Don’t bring yourself down by thinking about how things should be versus how they really are. Instead, practice acceptance and

peace will come to you. Question yourself when you try to read someone’s mind or look something through a purely negative filter. Also, address your emotional wounds and schemas. These often hold the answers to why you think the way that you do. When you heal yourself from the inside out, you will become a happier person. The more successful you are, the better you will feel about yourself. This pours over into your relationship. So read the chapter on being successful with Dark CBT and start creating small wins for yourself to boost your confidence. Don’t rely on your partner to do this for you. Only you can bring your success and make positive changes in your life. You are responsible for your own happiness. Your partner is simply there to support you and lend you a hand when you need it. Stop Assuming and Mind Reading You probably know your partner well. That does not mean that you can read his mind. When you try to read his mind or assume something about him, you take a huge gamble and you will probably lose. You should get confirmation from him before you act out at him or operate on some assumption about what he is really thinking or feeling. Notice your automatic thoughts when you are with your partner. Then ask if they are true or if you need more evidence. Try not to act on unhelpful thoughts, such as “He must be angry with me because he’s not

laughing at my joke” or “He must want something else because he is dragging his feet on closing this business deal with me.” Hurtful thoughts that make you feel badly about yourself and your partner are usually false but when you act upon them, you create conflict. You also fail to give your partner a chance to work things out with you to reach a satisfactory resolution. Decide how your partner is acting and feeling based on what he tells you, not on what you gather from his body language or assume by his facial expression. He may be angry, but it may not be at you. He may be unsure about a big decision that you are making together, but it may not be because he hates you and wants to move on to a different partnership of some kind. Don’t Put Generalizations or Labels on People When you first meet someone, or as a relationship progresses, you may label someone. Labeling is the brain’s way of trying to make sense of the world by ordering it neatly into categories. Unfortunately, the brain can be mistaken and an incorrect label can make you start to treat someone in a way that is unfair. You can become biased and thus create lots of relationship troubles. Stop labeling people. Instead, watch their actions and really listen to what they say. From there, you can make more evidence-based labels. Be

prepared to adjust your labels as necessary. Being flexible enables you to give your partner a chance to prove himself to you again and to make changes to the relationship. Labels are what create a lot of dysfunction in relationships. You get used to thinking about someone in a certain way and you never consider that he might be trying to change. So don’t let your labels solidify on someone. Be open to new things and changes. Try to Avoid Filtering What People Do Filtering is a natural and normal part of human interaction. That is unfortunate, though, because filters often cause you to misconstrue what others mean when they say or do things. You tend to put negative filters on people and assume the worst. Or you may put a positive filter on someone and fail to notice when he is not being very nice to you. You may also suppress your emotions because of the filter created by a selfsacrificing schema that you may possess. When you add a connotation to something unclear that someone says, don’t just rely on your filter to add meaning to the vague statement. Ask him for clarification instead. That avoids a lot of misunderstandings. When you take something someone says and decide to get insulted, stop and ask yourself if he was really insulting you. Do you think he may have had a different intention? You can also ask him. Directness is often

very helpful when communicating with your partner in a relationship. Try to take a neutral interpretation of everything that he does and says. Don’t just assume the worst or the best because of the filters that you view the world through. Take things at face value instead. And ask questions instead of just assuming that your filter is accurate. Filters often are not accurate and instead make you skew the information that you gather from the world around you. Drop Underlying Assumptions about People An underlying assumption is supposed to help guide you on how to act and what decisions to make without too much effort. But assumptions are usually wrong. Stop relying on your underlying assumptions and give each person a fair chance. A good example of this is the assumption that all men cheat. You enter each relationship expecting your partner to cheat because you believe this. Your lack of faith in your partner and your trust issues may drive him away and ruin your love life. Make sure to consider that each new romantic partner you date is a different person from the last one you dated. This one may be faithful if you just give him a chance. Racism is another great example of underlying assumptions. You assume things about people based on their race, and thus you fail to give good people chances because you think you know them. You might think

something like, “All white people are racist” or “All black people are lazy.” But these assumptions just aren’t true and you will meet plenty of people of different races who do not fit into your neat categorization at all. So drop the underlying assumption you have about someone based on his race and let him show you who he really is at heart. End the Blaming Blame is a huge killer of relationship satisfaction. “He did this to me.” “He doesn’t make me happy.” “He is always lying.” When you blame your partner for everything, you fail to see the things that you can do to improve the relationship. You miss out on your chance to affect positive change yourself. You also encourage him to get defensive and play the blame game too. Instead of blaming everything on your partner, consider what role you played in the current conflict or issue. You probably did something wrong. It can hurt to admit your own wrongdoing to yourself, but it is necessary for an adult relationship to really work. Take responsibility for your own actions and do what you can to solve your own problems. This will set a good model for your partner to follow. When your partner is at fault, simply throwing blame at him will not solve anything. You need to be gentle and tactful about how you tell him that he is in the wrong. Try not to belittle him or criticize him. Tell

him how he made you feel and how you would like him to address the issue. Ask him to please not do something instead. Suggest behaviors or words that would be better in the future. Teach your partner how to treat you right because he may not know how. He is not a mind reader, after all. Also consider asking your partner what he would like from you. Whether this is a romantic, friendly, or business relationship, your partner surely has expectations of you. You are not a mind reader so don’t assume that you know what his expectations are. Instead, ask him so that you know for sure and so that you can make him valued as you strive to make him happy. Fixing Your Partner After you addressed your own role in a relationship, you can expect a lot of positive change to occur. But your partner may still do things that are detrimental to the relationship and it is clearly not your fault. Now that you have done your part in fixing the relationship, it is time for him to do his part. How can you get him to change? Use the Tools of Change You already have the tools from the previous chapters in this book. You just need to find when and where to apply them in your relationship. You can start working on his schemas and cognitive distortions through

asking him questions. Try to get him to change to your advantage. Get him to realize that he is behaving and thinking in unhelpful ways and hurting the relationship as a result. Guide him toward the thinking that would be more helpful. Take a solution-oriented approach to every conflict that you two have and help him think of solutions that benefit both of you. Be Open You can do this in secret. Or you can just be open about it. Openness is usually best when you are trying to repair a relationship. Open communication is essential for both partners to achieve shared goals and to understand each other. Behaving in more closed, secretive ways can damage the trust that should be the foundation of this relationship. However, if your partner is resistant to change or resentful of your attempts to fix the relationship’s issues, then you may consider being more stealthy and using the clandestine Dark CBT methods covered in this book. Hide your intentions and make it seem like you are not really working toward a goal. Lead him through questions in a nonchalant manner so that he does not realize what you are really doing. And by all means, hide this book from him! Be There as a Friend

Also, be there for your partner as a friend. No matter what the nature of your relationship with this person is, being like a friend can make him trust you and want to work with you. It can make him open up to you so that you can learn his schemas and assumptions and find out what you need to change to improve the relationship. Friendship should ultimately be the basis of every partnership. You won’t care about each other enough to work together and take care of each other if you are not friends at the very core of your interactions. You can invoke friendly emotions to remind your partner that you care and to influence him to be more caring. Remind him of good times by showing him pictures from your vacation together in Hawaii, for instance. Talk about good times that you have had. Show him affection in some way that is appropriate for your relationship, from touching him to offering him a sensual massage to giving him a polite gift to treating him to his favorite dinner. Show that you are thinking of him to inspire his gratitude and affection for you to come up. Then, he will treat you more kindly and be more open to you. Confess Something to Him Sometimes, you need to get inside your partner’s head to determine how to change him for the betterment of the relationship. You can do this by confessing something to him that is deeply personal. This will create

the atmosphere of sharing. He will feel more comfortable opening up to you and he may reveal some things to you that you can use to your advantage. You can either use it against him later in a fight if you want to be manipulative, or you can use it to find out what way he thinks and how you should change it. You should also encourage him to open up by sharing things with him. When you confide in him, he will feel more comfortable confiding in you. But be sure to keep his confidence so that he continues to trust you. If you betray him, you can shoot down your entire chance of getting inside his head. If he is not the trusting type, you might consider chatting with people who are close to him, such as his parents, siblings, exes, or friends. Also review the patterns of his life. You will learn a lot about his thinking style based on what he has done in the past and what others have to say about his recurring habits in relationships, business, finances, etc. Rewards and Consequences Everything he does well deserves a reward. Everything he does badly warrants a negative consequence. In this way, you can train him to monitor his actions. He will quickly learn not to anger you and that pleasing you is better. Reward him with his favorite things and punish him by withholding his favorite things.

Ask Him to Be More Present To encourage him to be more aware of the things that he says and does to you, you should ask him to practice mindfulness meditation with you. Teach him to focus on the present and to let go of the past and future. Also, ask him to put away his phone when he speaks to you and to limit other distractions. Switch the TV off, turn off the stereo, and make him pay attention to you and only you. That way, he will be more mindful of how he speaks to you and he will absorb what you say more deeply and correctly. You can limit the chances of misunderstandings.

Chapter 8: Brainwashing with Dark CBT

Brainwashing is not just some secret CIA Jedi mind trick. It is something that you can achieve yourself and Dark CBT is your secret ninja weapon. Brainwashing is the act of getting someone to accept a certain idea as truth, particularly when the person initially rejects the idea. You want to change someone’s thinking and make them see what you want them to see. Dark CBT enables you to brainwash someone by changing his thinking to accept whatever idea you want to introduce to his mind. You might use brainwashing to get him to do what you want. You might use it to get him to adopt your philosophy so that he supports your cause, joins your cult, or buys into your brand. You might even use it to get him to drop his current political or religious views in favor of yours. Upset His Normal Thinking The first step to brainwashing is to upset someone’s normal thinking. This stirs up his identity and leaves room for you to slide in and inject an idea into his brain. You can scramble his thinking by using the emotional roller coaster we talked about before. You can also make him isolate himself by causing him to believe that everyone hates him and he

is alone in the world. Make him dependent on you and also make him doubt himself constantly. You can use CBT questioning as a way of gaslighting someone so that he doubts his own perception and sanity. When he says something, start asking him why he thinks that is true, even though it is true. For instance, when he says that the sky is a lovely shade of blue, look at him like he is crazy and ask him why he sees blue. Cause him to doubt himself by challenging what he holds to be true. Gaslighting makes him more dependent on you to tell him what is real, since he begins to doubt his own ability to see reality correctly and accurately. The more isolated he is mentally, the more susceptible he is to gaslighting because there is no one else to reaffirm his thinking and assure him that he is not going crazy. Twist His Cognitive Distortions If someone already possesses a bad thought habit or schema, you can use that to help you achieve brainwashing. It is a lot easier to work with what you already have than to change someone, so use what he already suffers from as a way to get ideas into his head. Find out the bad ways he thinks and then encourage him to act on those beliefs or bad thought habits. Charles Manson was great at this. He took people who felt that they didn’t belong in society and had schemas such as defectiveness, social

alienation, and abandonment. Then he made them feel as if they had a home in his cult, as long as they did what he asked. He warped and twisted their own cognitive issues to turn them into murderers in a matter of days. Of course, you don’t want to influence people to do evil, but you can follow his example to powerfully influence someone to think how you want by using the cognition they already possess. Expose Him to the New Idea Repeated exposure to the new idea will change his mind quite effectively. As he sees the new idea more and more, he will begin to think of it as normal. It will infiltrate his subconscious. You can use propaganda, such as pictures, or bring something up in conversation repeatedly. Then he will be exposed to the new idea, over and over. Eventually he will accept it. The more you can surround him the idea, the more readily and quickly he will embrace it as a part of himself. Subliminal messaging can really be effective in this. You can use flashes of images, scents, or sounds to inject ideas into his mind without his awareness. His subconscious mind will register the image but his conscious mind will not even notice it. He will start to become exposed and conditioned to something without even knowing how or why. You can fly into his mind and plant seeds there quite easily using subliminal techniques.

Show Him how this Idea will Change His Life You want to make someone embrace a concept so you can show him how it will benefit him and better his life. Really sell this idea so that he starts to think of it as the best thing ever. Show him how other people who buy into your political agenda, religion, or whatever are happier than most and more prepared for the future. Have other people join you in your sales pitch if you can enlist helpers. Start to make him question his own life’s sanctity by asking him, “How do you feel about your life right now? Do you really think you’re going in the right direction?” Just asking this question suggests to him that you think he is not going in the right direction. It will poison him with doubt and start making him notice the little things that are wrong with his life. He will come to the realization that he needs a change. This may just open him up to whatever idea you are pitching to him. Then suggest how he can settle his discontentment by buying into your belief system. Show him how the people who follow your ideas are more content and how he can fix his life by joining you.

Chapter 9: Healing People with Dark CBT

Dark CBT is called dark because it is covert and secret. It is not called dark because it is evil. It certainly is not always used for evil purposes. You can use dark CBT to heal people and repair their thinking. The only reason this type of CBT is dark is because you are using without someone’s prior knowledge and consent. You can apply Dark CBT as a powerful healing method for people around you who refuse to get help or help themselves. Without their knowledge, you can help them heal themselves. This enables you to help those around you who feel helpless. It can also greatly benefit you. The very premise of CBT is to improve someone’s thinking and thus to change how they approach problems and feel about life. As a result of this change, you can heal yourself or someone else. When you decide to heal someone, that person becomes your subject. You have tremendous power over him, so you want to be careful with it. Veer too far in one direction and you cross the line from healing to manipulation. While we certainly have covered how to manipulate others with Dark CBT, if you are trying to heal, you do not want to engage in manipulation. Your goal here should be to improve the subject’s outlook, mood, and problem solving. You can also improve your relationship with him.

So let’s look at how. Improve Someone’s Outlook on Life Negative people are detrimental to anyone’s success. They hold themselves back and hurt others. They don’t see the good in life and come off as ungrateful. They can create problems with their own brain chemistry and trigger depression, anxiety, and other issues by continually looking at the world in a negative way. Negative people usually engage in the following cognitive distortions: pessimism, discounting the positive, dwelling on problems, “should” thinking, black and white thinking, blaming others, and blaming themselves. They tend to avoid problem solving, instead feeling helpless and drowning in the negative vibes of their lives. Often, these people also hold schemas, such as believing that they don’t deserve happiness or that when they are happy bad things happen. Their minds are conditioned to viewing life in a negative way; they are basically hardened to being negative and have formed a very deep habit that is difficult to correct. This does not mean that a chronically negative person is incurable. But unfortunately, most negative people do not believe that there is any hope. They don’t want to help themselves. This is where you might want to consider using Dark CBT to inflict positive changes. You can make your relationship better with someone if you help that person become more

positive and pleasant to be around. It is best to challenge a negative person every day when he brings up the negative thinking that you find unbearable. He may resist you, but continue challenging him. Ask him things like, “Do you really believe this to be true?” Use the questions we covered above to lead him into a new line of thinking. You should also encourage your subject to notice the positive. Let’s say he likes to discount the positive. When a good thing happens, he rolls his eyes or finds something negative to say about it. So you should point out how it is a good thing. Ask him to review his life and tell him all of the good things that you see. When he comes back with arguments about why the good things in his life are not so good, you should challenge him. “Why do you think that?” When he gets gloomy and predicts that things won’t work out well or that things won’t go well in his life, challenge that. “How do you know that it may go badly?” He will probably say something like, “Things always go badly for me.” You can challenge that by pointing out times when life has gone well for him. Make him count the positive in life. Then tell him, “There is a chance that this might go well. Think about that. How does that make you feel? Does it feel better to have hope and to think that maybe things will go well for once?”

Let’s say he’s a chronic complainer. When he starts his complaining, you should challenge that. Point out the great things happening. Ask him why he is complaining and how it makes him feel. Then ask him how it feels when he notices the positive in a situation and talks about the good things instead of the bad. The worst thing about negative people is that they often try to darken the mood for others. They will try to pull you down to their own level. They can’t stand seeing other people be happy when they are so unhappy themselves. So you should counteract their attempts to drag you down by being a beacon of positivity and cheer when your subject does this to you. If he tries to put you down or darken something that you are excited about, you can simply smile and say, “I’m happy about this and I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to change that fact.” He will argue that he is looking out for you or that he isn’t doing anything to lower your mood and you are just being oversensitive. Just accept that with a smile still on your face and inform him that he does make you feel worse when he is negative about things that you are doing. Then ask him if he really wants to bring you down, if that is his true goal. He will likely say no, so then you can tell him to start being happy for you then. Mind Readers If your subject is a mind reader, he will make assumptions about

what you are thinking even when he is dead wrong. Then he will act on those assumptions and create stress and trouble. You see him do this with other people, too. So you want to change his habit of mind reading. The best way to do this is to challenge him when he tries to do this to others. Say, “How do you know that she thinks that? Did she say anything to you?” When he replies that he just knows what she is thinking, ask him, “Are you a mind reader?” You can also remind him of times in the past when he tried reading minds and was dead wrong. Suggest that he is doing that again and you don’t want to see him get hurt again. Encourage him to get more evidence or to ask the other person about what she thinks directly. When you have done this a few times, you can start to work on his habit of reading your own mind. Every time that he tries to guess what you are thinking, tell him, “How do you know that is what I am thinking?” When he tells you why, offer suggestions for other things that you may be thinking. This makes him doubt his logic in reading your mind. Then tell him what you are really thinking and make sure that it is way different than what he guessed. Prove him wrong so that he learns that mind reading is not an accurate way to read someone or a good thing to base decisions on. Uninspired People

Uninspired people don’t want to do anything. They can provide a huge detriment to productivity and can bring those around them to a lower level of work ethic. Inspiring someone who has no motivation is a great way to get him to adopt new habits that motivate him and shed old ones that cause him to slack off. You might have a friend or loved one who refuses to quit smoking, and you don’t want to see him die from lung cancer and other health issues that smoking can cause. So you should encourage him to quit. You can use these ideas to encourage someone to take on projects and do things that he is not inspired to do himself. You can push co-workers to do more work in the team and to raise office morale. Sometimes, all someone needs is a little shove in the right direction so that he takes off and completes a goal on his own. Inspiration is the passion to do something. It is a driving force. When someone lacks motivation or inspiration, he will not accomplish very much. He will engage in things like wasting time, procrastinating, complaining, and otherwise putting off work. His accomplishments will be few and small, which will further de-motivate him. Some of the things that contribute to inspiration include passion, confidence, love for what someone does, money, and the promise of heightened status. Threats rarely work to motivate someone, though sometimes you can use threats

such as, “You know that you will lose everything if you don’t do this.” Positive affirmation and encouragement often works better than threats and other negative techniques, however. Using Dark CBT, ask him a line of questions that make him realize that he is not being very productive. Then ask him questions that make him realize how being productive will aid him in getting what he wants. Make sure that he remembers what is at stake and what he stands to gain. Put the focus on gain rather than loss for more positive results. You can also ask him why he is feeling unmotivated. You never want to ask him directly, because he will say that he does not know the answer or that he is motivated and you are just pushing him too hard. Instead, you want to ask something more covert, like, “What do you feel that you are getting from this project? What do you think that you are putting into it? If you could do more, what do you think you could do?” These questions make him start thinking to himself how he is not being very motivated or inspired, and that he should try a little harder. Furthermore, you can drop the occasional reminder to keep his goal fresh in his mind. Dark CBT is all about making goals and following through on them. Tell people, “Don’t forget the big reward that we will get when we finish this project!” Tell a smoker who is trying to quit, “I bet you can’t wait to feel better and drop your risk of cancer and heart disease

by half!” Remind the uninspired person how well he is doing and how much progress he has made. You can have your co-workers, team members, or even family members write down how they were doing a year ago. Then write down how they are doing today. This shows them that they have made progress in life, even if they don’t realize it. This further encourages people to keep doing what they’re doing. People with Mental Illness Mental illness is incredibly common, despite the stigma that surrounds it. Most people suffer from mental illness, and it’s likely that you know someone who does. But most people also refuse to admit that they are ill or that they need help. They don’t want to be called “crazy” so they refuse to seek treatment. As a result, their symptoms only get worse and they fail to move forward in life. CBT has shown tremendous benefits for people with mental health issues. The act of changing one’s thinking to be more balanced, positive, and solution-oriented is effective at making people feel better. There is much strong evidence lending credence to the fact that just targeting thinking alone can help or even heal mental illness. So if you know someone who is mentally ill but refuses to get help, you can offer help in a silent way that he is unable to refuse. You can make a positive difference

in his life and help him get better rapidly if you just put forth a little effort at correcting his self-beliefs and cognitive distortions. This is the healing element of Dark CBT that is so stealthy yet so good for others. The best thing to do is to challenge him when he starts to exhibit the unhealthy thinking that leads to his mental illness symptoms. He may start ruminating about his problems, so ask him, “Is dwelling on your problems really helpful, or would you benefit more if you try to find solutions? Let’s brain storm some possible solutions.” He may start being pessimistic, so ask him, “What if there is a positive to this? Can you think of any potential positives to this situation?” You may also want to have a long conversation with him. Don’t give away that you are trying to help him. Simply be a friend, willing to listen. Ask him why he feels the way that he does. He may say I don’t know, so lead him down a line of questions to help him unearth the experiences that have led to his internal conflict and sadness. Then, help him realize the different beliefs that he has developed about himself because of these bad experiences. Question if these beliefs are really true and if he can find evidence in his own life that nullify these beliefs. For instance, he may believe that he is worthless and doesn’t deserve healthy relationships because he was abused as a child. So you can challenge that. “Don’t you do lots of things for your church? That

makes you a good person, right?” Try to bolster his self-esteem and teach him to erase his ugly self-beliefs. You are essentially playing therapist here. But you always want to pose as a friend. You never want to give it away that you are using a psychological method to heal a person. Otherwise, your subject will probably become resistant. Results often do not appear overnight. It takes a long time to teach a person new thinking, new attitudes, and new beliefs. You can only accomplish healing through patience and perseverance. Using lots of love and kindness and setting a good model of healthy thinking is also important. You can’t expect to heal someone if you are a mess yourself. This is why most therapists attend therapy themselves and many engage in a self-journey of healing and deep mental exploration while in school. Abusive People It is best to always avoid toxic, abusive people. They only mean you harm. They are not good to have in your life because they will do their best to destroy you. But sadly, life is not always so simple. Sometimes you may be forced to stay in contact with or in the presence of an abusive, manipulative person. It is said that you cannot rationalize with an irrational person and this is mostly true. But Dark CBT goes beyond rationalization and attempts to get inside someone’s head in a deeper

way. You can at least mitigate the harmful behavior of an abuser if you must spend time around this person. Try to get away from him if you can, however. There is no need spending time trying to fix people like this who just want to hurt you. When an abuser tries to play mind games on you, your best defense is to deflect those mind games. You don’t need to play games back. You just need to smile and act like his hurtful words don’t have any bearing on your identity. Challenge each thing he says. “You really think that that is true?” “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I think you’ll find that what you are saying is very one-sided.” “That may be true, but here’s another perspective.” Deflect his words and make him think about them. You should also ask him, “What makes you feel so bad that you must attack other people?” He will hate this because you are removing his power and not letting him intimidate you. You are also forcing him to face himself and his deep-seated issues. Challenge toxic people to debates by answering everything they say with a question that makes them doubt the veracity of what they’re saying and the strength or power that they hold over you. This also will drive an abuser crazy. He will probably give up and move on to an easier victim when he sees that he cannot get inside your head and hurt you. He will be disturbed by your supposed psychic voodoo. Just keep asking questions

and don’t argue or back down. Force him into a corner so that he wants to run far away. He will learn to respect you and to avoid you because you will not simply bow down to his abuse.

Chapter 10: Use Dark CBT to Improve Yourself

Part of the power of Dark CBT is self-improvement. You can do wonders on yourself and become the person whom you want to be if you use Dark CBT on yourself. If something, such as a bad habit or negative thinking pattern, is holding you back, then use Dark CBT to change it. Achieve all that you desire with Dark CBT. It really is possible! CBT has been shown to help people achieve the seemingly impossible, such as quitting smoking, curing chronic depression, and losing stubborn weight. It even has positive implications for helping people get over physical ailments and diseases. Set One Clear Goal It is best to set a firm goal. This is the goal that you focus on and stick to. Only when you achieve this goal should you take on another one. Taking on too many self-improvement projects at once will simply overwhelm you and cause you to fail. You can really do a number on yourself if you stress yourself out with too much lifestyle change or personal work. Instead, dedicate yourself to one major goal. You can take self-improvement a step at a time. You will also notice that improving

yourself creates a Domino effect: When you create a win by completing one goal, you will be more able to complete the next goal with less effort. Change Your Attitude You should take on an invincible attitude in order to improve yourself. Believe that you are capable of anything. Believe that you can do this and that you deserve it. Stop doubting yourself or thinking that you can’t do what you want. You have probably failed in the past, so now you have a lingering self-belief that you can’t be successful at your goal. You may also have a negative self-belief from childhood, when an adult in your life, such as your parents, took a discouraging approach in how they treated you. You may feel that you don’t deserve what you want, since you have low self-esteem. Well, those beliefs need to go. They don’t serve you at all. Just let them go and understand that you deserve whatever you want, no matter what you secretly believe, and that you can achieve anything regardless of what you have failed to achieve in the past. This is the present and it’s a new start. Use Visualizations to Solidify Your Goal Now, visualize who you want to be. When you visualize something, you make it seem more real to yourself. Your mind will believe that your visualization can be reality if it sees it. So create a very strong and real-

seeming visualization. You can visualize it in your mind vividly, or you can create a vision board with pictures. Seeing pictures can make a visualization seem much more real to your mind. Use your visualization as inspiration. When you are running low on motivation or feeling discouraged, just visit your vision board or imagined visualization to remind yourself of what you want. Seeing it again will reaffirm your desire to achieve that goal. So let’s say you want to quit smoking. You can visualize a world where you don’t smoke. Imagine how clear your voice will sound, and how great you will smell. Picture your wallet or bank account full of the cash that you save on cigarettes. Even visualize X-Rays of your lungs that show how clear and clean they are, and how healthy you are. Maybe put anti-smoking pictures on your vision board. When you want a cigarette, just revisit this nice world in your mind, and know that that world can be yours if you stick to your goal. Picking up a cigarette will simply cloud that world with smelly smoke and your lungs will fill with gunky tobacco tar again. Find the Thoughts that Trigger Your Bad Habits What thought makes you want to do the habit that you are trying to quit or the traits in yourself that you are working to improve? Most likely, you do bad things or engage in bad habits because you are trying to

assuage an emotional wound. That emotional wound is most likely being inflicted or kept open by a self-belief or cognitive distortion that you hold. Thoughts cause emotions, so controlling your thoughts can lead to changes in your emotional state. You can heal yourself and end bad habits when you address underlying sources of your emotional problems. So consider what causes the flaw within yourself that you want to change. Maybe you have a problem with procrastination. Most likely, you put things off because you believe that you have to be perfect and that takes a lot of effort. The sheer effort of being perfect all of the time and the fear of not being perfect can be exhausting, so you put things off and waste a lot of time avoiding responsibility as a result. Maybe you have an issue handling confrontation. You avoid it to a fault. Then you snap because you let emotions build up and create more problems because your supposed bad temper. Probably you were not allowed to express yourself or taught healthy emotional expression and conflict resolution as a child. Now, you have issues expressing yourself properly and you fear that you will anger others. You should work on not caring so much about what others think and not fearing your own emotions. Learn how to express yourself without fear. Or maybe you can’t stop smoking. You probably have some sort of underlying belief that is causing you a lot of stress. Smoking is like a

shield or crutch that helps you when you feel stressed out and sad or depressed. You rely on it for emotional support even though it is just an illusion that smoking helps you in any way, shape, or form. The same concept applies to habits like shopping, gambling, drinking, overeating, or using drugs. Once you pinpoint the thoughts that drive your habits, you can work to change those thoughts. You can improve your thinking first. Your behavior will naturally follow. You will feel better and stop engaging in unhealthy behavior. Accept Yourself More When it comes to self-improvement, people tend to engage in the cognitive distortion called “should thinking.” They think “I should be this way” or “My life should look like this.” They base their should thinking off of what other people tell them or what other people have. They fail to realize that they have it pretty good themselves and that their circumstances make it impossible and unnecessary for them to be just like other people. If you want to improve yourself, you need to consider why. Do you really need improvement? Or do you just need to improve your lack of self-approval? You need to work on yourself if you engage in behaviors or thoughts

that are self-defeating. For instance, if you do things that cause yourself harm or complicate life unnecessarily and create problems for you to stress over, then you need to end that behavior or thinking. You need to adopt healthier thinking patterns that are more conducive to your success. Stop doing what hurts you or limits you. But you do not need to improve yourself if you simply want to look like a famous model or have as much money as your friend who married a rich spouse. Just accept yourself as you are. The only thing you need to improve if you are trying to be like others and change yourself unnecessarily is your habit of “should thinking.” Start to love yourself and accept who you are and what you have. You will be much happier. There is only so much that you can change about yourself. If you change too much, you won’t be yourself anymore. Then you become lost and confused and have no identity. The only things you should change are thoughts and habits that hold you in a bad place in life. Find Sources of Stress and Toxicity There are probably people and situations in your life that cause you undue stress, problems, and anxiety. These things are toxic. You don’t need them. You will find that without these people or things in your life, you will be much better off. Sometimes, it is obvious what is toxic in your life. Cut these obvious

bad things out without apology or question. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for what you do. Just walk away from the bad things that stand out to you. But sometimes your toxic relationships or situations are not apparent. You have to ask yourself some questions to pinpoint what is wrong in your life. You need to consider what makes you feel awful. When you leave someone’s house, do you feel ugly or bad? Do you feel nasty after a conversation with someone? Do you hate yourself when you do something, or feel uninspired after going to work? Trace your bad feelings back to something or someone that you encountered during your day. Identify the things that hurt you and cause you to feel bad. You can use a CBT journal to help you with this process. Ask yourself a series of questions to lead you back to the source of your yucky feelings. Then you don’t need to question yourself or analyze yourself. If someone makes you feel bad, it doesn’t matter why. That person is bad for you and you should avoid him or her. The same goes for situations, tasks, and other things that bring you down. You don’t need to understand it or analyze it to know that you need to get away. You can only begin to improve your life if you take out the trash in it. Stay in the Present When people take on self-improvement journeys, they tend to fixate

on the future and what they want their results to be. They don’t enjoy the present. Their impatience often gets them into trouble. Being impatient makes them give up because they aren’t seeing results quickly enough. Staying in the present offers you an advantage over such people. You can really improve your outlook and your chances of succeeding at your self-improvement project if you don’t fixate on the future too much. Instead, enjoy the journey and don’t look forward to the destination too much. The present is the only place where you can do anything, so you should dedicate your energy to it and stay aware of it. Otherwise, you might miss something. Discounting the present is a major cognitive distortion. You should avoid doing it. Stay grounded in the present. Notice the present moment and be grateful for what you have now. When your thoughts begin to wander to the past or future, yank them back by focusing on something in front of you, such as a spot on the wall or an object. Notice that object and really observe how it looks, smells, sounds, feels, and even tastes if you can taste it. This way, you bring yourself back to the present. This is a great exercise to cut down on impatience when you are thinking forward too much. It can help you get over the past if you dwell on past experiences or traumas too much, too. And it helps you stay patient and grounded, focused on your present journey.

Let Go of the Past The past shapes who we are. Therefore, it can be very hard to let go of the past. But Dark CBT maintains the CBT teaching that the present is the only time that you should focus on. Basing your life on the past ends up causing you to assume that things are the same as they were in the past, so you make erroneous decisions. It also keeps you grounded in ugly situations that are over, and holds open emotional wounds caused by traumas and bad experiences that you really need to be working through. You continue to hold onto beliefs that formed in the past rather than learning that those beliefs are untrue, letting them go, moving forward, and growing as a person. You refuse to let those around you grow, too, which can frustrate and stifle the people that you love. It is time to find what past memories you keep thinking about. In your CBT journal, document the memories that continually pop into your mind. Investigate how they honestly make you feel. Your foul mood may have stemmed from when you were thinking about a sour memory this morning, for instance. Then decide on the memories that you would prefer to let go of. Ask yourself why this memory no longer serves you. Jot down reasons that this memory does not define who you are and what beliefs it has caused you to develop that you can safely let go of. Seeing why memories no

longer serve you shows your mind why these memories are not worth holding onto and thinking about. Your mind only clings to these because it thinks that these memories will help protect it from having similar experiences in the future. You want to teach your mind that these are not worthwhile memories to hold onto anymore. Also accept that your bad experiences in the past taught you a lot and molded you into who you are. Write down how they have helped you. You have benefited from them, so now there is no more point holding onto the pain. You can now move on. You can even thank these memories as a form of closure. When they pop up in your thinking, acknowledge that the memory is still there, then thank it and redirect your thinking to something in the present. When you encounter a new situation, try not to put the past onto it. This experience may be completely unlike the past. Accept that things may be different this time around. You can learn from the past and avoid repeating the same mistakes, but do not make decisions just because of what has happened before. Go ahead and take some risks sometimes. Things may turn out better than they did in the past.

Chapter 11: Use Dark CBT to Become Successful

Often, the main inhibitor to your own success is you. Sometimes, other people also stand in your way. With Dark CBT, you can remove the obstacles that stand in the way of your success. You can use Dark CBT to become a more successful person. Everyone has a different definition of what success is. Success is a relative thing that each person experiences differently. For some, success might be having peace of mind and coping with mental illness properly to minimize symptoms. For others, success might be making lots of money. And yet for others, success may be having lots of children and raising them well. Whatever your definition of success is, you must believe that you can attain it. Set your sights on the end goal and plan the steps that you need to take to achieve it. In the meantime, pinpoint the thinking and attitudes that hold you back from following through on each of those steps. You can change your own thinking to become more successful. Learn healthy and proactive thought habits that enable you to overcome hurdles in your life and further yourself. You don’t need to cling to the

schemas and cognitive distortions that hold you back. Let them go and you will be surprised at how far you can go in life. You can also make the people around you become more encouraging and more conducive to your success by influencing their thinking. When people become difficult or discouraging, you can challenge their behavior and lead them into a different attitude. You can make people basically make the way for you. The advice on how to get people to like you using Dark CBT is also useful in this venture, as it enables you to create a network of people willing to help you and open opportunities for you. Believe in Yourself You can be your own worst enemy when it comes to your own success. The most common reason that people hold themselves back is because they are afraid that they do not deserve success because they will only mess it up. The internal self-belief that you will mess everything up and that you do not deserve good things in life is a very inhibiting, limiting self-belief. It can strike fear in you so that you do not try your hardest, do your best, and ultimately drive yourself to success. It keeps you from taking advantage of great opportunities because you are too scared of failure. Another limiting self-belief that affects a lot of people is the belief

that you can’t. You think that you are not capable of the action and dedication that a task or goal calls for. You hold yourself back out of fear that you are not skilled, patient, hardworking, or otherwise able to be successful. A single parent might believe that he or she cannot succeed because he or she is too busy with work and raising children. An overweight person might think that he cannot become a police officer because he is not fit enough and the physical training will kill him. A hopeful entrepreneur might not believe that he can earn enough money to stay afloat, so he never bothers to even try opening his dream business. These are just a few examples of the excuses that people make to avoid taking risks. If there is a will, there is a way, so end this type of thinking now. Changing these limiting self-beliefs is an essential step in becoming successful. You cannot just become successful even if you work hard at it. You have to become the kind of person who invites success into your life. And one of the ways to invite success is to start believing that you can be successful. If you believe something wholeheartedly, your mind will trust you and will do what it takes to make something happen. Therefore, if you believe in yourself, your mind will allow you to do what you need to achieve your dreams. Hanging onto negative self-beliefs only teaches your mind to limit you in order to protect you from what it assumes is certain failure.

Every time you start to believe something ugly about yourself or something that is detrimental to your success, you need to challenge that belief. Ask yourself, “Do I have any evidence that this belief is true? Are there times in my past when I was successful that prove this belief wrong? Did someone tell me to believe this about myself? Is that person a credible source; is he or she even successful?” Challenge the belief and prove to yourself that it is wrong. Start forming more powerful and positive self-beliefs. An “I can do it!” approach to life is certainly more effective in achieving things, so you want to cultivate such an attitude. Start reinforcing positive beliefs within yourself by reciting positive mantras. This makes your mind start to accept the belief that is more conducive to your life success. Over time, you can teach yourself to be more positive and to believe good things about yourself. End Cognitive Distortions that Limit You All the cognitive distortions we have covered in this book are unhealthy because they impair your ability to make appropriate decisions and to solve your problems based on evidence. You need to drop any and all cognitive distortions in order to be truly successful. This does not mean that if you slip up and think in an unhealthy way every now and then, you blow your chances of success. It simply means that you need to

strive to think in healthier ways. The best thing to do is to take a balanced approach to life, and see things in shades of gray. There will be good and there will be bad, so you need to contend with both. Focus on the present and the positive. Focus on becoming the best version of yourself possible and don’t let your mistakes from the past hinder you. Try to avoid making assumptions or reading the minds of others, and instead work with concrete evidence that you have. Don’t dwell on problems, but instead find out ways to make your life better. If you do these things, you will be way more successful. Be Grateful Gratitude is one thing that CBT encourages you to cultivate. When you are grateful for the things that you have in life and when you focus on the positive in life, you open the doors to a better life. You see all that you have and you know what you have to work with to be successful. You also see that life is pretty good, so you have a more positive, enthusiastic attitude about life and you are willing to work toward things that will make life only better. You should keep a gratitude journal. Write down three things that you are grateful for each day. Also consider how you are doing better now than you were in the past, and feel grateful to yourself for making it this

far. Keeping your mind on the positive will help you overcome a lot of negativity that may be holding you back. It will open your eyes to what is possible, based on what you have already achieved. Make Challenges Fun Life will never be without problems. You will always run into new challenges and problems. But the key to being successful in life is determining how to overcome these challenges. CBT encourages you to look at your problems and rate your feelings about each problem. Then, go through the thinking that is limiting you from solving this problem. Ask yourself, “How can I think about this that will make it better?” This therapy technique basically coaches you through the process of becoming solution-oriented. It also encourages you to stop feeling distressed, panicking, and dwelling on problems, as these habits are not helpful in reaching good solutions. The key to being successful is to view each hurdle that you encounter as something fun that you get to work through, sort of like a puzzle. You need to figure out to solve the puzzle to move forward in life. You can’t let negative emotions get in the way. You also can’t base your decisions on the past. You need to work with the present and the tools and skills at your disposal to overcome this hurdle. When you view problems in this way, they will become less discouraging and you will

suffer less despair. You will also become more proactive about solving problems and being successful. Your solution-oriented, energetic mindset will become contagious to those around you, making them more positive as well. Lead Others in Your Success Setting an example for others by being successful yourself is part of how you can influence those around you to accept your success. Often, people get envious of others’ success. They want to sabotage others’ success in order to keep people on their level. When you become more successful and positive about life, you will notice that people will try to bring you down. They will discount the things that you accomplish, they will tell you that you don’t deserve what you have earned, or they will tell you that you have no chance of succeeding. You better not believe them. Instead, you should challenge their miserable thinking. Ask them, “Do you think that you can’t achieve this? Why can’t you do what I’m doing?” When you ask this, it automatically makes people wonder if they can achieve what you achieved. It also makes it seem like being successful is easy, so people will realize that they can follow your example. Don’t let other people get to you. Just encourage them to follow your lead. If they choose not to, that is their problem, not yours. But if you set a good example and encourage people to be successful as well, you

make people feel special and show them that they can achieve what they thought was impossible too. You can cut down on resentment and negativity from others if you attempt to share your success. Persuade Others to Help You When you want to be successful, you may sometimes need to persuade others to help you. Sometimes you need a leg up to get by in life. Other people are important factors in your success. If you have people supporting you and helping you, you are more likely to achieve your goal. But how do you get people to help you when most people only want to serve themselves? Dark CBT enables you to be very persuasive. It shows you how to make people want to like you and want to help you by encouraging them to think the way that you want. The best part is that Dark CBT is stealthy, so that other people won’t know that you are being persuasive. You can persuade people best by showing them how they benefit from helping you. This part is easy. If you can see a way to share your success with someone, or to benefit him or her in exchange for him or her benefiting you, then do so. But what if you can’t see a benefit that you can offer someone? This is where some Dark CBT manipulation can come in. Dark CBT manipulation is easy to use. You just have to change someone’s thinking to match what you want. You can use the tactics we

already covered to make someone dependent upon you and eager to please you at all times over a period of time. You essentially train someone. But if you don’t have time for that, you can simply lead someone on a line of questioning to make him feel obligated to help you. One way to do this is to play on guilt. Ask someone, “Have you ever done something that you regret?” Then ask him if he wants to atone for that. Lead him to believe that by helping you, he pays for his mistakes and incurs good karma. Or show him that as he does things for you, he can pay for something bad that he once did to you. You can also ask him when was the last time that he did something that he felt good about. That makes him start thinking about how he wants to feel good. Ask him if he would find helping you rewarding and if he would like to be known and remembered as a good person. Ask him if he gets enough gratification in his life and if he would like more. This line of questioning can make him realize that he needs some gratification in his life and that he can maybe get it from helping you out. He will know that he can get gratification from you and feel good about himself since you are the one asking him these questions. You don’t even have to promise to give him gratification; you simply have to make him think that you offer it by talking about it. Finally, you can remind him of a favor that you once did for him.

“Do you remember when I did this for you?” Then ask him if he would like to pay you back for that favor. “You can knock off your debt and we’ll be even if you do this for me.” Get People to Like You You will enjoy far more success if people like you. When people like you, they are eager to please you and more likely to do favors to you. They will also share opportunities with you so that you can get what you want. Taking advantage of opportunities that other people throw you will help you advance yourself in life. Essentially, you want to meet the right people so that you are in a position where you can further your life. You can get people to like you by making them feel good. Dark CBT enables you to do this by encouraging people to think in positive ways and nullifying their negative, defeating self-beliefs and schemas. When you help people feel good, they associate that good feeling with you. Then they want to spend more time around you. They may even feel that they owe you because you make them feel so good. When you hear someone speaking about himself in a demeaning way, ask him, “Do you really think that’s true?” When he says yes, ask him what evidence he has to support such a belief. Encourage him to think of ways that he has been a good person in his life to prove that his belief is wrong. Eventually, he will come to see that his belief is wrong

and he will attribute this revelation to you. You will make him feel better about himself, even if it’s just for a moment. Then you have made a friend. You can also do this when you see someone engaging in a cognitive distortion that hurts him or makes him commit mistakes. Start by questioning the validity of his thinking. Ask him if there is a better way for him to look at things. Offer a more positive perspective. Talk through his problems and help him reach a solution. Do this in a way where you only ask him questions that lead him to a conclusion on his own. Don’t just throw advice at him, or he won’t take it. After speaking to you, he will feel much better. He will want to keep speaking to you because of how you help him look at life in more positive and helpful ways. You will be like a therapist that he can turn to, and that will make him want to befriend you.

Chapter 12: Dark CBT for Parenting

Ideally, parents want to be perfect. They want to be honest and upfront with their kids and they want to avoid doing anything that may make others raise their eyebrows. But any experienced parent knows that parenting is not so simple. Parents are often forced to turn to using forms of manipulation on their children, such as bribery to get kids to do chores and eat vegetables, or reverse psychology to motivate uninspired kids. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with using Dark CBT on your kids. You don’t need to be a monster and use it to change your kids into different people. You can simply use Dark CBT to get your children to think in ways that are more helpful to everyone involved. Ultimately, you can use Dark CBT to become a better parent as you teach your children how to think in helpful and healthy ways that lead to their success in life. Dark CBT can help you turn your children into great, responsible, and mentally healthy adults. It can also make your job as a parent much easier and simpler. Again, I will stress that Dark CBT should not be used on your children to change their personalities or control them. Using Dark CBT in this way is a form of emotional abuse. To be a good parent, you should let your children find their own personalities and be themselves. However,

you also need to offer guidance to help them grow into healthy and welladjusted adults. As every parent knows, children love to resist guidance and advice. Therefore, you can successfully be a good parent by using Dark CBT to offer advice in a more stealthy way that your children will respond to better. That is the proper application of Dark CBT for parenting. Start Young One of the major premises of CBT is that people develop their cognitive distortions and poor thinking habits early in life. They often learn these habits from their parents and other prominent role models. Therefore, starting young is a great way to influence your children to think more helpfully and positively. You can teach them healthier thinking at an early age. These healthy habits that you start teaching now will last into your child’s adulthood and make him a healthier, happier adult. Understand that it is never too late to start using Dark CBT to parent your children, however. Even if your child or children are in their teens, you can help guide their thinking along healthy lines. Dark CBT will still work on them, no matter how old they are. After all, thousands of adults have used CBT to change their thinking long after their thinking habits have been solidified. You should start using Dark CBT on your

children at any point in time. Also keep in mind that Dark CBT isn’t just useful for parents. You can use these same concepts on any family members who are not good at thinking proactively and positively. You can apply these to your spouse, siblings, in-laws, adult parents, and other people in your life whom you want to influence in a positive way. Your family’s sanctity will be preserved if you help everyone think along more helpful lines. You can’t pick your family, but with Dark CBT, you can make them better people who are easier to get along with and relate to. Using Dark CBT on your family is stealthy, but it works because your family will not know what you are trying to do. Therefore, they cannot resist you when you try to help them or improve the family dynamic. Difficult family members will be much easier to contend with when you employ Dark CBT on them. Set a Goal Like with every application of Dark CBT, you need to set a firm goal for your child. This means that you need to figure out how you want him to think and what you want to teach him. Then you can focus on this goal to address his poor thinking. Basically, goal setting is very simple. You want to teach your child to steer clear of every cognitive distortion. Therefore, set the goal of teaching him to avoid such things as mind reading, assuming, blaming

himself, blaming others, and focusing on the negative. These are all common cognitive distortions that you may notice in your child. Probably one of the most important things to teach your child is responsibility for his actions. Therefore, you want to encourage him to stop blaming others or external circumstances for his mistakes. When he starts to blame other people or things for things that he does, ask him a line of questions that make him realize that he is at fault. Teach him to own his mistakes and apologize for them. Also teach him that when he screws up, it is not the end of the world and he can set things right. Make it a point to teach him how to become proactive about attacking his problems and finding solutions to correct mistakes that he has made. However, self-esteem is also incredibly important to teach to your child. Without high self-esteem, your child is set up for all sorts of life problems, relationship issues, and other emotional problems. He will not go after what he wants because he does not believe in himself. He will not choose friends or love partners who treat him right. Basically, his life will shrink and he will not shine at his best if he has low self-esteem. Therefore, you want to teach him not to blame himself for things that are out of his control. When he blames himself for things, ask him, “Is this really your fault?” Show him that sometimes life happens and some circumstances are simply beyond his control. Add that even when life

throws curve balls, he has the power to do something about it. Blaming himself is not conducive to anything, however. Teach him to let go of control and blame, and to instead focus on finding solutions to life’s curveballs. You also want to teach your child to avoid the common fallacies of assuming and mind reading. People tend to do this and make a lot of mistakes in life because they do not bother to get all of the information necessary to make a decision. You can teach him early on how to avoid a lot of heartache by teaching him to challenge his own mind and to investigate things thoroughly before assuming something about someone or about a situation. Negative thinking is often something that children only learn from their parents, role models, and peers. But some children are naturally more pessimistic than others. Setting a good model for your child and challenging him whenever he speaks darkly about things is essential to making him more positive in his thinking. Show him through your own behavior, encourage him to always be grateful, and tell him to never discount the positive or to engage in pessimism. When he becomes pessimistic, show him how to be optimistic and point out that good things do happen in life. Perhaps have a family gratitude prayer or keep a gratitude journal with him so that he focuses on the good things in his life

and counts his blessings. You can use this method also when your child begins to nag for a new toy or something that you are not willing to give him for whatever reason. Rather than arguing with him that he doesn’t need said toy, you can make him focus on how many toys he already has. You can also teach your child not to dwell, ruminate, or discount the present. When he starts to dwell or pout, tell him that the past is the past. Ask him what he can do about his problem or tell him that he can’t do anything about it and dwelling on it will not accomplish anything. Then do an activity to bring him to the present and take his mind off of his problems. This will teach him to adopt this same attitude as he grows up. Set a Good Model You can tell your child what to do until you are blue in the face. But as any parent knows, children are resistant to what their parents tell them. Especially past a certain age, children want to explore the world and find things out for themselves. They will not do exactly what you tell them to do. The best way to get a child to do what you want is to set a model that he will follow. When you want to teach your child how to handle a problem, you should model that behavior yourself. It may be difficult at times, especially since no one is perfect. You will not permanently screw up your

child just because you slip up and use a cognitive distortion every now and then. But remember that your behavior greatly influences his. When you engage in the behavior that you want to see in him, he will likely follow your lead. You are his number one role model, after all. The main thing that you can do as a parent is encourage your child to become proactive about finding solutions to problems. When a problem crops up in your own life, actively go about finding a solution and verbally illustrate your process to your child. This teaches him how to think when he runs into a problem. Later, if he seems stuck about something in his life, tell him, “Remember when I listed options and then weighed pros and cons about which plumber to hire?” Don’t tell him to do the same thing. Just remind him of what you did and he will likely adopt your habit. The other thing you can do is take responsibility for your mistakes and problems. Own them like a proper adult. Apologize honorably when you are in the wrong, even to your own child. This will not give your child a sense of entitlement, despite what many people think. Rather, it will teach him to apologize and take ownership of his mistakes as he grows up. When you start to feel overwhelmed or depressed and want to engage in pessimism, remind yourself what you are teaching him. Help

yourself and him by using an optimistic attitude. Focus on the present and the positive in every situation. Let the past go, at least outwardly. Narrate your life to him in an optimistic way and always talk about what is going well in the present. Everyone is guilty of making assumptions. Try to say, “I think this, but I can’t assume. I need more information.” Refuse to operate on assumptions. This sets a great model for him to avoid making assumptions and basing his decisions off of them. You should also employ this same model when it comes to mind reading. Instead of saying things like, “I just know what she’s thinking,” you should say, “I don’t know what she’s thinking. I can’t read others’ minds.” He will subconsciously adopt this and remember it the next time that he wants to read someone’s mind. The flip side to modeling behavior for your child is teaching him through your own mistakes. Naturally you are going to mess up sometimes, as you are only human. Mistakes and failures are actually awesome ways to teach your child how to handle his own in the future. When you engage in some cognitive dissonance and set a poor model, you can tell him, “See what I did there? Now this has happened. But I’ll fix it this way.” Show him how harmful certain thinking is by showing him how your mistakes negatively impact your life. But also show him how it is

possible to clean up mistakes and fix problems, as well. You just killed two birds with one stone. Use Lines of Questioning to Inspire Behavior Perhaps you have not been able to set the best model for your child because of your own problems and mental limitations. Or perhaps in a certain situation, you can’t set a model for your child. But you know that you can’t tell him what to do, either. This is where the stealthy part of Dark CBT comes in. You can influence his thinking through a line of questioning. That way, you can make him come around to your way of thinking without telling him what to do. He will think that he came to a conclusion or decision on his own. He will be proud of himself and more likely to do what you want if he thinks that it is his own idea. When you notice your child engaging in a form of behavior or thinking that you do not approve of, you can start asking him questions to make him come around to your way of thinking. Let’s look at an example of how this can work: The school calls and reports that your child shoved another kid in the hallway. When you ask him why he did this, he exclaims that this kid made him do it by being mean to him. First, ask him, “Did this kid really make you do this, or did you have a choice in your actions?” This will put doubt in his mind that the problem lies in the other child or in him and it

will make him wonder if he could have behaved differently. The ball is already rolling in the direction that you want. You should then ask, “Do you really believe that what you did was the right way to handle the situation?” When he realizes that he could have handled it differently, you can ask him, “How would you handle this situation differently in the future?” Let your child reach his own conclusion, but guide him with a line of loaded questions. This method is very effective at teaching new thinking and encouraging different behavior. Correcting Cognitive Distortions He Learns Elsewhere You are not your child’s only role model. He learns behavior from other people, such as his teachers, siblings, and friends. He may pick up cognitive distortions and self-beliefs from other people that are not healthy. How can you correct these distortions and beliefs? The first way is to challenge him when you hear him engaging in these distortions or self-beliefs. Ask him a series of questions to lead him to thinking differently. Just questioning his self-belief or distortion will cause him to realize that it is possibly incorrect. You can also tell him to question what other people say to him. Let him know that people can really influence his thinking but he has the right to think on his own. Therefore, tell him to question what everyone

says. When someone tells him something about himself, encourage him to always question it and compare it to evidence. That way, he won’t buy into mean beliefs that others try to plant into his head. He will become more immune to bullying and low self-esteem as a result of bullying in this way. Don’t just assure him that he is a great person or a golden boy when someone tells him something mean. Instead, lead him along a line of questions. “Are you mean to other kids?” “Do you lie and steal?” With these questions, you help him realize that he is actually a good kid and a great person on his own. It will mean more to him when he reaches this conclusion on his own. It will also show him how to deflect and question what others tell him about himself as he grows up, which is a very useful skill to have in this cutthroat world. Use His Own Experiences to Teach Him Sometimes, kids need to grow and learn on their own. You cannot hold your child’s hand every step of the way. But you can use his own experiences to really teach him lessons about how to think more positively. Use every situation that he encounters as a chance to point out how a better thinking habit could benefit him in a similar situation in the future. It is best to focus on how he can improve himself in the future.

Don’t rub his face in how he messed up in the past or point out his mistakes. He already knows what he did wrong. Simply point out how he can adapt his thinking to be better in the future. Let’s say your child makes an assumption about what another girl thinks of him. He doesn’t ask her to the dance because he assumes that she does not like him. She ends up going with another kid. This is the perfect time to tell him, “Next time, you know to go ahead and ask. Otherwise, you will never know and someone else will come along and scoop up the next girl that you like.” Offer Rewards Human beings love seeing rewards for what they do. Using rewards is a surefire way to encourage someone to do something and to keep doing it. You can use rewards to cement behavior that you teach your child through Dark CBT. One of the main rewards of CBT is noticeable improvements in your life, mood health, and mental well-being. But children are not as sensitive to these subtle improvements. They need more material rewards and more instant gratification. Their attention spans are often not long enough to appreciate more subtle or long-term rewards. Therefore, you should plan little rewards for your child that he will appreciate. Good rewards for children often include ice cream, candy, a fun trip to a place

like the zoo, or a new toy. Children love and understand these rewards, so use them to help develop your children’s behavior. You can offer your child a reward whenever you notice him using the thinking that you have been teaching him. For instance, if he is usually pessimistic but adopts an optimistic attitude about something, you can give him a toy. You don’t even need to tell him that he gets the toy because of his change in thinking. You can be stealthier and let him form an association between getting a new toy and thinking optimistically.

Conclusion

You have just completed the most powerful book that you will ever read in your life. You now have power that you never possessed before. Your ability to change the thinking within yourself and within others will pave the way to whatever you want. Nothing can stop you now. Does this newfound power feel good? It should, because now nothing can limit you and you are on the road to the life that you want. Dark CBT is the most powerful manipulation method that you will ever learn. That does not mean that it is evil and that you can go around hurting others. While Dark CBT can certainly be used for such nefarious purposes, its positive applications are far more useful in the long run. You will gain more if you help others and help yourself, rather than hurting and controlling people wrongly. Hopefully, you will harness the power that you have learned and use it to accomplish good things. Nevertheless, you are now able to accomplish anything that you want with other people. You know how to lead them into certain styles of thinking that will change their feelings, actions, and even personalities. That gives you tremendous power over others. Use this power as you see fit. Just beware of abusing it. How you use Dark CBT rests upon your

conscience. In this book, you have learned about the powerful and effective psychological therapeutic method known as cognitive behavioral therapy. Just knowing CBT itself is useful. You can use CBT on yourself or others to encourage more positive, helpful thinking. You can banish harmful thinking habits that cause you problems in life. You can also make others think in ways that are more conducive their own success and happiness. Life will become much easier if you, and everyone around you, becomes more positive and solution-oriented. Think of how this can help you in destructive relationships where fights are not helpful in resolving issues and the same problems repeat themselves. It can also help you if you have a team of unmotivated people at work who give up when the going gets tough. As a parent, CBT can help you teach your children to become better adults and to think along more solution-oriented lines when they run into problems in life. There is no limit to the ways that you can apply CBT to your life in a helpful way. What makes CBT dark is when you use it stealthily on someone, without his or her prior knowledge and consent. Dark CBT is ethically questionable, but that does not mean that you have to use it for evil purposes. You can get a lot done and cut down on problems in your life by helping others to think in more helpful ways.

There are some rather nefarious ways that you can apply Dark CBT. Use these methods at your own risk. You can manipulate people to do what you want by changing how they think about things, either in a positive way or a negative way. You can also bend people mentally and change their personalities by coaching them to adopt cognitive distortions that they do not currently possess, or by encouraging them to deepen their negative cognitive distortions. You can make someone helpless and negative by doing this, so that he is dependent upon you and easier for you to control. You can also brainwash someone quite effectively by changing how they think. Over time, you can condition someone to adopt a completely new personality by teaching him or her to think differently. You can make someone completely dependent upon you by continually challenging their thinking, causing him or her to become confused and inconsistent. If you don’t like someone, you can change him to fit the mold of what you do like. He will become like your minion, willing to do whatever you want, because you have designed his thinking to match your needs. Finally, you can use Dark CBT to get people to like you. Being liked is very important. In today’s society, it is not about what you know but rather who you know. Having people like you opens a lot of opportunities for you in life. You need to make people like you in order to get ahead. If

you are not naturally oozing charisma, that is OK, because now you know how to apply Dark CBT to get people to like you. You will certainly gain a leg up in life if you use Dark CBT in this way. Self-improvement is yet another application of Dark CBT. You can change other people with Dark CBT, but you can also change yourself. Become the person you need to be to achieve your goals by resolving internal conflicts, ending poor habits, and inviting success into your life. You can accomplish all of this now because you know how to run Dark CBT on yourself and change your thinking habits to reflect your goals. Sometimes cognitive distortions are your friend and you can use them to make your mind more powerful. Other times, distortions hold you back and you need to change them. You now know when and where to apply these concepts to yourself to become the optimal version of yourself. If you can change others’ personalities, then you can certainly change your own, perhaps even with more ease. You are now one of the most powerful people in the world. You have a special secret that you can use to gain control over others and yourself. The best part? This method is stealthy, so no one will ever know what you are really doing. Nothing can stop you now. People are no longer in your way and you are no longer your own worst enemy. Life can become exactly what you want it to become.

Thank you for reading! Other books available by Michael Pace on Kindle, paperback and Audio Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade

Dark Psychology 202: The Advance Secrets of Psychological Warfare, Dark NLP, Dark Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Super Manipulation, Kamikaze Mind Control, Stealth Persuasion, and Human Psychology 202

Dark NLP: How To Use Neuro-linguistic Programming For Self Mastery, Getting What You Want, Mastering Others And To Gain An Advantage Over Anyone

Dark Seduction: The Dark Truth About Seduction And How To Use It To Get What You Want From Love, Sex, Relationships And Romance

Dark Methods Of Persuasion: How To Use Dark Persuasion Techniques To Convince, Influence And Persuade Anyone And Get Them To Do What You Desire

Dark Psychology 202: The Advance Secrets of Psychological Warfare, Dark NLP, Dark Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Super Manipulation, Kamikaze Mind Control, Stealth Persuasion, and Human Psychology 202