So now that you have answered those key questions, how do you turn this into useful and usable insight?
Start first with what felt good and what felt bad. Both are equally important. ‘What felt good’ shows you what makes you a soft target for a destructive manipulator. Those are your vulnerable areas that people can hook into – and do you damage.
These ‘soft spots’ are necessarily bad things to have. Not only do we all have them – it is often our good qualities that attract exploitative people.
Read through your answers to the first two questions – what felt good and what felt bad – and see what comes up for you. Here are some results from many exercises. Note that they are from different people, and the same person is unlikely to have these, sometimes contrasting, qualities!
‘My vulnerabilities’
I’m not that good on ‘people things’.
I feel like I have some really intractable problems right now, and I want them solved by someone who is ‘better’ than me because I feel I don’t know how.
I take people at face value – why not? And how else to read them?
I always want to see the good in others.
I think it’s very dangerous to pay attention to gut-instincts about other people when it’s negative – prejudging people is a serious failing.
He seemed like the perfect mate I always wanted
I want to be liked
I hate confrontation