On one of the international blog sites that features my work, a woman commented:

I have only recently realized that my elderly father is a covert-aggressive personality.  I spent so many years hating myself and feeling that others didn’t like me, including family members.  Knowing how I’d been duped has been a really hard realization to come to.  I always thought I had the “Leave it to Beaver life” yet I was never happy.  But I thought it was me, or my mother, or anyone but my Dad who was the problem.  Somehow, he always came out “smelling like a rose”.  I almost divorced my husband because of him and his manipulations.   When my Mom died, my Dad wanted me and wanted my husband gone from his life.  I spent many sleepless nights trying to figure all this out and I’m not sure I understand it completely even now.  I have to read and re-read Dr. Simon’s book to remind me what has happened to me and how it happened.  I know the truth about him now, yet I find it easy to blame myself.  My question is, if I confront a my Dad, covert aggressive personality that he is, with the facts as outlined in Dr. Simon’s book, would he see himself?  Would he know that I’ve “got it” with respect to what he’s really like or would he look at me like I’m crazy?

Perhaps this woman did not read or possibly didn’t understand some points I made in my book In Sheep’s Clothing about covert-aggressive personalities generally being much more character-disturbed than neurotic and how different disturbed characters are from neurotics with respect to the level of insight they have about themselves.  So, in part I replied this way:

If your dad is the kind of personality I describe in my book, the likelihood is that he already sees himself just fine.  And, if he looks at you like you’re crazy when you confront him, it’s more than likely a tactic to keep you under control.  So, it’s far more important that resist trying to get him to see things and simply take charge of your own life by setting firm limits with respect to his involvement in your affairs.

On March 31st, Parkhurst Brothers will release a brand new edition of In Sheep’s Clothing, already a 15-year international bestseller.  On June 30th, Parkhurst will also release Character Disturbance, my new book on all of the problem characters that can make your life difficult.  Both books point out that when it comes to covert-aggressive personalities or any other disturbed character, “they already see, they just disagree.”  That is, they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and they know how other people want them to behave. They simply refuse to do things differently and use various tactics to manipulate others into backing down or backing off.  My new book goes into much greater depth about this and explains how not to get caught up in the trap of trying to get them “to see.”

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