Notes from the Wolf: A Survivor's Guide to Manipulators

They say a wolf in sheep’s clothing is someone dangerous pretending to be harmless. But here’s the truth you won’t hear in Sunday school or in any of the pop culture clichés littering the digital landscape these days. 

Some wolves wear sheep suits not to deceive, but to survive.

I’ve done it. (Maybe you have, too.) Not because I was a predator who was hiding bad intentions, but because I was surrounded by people who only tolerated softness, compliance, and silence. 

These were people who recoiled from the sharp glint of instinct. Those people didn’t want to love me as they should have. They wanted to train me, so maybe I'd be useful to them later.

So I learned to blend in, because that's what you do when you're still just a kid who's still wholly reliant on others for literally everything. But blending in never made me forget who I was. Here are a few things I learned during my anxiety-ridden formative years zipped inside the fleece.

1. Decent people don't associate healthy boundaries with cruelty

If you know someone who does this, you're likely already nodding along. They're the type who respond to even the most polite “no” like you just ran over their grandmother without even stopping to apologize. Then they cry, sulk, lash out, guilt-trip. That's emotional manipulation at its finest, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. 

People who pull this hot nonsense aren't doing it because they're truly hurt or confused. They’re carefully testing the waters to see just how much guilt it will take to get you to give them their way.

2. No amount of softness will change a narcissist

Narcissists respond to empathy the way sharks respond to blood in the water. They don't smell your kindness and see someone worth loving, admiring, or appreciating. They see a potential energy cache to be taken advantage of at will.

So they play the victim and plead for grace. Then they bite the very hand that offered it the second they think they can get away with it. I used to think I could "nice" my way to a better relationship with people like these and maybe teach them a better way to be.

Spoiler alert. They're simply not capable of it, but they'll happily take as much "nice" as you're willing to dish out before you finally see the light.

3. You don't owe anyone your vulnerability 

“Why don’t you trust me?” “Why are you so distant?” Because you’re collecting information, not facilitating a genuine connection, and I know it. That's why. Because I’ve finally learned that trust, vulnerability, and access to the best parts of me should be earned like the treasures they are, not handed out willy-nilly to anyone who asks.

Never let someone convince you that access to your private life, your personal space, or the most sacred parts of who you are should come free or cheap. You're allowed to set the price of that access to whatever you want. You're also allowed to raise it any time you want.

4. Anger can actually be sacred

I used to let others around me convince me that my refusal to appease people made me a bad person. That my resistance to being guilt-tripped meant I wasn’t forgiving enough. That my anger and frustration at being mistreated meant there was something fundamentally wrong with me as a human being.

At one point, the narcissists in my life even had me convinced that I don't possess the ability to love at all. But I eventually realized that anger is often your nervous system's way of saying, "Not this again. Not here, and definitely not now."

Trust that voice implicitly. It’s older (and wiser) than your trauma.

5. Remembering you're a wolf means knowing when to shed the fleece for good

I don’t stay in places where my natural instincts are labeled aggression. I don’t tolerate people who think love means unlimited access to me, the right to violate my boundaries, and double standards that never work out in my favor.

And I don’t apologize for refusing to appease manipulators, narcissists, or anyone else who thrives on chaos, either. I’m not here to be liked. I’m here to be free, and so are you.

........

I don’t wear that old, moth-eaten sheep suit anymore, not even for show. But I do keep it hanging way in the back of my emotional closet as a reminder of everything I’ve survived. Every smile I forced, every hug I didn’t want to give, every moment I knew something was wrong but lacked the language to name or unpack it.

So here’s to the wolves in sheep’s clothing –– the survivors who always knew they were different, sensed danger when no one else could, and eventually learned to trust themselves even when no one else did. We weren’t hiding. We were simply surviving until we grew big and bold enough to remember who we really were.

* This reflection is part of this lunar cycle's Feast of the Wandering Pen, a month-long adventure into identity, expression, and creativity in all its forms.