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Hot Buttons and Weak Spots
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5. Understand Your Hot Buttons and Weak Spots
We all have hot buttons and weak spots. Hot buttons are those things
that provoke an automatic—often emotional—reaction from you,
get you excited, or set you off. For example, you may react with envy
and depression when your colleague gets promoted, and with sudden
frustration or anger when someone cuts you off in traffic, gets credit
for your work, or is critical of the way you dress. You may react with
pleasure when complimented on your looks, with anticipation and
joy when your candidate is ahead in the polls or when a player on
your team hits a home run. Hobbies are often hot-button topics and
tend to provoke positive reactions out of most people. Likewise, passion
for one’s work can provoke intense energy and excitement, especially
when someone takes an interest in what you do for a living.
When someone presses one of our hot buttons, our attention
may be diverted from more important things in our social environment,
and our evaluation of a person or situation may be colored by
the feelings and reactions triggered by the hot button. This reflex-like
tendency—to let hot buttons get the better of us—is not lost on the
psychopath or any manipulative person. They will identify your hot
buttons and will push them to test their utility. They will use this information
to establish in you a mood that is conducive to their current
interests and schemes.
It is difficult, except in the most blatant situations, to tell
whether someone has purposely pushed your hot button or has inadvertently
done so without any particular intent to manipulate or
use you. In fact, many legitimate friendships are started when
someone has pushed a hot button in an effort to genuinely befriend
you. A psychopath’s attempt to use your hot buttons against you—
for example, to make you lose control in front of someone of
importance—will quickly be labeled a mistake by him or her, if challenged.
You may even receive a public apology. However, if the psychopath’s
motive is to embarrass or humiliate you in front of others,