Are there times you feel manipulated? Are there times you feel like you’re being conned but can’t quite put your finger on how? Many of us often feel as if our lives are not our own. Often it seems like others just have a way of getting under our skin and making us feel that we should be doing what they think is best. Sometimes, they even make us doubt our own capacity for taking care of ourselves. If you’ve felt this way, you’re not alone. These perceptions signal our susceptibility to manipulators and con artists. Some of them are even members of our own family. We have the ability to recognize their ploys and disarm their potential. Manipulators have a plethora of ways to make us feel that we either owe them, know less or that they have the only solution for what ails us. They also have a sixth sense for knowing who they can con most easily. What is not known is that they feel the same occasional sense of unworthiness as we do but are much better at hiding and working around it through their aggression. Recognizing their ploys in the moment is our primary challenge. Our secondary challenge is learning to trust ourselves and knowing that they’re not the only game in town. We have everything we need to be and do what we want. We must just learn how to turn off our susceptibility to them and empower our own Self-Trust and confidence.