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To set the terms of engagement effectively, you must observe these general rules:

 Do your best to avoid direct contests, and avoid trying to expose. Covert characters will eventually expose themselves, and contests with them inevitably escalate to everyone's disadvantage. Do your best to look for the potential “win‐win” in your relations with them. And when fashioning a win‐win scenario appears impossible and it looks like they might be facing the possibility of defeat, you need to be prepared for consequences and have an action plan ready if recriminations ensue.

 When you assert yourself on principle, stand your ground and don't let any of the tactics a manipulator might throw your way sway you. The manipulator's tactics will “invite” you to mistrust your gut and to buy into their distortions and misrepresentations. Stick to your principles and trust your instincts. They will guide you.

 Be open and direct in your dealings and communications. Expect the same from those with whom you engage. When you ask a simple direct question, don't settle for anything less than a simple, direct answer. And when you lay your cards openly on the table, don't accept an evasive or noncommittal response.

 Make sure you have a strong support system and have proactively fashioned for yourself some viable alternatives if the situation involving the character‐impaired person you've been dealing with deteriorates or becomes impossible.

It would be simply impossible to list all the steps you might take to empower yourself in your relationships and lessen your chances of being manipulated (in In Sheep's Clothing, I outline 12 of the more important “tools of empowerment”). But your intuition will guide you to a host of other empowering possibilities once you keep firmly in your mind that we live in a very different age – the age of character disturbance – and you stop assuming that everyone you meet is a frightened, insecure, unconsciously well‐defended, anxious neurotic like Freud believed, accepting instead that there are more self‐centered, grandiose, entitled, unscrupulous, calculating, and sometimes surreptitious fighters out there these days just waiting to get the better of you. Once you've made peace with that reality, heightened your awareness about such folks, know how to spot them, and understand how they tend to think and act, you've already empowered yourself substantially. And once you accept the notion that it's incumbent upon you to proactively define the terms of engagement with them and you understand the basic principles of doing so, it will become clearer to you with each encounter how to respond to their manipulations and maximally empower yourself.