Actions speak louder than words… or do they?
This week two people contacted me, both adult daughters of sociopaths. In one case her father and in the other case her mother has psychopathic personality traits. Interestingly, both disordered parents claim to be “Christian” and the theme of our discussions was the disparity between what the parent says and what they do. Both women shared the belief that this disconnect between words and action is particularly damaging to children. I agree with this assertion because I have also seen it in other cases.
Why would the disconnect between words and actions be so damaging to children?
Consciousness develops gradually during childhood. Consciousness means connecting words, thoughts and feelings to what is happening in reality. Many children naturally idealize their parents and so are inclined to believe the version of reality their parents present in words. But what if the words and reality don’t in fact match? Consider the following example a father wrote to his daughter from prison. Keep in mind this father is a repeat offender who has defrauded and ruined many including family members:
I have a lot of time to sit here and ponder the course of my life. I know I have wronged the family, and for that I am truly sorry. I have been so selfish and stubborn… I haven’t seen or talked to you in well over a year and I can’t help but wonder the rippling effect that sends into the demonic realm. I hope all is well. I love you with the perfect love of the Father.
This is a perfect example of the way a sociopath communicates. His agenda isn’t apparent until the third to the last sentence. His agenda is to manipulate her into having contact with him. But unless you are aware of how a person with psychopathic personality traits operates, you wouldn’t necessarily get that. He starts out stating a fact, he has unlimited time in prison to think. Then it’s progressively out of reality from there. He also connects her failure to contact him with something demonic, suggesting that things might not “be well.” He concludes by proclaiming he has “perfect love.”
I have been chatting with the recipient of this letter for some time and can tell you the father, in addition to ruining her mother’s life was extremely verbally abusive. A parent who abuses while saying, “I love you with the perfect love of the Father,” inflicts wounds that are hard to heal. How can a child make any sense of this experience?
Dissociation- dealing with the disconnect
The different parts of our brains that perform different functions are functionally connected. Experiences we have during childhood but also throughout our lives, determine the functional connectivity of our brains. When reality doesn’t make sense our brains automatically compensate to create a coherent whole. So for example, a child whose parent abuses and says “I love you” may deny the abuse or blame it on themselves. Children whose parents, and adults whose partners continually do one thing while speaking the opposite experience a form of hypnosis. In this hypnotic state they only focus attention on the parts of reality that support the version of reality given to them by the sociopath. (If you have a lot of time read my story and see how this happened to me with disastrous consequences.) But what are the consequences of a childhood or adulthood habit of self-hypnosis? We don’t really know the full answer to that question.
How to heal
The first step in healing is realizing what happened to you and understanding that self-hypnosis or dissociation doesn’t mean you are crazy. It is a functional response to differing inputs. The next step is to fight the hypnosis. Stop having contact with the sociopath. If you do have to have communication, do not listen to the words, try to keep present in your mind the real actions of the sociopath. Tell yourself, “actions speak louder than words.”
Lingering questions
If you have experienced the disconnect between words and actions, I discuss here, you are undoubtedly asking yourself, “Do they do this on purpose?” or “Do they know what they are doing?” The answer is some do and some don’t. The ones that know what they are doing are perhaps more evil and the ones who don’t know what they are doing are perhaps more affected with psychopathy. No matter what, the sociopath makes a choice about what he/she does.
You hit the nail on the head, Truthspeak. Sounds exactly like the manner in which my ex behaves.
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I say things like, “I can’t handle it when people lie to me,” or “I can’t deal with people who lie to me because there is nothing present for me to deal with.”
I agree, though. If somebody says that they hate a liar, it is a tell. They KNOW what the person is.
But I have never said anything like, “I hate a liar,” because I don’t judge the person. I judge the behavior. I also take the circumstances into consideration as to why certain statements were made.
I’m not so rigid that I don’t understand or cut people some slack if they don’t tell the truth initially because I realize that there might be a good reason for doing so although in most cases, I would prefer the truth all along.
Sometimes, I just don’t want to know, as in “too much information.”
I definitely keep certain hands very close to my vest because sometimes it just isn’t the other person’s business (plus they might be chronic gossipers who would do God knows what with the information,) I want to honor a confidence, or there are delicate matters going on that would be harmed by disclosure. Going no contact is an excellent example of this.
The topic of this piece makes an excellent point.
When I use “actions speak louder than words,” and that is something I believe strongly in, what I mean is “the consequences/ultimate outcome of the actions speak louder than words.”
I never thought of that before, but that is what I mean.
I look at the “end of the line,” if you will, of what happened. That to me is what the person intended all along. Everything else is up for interpretation, or is just fluff or smoke and mirrors, until the destination/objective is reached.
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Very interesting-I’m learning so much from this site. I feel like such an idiot for not being mature enough to break up with my ex when we dated, divorce him after the first child, or soon after the second. I’ve learned a valuable lesson, red flags cannot be changed to green. I felt that once married, I’m stuck, I made a committment, a covenant before God and I wasn’t fulfillng my role. I still feel shame from divorce, but it has been diminishing as time passes on-10+ years now.
The title of this one caught my attention as i’ve used that same phrase to my ex and kids time and time again-”actions speak louder than words”. The excert from the letter in the blog immediately made me think of a letter my wrote. He admitted to being physically and verbally abusive to his kids. He admitted to being off in the head, he’s known it for a long time, that he is amazed I put up with him for so long (12 years married) and he was getting help. OK–a weak moment when the conscious kicked in or what? And too, he goes to church every week, albeit, a legalistic church, which suits his controlling ways perfectly. He has rules to live by with the legalistic style and can bark out rules to prove a point of why or why not he will do something.
Now I find myself facing him in court again, I’ve spent close to $25K thus far in battling him for the protection of my kids, and to keep him in his place with frivilous lawsuits. And what’s more, my son acts just like his father, although he doesn’t like how his dad acts. He can’t see it-the blame shifting, denial, playing dumb, rationalize, diversion, and lies. I don’t know if it is learned behavior from his dad having custody of him since he was 13, now 19, or it is genetic.
I’ve noticed my daughter doing some of these things to a certain extent too, blaming others, rationalizing, and minimizing. The other night she was driving with her learner’s permit, and she went past the white line and she blamed the van brakes, that she doens’t like the van anymore, she wants to drive the car. So it’s the van’s fault you went over the line?? The brakes were new this past spring.
She likes our little dog when he is cute and cuddly and wants to spend time with her, but when he wants to be with his mommy or daddy he will growl (7 year old chihuahua) and she will be mean with him. No wonder he doesn’t care for her, but tolerates her. We almost had to have him put to sleep when he was about a year old, we thought she broke his back. He came crawling down the hall with his two hind legs flung out to each side, pulling himself with his front paws-it was a most pitiful site. At first she said he fell off the bed. Off we go to the emergency vet. We were about to make the decision of whether to have them perform expensive surgery or put him down. The staff let my hubby and I back in the room where he was. He saw us and stood up for us like a proud little soldier, tail wagging a mile a minute. We all started crying, staff too, bc that showed he was a fighter. It turned out that two of his vertabre were inflamed and he had to get cortizone shots and be pampered to help it heal.
My daughter was about 10 at this time, and about 8 months after the incident with our dog, she knocked at our bedroom door and when I opened it, she had laid her diary on the floor, our clue to read it, even though she ran back to her room. That is how we found out she hit him hard in the back bc he wouldn’t do the trick she was trying to teach him correctly.
What is hard is determining if it is being a teenager, hormones, jealously, anger, a mental issue, or what. I live hypervigilant all the time. It’s gotten to the point my brain will not shut off, it is like a video camera going all the time, recording everything, how I said it, what I say, where I am, who stands/sits where, and what they say and how they say it. Mostly with my son and daughter, I’m more relaxed at work and other venues when I have neutral people near me. Ugh.
I enjoy having our little dog, he is great comfort to me with PTSD, he can sense when I’m upset or anxious and knows just what to do to make me smile or forget where my thoughts are roaming.
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Wow I deal with disassociation. At times people have to ask me were am I while I’m present. I thought this was developed for survival while I was being abused. Now I recognize were the many promises that were given and I hoped as a child would come true and never did had great impact. I don’t trust people will follow through as promised. The woman who raised me was demented it was if I was living in a different world with no rules except; hers and the rules were always changing. The consequences were always evident and not quit knowing why. She will come across to others as a nice woman yet; to me a monster waiting to bounce for entertainment value. Just pure evil.
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