Psychopathy, empathy and moral agency: Lessons from autism
PDF If there is one thing that gets me argumentative it is statements like this one that appeared in a recent research paper: “non-incarcerated psychopaths have an arguably equal potential to illuminate our understanding of the emotional difficulties, such as lack of empathy and lack of conscience, which underlie psychopathy and which lead to offending behaviour.” (emphasis mine)
Now I agree that we can learn from non-incarcerated psychopaths, I wrote recently about a well designed study where sociologists conducted interviews of some. But I cannot believe that statements like the one above make it through editorial review for another reason. Researchers in psychology have spent the last 50 years and untold millions of dollars uncovering the cause of behavior. There is no mystery, we know what causes behavior!
Behavior is caused by rewards and stopped by punishment. Actually rewards cause behavior a lot better than punishment stops it in most people. That is because the brain reward system is functionally stronger than the brain punishment system for most, and especially for sociopaths/psychopaths. The rewards that cause behavior do so because they increase dopamine activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system.
Offending behavior exists and persists because it is rewarding and that reward affects the activity of the mesolimbic dopamine system. To put it bluntly, nothing but desiring/liking to offend leads to offending behavior. To say otherwise is to negate all the work that has been done in this area. The evidence is so strong that genes involved in dopamine metabolism and that system have been identified as candidate genes in the familial transmission of “offending behavior”.
I will repeat, a lack of empathy does not cause offending behavior, neither does a lack of conscience. These two may cause a person to show restraint if he is tempted to aggress against another, but it is the aggressive impulse that causes aggression. So a person with empathy and conscience can still offend if he has the inclination to do so. Furthermore, there is evidence that repeated offending erodes away empathy and conscience.
There is another source of evidence that calls into question the hypothesis that lack of empathy causes the sociopath’s behavior. That source of evidence is people with autism and autism spectrum disorders.
I recently found two very impressive discussions comparing moral agency in autism and psychopathy. The first is, Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency, a paper published in The Philosophical Quarterly (52:340, 2002) written by Dr. Jeannette Kennett, Deputy Director and Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, The Australian National University. Since I didn’t know to search Philosophical Quarterly for papers on psychopathy, I didn’t find that paper until I read “Moral Psychology, Volume 3, The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders and Development” MIT Press, 2008. Dr. Kennett also has two chapters in that book. But Chapter 5, Varieties of Moral Agency: Lessons from Autism, is a discussion of Dr. Kennette’s paper by Dr. Victoria McGeer, of Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. There is a back and forth discussion of the issues raised, with several noted professors also participating.
Both sources begin their discussions by saying that moral agency has two parts two it, a thinking part and a feeling part. They trace these concepts back to philosophers Kant and Hume. Dr. Kennett concludes that Kant is right and that reason is the most important aspect of moral agency. Dr. McGeer points to emotions being important even for people with autism. I am going to summarize the arguments, then give you my own opinion.
Now like sociopathy, autism is a spectrum. A large percentage of people with autism are mentally retarded, so this discussion involves those autistic individuals who are not mentally retarded. I should point out that many sociopaths also have poor intellectual functioning. These sociopaths tend to live in prison.
Dr. Kenneth quotes the following description of autism,
The most general description of social impairment in autism is lack of empathy. Autistic people are noted for their indifference to other people’s distress, their inability to offer comfort, even to receive comfort themselves. What empathy requires is the ability to know what another person thinks or feels despite that is different from one’s own mental state at the time. In empathy one shares emotional reactions to another person’s different state of mind. Empathy presupposes amongst other things a recognition of different mental states. It also presupposes that one goes beyond the recognition of difference to adopt the other person’s frame of mind with all the consequences of emotional reactions. Even able autistic people seem to have great difficulty achieving empathy in this sense.
Autistic people also experience an “aloneness,” yet this aloneness does not bother them. They are indifferent to the presence of other people and do not require affection. One autistic adult is quoted as saying, “I really didn’t know there were other people until I was seven years old. I then suddenly realized that there were people. But not like you do, I still have to remind myself that there are people. I could never have a friend. I really don’t know what to do with other people really.”
High functioning autistic people recognize that they are very different from other people and report feeling “like aliens.”
Dr.Kenneth correctly concludes, “Both psychopaths and autistic people experience outsider status, deficiencies in social understanding and social responsiveness… Both have a tendency to treat other people as tools or instruments, (they have) a lack of strong emotional connectedness to others and impaired capacity for friendship.” She says clinicians and researchers link these impairments in both psychopathy and autism to impaired empathy. But autistic people are in fact worse off in this respect than psychopaths. Psychopaths at least can interact socially with ease and behave in a charming way.
She correctly questions, “If empathy is crucial to the development and exercise of moral agency, then why is the autistic person not worse off, morally speaking, than the psychopath?” She points out that in spite of the lack of empathy which is at the core of the disorder, “Many autistic people display moral concerns, moral feeling and a sense of duty or conscience.”
That autistic people are not antisocial is evidenced by the observation that few come to the attention of police. I did a Google news search using the terms autistic and arrest. Although there were many arrests of people for abusing those with autism, all of the arrests of autistics for aggression were for aggression that stemmed from self-defense. For example, a 10 year old boy with autism was arrested for assaulting staff at his treatment facility. The boy assaulted staff members because he was afraid and they tried to prevent his escape.
Drs. Kenneth and McGeer basically agree on the source of moral agency in those with autism, and what they say is fascinating with respect to sociopaths. The source of moral agency in autism is a preference for order and organization. Autistic people have reported that their sense of morality comes from a desire to see their world as orderly and organized. Dr. Kenneth states that this need for order gives rise to an extraordinary rationality in high functioning people with autism. She says that since morality is organized and logical that those with autism easily pick up moral principles.
I also did a search on morality in autism and can attest to several studies demonstrating normal levels of moral reasoning in autistic children who are not mentally retarded.
Drs. Kennett and McGeer also agree on the issue of the lack of moral agency shown by sociopaths/psychopaths. They both say that this group just plain doesn’t care about morality or regard moral principles as important. This is where psychopaths and autistics differ. Autistics identify with and value moral principles. Dr. Kennett states, “It is not the psychopath’s lack of empathy, which (on its own at any rate) explains his moral indifference. It is more specifically his lack of concern, or more likely lack of capacity to understand what he is doing, to consider the reasons available to him and to act in accordance with them.”
The point of disagreement of the two experts involves the relative role of emotion and reason in autistic people’s moral agency and valuation of morality. Dr. Kennett says that the autistic person is like Dr. Spock of Star Treck, and views life in purely logical terms. Since morality is logical and rational, autistics embrace it. Dr. McGeer disagrees, she states that the autistic need for order leads to an emotional connection to order and rationality. She feels that emotion does play a role in the moral lives of autistics, since she sees them as emotionally as well as rationally invested in maintaining order.
What about sociopaths/psychopaths and the need for order/organization? This disorder truly involves disorder. Psychopaths/sociopaths thrive on chaos and seem to have a dislike for order. Everywhere they go they are a source of extreme entropy as they take order and turn it into disorder. Both Drs. link the lack of appreciation for order to a lack of thoughtfulness in sociopaths/psychopaths. Sociopaths are both disordered and not fully rational or logical.
Dr. McGeer States:
This failure of reason may seem surprising. After all, our image of the psychopath is of a person who is rather good at serving his own interests without concern for the damage he does to others; hence of someone who is rather good at thinking and acting in instrumentally rational ways…As Dr. Carl Elliot observes, “While the psychopath seems pathologically egocentric, he is nothing like an enlightened egoist. His life is frequently distinguished by failed opportunities, wasted chances and behavior which is astonishingly self-destructive. This poor judgment seems to stem not so much from the psychopath’s inadequate conception of how to reach his ends, but from an inadequate conception of what his ends are.”
I agree with Dr. McGeer in that I believe that the emotionality associated with the need for order leads to the rationality of autistic people. The brain punishment system is relatively intact in autistics as compared to sociopaths and when an autistic person senses danger instead of being disconnected from the source of anxiety/fear, the autistic person engages thoughtfully to avoid danger (punishment).
The brain punishment/anxiety system of sociopaths is both hypofunctional and hyperfunctional in that they experience anxiety but fail to engage their thinking brains in the presence of danger. The high functioning autistic is well practiced at using his thinking brain to avoid anxiety. The psychopath rarely uses the thinking brain he has- to do anything other than get into trouble and hurt other people.
There are interesting parallels between the autistic’s use of reason to manage anxiety and normal development. It turns out that anxiety and fearfulness in the first two years of life actually predicts the development of conscience. The brain punishment system seems to be more plugged in to the rational brain in kids who are dispositionally more anxious. These kids also have a more highly developed sense of empathy later on.
I am thankful to Drs. Kenneth and McGeer for their seminal contributions to our understanding of sociopathy/psychopathy. I encourage the scholars among you to purchase their book from Amazon. However, I think they both missed a further unifying explanation for why autistics are moral and psychopaths/sociopaths are not.
That explanation involves the brain reward system, which is fundamentally different in autistics and sociopaths. Autistics do not experience social reward, maybe not even in the sexual sense. They are indifferent to relationships. The main reward autistics live for must be the love of thinking because that is all they have. I don’t see that too many are obese, so I don’t think they even turn to food for their source of pleasure. Instead their inner worlds are rich with thoughts and reason. They busy themselves with their own thoughts. Most like who they are, enjoy life and wouldn’t choose a different life if they could.
The sociopath on the other hand, is completely dependent on social reward. The sociopath cannot tolerate aloneness because he has no entertaining thought-life to fall back on. The problem with the social reward system in sociopaths is that the only social reward they experience is dominance. All of their antisocial behavior is motivated by their dominance drive. When they lie, cheat or steal it is about gaining short term interpersonal dominance over some poor unsuspecting person. Autistics can’t lie and are as indifferent to dominance reward as they are to affection reward.
Dr. Keltner and associates at UC Berkeley are engaged in important research on the effects on people of obtaining social power. It turns out that when many people get power reward they change. Self-esteem increases, empathy is suspended, and they become uninhibited and less rational. They also think more about sex and tend to use more foul language. Their moral agency is diminished.
I believe that this response to power reward is the point of connection between sociopaths and the rest of us. Sociopaths are constantly in a state of power intoxication, or are in search of their next power fix. The rest of us can manage the power reward better, but the behavior of our politicians suggests that power intoxication doesn’t only make sociopaths less rational.
I could use your help on two things this week. First, I want your opinion on the term moral agency. I have been looking for a single term that would describe the moral deficits of sociopaths. Up until now I have used the term low “moral reasoning ability” because I couldn’t find another better term. Do you think people will better connect with/comprehend the term low “moral agency” or poor “moral reasoning ability”? Actually moral agency is more precise and technically more correct, but will people get it?
The second question I have concerns successful psychopaths. When I read the autism papers, it occurred to me that successful psychopaths do one of two things that unsuccessful ones don’t do. They either have a better appreciation for order or organization, or they find someone to organize and order their lives for them. If you know a successful psychopath, can you comment on how he/she is successful in spite of the chaos he/she tends to cause?
written by Liane Leedom, M.D. • Permalink •
keeping_faith says:
LOL….thanks Matt for remembering all the GROSS details. It is so hysterical. I do enjoy telling people that story (embarrassing as it is for me) he just looks like a bigger asshole. Did I tell you about the time his wife called him and he cried in the video store because she said she had herpes and he tried to convince me she got it from using her sister’s towel. Believe me the first thing i did was go to my OBGYN. Thank GOD…..he gave me a nice Yurman necklace once but he didn’t give me the gift that keeps on giving.
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Matt says:
keeping_faith:
Sorry, if I were in your shoes, I would be dining out all over town with that particular detail! Too bad you don’t have him on video telling that story. The entertainment value alone…
The only thing more ridiculous than S claiming his wife got herpes from her sister’s towel would be if he claimed if she got it from a toilet seat.
I say the same thing you did regarding S not giving me the gift that keeps on giving. Right after I gave S his walking papers (4 month anniversary was 3/7. Yippeee! Pop the Veuve Cliquot!) I ran for my doctor’s office had had every STD test known to mankind.
Sheesh. What a way to live.
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keeping_faith says:
How embarrassing too. i cried the whole time i was in the Dr. office and the Dr just hugged me. She didn’t know waht to do with herself. I had never met her before !
Let me put this in perspective… (just for comedy sake) You can get herpes from a towel, x strippers are known for their fidelity, your daughter isn’t a sociopath she lacks a “social filter”, you killed your captor after he shrunk your testicles, you had a heart attack at 50, but it wasn’t from abusing steroids even though you have ALL the other symptoms, you killed terrorists working for the NSA (part time), the NSA may come and kill me if I tell your stories. Your Navy diving watch is REAL (I don’t think he can swim), your daughters friends all WANT you…..and on and on and on.
Congrats on the anniversary MATT. You are doing great and you have helped me SO much !!!
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Matt says:
keeping_faith:
Thanks for the Reader’s Digest version. Amazing when we boil things with our ex-Ss down to just the facts, how ridiculous they really look.
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keeping_faith says:
I can’t even believe Matt that I was in such a SPIN over this guy that i even let some of this nonsense slip by. WTF? I may write a book and rather than it be a drama, it may have to be a comedy !!!
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Matt says:
keeping_faith:
I’m right there with you. Forget my head being in the clouds. It was right up my ass. The bullshit I tolerated and let slip by floors me.
I was thinking the same thing — if I wrote my story it would have to be a comedy. A black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless.
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keeping_faith says:
I’m picturing a screenplay that has all the makings of “Dumb and Dumber” as sociopaths. I love you, man !! You made my day. But I had better get to work. I can’t support you if we are both unemployed…… by the way, anything good on the job search??????
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Matt says:
keeping_faith:
Have seen a few federal postings that have piqued my interest. Also, a few headhunters have called me.
I need to start dragging myself to the outplacement service. Otherwise, I while away my hours surfing the web.
Back to revamping my CV.
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keeping_faith says:
Well if I can help in anyway….seriously, I am in HR. I could help with your CV. Just let me know! The funny thing is that the templates in Word are some of the best structured for resumes so check that out too.
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S O S says:
Correlations of the Dark Triad with the Big Five
From: http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~della.....lliams.pdf
(my best guess as to closest MBTI type)
Narcissism
Extraversion ======= .42
Agreeableness ===== -.36
Conscientiousness == -.06
Neuroticism ======= .02
Openness ========= .38
(ENTX)
Machiavellianism
Extraversion ====== -.05
Agreeableness ===== -.47
Conscientiousness == -.34
Neuroticism ======= .12
Openness ======== -.03
(XXTP)
Psychopathy
Extraversion ======= .34
Agreeableness ===== -.25
Conscientiousness == -.24
Neuroticism ====== -.34
Openness ======== .24
(ESTP/ENTP)
From: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s.....318047e4d4
Autism
Extraversion ======= negative
Agreeableness ===== ?
Conscientiousness == negative
Neuroticism ======= positive
Openness ========= ?
“Sixth factor”======= ?
(ISTX?)
Incomplete, but makes some sense to me. May yield insights into the “successful sociopath”. Have at it.
==============
Student Of Sociopathy
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Elizabeth Conley says:
Blogger T7165,
I was very interested in the twin study with children, but I want to understand which children they considered psychopathic and which children they considered merely sociopathic. What were the criterion for classification?
The information would be much more meaningful and useful if that were made clear.
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Elizabeth Conley says:
This found in wikipedia:
Children showing strong psychopathic precursors often appear immune to punishment; nothing seems to modify their undesirable behavior. Consequently parents usually give up, and the behavior worsens.[71]
The following childhood indicators are to be seen not as to the type of behavior, but as to its relentless and unvarying occurrence. Not all must be present concurrently, but at least a number of them need to be present over a period of years[citation needed]:
An extended period of bedwetting past the preschool years that is not due to any medical problem.
Cruelty to animals beyond an angry outburst.
Firesetting and other vandalism. Not to be confused with playing with matches, which is not uncommon for preschoolers. This is the deliberate setting of destructive fires with utter disregard for the property and lives of others.
Lying, often without discernible objectives, extending beyond a child’s normal impulse not to be punished. Lies that are so extensive that it is often impossible to know lies from truth.
Theft and truancy.
Aggression to peers, not necessarily physical, which can include getting others into trouble or a campaign of psychological torment.
The three indicators—bedwetting, cruelty to animals and firestarting, known as the MacDonald triad—were first described by J.M. MacDonald as indicators of psychopathy.[72]
The question of whether young children with early indicators of psychopathy respond poorly to intervention compared to conduct disordered children without these traits have only recently been examined in controlled clinical research. The empirical findings from this research have been consistent with broader anecdotal evidence, pointing to poor treatment outcomes.[73]
Opinions Anyone?
What’s the difference between a child psychopath and a child sociopath?
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
Matt & keeping_faith….while searching the employment world…remember, I need to find a J O B or something when I get back from Scotland end of March…in case you run across something that doesn’t fit you, let me give you my resume:
1. Valid drivers license
2. No criminal record
3. Excellent credit score (for now)
4. Unique talent…I can unitask in a slow-paced environment.
Well, that’s about it.
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Midnight_Reflection says:
One of my best friends dated this 26 yr old when she was 17, he was overweight, balding, a bit of a pervert …. and claimed to be a former Navy Seal. He even showed her a picture of him in the water with diving gear on giving a thumbs up as “proof.”
I used to quote my ex and do impersonations of him being high and drunk, my friends loved it at parties. I can’t remember how I did it anymore, guess that’s a good thing.
Just wanted to comment on the “big fish in a small pond.” That was what my ex-S strived for. In the big ponds they saw through him, but in the small pond he could peddle his lies and the drunk and/or uneducated believed them, or so he thought. He lived for the bars downtown. He would go on and on about how everyone knew him, he was the life of the party, how it was like Cheers when he walked in. After we broke up and I went to DJ at one of the bars with him he actually got jealous of me. I walked in the door and all the guys were talking to me, giving me hugs, all he got was an “oh, hey.” He hated that I stole his attention. Then after I started talking to some of the guys I found out they kind of felt sorry for the S, they weren’t his friends, they didn’t think he was cool, they thought he was pitiful.
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BloggerT7165 says:
EC – The one article I posted above of the different views said this about sociopathy:
Two conditions–sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder–often get confused with psychopathy. Sociopathy refers to criminal attitudes and behaviors viewed as normal in certain groups, such as street gangs. Sociopaths have a sense of right and wrong that is based on the values of their criminal group.
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Elizabeth Conley says:
Well, that’s consistent with my point of view too. “Sociopathy” is the values and attitudes of your garden variety thug. Psychopathy, on the other hand, usually implies more. I’ve witnessed children who exhibited (1) Cruelty to animals. (2) Lying, often without discernible objectives, extending beyond a child’s normal impulse not to be punished. Lies that are so extensive that it is often impossible to know lies from truth. (3) Aggression to peers, not necessarily physical, which can include getting others into trouble or a campaign of psychological torment. I’ve also seen a child I considered to be pre-psychopathic employ campaigns of manipulation against adults, and even efforts to get adults in trouble. This last I consider very rare, and truly bizarre.
I truly thought there was hope for the child I considered pre-psychopathic, but it required his family to get a clue. He needed limits, and the direct supervision of an adult who understood logic well enough to sort through his stories. It was not good for this kid to be the smartest person in the family. At least half of the males of the family showed sociopathic tendencies, but this kid was and is a serious problem.
I’m just curious about the study. The “information” doesn’t mean much without clarification. As we all know, Psychopathy and Sociopathy are used interchangeably by a lot of people, even supposed experts. These two researchers at least acknowledge that they exist as two separate conditions, but they fail to explain their criterion for categorizing their subjects. This strips their “findings” of practical use.
I also find the “bed wetting” claim to be more than a bit suspect, and consider this idea to be dated. Toilet training practices have altered considerably over the last 50 years. Parents are now desperate to get their kids toilet trained for daycare, but willing to diaper them at night almost indefinitely. I know kids still wearing pull ups to bed way, way past preschool. Is it psychopathy or child rearing practices? My vote is the latter.
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Grant says:
Elizabeth
In my practice, I see a lot of kids that wet the bed due to stress (they are being bullied at school, parents are divorcing, have suffered a trauma, etc). I never view bed-wetting as an indicator of psychopathy, in the anti-social sense. Anxiety, maybe.
Personality testing for disorders doesnt happen pre 18. Sure, there are tests, like the MACI that look at teenage personality clinically, but you cant talk of a ‘personality disorder’ until they are 18, and the personality is ‘formed’. Untill then, you talk of ‘tendencies’.
Cruelty to animals is always a very poor sign, and quite common, Im afraid.
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keeping_faith says:
Jim,
I saw your resume. It looks good for potential as a partner, I’m not sure about any other skills….can you clean? Would you be more interested in me or Matt???? LOL
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
keeping_faith….clean?…I can. I have. I need to now, instead of wearing out my keyboard.
Oh, I like girls. Matt’s OK to talk to, but I like to talk to girls more. Yeah, I still like women…as I recall. Haven’t run desperately out to find one yet, though….probably not good at this point for her or me to rush it. I’m getting there now, though….
Updates to resume:
5. Reliable transportation (for now)
6. House (for now)
7. P-detection personal security system (upgrading daily)
But if all else fails…I can clean a rabbit and run a trotline…THIS country boy will survive!
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Matt says:
keeping_faith:
Knows how to clean a rabbint and run a trotline. Sounds like a keeper to me. Guess I’ll have to bow out of the competition for your heart.
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learnthelesson says:
Jim …getting there… I havent accepted an offer in over a year and a half. Well I did accept a few and then cancelled at the last minute. Just couldnt bring myself to go through ANY of the social graces/meet for lunch/dinner drills. I just havent been ready to go through that hoopla. I recently accepted an offer from a friend I use to work with years ago, weve stayed in touch, but Ive said no to all the formal invitations and finally agreed to just get together and catch up. He was taking the metro home from Manhattan and I agreed to meet him at his place… he phoned an hour ahead of the time we agreed upon to say the train was running late (weather was bad) …I said okay another time… he said oh no Im not canceling I just wanted you to know I ordered us a pizza and hope you’re hungry…When I got there, he still had his coat on and was rushing around putting the pizza and a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. Everything was fine until we sat on the couch with our pizza and glass of wine. It was the smell of the warm pizza box being lifted open.. just sent me WAY BACK..and reminded me of xtox… many, many times the x-tox would ask me to stop and grab a pizza for us because he was on his way home from gym or auto store or some other insignificant place — and I would go out of my way to accommodate him. But the other night, something felt so right about this guy taking the initiative to go out of his way for me. I dont know how I got through the feelings that overwhelmed me (esp. because Im a TALKER lol)… but I sat quietly in the moment and just convinced myself to enjoy the moment, his company and the movie. When it was time to leave, I said next time pizzas on me (can you believe i said that!)– he said next time I hope you will say yes to me taking you out to dinner . LIVE AND LEARN. I had alot of mixed feelings that night, but I was proud I got through it, and didnt fall apart afterward. The trigger memory of being with my xtox is STILL so raw for me – and its not all entirely bad memories – thats whats so messed up.
But there are decent ones out there… just have to watch for the red flags EVERY STEP OF THE WAY…and let go of the past and stay in the moment – a little more each and every day.
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
learnEDthelesson-good job! Yes, there are regular old decent people out there. And remember the yellow flags and green flags. Trust your intuition, and your new knowledge. One day at a time. Stay safe.
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nottakingitanymore says:
I’m not sure if this answers your question exactly, but my experience is this: I think the best description of my X is narcissist, although many descriptions of sociopath, psychopath, and sadist apply very well to him.
Sociopaths are often described as having no moral compass. My X seemed to have several levels to him, like an onion.
On the surface, to a casual contact in society, he was charming and gracious and an upstanding citizen. When we were dating, he was flattering and attentive.
At the next level, for those who got to know him, he was a liar, a backstabber, and very emotionally sadistic. He got a great deal of pleasure out of hurting other people, sabotaging their work or their dreams, thwarting their plans.
After we got married, he pretended to be supportive while doing whatever he could to upset me. Then he would pretend to be innocent and pretend to not have any idea why I could possibly be upset.
I learned, for example, that telling him what I wanted was a recipe for disaster. If he asked what movie I wanted to go to and I told him, it was a guarantee that we would NOT go to that movie. If he asked me what I wanted to do over the weekend, he would be sure to interfere if I told him. It didn’t matter if the plans were large or small. If I planned to scrub the floor, he’d want to go out of town. If I wanted to go out of town, then it became an emergency to clean the house. He did it in such a way that for many years I didn’t understand what was happening.
He always managed to make it seem that he was helping while in reality he was doing the opposite. It was very much like someone who is practically twisting your arm off while they smile and pretend that they are helping you put your coat on. If you say anything about it, they act all innocent and indignant. Now, not only are you ungrateful for their wonderful help, you are now a bad person for saying anything negative about it.
The third layer is where my X seems to diverge from what I read in the literature. This may be the part that would be most interesting to a professional. Unlike the description of a sociopath, I believe that my X *did* have a conscience. What seemed to happen, in my opinion, is that when he behaved badly, he looked for a reaction. I have a very long fuse and I think I have a natural tendency to look for the best in people. So, I tended to explain away and excuse much of his behavior. For example, with the movie issue, a disagreement over one movie is not a pattern. I had no problem going to see the movie he preferred. The second time, too. He would have some compelling argument about why, once again, we should do what he wanted. It took many incidents before I realized that not only did we never do what I wanted, but what was worse, he would find out what I wanted in order to thwart it. I would have had a better chance of seeing a movie I liked if I had not admitted what it was and left it to chance.
Stating my preference was a guarantee that it wouldn’t happen. So the next step for me was to point out the pattern (still naively thinking I was married to a normal person, who loved me and therefore had my best interests in mind and if I just pointed it out, he would realize what he was inadvertently doing and stop) or I would say very calmly that something was bothering me. Pointing it out just helped him refine his technique and prolong it.
Finally, what he was doing would become impossible to deny, it would become clear that any rational calm discussion had no positive effect, and I would blow up (cry or yell). Since both crying and yelling were very rare for me, this actually got his attention.
If I cried (maybe 5 times in 20 years), I could tell that he actually felt sorry. This was unlike the pretend contrition that he often feigned which was just another technique to manipulate people. I think he truly felt bad on these very rare occasions. But what I think separates him from a normal person, is that to make himself feel better, he needed another “fix” of sadistic success, only he had to be careful that he didn’t go too far. It would be like a physical sadist who nearly killed his victim. That would be too far.
I think part of why the X felt sorry on these rare occasions is that in his mind, he maintains the careful fiction that he is a good and moral person side by side with his emotional abuse of others. (Maybe this is like an adulterer who thinks it doesn’t count if it’s only a prostitute, or it’s out of town, or whatever.) The rare occasions when he felt sorry were when the results of his behavior could not be explained away. He would apologize and try to make up for it. When he asked what was wrong and I cried and said we hadn’t been out to dinner in over 5 years, we went out to a very nice restaurant and he bought me flowers. That is like putting a bandaid on an amputation. (And by the way, we were not poor. He had plenty of time and money to take other people out to restaurants, but never me.)
It took something very jarring to shake his view of himself as perfect, but when it did, and he was forced to face it, he felt sorry. Maybe he felt more sorry for himself than for his victim, but I think he felt sorry for me, too. It was as if all the other abuse just fed his appetite, but when it reached the point of being the last straw, he was forced to see it.
I think that perhaps his brain was wired so that all the sadistic things he did caused an increase in “dopamine activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system.” They were rewards (in his warped world). But when I cried, he was no longer able to get that dopamine fix. It disrupted his typical reward system and he actually felt sorry. Then he would try to be nice (press the reset button on the brain reward system) so that he could go back to his familiar patterns of abusing others to get his reward.
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keeping_faith says:
Jim and Matt,
What a way to start the day!!! You guys ROCK. I’m laughing out loud !!!
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
keeping_faith….we live to serve…keep on laughing!
nottakingitanymore-I read your post twice, or three times. Glad you’re here, sorry you have to be. I think you’re giving him too much credit…I don’t think he’s sorry…just adjusting his game. Maybe one of the other people here has another take…
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nottakingitanymore says:
Jim,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m doing pretty well now and just hope that what I post can help others.
I used to talk about “recovering from the divorce” which came as a shock to me. Now I realize that it was a blessing in disguise and I am “recovering from the marriage.”
Jim, Matt, keeping_faith,
Thanks for the stories. Made me laugh! Sorry that the bad parts had to involve you. I knew I was recovering from the bad relationship when I started to recover my sense of humor. Sounds like your sense of humor is doing fine!
All,
Thanks for all the posts, information, and support. God bless you all!
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keeping_faith says:
nottakingitanymore,
I can’t tell sometimes if the XS was narcissistic, S/P Borderline……. it’s probably irrelevant in the scheme of things. I too used to thing he DID actually FEEL something. he seemed to show empathy, and sorrow…… Every single time he had told a story about his military career and being tortured, killing terrorists on bahalf of the NSA and US gov’t, he cried hysterically, passionately. REAL? Seemed traumatized by these events and he got the attention, adoration, pity, that he sought. Yet he would apologize later and say how he does not usually talk about these things. it’s against the “rules”. He was so proud of his service. The man wore dog tags and a diving watch 30 years later. WHY WOULD I NOT BELIEVE HIM?
None of this was true about him. I later learned that he served all of four months in the Navy before he was kicked out. He was a really good liar, fake, phony. He appeared to care, to show sorrow and empathy on many occassions….. but the reality is that what you see in alleged emotion and even behavior is totally different than what goes on inside their head and it’s hard for us to comprehend that. One should relate to the other. Right?
Now when I start to think about the times he professed to love me and the engagement ring he bought and how I was supposedly the most beautiful woman in the world and allegedly the best sex ever….. I think back to how believeable he was when he told his stories and gained all kinds of satisfaction from conning me. THIS is who he REALLY is. He is/They are cons who don’t know who they are themselves. They don’t feel. They show what they need to in the moment for any or no reason at all and sometimes it has no rhyme or reason.
It’s incomprehensible to those of us who do as we say, are truthful, respectful and show the emotion that we truly think and feel.
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Jim in Indiana USA says:
nottakingitanymore-I didn’t think my words were very kind…but, now, you can see the movies you want to see, spend the weekends the way you want to…right?
I was familiar with a long campaign of “appear to support while subverting” when I was in the fog. I was far from perfect, but the subtle “devalue’ went on for a long time, accelerating as the “discard” was planned. She’d have done it sooner, but she needed a source of backup supply….
On my first visit to my therapist he said…”Did she support you in your work?” The more I looked back, the worse it looked. There wasn’t a partnership, it was a “power struggle”.
I found out after the divorce was filed she had revealed this concept of marriage to my oldest daughter.
I wish someone had told me…I didn’t know I was in a game, much less what the rules were.
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keeping_faith says:
Jim,
The thing is we were palying real life and they were playing a game where NO RULE APPLY, unless they benefit them. RULE 1: it’s inappropriate for me to have coffee with a friend (a guy) at Starbucks. But it was OK for him to crawl in bed with the nearesr biker chick x stripper two days after we picked out all the things for our new home. (because he ditched me first). That’s not being disloyal….but because i questioned all the lies about military service and them discussed them with his sister….I WAS DISLOYAL. but he wasn’t for lying…..WTF????
Believe me, he ditched me a lot and i am thinking each of those times it was probably a different bar and a different biker chick.
Nice rules. Huh?
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Grant says:
Nottakingitanymore
Thank you so much for your post. I know EXACTLY what you mean in terms of THWARTING. That is a word I seldom used, but it came to dominate how I felt. I also could never quite get a handle on how things never seemed to work out my way. I began to feel that I had an evil spell on me, a hex, because my luck was so bad. It was uncanny how I was thwarted, every time, despite enormous efforts on my part.
It tends to make you start to feel paranoid. It errodes your belief that you can achieve even simple things. It results in that constant, low-level dispair that others have mentioned.
I too began to feel hugely frustrated. Its part of the stratergy – I knew, unconsciously, that if I acted out my frustration, Id be labelled the nut. If I did nothing, then Id just get thwarted somemore.
It is a passive-aggression that is so insidious that it, over time, is literally soul destroying. It kills your Joy.
Mine also went too far at times (though not often), and feigned regret. My trust was so damaged, however, that I didnt know what to make of his regret.
I think that one day he may pick on someone with a little less self-control, and come to a sticky end. I live in hope.
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Matt says:
Nottakingitanymore:
I read you post in which you question what you ex really was. My personal take is you’re attributing human emotions where there were none. I think those few episodes you recounted where he felt bad were just instances of him perfecting his game because he knew you had about reached you limit.
Never forget, they are masters of manipulation. They will do whatever they have to do in order to “win”.
I think it was Kathleen Hawk who one time said — turn off their words and watch their actions against a blue screen. That’s the real key. Actions always do speak louder than words.
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OxDrover says:
Dear Nottakingitanymore,
I think you are too “kind” to your X, sounds to ME like he is a full fledged P, enjoying hurting you, and then PRETENDING REMORSE—they are SOOOOO good at that! That is why we don’t suspect for so long that they are EVIL and their intentions ARE TO HURT.
But now you are FREE of his problems, and his putting you down!
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Midnight_Reflection says:
Nottakingitanymore – I sometimes thought my ex-S actually felt bad too, but with time and distance now that I look back I think the only thing he felt bad about was breaking his toy. He didn’t feel bad for the toy, he felt bad because he wouldn’t be able to use it anymore until he put it back together. That’s when he’d be really nice, apologize, hugs and kisses, but I’d still get the “you know I only say those things because I care about you and want you to know the truth.”
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S O S says:
WHY ARE SOME SOCIOPATHS SUCCESSFUL?
A very big issue which I have about ‘feeling and morally rational’ types (normal folks, regular guys), is that I have never witnessed them unify to act against a successful sociopath. Dumb S’s, yes, but they are not considered successful sociopaths, are they? Theoretically, any three or four people with a clue should be able to combine resources to expose and discredit an SS. But in my own personal life, I have never seen this happen. For some reason, people will not effectively unify to aid or prevent more innocent victims being targeted by SS’s, within a complex social context, until much obvious damage has been done. And thus the SS’s moral retardation is reinforced.
1. People knew what was going on when I was targeted for bullying by an SS, yet did nothing. The boss was a good man, yet fell for the SS’s lies. I responded by finishing my schooling, leaving that job, and adding 40# of muscle to my frame. I was targeted the way I was because I was perceived as weak.
2. I found out after the fact that a girl I worked with had been hazed into PTSD for pure sport. Management simply transferred her away, while allowing her tormentor to remain in our group. The rumors which remained involved her having “insecurity issues”, yet her tormentor never figured into any rumors. I found out the rest of the story straight out of that girl’s mouth when I bumped into her months later. Her perceptions ‘jived’ with my own, and knowing the truth I became enraged. Some in that group believed me, but nobody wanted to unify against the SS. I assumed that issue ended when I was transferred to a site much closer to my home. But many years later, I found out via an unlikely source, that that SS was still smearing my reputation with lies.
3. I quit a job when the SS unified 3 other guys and our immediate boss against me. He’d accomplished this by pretending to be my “bro” and “buddy”, while setting me up behind my back. There had been other good people there who were aware of and/or been targeted by the SS, but nobody unified against him, and they moved on to other ventures when business within that company declined. Eventually, the good boss was ousted by the bad one (with support from the SS), and I had no choice but to quit. I had been a target because I was perceived as psychologically weak and naive. (I’d been burning the candle at both ends working that job while also working on two houses after hours.) I assumed that being a good employee would be protection enough. Wrong!
4. The best results I’ve ever had against an SS was the first time I consciously fought against one. Long story short, I discovered to my shock that our ‘friendship’ had been in reality, a skillful cultivation for me to be used as a disposable tool for her career. In hindsight, she was a good psychoanalyst (and actor), with excellent ‘people skills’, who could size others up for their usefulness as scapegoats, henchmen, enablers, rivals or allies. I committed the crime of refusing to do her dirtywork. She never took me on directly, as I was twice her size, instead skillfully manipulating others into believing that I was a threat to them, a ratsnitch, was mentally unstable, etc.. But again I was naïve. After figuring things out I attempted to negotiate a rational truce, which her warped brain interpreted to mean that her SS tactics against me were weakening me.
And again the pattern, nobody would unify against her, even when it was obvious that management were the only ones who liked and trusted her, and I was trying to expose the truth about her. But I did get results. While I volunteered for layoff never to be recalled, I had also gotten enough truth about her to stick. She eventual quit “to spend more time with family” (she went into local politics and spent more time with her boyfriend while her husband supported her).
The biggest mistakes I made was not trusting my gut quickly enough, allowing her to poison the big boss against me, and not being more knowledgeable about taking down SS’s. Yes, maybe she could have manipulated a couple of her henchmen into carrying out their veiled threats to kick my ass, but I could have countered with an army of my own. She’d forced her neighbor to quit in disgust (an INTJ) who was friends with the SS’s rival (a big ENTJ). She’d also slimed her 220# 6’3” tall (ISTJ) lead for mistakes she’d made, while taking full credit for the highly creative and inventive work being done by two other excellent employees (NF’s). Plus I had helped get the big boss promoted (ENXJ), once upon a time.
Right now I’m banging my head over this. Instead of using the considerable advantage I possessed, such as the above and my reputation among all the PMs as a hyper productive speed demon, I still managed a draw in that war (the SS and I ruined each other). But that’s all in hindsight, and after considerable knowledge had to be been learned the hard way.
I made the idiotic assumption that being “the perfect employee”, while remaining a civil team player, would magically bring allies to my cause. This is probably the SS’s greatest asset, next to their intelligence: they know that most people are either in it for themselves, or are afraid to risk confrontation and conflict. Nobody came to my aid until the game was over. SS’s know that political cunning and alliances will defeat the pure and good intentioned (but frightened) normal naïve people every time.
Their natural gift for ‘low moral reasoning’, and their subsequent survival skill set, is reinforced by polite society.
==================
Student Of Sociopathy
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Elizabeth Conley says:
Grant,
I’m cheered to read you don’t hold bed wetting against children. I never have. My kids pretty much toilet trained themselves when they were ready. Most of their peers were “trained at gunpoint” far before they were ready. The kids toilet trained under heavy pressure were pretty stressed, and not just about potty issues. I felt the demands placed on them were unreasonable.
Their parents were pretty stressed too, so I guess they didn’t realize the pressures the kids were under to meet their expectations.
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Eye_Of_The_Storm says:
Dr. Liane,
A couple of comments.
Defining the term “moral agency” for your readers in terms of a capacity to make reasonable choices based on ethical values rooted in an accepted moral code of behavior that separates and defines right and wrong should be easily understood by anyone reading your work. You are an educator! Why water down what you have to say! You have the chance to teach through your writing! Bring the reader up to your level and improve his grasp of the subject!
Dr. Liane wrote: “Remember that psychopaths do not pursue their own interests. They pursue short-sighted gratification of their drives for dominance and sex.”
This makes a lot of sense to me and helps me put some pieces together about something I observed and never quite understood. I think this is very accurate.
For those trying to understand WHY, I found the books “The Lucifer Principle”, and “The Global Brain” by Howard Bloom extremely interesting and worthwhile when it comes to developing an understanding of WHY people behave in certain ways that confound anyone with a conscience, an ethical perspective, or highly developed moral agency. Dr. Bloom considers human behavior from the perspective of “psychobiology” and casts a different light of understanding on social behavior from that which is routinely presented by experts in the mental health field.
As for successful psychos, my observation is that they frequently have an entourage doing everything for them! They exercise power and control over these clinging followers who often carry out the wishes, dreams, or orders of the S/P/N/!
Anyone who cannot function independently and without an entourage in whatever form that takes, raises red flags for me now. Whenever someone must get someone else or others to do even the simplest thing for them, and the “someone else” has obviously surrendered his/her sense of self to the S/P/N, it’s a blazing sign to watch out, IMHO! The chaos they create often has consequences outside of the inner circle. If the psycho is powerful, those closest to him and content with that status are often insulated from the immediate fallout until things eventually break down and backfire!
Eye Of The Storm
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Elizabeth Conley says:
SOS,
You ask why Sociopaths are so successful. I don’t think they often are, but Psychopaths can be.
The only Psychopath I’ve ever met had a genius for exploiting people’s weaknesses. He used their perversions. He used their jealousies, envies and petty misunderstandings. He used their fears. He used their cruelties, prejudices and inevitably, their shame.
Over and over I watched the P’s one time dupes become his targets. I also saw subordinates who knew full well he was pulling scams to persecute people remain silent or even play along, hoping they’d be spared if they lay low. They weren’t. Not only were they eventual targets, but by that time these victims must have wondered if they deserved to be punished.
The various other cluster Bs I’ve known have been far too disorganized and impulsive to follow a long term scheme to completion. The S would have liked to, and occasionally thought he pulled one over. In reality he rarely had, and never for long.
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OxDrover says:
SOS,
I saw an S destroy an entire hospital, which ended up being sold. I was there the first six months while this was going on and along with the rest of the nursing staff, we couldn’t figure out why no one higher up SAW This. Then half the staff left at the 6th month of this, then in the next six months the rest of us left, leaving ONLY one nurse there, and she was the human resources and infection control nurse.
Eventually the director of nurses was fired, the S, and the hospital administrator (a clueless dupe) then the hospital sold.
I think a lot of it is like the Jews in Europe and Germany, they kept a low profile and disbelieved what was going on as the psychopaths kept taking small “bites” a few at a time. I think in the corporate world many people think if they will just stay “neutral” and their head down THEY will be safe, and you are on your own.
Whistle blowers are notoriously beaten to the ground….that’s just the way it works. Everyone waits for someone else to blow the whistle, but they will not support them.
I went to work for a BPD (after having been warned BTW) and when she went into a RAGE and spit fire at me, I was totally shocked. I resigned that day. Found out later that she had done that same RAGE and Spitting fire at everyone in the office ONE AT A TIME to show her control and power. I, fortunately, was in a position to quit, but many of the other people weren’t. She was totally shocked when I put my resignation letter in her “in box” and came to me and said “we need to talk.” I assured her she had already said enough for both of us and there was nothing left to say. I worked out my notice and never again spoke to her, if I passed her in the hall I treated her like she was invisible.
ONe of the nice things in my profession (retired registered nurse practitioner) is that I could get a job in 15 minutes, never had any down time I didn’t want. Even now with times really hard and jobs going away, there is still a shortage of nurses to fill the slots that are there.
Elizabeth,
I “conditioned” mine instead of “training them at gun point” by sitting them on the potty and pouring warm water over “it” at which time they would urinate and then they got some reward and praise, didn’t take long til they had it down pat! Animal training comes in handy! I also train my dogs to “do it on command” by saying the word(s) as they are DOING it, and it isn’t long before they will do it when you say the word.
I also taught them (my kids) to “sit” and “stay” by the time they were a year old! LOL ROTFLMAO. I actually didn’t even realize it until a new friend pointed out that I talked to my kids like they were puppies! LOL But heck, when I got my kids I had never seen a new born baby so used the “skills” I had to teach them. It worked well with puppies and did with my kids too—I never did spank them with a newspaper though and I never “rubbed their noses in it”—the analogy with training puppies only goes SO FAR! LOL
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anetsu says:
Concerning the “successful ” sociopaths….here is my experience:
When I first met my S(online) she was way down and out! Living with a woman who had two kids and living off the government. Of course her situation was all the fault of the other woman(something I can laugh so hard at now) She was financially in ruins and emotionally as well. At least that is what she led me to believe and I fell for it hook,line,and sinker! The only bright spot in her life seemed to be her job where she bragged repeatedly how everyone loved her there and she really knew what she was doing. Now I can see a pattern in that for her. Her jobs is where she shines and becomes someone else to all her coworkers and the “front” that she so cautiously maintains.
I sent her thousands of dollars to pay off bills and get her out of her situation so she could move three hrs south to live with me. I even sent her the lead to the job she holds now. Ultimately, she interviewed and got the job at a property management company working the front desk. Within three months she had the owner wrapped so tight around her little finger that she was given a supervisors position over other candidates that had been there much longer. She had NO experience and was actually going to have several managers under her!!! Low and behold she worked her magic over and over and transformed into a shining star of the company. Loving that she was able to hire and fire people at her leisure. She has these people so fooled because they dont know who she is….that she abused me for three yrs, lied, cheated and if I had pressed charges for everything she did to me she would be in prison for 5 yrs. If I told everything I knew to her boss about the company policies she has violated she wouldnt even have a job. But her successfulness is her employment. She is very professional,courteous and it used to make me sick she adopted some of the “southern drawl” sayings and everytime she said them it would make my skin crawl but to other ears it was like “Oh she is so sweet” Yuck! But as soon as she walked in the door in the evenings she tranformed into a lying manipulating,conniving, user. And the worst part is, now that she is gone, Ive been finding out she was telling her coworkers and friends that I abused her!!!!!!! There are two of her friends(husband and wife) that I have somehow managed to be on my side. probably because my S had slept with the husband(LOL) and he used to work with her at her old job. When I started telling them all the things she had done they were like OMG she told us you did that to her. So it made for a good weeks worth of conversations and emails with them asking question upon question. They absolutely couldnt believe it!!! But I knew too many tiny details for them to think I was lying. Of course when my S found out I had been talking to these friends they were her instant enemies. Forget they had been friends forever ya know. She deleted both their numbers from her phone and they were now known as expletives instead of their first names.
So my S’s successfulness is her employment. It it where she keeps the spinal cord of her evilness in tact and “healthy” if you will. Where she wanders around in her fantasy that she is so needed and non dispensable.
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Elizabeth Conley says:
Ox Drover,
My kids are just naturally easy going people. I think God sent me easy going kids because He knew I am a pushover. I even have a good natured husband and the world’s most easy going dog. This can’t be an accident. God knows I’m simply not lion tamer material, and has been merciful toward me.
As for the toilet training, it just kinda happened on their time table. They’d each watched the parent of the same gender, and wanted to imitate us. At that point in their development when they started waking up dry in the morning, I started taking them to the toilet when they woke up. They were pretty thrilled to be doing the big people thing. Within a few days they had it mastered. All the other kids in their play groups had been through months of exhausting drama, and still wore pull ups at night. We started later than everyone else, but within a few days we were done.
I’ve read volumes on toilet training, and volumes more have been written. I think the biggest problem is the pressure to start early. Daycares think they want toilet trained children. They should want sane children.
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Wini says:
Elizabeth Conley: Cute story about the children (SMILE).
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S O S says:
As for successful psychos, my observation is that they frequently have an entourage doing everything for them! They exercise power and control over these clinging followers who often carry out the wishes, dreams, or orders of the S/P/N/!
SS#1 & SS#2 (both ESTPs) could do their job if required, usually when the boss was watching. They didn’t waste effort and would take advantage of anybody whenever possible. Both had a sadistic streak which was ignored or tolerated by their ‘entourage’. They loved mindf^%king “the weak” for entertainment. Both had the odd habit of ‘making discoveries’ (coming to unsubstantiated conclusions) about people they didn’t know and then wasting time trying to get the group to buy into these ‘discoveries’. I’m not sure if the last thing was idiocy on their part or if they enjoyed the game of persuasion and persecution or both.
SS#3 & SS#4 (ENTP and XNTP) would only reveal members of their inner entourage when it was politically expedient to do so. They seemed to prefer to keep some or most of them hidden, (or imply such to keep people afraid of forming alliances against them?) unless they were a fall guy. Both had narcissistic qualities and needed to appear stronger and more intelligent than they actually were. Interestingly, both were much less willing or capable of doing their jobs themselves than were SS#1 , preferring to manipulate others into doing things which they would then take full credit for themselves. They also had much less education and experience relative to peer average than the other two, and they lied more often and more skillfully.
I’d say 3% of the people I ever worked with had enough SS characteristics to be a real pain and make work life miserable. About 10% of people are potential henchmen or wannabes, but without a psycho leader around they’re tolerable and reasonably well behaved and handled. I get along with worldbeater taskmasters, micromanagers, grumps, blowhards, touchy types, smartasses and absentee managers, as they add some color and personality to the office landscape and they’re usually fairly predictable, honest and not evil. OTOH, all of the SS’s had excellent people skills and started out as normal, civil, and very self-controlled.
OxDrover,
I read that nursing has a higher incidence of SS’s than other professions. I’m in engineering, which fortunately has less. Most of my jobs and groups have been pretty good – I even had a couple ‘animal house’ groups full of characters where there was always something nutty going on. It’s a real drag to go from wild and crazy fun group that’s like family, to one owned by a control freak psycho. One asshole can sure do a lot of damage to a good environment.
==================
Student Of Sociopathy
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OxDrover says:
DEar Elizabeth,
Yea, the first mother on the block that got a spoonful of cereal down her kid was the “winner” in the “first solid food” race—I think mine were 12 or 13 days old! LOL Of course I found out later that a baby can’t digest starch until 4 months so we might as well have been feeding them saw dust. I did breast feed mine though so I didn’t have much problem with either of them as infants and my “housebreaking” them was pretty much “conditioning” with rewards and so no harsh problems.
My oldest son had bed wetting problems (for which I never shamed him) but my younger was dry at morning by 1 yr old, very unusual, but did it on his own. Didn’t potty train other wise any sooner than “normal” though, just had a good big bladder I think.
My kids never went to a conventional day care except when we lived way out in the boonies and I would take them one day a week just so they could socialize. The only tantrum my older one ever threw was when I came to get him that first day and he didn’t want to leave (I think he was 3-4) but when I told him he could come back the next week, he was OK.
I loved it when they were toddlers, everything was so new and exciting and so much fun for both them and me. I loved their language development and seeing the “lights” go on when they figured out how to do something new, or discovered some new body part or skill. They were a challenge, each one individual, not alike at all, but so much fun. I was fortunate to be home with them and have friends with kids the same ages and I never ceased to wonder at these wonderful little guys! I think I took a roll of film a week taking pictures of them, even photos of them sleeping! LOL
Ahhhhh, the memories!
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AllPainNoGain says:
Hi All!
I don’t know if hearing all this makes me feel better or worse. Talk about chaos and being off balance. This is what I live with on a daily basis. Are you sure we aren’t talking about the same S/N? Stupid me I give away all my power by telling him what I know. Yes, I’m the insane one and EVERYONE knows just how insane I am. Uh, because he tells everyone I’m insane.
I’m still stuck in the “Boo Hoo, I still love him” thing. I’ve been told to get out, but I have nowhere to go. I’m working on it, but I can only go as fast as I can. He’s not physically abusive, but most of the time I’d rather him punch me in the face than do the things he does to me emotionally.
It is ALL a game to him and he loves it. He loves watching me try to defend myself, but it’s a hopeless cause with him. There is no defending myself against an S/N. It will never EVER work. Someone asked if they do it on purpose and I believe the answer to that is not a simple yes or no answer.
They know full well what they’re doing, but can they help themselves? I don’t know, but I think they do what works for them.
They will do what we let them do to us from the very start of the relationship. They blind us with so much love and attention that we are defenseless against it. I have been paralyzed with love, fear and hatred for this man. He’s stripped me of all that I use to be once apon a time. Being a very smart woman, I ask myself “How the hell did I allow myself to get involved with this S/N?”
I take responsibility for this, but now that I’m in it, I don’t know how to get out of it. “Just leave” they all say, sure, but it’s not that easy. I’ve given up my previous life, my home, my business, my dignity, and ALL my money… and for what? There is no gratitude when it comes to these types of people. They feel they are deserving and somehow owed what they take from people like us… good, kind, loving, giving people that only want to love and be loved.
It’s a sickness. The longer we’re in it, the sicker WE become. The less able we are to make healthy decisions for ourselves, to take good care of ourselves, to LOVE ourselves. We’ve become the trapt rat in the cage and the S/N is poking his/her stick at us making us dance, making us run on the wheel to the point of exhaustion, all the while they are so incredibly amused and disgustingly proud of the fact that they have so much power over another human being.
We are nothing but pathetic little puppets in their world. We walk on eggshells hoping not to have “A look on our face” that makes them mad, not to say something that may make them fly off in a rage, not to ask for anything because we are so selfish and only think of ourselves.
Here we are, beautiful people, deserving of all the best life has to offer, but we practically beg these MFs to love us. Please, I love you. Please don’t say those horrible things. All I want to do is love you. Please let me love you. Please LOVE ME!!
The only thing I have are my books, and as far as he’s concerned, I shouldn’t even be reading them… self-help books of course. I just found out that I can actually paint. I’m good at it, but he’s so hateful that he doesn’t want me to have any talents. I’m selfish if I buy a book or some paints… with MY OWN MONEY!!
It’s all so so very sick. These are the lyrics to a song that really describes how I feel, and imagine how a lot of you have or are feeling too. It’s by Pink…
I’m lying here, on the floor where u left me
i think i took too much
i’m crying here what have you done
i thought it would be fun
Bridge
i can’t stay on ur life support there’s a shortage in the switch
i can’t stay on ur morphine cuz it’s makin’ me itch
i said i tried to call the nurse again but shes being a little bitch
but i think i’ll get out of here
chorus
where i can run just as fast as i can
to the middle of nowhere
to the middle of my frustrated fears and i swear
you’r just like a pill stead of makin me better you keep makin me ill
you keep makin me ill
Verse
I havnt moved from this spot where you left me
This must be a bad trip
oh all the other pills, they were different
Maybe i should get some help
Bridge
i can’t stay on you’r life support there’s a shortage in the switch
i can’t stay on you’r morphine cuz it’s makin’ me itch
i said i tried to call the nurse again but shes being a little bitch
i think i’ll get out of here
Chorus
where i can run just as fast as i can
to the middle of nowhere
to the middle of my frustrated fears and i swear
ur just like a pill stead of makin me better ur makin me ill
u keep makin me ill.
End of Lyrics-
Thank God you guys are all here. Before I found this site I started wondering if I really was crazy. I thought that maybe it WAS all me. My reading helps. I write may prayers and affirmations in a notebook every day. I’ve also been listening to CDs by Paul Scheele from Learning Strategies. They’ve really helped me a lot. I’m feeling stronger, but nowhere near ready to jump. I’ve lost weight (14 pounds), I’m actually making new friends, and continue painting, so it’s not as bad as it was a few months ago.
I’m finally to the point to where I can IMAGINE being without him. I couldn’t do that a month ago. Reading your posts and having your support has really helped me to stop feeling suicidal and I’m eternally grateful.
“The courage to wonder about other life-perspectives than presently held, Dear One, unprovoked by people and circumstances, especially when they may contradict lifelong convictions, takes not only a spiritual giant with a child’s curiosity, but a blazing desire for more of everything life has to offer.”
The Universe
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shabbychic2 says:
AllPainNoGain: Hi! Thanks for posting the song by Pink, I really like it. I too have been going through the “I still love him” phase, and wondering how I got involved in the whirlwind of the whole thing. I am happy to hear you are at the point to where you can imagine being without him! I never lived with the guy I’m seeing, but I stopped calling him and was just trying to gracefully bow out of the situation with what little dignity I have left. I don’t cry in front of him, and I act like I’m just fine! Now that he has told me how sick he is I feel really bad again.
You do sound very smart! You’ll get strong enough to jump! Interesting how when we start understanding what they are doing we get stronger. A couple of months ago the nut case in my life tried the pulling away strategy “I can’t see you for a few weeks because I’m broke”… so I just said “okay!” LOL, he was on he phone and then at my door the next day… but no money!
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shabbychic2 says:
Oops, I meant: he was on the phone.
My cat is bugging the crap out of me, I’m sitting in a large/overstuffed chair like a loveseat but it’s just for 1 person, the cas sits behind my head on the cushion while I’m on the computer and plays with my hair! Then he tries to squeeze in and sit next to me, which isn’t too bad until he starts rubbing his face on the laptop and then starts drooling. Yes, my cat drools. I can’t stand it! But I love him anyway.
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Elizabeth Conley says:
Ox Drover,
“the first mother on the block that got a spoonful of cereal down her kid was the “winner” in the “first solid food” race—”
Yep. I call it the “Full Contact Sport of Competitive Parenting”. It makes Ice Hockey look tame.
Like you, mine only went to daycare for a few hours of “socialization” a week. This was while we lived oversees and I hadn’t made friends yet. We’d go in to the base childcare center. It was good childcare in a technical sense, but still a loony bin. I was glad I didn’t have to interact with them as much as the mothers on active duty did.
The institutional setting seemed to bring out the worst qualities in the kids.
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Liane Leedom, M.D. says:
I think it is good to have an open discussion about whether there are two groups of antisocial people that we may either call primary and secondary psychopaths or psychopaths and sociopaths. For all of you who believe there are two distinct groups email me at ljleedom@aol.com and I will send you the zip file I have put together.
I try to ask questions then look to research to answer the questions. To date everyone who has looked at the two disorder question has rejected the two disorder hypothesis. Even those who say that early and later onset make a difference still come to the one disorder conclusion. The evidence this is only one disorder is very strong at present. That is not to say that some subtrait like anxiety might also very in these individuals.
I will be the first to tell you when some research gives support for the two disorder model. It seems like those who are severely affected do form a separate group. The data do not show this.
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Grant says:
It is all made worse by the fact that the term ‘Psychopath’ is not a DSM term, and thus unofficial, and that the term ‘Sociopath” was dropped by Psychologists in the 1950s, and replaced with Anti-Social Personality Disorder. This disorder embraces both. Because “Psychopath” literally means “mentally ill”, it will never be specific enough to describe any particular disorder, and will never gain popularity. “sociopath” has Freudian connotations which make it too narrow.
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S O S says:
At this place, I use “sociopath” to partly go with the flow, partly to refer to anybody whose adult behavior is incorrigibly solidified within the Dark Triad domain. I’ll get more specific whenever I see the need to.
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