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.
superkid10: I didn’t have him around me for too long when I was little. My mind would have been blown, though. I would have been dead inside after living with that crazy making. Hugs!!! I can’t resist hugs! *hugs* Yeah! ^_^
Ana: Hey, buddy! I didn’t mean to worry you guys or make you wonder. I’ve been lurking some here, but haven’t been on too much. How have you been? Do you want hugs too?
Thank you so much for writing this article!
I have known for so long, that I had a problem of this nature. I had no idea what it was, or why I had it.
Disassociation was the closest fit I could find, yet all the definitions I could find for the condition, seemed vague and didn’t quite hit the mark. ( a feeling of being disconnected to oneself, and/or surroundings and so forth). This is the first time I am hearing the word HYPNOSIS used to describe it, and boy did a huge bell go off in my head! (Ding, Ding, Ding We Have A Winner! lol!).
I feel I have underestimated the severity of the problem I have with this. It has been a part of who I am for so long…I have always worked around it, and I do that almost on auto-pilot too. There was a time when I though I had the ABILITY to “tune out” and I was grateful. But in reality, it developed into a huge problem as I somehow lost of control of WHEN I tuned out. many times I was completely unaware that I was doing it. I have become much more conscious of it now. Still can’t fix it though. 🙁
My adult son once told me that, when he was young, he would preface every important conversation he wanted to have with me, with the phrase,”Mom, are you paying attention?” This is important! (He was making sure I was “There”! It has always been a worse problem than I though, because I didn’t KNOW I was doing it!).
I have been told I have ADD. Some of the criteria fits, but a lot of it doesn’t. I never took add meds, because I suspected that just wasn’t it. Much more accurate is what you are describing in this article, and I thank you kindly, for this new tool of understanding I can use to help myself…
I come from a large family, there were 13 children. We are separated into three camps, some of us,(primarily the oldest ones), insist that we had, “A Wonderful Loving Family”. That is the actual phrase they use.
Others of us are of the mind, that we were lucky to have survived the horror, ( some feel it would have been “luckier” NOT to have).
Then there are the Middle of the Road’ers . They don’t idealize nor demonize our up-bringing. They seem to take the, “well that’s just how thing were done, back then”,mind frame.
I find I enjoy the company of my “middle of the road” siblings more than the other ones. I don’t have to listen to them act we were the Waltons. (The older ones remind me of Stepford Wives, Like they’re playing this, “everything is so perfect”, Life is great, tape. They LOVE Facebook cause they love to “chat”, but they NEVER want to “talk”. They scare me lol!).
When I am with the ones who know, “what time it was”, in that house, we almost always end up caught in a traumatic sharing of the horrible things we remember, and while our memories DO dovetail, and have cleared up some troubling nightmares, and memory fragments for me…The compulsiveness and intensity of the sharing, is exhausting.
There have been tears, anger, validation, acceptance… sadness for not being able to protect or help, one another back then… And a LOT of love. But we seem almost “unable” to just have a good time being together, WITHOUT doing this!? There is something that happens every time we get together…It’s almost an inevitability at this point.
The middle folks, just don’t talk much about the past at all. They live in the here and now, they look uncomfortable if an ugly truth is touched on, (but they don’t deny), they brush it off, (We’ll yeah, but it could’ve been worse…), and then they move on to whatever is currently happening. I find I am more relaxed in their company, as opposed to the other two camps, as they seem to generally be in good humor, but not fake humor, and I know they have their demons too…
I never thought of my Foo in terms of “N’s/P’s. Just mean, abusive and immoral. And my mom was a pyc. Nurse! lol! She was perfect at work, but a scary, scary mom…
So now I need to find a way to fix this self-hypnosis problem. Is it fixable? NC with Nutters seems to help, but I believe the problem is much more pervasive than I was aware of. The least little encounter with a disorientating person/situation can bring this on.
Near:
You are back!! Yay!! Good to hear from you 🙂
I really enjoyed this article, I think it also ties in with the whole idea of accepting a N’s blame- even harder for a child to distinguish someone else’s emotions from their own.
I am also struggling with my No Contact. It has been nearly 2 weeks now and I still have not picked up the phone or been in contact with him. The phone call attempts from him have decreased from about 12 times per day to about 3 or 4 times a day. It is very hard now that I am beginning to realize that without him, I really do have noone and am very alone
Hi Snow,
Congrats on the two weeks NC! I know it can be so HARD. Strange thing, this longing for contact…Who the heck would be dying for contact with a spath right?! I have read all the theories:
Trauma bonding
Stockholm Syndrome
chemical bonding
And everything else I can find…Still can’t quite make sense of it myself…Maybe I was so isolated, for so long, that spath became my only source of adult human contact. So naturally when I feel lonely, I think of spath.
That is what I was “conditioned ” to do I suspect… Come to think of it. People who are, at least periodically, in a state of self-hypnosis, as per the main article, must be SO easy to program!! Uhhgggg!
I did two years complete NO contact. (He’s back though. ), and it does get a LOT easier.
One thing I know for sure is, if I want to stay alive and healthy, I need to stay away from spath, no matter what I feel…
Please don’t feel alone. We are here for you.
Great article, Dr. Leedom. What you wrote on dissociation reminds me of the oft-quoted words of Dr. Viktor Frankl, ” An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” I think it’s incredibly important to acknowledge this following a sociopathic entanglement. Thanks
Dear Safeguard,
You ask some interesting questions and make some interesting points about your FOO….it is odd how two or three people can go through the same thing and each saw a different “event.” Your observations of your family seem to be well-thought-out. With large families like yours though, the older ones do have almost a different “environment” than the younger or middle ones due to the changing number of people involved at the various stages of the marriage.
A am also a bit ADD, it is genetic to some extent if not entirely, but also worse in some cases than others. Also many psychopaths are ALSO ADD or ADHD and/or Bi-Polar as well so they get the double or triple whammy. I have one son who is very ADHD and he’s just a jerk, but one son who is a full-blown psychopath (in prison for murder) but not at all ADHD.
It is odd that you mention your mom was a psych nurse. I’m a registered nurse practitioner who worked in both medicine and psych and believe me in my experience there are some mental health professionals who are nuttier than a fruit cake and/or meanern’ a snake.
Many people who are dysfunctional hide behind “christianity” or “morality” when in fact they are anything but Christ-like or moral. That kind of “double standard” is so confusing to kids, the message verbally of “I love you,” and action of “you are worthless.” Glad you are here Safeguard, again, welcome, your posts are very thoughtful and thought provoking. Thanks.
Dear Snowsettled,
Are you any LESS “ALONE” WITH HIM?
There used to be a cartoon called Lil Abner, in which a guy named Joe something or other was the most unlucky man on earth and a black cloud lived over his head, and when he came around he brought bad luck with him. The rest of the characters didn’t like Joe because he brought bad luck with him. One day joe managed to trick the black cloud and lock it up in a cave so he no longer brought bad luck to himself or to others, but the people still THOUGHT of joe as Bad luck so they shunned him.
Eventually Joe became so lonely he went and let the little cloud out of the cave and said something to the effect “Of you’re bad company, but you’re better than no company at all.”
That was decades ago that I saw that cartoon but I cut it out and saved it for the longest time….it struck a cord within me…and sometimes we DO feel like old Joe, we are lonely, but I have decided UNLIKE JOE, that I would rather have NO company than BAD abusive company. I am pretty good company for myself, and am learning to appreciate being alone without being “lonely.” I have discarded my dysfunctional friends and appreciate the good friends that much more…and I’m down to a hand full of people who care if I live or die…but that is okay. I CARE. THAT’S THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS.
I know we were talking about this mother the other day somewhere but I can’t remember where—she is on trial for child abuse for using hot sauce in the kid’s mouth and a COLD shower for punishment.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027386/Child-abuse-jurors-video-Jessica-Beagley-squirting-Tabasco-sauce-boys-mouth.html
Interestingly enough, this mentions that the children were adopted from Russia where they had been found neglected and abused and that “other forms of discipline didn’t work” with the kids.
This takes me back to the boy that was sent back to Russia on a plane by himself and the furor that caused….
While I am not in ANY way condoning what this mother did to the child, I think it is very important that people understand WHAT they are taking on when they adopt a child…especially an older child from another country who has abuse in his/her back ground as well as potential for genetic tendencies or drug/alcohol problems in the parents or prenatally.
Just as an adult psychopath can drive a “normal” person “nuts” a child with major psychological problems and/or past abuse can drive a normal parent to “insanity” and for that parent to find something as “unusual” (for lack of a better word) as cold showers and tabassco sauce. I feel for this child, but I also feel for the mother—having unsuccessfully tried to raise a psychopath, I know that I qualified as “crazy” though by the time I would have considered “anything” he was old enough I couldn’t have done it physically.
This child needs to be in an inpatient setting, and it is possible the mother might benefit from that as well, but my guess is that she will go to jail/prison and it is a lose-lose situation that started out most likely in my opinion with someone’s good intentions but not the knowledge or strength to carry through without being stressed to the max.
Not trying to get a fight started here about “what is child abuse” but just to sort of look at this situation from both sides of the coin. The whole thing is sad, at best.
Safe,
http://www.godhateshomophobes.com/homphelps.html
you might find this interesting. It is long and actually quite horrible, so if you find that it triggers you, perhaps you don’t want to read it.
It is the story of Fred Phelps the preacher who preaches hate.
He had 13 children and abused them to the point of beating them unconscious. But only 3 of them have escaped and acknowledge the abuse. The others just think everything was fine. How is that possible?
My father has a spath brother. I was raised playing with my 3 cousins and my 3 siblings. Of the 7 of us, the three oldest moved away and can’t stand our fathers. Of the 4 youngest, including myself, we thought everything was ok. Now I see the truth – far beyond what the older cousins and my older sister see.