This week I will propose a strategy for helping a family member break free from a con artist/sociopath. The conclusions I have come to about how best to do this are based on the information regarding the techniques these people employ that I explained last week in Coercive persuasion, mind control and brain washing.
Sociopaths establish control over a person little by little, BITE by BITE. Remember, BITE stands for behavior, information, thoughts and emotions. To help your loved one, you have to BITE back. Take a look at the situation and see how you can gently facilitate your loved one gaining back autonomy over his/her daily behavior. Try to always appear affirming and loving so that it will be difficult for the sociopath to come up with an excuse to exclude you from their lives. See your loved one as frequently as possible. Be a source of real information, in contrast to the lies your loved one is being told by the sociopath.
The sociopath will set up situations that narrow, yet intensify, the range of emotions your loved one feels. Be as much of a source of warmth and encouragement that you can. Try to resist any temptation to disparage the sociopath. The responsibility for recognizing the evil in the sociopath has to come from the person him or herself. If the person complains about his/her life, do not react emotionally, instead be a good listener and point out the feelings you see. If you become angry and say to the effect, “How dare he/she treat you this way!” You will see your loved one defend the sociopath, and make you shoulder the emotions he/she should be having about the situation. Instead, your loved one has to personally own all the negative feelings about the sociopath.
While you should be loving and supportive, don’t render any practical aid as long as the person is still with the sociopath. For example, do not give or lend money or take your loved one in until you are sure the relationship is over. The only exception to this rule is in regards to your loved one’s children. Do not stop babysitting even though this is rendering aid. Chances are the children need a break away from the sociopath.
Realize that your loved one may be subjected to these coercive influence tactics:
• Selective reward/punishment
• Denigration of self and of critical thinking
• Dissociative states to suppress doubt and critical thinking
• Alternation of harshness/threats and leniency/love
• Control-oriented guilt induction
• Active promotion of dependency
• Debilitation
• Physical restraint/punishment
Combat these tactics by bringing up the good you see in your loved one. Talk about his/her past successes. Help your loved one reconnect with a sense of autonomy and competency. Encourage your loved one to be more independent. For example, women often stop driving. If this has happened, say something like, “I always thought you were a good driver.” Use compliments and other supportive comments as much as you can genuinely do so. If you do, the contrast between you and the sociopath will eventually be felt by your loved one.
Patiently wait for the honeymoon phase of the relationship to be over. Since Sociopaths, at first, don’t act like jerks you will have to wait for the “jerk” phase to begin. When the situation escalates and you feel the time is right, you can chance talking to your loved one about the sociopath. Instead of labeling the sociopath, I think you might have more success if you point out that some people “love by control.” You can then name the above tactics that these people use to gain control over others, and give examples of what you have observed here. You can say, “I’ve heard that people who love by control aren’t capable of real love”¦tough spot to be in.” It is very likely that, in the beginning, you will not be able to convince your loved one that the sociopath doesn’t love him/her and is a complete fraud. That is why I suggest you not try to do that. Instead point out the harmful dynamics of control. People need some amount of freedom in order to be healthy and happy.
If you are in this very difficult situation and your loved one is in the grip of a sociopath, don’t give up hope. Every one of us here at Lovefraud was once in that situation. I will be forever thankful that my dear parents were there for me when I needed them most. May that also be your happy ending.
Dear Lisa,
I posted to you on another thread before I knew the entire story of your son (being 18) and so on. I’m not sure if he is still living at home, etc. or if they are living together.
For right now though, I would simply relax (I KNOW, HARD TO DO!) and sit back and know that MOST OF THESE ROMANCES AT THIS AGE SELF DESTRUCT on their own sooner or later. Just hope and pray it is before there is a child. Sometimes the P females will deliberately get preg in order to hang on to control of a male victim.
Kids at this age think they know everything any way, and I can relate to that because at 18 I KNEW EVERYTHING THERE WAS TO KNOW IN THE WORLD…..now I know I don’t even know all the questions much less the answers. LOL
I just finished a great book called “a mind of its own< how our brain deceives us" (there is a book review here on the blog) by Dr. Cordelia Fine, and it is GREAT! I suggest that you get it and read it and you will be able to see some of what your son is doing to himself….convincing himself that he is in love and she is in love with him and that they are "happy"—also, you are working under the "I am his mom and therefore I can and need to fix this some way to protect him."
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS ABOVE "MOM RULE" is no longer operable. It stops working when they are about 6 or 8…if not before then.
Believe me, I had to let one carefully raised, loved and nurtured son "go" BECAUSE HE IS THE PSYCHOPATHIC PREDATOR (he is in prison for murder and at his recent parole hearing I hired an attorney to FIGHT TO KEEP HIM IN PRISON) and I had to let the other son go (the one whose P wife tried to kill him) because though he is not a psychopath, he is not respectful or honest with me….I'm down to 1 son out of 3, but that one son is a joy to my soul and heart. It is extremely painful to let a child go their own way when we KNOW that they are "going over fool's hill" in a bobsled with a tail wind, but actually there is nothing we can do to save them from themselves. I wish there were. ((((hugs))))
She did break up with him but he begged and pleaded and was a mess until she took him back. Just like an addict looking for a fix which is how spaths seem to tailor it. In truth I think the break up was to get him more bowing to her wishes. If this were a short lived thing I probably wouldn’t be too worried but this has been 2 years now and should have run its course already if typical of young relationships.
Unfortunately, though I wish there were one, this is no biological tome where maternal instinct peters out. It stays with us, damn it! LOL. He lives at college so he lives at home only part time.
You said that you had to let your son go and learn on his own about his spath. Is he back? In other words, is he back in the family and whatever else he was let go from?
Lisa,
Son C the one who married the P was “back”—and for about 2 years we had a pretty good relationship, then he moved back home and it was still pretty good until last year when he lied to me, and I caught him. Not a “big” lie, but a premeditated lie none the less, and I do NOT tolerate lies. I told him he had to leave my house and I have been essentially NC with him since then.
I have not seen him in over a year, and the only contact has been via e mails about his brother’s parole hearing and I did “interpret” an MRI he had done into “english” for him (I am a retired advanced practice nurse) but that is the ONLY contact either I or his adoptive brother have had with him. He is “own his own.” It isn’t like with the P son that I know is out to have me killed at the first chance he gets, but none-thje-less I do not want anything to do with son C, I don’t “do” liars and people who are dishonest.
And frankly, it isn’t just about the ONE lie he told me last year—a “small” lie, it is the fact that really since he was a teenager every chance he got to join some “posse” that was going out to “hunt me down and kill me” he may not have been the LEADER, but he was there riding along, not warning me that his brother or others were out to do me dirt or harm, even when he KNEW IT. I asked him once why he didn’t tell me that the Trojan Horse had control of my cell phone account and was running it up to hundreds of dollars a month, ordering thins on my credit card, etc. and he said “Wellll, I told him not to.” WTF? He “told him not to?” What about WARNING ME or calling the cops! Nah, he may have said “sorry” but he isn’t ACTING like he is sorry, and that is what I am going to go on.
King David in the Bible was a sinful man, but yet he was called “a man after God’s own heart.” WHY? Because he would REPENT of his sins and change his ways. My son C is still a liar and hasn’t in my opinion repented or changed his ways. St. Paul said that when we had tried to talk to a “brother” who was Doing something we knew was wrong, and then with witnesses and then talk to the other Christians and if that didn’t work, treat them like a heathen, not even to eat with them. That is NO CONTACT as far as I can tell.
I can’t stay away from everyone in the world who is a liar, and continues to lie, or who is abusive in other ways, I just don’t have to intimately associate with them.
OX,
SOn C and the lie he told you, the things he’s done, going along with the psycho crowd, so to speak…..isn’t that kind of passive aggressive? Is it possible he had anger at you but someone else was the one to do it by proxy? LIke feeding off of one another?
I know that my kids have lied to me at one time or another. There is only ONE child that I would NOT allow into my life, except at a distance and that is the one with my grandchildren whom I highly suspect is N. I don’t know that I agree that one lie told tells the whole story as there are reasons people lie at times it’s hella different than a psychopaths lies for sure.. I think I saw an article on it here…..
Could you clarify for me why you will not allow yourself contact with C son and if he ever made any apologies or tried to redeem himself with you about having gone along with the psycho crowd?
LL
Dear LL,
After the P-wife and the TH-P tried to kill him and they went to jail, He hugged me and said “Mom, you’re a prophet, I am so sorry.”
But when we went to (at my instigation) discuss the specific things, he “didn’t want to discuss them” (sort of the old family motto “LET’S JUST PRETEND NONE OF THIS HAPPENED AND START OVER.”
Well, actually that is NOT good enough when you have done the kind of thins that he allowed to go on, that he participated in at least to some extent, at least knew were going on.
When he came back home I made it very clear just exactly what the rules were, and he agreed to them. NO problem. Then after about a yr and a half he started the lying—and it was over breaking a financial agreement we had, which though he paid room and board here, allowed him to live for about 1/3 of what it would have cost him to live on his own, or even with a room mate, so he could save money—and instead, he spent the money on his computer/video game addiction and LIED TO ME TO COVER IT UP. Then lied about lying even when he was caught red handed. Then, I gave him 30 days to move out, and instead he moved out that night and went to work and told his boss and some mutual friends that I had thrown him HOMELESS OUT ON THE STREET! Sheet! What a crock of carp!!!!!
His loyalty and appreciation only last as long as they don’t get in the way of his computer and video game addictions. I used to think his wife was to “blame” for the financial problems they had, but I realize NOW that he was as much to blame about that as she was….if not more so.
I have no problem helping someone, especially my own kid, but you know what, I am not a social services agency and I don’t shoulder the responsibility. When my kids were teenager they had to get a job to help, not because I wanted the money but because they I thought needed to learn responsibility. The rules were that they had to contribute 1/3 of take home pay to the household, 1/3 to savings for big ticket items like college, a vehicle, a house down payment when the time came, etc. and 1/3 they could spend any way they wanted to. When son C moved back home, the rules were the same…but I did let him live here to recover for 6 months without a job or any payments, but during that first 6 months he did have some money of his own he had saved from before he came back here, and he also worked around here on the farm and did his share of the house hold upkeep and housework.
Rules on that is if you eat you wash dishes, if you eat you cook, if you bathe, you clean bathrooms and if you carp, you clean toilets! So we share the housework, yard work, farm work, etc. That’s always been the rule since they were little kids, you help around the house as PART OF YOUR FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES, not for pay or not for an allowance, just because that is part of living in a family. My male kids know how to do house work as well as any woman ever did.
But when I started looking back, LL, I saw that multiple times in the past C had “betrayed” me or allowed someone else to do so, and I began to believe that there was a PATTERN HERE—and also that his “remorse’ wasn’t really very sincere or behavior changing. It was what I call “from the teeth out” (not from the heart but just from the LIPS only.)
He isn’t’ going to come to my house in the middle of the night to hurt me like P son would, but at the same time, I cannot trust him to be honest with me and I do not WANT ANYONE in my life UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL who is not honest and trustworthy. What kind of relation-shit can you have with someone you can’t trust to be truthful to you?
MY HOUSE, MY RULES—NO lies! Period. He knew the rules, he knew what the agreement was and he broke the agreement, and he lied. So now he lives with a buddy of his and I am sure that he probably doesn’t have enough money in the bank to fix a flat tire, but he DOES have a zillion-dollars worth of high speed internet to get on the net and play video games with his buddies from the time he gets in from work until he goes to bed 7 days a week. It’s his life, but if he blows a tire and can’t afford a new one, “Mom’s savings and loan” is closed because he did not do the best he could to help himself, instead, he made decisions to spend his money on “toys.” HIS DECISION, HIS CONSEQUENCES, HIS PROBLEMS—His life.
Just as The story of Joseph in the Bible illustrates, Joseph had forgiven his brothers who sold him into slavery, but he did not trust them until he had TESTED them well. I tested C and found him not trustworthy. Joseph tested his brothers and found that they had CHANGED their attitudes and behavior. I see that my son C has NOT changed his behavior.
Oxy,
C’s response when you said you wanted to discuss why he went along with the attempts to hurt you was that he didn’t want to discuss it. That is exactly what my brother says when anyone wants to pin down his behavior.
some of his one liners:
“that’s in the past”
“we aren’t going to talk about that right now, we can discuss that at some other time”
“We aren’t discussing that, I’ll let you know when we can discuss that.”
And my favorite from my own spath:
“THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST”
LOL.
C may not be a spath, but it’s scary how many parallels there are. If I ever had a spath by the balls, I would FORCE him to discuss his past behavior. That would be fun, but I know that in all of history, it has never happened.
Ox,
Okay, that DOES clarify things a bit lol! Is he a P do you believe? And if not why?
I had a great, but very emotionally draining, complicated therapy session. This one was VERY VERY VERY deep, touching on some very sensitive issues that had me pissed off at my therapist!! lol! He asked me, “Are you pissed at me?” I said “YES I”M PISSED OFF AT YOU!” LOL…He smiled and said, “GOOD, THAT”S WHAT YOU NEED TO BE BECAUSE WE’RE GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS REAL FAST HERE!” lol!!
What started this was talking about Personality disorders. We went around and around about it. There were things I TOTALLY did not agree with him on. The reason we started this discussion was because I called him during the week and told him I was concerned that I might be Bipolar or have BPD. He NEVER called me back about it. Okay, so I wasn’t going to worry about it and figured he’d test me, per my request when I got there today. So when I sat there, he said to me, “I DID get your message about whether or not you are BPD or Bipolar and I wanted to answer this question to your face and in person so that we could talk about it and so that you are VERY clear: YOU DO NOT, IN MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION, WITH LOTS OF EXPERIENCE WITH PERSONALITY DISORDERS, HAVE BIPOLAR OR BPD!!!” He went on to explain why and said, you DEFINITELY, based upon my professional opinion, have POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AND SITUATIONAL DEPRESSION, BUT NOT A PERSONALITY DISORDER!”
So I argued the point with him lol! Well, guess what Mr. therapist, from all the reading I’ve been doing on BPD, even bi polar can overlap with symptoms of PTSD!!!!
YOU DO NOT HAVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then he went on to explain why. I got it. But then it went deeper, and it was at this point that I was getting very angry. We talked about psychopaths and Narcissists and BPD, I had some great arguments. He went on to explain that there are some out there, who are NOT disordered but are ABUSIVE anyway…..
“You’re trying to assign a label to your experience, LL, why?”
“Because I need to label it to VALIDATE it!”
“No, YOUR EXPERIENCE with this man VALIDATES IT”.
But……..so we went around the block again. This is where I think for NEWBIES or for the GENERAL PUBLIC, there HAS to be an awareness about sociopaths. I told my therapist that I believe there is CLEAR distinctions with regards to your everyday asshole and a sociopath, N, whatever PD they have…
Know what he did then, Ox?
He went to his desk and got a dictionary (I about fell over when he did this, seriously), and he read the definition of evil to me.
After he was done reading it, I was like “YES!!!!” but then he got a serious look on his face….”But it’s very, very scary isn’t it?”
I understood then. Labels, if we are to apply them, to the “personality disordered”, fit this definition and nothing else really needs to be said, but I still disagreed with him in that labels, particularly for those who do NOT understand personality disorders, are helpful, of the psychopath, so that other victims or so that educational materials can be given to help validate or for prevention. He agreed. But from a psychology perspective, psychopathy is a “new frontier” in that there is SO MUCH MORE work to be done in this area of psychology…..
So, Ox……..he also talked about the person being just plain toxic. Unhealthy. I’m still not agreeing fully on that because it runs a spectrum. He agreed….so what I think was decided upon, at least for me, is what is one’s perspective about it.
As far as C son goes………..I think I would have done/reacted the same. I have to do this with N daughter too. It’s hard and at times it DOES hurt, but it hurts A LOT less than enabling her in her behaviors and preventing her from being an adult and making her own decisions, as well as her own destructiveness.
You don’t have grandchildren, but I can honestly tell you, that the heartache is ten times worse when you know there are very young innocents whose lives you KNOW will be profoundly affected by your toxic child. I WILL babysit as often as possible. They need a break from their mother. If I can have even a few hours or an overnight with my grandchildren, it at LEAST gives them an idea as to what is good and what is not.
I just want to love them up as much as I can. So they know the differences. Then when they go home, what she does, is what she does. I have to emotionally detach. And I’m getting better at it in that way.
SO having said all of that, OX, I’m seeing what is CLEAR for me in defining what is toxic and not to an EXTREME, but with all else…it’s a wait and see kinda thing right now.
My other children, when confronted CHANGED their behaviors. Like many here with our spaths, sometimes that can take a long time, but I have a feeling, Ox, as a Mom, you “know” which ones will and which ones will not.
Have I hit a home run in understanding this better?
LL
Okay, so I just got word about my tumor from my doc.
Biopsy results back. NEGATIVE for cancer!! YAY!!! BASTARDS in radiology and with my doc’s office telling me it was “an obvious malignancy” OUGHT TO BE SHOT!!!
Screw it! I’m so happy that everything is okay!! They want to check me again within the next year, but HEY, I’m totally up for that!! WOOT!!!
Thanks for your prayers, those that prayed!!!
Erin, this bitch is gonna be BACK!!!
LL
WHOOHHHOOHHHHPOOOO!!!!!
(((((((((((((((((LL))))))))))))))))))
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LL-YYYYEEEAAAAHHHH BBBBAAAABBBBBYYYYY!!!!!!!!!