This week we received the following email:
My daughter is married to a man I consider a psychopath. My daughter has not spoken with me for many months. She has totally changed her personality, voice, she says things she never would have said before, she attacks me to my friends. My daughter and her husband seem to have their own version of reality, truth, and morality that is not consistent with those outside her marriage or in the world. My husband doesn’t want to invite them to our house for the holidays or have anything to do with them. I feel the same way, too, because of their attacks and saying things that are not true about us. I have gotten advice on this blog to try and have a relationship with her no matter what (she needs us if she ever comes out of this relationship or if she comes out of the fog) and to not say anything negative about her husband. (The prior question.)
I really need more advice on what to do. She called my friends and has repeatedly said lies to them, then she called my husband at work and lied to her father. She has totally changed. I kept thinking she would snap out of it and go back to her “old self”. She used to have affection for us. She never would have lied to us or about us. Is this what happens when you live with a psychopath? Can they so change you that you see the world through their eyes or perspective? She used to be so happy and so much fun to be around. I don’t know how we could be around them now. Do you just agree with their reality and say you are sorry for things they said you did, even though you didn’t do them? It seems like a power struggle and the psychopath wins. It seems like the reason they are calling our friends is because they want to stir up drama and win some kind of “battle”. Our life was so even and no drama before our daughter met the psychopath. I am amazed how one person can affect so many lives for destruction, evil and suffering.
This is very hard to know how to respond to my friends, daughter and husband. Could you please give me some advice?
There are three questions here and I will try to answer each one:
(When you comment on this article please reference these question numbers.)
1. She never would have lied to us or about us. Is this what happens when you live with a psychopath? Can they so change you that you see the world through their eyes or perspective?
2. What do we do about a sociopath/psychopath’s smear campaign?
3. Can we still save our daughter?
Question #1 Is this what happens when you live with a psychopath?
The answer is definitely yes. This is what happens when you have any association with a psychopath, no matter how you know them and whether or not you live with them. This is why I strongly encourage family members to cut the sociopath/psychopath off. Sociopaths/psychopaths whole way of relating to the world is about power and control. This need for power and control is very personal. They do it one person at a time, one victim at a time. They do it very systematically with malice and forethought. When they succeed in hurting someone or getting another person to hurt him/herself or others, they step back, revel in it and say, “I did it again, s__t I’m great!” (they use a lot of foul language also.).
Never forget this
Sociopaths/psychopaths get off on controlling people and hurting people. That is why we don’t understand them, and are unable to predict their behavior. To let this sink in emotionally do the following: Next time you eat that piece of chocolate cake, have an orgasm, or watch your favorite team win at sports, focus your attention on the pleasure you feel, and say to yourself, “This is what a psychopath experiences when he controls or hurts another person.” Once you do this a few times you will have no problem understanding them or predicting their behavior.
Since sociopaths/psychopaths lack the brain wiring and chemicals necessary for love, they can only experience pleasure in relationships through power, control and sex. When a normal person says, I love you, he means he has affection for you and “cares” for you. We call it caring for a reason. When we love someone we take care of that person. If we really love someone we also take care of everyone in that person’s family.
When a sociopath/psychopath says, I Love you, he means I own you. When a sociopath/psychopath really “loves” someone they own everyone in that person’s family, including and especially parents, siblings and any children. When you own something you can take pleasure in it however you want. Again this is very up close and personal, There is nothing distant or impersonal about a sociopath/psychopath’s way of relating to others.
How do victims become psychopathic?
It is important to remember that all non-relative victims are to some degree tricked or fooled into the relationship. The need not to acknowledge the profound mistake causes them to lose contact with reality. Their brains are busy constructing the imaginary world they wish to be in. The victim therefore enters what may be called a hypnotic state. Hypnotic states involve shutting out reality and attending to only certain parts of it. In this state, the victim is easily manipulated. What the victim is willing to do may or may not be a reflection of who he/she is. The evil deeds may reflect the victim’s response to selective perceptions. For example, perhaps the daughter in the story above is now so confused about love that she believes the lies.
The process I describe above also applies to families. The less affected family members do not want to admit that their family has psychopaths (because usually there is more than one) in it. They want to have the perfect family as much as anyone else. They therefore normalize and justify ALL of the psychopath’s hurtful controlling behavior.
An ugly side of victim psychology
Since our drives are contagious, a person who is with a loving person becomes more loving. The person who is married to the power obsessed becomes more power obsessed. This can occur outside of conscious awareness. Part of being power obsessed involves delight in both aspects of victory-delight at being a winner and delight at the loss of the loser. People who are not power obsessed usually feel empathy for the loser. The brain power system turns off the brain empathy system.
Get away from that psychopath before his/her behavior rubs off on you more than it already has!
Question #2 The psychopath’s smear campaign
Please check out the other posts on this topic. A colleague recent told me a very similar story so I will address this again in detail soon. My inclination would be to ask the friends to tell their daughter and her husband not to call. If they call after being asked not to they may be prosecuted for harassment. That will put a stop to the drama. Please focus your attention on addressing this specific problem-the phone calls. The drama comes from the context of this problem. (Daughter in the clutches of a psychopath.) Try to make light the silly lies, that way the psychopath can’t win.
Question #3 Can we still save our daughter?
There may come a time when you will feel the need to let go and live the rest of your life as best you can. Only you can pick that time for yourself. Statistics show that the more psychopathic a person is, the more prone to life failure he/she is. In other words most psychopaths screw up, A truly successful psychopath is so rare that I have never verified a case- again it depends on how you define success. I mean this: all of their relationships are eventually broken, they lose their jobs, they have no real friends and they can’t manage money. They also suffer from ill health because they don’t take care of themselves, They also get into accidents and their life span is 15 years less on average. If the man in question here is a psychopath, he would be in the extreme minority if he is NOT cheating sexually or bringing them to the brink of bankruptcy.
The question here is whether this will take so long to run its course that the victim will lose herself completely. When that happens there is great risk of suicide when the relationship falls apart. So if you do decide to back off of the relationship, that would be time to set the record straight perhaps in writing something like: No matter how old you are you are still our little girl and we have loved you since the day you were born. Your choice of a partner has hurt us so much that we must ask that you not call us or have contact with us until this relationship ends. No matter what else happens, we will always welcome you back into our loving arms.
Has a sociopath/psychopath’s influence caused you to do things or be involved in things you regret?
Please comment below.
In regard to: I am amazed how one person can affect so many lives for destruction, evil and suffering. I had the benefit this week of talking with one of my ex-husband’s other victims. In comparing notes, it was clear, the man has harmed everyone who has had the curse of connecting with him. This is the mark of a person with psychopathic personality traits. Since he cannot love he can only do harm. He doesn’t know any other way of being! Just like an apple tree produces apples because that is what it does, the sociopath/psychopath hurts because that is what he/she does.
onajourney,
the bottom line is in order to communicate with an antisocial/narcissist, you HAVE to become like them. There is no exception to this rule. I will take it one step further…you have to become them. Look at the myth of narcissus and echo. Echo was with him because she echoed him. You want to know how to communicate with your daughters boyfriend? Echo him. If he tells you that you don’t tell your daughter you love her enough. Say the same thing back to him. If he yells. Yell back. If he tells you your lovely, say it back. You’ll never say the wrong thing! But you will also never say anything that you really feel. So you become his mirror. It is the ONLY way to survive in this relationship. It is what your daughter is doing. It makes you a shell, but it might be tolerable in small doses. Ot it might consume you. I am not sure. Your daughter sounds already consumed. It might be best to cut your losses and wait for her to get discarded, as every echo does.
I had become just like him and he didn’t like himself so he left, and maybe two lives were saved – I just knew he had to live his life somewhere else and I had to find out who I was – and why this happened to me..during the three year relationship I became so conditioned to taking the blame – for everything – I still feel guilty that I could not love him – as hard as I tried – I never did – I felt pity for him – and he used that to his advantage – I had strong feelings of emotional something for him – I still do – but it couldn’t of ever been love – and it wasn’t sex either – I remember a feeling of doom, that whatever happened we were doomed – I dont feel doomed now – but he doesnt feel anything – i really think he lives totally in the moment and wakes up everyday in a new world – he never was excited about anything – I asked him to come out and watch the sunset one evening – he brought his crossword puzzle book out with him – he never saw the sun go down..
just wondering if anyone saw oprahs show today? the guy who killed his whole family. he was a complete sociopath. he said he felt nothing inside. he didt feel emotions. he lied for 4 years about going to school and his family thought he was going to graduate from college but he never finshied freshmen year. more and more people are becoming aware of sociopaths. you really need to always be on the look out for red flags at all time with all people in your life.
I saw oprahs show today…his father forgave him..not sure if I could do that — but I think forgivness is something i will have to do at some point because I agree with the physcologist that was on her show – untill we forgive we remain bitter and full of toxin’s – i think forgiveness is going to take some time for me because he did what he did knowing what he was doing was wrong – and that is criminal – if he asked for forgiveness? yes I could – is he going to ask? you know the answer too that….
I didn’t see Oprah today:( But yesterday on Nancy Grace they actually called the girls mom a sociopath. They said the word “sociopath”. They said her mom is acting just like a sociopath would, and none of her actions are a surprise. She is a real nutcase! Nancy Grace just can’t believe how much she so obviously lies and the person who called her a sociopath said, it’s totally in line for a sociopath. I nearly jumped out of my shoes when I heard the word
From my own experience I’ve found that sometimes someone will join into a partnership with a S/P willfully and almost consciously. A normal corrupt person, who believes entitled to lie and cheat their way to success, still has a conscious. Sometimes they seem to think that a S/P could teach them the secret of guilt free corruption. Similarly a rigid narcissist (who has disowned their soul and emotions in favor of the consciously directed will) may feel a S/P could free them from the constant friction of their own soul calling them back to full humanity. Couples like these belong to the phenomenon of the “evil couple.”
I first became aware of that phrase some years back — probably in Scott Peck’s The People of the Lie (that’s my best guess without finding the specific quote). The book is about the rigidly narcissistic. He defines them as being “addicted to the will.” I would say the same thing differently, I’d say they believe their true self is their will and their mind and that they disown their own deep emotions as though their emotions were some kind of outside manipulation. For example an incest victim might, on a deep psychological level, decide that the only reason she feels shamed is because of her emotions and then attempt to split off from her soul and emotions as though they weren’t “of her,” becoming a rigid narcissist.
I don’t believe the above really speaks to the other comments, but I offer it as something worth keeping in mind.
http:\\pathwhisperer.wordpress.com
Hi, guys,
Been busy during the days lately and lost power tonight during a storm and just got back on internet when the power coming on woke me up at midnight.
I dont watch much TV at all so didn’t see Oprah, but had heard somet things bout the P that killed his, entire family and the father “forgave him.”
Forgiveness to me is in two forms as I said on the thread articles I sent in here, we have to get the BITTERNESS out of our own souls and hearts for what they did, that doesn’t mean though that we have to TRUST them, or be around them (for future injuries) and then we have to FORGIVE OURSELVES for allowing them to repeatedly abuse us–quit being bitter and angry at ourselves. I had the hardest part in forgiving myself I think. Cause I felt so incredibly STUPID.
I am rereading “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman. IT is one of those REFERENCE books that I KEEP and reread from time to time to refresh my thinking and help keep me ON TRACK. It talks a lot about many of the articles here on this blog and why we must work with our emotions AND OUR LOGIC and that we CAN take control.
The book also goes into some very interesting studies about how infants as young as 2-3 months are influenced by their mother’s reactions to them, and how personality and empathy are developed (or not developed as the case may be) and also about how we read “body language” and that 90% of our communication about emotions is PHYSICAL not verbal. How our training and culture influence how we show emotions under different circumstances.
One of the very interesting things in that book, too, is how experiments have shown that two people sitting in a room (in an experiment) will mirror each other’s moods even though nothing is SAID between them. Take on the mood of the other. When we are around the P’s most of the time they are either euphoric with glee if things are going well for them, or they are in a flipping RAGE if things aren’t. We allow their “moods” to effect us, so in a way we start to mirror their moods or respond to their moods rather than to the REALITY of the real world.
I think Pathwhisperer’s “evil couple” reference can be along this same lines too. One N or P dragging someone down with them into the bowels of N or P-ism (emotional hell), feeding on each other like two vampires with a mission to find a victim.
The forgiving though, for me, has been my “ticket to freedom” from the Ps, because as long as I was wrapped up in bitterness, I was not free from them, and as long as I was unforgiving of MYSELF for being so “stupid” I was also wrapped up in negativity. It is only since I have forgiven them (and I believe I truly have) and forgiven myself (I’m pretty close on that one) have I been able to again experience JOY!
My son D and I were talking today as we worked on a long over due project and during it we were both “worked out” and tired, and there had been some things I wanted hung in the house that needed two people to do and I had asked him to help me with it a couple of weeks ago and we somehow had never gotten around to doing it. He apologized and said “Ask me in the morning when I am not so stiff I can’t raise my arms above my head” and I laughed and said “Well, it’s been needing doing for a year and a half now, so what’s one more day or one more week?”
I realized then that I NO LONGER RUSH all the time, I no longer have this internal slave-driver beating me with an emotional stick to “hurry up and get it done”—I just for the first time in my life am “going with the flow.” Do what I can do and don’t worry about what didn’t get done. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I won’t get everything done in a day either.
We were gone from here for quite a while so there are a 100 little repair jobs that need to be done on the farm and have been neglected while we were gone, or after my husband died and we weren’t able to “get around to them.” SO WHAT! They will be here tomorrow and the next day. But JOY IS HERE TODAY in every thing I do now. No worry about yesterday, and no fretting about what I didn’t get accomplsihed today, no fear about what may come tomorrow, because I HAVE JOY NOW–TODAY—THIS MINUTE–THIS SECOND. I am P-FREE, not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
I no longer have to “make an appointment with God” to pray, I pray continually. When I look out at how pretty the trees are I say “Thank you God for giving me such a wonderful world and such beauty” When I read a story on here of someone else’s pain, fear, etc. I don’t sit down at night and say “Now God bless Henry, and God Bless I wonder,” I pray as I write “I will keep you in my prayers”
Each day has something MAGICAL AND WONDERFUL in it for me to experience with JOY. Even on the days I do something really dumb and stumble and fall (fell flat on my face the other day, skinned my knee, elbow and NOSE LOL) But heck, “stuff happens” and I won’t let it make me lose my JOY.
Goleman talks about Optimism and hope in his book and says that all kinds of research has shown that having optimism and hope that we can take control of our lives is more important than anything else in helping us recover. Helping us to grow.
When we feel down and bad and hopeless our brains don’t even THINK RIGHT, we are less able to make good decisions, etc. I think that is one way LF helps us by raising our optimism and our HOPE for each other.
We have grown to know what a psychopath is and we can see them on the news at night and recognize them and we are also getting to where we can recognize the RED FLAGS in people we meet as well.
hi oxy looks like you are up late – i have never been a good sleeper. I enjoy reading your post about your days on the farm and the time you spend with your son. Thanks for sharing your thought and simple joys of life, it gives me hope that I will get back to that simple life – uncomplicated by mental agony lol – oxy I remember the first time I posted here, you were the first to respond – you said it would get better and it has – yes he is still my head but slowly getting less and less intense – I can think now and concentrate on what has to be done -I dont whine about him to my friends and family anymore -they are sick of it – I get lonely because I miss him not because I am alone – and yes I know I have issue’s still to work on that has nothing to do with mike but with my childhood – oxy i swept my childhood uner a rug for years and my mothewrs mental abuse – some of the things that happened in my childhood – well there was just no place to put them in my brain so I just avoided them – the past 3 years have been hell -with my mom and mike – and it just all caught up with me – but I have processed alot of things and realize they were not my fault – i was a victim – thank you oxy for helping me out of a dark place I have avoided for so long….
I did worry about this question as well as to what affect this will have on my children and I in the long term…
Until I learned about our core personalities did I really understand that most of us don’t really change. What I mean is that we are who we are. We can understand ourselves better learn to hinder those personality traits that hurt other and us but we will always be “who we are”. Because we see ourselves as “authentic” people we can then learn to accept and understand that which is really who we are and will always be.
Patricia Evans from her book “CONTROLLING PEOPLE”. Puts it best insomuch as she writes:
As we have seen, people have the ability to build their identify backwards, from an outside source, by accepting definitions of themselves that have not come from within, and by believing the pretender knew them better than they knew themselves. It is often very difficult to believe in oneself, especially when one is constantly told not to. But it is the ability and freedom to define oneself, and to see the other as pretending that protects one from negating his or her true self. (pg. 56)
When we build ourselves from within we in fact are authentic people. I don’t need things outside of my reality to define me..
You can take my money
You can take my car
You can take my house
You can take my job…
These thing don’t and never did define who I am…
That I am still that person I was before I had these things and will always be that same person after I lose these things….
Thanks, Henry, I KNEW YOU WOULD GET BETTER, and I didn’t need a crystal ball to see that, I could see it in the shine on my iron skillet! LOL
Seriously though, being CONVINCED that we CAN get through it is 99% of the process. It is when we say to ourselves “I CAN’T…______” (fill in the blank) that we actually can’t.
That is why I am BOINKING you guys over the head so often, when you are negative and use the “I can’t..” words. They are POISON TO THE SOUL. Remember that book “The little Engine who could” that we used to read our kids? As he chugged up the tall steep mountain he kept chanting “I think I can I think I can I think I can.” until he DID IT.
We have to realize that our HOPE and our CONFIDENCE in ourselves are what bring us through. What JAMES WROTE from the book “Controlling Peoplle” is ABSOLUTELYright. We formed ourselves BACKWARDS so that the people (in our case the Ps) became our definiing character, without them we were nothing because WE LET THEM BE–we have to take back our POWER and our CONTROL over ourselves, our thoughts and our feelings and WE CAN. Feelings don’t ust wash over us out of the blue, we CAN CONTROL THEM, but we have to BELIEVE we can.
Last night when I was rereading “Emotional Intelligence” for the umpteenth time I came across a paragraph about how even a 3 month old infant will “quit trying” if the caregiver doesn’t respond to them, just GIVE UP. That baby is trying to define him/herself by how the mother reacts to them, and if they don’t get a reaction they quit trying. They give up hope and say “what’s the use, I can’t get a reaction anyway?” But we KNOW MORE THAN THAT BABY, we can make ourselves not give upo hope. We can encourage each other, and BOINK each other when we give up hope and confidence.
That’s why I kept BOINKING you and Kat, cause you would be so negative “I can’t, I can’t”
The more positive I am, the more I stop and appreciate things, the happier I am the happier I GET.
This morning I lookd out my window to the back of the house from my bedroom and the trees are all still thick and green so I cant see very far but there were some tiny light purple flowers on some weeds growing in the edge of the woods, just little spots of dim color but I thought, “How beautiful” here it is nearly time for frost and still there are wild flowers blooming…JUST FOR ME. Just to make my rainy morning better.
Henry I know that the P-experience can “bring out” the crap we went through as kids, but until we DEAL WITH that crap too instead of push it aside like we have done in the past and ‘PRETEND WE CAME FROM A NICE NORMAL FAMILY” and deal with it. DEAL with it, it will always rear its ugly head and we won’t be able to make headway in TRUE AND COMPLETE HEALING.
I think, Henry, that I am at age 61 healthier and happier than I have ever been in my life. Sure I still miss my husband, but it’s not “painful” missing, just sort of sentimental, and you know, I don’t miss the Ps any more. I don’t miss my mother. I realized that the other day, I don’t miss her AT ALL.
I no longer feel bitter at myself for being so “stupid” and I no longer even feel bitter at them. I realize, like the story of Joseph in the Bible when his brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, he was bitter and angry at them but eventually, he realized, when he became the second most powerful man in the kingdom of Egypt that GOD HAD A PURPOSE IN HAVING HIM IN EGYPT for everyone’s benefit. He saved the whole family and the country fro starvation. But long before he was reunited with his family, he had Forgiven his brothers, but even though he had the bitterness out of his heart toward them, he TESTED THEM to see if they were the same nasty men who had sold him into slavery. He had forgiven them, gotten the bitterness out of his heart, but that didn’t mean he trusted them until he had seen that they had had a change of heart and had grown up.
I can look back now and see PURPOSE in my encounters with the psychopaths, and like Joseph I see that there was a lesson in there for me IF I WOULD LOOK FOR AND LEARN THE LESSON. I don’t believe that God looks for a psychopath and says “go attack Oxy and teach her a lesson” but when Satan does send his “P-angels” to attack us, and I DO believe that, then if we “get the lesson” we have become stronger and over come, and become better people than we were before.
Spiritually we “lift weights” in over coming problems just like a weight lifter goes to the gym and his muscles become stronger. People who have never had any “serious” problems just FALL APART when something comes along, so each time we face a problem and over come it, make a good decision, then we grow spiritually and emotionally STRONGER.
Just as a child learns about death from the losss of a pet frog or gold fish, then maybe a puppy or a kitten, then when grandma dies, they have something to relate that great loss to. From each thing in our life, each hurdle, we can learn valuable lessons and GROW. Keeping up our HOPE and our OPTIMISM is important, and, Henry, you keep- up your hope or ELSE–you know the drill. (Hugs)