Hopefully, many of you read this blog because you want to know how a trained psychiatrist deals with the issues you also face. I am not glad to be eternally tied to a psychopath, but since I am, you and I share the same challenges. We can reflect on these challenges together and we will all be better and stronger.
This week I received an email from one of my ex-husband’s family members, so I will put off the planned discussion of psychopathic anxiety to address the issues raised by the email. The email points to the trivializing of the sociopath’s/psychopath’s behavior that family members often do. This week give some thought as to how you will deal with others who trivialize a sociopath’s/psychopath’s behavior or perhaps your own tendency to “excuse” what he/she does.
In case you missed this, my ex-husband is in prison and is a sex offender. Regarding the events which led to the prison sentence, one of his blood relatives just wrote me, “but I don’t agree with all of his choices and in all fairness I do understand your disgust with ________’s actions.”
I want to ask all of you to consider this question: Do sociopaths/psychopaths make choices? If they do what does it mean when we say we “disagree” with their choices? What is the difference between disagreeing with their choices vs. being “disgusted” by them?
Last night at La Salsa, my favorite restaurant I made a choice. I chose to have fish tacos and some chips. I chose the fish tacos because I really like them. If I didn’t like fish tacos I wouldn’t choose them. I have to also confess, that I ate a small amount of ice cream when I got home, even though I am counting calories. I also really like ice cream.
My food choices were indeed choices, but notice that you learn about me from my choices. In regards to the ice cream, you learn that my impulse control regarding food is only fair in that I ate the ice cream even though I am making an effort to reduce the amount of fat I eat. If you have met me, you know that I am not particularly overweight so you probably wouldn’t hold my ice cream consumption against me.
What we learn from my eating behavior is that all choices reflect the chooser and his/her circumstances. I ate the fish tacos because I went to La Salsa. I ate the ice cream because it was in my freezer. If I hadn’t gone to La Salsa or had ice cream in the freezer, I would have eaten differently.
That gets me to sociopaths/psychopaths. These individuals do not just make “choices.” They, with malice and forethought set up situations where they will be able to gratify their deviant impulses. My former husband sought me out so he would have access to victims in addition to me. The choices he made started with his looking for his next victim on the internet. That victim turned out to be me. This situation is analogous to my eating the ice cream last night, because although I am trying to eat healthier, I did buy the ice cream and put it in the freezer myself. I would have eaten 250 less calories last night if I didn’t buy the ice cream in the first place.
It is clear that a person’s pattern of choices reflects that person’s drives and impulse control. Most sociopaths/psychopaths have a clear pattern of “choices” that show clearly what and who they really are. During psychiatry residency I was taught that the best predictor of what a person will do in the future is what that person has done in the past. This is because the past is a reflection of who that person is.
If choices are a reflection of our person and our drives are we without choice in the end? The beauty of it is that we do have choices because as humans we have some capacity to set up our environments and to modify our drives. If it was really necessary for me to avoid ice cream, I simply would stop buying it in the first place. I can also work on liking fruit or some other healthier alternative. As a human I can change what I like, what I want and ultimately what I do.
On the other hand, if you really understand the connection between what a sociopath/psychopath chooses and what he/she IS you will move from disagreeing with the choices to being disgusted by the person. Merriam Webster’s online dictionary defines disgust as:
1. to provoke to loathing, repugnance, or aversion : be offensive to
2. to cause (one) to lose an interest or intention
Notice that seeing the connection between choices, behavior and the nature of a psychopath, provokes loathing, repugnance, aversion and loss of interest in the person. I have stated before that I believe the people who are “fascinated” by psychopaths do not understand them. Understanding psychopaths breeds contempt not fascination.
The other difference between disagreeing with what a psychopath does and being disgusted, is that disagreeing is an intellectual exercise, while disgust is an emotion. If you are disgusted by psychopaths, that emotion means you comprehend WHAT THEY ARE with your entire being.
Can sociopaths/psychopaths get help or ever make different choices?
The problem with psychopaths is that they are so grandiose that they never examine their own behavior, nor do they ever seek to modify their choices. The choices they make are a deep reflection of their pathology. That pathology includes a lack of desire to be anything other than what they are. But why don’t sociopaths/psychopaths desire to change? The answer is that they enjoy their choices too much. They also do not have insight enough to comprehend that their drives are deviant. They think everyone else is as they are, only weaker.
The other problem is that drives are triggered by the things that remind us of our pleasures. Since people trigger the sociopath’s/psychopath’s deviant drives for sex and power, in order to begin to be different they would have to stay away from other people. Since sociopaths/psychopaths don’t want to be alone, they can never take the steps required for change. They will therefore never be anything other than what they are- dangerous to everyone.
Well put Dr. Leedom.
My ex-P always said with great dignity and and seriousness to me and our children, when an issue of self esteem, or other moral choices were being discussed at home ” First you have to love yourself”…
Well during our breakup he rephrased it to more accurately reflect his meaning ” The way I work is I come first”
BIG difference.
So to me that is the one and only over riding choice that P’s make. They choose their needs, desires, etc. over everyone else, consequences be damned.
What I would like to hear more about is the deeply self destructive tendencies underlying this behavior. My ex has been spiralling into an ever deeper quagmire of debt, deceit and destruction that is breathtaking. Committing fraudulent acts with CLEAR paper trails that can only lead to ruin. His over riding sense of entitlement, correctly identified recently by one of our lawyers, is what to his mind justifies ANY action he takes, legal or not.
I wish, years ago I had been more attentive when clients sent a live Pirhana to him at his office. I took it as a joke, and admired his hard nosed, winner take all business acumen. At home, after all, he was a real softie.
Do they make choices, yes. But in my experience with only one benficiary, and even that is doubtful. They end up much like that famous story of the monkey trapped by his own greed.
He dies of hunger because he won’t let go of the peanut in the jar, his fisted hand being to big to escape the neck of the jar.
“Out of my cold dead hands”.. comes to mind. What is bracing, is how much this culture of winner take all, me first, greed is good mentality, even the glorification of this behavior permeates our daily lives. Men especially are taught to think this way. Me first.
So they are driven to hurt other people for their own pleasure…..whether it be sexual, power…or that euphoric rush they get….and to hell with everyone in their way of it….maybe there should be a drug developed to take away their sexual drive…power drive and euphoric rush and when they get caught and plead guilty to their crime…the drug is administered….just a thought!!!
I would like to see that the legal system takes all of this into account and that the perpertrator has to do serious therapy…..if there is a thread of hope that would bring about a change…..maybe some behavioral modification….It’s almost like you have to teach them the boundaries they never learned as children…..
The con-artist who hurt me and my family…told me a little about his childhood….his father died when he was 9-years-old…his mother raised him and he went to work early in life….He didn’t talk alot aobut his mother which led me to believe he didn’t love her much….myself, the x-fiance of 11 1/2 yrs. and the current fiance are single mothers with children….No problem making our lives difficult to say the least….and what is shaving all your manly bodyhair off about?
I want to say that I believe he had the tools to hypnotise and control your mind….and that is a very difficult thing to break….you have to tell yourself when you feel it might be happening that you are in control and you have to get to your core beliefs and break the control…..and if anyone out there is feeling this…I urge you to get into therapy without the P’s knowledge….and break the cycle!
I want to believe that there is a thread of hope for these people….but to believe that would feed them…so I just give it to God!!! Maybe they need to be taught a tough lesson! I believe our legal system has to know more about these people and be tougher on them!
The P thought he was going to get away without paying back his restitution to me and my family….he did not and I thank Judge Batten….He came through….he is a good and honorable judge and he saw through the P. He violated his probation and next month he is being sentenced again. My P tried to make himself look like the good guy taking care of a single mom with a 7-year-old son.
I feel for her….but just as the judge said….he has a prior obligation….He stole from us and left us homeless…..and my daughter is taking student loans…which will exceed $60,000….for her undergraduate degree in Music…..
I haven’t been able to save money yet because I am still paying off attorneys….It will take 2 more years…..I know I am stronger….as every day goes by, I build my life back….it’s like taking baby steps….
“you learn about me from my choices”
So true – and eye opening !!!
When I focused like that, I realized who my cop was. His choices were to lie, to manipulate, to disappear without explanation, to break promises with no remorse, to re-write history, to deny responsibility and to play games.
And these behaviors had nothing to do with me.
None of them were “my fault” (the way I tend to blame myself for his lack of loving).
“The past is a reflection of who that person is”.
I knew nothing about his past except what he had carefully edited. He was able to create an image of who he wanted to appear to be – a good guy, a noble man, a loving, honest man who just wasn’t available yet.
He told me he hated his Mother, who had been a verbally abusive drunk. That his brother was a leech. That he hadn’t spoken to his family in years because his girlfriend pissed them off, and his pride wouldn’t let him contact them. That he was so isolated and had no friends.
(Now that I see all of this instead of feeling sorry for him, it paints a picture of someone who refuses to work on his issues with women and around alcohol, who alienates, isolates, isn’t a friend himself – and is proud of it/his choices to do so.)
These two remarks from Dr. Liane Leedom put things into context very clearly.
The cop makes his choices deliberately, and in his quest for emotional-sexual seduction and power, he has no desire to change his choices. They work for him.
It is irrelevant to him how destructive and devastating his choices are to someone else.
However, seen in this framework of how, what and why – he disgusts me. And that makes me lose interest. WHICH IS A VERY GOOD THING INDEED.
I’m going to keep coming back to this article when I start doubting myself out of habit.
Thank you, Dr. Leedom.
Hope you have a good Memorial Day weekend.
Yes, choices define us. Thank you for this reminder.
And that we act based on what we want/enjoy….
Puts the behavior of psychos in a disturbed light.
Last night I calculated the body-count for my psycho- 11 women (2 marriages in there) in 10 years. Yes, all the relationships/encounters overlapped. That’s 11 I know of, I count myself lucky for dodging that bullet. I was not sexually involved with Psycho.
But still I was emotionally destroyed, perhaps because he could not physically destroy me as he tried. So when I feel like a discard, I remind myself….he is evil. The numbers don’t lie.
Very good article about “choices” Dr. Leedom.
Another thing struck me about it too–even when their “choices” cause them to “lose” (go to prison, etc) they don’t seem to feel that they “lost”–only that they are temporarily inconvenienced…and that they still GLORY in the hurt that they inflicted on you. It almost makes me think that they are in a “can’t lose” state of mind—if they get what they want and no punishment comes as a consequence, they WIN, if they get “punishment” since punishment is of no consequence, they still feel like they have “not lost”–maybe not a complete “win” but NOT a “loss.”
So we in up in a situation of “heads they win, tails we lose” and they end up feeling like “winners” no matter what happens to them.
So why should they alter their choices if there is never a chance they will actually “lose?”
I have imprinted on my brain like a tattoo, the vision of the Trojan Horse Psychopath sitting in the court room in the orange jump suit and chains, SMIRKING at me with the “I got you good” look on his face of GLEE. He seemed at least to not even be embarassed that he was caught, but glorying in his “success” of having sex with my daughter-in-law, and stealing money from my mother…which of course he could no longer have either of.
My daughter-in-law sat behind him, also in chains and orange jump suit, chatting with him very socially and smiling…she, on the other hand, looked at me with RAGE and hate. I’m not completely sure she is a complete psychopath, but she is at the very least Borderline Personality Disorder (from both her behavior and past life record). From reading her letter to her daughter “blaming” me for her situation of adultery, theft, lies, manipulation, and trying to kill her husband, and vs. her “letter of repentence” to the church (written on the same day) I realized that she has no remorse for anything except that she “got caught.” She is angry at and blames others for the consequences of her own CHOICES that resulted in a jail term, a felony record, loss of all respect in the community, loss of her FOO family’s support, loss of her home, her marriage, and her freedom. She did not in any way connect her choices and her bad behavior to the consequences.
My P-son, who engineered and planned this years in advance (in order to get all the players in place) was enraged that it failed. Enraged that his carefully planned attempt to murder me, and take over the family finances etc failed, but he didn’t in any way, I don’t think, from reading the letters he wrote to various people, feel that he had totally lost, only that he had not succeeded NOW, but still had confidence that he could “repair” the damage done by his partners and still succeed. Even though he has really never gotten away with his crimes, at least the major ones he has been caught and prosecuted for and sent to prison, he still does not see himself as a “failure” or as a “convict” but sees himself as “successful” and “super smart” and “invincable”–DUH?
Looking back at his mind’s workings as a rebellious teenager “trying to put one over on the parents” so he can stay out later, I can’t see that his thinking has changed in the 20+ years since that age—the only difference is that his CRIMES have escalated from “staying out past curfew” to trying again to get away with murder–even though he didn’t get away with it the last time. His choices of plans have become more sophisticated, more carefully thought out, but he has no more insight now than he did then. No more fear of the consequences of not immediately succeeding, no more empathy for the consequences of his choices to others.
His deliberate choices to kill for what he wants, his deliberate planning over a long period of time, working in concert with other personality disordered partners—they are free choices that he made in an effort to GET WHAT HE WANTED no matter what the cost to others, even the loss of their lives. He sees nothing “wrong” with doing this if it gives him what he wants. In fact, he chortled with glee (in letters) at the prospects of success of his carefully thought out plans.
My feelings for my son now are simply that the child I loved and had such hopes for is “dead”—the man, the psychopath that tried to kill me, that destroyed our family, that caused such havoc and pain, that MAN is not the long gone smiling child I adored. I have no love for that MAN, and my memory of the long-gone CHILD, is good, but for the MAN, he is a stranger and I have no love or pity for him, any more than I would a rabid dog. No matter how much you loved the dog before it became rabid and tried to attack you, it is no longer the dog that loved you, would have defended you with its own life, it is now a crazed animal with a defective mind that will kill you. Your loving dog is NO MORE. (I know the analogy of the rabid dog is not exactly 100%)
Yes, they CHOOSE to do what they do, they make PLANS and carry them out, oblivious to or uncaring of the consequences to others or even themselves.
The trivalizing by others of these choices, the unbelief of others who still “try to see the good in everyone” etc, makes it more difficult for those of us whose lives are devestated by their actions…it tries to invalidate our TRUTH, and we must not allow that invalidation to make us “wonder about ourselves”.
OxDover,
How strange. I used to say Bad Man attacked me like a “Rabid Dog.”
I think it is so strange how we (all here) often come to the same conclusions nad make the same analogies across the globe. Weird.
LovinAnnie and TrishNJ,
I think that it is a dangerous place to go in the mind where we start picking apart their childhood and being concerned for their rehabilitation, wishing there was hope for them.
Beware of putting too much thought into what you “know” about their childhood and their tragic life and psycho ex-wife. You only “know” what they told you. Somewhere down the line is a woman that will feel bad for one of these guys because he got hooked up with a psycho like you. Do you get what I mean? Everything they say is about making them look good and others look bad. They paint themselves as the victims and not as the perpetrators, ALWAYS.
I think it’s a complete waste of time thinking about the inner workings of your ex-Bad Man and worrying about him and how he might be helped. Do we really believe that if they could just learn some boundaries (that they didn’t learn in childhood) then there would be hope for them? I don’t think Sociopath’s are people who just didn’t learn about boundaries. This is a hard wiring problem in the mind. It has nothing to do with learning boundaries when you are a child.
What do you say OxDover? Did you forget to do that lesson with one of your kids? Oops!
If we are still worrying about them, then they still have our attentions. They get us so worked up about them that we are not paying attention to what is happening or has happened to us. Perfect! This is exactly what they want.. to be the center of our universe and we are nothing more that some dust and particles unconciously orbiting around them.
But WE do have choices like Dr. Leedom said. I think that Bad Men have choices too… they chose to do what pleases them and they have absolutely no desire to do anything differently so we should not spend any time thinking about “if only they could get some really good therapy… or be reconditioned.”
My opinion is that if we are doing this… we still don’t get what a Sociopath is and we are still ignoring ourselves.
My healing is purely focused on me. I spend absolutely no time worrying about, pondering, being concerned for, the healing of the Bad Man. He likes himself just the way he is.
Aloha,
The “seeds” of my son psychopathic mind surely must have been “in place” when he was a very young child, but they were invisible to me, the say may that your “bad man” appeared so wonderful to you at first. I fell in love with that child before he was born and visiualized this loving child to nurture and grow with. You fell in love with the Bad Man who presented to you this “image” (just like my image of my unborn child) and you loved the image of what was in your mind.
I look at my CHILD son like I would the dog that WOULD turn rabid later–the genetic “virus” was incubating in that child, but he was still not yet RABID until the hormones of impending puberty activated it. (at least I think that is what happened, but who knows?) the ADOLESCENT/MAN who was fully RABID is only sharing the BODY of the CHILD as the RABID dog no longer has the mind of the loving dog, it has been polluted by the “virus”—it has been changed forever from the loving dog. So you shoot it.
We can’t shoot our Ps, though society still, once in a while, does put them to death for the crimes they commit, but even that is becoming “politically incorrect” no matter how horrible the crime or how overwhelming the evidence.
There was a time when I was so devestated by my son’s behavior, and yet I would have “died” almost letrally if he had been put to death for his crime—as I still saw the man and the child as the SAME.
I wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot a rabid dog, no matter how much I had loved it, yet I could not SEE that my CHILD/SON who had grown into the RABID MAN was just as dangerous, just as forever changed from the IMAGE of the CHILD I had nurtured.
Personally, I think our “criminal justice system” (boy, is that an oxymoron!) is proliferating the crimes in society by believing that “anyone can be rehabilitated” and turned back into society. If they don’t want to execute them, they should lock them up FOREVER. Just like the Trojan Horse P will get out at least by August 2010 (3 years for this latest series of crimes) and I don’t need a crystal ball to KNOW FOR A FACT that he will again sexually molest someone, that he will steal, that he will commit further crimes.
I am totally for the 3-felonies and you are out! Life without the possibility of parole. Period. No discussion. No appeals. MURDER, NO PAROLE. RAPE. NO PAROLE. CHILD MOLESTATION or RAPE. NO PAROLE. Get these people out of society. Stop their predation the ONLY way it can be stopped. What ever the cost to society in terms of $$$$$, it is CHEAP in terms of crimes prevented. Psychopaths commit in the neighborhood of 70% of the violent crime. There is no therapy, no medication, and nothing else, except maybe a pre-frontal lobotomy, that can stop them from continuing their predation.
Some few of us have their Ps in prison, but probably only a tiny percentage, though many of them do committ fraud, violence, etc. it is never even prosecuted.
Dr. Leedom,
You point out what I think is the single most difficult problem in exposing this behavior and obtaining due process in the courts, in the mental health field, and in the daily lives of those affected, getting public awareness to move from some intellectual perspective to genuine understanding, gut-level, emotional, heart-of-the-matter awareness.
It’s complicated and it’s not pretty. It’s another dirty little secret that we (the public) want to hide in the closet out of fear. We fear the unknown, and we fear the pain in making the unknown known in opening the closet door. And people resist change and change takes time, a difficult concept when you are facing a child visitation, destitution, mental illness at the hands of someone lacking a conscience. It starts with taking the first step. We’ve all done at least that here.
I understand, and much I learned here and as always I am grateful. Choices? Most certainly. Change? Not likely, he likes being the big dog on his block. This is a paragraph from my blog I’d like to share.
He is like the proverbial junk yard dog, an analogy I’ve also shared with him, mentally uncivilized, lying in wait to attack, and not to be trusted. Sound advice I learned the hard way is do not try to understand, sympathize, or help. Do not even as much as walk up to the gate of his junk yard full of problems. Once you do you can’t just run away, but you must back away ever vigilent because he will attack from any angle and he will bite the hand carrying the stick or the hand carrying the food. It is now obvious to me he does not have the capacity to desire or appreciate a difference. His choices are made with greed and malevolent disposition and he believes he is owed whatever he can grab, and without regret or second thought. And that behavior didn’t just begin, he’s been locked in that junk yard from a young age and the key is not something he’s concerned with finding.
The difference between disagree and disgust for now I think is the difference between observer and target. One more line from my blog, “I can think of little that is more contemptible than a greedy, insecure, parasite who has no remorse for deceitfully spreading his spawn and leaching off of women while he propagates his delusions of superiority.”
But I don’t really find contempt and fascination mutually exclusive. Fascination is what seemed to propel me toward understanding and taking whatever steps I could toward exposure and due process (closing the gap between disagree and disgust).
The concept that people don’t grasp, I think, is “no conscience.”
This is what the public doesn’t understand. They think it can be trained and taught and therefore rehabilitated.
No conscience is like no kidney. Can’t grow one.