Like many of you, I am very grateful for a few friends who acted as sounding boards as I processed my experience with a sociopath. The best talks have been with my exercise partner who is also a former Federal agent. About 2 years ago on one of our walks we discussed what it must be like to be inside the skin of a sociopath. Both of us tried to imagine what their inner world is like.
On that walk we both connected with ourselves and each other in a way we hadn’t before. The connection happened as we reflected on what it must be like to live a life without love. I realized that my sense of myself as a continuous person over time is based on the people I love and the values I have a passion for. Everywhere I go I carry with me a sense of duty, love and connection to my children and other loved ones. My dearest ones are always inside me. The fulfilling of duty to them gives life purpose and direction.
According to Dr. Cleckley, the first psychiatrist to really study sociopaths, the disorder produces an incapacity for love that is “complete”. Furthermore Dr. Cleckley states in his book, The Mask of Sanity that even those who have an “incomplete manifestation” of the disorder completely lack the capacity for love.
Without love to give themselves a sense of feeling and purpose, sociopaths are prone to boredom. They have to keep filling their lives with excitement and also abuse substances to fill the gap.
Sociopaths live in the moment because they lack the loving human connections that give everyone else a sense of continuity of person and purpose.
Sociopaths also have no true self because instead of being based on loving connections, their sense of themselves is based on who they can dominate in the moment. If yesterday they had to assume a certain identity to get over on person A, today they may have to assume another identity to get over on person B. This assumption of identities is not a problem for them because the goal is not loving or meaningful connectedness. The goal is the pleasure of the get over. They will become what they must to accomplish that goal.
I’ve been struggling over whether or not to include a section on “identity” in my next book. I am trying not to get too psychologically technical. But it might be helpful for victims and family members to reflect on identity and understand why sociopaths lack a stable sense of self. I am interested in your thoughts about that.
Since some of you indicated you wanted me to tackle an explanation of “borderline personality”. I’ve been reading on the issue of identity. On page 213 of “Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism” psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Kernberg says the following:
The normal integrated self and its related integrated conceptions of others guarantee a sense of continuity throughout time and under varying circumstances. They also guarantee a sense of belonging to a network of human relations that makes life meaningful, and they guarantee the ordinary “self feeling” we take for granted”¦
He also says that absent loving connections:
”¦ pathological subjective experiences of a painful and disturbing nature develop. Among these experiences predominates a sense of emptiness and futility of life, chronic restlessness and boredom..In typical cases, it is as if this emptiness were their basic modality of subjective experience from which they attempt to escape by engagement in many activities or in frantic social interactions, by the ingestion of drugs or alcohol or by attempts to obtain instinctual gratifications through sex, aggression, food or compulsive activities”¦
I hope you will spend what is left of summer reflecting on your own loving connections. As you contemplate the meaning of these connections and their importance to your sense of who you are, consider your own “self-feeling”. Realize that you have yourself to give yourself in intimacy to another either friend, family or lover, while the sociopath you know has nothing to give anyone.
Blindsided , this is in response to one of your earlier posts but I was wondering if you were describing a sociopath or if you just describing a man.
Without wishing to offend any men out there by that statement , I think that there are plenty of relationships that don’t work up between regular people, and that it doesn’t mean that one of them was a sociopath.
Holywatersalt: I thought your observations were interesting but I’m not sure these people are as easy to spot as you say. Although physical markers would be interesting to swap notes on. Scientists say that nature marks her most dangerous creatures.
These people are extremely dangerous on many levels, avoidance is the best approach. However they do seem to be the human equivalent of quicksand; everything seems normal at first and then before you know it you are completely trapped.
It is their ability to trap which is the worst thing. Invite one over for dinner once and they will take that as a standing invitation from there on in. These are not people you can politely decline, there will always be drama, hurt and insult if things don’t go their way.
Bunny,
I think it is good to post events that happen to us because it will assist others to identify similar situations. I agree that not every marriage should work wonders, but I believe that every civilised and educated normal human being knows the difference of things not working the way we expects and abuse. Respect is a must even with a lot of disagreement.
A marriage or any partnership should have common goals but each individual do not need necessaryly be like the other… complementarity is a very good thing and it actually enriches the union. Abuses of any kind is sickening and it must stop. Many of us were in abusive situations with no means of scaping due the ferocious manipulation, control and all sort of sickening things.
I remember once my ex S was down (in one of his cycles) he spent a lot of time in the garage and it was a very cold day. In my kindnes I took him a cup of hot chocolate (in some ways he knew I was going to do that as I always did). When I openned the garage ther he was simulating that he was about to hang himself ( we had 2 little kids and they were inside the house). I calmelly closed the garage door and called the police telling them what was happening. The police came to my house and they found my ex S gardening and the Ex s pretending to be surprised with the Police presence and denied everythig. I told the police to take him to hospital or take me and the kids away. I would not stay in the house alone with him and the children. The police took him to hospital for an assessemnte. A few minutes later the hospital rang me saying that my Ex was comong home. Nothing wrong with him and for me to stopp nagging in his ears because he told them I was driving him crazy demand a lifestyle which he could not afford. The police took him back home. Once the police left he started spitting in my face and loughing saying: do you think they would ever believe in you?
Well what else could I do in a foreigner country with nofamily and 2 little kids (and I was the breadwinner of the family).
I would not leave my house and be homeless with my children if everything we had was built with my work.
Just one episode of my situation . There were so many others..
Hi OxD-baby birdie is doing great!!
I don’t comment often anymore, but I still read the blogs. I havn’t had the P in my life for over a year, and I feel normal again. Life is great and calm, and now I can spot a P a mile away and go NC before it goes any further.
missdiaz- being devalued and discarded is the best thing to ever happen if you end up in a relationship with a P. It hurts like a knife when it happens, but the clarity it brings is astounding.
Dear Bird,
I have missed you and the reports on Birdie and you are frequently in my thoughts and always in my prayers. I know he must be a BIG man now, or think he is anyway. They stay little for such a short time, really! I hope you are doing well and that things are well for you all the way around, and the P not trying to mess with you much.
Please do update us on how you are. When folks just drop out of site I often wonder about them. You touched my heart when you first came here and I admire you so much for all you have been through and kept your head high! You are absolutely a point of light for others to follow on the healing path. You are ONE AWESOME YOUNG WOMAN!!!!! (((HUGS)))))
Brilhancy:
What a setup…..the suicide event! Sick….they stop at nothing…
And the fire they throw out to others….totally exploitative!
SICKO Scumbag.
I remember in the end, I was on a weekend trip with my GF’s….I never went away….I was so nostalgic for the S…Weird, because he never traveled with me, let alone have fun with us…..so don’t know WHY my mind was so nostalgic for him……I called him, as if he cared that I arrived safe….we chatted a bit…..he said he was on the roof shoveling snow and so upset he contemplated jumping…..At that point, I didn’t respond AT ALL…….for one, because I knew he wouldn’t do it…..for two, if he did jump, it was only 2 stories and he would look like a fool, jumping into 10 feet of snow…..and for three, I was wishing there WAS a way he could figure out how to be successful at killing himself….(sorry!)
But, I figured out that since I was off having fun in Las Vegas…..he was trying to keep my mind on him and home in a negative way to dampen my trip…..
Instead, it showed me just another example of what a selfish ass he was…..I deserved to have fun, I deserved to have an emotional ‘out’, it was MY time.
After that trip, when I came home, that was when he upped the anti and claimed I was faking cancer……(I had just had another scan come back prior to leaving, that wasn’t good and and my friends decided I needed to go away before another radiation)……he didn’t like that!
The trip kicked my butt…..just being out was exhausting, but necessary for me.
Not for him.
So…it’s only too bad they never followed through on the shirades. I would have made our lives that much easier without them around.
I’ll throw the party!!!
It will be 12 months for me NC sometime in November (same as Matt i think). And I am going to have a Cyber Party. You are all welcome (except Elton John and his sister). I am telling you know because bird is doing so well at 12 months and i intend to be the same. If I could just get rid of these recurring revenge thoughts I know that I would be fine. Know anyway to stop the revenge thoughts from coming back all the time? (i.e. apart from actually taking revenge lol!)
How come Matts got a lover ALREADY and I havn’t? I think I will have to start using those eloquent euphemisms more…………….
Birdie: THANKYOU YOU ARE SO INSPIRING!
This is my mantra for today:
“being devalued and discarded is the best thing to ever happen if you end up in a relationship with a P. It hurts like a knife when it happens, but the clarity it brings is astounding”.
Dear Tilly,
How to stop the desire for revenge? You may think I am crazy but I STARTED PRAYING FOR THEM. I said the words out loud (and I did NOT MEAN A WORD OF IT) and I knew that God knew I didn’t mean a word of it, but you know, STRANGELY after a while, the hate, the rage, the thoughts of revenge VANISHED and so slowly I didn’t even notice them go, but one day I looked up and noticed they were GONE.
It doesn’t mean I never have a RELAPSE, but I just go back to praying for them.
I’m not sure what your belief system is but the Bible says that Vengence is God’s, and you know I figure if he doesn’t want us doing it, HE WILL DO IT, and it will be 1000 times worse than anything we could dream up, much less DO. I figure I will just put it in God’s hands and let him do HIS job and I will do mine.
You know, Tilly, since I quit trying to run the universe it has been much easier being me, and the universe is no worse off for me not trying to spend my life micromanaging it. LOL ROTFLMAO ((((hugs)))) Oxy
Missdiaz and Brilhancy, (and all)
Missd- This place is a lifeline, isn’t it? So good you are away from him. It can be a challenge when they so easily move their attention to another. Unless you know, as I can see that you do, that this woman will suffer as much, or more, than you already have. That all anyone has from them is their draining presence, not love or connection or caring. Then we know Oxy is so right….we are the winners.
Brilhancy,
Jeez. What a story about the hospital visit. I’d say ‘what a psycho!’, but you already know that! I feel like I am repeating myself….but I am SO glad we are all AWAY, and here, learning.