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.
oxydrover…..you made me laugh today….it is soo true i need to learn to stop running the universe as well….lol…would free alot of my thoughts….i will let you know how i manage…..thanks for the smile….cheers….
Dear Jordeez,
Glad for the chuckle, it is so tempting some times to take on “too much responsibility” for other’s problems when it is NOT our job to “fix the universe”—-we are only responsible for ourselves and our little children. I’ve always been a push over for a sob story, but I’m learning that I’m responsible for me, and others are responsible for themselves.
There’s a big difference in “helping” and “enabling” and sometimes I get side tracked—but am getting better and better at seeing the differences. I don’t guess I will ever “get over” (and not sure I want to) the need to share with others who are less fortunate than myself, but am just being more picky about what I share and how I do it, and NOT picking up some one else’s responsibilities and making them my own.
I think it is a good part of why I became a victim over and over from my “friends” and “family”—but feel a tremendous load off my back now that I am only RESPONSIBLE for me. Setting boundaries with people close to me was very difficult and anxiety producing at first, but I am getting to where it is (if not second nature exactly) is at least easier emotionally since I am not so “invested” in being responsible for everything in the universe. LOL
Oxy:
I have to be honest Oxy, I have tried that a milion times (honestly and day at a time aa etc), but it DOESN”T work for me. IT makes me ten billion times worse!! I don’t know why. I have done the “please god make me willing to be willing to be willing to pray for him”, but it simply backfires (badly). I end up filled with overwhelming rage . So I can’t do it.
I can distract myself with art or something, and i still have a week where it might not come up, but thats the longest.
Tilly:
Tell God what you just posted to OxDrover above…..He will understand. And hopefully, you will be comforted, as well.
For me, there is comfort in prayer, whether I am praying for someone/something, or just talking to God.
Rosa:
Yes I will do that. Thankyou Rosa, I am scared of my own desire for revenge.
Tilly,
The desire for revenge comes I think from the anger which comes from the injury and is a NATURAL emotion, it is, however, TOXIC if we keep on nursing it.
There is an old story about and “Indian Chief” who was talking to his grandson about feelings, and the boy asked his grandfather how he handled his own feelings of anger/vengence etc.
The old man told the boy that there are two wolves inside of us, a mean angry one and a loving and kind one and that they are fighting all the time.
The boy asked the old man, “Which one wins?”
The grandfather said “The one you FEED.”
When we FEED our anger, our vengeful feelings, by continuing to “enjoy them” (there is scientific proof that even thinking about vengence actually sets off the pleasure centers of the brain with “feel good” chemicals.)
Believe me Tilly, I have had some HORRIBLE thoughts of vengence that are SO disturbing to me that I could EVEN THINK of something so evil! I can’t even print here what I thought about doing to the man (our hired hand at the time) who stole my husband’s gold watch off his arm as he lay burned and dying! We have an american saying that someone is such a thief that he would “steal the nickles off a dead man’s eyes” (they used to put heavy coins on the lids of a dead person to make the eyes stay shut until they would stay that way without the coins) This literally was doing that! How low can a person go? But you know what, Tilly, no matter how much that watch was worth in dollars, or how much sentimentality I attached to it, it was JUST STUFF. I do not want the rabid hatred in my heart for that man to last for the rest of my life. It POISONRD my soul. MY soul, and he will have to account to God for his act, and I DO believe that Vengence belongs to God, not to me….because the need for vengence, the thoughts of vengence are TOXIC to ME. I think God knows that and that is why He, in His wisdom assigned that to Himself. He took that BURDEN from us. Believe me, Tilly, I am better off than that man is, because I am NOT as LOW as he is, and my conscience is clean of that hate. It was difficult to give up, but I worked hard at it and succeeded. Doesn’t mean I approve of it, or that it didn’t happen, it is just that I won’t let the PAST RUIN MY NOW, AND MY FUTURE.
Keep working at it. I too “prayed” for them and I KNEW I didn’t mean a word I said, and I told that to God (as if He didn’t know! LOL) but it did help me and I think Rosa is right. Anger itself is not bad, it is a natural response, and even Jesus was ANGRY at INJUSTICE, but He said “be ye angry and sin not” and “let not the sun go down upon your wrath” Wrath is “vengeful anger” and it isn’t good for US, so we have to work at resolving it, and WE CAN. Hang tight Tilly, you are making progress and “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It all takes time!!!! (((Hugs)))))
Oxy, I found your post of 11:42 am very inspiring and full of wisdom. Thanks for being you and the help you give to others. Jenn
Dear Jen,
Thank you so much, I needed that validation today of all days. I had to set some boundaries today with a person I consider a friend and it was stressful. I knew I had to do it, but it is never pleasant. Deflecting the projections from the friend wasn’t as painful as I had expected, but still, stressful. Thanks for the kind words, I did need that today. ((((hugs))))
Here is a good site on gettting over revenge
http://www.ultimate-self.com/getting-revenge/
There can never be revenge. For revenge to work the person has to be able to feel regret. My mother just got caught in a pack of lies my sister decided to corner her with. Mom was unable to back out of it. But did she care? No! The next day she tried very hard to get me to lose my temper by acting like a wee little scared rabbit. It was as if nothing had been said. It was clearly all about playing a role in order to get a result.
Let there be no doubt. It’s all a game. It takes my breath away when I think about how adept she is at switching personas. A couple of weeks ago I dropped everything to tAke care of her because she had a problem with her eye. Does that count for anything? Of course not. My sister and I found out she has been planning a totally sick party to mark the death of my father who died a year ago. Neither my sister or I are invited. That’s what started the whole confrontation. Anyway, these people are like androids. They’re good at faking things but Theres always something missing. Stay away from them.