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.
PInow
Guys, some of us are undiagnosed BPDs. I see it through the blogs and I read it through the education. That is the reason we gut sucked in the way we did by the charm and manipulation, and “Unconditional” love. There are so many variations of “normal” and I challenge you to show one “normal” to me. if we learn from mistakes, contribute to family and society, establish self – control, we are on the right path. If we want to change, we are not the Ps. Can we please, continue to show respect to one another?
PS I will spend some time tonight doing a cross examination of “Women who Love Psychopaths” vs the BPD criteria. I will happily report my findings. My hunch is that the Women will exhibit many characteristics of typical Borderline Traits. I will be honest, if I am wrong. Love to all.
stormee
Kamalociy,
OK it may sound rude or blunt, but I’m hearing extreme self pity in your posts “…I was abused, I need sympathy, noone understands or feels compassion for people like me, it’s so hard not to have feelings etc…. ” and what I meant regarding a person’s upbringing is that unfortunatly it is a fact that many chidren experience abuse or are not shown enough love etc. but they don’t become Sociopaths…. that said, I’m choosing to go”No Contact” with you …
Peace out
Aeylah
Akitameg:
My S had many “loving connections”, starting with his adult daughters and parents. I would see him be unbelivably loving, giving and supportive to one daughter knowing she would “owe” him and knowing that the other dauther would be jelous and want to play up to him. He even admitted to me he enjoyed creating chaos between them just so he could watch them squirm, and fight for his attention. He did all this out of CHAMELEON BOREDUM! period. He did similar things with his parents, not to mention me, just to entertain himself.
I do believe they can have some kind of love for their closest family….but this as we know does not preclude them from reiciving manipulation and abuse.
ANewLily
Kamalocity, on the other hand, I don’t understand why BPDs and Narcissiopaths can not recognize our compassion. I’d say the members here who are trying to heal from the wounds of their association with their disordered person have had even TOO much compassion for them. That trait turns out it is our Achilles Heel, bringing with it unspeakable pain and confusion.
I can attest to recognition of the emptiness you feel. That’s why I call my disordered EX an “empty suit.” I don’t call himthat without compassion for his suffering. It’s just that a long “pretend” marriage almost killed me, both literally and figuratively.
I deeply loved my EX — and still do. I escaped, however, for self-survival. Nothing my caring and compassion did for him made a bit of difference. I did not have the ability to fill up his emptiness.
Maybe in the end it is only God Himself Who can fill up that emptiness and help a person learn to love themselves so they can authentically love others. I do know that God hears our prayers but I also know that He is not a Santa Claus and that He expects us to listen to Him and allow Him to help us. We can’t do it on our own.
As you must have discovered, observing and pretending don’t work for you. I CARE but I can’t help you.
Blessings on your journey to self-awareness. I pray you find relief.
ninalinda
Nobody has answered my question……..(This morning at 6:50 am)
And does anybody else experience this?
It drives me crazy!! I haven’t heard anybody talk about it yet.
PInow
How can you erase 20 years of your life Ninalinda? I think it’s impossible. I think what you speak of is thought racing, perhaps, even incorporating the abuse and then responding to it. these are perfectly normal PTSD type reactions. you can treat them with pills, meditations, thought stopping, but I don’t think we can erase what happened to us, or move on as if nothing had happened. I hope I answered your question. Be well.
neveragain
Ninalinda: Yes, others experience that, myself included. I hope it does lessen over the years. But there are techniques to speed the process. Try reading and practicing http://www.drjoecarver.com/clients/49355/File/Emotional%20Memory.html
Try picturing that voice coming from a little tiny man in diapers, or whatever works for you. For me, I picture the P suspended in mid air, completely wrapped up in sliver chains, I can’t see him at all.Have no idea why that image works for me, maybe it emphasizes that he has no power over me anymore. So if his way of thinking or his words pop into my head, I just think of that image and tell myself “that was then, this is now” (from a blog Dr. Leedom wrote here).
It took me a LONG time to recognize that mostly what I was feeling about him was FEAR. That somehow he would still be able to hurt me. Finally I realized even some of what I was calling “longing” was FEAR, not longing! Go figure!
I was in real denial that I was afraid of him.
bird
I was left 1 year 4 months ago when i was 6 months pregnant by a sociopath for another women who was 20 years old (i am in my 30s), halfway across the country. When he left me bawling and 6 months pregnant, he said straight faced without an ounce of emotion that “he couldn’t help it.”
Fast forward a year and a half and she is still with him; they moved in together when i was pregnant. The other woman has tried to contact me over and over again but i went NC. She recently started following me on twitter; i dont use twitter, i just have a blank account, so there was nothing for her to see. Curiosity got me and i looked at her page. She is 21 years old now, and her tweets are all about her health condition; she thinks she has a thyroid disorder that is making her emotional. She tweets about crying all the time, and she blames her thyroid. We all know its the sociopath messing with her, but she thinks its her health.
Because of reading the tweets i dreamt about her last night. It was a horrbile dream where i wanted to help her, but i couldn’t trust her. Its made my stomach upset just like when i was left pregnant. The next dream i had right after was about zhombies taking over the world.
Sociopaths are clearly the zhombies. Horrible dreams
PInow
Bird,
Can you create a new account and anonymously send the woman few links to this website and some others? Maybe, it’ll help her figure out what is going on, and maybe it will help you feel like the world isn’t going to be taken over by zombies if we choose to help it? Just my 2cents worth.
I do so hope to be contacted… My P is incredibly good at isolating his women and painting them in horrid pictures to each other, so that the women who Should stick together, end up fighting over a useless piece of meat that he is.
ninalinda
That is very true. Even when not fighting over the same man. My X wouldnt let me continue relationships w/ women that divorced his dad or brother. He painted such an ugly picture of them. And now I am one of them. Actually, I’m probably not just a member…..I’m most likely the PRESIDENT!
Humor is good for the soul!!
I’m just so glad I’m out!!