“How did he really feel?” and “What did he want from me?” are two questions that often haunt victims of sociopaths. The reason we are haunted by these questions varies but often stems from the habit of over-focusing on the sociopath instead of ourselves. That being said, victims also have a healthy ”˜need to know’ that can help with recovery and healing.
I struggled with these questions in my own healing. I remain baffled by my observations of enjoyment of affection on the part of sociopaths. Early on, I told my own therapist that I had come to the conclusion that sociopaths exploit those close to them to the point of death, then, cry at the funeral. At the moment the tears are shed, I believe they do represent a grief of sorts. The feelings of loss experienced by sociopaths are however, short lived. Victims also have to beware because, although sociopaths are said to be incapable of feelings for those in their lives, they do become obsessed with them. Psychologists have not yet explained this obsession. If they don’t attach, why are they obsessed? Those who have read my other entries know that I believe that sociopaths do attach. It is what they do with attachments that is disordered.
How did he really feel?
In response to the picture of a sociopath crying at his victim’s funeral, my therapist said, “He feels what he tells himself he feels.” To help you understand what my therapist meant, I will explain what is known about how people usually experience feelings.
There are two components to feelings. The first is a physical sensation. When we experience a feeling we feel something in our bodies in relationship to that feeling. Think about loving someone close to you and sense how your body feels. Is it warmth in your heart? That is usually what people report.
There is much evidence that these physical sensations are disordered in sociopaths. Sociopaths do not generally experience the physical and hormonal changes that go along with feeling emotion. If they do experience them, it is to a lesser degree. Physical responses are blunted.
The second component of feelings is called attribution. Attribution is a cognitive process. When I feel that warmth in my heart as I see my children, I attribute the sensation to my love for them. Thus the physical sensation alone does not make emotion. Emotion is physical sensations and our interpretations of these sensations. There is also evidence that the parts of the brain responsible for attribution do not function properly in sociopaths.
There is one emotion that many sociopaths experience in a not so disordered way. This emotion is anger. Sociopaths do have blunted physical responses to anger. Despite this blunted responsiveness, they seem aware of angry feelings and make correct attributions about what makes them angry. Again, science has not even addressed, much less explained this observation.
Since the physical sensations and attributions that allow for the experience of emotion are disordered in sociopaths, their inner world is very different. They are left to make sense of themselves and others without the tools most of us use. Other parts of the brain fill in the missing processes. The person who is credited with first describing sociopathy in depth is Hervey Cleckley. He proposed that sociopaths are at least of average if not above average verbal intelligence. This makes sense because they have to use their verbal intelligence to make up for their lack of emotions. They do indeed feel what they tell themselves they feel. Scientists say they mimic other people’s emotions, yet again there is no real proof of this.
What did he want from me?
This question is easy to answer intellectually, but very hard for victims to accept emotionally. There are three pleasures we get from our love relationships. The first is pleasure in affection. The second is sexual pleasure. The third is pleasure associated with dominance and control. Sociopaths experience sex and dominance as enormously more pleasurable than affection. Therefore, they are in relationships to get sex and power, pure and simple.
If you love deeply and feel affection for others, you cannot fathom the inner world of an emotionally disordered person whose primary pleasures are sex and power. To understand another’s world you have to imagine yourself experiencing what the other experiences. You can’t do this with a sociopath.
Louise Gallagher said in her post The six steps of healing from a psychopath that the first step is acceptance. We have to accept that we can only know in part how sociopaths really feel and what they want from us. We can understand intellectually, but never emotionally.
EB – sorry, I don’t have anything to offer, but my immediate hit on it, is not about them harming you, but about creating a pipeline for drugs to come into the prison.
Thanks, Oxy! I took a break from reading the blog last week and really shouldn’t have, eh?! Yeah, I still am putting myself in time outs and am terrified of being home alone at night, almost 50 y.o and gotta grow up, I guess!
I hope if you ever get the sense that I will be one of those that leaves this site and gravitates to yet another P, you will tell me! Because if so, I will just go dig a hole somewhere and go total reclusive! We all have a past, and you amaze me with your wisdom and support for us newbies.
I have a N/P-something mother that I went NC with 9 years ago, the bio father walked out when I was 5 after he promised to rescue us from the psycho mother and never was heard from or seen again, my son’s father stalked me for years before finally going to jail for it, and my son is apparently bi-polar. By the grace of God I still get up every morning excited for a new day!! I really did love life, and I want that back. ((HUGS)) back atcha!, thank you for being you!!
Dear enigma,
Well, I’ll be 64 next month and I am still learning and lots more to go. Good for you for going NC with the egg donor, that was the BEST decision I ever made and one of the hardest! She is actually pitiful really, set in her ways and those ways are destructive for herself and for me as well (I was her only chick) part genetic, part cultural and part free choice, but she made her choices and so have I.
I’m working really hard on gathering up my strength for the rest of the life I have.
I’m sorry your son is apparently bi-polar, sometimes that goes along with psychopathy and sometimes it is a “stand alone” problem that can be almost as bad when they are manic. My non-P biological son is depressed and ADHD and refuses treatment, so wallows in his own bad decisions, mostly hurts himself, but is a follower and easily led off in the wrong direction. In the past by his P-brother, but I think he had all of THAT he wanted but he still doesn’t make good long term decisions, but not my problem any more. Could be worse, at least he isn’t out robbing liquor stores or killing people and I’m not afraid of him, so I’ll take that over what it COULD be.
I understand the terrified of being “alone at night”—I used to call those the “night things” and sometimes I felt the feelings were almost like BATS flying in the dark–whoosh, whoosh!
Learning to be okay without someone ELSE to validate me has been a big hurdle for me…and accepting that I am OK by myself. After I lost my husband I felt so ALONE and feared being “by myself” for the rest of my life—but now if I am alone, at least I am in good company! LOL (well, most of the time anyway) But making changes in my life, quit smoking, quit digging my grave with a spoon and a salt shaker so I’m making progress in several ways, not just in cutting out the DRAMA QUEENS and the TOXIC people in my life, but working on getting healthier all around.
I still grouse about how food tastes without salt (YUK!!) but I’m not craving cigarettes much any more, minimal short twinges once in a while, or food so much–hell, without salt who wants it! It tastes like cold carp, or is it cat carp? Not sure but it sure tastes BAD!
Oxy and anyone else that has some ideas:
I need some help with how to return some things the S left at my home. Over the summer he built me a very awesome garden shed (I did not realize it was advance payment for his ongoing craziness in my life) and left a ladder, saw horses, some hand tools, etc. He owns a home 1 1/2 hours away from me, but is actually living with family 500 miles away due to work. He is not inclined to come all the way down here to check on his house unless he has a woman lined up to host him (and I think I am about the only one left in this region, he has been back in his home state for over a year and is building / reviving his harem back up there), but his stuff here leaves an opening for him to return that I do not like.
When I went NC with him last month, I emailed a request that he only contact me if he was coming down and give me a day or two notice so I could put his things out in the drive for him to pick up. I intended to make sure I was gone for several days upon learning he would be in the area. I have not actually seen him since mid-Aug. and would not be surprised if he dragged out leaving his things here until after winter, thus maybe he would find me hankering to jump back into it all over again.
I am considering hauling his stuff to his home here and leaving it outside, maybe around the back of his house where it hopefully won’t get stolen. I do not have access to his house and there isn’t a shed or a breezeway to leave it in. One of the power tools isn’t even his; he “borrowed” it from his employer and is apparently not in any hurry to return it. Afterwards, I thought I would email him that I had done so and let him worry about getting it taken care of.
However, if I am to do this I need to do it soon as I have to drive over a mountain to get to his house here, and cannot tackle that once it snows. Which means next weekend, since I also do not drive well at night! My worry is that he could make something out of this; without a witness that I actually left his things on his property could he charge me with something? Or – if I get to his house and there has been vandalism (it is empty and he does not even bother to have anyone check on it or mow the grass), would he try to blame me? I do not really have anyone that could accompany me as a witness, and have considered going straight to the local police in his town to see if an officer would accompany me to his house, but we are in a very rural area and I do not know if they would oblige me.
Any ideas?….thanks for any help on this. ~ Enig
P.S. I am EST and it is late….bedtime, but I will be back on tomorrow. Good night all! xoxo
ps Enigma
I’ve been here at LF for about 3 years now (can’t remember when I exactly came here, but know it was summer or fall of 2007) and I’ve seen lots of people come and go and a few stick around for a couple of years, and I STILL LEARN MORE every day here on LF.
In posting to others, if nothing else, I reinforce to myself what I know to be right for myself. Maybe others can use that and help themselves, if so, fine, if not fine too, as it reinforces it to ME. My biggest obligation is to heal myself, and if I can help someone else, fine, but in the end, we are each responsible for ourselves.
I appreciate what Donna has done here by making this site and all the things she has assembled here for us to use, but she’s not responsible for my healing, I AM. If I can show some gratitude to her by helping others as well with my posts, that’s wonderful, but we each must take our own responsibility for ourselves…but it sure HELPS to have someone reach out an understanding hand. I appreciate that so much! The hands that have reached out to me here have been very validating when I couldn’t validate myself, and that means more than I can ever express.
Oh Oxy……thank you, just read your last post. I hope you have a long, happy and healthy life still ahead, we need all the women of your strength and wisdom in this world for as long as we can keep you!
I guess we are never given more than we can handle, are we? But sometime I have to ask God…”are you sure I can handle this??!”, then I find the strength somewhere (generally from above!).
My son also refuses the meds, and I say “apparently” because I think the medical world is over-using the bi-polar diagnosis on young people. He may be P/N/S…I don’t know. He has anger management issues and they have been escalating since his early teens. He lives (rents) the other end of my home and sometimes I do fear him, his physical strength and lack of control, but he works nights and for the most part tries hard to be a decent human being. I love him, I help when I can and pray for him daily, but like the airplane analogy, have no problem putting my oxygen mask on first.
I find loud music at night drowns out the batties! I will have to work on quitting the cigarettes once I get the sociopath further behind me, I guess. I am aiming for Jan. 1, then the food changes will need to occur because I can hardly afford the extra weight that will come on!!
Dear Enigma,
Google bi-polar and read about it vs. S/N/P, the “anger issues” tend to make me “gun shy” but sometimes people with bi-polar also have issues especially when manic, but the CYCLE from down to up, and cycles can be years long or hours long. (usually the rapid cyclers are “worse”) there are also other potential issues including Borderline Personality Disorder. A lot of times these show up at puberty.
You may not ever come to a “solid” diagnosis, I never have on my egg donor but I know she is TOXIC and I can’t tolerate the drama and the pain. So it is NC for me.
The stopping smoking I cheated with the nicotine lozenges and they HELPED A LOT. The generic ones, then over about 3-4 months weaned off of them. Then went to the gum (which didn’t seem to help as much but kept my mouth busy) then used 1 box and limited myself to that one box and when it was gone, it was GONE. Still cheaper and “better” for you than cigs though, and nicotine is an addiction physically.
I made up my mind that THIS TIME I WOULD QUIT, actually QUIT not “pretend” to quit, but make a life time committment. All the other times I “tried” I knew I would fail because my heart wasn’t in it. This time it was and my cough (bad) stopped immediately, just in days. I hardly ever cough now.
I got a good lung check up, even after 40+ years of smoking, I have 80% of what would be expected in someone my age.
Heart is fine and arteries fine, so just fat and out of tone, and those things can be repaired if I stick to it. I’ve lost about 15 pounds, increased the exercise, no more blood pressure problems (no meds) no more blood sugars high (no meds) and no swelling in feet and legs (no medicine now) so now it is just a matter of keeping it up. Need to loose 45 more pounds to be down to my “fighting weight” and I will.
Tonight I even had one piece of bread about 1/8 of a slice and one TEASPOON of jelly as a snack to soothe my sweet tooth! So I’m going to keep some good things in my life and my changes even if only a tiny taste!
Glad you are here and getting your stuff together! Keep on reading and learning. I learn something new every day! (((Hugs))) and God bless your prayers!
ahhh, can’t sleep tonight! I have some books on bi-polar, my son definitely cycles. I called my mother N, but I am not certain. I do believe she is bi-polar based on the cycling we endured growing up, and came to that realization several years ago when it started with my son. There is the genetic factor, and I have SAD, which is a form of bi-polar depression to a lesser extent. But – we grew up in the far North and that dark cold hell will depress anyone!, I just spent too many years up there and my brain is slowly re-wiring itself so getting through the winters in the South aren’t nearly as difficult.
I am so hopeful that my encounter with the S man is not for the purpose of preparing me to deal with that in my child. He is not yet 20, so I wait and watch. His teenage angst made for some hellish times, so I am hopeful that the anger problems will fall away. He is incredibly gifted; a self-taught musician and composer, extremely high IQ and with all that often comes some emotional deficiences. His father was my stalker; it was a childhood of hiding and being on the move at times, but I kept it as hidden from him as I could. I did not disclose what his father had done until the early teen years hit and we went to counseling for his anger about not having a father. To this day I wonder if that psychiatrist was right about me disclosing what his father had really done to me. Anyway, this family is basically a gene pool without a life guard. But it’ll be alright, as they say here in the South!
Enigma – I know your son isn’t a child anymore, but this page, which is listed on the left of the lovefraud blog may have some relevance for you: http://parentingtheatriskchild.com/index.html
really like the ‘gene pool without a lifeguard’ phrase. it’s a keeper.
trueloveistrue, you posted here alittle while back (earlier on this thread) to me…
“@it’sjustme-
Thank you.So you are new here too?
How did you come across this site?”
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to find your post. I have been reading here for over a year. I have posted here for almost as long, but not much and I also have changed me original name for privacy here at home. I found this site looking for the trueth about the p’s behaviour. Someone told me he was a p/s. I didn’t look into it for a long time but when I did, I found out a lot and also found this place. Thank you for asking. I hope you are doing well!