“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.
Athena, heartbreaking that your monster actually spoke convincing and very sweet words of love to you. I understand your times of confounding mental conflict, but in a way it’s a blessing that you *are* confused. That would be the norm. Our minds can’t conceive of someone who is so damned convincing actually not caring. I felt the same way about Godzilla. We never got anywhere near love statements, but I couldn’t understand how someone in his position would put himself out there like that to me if he didn’t really care or look at me like he did or tell me “There’s just something about you,” or suggest we go away together! Now that I look back, the trip would never have happened. I have no idea what he was after. None. If you haven’t read, http://www.sociopathworld.com/2009/01/do-sociopaths-love.html, you may want to see if it holds anything for you.
Believe me I feel your pain as do all others on this forum.
Skylar, I almost fell over when I read the following in your riveting story about the primitive “scapegoating” ritual:
“In some tribes they were prized as sexual partners. Then, after a few months or years, when the captive was fully integrated into the community, they would ritually sacrifice him or her and *eat them*. WTF? who does that?
Who does *that*??? Jeffrey Dahmer! One of the most notorious sociopaths ever allowed to hit this earth. He said he ate his beloved young boys because he wanted to be *that* close to them, to engulf and actually incorporate them into his own body. Scary.
Many on this blog know how dangerous these guys can be. I presume Dahmer was lovable too at times, luring his young prey into his lair.
Ana, I agree with you. And in some cases, spaths and others of their ilk would be better off dead where they can no longer hurt anyone. They kill dogs for less than what these losers do. How they are allowed to walk the streets, I cannot imagine. If you have no compassion, no empathy, you are not human and are capable of great harm to others. Should not be working in offices, marrying, having kids!! Their influence is toxic and needs to be recognized and treated as such. Those who can’t or refuse to control themselves need to be locked up in mental institutions or prison. At the very least, they should be watched very carefully, (probation) but in our society, rapists go free so forget socios being punished unless and until they kill, rob, steal. Then you’d hear them talking about the voices in their heads, etc., but who cares…hopefully they’d get locked up.
Truthspeak, exactly..your post directly above should be read and re-read as often as possible when one is grappling with whether or not their spath meant/mean what they said/say. Your story is tragic…again I truly respect you so much for pulling out of this and getting your feet on the ground…I know it is ever so very difficult, but you and others are true inspirations..when I think of how crazed I’ve been over just a few little crumbs thrown my way, I can’t even imagine dealing with a “permanent” relationship…destructive and insidious. Blessings and love to you and to everyone here struggling with the dreck these sick morons leave behind them.
As Truth says, they say what they think you want to hear….but they can’t feel so there is no meaning. So often, I say to myself, “No, no, there is no way he didn’t really feel something special for just me…no way! Then I even fantacize that I will get together with him and he will explain all of his behavior and we can be friends…but just thinking about that actually makes me feel sick right now…I think you guys are truly getting into my head in a positive way.
Thanks and uber-hugs.
The only thing that matters is letting go.
If you are thinking about anything except not thinking about them, then you are still thinking about them in the way of being attatched.
There is nothing to discuss as far as what they said, what they did or where they are.
The ultimate NC is to let go.
And its strangely difficult to do.
As though we feel compelled not to.
The purpose of the process is to achieve letting go.
I say that knowing how hard it is, understanding how incredibly, profoundly difficult it is to do and how it was for me.
But the work to be done is that, exactly.
The longer it takes to let go and make the story of your life not about what happened with a disordered personality, the longer it takes to heal.
Healing is about not continuing to try and make sense out of it or respond to it.
We were fooled. Maliciously, intentionally. For the purpose of our loss/ their gain.
Sadly, they can’t be put away for just being. And even when they have committed prosecute able crimes the push to get them convicted is not small.
If we don’t have a case that a DA will take on, then, there is only one way: Walk away. Physically, intellectually and emotionally.
Not fair its so hard. Not easy to do.
But the suffering that follows lasts as long as it take to not think of them any more.
You can’t be friends, You can’t be lovers, you can’t be partners. They were never going to be. They can not.
And the fantasies about all of it are really the part of you that needed to hear what they told you being in control of you.
The positive change that comes out of it all, is a transformation away from the person who needed that into someone who doesn’t need to be fooled the way we all have been.
The whitewash on all of these pathalogical relationships makes them wonderful in hindsight, but in reality, most of the time it wasn’t all that great. And there were warning signs. Lots of them that we chose not to see or hear.
And there were some really dark moments when we knew something was wrong and felt stuck.
What if the stories here were to change from fantasizing about going back or being back, but about being free of them and fine?
Your ability to imagine and envision is very powerful Why not use it to put yourself in the place past the spath and into the future?
We can’t go back. We can’t change the truth.
What does tomorrow look like without them in the story?
Silvermoon, SO well said. I cannot go back in time and rewrite my decisions. I cannot go back in time and “see” the symptoms. I cannot go back in time to change the way that I was raised. I cannot go back in time to right my many wrongs.
What I CAN do is accept the Truths. Truth = Facts. I don’t have to like the facts. And, I can choose to pretend that the facts don’t exist. I can also choose to alter my perception in an attempt to force the facts to fit into my system of beliefs. I can also choose to dwell on what “should have been” rather than see and accept “what is.”
If I make the choice to hang on to feelings, perceptions, and sentiments, the exspaths will be given my personal permission to continue torturing me for the rest of my life, by proxy.
For this moment in time, I’m choosing to see the exspath for what he is: a sniveling Nobody that will NOT factor into my life as the passage of time takes me further and further away from him.
Thanks for the post, Silvermoon – VERY well said, indeed.
Good points Silver, living in the past is not a way to grow, and living in the future is a fantasy, but living in the NOW and the TODAY, enjoying the blessings we have and appreciating those blessings, I think is important.
When I was at my deepest pain I would have a “project” to do each week for myself, something positive to learn or practice.
When I felt I had lost everything, I started to make lists of the blessings I had…starting with VERY BASIC things, like enough clean water to drink, a roof over my head, enough clothing and food, medical care, and at least one person in the world who truly loved me. Back when I was a “world traveler” doing the wild life photography when I was a teenager working for my sperm donor, I traveled to lots of 3rd world countries where people had few of those blessings. I saw so many people who had none of those things that it broke my heart to see the little children with the pot bellies of malnutrition being carried to the communal city dump for burial in Columbia where the price of a casket and a burial plot were out of the reach of these poorest of the poor.
I saw women in Africa who had had no choice in the men they were married to, men who had absolute control over whether they lived or died.
People who drank water out of polluted rivers and suffered from malaria and other diseases without medical care to cure it or knowledge of how to prevent it. Where women and children washed their bodies and clothes in rivers infested with crocodiles (about 6,000 people per year in Africa are taken by Crocs)
When you look at what we HAVE versus what we lost, most of us don’t think about the BASICS, the things on the list of Maslov’s pyramid of needs, we have taken these things for granted for so long that we don’t even think about not having them, we don’t count them as blessings because we take them for granted.
Sure, we have lost a lot, physically, emotionally, financially, etc. and we focus on that rather than what we have left.
When I was in the “wilderness” I read Dr. Frankl’s book “Man’s search for meaning” and it helped me to appreciate what I had left, and to see that though I didn’t lose as much as he did in the Nazi prison camp, that my pain was legitimate, total even, and I was entitled to feel my pain from my loss, but also that I did need to appreciate the things I had left, however basic and simple they are.
I realized finally that “healing” is a journey not a destination and that I need to take the journey one day at a time, one mile post at a time. to look to the horizon for guideposts. I also realized that healing is a spiritual journey inward as much as a physical, medical, and emotional journey. “Spiritual” isn’t so much about my view of God, that is personal, but each of us even if we are an atheist still have a “spiritual’ aspect to our make up in what we believe is good and worthy.
Indeed we can’t change the past, and we can’t change things we have no control over, but we can change the future and we can change ourselves and how we look at our lives. We do not have to let the past taint us forever, to block our views of the good and the beautiful, to sap the joy from our days and nights.
We can have as much joy as we are willing to incorporate into our days. I remember one winter after I got back into my house and was still feeling pretty down. I looked out my bedroom window into the woods and there were some wild flowers (weeds) blooming behind the house. I watched them every day and that little bit of color fought to stay there even through the cold nights until a heavy frost finally killed them for the winter. Hens and I talked about those wild flower blooms and I looked at them as something joyful in otherwise dreary days of late fall.
I have a friend who is an immaculate housekeeper, you never find anything of any kind out of place in her home or her yard, she rakes every leaf and her yard is as clean as her kitchen floor which I would not be afraid to eat off of. In the spring she goes and buys all kinds of annual blooming flowers and her flower beds look like a professional gardener had planted them. My house by contrast is located in the woods, in a small clearing enough for my house to sit, and the yard is so shaded that most plants won’t live, so my son and I went to the woods and dug up blooming wild flowers and planted them under the shady trees. Their blooms are much smaller, but we enjoy the different textures and the different plants that come up at different times of the year and how the variety of blooms change, and how they give a soft texture to the ground. My friend thinks my wild flowers are weeds and she tells me what I should buy to plant there instead, but it is my garden and I plant what is pleasing to me. My leaves, unraked, mulch down to form top soil in which the wild flower seeds germinate.
she is pleased with her immaculate house and her manicured lawn, I am pleased with my wild flowers and my house tucked back in a natural setting with large stones for my porch and my path and my antique furniture, each piece with a “story” of how I found it and where…but when I had to leave it all, to go into hiding, I also realized that nothing we have is permanent, and that at the end of our lives “stuff” doesn’t matter, what matters is what is in our hearts. I hope that mine is filled with contentment and love and peace.
Silvermoon,
Thanks for that post. It was very encouraging and comforting to me. That is the way to go!
Truthspeak,
the words you repeated were worth repeating.
It is the crux of the relationshit with the spath, that it involves HIDDEN violence. It disables you in ways that can’t be seen, which makes it all the more difficult to resolve. And because it can’t be seen, these dysfunctions are passed on to other people like the slime they are.
Stillreeling,
The link to spathworld and their description of spath love, I think is misleading. How can someone who can’t feel love, describe it? They can’t. In this case, the writer describes something more like what a borderline feels, but I wouldn’t call that love either. It is all about taking and possessing, not about responsibility. I do believe there is an intensity, but like Jeffrey Dahmer, they only want to incorporate us into themselves. They want to become us. That feeling which they call “love” is ENVY. They just don’t know the difference. Their heads are f*cked up.
BTW, I wanted to mention more about your dream. You’ve heard the poem: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. It is a poem about insults not hurting you. Technically, that would be true, unless they are strategically positioned to appear as though they are coming from a friend. You would expect loving words from a friend and an insult is hurtful.
Skylar!!!!!!!!! Now, I’m really laughing: relationshit! LOL
When you metioned a writer describing something, this whole thing came down like an anvil. The exspath has touted himself as a noteworthy author – written some really bad junk (literally) which has all been rejected. HE CANNOT DESCRIBE anything EVEN in his writings!!!!!! He can’t do it because he cannot reach into his own frame of reference to CONVEY it, even in written form!!!
I don’t know if anyone else ever asked their spouse or significant other this question, but I asked the exspath several times, “What is it that you love most about me?” His answer was NEVER that I was compassionate, caring, or joyful. It was always something like, “You make the best omelettes.” What a frigging TELL!
Wow………wow……….wow………I need more coffee, now.
Silvermoon
Very very good post. I wish I had a way to flag and save that.
Thank you.
Athena
Wow, I’m watching the Boston Marathon! These people are so inspiring. It’s in the 80’s today so they are expecting a lot of people to overheat. They said if it is your first marathon, you should consider not running in this heat.
I think if I get off my butt and start training today, I MIGHT be able to run it next year!
Ana:
I know…I heard that about the marathon. Imagine that…it’s in the 80s in Boston in April! Not the norm!