“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.
Truthspeak:
OMG, what you said about spaths and communication is so spot on. Exactly! That’s how mine is. He only says what he needs to say at the moment to satisfy whoever he’s trying to con. I truly believe that most of the time, if not all of the time, he doesn’t even remember WHAT he says. It’s all rubbish. He would say so much and really say nothing at all…it was all superficial and most of the time, he was only tearing someone down…and it was a woman the majority of the time. He rarely ever talked ill will about a man…leads me to believe my hypothesis about him hating his mom and deep down probably all women. “Bring me up fast, break me down faster”…that was him.
Louise, hindsight is always 20/20, and looking back I can see that there was a great deal of silence.
My posts are pretty much the way that I speak in Real Life – I can run on and get really descriptive. Throughout the relationshit, the exspath would constantly (and, never altered this, either) tell me to “get to the point” whenever we were talking. So, I would be relating an experience that I had and he would become irritated and tell me that I was too long-winded. Now, what kind of flaw is that to focus on?
Yeah, it was a weepy day. I’ll be okay. Just scared, sad, and angry. I’ll work it out with help – and, thank you all so very very much for your support and encouragement. Finding people who actually “get it” is helpful beyond measure.
Brightest blessings and huge hugs to my emerging “brother and sisters.” We’re all family, here, I think.
Sky,
LOL, because only spaths advertzize by what they don’t do 🙂
Ever have those moments where you just wish you were dead?
Like nothing is every going to work out or matter in your life?
Where everything you have tried to move past all the hurt and ugliness just hasn’t seemed to work out?
Where giving up seems like the easiest thing to do?
I don’t feel well at all, you guys…
I haven’t for a while now and it only seems to get worse as I go along now. Not better. I feel like ‘disconnecting’ myself from what was left of my hold on the world and just giving up.
I don’t know how else to feel; where else to turn or how to go about finding anything different in and for my life anymore.
It seems there is nothing left.
I have lost it all.
My health, my friends, my job, my ‘life’…
I am crashing hard right now from all this and I just don’t know how much more I can take.
Back_from_the_edge,
Please hang on…I apologize for not knowing your personal story…But I do know what it feels like to be in a dark place.
There is always a reason to come to the other side of a painful experience. Sometimes that is hard to “see” when we are engulfed over our heads in pain. But the reasons are always there.
Do you have children? Grandchildren? Family?
Take it 5 minutes at a time if you must but please think of all the reasons that you DO HAVE to get through this.
Don’t let go and give up. GRASP on tighter.
YOU are worth it. Please don’t let anyone take your self worth away from you.
I am worried about you and what you said in your post. Please post so that we know that you are ok.
Back from the edge, is that you, Duped?
You say you have tried to get past it but it hasn’t worked. That is because the only way out of it is THOUGH it. You need to feel the pain of this without the story. The story is how horrible your life is, how it’s been like this for years, how it will always be like this, you will never get better, etc., etc. That is the STORY your mind is telling you. The story is at the level of your thoughts. The story is NOT TRUE. Thinking will not get you through this. FEELING will. Staying in the present moment will connect you to your body and your real feelings – not the story about it, but the real pain you need to face.
You need to let the mental part go. Please go inside right this minute and feel what you are feeling. Never mind what it means or what you think about it. Just feel the feelings. Right now. With no mental commentary. See if you can be aware of the physical sensations. What does it feel like in your body? Can you be in your body and just feel what is going on? This is where your healing is, Duped. You ABSOLUTELY have the power to do this. You are the ONLY one who has the power to do it. You can get through it just by being aware of what you are feeling. If you don’t know what you are feeling, just pay attention to physical sensations – your breathing, your feet on on the floor, the noises around you……..you need to create a space where you can have a break in your thinking, so you can really feel what is going on inside. It may feel too overwhelming and you will immediately want to go back to your thoughts. Just notice that process. Notice how you choose to avoid being in your body and getting lost in thoughts. This is the addictive process. If you can become aware of this process, you will raise your consciousness. From this place of awareness, you WILL heal.
You have been battling with your addiction to the spath. All addiction is about resistance to feeling pain. There is no way out of this but to feel it and surrender to it. You can do this. You would have had to feel this pain with or without the spath. Why not just deal with it, so you will never have to have another spath in your life?
You are on the verge of a breakthough. Don’t run away from it, dupey.
witsend and dear sweet Star: Yes, it’s me, Dupey.
I love you for responding to me and I read your words but I don’t feel them anymore. I just don’t. I seem lost in this hell and I don’t really know anymore how to get out of it. It doesn’t just have to do with spath…he is a loser and I grieved for YEARS…the grieving and the hatred is all gone. I made it gone. Now that I have made it all gone, I sit here and I realize that I just don’t have much left now and I can’t see the reasons to prolong the inevitable. That’s the thing. You know, my psychologist put me on xanax and all that did was magnify my suicidal tendencies. I immediately stopped taking it because I didn’t want to run out in front of a semi truck. I am still waiting and waiting and waiting for some help from my doctors to deal with this deep deep depression and this anxiety. With my heart condition being as it is, it’s difficult to find any medicinal relief the way most people can. It doesn’t work for me. I am stuck. I don’t see any way out. Where I once was strong and dynamic and never took ‘no’ for an answer, I don’t see that anymore at all. All I see now is that everyone wants me to hurry up and drop dead so the insurance doesn’t have to pay; so I give up all my family and have no body around me when I die. So I don’t have a home anymore and just nothing. It’s coming to that and I would rather die than to die underneath a bridge viaduct, somewhere, on the streets of L.A., eating out of garbage cans. Before spath, I had a wonderful career, bringing home great money and taking care of myself. Little by little, the stress of all that roadshow, pushed me deeper and deeper into a situation, personally and medically, where there just isn’t much left anymore and I am coming to terms with that. Oh, it’s definitely OVER for spath. I will never go back to that, not ever. He stole my self worth, my strength, my time and my very life and I will always hate and despise him for being the cruel and crass person he is. Nobody means anything to him but himself and he uses people, one against the other, in the most horrible and ugly ways. All I ever wanted and expected was his friendship and he couldn’t even handle that. I know he is a sick person who needs help but he won’t ever get it. His whole thing with me, the past four years, has been to hurt me and disrespect me and degrade me as much as he possibly could and he still tries to reach through the abyss I have put between us. The stalking just never ends. Even when I go NC, it doesn’t end. It is constant and persistent. Every one says: “change your number”; move; and just where do I go? Hm? Yes, I have family but my children shouldn’t have to support me nor pay for my funeral. I should be able to do these things for myself and as it is turning out, I can’t even do that for myself right.
I just don’t see very much of a bright future for myself anymore and all the counseling, doctors, medications, none of it helps fill that empty, lifeless void in my life. It wasn’t just spath…it is and has been a lifetime of sorrows. Just one after another. Sometimes I think of ways that I could just disappear and never bother anyone ever again…I don’t want to be a burden but as I get up there in age, now, and I know what my medical situation is and I doubt seriously I will be here to blog much anymore, in a relatively short time because I know now what my prognosis is and it doesn’t look very bright. Kind of hard believing in a future of any kind when you know you aren’t going to have one. Everyone says: “Live your life as fully and completely as you can!” Well, that would be alright, I suppose, but I don’t want to live it alone and by myself.
I am done with this torment and torture in my world. All of it. There is too much to feel; too much to separate; too much – just too much. I don’t want to wake up anymore.
Thank you for trying to make sense to me. I don’t understand your words. I don’t understand much anymore and I just want to go now. I am not doing very good and I don’t know how much longer I have left because not even the doctors will tell me. What do I have; hm?
On the verge of a breakthrough…Stargazer, you have been one of my most strongest of supporters and people who understand me and I thank you for that.
I don’t see any other solution now but to completely run away. Entirely and completely. I am on the verge of making the decision to just cease all my heart medications and let nature take it’s course now. I will leave a DNR. Everything I have ever been or ever owned…everyone else can have. I won’t need it where I am going.
Thank you Stargazer for always being here for me.
I can’t take any more of this.
Dupey
BackFromTheEdge/Dupey, yes – there are times when I feel like rolling over and just giving up. Yesterday was one of those days – heading into a painful flare with no transportation to get to my doctor, fetch groceries, etc., etc., etc. My family is gone and I’m dealing with this, alone. I am essentially “homeless,” though I am renting a room from a colleague. Hell, YES I feel like giving up, sometimes.
Dupey, fight. Fight with whatever means you can find. Call your local counseling hotline and get yourself a counseling therapist who “GETS IT.” If you don’t have funds to pay for counseling, call the Domestic Violence Hotline and they have trained counselors who work at no cost to you.
Dupey, do you even know that you are precious and valuable in this Universe? Do you realize that there is Something That You Were Meant To Do? These experiences are horrific, defeating, ruinous, and gut-wrenching, to be sure! But, there is something that we are supposed to be learning from them about ourselves. Doesn’t make it easier to manage, but that’s what it is – at least, that’s what it is for me. YOU ARE VALUABLE. You are precious and unique in this Universe – there is no other human being that can REPLACE you! FIGHT, goddammit, FIGHT! If I were next to you, I’d be gripping your hand and clutching your elbow to help you stand back up. But, I’m not there, physically. I’m there with you in spirit and I completely understand how you are feeling – lost, desperate, frightened, grieving, and destitute. I’m there, myself.
Together and with all of the strong, courageous, and wise people on this site, you and I (and, everyone else who is hurting) will make it through our personal Hell and emerge on the other side. We’re all going to make it through this. Our lives will never be the same. We will be changed. We may struggle and have to sacrifice for a while, but we’re all going to make it.
Hugs, hugs, and more hugs, Dupey.
Dupey, it helps me to remember that, although I have no family left except my son, I’m not “alone” in this struggle. What’s more is that there are people out there whose experiences were worse than my own. I have a lot to be grateful for. I may not have a home, anymore, but I’m not in a cardboard box, I have food to eat, and I have friends and this site to help me through this living hell. I don’t like it. I feel sorry for myself, OFTEN. It isn’t FAIR that I should live like this after the years that I supported and encouraged the exspath. No, it isn’t! But, there are no religious or philosophical writings out there that say, “Life is Fair.” It isn’t and giving up would be just the type of reaction that would give the exspath a permanent boner. NOPE – not going to do it. I have “something” to accomplish from all of this – I have no frigging idea what it is, but something has to come out of all of this, EVEN if it’s only the lesson for me to guard my Trust with tooth and nail.
You’re not alone, Dupey. You have this site. And, you have strong support and encouragement, here.
Dupey,
You are in the pits of the pits called depression. It is NORMAL! NC-ing the spath is only the FIRST step, and after that it tends to go WORSE.
When the spath threw me away and I realized what he was and found out all the things that had happened behind my back, I THOUGHT that NC would solve everything. I THOUGHT that I could ISOLATE the impact of the spath to just only RELATIONSHIT. But the impact went way BEYOND that. I lost my job, I got such a bad review that all my hopes of ever being able to teach math went down the drainpipe at that moment. I went tourleading and it was such a hell and I got so many bad reviews on that too, that I thought I’d NEVER BE ALLOWED to tourlead again, and that I would be ousted out of the beautiful organisation of tourleading volunteers as well. I had one one-night-stand that showed I could not function normally at all in that department either.
I felt alive, but that ALL I had worked for, built on was dead. It was as if I was a ghost standing in the Marches. There seemed nothing left of my life. And this time it was GOOD STUFF that was dead in my life… the satisfying career, passionate hobby, etc… I never believed I could start building it all up again. Obviously something was seriously wrong with my mind if I could not do the things anymore that used to be my skills and talents. I felt betrayed by my own brain and the people who kicked the beaten dog.
And from what I read of other people’s stories something similar occurred to them. Their life went down the drainpipes overall. The loss did not just stay in the relationship corner. Instead it got loose and rampaged all over in people’s lives.
What I learn from this is that NC is the start and then it gets worse for a while. There are three options: a) you step out b) you surrender yourself to the ghosts of the marshes and drown in the depression c) you accept you’re stuck in the marshes for a while yet, and no magical eagle is gonna swoop by to save you, and then kick yourself against the butt with the last bit of energy left and start taking steps.
ANY step is good, once you realize you’re stuck in the marshes. Organizing your day is good. Doing some little creative projects is good (don’t even promise yourself you’re gonna finish them, doesn’t matter… cause you’re doing it for yourself anyway). It may feel for a while as if nothing significant is happening to make life overall better. But you’re stuck in a shitty place, so actually you’re free to do with your day that at least stimulate your brain somewhat and lower stress levels.
It helped me to ACCEPT that my life was my present life. i hated it, but I accepted it. Stargazer is right. You are close to a breakthrough, because you’re not running away from the present anymore, you are realizing what the present is. It is a harsh and bleak one. But only when you accept where you are now, you’ll be able to start taking conscious little steps that eventualy WILL GET YOU OUT.
Once you START taking little steps you only do for YOURSELF, that symbolize a COMMITMENT to yourself, the path out of the quagmire will start to become clearer. You’ll be able to recognize more and more which paths will lead you back into the heart of the marshes, going in circles, and which ones join to the yellow brick road. Once you recognize the right path for you, the possibility to a life beyond the marshes becomes a reality to your mind again. YOU’RE GONNA have the feeling that THERE IS A FUTURE for you. THAT is the first light of the end of the tunnel. You may not actually see the light yet, but your mind will start to accept that it’s there if you keep on going. After that the light will become visible, and bigger, and you’d be amazed how quickly you’ll find yourself in a total different environment again.
No, it won’t be what it was anymore before the spath. But you’re gonna like it nonetheless.
It also sounds to me that you expected anti-depressants to solve it all for you. They’re often portrayed as magical pills, but I’ve never heard of a mental therapy working only by taking magical pills. An anology: You’ve got a busted knee and you’re using crutches to help you move about. They’re an AID, but they won’t heal your knee, let alone strengthen the muscles to walk without crutches again. The crutches won’t cure your busted knee. The true recovery lies in an operation by a specialist for busted knees (so not a gynaecologist) and fysiotherapy, not the crutches. Anti-depressants are like CRUTCHES. They can keep you upright, help you support yourself without falling down, but they do nothing to the injury itself. That requires psychological TALKING therapy with a therapist SPECIALISED in your injury.
And it’s also true that there are some mental issues, and some stages of depression where anti-depressions are dangerous: because they just give someone the energy to do the opposite of saving themselves. So, the fact that you quit them immediately, shows that you WANT to live, that a part of you KNOWS HOW TO LOOK after yourself. You still have a Dupey in there that KNOWS HOW TO SURVIVE. Listen to that Dupey within!