“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.
Dupey, you have to consider why you would post here if you weren’t reaching out for help and good reasons to live.
You’ve received so much.
I don’t believe that your kids don’t want to hear from you.
Seriously, anti-deps help many people. I’ve watched it happen for any number of friends and relatives.
At least go another round with them. What’s the harm? You certainly have nothing to lose.
Night really is darkest before the dawn, you are correct libelle.
One more round…try it.
Dear, dear Dupey
Like Star, I don’t see suicide as a sin. It’s an option, whch is valid to someone who has run out of energy and cannot perceive an end to the pain anymore. I’ve been there once. Sometimes life can be so emotionally and mentally painful that it nags at you every minute of the day, and no matter what you try or how long you seemed to have been trying the pain is as unbearable since the first day you were struck by it. I know how valid it feels then that the only way to not feel the pain anymore is by ending your life. I was in that deepest pit of the pits 10.5 years ago.
Now I wouldn’t consider it anymore, not even after the spath and all I had built in those 10.5 years after pulling through my reactive depression was knocked down again. It taught me that I can ALWAYS rebuild. And those 10.5 years were some of the best years of my life. This time again I discovered a path to rebuild that gives me enjoyment and I wouldn’t ever have imagined walking it, had my life not been knocked down.
I’ve had a good friend who hated being 60. He noticed he didn’t enjoy anymore in his life what he used to enjoy – going to the bar to meet all the young people. He was tired of it. He lived on a social wellfare apartment for years already. He had been unemployed for a decade, after he had been one of the older workers put on pre-pension unemployment to cut expenses. He had seen the world for years on the long haul boats. He had chronic pain in his back for years already. When he felt other pain and feared it might be cancer he refused to get medical treatment and opted for suicide. He sent out 3 letters to 3 people to warn them to find him when it would be over. He took his pills and went with a smile of peace on his face. Was he a laughing stock? Perhaps in the eyes of other seniors. He was not to any of us, or his son with his wife and baby daughter. The ceremony was heart-breaking. He had judged himself too old, meaningless and didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. The cremation hall was filled, stack full… with over hundred young people in their late twenties and thirties. It was as if all the 20-something and 30-something generation of my city came to pay him their respect. We didn’t do a coffee table, but had a tuborg beer ceremony in his favourite pub, together with his family. His family had put together a picture album. He used to let photographers take polaroid pics at the bar of him and whomever was there with him, and he hung them all on his picture wall. There were years and years of these polaroids, and his family put them in a pic book for us to write our sentiments and goodbyes in. I never faulted him his choice, but I wish he could have seen how much he actually was loved by all of us, before he actually went through with it. I wish he could have known that even several years later he’s still missed by so many who could have been his own children. I wish his granddaughter could have had several years more to get to know her remarkable grandfather.
And I deeply wish you to consider this too. You are loved by people somewhere, more than you realize or can see. And you can still have time to enjoy it a while longer. I truly believe it would be a great pity to miss out on it.
Dupey,
I know from experience how it is to be lost, desperate, fearful and totally confused.
Its not fun. In fact it is awful.
But, its going to take a decision on your part to not be there any more. And its a decision you are going to have to make over and over again.
In the begining, its hard. So make the decisions small ones.
Learn to postpone your thinking abut how awful everything is and find small points of joy in the simplest parts of everyday life.
YOu are going to have to put your oars in the water and PULL to get yourself away from feeding into the drama which has been your life because of the spath.
There is nothing dramatic about laundry or housework, taking a walk around the block or reading a chapter in a good book or spending an hour with a good movie.
If you can’t stop completely with all this feeling bad, then stop for a little while and then set your goal to stop a little longer tomorrow.
If you don’t stop a little longer the next time, then think about what was the barrier to your success and how can you fix that little thing.
It is up to you. We can be here, but we can’t do the work. And you have to do the work.
You can’t wait for magic healing words, eat anything, drink anything, wear anything or go anywhere to fix what is in your head and your heart when you won’t make the decision to move on.
Am I blunt? Well I don’t mean to be unkind, but I will tell you the people who helped me the most were the ones who told me to KNOCK IT OFF when I was reeling over a murderer who took advantage of my trust and likely had very specific and unkind intentions.
Sooner or later you have to choose not to be where you are. And the sooner you do, the sooner you will find the miracles in life which will help to accelerate your progress. Look for the tiny ones. Find the joy of stillness in a rock. Rocks endure.
Not even Providence can move forward until you will.
You can and you must.
We’ll be right here on the walk forward with you.
Its up to you to take the next step.
Declare your freedom and fight for it!
Dupey, I want you to think about this: you have a car, even if it’s 15 years old – you have means to get to a physician or hospital if you need to. I do not have tranpsortation and the nearest bus stop is well over a mile away. I have an auto-immune disease that will eventullly leave my body deformed like a pretzel. I am taking an oral chemotherapy to address the immune issues leaving me even MORE susceptible to bacterial, fungal, and viral infections. I have been on antibiotics for 5 months to combat an infection that just won’t go away. I have endured gang-rape, threats at gunpoint, threats of murder, threats of suicide, beatings, spousal rape, financial rape, and spiritual destruction that left me wondering if there even WAS something better than dying.
Dying isn’t the answer, Dupey. We all die, in the end. Living our lives to the best of our ability is our mandate. Giving up is definitely an option, if that’s the way that we want to be rememberd: someone who just gave up.
Personally, I am fighting the depression, the desperation, the fear, and the anxiety because I am NOT going to let the exspath win. I’m just not. He took everything from me either by coersion or outright CRIMINAL INTENT and action, and there will be no justice for me – I will never recover over 1/4 million dollars that he either coerced me out of or outright stole from me. I am over 50 years old, very sick, in constant pain, without transportation without a home, and without gainful employment. I am NOT going to let this temporary situation define me, my life, the meaning of my life, or my ending.
May you find what you need, Dupey, and may you find peace and understanding that this is a temporary despair that we have all experienced, and continue to experience from time to time.
Brightest and most sincere healing blessings to you.
((Truth)), you really are strong. I’m amazed. Thanks for being here, you’re a hero.
Truth, thank you so much for sharing. ((((Hugs))))
Skylar, I appreciate the sentiment, but I am no better or more heroic than anyone else. We’ve ALL had our lives destroyed by an spath, no matter if it was a husband, lover, mother, father, sister, brother, or the guy at the 7-11. Damage is damage, no matter how long we were exposed or whom we were exposed to. We’ve ALL lost SOMEthing, whether it was our innocence, our homes, our cars, or our minds.
Most important thing is to push through it. Push through the other side and the spath FAILS. That is MY frigging goal! HUGS!!!!
Duped, the thing you are not seeing is the one mindset you are caught up in. “I’ve given and given my whole life and where is anyone to give back to me”? This is a very tricky mindset to overcome because you are very identified with it. And you are angry that you don’t have people who are there for you in the way you need. (You DO, in fact have people who are there for you because WE are there for you, but perhaps not in the way you want or need). You are giving up on yourself because no one is helping you. In doing this, you are shutting out the help and the love that is right here for you. You are caught up in the mindset that you will only be happy when some of these people come around and give you what you need. This is a very tough mindset to get out of. But it is just that – a mindset. It is not the truth. The truth is that you don’t need those people to feel okay about yourself. You can still feel good about yourself with a heart condition, aging, poor, and alone. What you are saying is just not the truth. I know it is your experience. But you don’t realize that you have total power over what you experience. This is your depression talking – but it’s not the truth about you. It is not the truth about life, about how the world works. Depression is like a fog. When it lifts, you will feel differently.
It hurts very deeply to feel betrayed and abandoned by people we love. If you can just feel the pain, it will pass.
I have been to a point where I was in so much pain and felt so hopeless, trapped, and isolated that I didn’t want to live. I continued on for two reasons: 1. Because I know that mental and emotional states are all temporary; 2. Just because. Now I live because I actually get joy from giving to others. This is something that is not dependent on what others do for me.
You can choose to fight just because. Because you don’t want to let them win. Because you want to see what’s on the other side. Or………like me……….just because. Believe me when I say that I know of NO ONE who was more depressed than I was up until a few years ago. NO ONE. If I can get better, anyone can. I am willing to help you (like everyone here) and give you the benefit of the things that helped me through it. But like Silvermoon said, you need to choose. If you choose life, you WILL get through this. But you have to choose life.
Think about it very carefully, because like you said, death is final.
Truth I agree with you, we are as strong as we are determined to be. We can fight or lie down and give up.
During my darkest hours I got and read “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Dr. Viktor frankl who wrote it after being in a Nazi slave labor camp for several years. He had lost everything except the ability to breathe and barely walk.
He talked in the book about how some people would just give up, smoke their last cigarettes and lie down, turn their faces to the wall and die. Others fought to live, but kept their humanity. Some others fought to live by preying on their fellow inmates and working with the Nazis, and when they were liberated some were so bitter they destroyed things just because they were angry.
That book (and yes, i know I have talked about it and talked about it) but it gave me the will to fight, to work on getting better, and not feel that I had no choices. It also showed me that no one’s pain is any more horrible than any one else’s pain.
Pain is total and absolute. Regardless of what your loss is. For example a baby drops his binkie and he cries like his life is ending, and for him it seems like it is. We look at the situatiion with the binkie on the floor and we realize it is easily fixed but the baby doesn’t realize this, his pain is TOTAL and COMPLETE.
When we lose something—whether it is $5,000 or $5 million—or our homes or our cars, whatever the psychopath takes from us, our loss is TOTAL and COMPLETE and our PAIN IS TOTAL AND COMPLETE.
But we have the choice to turn our faces to the wall and die, or lie on the floor and whine, or we can get up and fight our way back into a life.
No one gets out of life alive…we are all going to die some day, and no matter how many people love us or are there to hold our hands at the time we breathe our last breath, WE must do it for ourselves. In any relationship one of the people will die first and the other be left behind alone.
My beloved step father faced his impending death by cancer better and stronger than anyone I have ever seen and I hope that when my time comes if I know in advance I am terminal, I hope I have that fortitude. He LIVED that last 18 months—he didn’t take but a second to die, but every minute of his life HE LIVED. I intend to do the same thing.
He was a very private man personally but when the time came that he needed “personal” care he was so gentlemanly about it and didn’t make me self conscious at all when I did it. We laughed about his incontinence of bowel and bladder, made jokes about it…the time I spent taking care of him was some of the most precious memories of my life. We had such good times together as crazy as that may sound. He never whined, but we did cry some together and we did the grieving of his impending death together, but it brought us closer.
We can’t always choose a lot of the things that happen to us in life, but we can choose how we handle them. As the Bible says there are times to plant and times to reap, a time for birth and a time for death. We can choose how we respond to whatever life throws at us.
Dupey ~
Oh my dear, my thoughts and prayers are with you.
You have helped so many of us, what can we do for you? We are all here to listen. I know it’s not much, but give us a chance to help.