“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,
Glad to see you are posting! I went to sleep praying for you last night. “Please, God let Dupey make it through the night so the fog can lift a little and she’ll “see” the light”
Keep on posting Dupey. You have a lot of people who care for you here. 🙂
They need to have ’warning’ signs stapled to their foreheads. ” Yes! And actually they do….if you allow yourself to see it..I did but the trick is to walk away. Something about our internal workings + their type of deadly charm makes it almost impossible.
Dupey, you sound a bit better…thank heavens. One moment at a time. Your path “laughed” as he walked away did he? Reminds me of Jeffrey Dahmer, after an intense interview, at the end of the docu, he looked back at the camera, smiled and winked…I thought, “you lying sack of shit. You have no sorrow, no remorse, nothing. You’ve made a mockey of this entire production because what you’ve done means nothing to you. I was always fascinated by his and other famous paths lack of anything that could vaguely be called human. I was surprised any of them ate or pee’d or anything that humans do. This was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before I met Godzilla.
Try for yourself to stay + and know there is help when you want it.
one/joy-your entire post just rang bells with me and I’m sure all the rest who post here. To think that someone like you lives with this agony, has been thru so damned much, and all of it caused by one stinking freak of nature just leaves me sick. I wish you only continued healing and comfort.
You are so correct, I can see now that my flirting with the train trax is primarily about control. I *will* take control of my life, even if this ends it. I like that that is a choice you keep with you, but as you so exquisitely said, “in your back pocket.” I can see where allowing it as an option can be very peace-inducing. When I feel like panic and anx are crushing me, I always look for a hook…sometimes it’s suicide. And that works if I’m not too far into that horrible spiral. I so hear you.
You said, “i am trying to deal with the shitpile of fear that i constantly shovel from one area of my life to the next. (can’t say this one enough!) communicating what i want need and feel fucking terrifies me often, and some days i am just crap at it. i am terrifed that people will hit me with the shovel; ***that i am not this or that ’enough’.it’s very undermining.”***
Boy, you are not alone. Keep those small victories coming and blessings upon you for feeling the sun on your face and appreciating it. I just do not get how these sons of bitches are able to cause good people such dire pain..I hear it tho, I so hear it. I don’t understand why I continue to allow that worm to slither around in my head. I hate him and I knew he was psycho the first time I met him….within minutes. There is something in each of us that allows them an entrance into our souls. I wish you love and peace.
Louise, I wanted to comment on something you said a few days back:
“I wonder if what you said above is why mine said, “I’m different.” I’ll never forget it”it was right before we were intimate for the first time and we were sitting on his couch in his apartment when he said it. It’s the one thing that always haunts me”what did he mean? I didn’t ask. I became kind of speechless when I was around him”I didn’t say a whole lot”he did all the talking. Which also leads me to say that he said to me, “I don’t know anything about you.” Now I get it”he wasn’t really able to mirror me because I wasn’t telling him anything really about myself”I was very mysterious and he told me so. I think that’s why I was dumped”he couldn’t identify my weaknesses and con me further. Very interesting.”
First of all, I hear you…somehow these beasts (because they choose well) somehow get away with saying and not saying exactly what they want. Godzilla after I told him he was f’ing crazy and i wasn’t smiling, “I’m complicated.”
Beatle Boy – “I’m different.”
And we sit!!! We def should have probed but knowing those psychotically-controlling a.holes, they would have had some smarmy put-off for us that caused us to shut up.
I was also struck by the fact that he did all the talking. Godz was so guarded and never spoke in “I” statements where B.Boy sounds like one talkative little f-er. You are right, he was probably so frustrated that he couldn’t mirror you, he yakked it up even more, hoping for response. Let’s hope so.
To frustrate one of these non-beings is nothing short of sweet.
There is no telling why he “dumped” you. I just hope you can hold it together and literally or verbally flip this loser a bird if he contacts you again. He can’t even f properly!!! Screw him.
KNOW that you deserve better or if you choose not to have a man in your life, So BE It!
I so completely wish that the last few days of posting was a bad dream, but dupey and everyone else who is trying to support her tell their stories of utter and complete devastation of life and sanity and self and financial stability and health and wow, I could go on and on. Louise, we are very fortunate this did not happen to us. Keep your distance friend, please. No more psychos. Bboy sounds so unattractive to me. Like an ADD puppet in a Ringo wig, with a 34 hr chemically-induced hard-on who still can’t do it right (cause he has no soul or feelilng)!!! EW. Please see him that way. And I know you are reeling too, you have to be, from what you’re read in the last couple days. No more.
RE: B Boy’s daughter, it makes me sick. These creeps should be made to go thru irreversible vasectomies. I’m sure she will have at least some of his tendencies and perhaps a lifetime of misery ahead. That’s just awful, Louise.
I recall when Godzilla brought his young son to work one day. The way he acted towards the son made me want to ick. It was this fakey removed sterile stiff kind of behavior. He had just hit on me for reals a few days before this, so I was *all* wound up and went over there to meet the child..he was very hyper and smacked me hard in the chest with a sticker (I wanted to say, “Wow, like father, like son but maybe you can teach him to be a little gentler??” It HURT!!! Godzilla, that disgusting sick pig said nothing…of course not. What halfway decent parent wouldn’t say, “Son, gentle please. We don’t hit people.” He said nothing. He also allowed the kid to make hella noise for over an hour. Said nothing to him. Didn’t want to mix it up with others very much. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want anyone he’d been hitting on to say anything revealing. OH it was plain WEIRD. I knew, Louise, I knew, he was f.ing nuts and the kid seems like he is somewhere on the spectrum, def has impulse control issues. And Godz had the nerve to tell me one day he was terribly, just so terribly worried that his some would pick up some of his wife’s mental issues. OMG
Dear Dupey, I am so glad you had a successful talk with the SOS-hotline. Seems to me you sound a wee little bit better. Baby steps in the right direction; wonderful! ((((hugs))))
One/joy: Thanks for your entry to dupey. I can so relate, also to your feelings you expressed (you can do this far better than me). You do sound also so much better and invigorated. You seem to see the manure in the shit, and also have the shovel to put it wher it is most useful. I am so glad!
Depression as being kind of disguised “inner spath” that tries to reel us in to think bad about ourselves and wants us to commit suicide (great idea to work on! Thanks!)
I also have been on the “because”- point, when I got sacked last October. It was to my biggest surprise the first time I did NOT consider suicide.
There is no answer to the “Why” in life or towards life, it is just the “Because” without question or answer. Living on because of curiosity and the obligation of not posing the question “Why” (did she commit suicide?) on my beloved nieces and in honoring my great great grand mother. She had to survive, having moved to a foreign country because of bad economy when her husband suddenly died, with three little children and no social security and no proper profession, and who managed to raise her children and have them all schooled, even the girls became teachers, in the 18-hundreds.
Have you all a wonderful weekend; what a powerful conversation!
Ana; steel reeling and libelle: Thank you for your prayers and wishes. I made it through another night. I am sure it was your good wishes and thoughts that has helped me. Seriously.
Depression is an ugly monster, almost as bad as the spath themselves. Like a slow release time bomb.
I have other issues going on in my world too which has only compounded things for me. Makes me feel like there is truly no way out sometimes.
You will all be happy to know that I have TWO (not one but TWO) counseling appointments tomorrow…one in the morning with one counselor and another in the afternoon, with another. Hopefully I will be able to find some relief. Both counselors are doctors and one of them is a medication specialist. However, with my heart condition, I made it quite explicitly clear, there will be no ‘experimenting’ or ‘drug cocktails’ with the “let’s try this one and that one and this one and that one”. MY LIFE cannot AFFORD to be an ‘experiment’. I had to ADVISE MY OWN Med Spec to contact my cardiologist to find out what I CAN TAKE that will not interfere with the coreg I take, which staves off stroke and/or congestive heart failure. It is a very sensitive drug and could cause a whole lot of problems if mixed with other drugs. I am not looking for a drug to become ‘addicted’ to either. I want something to help me through this ‘crazy’ time in my life and nothing more or less. So, I see him tomorrow and “I” was the one who had to contact MY OWN CARDIOLOGIST and have HIM contact Mr. Quack to tell HIM. Mr. Quack openly admitted to me: “Please be patient with me; I have never treated anyone before with such a serious heart condition.”
Well, um, excuse me, don’t you think you need to go to the SOURCE? He was embarrassed, I think, to admit he didn’t know how to treat me and if he has nothing for me tomorrow, just like I told him he should, he is going to be FIRED. Period. Waiting a month for a tranquilizer and coming through bouts of suicide contemplation is inexcusable when it could have been relieved. Even if just for a while and yet, I have been waiting almost a month now for him to give me something for my depression; all because he was embarrassed to call my cardiologist to ASK what I CAN take. “I” had to call my cardiologist and ASK HIM to call this nimrod. And I am suppose to trust my life to this person with one ‘drug cocktail’ after another?
If anyone is coming through this same kind of thing, BEWARE of what your own health is and BEWARE of what is being given to you. Ask questions and don’t just take whatever they give you. Sometimes it CAN push you to thinking suicidal thoughts.
I love you all, each and every one of you for being here for me. Hopefully after tomorrow, I will be able to ‘calm down’ and find myself again.
I hope you are all doing alright this day. Each and every one of you are in my thoughts and gratefulness.
Love, Dupey xxoo
Dear Dupey, you really really sound MUCH better! Taking responsibility for your heart/ for your life for instance is VERY important (you could simply commit suicide by not taking any drugs for your heart anymore). But your insisting on advising Dr Quack about your heart and that there has to be extra care tells me that you are far more interested in life than you might have thought. I am so glad that your strength on taking responsibility and being again the captain of your own ship setting sails according to the direction is working again! Towanda!! (((Hugs)))
Dupey,
You go girl!! Setting up TWO counseling appointments tomorrow!! YES!! I have found, that when I was in the depths of immobilizing, self disgusted, hopeless depression, the thing that helped me most was taking control of some aspect of my life. You have done that by scheduling counseling appointments. So good.
I thought that some of the posts here were so loving and inspiring. Dupey, you are not alone.
Step by step, you will get out of this dark phase in your life and move from dark to light. Please just give it some time and have some faith.
Lottsa love to you,
clair
Dupey,
TOWANDA! You took matters in your own hands. Yes, you shouldn’t have been the one doing it, but you did. And it feels empowering, doesn’t it?
libelle, clair and darwinsom and sweet Ana: Ana, I thank you for your loving wishes. I felt them surround me as I slept last night. You will never know how much that means to me.
libelle: ;p thanks for the chuckle: “Dr. Quack”. You are right, aren’t you? I am showing interest in life. Yes, Captain of MY OWN SHIP and nobody else has the helm. Right. ((Hugs back Dear))
clair: Yes, taking control of SOME aspect of our lives helps us remember who we are and our value and worth. Definitely, the posters, ALL OF YOU, who have responded to me, were and absolutely amazing. Without all of you here to help me hang on, I just know where I would have ended up. I will always love you all more than you will ever come to realize. I know I am not alone but I hate it that all of you seem to be here right along with me. Not because I don’t want you here, I am so grateful you are; I just wish you didn’t have to be here with me through these ugly experiences – it saddens me that all the nice people are the ones most hurt. There is something unjustifiable about that.
Clair, you said:
“Step by step, you will get out of this dark phase in your life and move from dark to light. Please just give it some time and have some faith.
Lottsa love to you,
clair ”
—————————————-
Thank you for that. It was like a huge hug to me.
Love back at you too….
darwinsmom: empowerment in this situation is what we should all be seeking and trying to attain. We know who we are and what we are about. We don’t need validation from anyone else. If we just try to remember the person we were before these horrible things came along. That person is still there, underneath us, fighting and trying to get out…that person is lost somewhere in those dark halls…just wandering around…trying to find the ‘exit’ door out…
I don’t know what else to say but that I love you guys for holding me together. I can’t say I won’t fall apart again, until this is over but knowing I have all of you: people who understand, it is not only priceless, it is a complete blessing.
Dupey
“it saddens me that all the nice people are the ones most hurt. There is something unjustifiable about that. ”
Dear Dupey,
I know what you mean, but on the other hand, it’s all about helping each other. And, ya know what? When we help someone else, we also help ourselves. There’s a saying that says “We teach what we need to learn”. So, it’s all a big helping circle and we all help to heal each other.
Lottsa of love to you (((Dupey))) and hope you feel better, sweetheart.
love,
clair
Dear clair: thank you for being wonderful “YOU”!
You shine light every where you go and every word you speak.
Love you too ~ Dupey xxoo