Editor’s note: Be sure to read both articles that Ox Drover links to.
By Ox Drover
I ran across two articles in NY Times that sort of got me to thinking about how it sometimes does pay off to act like a psychopath—in business or other ways.
The following (quite long) article tells how an Internet seller terrorized his customer. I think that many people who have been the victims of psychopathic-like stalking can relate to this woman’s story. The fact that it was over such a relatively small amount of money is amazing to me, though. The lengths to which this stalker pursued his victim are also amazing to me.
Read A bully finds a pulpit on the web on NewYorkTimes.com.
This follow up article tells how, eventually, through the persistence of the victim in pursuing justice for the bullying psychopathic-like stalking she got from the abuser, it turned out that the man didn’t get away with his campaign, and now local, state and federal authorities are getting on the band wagon to go after this guy.
Read U.S. arrests online seller who scared customers on NewYorkTimes.com.
The guy even got denied bail. Yea for that judge “getting it.” It will be interesting to me to see how this plays out and just how much real jail/prison time this guy actually gets. While I can’t diagnose someone out of the newspaper, I really do feel that this man fits the criteria for many of the traits of a psychopath and he definitely is a stalker.
Merry Christmas everyone! Just turned after midnight here, it’s still raining so may not get cold enough over night to snow, but won’t last if it does. I’m just glad I’m not one of those poor people under several feet of snow!
Or the official LF “Happy Towanda and an s-path free New Year” (thanks to One_stepper)
Hi folks , merry christmas and all that good stuff . For the last few days i have had some thoughts going through my brain that I would like to throw out there and see what people think . It all stems from O like umbrella . What I began to realise is , that most of the books out there on psychopaths are dealing with , well psychopaths and not so much with the psychopath victims . Meaning , what exactly are psychopaths up too and how does it effect normal people and why . Well my thoughts were mostly about the shut down process which I was able to observe within myself with the O like umbrella experience . I then began to realise that there were a whole lot of things that have tended to shut me down to some degree over the years . Well the list looks something like this . Lying , psychobable , certain types of intimadation , as in when a woman looses her temper , nonsense , the illogical etc . I am sure there are more that I have yet to discover . Well I then had to ask myself why do these things shut me down . Well , one of the aspects of it is the logic . If something is not logical it will shut me down . What does this mean exactly . I think that perhaps the biggest realisation was that all these things are power plays and for some niave reason I had not realised this . Looking at myself for example I will normally speak my mind . If people don’t like it, too bad . Now that doesn’t mean I go around insulting people just for the fun of it . Now heres a funny experience . Years ago when I was 21 , now 55 , I met a woman while i was travelling the world who i fell in love with . She had a temper the likes of I had never seen . Funnily enough this temper was never directed directly at me and so for the most part I was immune . I suppose I had better add a Few details here so you get a picture of the scene . We met in Scotland . I was from New Zealand she was from Quebec , Canada . When we first met we were both travelling without a care in the world so to speak , Today was today and tomorrow could wait untill it arrived . Anyway I am not the kind of person who looses his temper very easily . She on the other hand seemed to loose it quite often . The first time I saw this temper I was somewhat bewildered as I could not imagine anyone getting that angry over something that for me was of little relevance . Anyway the years went by and we got married and settled in Quebec . For 3 years everything was more or less fine . She used to have this expression when she was angry with someone . The expression was , I send you to hell , . The temper usually went with it . Funnily enough I found it kind of cute as it was never directed at me . Anyway as the years went by I wondered a few times if that temper was ever going to be directed at me . Sure enough that day came in spades . What was the point of the story . Well i did not have a good understanding of anger as a manipulation tool . So now I got to thinking back to my childhood and my father . As a kid I was never hit or spanked ever by my parents . However my father did use his temper as an intimadation tactic , so in a funny kind of way as a small kid I did, kind of, have a fear of my father . Not sure where all this is going but its a kind of brain storm session so hopefully something comes out the end .
Changing the subject a little . The shut down mechanism . I am thinking that certain people are more sensitive to the shut down phenomena than others . Who are these people like us . What is it in our makeup that psychopaths can see that we maybe do not even see ourselves . Well I will stick my neck out , here goes . We are the lovers , we would not do unto others , other than what we would expect in return . So in a relationship with a psychopath , at the beginning we are in love and the psychopath basically mimics the actions and expressions of love that are coming out of us . So not realising the aspects of the psychopath , our guard with that person evaporates, revealing all . Now this is not a bad thing in of itself . The problem comes when the psychopath decides to show their true colours . That change when the psychopath reveals their true selves is a shut down mechanism because it does not make sense when one remembers all the good stuff that was happening up till that point . I remember the day that that happened with my psychopathic X . This was not the woman at the beginning of this story . My true psychopathic experince was way more recent than that . When the true self of my PX was revealed i had no glue as to what I was looking at . It was as if she was testing me to see if I was hooked or not . That is my realisation now not then . That evil was not revealed to me again in its entirety untill we moved into the same house . There were many indications along the way however I did not percieve them for what they were .
So where am I going here . Well it all comes back to the shut down mechanism . I think once a person realises that they can be shut down and what shuts themselves down , then they are on the road to recovery . The biggest problem for the victim is understanding the psychopath because the psychopaths nature is so far removed from their own nature . In other words it is not logical when compared with their own loving nature . Unfortunately for most victims who are not familiar with the psychopathic mind set , by the time they realise something is wrong they have already been sucked into the void . Now they have a huge problem . The biggest one being , trying to figure out what has happened to themselves . Where did I go , what did I fall in love with and where did he or she go . Now for some bizarre reason the lovers inner being has a hell of a problem getting a grip of the ever changing reality of the person they are with . Not only that but their ability to comprehend seems also to have dissappeared . Shut down . What has happened . The realisation, that what psychopaths are and the fact that they exist is probably a huge step in the right direction to recovery , however trying to figure out what has actually happened to the victim is a science that apparently is little understood by the experts who prefer to study the psychopaths instead of the victims . I read in one book of an incident where a trained psychiatrist went to interview a psychopath in jail and after the interview the psychiatrist had to have therapy . You would think that incidents like this would empower the authorites to invest some time in understanding the real effects that psychopaths have on people and on society in general . It would be my opinion that there is more to be learned from studying the victims than studying the psychopaths . Well I feel as if I made some huge progess in the last few weeks . It will be interresting to see how it pans out . One other thing , it is apparently possible to be shut down by someone who is not a psychopath as in the O like umbrella incident . It is probably important to take notice of these moments as they may tend to enlighten oneself in an unstressed environment . Meaning if one is being shut down by a psychopath chances are you are not going to notice it unless you are aware of the mechanism allready . Well thats it , brainstorm over . Happy holidays
Quest,
that’s quite a brainstorm, I love it.
Don’t know how much time I have to respond at the moment, but I wanted to get this link to you.
It is a site that talks about the victims and traits in us.
This particular page has these traits and I have 11 of them. Mostly, the last one, “•A lack of motivation from within and being motivated by what others want” is my biggest problem.
http://www.sociopathicstyle.com/traits/victims.htm
My parent also kept me in fear as a child and they did use violence too. That is why I’m stuck with these traits, more than because of the exP.
The sociopaths are like infants, and like infants they use rage to control us. Often you will notice that the rage quickly stops and they act like it never happened within a few hours. That’s because it didn’t. It was all an act to see your reaction.
They just wanted to push some buttons to make sure they were still in control.
Realize, that when you say “authorities” that it is a loaded word. Most people do not seek to control others, only P’s do.
Therefore P’s look for jobs that put them in positions of authority. Therefore most authorities are P’s. Why would they want to undermine their own authority by examining their psychopathy?
Good morning, Quest,
I think the “O like in umbrella” state you are talking about is more like “dissociation” Wikipediea defines it as below
“Dissociation is a partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning.[1] Dissociation can be a response to trauma or drugs and perhaps allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time.[2] Dissociative disruptions can affect any aspect of a person’s functioning.[3][4][5][6] Although some dissociative disruptions involve amnesia, the vast majority of dissociative events do not.[7] Since dissociations are normally unanticipated, they are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person’s usual ways of responding or functioning. Due to their unexpected and largely inexplicable nature, they tend to be quite unsettling.
I think the “O as in Umbrella” as you describe it, and I have experienced it myself, is a lower form of dissociative states that quickly passes. In fact, recently I experienced it in something I SAW but didn’t believe was happening, fortunately I stopped myself before I got physically hurt.
You talking about how she would “go off on” (lose her temper with) others and you didn’t see that as a danger because it was never directed at you—typical response I think, but it is a RED FLAG sign of a psychopath or disordered person.
RED FLAG RULE #1: If they are verbally abusive to someone else, it is only a matter of time until they are verbally abusive to US.
If you grew up being intimidated by temper outbursts by your father that were meant to intimidate you and frighten you into compliance with his wishes, or if you were just used to vent his rage at, you may have internalized that this was acceptable or even normal behavior. Well, it isn’t normal behavior and it sure is NOT acceptable behavior to me, so as an adult, you can decide for yourself what is and what is not acceptable behavior in those close to you and set boundaries. It is like reprogramming our internal mental computer I think. A big job, and one that takes some time to figure out which programs that are running are messing up the system.
I think you are on the way to getting there though, Quest, because you are showing some good insights into the virus programs that are there and need to be removed or reprogrammed.
Thanks for those thoughts skylar and oxy . I will ponder this for a couple of days , see what floats to the surface
quest thanks for sharing that, was very enlightening. I agree that more studies should be conducted on the victims of psychopaths… the majority of the literature out there is, like you said, on the psychopaths themselves, and not the victims (save the book, “Women Who Love Psychopaths” by Sandra Brown). i thought it very interesting when you mentioned shutting down… and the notion that when the psychopath reveals his/her true self- the fact that this behavior is incongruent with the initial behavior when the psychopath was mirroring the victim ( and lovebombing ) confuses the victim.. i think you’re right on target with this… it’s quite like the analogy with the rat study which has been mentioned around here before. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the experiment basically had a rat in a cage with a lever, which- if pressed would provide the rat with a treat. Well the treat was given liberally at first, with each lever press.. and then suddenly the rat had to press the lever more and more times to get the same treat. Eventually the lever presses did not provide any treats- but the rat kept pressing the lever, even though now instead of treats they would be getting electric shocks with each lever press. The rats clearly don’t want the electric shocks, but press the lever anyway because of the positive memory associated with the lever. The rat still expects a treat when with every lever press he is only getting shocked ( a good explanation of this phenomenon can be found here : http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/2008/03/rat-game.html at Kathy Krajco’s blog )
What really intrigues me and that which i’d like to see more research on however is the shutting down. What causes the victim to become so disoriented or removed from logic that they simply forego their instincts and blindly concede with the abuser? It seems we have, or you have, skimmed the idea but it would be very helpful to know the more intricate processes at work. Though even just getting a gist of the mechanism is very illuminating to say the least. I would suppose that as time goes on, there is an element of habituation that goes on.. or proverbial ‘wearing down of the psyche’ . Would love to have more discussions on this topic.
quest, very interesting, I think you’re on to something.
I did not know the nature of sociopaths and therefore did not understand that the person I was with felt nothing for me, so maybe I did shut down in a way of not only being in denial but also not comprehending what I was seeing or feeling… they are so opposite of what I am.
You are exactly right, when I discovered the truth, I began to heal.
I would like to read more of where you are going with this.
Dancingnancies – the link you gave was very inspiring …..
‘every narcissist goes through life deliberately ruining repuations by the dozen through telling the most sickeningly malicious lies about people WHO HAVE DONE HER NO HARM. She even does this to people who have done nothing but love her – her brothers and sisters and parents and spouse’.
This is so true. I believed spath (like the rat) spath of course, blamed everyone else, it was never spath’s fault!!
Dancingnancies,
I think what you are referring to is the Stockholm Syndrome where the victim identifies with the abuser (the kidnapped with the kidnapper, the hostage with the hostage taker) and the book “The Betrayal Bond” by Patrick Carnes is a good example of this.
Looking at this back through history to man’s earliest times where slavery and arranged marriages or captive marriages were common place, only the captive that managed to bond to the captor, and quit struggling and trying to escape was the one that survived. So there is a survival process being demonstrated here I think. Of course there were always captives that tried to escape or women that fought back against their captors, but the majority of the ones that lived quit fighting, and made the best of a bad situation.
In fact, I read an article the other day about a genetic study done on the Icelandic people who are a fairly uniform group, that showed that a native American woman had been introduced to their group sometime over 1000 years ago. The woman had obviously been taken captive and left her genetic contribution to that group.
Women, especially, in early historic and prehistoric times, had little power or choices for picking husbands in most tribal societies. Without this ability to bond with their captors, even if they were abused, their lives would have been worse than miserable. Unfortunately, in a fair sized portion of the world today, women are still considered property and forced marriages are still culturally considered appropriate. Even in England and the UK “honor killings” are still a reasonably common way for some cultural groups to deal with a sister or daughter who refuses to go along with a forced marriage, or one who violates the family dictates about trying to pick her own partner.
The little Afgan wife who ran away (she had been forcibly married to settle a family debt) and had her nose and ears cropped off who was brought to the US for reconstructive surgery is a perfect example. She ran away to her father to tell him she was being beaten and abused and he sent her back to her husband’s family. AFTER she was attacked and left for dead, she crawled to her uncle’s house and he refused to take her in, and she finally found help. Her plight touched the hearts of many people. I read an article though, where her father is complaining that He is being made out the “bad guy” and that (whine!) he is having to move because her husband’s family is mad at him over it all. Poor daddy, having to move. My heart goes out to him. NOT!
I will admit though that the culture of women being property and not fully human or worthy, is trained into these people from the cradle to the grave, so possibly it is not all their own free choices about what to believe, but it still to send your daughter back to be abused seems pretty callous to me. The father’s attitude of “if she had just behaved none of this problem would have happened and I wouldn’t have had to move.”
The fact that this daughter rebelled and ran away showed to me that she had not trauma bonded, and for those women who did trauma bond and stay, they would have been more likely to leave offspring, so I think in a way that trauma bonding would be superior to non trauma bonding for the evolutionary purposes of leaving offspring and thus pass on that tendency to trauma bond.
I suppose what would be interesting would be to interview a psychopath and ask them what they are doing when in a relationship and how they do it . Of course the problem here is that they would probably lie about that to . It makes me wonder if a psychopath is likely to tell the truth in certain circumstances and what those circumstances might be . Would it be possible to get their co-operation .