Wow, last week’s course with Dr Robert Hare was absolutely amazing! A huge eye-opener on how offending psychopaths are measured and dealt with in the criminal justice system — and also an insight in to the astonishing man who has given so much to so many of us. I’m planning to cover more about that in future posts…
This week I’d like to talk about another subject that came up last week. It was also spelled out loud and clear in the Fishead movie that I know many of you have seen. It’s the point that, even though it’s widely acknowledged that a psychopath cannot ”˜get better’ (and therefore it stands to reason that we cannot change the way they behave) it’s also true that the vast majority of the population are inadvertently supporting these types of people as they continue inflicting damage on individuals and on society itself.
I know”¦ that was a pretty strong statement to make. Believe me, it’s not one I make lightly.
The movie, Fishead, made a point that I found absolutely fascinating. Talking about famous psychopathic leaders, it invited us, the audience, to consider whether it is solely the psychopath who is responsible for the bad things that happen. Couldn’t it also be argued that it is the rest of us who are also in part responsible, because we are allowing the destructive behaviour to continue? Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Stand Up, Speak Out
I had to agree — it made perfect sense to me. In particular, I could identify with this from my years of experience working with teams and individuals in my professional career. Too often people will choose to keep their heads down, say nothing or let things wash over them in order to keep the peace. They’ll smile and say that everything is ”˜fine’”¦ Despite the fact that they may be desperately unhappy with a situation or a person they work with! Everything is far from fine. And no, it’s neither OK nor right that people should be expected (even encouraged!) to carry on regardless. This isn’t what the human race is about! This isn’t how we’ve made so much progress! This isn’t how it’s meant to be! My job, in those instances, is to encourage people to speak out and find a way to openly and honestly address issues in a healthy way that benefits them as an individual as well as the wider team. And it works. Every time.
It was the next part, though, that really made me sit up and take notice. Because just a few moments later, the film explained what percentage of the remaining population would need to do something different in order to have an effect on the rest. Before the answer was given, I had a stab at guessing what the figure would be, and felt confident that they would say around 20 — 30%. But you know what? I was totally wrong. The film said that it would take just 5% of the population to wake up and make a stand against the unacceptable — even just the small things — to make sociopathic behaviours that much harder to stick. Just 5% of us”¦ that’s all. Just that small amount to stand up to actions we know are wrong. To say “no” when we’re not happy. To demand a change when something goes against our values. Because when one of us starts standing up for what is right, then it encourages others to do the same. It wakes people up. It gives people permission to speak out and stop tolerating stuff that is harmful or hurtful to ourselves and to others.
“Having good morals” somebody said in the film “is contagious — just as much if not more so than bad morals!”
The thing is, though, while we block our instincts, shut down our emotions, and glide around in a pretend bubble of “everything’s fine” we are providing the perfect breeding ground for predators. They’re free to fine-tune their approach, hone their skills, and continue with their actions against humankind because we do nothing to stop them or at least ”˜call them’ on what they are doing.
Behaviour Breeds Behaviour
Yes, this is a scary world. It is also a world of opportunities and magic. A world where we can make more of a difference than most of us realize. And, in my opinion, the more people who become aware of how little is necessary to make a massive difference, more will join our growing army of fighters determined to do something to stop the predators, warn others against them and help those of us who have already been hurt by them.
It doesn’t take much you know. It really doesn’t. From my own experience, I know that as I have become stronger at simple things like setting boundaries and saying no, then my perspective of the world and, therefore, my experience of the world continues to change for the better. I feel more confident, and more in control. My heart is more open and I can clearly see with love and kindness. Each day I am more joyful, and each day brings more wonderful surprises. Did anything change on the outside? Does it mean that I have managed to rid the world of people who would do me harm? No, it doesn’t. It simply means that what I am now allowing in to my world is a deliberate and conscious choice — and I no longer stand for any kind of nonsense.
Can you imagine what would happen if more of us took the conscious decision to say no to anything that wasn’t useful or pleasing in our life? Can you imagine how inspiring it would be to others? Can you imagine how wonderful things could eventually become — and how impossible it would be for sociopaths to thrive as they have been”¦?
My friend Rachel pointed out when I was telling her all about last week’s course “Well, we can’t keep all the psychos locked up — so we’ve got to learn how to fight against them!”
So I did some simple sums in my head. Granted we don’t know for sure, but let’s say that 1% of the free population is psychopathic. We all do know for sure that these people will all have many victims — most running in to double figures when you take in to account that they may have hurt colleagues as well as friends and family, let alone the mega-sociopath who may have hatched a scheme that defrauds hundreds or thousands! So, for argument’s sake let’s say that if each has ten victims, then at least 10% of the population has had personal experience of a psychopath — regardless of whether or not they recognize what they were dealing with. That doesn’t necessarily matter. What matters is the fact that they have been hurt. That in some way (or many ways) they have experienced the destruction that these individuals continue to wreak on us, their unsuspecting victims. The original nice guys who naturally choose trust over suspicion.
It Only Takes 5%
So, what do you think might happen if just half of those people could learn how to re-set boundaries? How to speak out? How to stand up? How to reclaim who they are? How to consciously choose a life that’s filled with happiness and positive experiences”¦ ? We’d have the 5% that the film talked about and, as I’ve already said, it’s just as simple to copy the happy stuff — if not easier in fact! The good stuff, the positive results, can be hugely contagious. What chance would the baddies have in such a positive environment where people would no longer stand for negative behaviour? Of course I can’t prove it”¦ but I’m pretty sure that they couldn’t survive.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again because I feel it’s important. It’s up to all of us now. We all have the power to heal and to make a difference – no matter how impossible it may seem at times. Yes, I know from experience that it isn’t easy. I also know that we are all at different stages of our journey and I also acknowledge that not everyone will be interested in reaching out any further. It doesn’t matter. Because either way, all of us here have first hand experience of “the dark side” — we know what it means and we understand the dangers. And our numbers are growing.
I believe that we are the ones who can band together and make a real difference. From where I am standing, it is our painful experiences that make us authentic, giving us the hard-earned power to understand and empathise at the deepest level. We’ve been there, seen it and got the T-shirt, and perhaps have more reason than others to make sure that we find a way to stop these people continuing to hurt us and others.
What do you reckon”¦? 😉
Darwinsmom
Your post on empathy is interesting but how do you explain this sentence occurring in the absence of trauma (maybe I misread your point? if so, reset my direction?):
“People can only either do this through dissociation or not actually feeling anything…….For this to lead to the effect of sociopathic levels the dissociation must be chronic and fixed as survival method for a majority in someone’s lifetime”
Sarah,
empathy is not the same as knowing what someone is feeling. It’s not even the same as caring what someone is feeling. Empathy is when you believe you can feel what someone is feeling. Empathy can be wrong, too.
My spath could read people like nobody’s business. He knew just how to read their faces and was obsessed and fascinated by people’s facial expressions of emotions. I can’t say he didn’t care what they were feeling, he cared very much. He cared that he could manipulate those facial expressions. What he couldn’t do was imagine how that felt. He COULD imagine that a distressed person might commit suicide – he reveled in that. But he COULDN’T imagine what it would feel like to experience the pain that drives one to suicide. He was obsessed with suicide.
We weren’t intimate for the last 15 years or so. But when we went to a movie, it was usually a thriller and he would say, “honey, put your arms and legs around me so I can keep you warm.” I thought this was sweet, to be so thoughtful. But, I never said I was cold. He was just getting off on the starts and jumps in my body during the thrilling parts. He wanted to know which parts of the movie were the most impactful on my nervous system. With the lights off in the theatre, he couldn’t read my face, so this was the only way to tell.
Some spaths are very good at knowing how we feel, but only by watching our body language. They have no way to imagine what our sensibilities might be except to watch our reactions, because they don’t have any sensibilities themselves. That’s not empathy, they don’t sense your pain, they observe it, objectively – they can be fooled.
We, on the other hand, have empathy without even seeing a person. We imagine that if we were in a plane crash, we would be horrified. If a loved one dies, we would be grief-stricken, etc… When I see someone getting a shot at the doctor, I literally feel pain in my arms and legs. My legs turn to jello, just from watching. That’s empathy. If I were watching my ex-spath get a shot, I would react the same way, but it would be misplaced empathy, because in reality, he would feel almost nothing, except a localized pinch. Therefore empaths can be fooled too but we are mostly fooling ourselves, when it comes to spaths because we assumed that they are just like us.
Compassion is empathy WITH the desire to alleviate pain.
Sarah wrote:
“Sarah999 says:
Also . . . you said
“my ex spath was able to deliver a perfect I message to appeal to my empathy”. He showed empathy . . i.e., he KNEW what you would feel.
But he had no COMPASSION . . . he was manipulating you, WITHOUT CARING (no compassion) about the effect his manipulation would have on you.”
Actually that was the mistake I made… I thought that because he could deliver a perfect I message that he had emptahy. But any I-message of mine would always result in a fight. He behaved himself as if I accused him… exactly the opposite what an I-sentence is supposed to do.
Now, I know that he could make a perfect I message because he could identify his own feelings of anger and narcisitic injury, but that it does not mean that he felt any empathy.
“If someone’s going to be a successful sadist (which many P/S/N/A are) . . . . i.e, hurt the victim the maximally, (and thus garner the most power and control for themselves) . . Who do you think would be better . . the person who knows what will hurt and how much it hurt (i.e., has empathy) or the person who doesn’t know?
Just a question . . .”
I don’t need to hurt someone at all to the extreme to know how much they hurt. My empathy kicks in even with the hypothetical. I do not refrain from sadistic acts because of feeling compassion, but because I can imagine how much it would hurt , all that before any compassion is in the picture. It is empathy which prevents me beforehand from hurting someone wilfully.
Empathy is the ability to almost physically feel what you think others would feel if you were in that situation. Compassion is the choice to act on the empathy. When I walk past a begger at the supermarket I can feel empathy for him, and still refrain from giving him money. When I also take out my purse and give him some money, then I’m being compassionate.
I understand your reasoning… it’s the reasoning I made while I was with the spath… the glee while conning, the bemusement, the appeal to my sympathy, his ability to make me sympathize with I sentences… were they not evidence of him having emotions and empathy? They’re not. Sadism is not even about pain but about control… to make another person do and say as you like to avoid the pain. They find it funny, we would go to these lengths, because they themselves do not know this fear for pain, nor the pain.
Katy…
I have suffered from dissociation when I was younger. I had feelings, but I could not feel them, except in a blunted manner. I was able to talk about my feelings, analytically, afterwards but not WITH feeling. This was during my ID-crisis, and most of my therapy was targeted to help me experience emotions while being centered. Most of us have dissociated at times during our relationships with spaths… whenever their masks started to slip and they hurt us and we ignored it. If you think back of that hurtful moment, chances are you even see it as if in a movie, from a camera pov outside of yourself. Some of my nightmares in the aftermath involved digging up back some of those moments and instead of having my experience it from a camera pov, those nightmares pushed me back into the moment and my body and recognize how much he acutally had hurt me with his words. That hurt, but it also helped me to deal with that memory and move on from it in a healthy way. Most normal emotional gifted people can dissociate to avoid feeling pain, if needed.
When you read about sexual abusers and serial killers, the dissociation is often mentioned… but the dissociation is at a chronic level that permeats the disturbed personality’s daily life, 24/7. But when we talk about dissociation we still talk about a mental survival method in the brain to deal with painful emotions, and it’s a learned method.
On the other hand, people apparently can be born without having deep emotions. They don’t need to dissociate, since they’re already born that way. One could say that psychopaths are the latter… they don’t need to dissociate from their feelings, since htey don’t have any.
Sociopaths have gone through such trauma at early life, probably involving brain damage as well, that solely dissociation remained as a mental tactic to deal with emotions. The result is the same, observing yourself and others without much feeling, but because of other causes.
And I’m using the terms under the premisse that sociopaths are not disordered because of genetics, whereas psychopaths are.
Darwin’smom,
You said “Sociopaths have gone through such trauma at early life, probably involving brain damage as well, that solely dissociation remained as a mental tactic to deal with emotions.” but research shows that is NOT the case that it is trauma that causes this “dissociation”, just like it is a MYTH that they “all abuse animals as children” or that “all pedophiles have been sexually abused as children” or that all “sexually abused children become abusers as adults.”
There have been studies with twins raised separately and other studies that show that GENETICS plays a big part in psychopathy just as it does in Autism, bi-polar, ADHD and depression (as well as other mental problems) It used to be that if a child didn’t turn out well it was BLAMED on the the parents. Temple Grandin’s mother was told that her being a “cold mother” was the reason that Temple was how she was, of course NOW we know that is not the case, but at that time in medical history the politically correct belief was that a baby was born a BLANK SLATE and that Environment was 100% of how the child turned out. Of course this was NOT TRUE, but it was what most professionals subscribed to until the OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE was shown that DNA has a huge impact.
Farmers and animal breeders have known for 1,000s of years that the temperment of animals is bred in the bone…look at Pit Bull dogs and Spanish fighting bulls, Border Collies, and retrievers and other hunting dogs bred as well as trained for specific jobs. Of course not EVERY Pit Bulldog is a stone cold killer, but the breed in GENERAL is more aggressive than other breeds because that is what they have been selected for.
Through the years of having cattle, I selected out the ones which were more aggressive or flighty and after 20 years of this, my herd was for the most part exceptionally calm and docile. Every once in a while though I would have a “crazee” one born, and as soon as I realized it was that way, it was “selected” out of the breeding pool and into the meat freezer.
Children are born with an incompletely formed brain (if our brain was completely formed when we were born, our heads would be too big to be born) so the child’s brain grows after birth and environmental things stimulate that brain, the way it is programmed etc. It has been shown that EARLY learning of multiple languages facilitates the ABILITY to learn new languages later in life, and learning to play a musical instrument EARLY makes it easier to learn other instruments later as an adult. So the parts of our brains that are USED grow bigger and those that are UNused don’t develop as well.
TRAUMA in early childhood can also have a negative effect on the development of the child’s brain too, or loving and gentle nurturing can have a positive influence on a child with “poor Genetics” for empathy.
Baby kittens are borh with their eyes closed and they open about age 10 days. If a kitten’s eyes are taped shut and don’t open during that CRITICAL TIME then the kitten will be blind forever because the neural pathways from eye to brain are NEVER FORMED. So there are critical periods for children as well, just like with other animals “bonding” takes place at a CRITICAL TIME (geese bond to the first thing they see move after hatching) wolves bond to their pack/family at age 4-12 weeks (and dogs do as well, but to a lesser extent, so the best age to get a puppy is during those weeks) and if wolves miss this critical bonding period they are not ever properly bonded to others.
Research is going on all over the world in psychology and in studying psychopathology in particular, with brain scans, etc. but there is still a GREAT DEAL to learn about the human brain. I’d love to be around in 100 years to see what mankind has learned.
I think we cross posted, because I added at the end in an edit… “And I’m using the terms under the premisse that sociopaths are not disordered because of genetics, whereas psychopaths are.”
I kinda see brains like a field of acres… development would be the farmer riding tracks in the field to plant with his oxe. Neural pathways are like those tracks. The problem after years, comes when the farmer decided to lay different tracks, but the tool keeps sliding back in the old tracks. Dissociation is one of those developmental tracks.
The question of course is whether a distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths can be effectively made. And another is whether severe dissociation can be unlearned.
Darwin, there really is not much difference in psychopaths and sociopaths, they are essentially the same animal, just two different names.
We have debated here on thhis blog what is the “best name” for them, the CURRENT OFFICIAL name is “anti-social personality disorder” but even that is not 100% what the researchers are calling psychopaths or sociopaths.
The EXPERTS CANNOT AGREE either on a name or a definition in the DSM-IV or DSM-V which is coming out in the next year or so. The PhDs are like a “committee designing a “horse” and each one has to come up with their own “hump” to put on it and it comes out looking like a 4-humped CAMEL” LOL
If the experts can’t agree how in the world do you expect the public to get a handle on what a psycho/socio-path is? Most people think it is a serial killer, and they don’t associate it with People like former NJ Governor James E. McGreevey, or John Elliot, or Bernie Madoff. They think of Ted Bundy, or Jack the Ripper, and only a small percentage of psychopaths are murderers.
About 20-25% of CONVICTS would score 30 points on the PCL-R which is the check list to determine who is and who is not a psychopath, but the AVERAGE score of ALL convicts is 22, which is VERY high in P-traits even though they are not “officially” psychopaths until they score a 30, you sure don’t want to take an ex convict home for a pet! LOL ANY ex convict is a HIGH RISK to be a very TOXIC person.
Again, though, most of the population of psychopaths or people HIGH in P traits is on the OUTSIDE of prison passing as “human”
Darwin’smom,
I think the ability to dissociate is inborn in some of us more than in others. Cattle and many kinds of cloven hoofed prey animals will dissociate when they are held firmly. Horses on the other hand panic and keep on struggling, or they run blindly away from a perceived threat. Donkeys on the other hand, do not run blindly from a threat but stop and reassess the direction the danger is coming from and decide whether to fight or flee. If they are tangled up, say in a rope around their leg, they will struggle a bit to get free but if they are unable, they do NOT panic like a horse will and hurt themselves by struggling.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that some people tend to FREEZE when they sense danger (dissociate) and several times in my life I have literally FROZEN on the spot when I thought I was in danger. My son D (adopted) does NOT freeze,, my husband didnt freeze when he saw the plane was going to crash, but the cause of the crash was an over reaction to a perceived threat by the man flying it, and then He FROZE. If he had kept his head and had turned off the electrical system, there would not have been a single scratch on any of the people in the plane. But because the man froze, it burst into flame. My husband’s efforts though, kept it upright and kept it from flipping upside down and killing everyone. Only my husband died. The man who caused the crash by his dissociation and freezing did recover early enough to break out a window and allow himself and the other two people to escape the fire alive at least, even though with severe burns.
At the site of the plane wreck, I was gobsmacked and in shock, but my medical training did allow me to function somewhat until other help arrived so did benefit the three survivors who were also in shock as well as burned.
Looking back at my life and the various times I’ve been endangered (thought I was not going to get out of a situation alive) I have dissociated completely, gone into almost a shock state where “all was dark” but other times, under similarly dangerous conditions, I have functioned well and NOT dissociated, so not sure why some are different from others.
Denial, and being able to maintain that state of thinking that something isn’t “real” is a protective mechanism for us all and is a form of dissociation for more chronic stress and danger, but long term, it keeps us from ACTING to protect ourselves from the danger, so we have to get out of the denial.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s research on the grief process (google her work) shows that the different stages of grief over a loss flow nbut not in a linear way (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) but in a “random” way of 1,3,5,2,4, etc. until we eventually resolve it and come to acceptance. Denial is a big part of this grief process and protects us early on from overwhelming emotions we are not equipped to handle. FAcing the truth of what we have lost is very painful, but necessary to healing.
Uhuh, I was just thinking of the genetic versus non-genetic forms. The results are the same, but developmental causes are different. It was when I was writing about dissociation that I suddenly realized that may be an explanation. But I’m not sure whether dissociation is still regarded as a cause for non-genetic spath behaviour, and whether it should.
In any case, if one counts chronic dissociation as a cause for the lack of feeling and empathy it still means the potetional for the brain to allow a person to feel is present within that individual… otherwise there wouldn’t be a dissociative reaction.
It is possible the diverging theories of the cause of lack of empathy are the reason why professionals disagree on wether it is curable or preventive via therapy or not.
The dissociaton mode (which I regard as the observational mode) is sometimes a good thing… I’ve always been very good in emergency situations to keep my cool and remain pragmatical.
I had an accident on my bike with a car when I was 14. Everyone around me was in a frenzy, and while the ambulance wa on the way, I was the one able to say… where’s my schoolbag, I need my schooldiary for the insurance papers, since this happened on my way home from school. Even the adults aroudn me looked at me kinda with awe. It was the same thing when oe of the rafting boats on a trip in Mexico had flipped and several people had ended up in the water and were panicking. And again during the hurricane sheltering.
Always I kept thinking, “these people must think I’m cold as hell and unempathic to their panick.”
However, AFTERWARDS, I would retreat and do something very empathic and compassionate (like saving a kitten and taking it further along on the trip and handfeed it), which is a way to reconnect with my own emotions again.
Those are the situations imo to dissociate, if it helps to keep you pragmatic.
Oxy
You bring up excellent points. I know I do not freeze in emergency situations (my first response is to say OH SH*). LATER I sometimes feel like crying my heart out. I have seen people freeze or look dazed like zombies. I did not know this was dissociation, I thought they just did that b/c they didn’t know what to do in a panic situation. So when I trained new nurses or tech for cardiac interventions, I gave them ONE task they must do in a code situation and I have them practice it. We learned that people didn’t seem to freeze when they were trained to that task. In fact, NOBODY experienced a FREEZE since we started training that way.
So what do you think? Can it be possible that the FREEZE has more to do with not knowing what to do?