Editor’s note: The following article was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Adelade.” She previously wrote “12 steps of recovery from love fraud.”
I very much enjoy reading, especially those fictitious works that cause me to think and learn. Without a doubt, nearly everyone has seen the movie, Jurassic Park, based upon a book that was written by Michael Crichton over 20 years ago. Well, I re-read the book over the long Memorial Day weekend. It is far, far different from the movie, and drives home the ramifications of the human myth of “control.” If you haven’t read the book, I would urge you to do so, simply because it speaks to a part of the human condition that is inherent in each of us: the need for control.
In reading Jurassic Park, the character of Dr. Ian Malcolm is a naysayer with regard to the Park’s subject matter, from the first page. Malcolm espouses “Chaos Theory” and seems beyond arrogant. As the story unfolds, the reader eventually rejects the perception that Malcolm is just an arrogant ass and realizes that he’s just speaking truthfully.
Well, that’s all very interesting (yawn) and zippety-doo-dah, what does any of that have to do with surviving sociopathy? Okay ”¦ hang with me for a second. Where I am concerned, many of the discussions in this book caused a personal epiphany.
Knowledge vs. control
Malcolm goes on to discuss how science has only focused upon “control” as the driving forces behind scientific discoveries. If something can be scientifically proven (or, discovered), human beings have been under the false assumption that we will have the ability to control whatever it is, whether it’s nuclear physics or human behavior. Knowledge about something does not signify control over something. This is where the fallacy of science vs. life is exposed, and that simple truth rocked my world.
The arrogance of science is very clear: there are many diseases, disorders, and deformities that cannot be altered even if science can explain what they are or why they occur. Genetic research has been in full swing for nearly 80 years and the one thing that has been proven through generations of hybridization and engineering is that anomalies will randomly occur regardless of how a genome is tweaked. This is an inevitability – when a string of DNA is hybridized or altered, it is impossible to weed out defects and anomalies, even if the geneticist believes that he/she has taken every possible variable into account. Nature has the final say in all things, period.
Sociopaths are what they are
So, once again, what does all of this gibberish and ranting have to do with surviving sociopath entanglements? It means just this: defining sociopathy/psychopathy, pigeonholing assessments, and all of the psych-speak in every human language will not alter the fact that sociopaths simply “are.” Regardless of the label, the acronym, the bell curve, the paradigm, or the nodding of educated heads and “harrumphing” in unison, what is not going to change is the fact that sociopaths are what they are, do what they do, and will always remain a factor of the human condition.
Without a doubt, this is the singular truth with regard to our survival, recovery, and emergence: We don’t really need to understand sociopathy. We don’t need to define whether it’s “nature vs. nurture.” We don’t need to construct parameters for an individual to be stuffed into. No amount of data is going to prevent sociopath and psychopath developments ever. What we “need” is to alter our own choices, behaviors, and perceptions and adapt so that we won’t be easy targets, again. What we “need,” more than anything, is to accept our human limitations with respect to “control,” and adapt.
Plants and animals have adapted to develop numerous strategies with regard to defense, propagation, and survival. Unfortunately (or not), human beings have come to the point in their perceptions that all we need is to “control” everything on earth from cellular mitosis to comet trajectories, and that Science and “The Experts” can accomplish this. And, this just isn’t so. We cannot stop earthquakes, though we can attempt to predict them. We cannot control where/when tornadoes will develop, though we can observe Doppler radar and blare out klaxon warnings if data suggests a threat. We cannot control whether an expensive show-quality heifer will produce a conjoined calf or not, but we can conduct amniocentesis in an attempt to intervene. We cannot control whether a human being is born as (or, develops into) a sociopath or not, but we attempt to construct parameters so as to avoid those who fit the profile.
We can adapt
What we can do is adapt. If our system of beliefs is flawed, we can change them. If our perceptions about human nature are flawed, we can alter them. If we leave ourselves open to repeated targeting and victimization, we can alter those things that make us attractive to sociopaths. We have the capacity to adapt, to heal, to emerge, and to progress. Now, I’m not saying that adaptation is smooth, painless, or instantaneous. Adaptation requires time ”¦ good, long time. Mistakes must be made along the way in order to develop “permanent” personal changes that are beneficial. The work that goes into adaptation is going to be intense, challenging, and demanding.
I’m taking this and I’m running with it as if my backside is on fire. I don’t need anyone in any professional capacity to tell me what I need to understand in the false assumption that “understanding will bring healing.” For me, that assumption is pure rubbish and simply not true. My healing, and the desire to heal, must come from within me, alone. No pill, no suggestion, no philosophy, no data, no acronym, and no religious ritual is going to cause me to adapt sufficiently enough to make myself safer from future victimization. So, I’m going to prioritize my “emotional hybridization,” and begin the long, slow processes of healing and emerging. I’m making the choice to accept this emergence as it is: a necessity of survival, on every level.
Donna,
I felt the strong urge to reply to your post because I respectfully disagree with your premise that we don’t really have to understand psychopathy. I believe it is crucial for readers who come here to understand this fundamental truth so they can learn to heal. I think it is imperative that we do understand psychopathy. I say this not because I expect the psychopath to change, rather for ourselves, for at least two essential reasons:
• It helps us heal
• It helps us to better protect ourselves
You mention in your post that we must adapt, change our flawed belief systems, and flawed perceptions of human nature. I wholeheartedly agree.
* However, we cannot change and adapt in a vacuum.*
In order to accomplish these goals we need tools. Knowledge is key. Studying psychopathy gives us the tools we need to adapt. We learn about specific behavior patterns in people that signal a red flag. Knowledge is power. We learn the warning signs that tell us this person is dangerous. Unfortunately, this learning doesn’t happen overnight, like any subject. I believe that one cannot learn enough and that learning is an ongoing process.
The more we learn, the more the old layers peel away and new ones grow in their place. Our brains begin to make new neuro-pathways. Changing our thinking is a long process and it takes time for the neuro-pathways to become entrenched. It shouldn’t be thought of as a task since learning is tremendously rewarding. And, it helps restore our self-esteem.
For these reasons I am very grateful to those who create websites like Lovefraud and all those who have written books on the topic. They have opened my eyes and helped me on a continuing path to recovery.
I also continue to review to keep these ideas fresh and updated. Learning brings enlightenment. It’s very exciting. The more we learn, the more we grow.
Learning about psychopaths helps us to better understand ourselves and gives us *validation* by not blaming ourselves, and not allowing others to victim-blame ourselves and others.
Gia, I’ve devoted too much time focusing on “labels” and what I feel to be an endless loop of energy being spent on defining sociopath/psychopath. When I said that “we don’t need” to know, I meant that precious healing energy might be better spent focusing on ourselves.
I do agree that knowledge is power, to a degree. But, I’ve also seen in myself that the search for knowledge can become an enormous distraction from personal healing and growth. I’ve done little of either, lately, and a great deal of energy that I could be putting into myself has been devoted to a vain attempt at “understanding” sociopathy. I don’t think that anyone in any capacity will ever truly “understand” this personality disorder. For me, it suffices to recognize that it simply exists, what the symptoms are, and how to better construct personal boundaries so that I’m not such an easy target, again.
As for blaming victims of sociopathy, my personal feeling is that this is part of cognitive dissonance – people don’t just “do bad things” to other people for their own entertainment, or so we’ve been taught. Well, they do harm others for entertainment, gratification, sex, money, power, attention, and accolades. Once a person has experienced a sociopathic entanglement, they’ll be very slow to blame another victim for being duped by a sociopath.
Adaptation is a personal exercise, I believe. No single formula, diet, regimen, or ritual works for the whole of human kind. Whatever works for me to get up that mountain of recovery is fine by me, and the same holds true with what may work for others. And, I hope to goodness gracious that I can figure out a way to get myself going, again. I don’t like being stuck on that mountainside in the rain.
Brightest blessings
To clarify “victim-blame,” I was once one of “those people” who believed that domestic violence and abuse was committed by the ignorant and uneducated. Strictly “low-class.” Imagine my surprise when I began learning Truths about DV&A! It’s all about preconceived notions, misinformation, and stereotyping. That’s what I feel goes forth with sociopathy/psychopathy – perceptions that are generated based upon misinformation and stereotyping.
We rarely hear or read about a garden-variety sociopath in publications or news broadcasts. Only the most notorious, shocking, and marketable examples of sociopaths/psychopaths are reported. Perhaps, this is why Courts and profesisonals in the psychiatric/psychological fields cannot (or, will not) connect the dots to make the image whole: one need not be a serial killer to be a sociopath.
Adelade, Great article! I am looking forward to your next ones as well….and I have enjoyed this and your past ones. I am so glad to see other lovefraud bloggers starting to write articles and making LF more and more inclusive as far as authors go. Thanks for your contribution.
I just finished reading a (true) book about a NY city policeman and the problems he had in his unit with crooked cops in high places covering up for their kids who were also crooked cops. The evidence was so OPEN and OBVIOUS and the crooked cops described were so obviously high in P traits if not fully psychopaths…and the honest cop had his life on the line as he was undercover and the crooked cop was tipping off the bad guys…people died as a result.
Abuse is not limited to one strata of society, but is all throughout, and it comes in different forms from wife beating to political corruption.
Thanks Adelade! Interesting read. We can learn about psychopathy from many different subjects. We can learn about healin from many as well.
Adelade,
I have to agree with Gia. Understanding psychopathy is critical to healing, not just ourselves but also the effect of spaths on humanity. Zooming out to see the big picture using anthropological lenses, has allowed me to RECOGNIZE psychopathy in all its forms through time and various cultures.
Psychopathy is not like a species that pops up out of nowhere. It is a disease, it is contagious. Like love, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is a disease that occurs in relation to humanity. When spaths slime us, that’s contagion. Violence is contagious. Human beings are mimetic, we become like the people around us. To say that you can protect yourself without understanding the thing you are protecting yourself from is naive. This is especially pertinent to something like scapegoating, since it is hidden and when it is unveiled, it morphs to hide itself again. Abuse is that way too.
I never even KNEW I was being abused because I thought it had to involve physical violence. At the end, spath became so abusive to everyone and then cried saying that it was all because of stress from his job. boohoo. Abusers hide what they do.
Domestic violence gets you put in jail, so it has morphed. What was once physical abuse is now emotional, financial, and legal abuse. Nobody recognizes it. It’s not illegal and you don’t go to jail for it.
The bankers cried in 2008 about needing money because they were too big to fail. “It would hurt the PEOPLE if we fail! They’ll lose their houses and businesses!” Well, as soon as they got their money, they went off on luxury spa vacations and then said they had used “other money!” The taxpayers still lost houses and businesses after we gave the bankers billions. How are you going to single handedly heal from that kind of abuse if you don’t understand it?
Gray rock and decoy gray rock are products of studying the spaths. There is much more to know. They watch and study us. We are at a disadvantage if we don’t watch and study them.
This perspective also frees us from feeling the slime of the spath as a narcissistic injury. Once we understand their way of thinking, we stop taking it personally. It was never personal, it was never about you. He’s just attempting to regulate his own dysfunctional emotions.
I agree that we need to know about psychopathy.
I’ve mentioned a few times here how angry I’ve been that I have wasted so many years in therapy attempting to reconcile and heal relationships with Ps that had no hope of ever happening.
Without knowing what Ps are, what they are capable of doing, and why psychopathy exists, I would have continued to have been a square peg being forced through therapy’s round hole.
Therapists not knowing was far from healing for me; the lack of knowledge contributed substantially to my continued abuse and misery. And since I cannot be in two places at once, wasting time and effort in therapy meant that I was deprived of time and opportunities to positively develop myself, making myself less of a burden on others, and even possibly doing or saying something that might have benefitted others.
The courts do not understand psychopathy or why else would they have rulings that prior acts cannot be considered in a crime because they are too prejudicial? Or why do judges keep sending powerless, innocent children back to parents who will continue to abuse them?
Society in general doesn’t get psychopathy. We keep electing leaders or admiring business people who will stab us in the back.
We keep being urged to forgive or overlook Ps. Kids are up against bullying in school from fellow students, teachers, and other staff.
I think we need to know, and we need to know fully, so we can modify our society, laws, and practices that will protect and benefit the most people.
We need to throw out misleading presumptions like, “What mother doesn’t love her child?” or “How could anybody so charming and pleasant be capable of anything like that?”
We need to distinguish a token statement of “I’m sorry” from genuine remorse and personal insight into one’s character. We need not be sitting ducks for predators. We need to know how the predators groom and prey.
We need to know so that we can develop training programs for children and adults in all types of situations and walks in life.
How did I heal?
A large part of that came from understanding what was going on with the other side and that everything was not my fault. With that knowledge, I was empowered and no longer at the mercy of the Ps.
G1S,
for me it was doctors giving me SSRI’s, prozac and paxil and lexapro etc…
Not one asked me about my relationshits. Not one imagined that I was being poisoned.
There will come a day when we stop treating human beings as individuals and start treating them in the context of their lives and relationships. These things, our environment, affects us as much or more than our genetics.
One doctor, a naturopath, did suspect something. She said, “Were you sexually abused as a child? You seem like you’re suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.” When I indignantly denied that my parents could ever do that, she suggested a psychic healer. I didn’t go. Maybe I should have?
There was another doctor, an osteopath. He was obsessed with the stock market and his Eli Lilly stock. He had a huge bigscreen tv on in the exam room so he could watch the stock market while treating patients. He loved prozac so much that he took it himself. He said it “makes me a better me.”
Despite himself, he had some insight. He put all my problems down to stress. I denied that too. This was in the early 80’s and I said, “stress? no-I-don’t-have-stress-stress-is-not-the-problem-I can-handle-stress.” Obviously I lacked self-knowledge and the quack did have some insight, but his solution was prozac.
Finally, in 2009, after I left the freak I talked to a security guard at the local tv station. I wanted to know what the spath had done to be banned from the premises. He wouldn’t tell me, but he did say that his wife was a therapist. She had told him that almost all the patients she has, come in thinking there is something wrong with them and then it turns out that there is a toxic person sabotaging their lives.
So, yeah, people are starting to get it. But it’s still hard to see. Abusers hide what they are. If they didn’t, supply would run.
I think that it’s important to recognize victim-blaming as a RED FLAG. I’ve noticed on several news articles about sociopaths and their victims, that the comment sections are filled with quotes like, “well she should have known.”, “She believed what she wanted to believe.”, “This is what happens when you’re greedy.” etc…
Well, I’d like to believe that these commenters really are just stupid, BUT I’ve learned a few things from studying psychopaths and the phenomena of scapegoating. What I learned is that the victim must be blamed so that the spath feels better and so that the community feels safe and so that catharsis can occur and order restored. Blaming the victim is PART OF THE PROCESS of scapegoating. In every mythology, the sacrificed victim is guilty and that’s WHY they are killed and that’s why they become a god, because they have the power to restore order through their death.
The only one that is different, is the story of Jesus, who is known to be innocent.
I don’t believe the commenters are stupid, though some might be. I know for a fact that psychopaths feel compelled to spread their way of thinking by planting seeds. My own spath would say, “Anyone who would fall for a scam deserves to lose their money.” I had NO CLUE that he was talking about me and about all his other victims. He said it with such certainty and authority that I actually saw the logic in his statement. After all, haven’t we all heard the wise old saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”?
I propose to you all that a spath came up with that saying, just so we would all blame the victim.
Sky,
I agree.
They scapegoat the victim because the alternative is too horrendous to consider, i.e., that they walk among us in great numbers and that we are all fair targets.
I’m not so sure that they are getting it about the scapegoating that they are doing, but I do believe that it is no longer comfortable to write all these incidents off as “the exception.”
When the exceptions keep accumulating and there are too many of them, then what you have is the norm.
When reporters et al start to realize that this is the norm, they will start looking at other things and asking other questions.