By Mary Ann Glynn, LCSW, located in Bernardsville, New Jersey
Before I go into explaining in more detail the exercises to help you gather strength and lose fear to leave the sociopath (from my last article) it would be helpful to know how and why we end up reacting to the sociopath and getting attached and controlled in the first place.
Predators are extremely astute at quickly assessing and targeting our vulnerabilities, whether consciously or subconsciously. It’s very empowering to start becoming aware of what those vulnerabilities are that hook us and keep us hooked. Self-awareness, or “mindfulness,” is the most essential tool in going forward. It means to become conscious of our reactions instead of being subconsciously driven, so that we can regain control and inner strength, and become detached.
Perhaps the biggest question we ask ourselves after realizing we have been with a sociopath is, “How did this happened to me?” We may have started out as strong and independent, feeling relatively good about ourselves, had success in our lives, even had successful relationships. But when we were swept off our feet by the attentive, often intelligent, charming, and confident/strong personality that was our sociopath, we thought we had finally found someone who seemed to focus on loving us and was adoringly committed. At the end of it all, we feel foolish and ashamed for being taken in, for not seeing the signs.
When it happened to me, I was an experienced therapist who had worked long and hard in therapy myself to heal childhood wounds. I had recovered as a teenager from addiction and worked in the rehab as a counselor for three years. I had grieved the death of my husband after a long and happy marriage, become a struggling single mother while obtaining a graduate degree so we could survive. I dealt with mental illness in family members. I had great friends and a loving family. I loved my work. I felt strong. I was good. So, after having been taken in by a sociopath, I felt particularly foolish and ashamed. How did a therapist get conned?
I suppose some of that has to do with trusting that people who look you in the eye and tell you something are being truthful, plus believing in the inherent goodness of people — what I’ve now come to recognize as naivety. But, there were other things in me reacting and responding to the sociopath as well — some dormant for a long time — and these vary from person to person. What are those reactions and responses in us that the sociopath targets, that we can identify and change?
They target our loyalty, trusting nature, commitment
They can see that we are naïve to their type. I believe the “love-bombing,” the attention, the being everything we want or need them to be, their perfect glib answers, initially throw us off guard. The only thing we know about this person is what they present to us and that is all good, and we believe them. They have made it through the first level — gaining our trust.
We mistakenly perceive that they feel as connected to us as we do to them. We believe they are experiencing the growing feelings for them in the same way, becoming more committed — especially as they voice that they are. They may be feeling something intense (or not), but it is not emotional connection like we think it is. We explain away their questionable behavior in the only way we know how — we perceive their confidence not as arrogance, their glibness not as deception, their dominance not as being controlling — but as strengths. It is encouraging to them that we accept them, and remain loyal and committed.
They target our caretaker, codependent tendencies
We may have been very much in control in our lives, felt confident, were independent, even have overcome previous codependent tendencies, and built solid boundaries. But, when the sociopath we love starts outwardly exhibiting the need to be in control, our subconscious knows just what to do.
This response is likely to come from a younger version of us, perhaps going all the way back to childhood. We may have had a controlling/abusive parent or older sibling, a non-present parent, or witnessed the parent abusing or neglecting the other parent or a sibling. Maybe someone outside our family abused us or we were bullied. Or, maybe we just got too much correcting and/or criticizing and not enough validation. As children we may have responded by trying to be “good,” trying harder, being the peacemaker. We were over-responsible, blaming and looking at ourselves to solve the problem/chaos, in hopes that it ultimately will get us what every child needs: nurturing, validation. Some of us may have fought for it.
So, when our partner creates the same environment in the relationship (e.g. reacting in anger, dismissiveness, shutting down, dissociating/withdrawing whenever we express a need or are not submissive), we do what we know. We scramble to save the relationship by trying harder, looking for the answer in ourselves, or fighting, in the hope that our needs for nurturing and validation in the relationship will be met. But the sociopath’s message is always the same: “Either conform to what works for me or go away.” Over time we accommodate them more and more to save the relationship. We start to lose what boundaries we have and our very selves.
They target the addict
Some of us respond viscerally to the frequent over-the-top sex the sociopath is so good at, or to the feeling of “love” that comes at the beginning of a relationship. Of course, the sociopath knows how to pour it on in heady doses. If we have addictive tendencies, we will be vulnerable to the “love drug” as a means to feel better.
Through the sociopath’s continual demands for sex, the hormone oxytocin is being released, which creates a powerful feeling of attachment. The sociopath instinctively knows this! This process is genetically encoded for the survival of offspring. Sex also causes a powerful release of dopamine, which is the body’s natural opiate. It all just makes us feel happy and close to our partner, makes unpleasant feelings go away, inside us or in the relationship. We have to ask ourselves, what about that “high” works for us?
They target our own fears about commitment
This is something we may have to dig deep to see in ourselves. While we were consciously “ready” for love, and so happy to have found it in the sociopath, our subconscious beliefs about love were likely not so optimistic. For instance, deep down we might not believe we are lovable or worthy of happiness. Or, we may have experienced a trauma that changed our former faith in love, happiness, or our worthiness, such as divorce, death, multiple failed relationships, being alone, aging.
These subconscious beliefs will make us afraid to fully commit because if we do, we will experience the very painful loss of love that we had experienced before. So, we end up with someone who is not capable of committing, not even really present in the relationship. Then we subconsciously know the loss won’t feel as bad. In a strange way, we are protecting ourselves.
They target our inner victim
I remember thinking at times, “Why do I feel like I did when I was living with my abusive father?” (wounds I had healed long ago with my father). But then, there was that feeling of it being very familiar. My “victim consciousness” got triggered. When she did, she went off and isolated, curled into a ball of despair. (That is, until my “fighter” kicked in later on.)
We all have a victim in us to some degree — whether we were victimized by abuse and/or neglect in our families, abuse outside the home, bullying, rejection, or learning problems. As a child, we were powerless to protect ourselves or know how to feel good with ourselves. Our partner who abuses, threatens, dominates, etc., violates our personhood, and by definition, victimizes us. This triggers the inner victim, which may have been long dormant, but who will feel and react exactly the way it did before — feeling powerless to influence/stop the perpetrator, questioning his/her own worth, feeling shame — all crippling.
They target our empathy
This is the biggest hook! Subconsciously the sociopath can intuit our “childhood wound,” as we can intuit theirs. They may tell us about how they were abused and/or neglected by their parents or others. Indeed, they may have horrific stories of how their parents or others victimized, humiliated, and abandoned them. When we hear this, our own childhood wound of abandonment, abuse, loneliness, or neglect, is triggered, and so we feel intense compassion and sorrow for the wounded boy/girl in them.
Their wound is deep down in them, and it is unhealed because, while they may speak sadly about how they were unloved or victimized, they are not actually emotionally connected to it. They chose at some point to bury it under rage. But we very much are! This can make us determined to love and never leave that poor boy/girl who no one ever loved and who everyone else abandoned.
Our sadness for that wounded boy/girl will also encourage us to overlook too much. We may not judge him/her by normal standards or expectations, and may excuse his/her behaviors based on what s/he’s been through. At this point, because we identify and connect to our partner’s wounded child, to leave him/her now, we would be putting ourselves in the place of the parents or abusers who wounded them (and us). We are put in a terrible conflict between not abandoning them, and our own survival.
@....... Truthspeak Thank you! Nice to “see” you as well!
Truthspeak
I know what you mean about the entitlement. Some of the things he took from me were just plain stupid. Face cleanser, half of a petrified wood rock I found. I assume he gave it to his son. Things he could easily afford. Plus, I’m financially strapped. I have to laugh and say, WTF?
Interesting comments about the spath eating. My ex would literally inhale his food. It was difficult to watch and he would shove it in his mouth with his finers. It completely grossed me out. Then he would loudly blow his nose and wad up the napkin and twist it in his nose. There were so many times I lost my appetite watching him eat. And yes he would eat my food to and anyone elses for that matter. Food is a BIG thing for him. He prides himself on his cooking abilities but the only thing he really knows how to make is heavy cream sauces. And he is overweight and doesn’t exercise. Well he exercises his fingers as he types on his keyboard trolling the internet for his next victim(s). And the rage. He would scream at me at the top of his lungs in front of his children and it was always something trivial that he would rage about. That I allowed my daughter to have a sleepover. His children never leave the house. He plants them in front of the TV to play video games so he can find his next prey on the internet. And in the end it was me who was clinging to him trying to figure out why he was detaching himself from me. I blamed me. He blamed me. But in reality the relationship was doomed from the get go. As all of his sick and twisted relationships will be. Sadly he is someone else’s nightmare now. Not sad for me. Sad for all of them!!!!!
“Interesting comments about the spath eating. My ex would literally inhale his food. It was difficult to watch and he would shove it in his mouth with his finers. It completely grossed me out. Then he would loudly blow his nose and wad up the napkin and twist it in his nose.”
Such behavior is also consistent with Aspergers Syndrome. Keep in mind, such people can be very, very difficult and can appear to be sociopaths, when they are not. However, while some of the underlying physiological causes are shared with sociopathy, sociopaths are generally much more functional than those with Aspergers Syndrome.
BBE,
the aspergers man I know is a very picky and refined eater.
He is obsessed with manners. It’s part of the obsession with rules. So I don’t think disgusting eating habits is part of aspergers at all. Though I think it is related to being a spath.
More on this. I know or have known individuals with Aspergers Syndrome(a long-tie family friend), Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Sociopaths.
In terms of “functionality” my observation is the reverse order of the above. The Sociopath was the most functional, the Aspergers the least functional, at least in terms of general interpersonal behavior.
Skylar;
Thankfully, being non-professional, our sample size of such individuals is small, so your Aspergers friend could be a meticulous eater, where as the one I know is a slob…
But neither sociopath I knew ate in such a manner — table-wise, they are both reserved eaters.
Part of the mask — sociopaths typically display no external manifestation of being disordered, other than the stare and lack of vocal affect, both of which would not be apparent as indicating a disorder except to the learned…
In addition the Aspergers person I know is almost always cool and never overtly emotional, whereas the sociopaths were prone to odd, inappropriate outbursts.
As a child in Sunday School, I was taught that all people are good. I believed this to the bottom of my soul…even the murders’ etc. just did not know what they were doing… I was convinced that they had a lost inner core that was good and God given. Being married to a psychopath destroyed that false belief.
God did not make a mistake or created psychopaths. They are simply a deviant mutation of evolution. They have human bodies and brains without a soul. How that happened, I cannot comprehend, but that it has happened I know to be true. Like all of you, I learned the hard way by being too trustful, naive, honest and committed.
I do believe there is a reason we have had to learn this though…to help others and to let posterity through science, child protective services and law enforcement figure out how to diagnose and contain them.
They are not new, they are just being defined.
I’d like to add a few thoughts.
I think too much credit is being given to the Ps’ ability to pick us out. Just like we need to be on the watch for their red flags, my guess is they’re on the watch for our green lights, e.g., everybody is born good etc.
Yes, I absolutely agree that we unconciously gravitate to those who remind us in some way of our upbringing. My guess is that they’re doing the same as us, but from the other side of the coin – gravitating to those who were the victims in their childhoods.
I’d like to see a list of our green-lights, i.e., those things that we say and do that say, “Come on down! Will I be a victim for you!”
I bet we give off a lot of clues (or tells.) My guess is that nobody has really looked into that aspect of relationships (if anybody knows of any studies and can cite them or post links to them, I’d be really interested in seeing them.)
For example, it was very revealing to me how differently I reacted to what the P was saying at the most recent child support hearing. Instead of rising to his bait, I dismissed what he said to the judge.
Example – he told the judge that I hung up on the guy he had call me. I sure did. Instead of trying to convince the judge that I really am a good girl and would never do anything as rude as that, because the judge might not think well of me, I realized that what I did was very appropriate; I told the guy to have Daddy Dearest’s attorney call mine. I relayed that to the judge. I really didn’t care if she approved of me or not, but I knew that she wouldn’t find fault.
Now that I have had some time to think over how I could have responded, I could have added that I would never give out personal information to a stranger over the phone. How did I know who this guy was?
As it was, I did have the presence of mind to say that I couldn’t have submitted the application if I had wanted because quite simply, the health insurance policy isn’t in my name.
Now that I have a 19-year-old son, I hear him making statements that he wants Mommy to do for him the drudge tasks, the things that are boring, take time etc. so he can have fun with his friends. My answer to him is, “Don’t we all?”
I strongly suspect that a version of this is one of our green lights.
I’m a single mother. I’ve had to do it all since my son was born. Many times I have longed for and wanted somebody in my life to share the burden, i.e., tell me what to do, make the decisions for me etc. I remember one time telling my brother that I’d be happy just to have somebody tell me what to have for supper tonight. Somebody who is that worn down isn’t going to look very hard at somebody love-bombing me or wanting to step into my life to “help out.”
Isn’t that true, though? We all want our Mommys or Daddys to step in and take care of the routine, heavier stuff so we can go off and play for a while? To me, these are green lights-I am willing to invite somebody into my life to tell me what to do.
Back when I was a good girl, I would explain my reasoning and/or actions, giving away much too much information. Now, I am a grown woman. I don’t have to give you anything that I don’t want to give away, and that includes my sanity.
No more explaining myself. It’s nobody’s business. That hit me in the face within the past few weeks. I do not have to explain myself. There are always going to be critics. There are always going to people who find fault. So what? Get a life. Take it some place else. I am not interested.
So, yes, we do pick up on words and mannerisms that remind us of somebody long ago. Unless we are vigilant, we’re at a high risk of going right back into the old mode.
We may have had lousy relationships with those people, but when it feels comfortable, like an old shoe. We do not need to accept the invitation. Old shoes need to be properly seen for how worn out they have become. They’ve got thin spots, they’re beaten up, and they simply do not flatter us. We, not somebody else, need to replace them with something new. We need to decide how we want to walk in our lives.
If we’re emotionally needy, we want those strokes that they give us from time to time. I bet one of our green lights is saying something like, “Did you really like that? You honestly think I look good in this outfit? Do you really think I did a good job with that?”
We don’t just give away our power. We hang out the sign and say that we’re open for business.
We might even justify it as “the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know.”
I’m just not into devils anymore. I want angels in my life. Peace and love, too.
So, what do we do to turn off the green lights? Well, one of the best things that I ever did was decide to take child development courses as an undergrad. I realized that I didn’t know what constituted an emotionally healthy family. I wanted to learn because I did not want to do to my children what my family had done to me.
What I didn’t learn is what constitutes emotionally healthy behavior-what can I do (or not do) to signal to other people that I am my own person and will not be taken advantage of?
I’d like to see something that tells us how to turn the open sign over to closed, pull down the shade, and lock the door.
I would really love to see a list of the green lights that we keep on.
G1S
How you’ve been?
I do like your thinking here.
To me the spath is always looking consciously or unconsciously for their next feeding. It doesn’t happen all at once but it is a process. Down the spiral staircase until they have their prey trapped.
We all know when someone is interested in us. We usually know in the first few seconds. Mostly through body language. How long the eyes meet etc.
And as you have mentioned we don’t know what we do to flag the spath. Reason is we are “out of rapport with our unconscious minds. Think of it as two distinct persons being joined together. One is is the conscious mind the other the unconscious mind.
Unconscious Mind
Is in the Now. It is Rigid.Sensitive to negative information. Our Pattern detector. Handles Multisystemic.
Conscious Mind sees into the Future. It is Flexible. Sensitive to positive information. After-the-fact checker. Single system.
“Two Personalities?
Are we really two personalities woven into one person?
I confess, it’s a funny thing:The personality of the unconscious mind correlates to a person’s behavior and the person’s conscious mind correlates to a person’s behavior—but the conscious mind and unconscious mind of that person don’t correlate to each other! Gulp.That’s why people say things like, “I don’t know,” “I have to think about it,” “I’m not sure what I want to do.”
People typically look to make sense of themselves and the world around them. Because we all do and say things that truly surprise us, we must construct (fabricate) a narrative (story) that makes sense of those behaviors that conflict with our intentions. The rationales and explanations help us put the incongruency behind us and move on to other things.
What makes understanding ourselves and others even more difficult is the painfully distorted memories we all carry in the three-pound universe.
The brain simply isn’t a videotape recorder that records events.The brain is a vast array of storehouses and interpreting functions that constantly store, re-store, interpret, and reinterpret our memories and beliefs. False memories are so common that almost every conversation of any length includes reference to at least one memory that never happened. Recognizing these two defective elements of the human experience(our suspect memory and the dual nature of our personality(ies)), one can understand the arguments, the fights, and the butting of heads that take
place in relationships and communication in general between people who have lived through the same events and remembered and interpreted them so differently.
Recent research does show that there is some predictability in how we will respond to other people. For example, a person who is fond of her sister will tend to be fond of people who exhibit behaviors similar to those of the sister.
How do you actually come to know yourself? Pay attention to your behavior in any given situation and you learn who you are. And, of course, even that is suspect because we don’t see ourselves as clearly as we see others.” Hogan, Kevin.
“The science of influence”
http://coachingleaders.co.uk/using-nlp-principles-the-only-reliable-information-about-someone-is-behaviour/
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2012/11/14/letters-to-lovefraud-i-lost-myself-in-the-relationship-with-a-sociopath/comment-page-2/#comment-175013
My 2 Cents
spoon