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.
“I think too much credit is being given to the Ps’ ability to pick us out…”
G1S;
In my experience, I tend to agree, simply because of where I met the x-spath and the fact that he was clearly “eyeing” me. However, many x-spaths are active predators, who seek a particularly type, for example, an older woman with money.
All sociopaths “watch for green lights,” in my case being either trusting enough or naive enough to fall for “reserved and sorted” act.
Regarding “active predation,” I am not sure regarding “targets” my x-spath does employ a method.
He is a gay male flight attendant who uses his profession to provide him with short-term, long-distance “relationships” as well as sexual liaisons.
While he is very active on the internet internationally, he is not active on the internet locally. In fact his most active online profile is a lie regarding his location, age and personal details — clearly he is hiding something…
I was really not that into the person who targeted me but I got caught out when he impressed and befriended and deceived my employer who then did something illegal with his enrolment in a government funded course. I do not know why this happened but it was a disaster. He called my work constantly but covered this by calling my boss too, and she often took his calls. It was all super friendly until I tried to distance myself from him and he started to threatening to use private emails I had sent from work to threaten my job. This could have happened to anyone. Beware of letting any social contacts befriend your employer.
Denise, they will weasel in any crack in our armor that they can find, both social and professional.
I do agree though that it is usually a VERY good idea to keep our social and our professional lives separate. I have made friends at work that were life time friends, but I have also had people at work who I thought were “friends” who later stabbed me in the back, and though I am now retired, and I no longer have to worry about that, I think looking back, that I would keep my work life and my professional life totally separate if I had to do it all over again.
BBE,
regarding your reserved eating spaths: maybe they are just mirroring you?
Hi, Spoon, thanks.
I’m a big believer in “actions speak louder than words,” which is another way of saying that behavior tells what the person is.
I wasn’t thinking in terms of split personality. I was thinking along the lines that in a relationship, there are two people involved.
There are times that I read posts on LF that make me wonder if the Ps are being given magical abilities, such as they have x-ray eyes that can see into our souls and hypnotize us.
I know that there are other explanations. For instance,
1.) trying to be nice and positive and see only the potential of the individual and/or the relationship
2.) minimizing the bad things as a gesture of how accepting we are
3.) being accepting without having a real basis for it (or, as one of your links suggested about trust, giving it immediately)
4.) declaring that you trust everyone until they give you a reason not to trust them
5.) forgiving people who never show remorse, never ask for forgiveness, or when we know the “I’m sorry” is about them, not you because we believe that makes us bigger people
We’ve been strongly culturized to think the best of everyone. I think we should be neutral and see how things go.
I definitely agree that Ps are predators. In part, that is what they are, but what if we stopped feeding them? Are they the extreme predators that they are because they cannot help themselve, or is it partially because the other half of these relationships present themselves indiscriminately (display the green lights) as ripe for the picking?
In other words, until the word spreads and we learn what it is what we are doing that makes us vulnerable, the Ps are roaming through a candy store of very trusting, very forgiving, and very accepting people. We might want to consider what we are putting on the shelves that makes us so attractive to the Ps.
There is a stigma if we hold back and not welcome someone. We roll out the red carpet to show that we are not people who judge. Heaven forbid! That would be horrible.
I think we should judge in the sense that we need to slow down and be discriminating. How does a lot of society regard someone with “discriminating tastes?” Some people admire it, but a good number ridicule them for being snobs or thinking that they are better than everybody else.
We do that with people, too. Who hasn’t heard things like, “What? Do you think you’re better than him/her? You think you’re above those people?” Well, yes. When it comes to Ps, I don’t want to sink to that level. I don’t want the drama. I don’t want to be around them because I think I deserve something better, like respect, love, and kindness. When we’ve had enough bad encounters with Ps and have learned what they truly are and/or capable of what they are doing, I think we become very discriminating. And yes, I will go on record and say that I think that I am better than Ps.
We also don’t want to work on ourselves. That’s a slow process, can get real uncomfortable at times, and it takes a lot of work. If I am vulnerable because of my upbringing or experiences, I want to address those vulnerabilities. Nobody else is going to be able to do that, although outside help can speed up or aid the process.
What a lot of people do is look externally for someone who will make them feel good. We through our power at them and then we fault the Ps for being (gasp!) predators.
Yeah, they are. I don’t mean to trivialize that fact, but they’re not operating alone. We are contributing to the mix. I do NOT think it’s a 50/50 mix. Uh-uh. No way. Not at all. I simply do not accept that we are not contributing to the dynamcis, that we are powerless to stop them, or that we cannot do anything to protect ourselves.
Knowing the red flags and being able to protect ourselves are parts of the equation, but read anybody here who has learned the hard way about Ps. They have all stopped doing certain things. They have low tolerance or no tolerance for certain behaviors. Those changes I would call turning off the green lights, locking the front door, and pulling down the shade.
Skylar;
The clinical description of Aspergers includes physical clumsiness. In addition, Aspergers is also associated with poor hygiene habits, whereas with sociopaths, in general there is no such association. In fact, Narcissism almost dictates good hygiene.
But there are always exceptions.
BBE,
it’s very common for Asperger’s patients to have issues with listening to other’s eat. they don’t like it. It’s also common that they are picky eaters, refusing to eat anything except their favorite foods. Yes, the physical clumsiness is also obvious in some of them.
The thing about spaths, is that they like to imitate. My ex-spath was best friends with an aspergers person and he tried to BE him. He imitated all his characteristics, his preferences etc…
I do believe that spaths target narcissists and asperger’s people. Anyone who is out of touch with their emotions is prey for spaths.
Skylar, the exspath actually began to “set up” his own “defense” of his behaviors, choices, and actions before I discovered what he’d been doing. First, he tried to make me believe that I suffered from some sort of mental illness when, during an argument about his activities, he screamed at me, “You’re in some kind of MANIA! You’re having some kind of MANIA!” When I evenly responded that what he was telling me didn’t make any sense, and was he having an affair, he realized that I wasn’t going to cave in to the crazymaking efforts, and began launching a campaign that woudl absolve him of wrongdoings via an organic disorder! No kidding! He sat in the living room, one day, and OUT OF THE BLUE asked me if I believed that he was bi-polar! This was after he had made the “MANIA” remark, and I evenly responded that he already knew the answer to that and that I was not the person to render a diagnosis.
Having typed all of this brings me around to the fact that the exspath had read a couple of books almost 4 years prior that explained sociopathy and their tactics: “Sociopath Next Door,” and “Stalkers Of The Soul.” Well, he apparently viewed these as textbooks on HOW to perpetrate the crazymaking because some of the tactics were straight out of those books.
What is interesting is that he wasn’t very adept at maintaining the illusions, so he actually researched methods using books that were written with a completely different purpose. What a schmuck! And, he did this, constantly – he would read a book and become an instant expert on whatever it was that he was reading about.
And, I agree that they target ANYONE who demonstrates any emotional issues, on any level. It’s much more of a challenge to manipulate someone who is in full control of their lives and emotions than it is to manipulate someone who has obvious issues. Even so, sometimes that challenge is more tempting for spaths to ignore, and they seek to take down someone who is successful and self-assured.
Brightest blessings
As a complete aside and off-topic, I am amazed that I remained with this man for as long as I did. I had suspicions about his motives when my finances began to dwindle, but the cog/diss kicked into overdrive and I always found some excuse to believe in because the alternative was too horrifying to accept.
Retrospect is always so very, very clear and, while I was in the moment, I wasn’t able to “see” what was going on, at all. Fear. It all boiled down to my own fears of “losing” the illusions, etc.
(Dope-slap) WOW…..instead of a sociopath, I could’ve had a V-8!
Brightest blessings