Most of the time we spend with sociopaths is spent in confusion. They tell us that they love us, while they cheat on us and take our money. They tell us that everything will be wonderful while our lives are falling apart. They tell us they’re sorry and will never do it again, yet they do it again, and again, and again.
We ask ourselves—what in the world is going on here?
They explain it all away. The explanation seems to make sense. But something still isn’t right, and they still don’t stop the behavior that makes us believe we are losing our minds.
There must be a reason. We wonder if they’re depressed, or bipolar, or they have low self-esteem. We’ve been told that they were abused as children. They overindulge in alcohol or drugs, and we’re sure that if they can only overcome their addiction, they’ll change.
It never happens.
We can’t figure it out.
The words that fit the behavior
Then someone says, “It sounds like he (or she) is a sociopath.” Or maybe they even use the word “psychopath.”
Sociopath! They’re the guys on The Sopranos.
Psychopath! They’re all serial killers.
But something tells us to do more research, so we go online. We buy a book. And there they are, the people who are driving us insane, perfectly described in the symptoms of a sociopath.
At Lovefraud, we hear it all the time:
“He’s got every symptom on the list!” “The description fits her to a T!”
Finally, we have a name for that person’s problem. He or she is a sociopath. A psychopath. An antisocial.
Finally, it all makes sense. The lies, the emptiness, the remorselessness, the evil. There is a reason. It is not us. It is a personality disorder.
Naming the disorder makes all the difference. Finally, we begin to understand what we are dealing with. This allows us to begin recovery.
Learn about them in school
Why do we spend so much time in confusion? Because there is no education program about this personality disorder for the general public.
I remember a story from the tsunami that struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand on December 26, 2004. A vacationing family was on the beach there when the ocean suddenly receded. The little girl of the family had just finished studying tsunamis in school, and learned that the receding ocean meant that a wall of water would soon come crashing into the shore. She told her family, and they escaped to higher ground.
Sociopaths cause personal tsunamis for all of their victims. The sociopaths/ psychopaths/ antisocials of the world cause a huge percentage of all human pain, damage and devastation, yet most of the population does not know they exist. Why? Why don’t we learn about these predators in school? If we did, when we saw the symptoms, we could escape.
Arguing over terminology
Part of the problem with trying to educate people about these predators is that the mental health professionals do not agree on what to call it. First it was moral insanity. Then it was psychopath. Then it was sociopath. Then it was antisocial personality disorder.
The professionals can’t agree on how to define and diagnose the disorder, either. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), is supposed to be the bible for clinicians. I find its description of antisocial personality disorder to be vague and difficult to understand.
Dr. Robert Hare’s description of the symptoms of a psychopath—the term he uses—is easier to understand, and the test he developed has been consistently shown to be useful in predicting recidivism among criminals. But Hare’s criteria and evaluation are resisted by many psychiatrists. From what I’ve heard, the basis for much of the disagreement is political.
Mental health profession should come to agreement
I believe this lack of agreement is a travesty, and the professionals are actually contributing to the confusion in which the predators operate. In a way, that makes the mental health professionals complicit in the havoc wreaked by the sociopaths/ psychopaths/ antisocials—whatever we call them.
Lovefraud calls on the professional associations to solve this problem. The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry—please, come to an agreement.
Make a decision. Define this disorder. Publicize the symptoms. Let the general public learn what to look out for.
It would help all of us keep the sociopaths/psychopaths/antisocials, the human tsunamis, from upending our lives.
My Mother did that too Oxy. She would stir things up, make sly comments and ‘looks’ and then she would pretend that nothing had happened – and I was left feeling pretty angry. I realised that I was carrying the can for her anger. Anger by proxy, and then if I reacted, I was labelled a troublemaker. Great gaslighting by my mother. She really ruined my self worth, because she put me in care when I was just aged 6 and then when I returned home, I was put outside in the cold, she gave me no positive or motherly love and said I should be grateful for having a roof over my head. Even when I gave birth to my daughter Oxy, she said ‘Oh good, you’ve had a girl, someone to keep you company’. Because I also had no father around and no other family, she was the main person in my life. I’ve found it hard to shake off her words ever since.
That book ‘Dont sweat the small stuff’ is by Richard Carlson. I dont know the date, but I have one of his other books.
Oxy, Although I had a less than perfect upbringing, I dont want to bad mouth my mother she had a difficult and hard life and I dont want to negate that fact, she probably did what she thought was best at the time and I am grateful for her giving me life.
Dear Oxy: I think you were born wise. A gift from God to get you through your childhood. Yes, you have a lot of bruises, but you’re still kicking and going strong. I personally, give you a lot of credit. The only psycho personality that I had to deal with in my family was my middle sister … always playing her games. You should hear her version of our childhood … I was always the “joke” and she was always the “jester”. She could be nice and decent … and then whamo, kick you in the butt. I told her just a few months back … don’t insult me about my EX and what he did, yadda, yadda, yadda … then I told her, when you read the Bible and learn some wisdom, then come back and have a conversation with me of what you think you know. Until then, I’ve had enough. Besides, she’s the reason why I knew what my bosses were up to. That same smug look on their face, that same phony smile, that same playing nice to you … then whamo kicking you down and laughing as they kick you in the teeth. As you are down, them reaching out their hand to you … to go through the chaos all over again. No thanks. And she’s the one in my life backing what my bosses did to destroy my career – blaming it on me. I told her “that goes for my bosses and their cronies too – the ones you know, that you slept with when you worked for them – the day any of them pick up the Bible and read it cover to cover … come talk with me. Other than that – they are all a mute subject.
Peace sweety, hang in there. You give me hope for my future.
Beverly, the funny thing is that while I was growing up I didn’t realize that I had a “less than ideal” childhood, in many ways I had an excellent one. I had a large extended family, most of whom I only saw the good side of, or they actually were good people. I had a grandfather who doted on me, I had a horse to ride and enough to eat and my grandmother made my clothes and I didn’t realize we were “poor” because there was never anything I needed that we didn’t have.
I learned to work for my spending money which is a good thing, and to finance my horse hobbies. I learned to clean house and cook by having chores, and to mow the grass and tend the garden (I hated those two things growing up but dont’ mind them now, and actually like the gardening).
What I didn’t have was a good relationship with my mother. I had a good relationship with both grandparents and my step dad, but not with my mother. It is only since I have been grown that I even saw the dysfunction in the extended family becuse as a child and a teenager I didn’t know that any of these things were going on or had gone on.
My mom didn’t start out to say “Oh, let me see how mean I can be to this baby” and I am sure that she believed her “version” of “forgiveness” because that was what she was taught by her mother, who was a more passive enabler. Part of it was dysfunctional family of origin and part was religious and part cultural, but the bottom line is that by the time I was an adult and found out the “family secrets” she and I clashed heads over the definition of “forgiveness” when Uncle Monster was abusing my grandmother, and had previously abused his x wife and kids.
Mom’s persona has now hardened into this game playing and enabling and it is set in concrete at her age of 79 and I doubt not that there is some fairly significant short term memory loss, some loss of judgment, and general decline in her mental functions. But a lot of this stuff has been going on for well over 20 years, especially with her enabling my P-son AGAINST MY WILL and DESIRE. Even she sucked me into it, and I would try to break free, but until I finally severed the umbilical cord I couldn’t break free. Pleasing her meant enabling him. Period. I realized that I couldn’t do that, and if she was not pleased, she did her best to punish me.
I tried my best last year when I thought (and I still think) that if their plan to kill me had gone off as planned, that my mother would have been the next to die “by accident” of course. She fought me tooth and nail. Even though she knows (because they got arrested and the whole plot came out) the truth now, she is still trying to CONTROL ME, to project her lies on to me, etc. so she is making NO effort to rectify what has happened, or the betrayal. I don’t at this age expect her to, and for that I am really really sorry, but I don’t have the strength to deal with it any more. I can’t have anyone in my life that bears me ill will. I’m a lot better and stronger than I was a year ago, and the anniversary of the arrests coming up in a couple of weeks, which at least vindicated me to my son C if not my mother, and to some extent to my cousins, as my “predictions” about the affair etc all “came true” when it all became public knowledge.
I really do wish that there was even the remotest possibility of a reconciliation with my mother in this last years of her life, but I have come to some peace with it, and realize I have done all I can do. I can forgive her, and I have, but I can’t trust her because she won’t allow me to trust her because she continues to lie to me. The lying is upsetting to me and the only way I can protect myself is to stay away from her. NC.
I have professionally dealt with many families who were in distress became an elderly parent was becoming senile or had organic brain dysfunction and wasn’t totally rational. I know it hurts when your parent is senile and says mean things to you that they never would have said before that, but at the same time, my mother has BETRAYED ME BEFORE. This is not something that is “new”–she has behaved like this before when my P-son was a teenager and when he became assaultive with me and was breaking the law, she took him in to protect him from ME, and of course the consequences of his behavior. I didn’t have the money at the time to hire a lawyer and fight her for custody of my son and she had”possession” of him against my will. Of course that turned out poorly as he stole from her and from the neighbors etc. but she didn’t find that out for months after he had finally come home to live with me.
But even knowing that and knowing the many other “second chances” he has had and blown and not doubting at all that he was trying to have me killed, she is still willing to enable him and to punish me. She is still concerned about the “poor child” suffering in prison (for murder where he should be suffering) and could care less how she hurt me, not even an apology to me or to my son C, or to my son D “who isn’t really family after all, cause he’s not blood.”
She’s not so far “off her mental rocker” though that she can’t come up with the most cutting tongue and phrases that would slice better than a laser scalpel, and she knows just where to stick the knife, how to twist it, and pour salt in the wound for maximum pain, and then play the pity party, “Poor her” and “Poor P-g-son”.
NC is my only way to crawl out of the hole of pain.
Beverly and Oxy: Have you read “People of the Lie”. Another must read. I think this is all a test down here on Earth… God having these clueless wonders in and out of our lives … so we know that we must love everyone. No matter what “do not judge, unless yea be judged”. I remember sitting in my first deposition remembering what a friend said to me when he called my home to wish me “good luck” reminded me of the scriptures about “people living in glass houses, shouldn’t be throwing stones”, but he replaced stones with bolders. Shouldn’t have these hug bolders crashing on your head Wini what is wrong with them where you work?!!? Yeah, like anyone would raised their hand and said “come destroy my career, I’m bored with my life … you can do me in”. And if you don’t think what happened at work is directly linked with my EX (he’s a ringer for them), then you people have to open your eyes. Then the FBI told me in order to arrest my EX I had to sue him in Civil Court… With what? My looks? Such a joke and a slap in the face. They’re all psychos, all of them … all got to the top of everything in this country or at least taking directives from psychos and keeping their own head above water. Hey, I wonder … if rape victims have to sue their perps like we do. Isn’t it the same thing?
Peace, I’m doing my breathing now.
Wini, I’m sure I must have said this before, but when I went to my new therapist and told him my story of “they’re all out to kill me, the whole family is in this big conspiracy” he listened patiently and then at the end of the session asked me very nicely if I would bring a witness to show him I was telling the truth! He put it soooo carefully cause I am sure he thought I would be offended that he didn’t believe this CRAZY TWISTED tale right off the bat! I actually laughed about it.
NO ONE who hadn’t been through something like this would BELIEVE the stories, the TRUE stories of conspiracy, secrecy, betrayal, conspiracy, conning, fraud, greed, lust, distrust, lies and so on! We are better than ten episodes of “As The Stomach Churns, tune in again tomorrow and see, does Henry’s back get better or does he go on a date, does Oxy’s paranoid dream reveal the truth about Beverly’s ingrown toe nail?” LOL ROTFLMAO
I mean think about it, everyone of us have had some kind of “unbelieveable” crap done to us, and we WONDER why our friends and family don’t GET IT? LOL Heck, half the time I DON’T GET IT. I just know that I am not going to let it get me down and stomp me any more. I’m going on with my life, as BORING as it is—-I LOOOOOOVE BORING, NO DRAMA, peaceful, the sound of crickets at night, and a beautiful full moon rising outside looking like a giant pumpkin in the sky.
And I just sit here typing and smiling and listening to the crickets outside and the frogs in the pond and life is wonderful, I am secure and happy, and each day it gets a bit better. I’m doing things for MYSELF for the first time in my life I think, not taking on other’s problems and responsibilities. Just mine. I am ever so grateful for those that do love me, and for you wonderful peeps here and all your support. I never knew there were so many great folks out there that maybe I would never ever meet face to face, but over the internet could share so much with me. Love and Peace to you all. I’m gonna go to bed now–before midnight for a change! LOL
Dear Wini, No, I havent read that book. I think maybe the test is to learn through experience to make the best wholesome choices for ourselves, especially in the relationships we keep. In our evolvement, the universe will always throw us experiences to help us complete the missing bits of ourselves and to realise that most people are living in progress of that. Number one duty is to ourselves, not to sell ourselves short, to honour our own divinity first and foremost.
Wini, Sweetheart. Have you ever had moments in your life, that shake your core? Have you ever seen your own name on a tombstone? I was in church a couple of Christmas’s ago and I glanced across to a memorial which had the name of the alcoholic guy I was visiting and supporting through work and my own name, that really shook me. I just looked in the paper and the obituaries column is full of people with my surname. Sugar.
Beverly, True about the universe (aka God) throwing us experiences … not only for our growth, but to thump those in the heads by meeting us. It’s God’s will, not ours, on God’s time frame, not ours. That’s what we have to remember and respect while going through this pain … God’s time frame, not ours.
That theory I sent out about maybe they really are stunted at the age of first infliction of pain … I think I’m on to something. I sent an e-mail around to all my cyber space buddies … friends that I know, friends that I met on the net and haven’t see face to face … and men that I met one time and kept them as e-mail buddies … not to further the venture of anything long lasting. Anyway, I sent this e-mail around about a child praying next to his dog … what do you think I got back from one of the spiritually stunted? Agreeing with the photo that that is how he feels. The photo of the child was around 6 years old. So out of the mouth of a spiritually stunted individual who is chronologically in his 50’s, married, children. My EX told me about how he and his brother were punished for an entire year for having fun in his neighbor’s garden, throwing tomatoes or pumpkins at each other, running up and down the rows of the garden, probably trampeling everything (he didn’t go into details about the damage down to the neighbor’s garden) … how the neighbor came to his parent’s front door, complained to his mom … the mom called the two boys into the house, in front of the neighbor reprimanded them and told them to apologize etc. Punishment was for a full year, raking the neighbor’s leaves in the fall, shoveling her walk and driveway during snow storms after they had to rake their parent’s lawn and shovel the parents walk and drive. This is a long period for punishing children for an infraction and I’m sure my EX and his brother grumbled every rake full of leaves and every shovel full of snow. At that moment in time, my EX’s ego took on a life of it’s own (I don’t know about the brother, I only met him once and it was at his mom’s wake and funeral, looked like Pat Boone with Blonde hair – good looking guy, angelic looks, very innocent (debatable) and his wife looked like an army sargeant, very stern and obnoxious, totally ignored meeting me during services). If my theory is correct (and I feel it in my heart and soul, that’s why I’m going with it) … that the anti-socials are stunted from the first onset of an infraction upon them (whether it is verbal, imagined or actually physical) doesn’t matter, they are taking the first step out of being innocent and humble … into the ego realm of believing their own voice in their heads instead of staying humble so they can learn wisdom of lessons taught. Then as they chronologically age, everyone expects them to accomplish things at that age and move forward. So they only pretend (to save face) to move forward. Year after year they do (most) what is required of them, but secretly knowing they are still stuck back at that age of the reprimand … except their ego is laughing at everyone and looking down at folks because now they compensate for what their ego is telling them and saying to themselves “look at all these fulls doing the righteous things in life, look at all these fools for doing all the work to get where they want to get, look at all these fulls believing in God (there is no God, there was no God when mommy made me rake and shovel the snow for our neighbors for a year)… and so on and so forth. Their egos are now leading them instead of learning wisdom by each righteous step they took in life. As children making this decision of living and believing in their egos, they have no clue what they are giving up. They have NO clue what God’s wisdom brought into their life step, by step as they chronologically aged. This is what we are not seeing. I’m telling you … we are horrified about what they do and we look at them as their chronological age … but we aren’t digging at the truth that they were stunted at that young age of the first infraction.
Another example from my immediate family. My middle sister is a year older than I am. Very jealous of me. Always putting the wrench into my wheels whenever she can. I keep telling her for the last 20+ years “can’t we just love each other as sister’s, why are you always competing with me? How can anyone compete with another? We’re all unique, we are all individuals, we all have our own special gifts from God, etc. – how then is it possible to compete? Competition is man made, not God made. All this flies over her head. Why? Because she’s spiritually stunted. Why and what stunted her? My birth. By me being born into the family, I bumped her out of the lime light of being the “Youngest” in the family. This has irked her all her life and she has made me pay for it for all these years. Finally, a few months ago, I told her to stop this back biting on me, read the Bible for once in your life, stop shooting from your hips what you think you know, learn some wisdom (by reading the word of God) and after you do this, come and have a real conversation with me. Well, of course this didn’t go over well and she’s not talking to me (break my heart and I’m being sarcastic right now). But, I needed a rest from all these spiritually stunted individuals. My sister has two sides to her. She will give you the shirt off her back, bring a stray animal home and give it food and shelter etc. But, she has this win/loose mentality. She’s going to win and you are going to loose. I keep explaining to her over the years … hey J, there’s also the win/win mentality out there … maybe you should read up on this and produce something positive. Of course, because she’s competing with me all her life … she does not listen. She believes her own ego and what that ego tells her is right or wrong. So it’s a crap shoot with her. Sometimes she hits what is right to do in life … and then other times (well, let’s just say, she could have forgotten this way of thinking for the fiascoes in her life). Same with other personal friends I know. They are stunted spiritually at the age of the infraction … hence become an alcoholic since age 10, drug addiction, sexual addiction, food addiction, exercise and physical attraction addiction … etc. etc. etc. All of them have one thing in common … any time I give them a wise decision, they fight me out of their jealousy and refuse to research my suggestion. So, what do I do? I find someone that I know they like and respect (in their own simple way) and repeat my suggestion to that person. Then I sit back for as long as it takes … the 2nd person I told my suggestion relays the information to the 1st person (of course, acting like they thought of this on their own) and the person they are telling to this will do what was told to them. Works all the time. Incredible. So if this is going on with the spiritually stunted that I know in my life, imagine what the spiritually stunted ages are of those that we have imprisoned? Imagine what the true age of our spiritually stunted EX’s are?
Peace. I know if I write for long periods … it doesn’t get read through it’s entirety. I’d rather write a few lines and out the door.
Wini, Sweetheart, God’s truth always shines through in the end. Once the anger has dissolved, another view comes into play. I know that. I will read your post in more depth.