Understanding helps us heal from our painful experiences. Understanding also helps us avoid repeating those experiences. What is understanding? Understanding is knowledge gained by our higher-verbal brain that helps it to manage our lower non-verbal brain. Understanding is, therefore, a path to our own impulse control. In the next few weeks, I am going to present a series on the science of motivation. I hope that a new understanding of motivation will help you in your quest for healing.
Where does motivation come from?
The first thing to understand about motivation is that it does not originate in our higher verbal brain (the cerebral cortex). It originates in our non-verbal, lower brain or limbic system. This part of the brain performs the functions of what Freud called the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is very much like wind. It is unseen yet very powerful. We know it exists because we see its effects and we can feel it. Yet, we do not know exactly where its force is coming from. Just as an experienced sailor uses his understanding of the wind to travel, one who understands motivation can use its energy to go far.
Motivation starts with the anticipation of pleasure
Motivation research began with the discovery of the fact that rats will press a bar to obtain various rewards. This discovery allowed scientists to study motivation in mathematical terms. For the first time, we had a measure of desire and therefore motivation. If a rat pressed a bar many times, he showed a strong desire for a particular reward. With these measures we discovered that motivation starts with the anticipation of pleasure. Something about pleasure is rewarding in that pleasure causes behaviors to be repeated.
We soon discovered that all the things that act as rewards and that increase motivated behavior are sources of pleasure. These things are food/water, sex, entertainment, possessions, affection, social dominance and substances of abuse. When a behavior causes us to get these things, we repeat that behavior. Thus, by some brain process, an association is made between an action and its outcome—getting a source of pleasure. All rewards influence motivation by affecting the same brain process.
Pleasure is necessary for learning an association between action and obtaining reward. This association, once made, causes behaviors to be repeated. Repeated behaviors are motivated behaviors. Pleasure, therefore, is the beginning of motivation. The things that give us pleasure are necessary for survival and we physically need them. We want and crave these things and we like them because they are sources of pleasure.
Needing, wanting and liking
There is an interesting interplay between needing, wanting and liking. For example, when a person is starving, food is much needed, and thus very pleasurable. Food becomes less needed, and thus less pleasant, for someone who has already eaten. The motivation for a particular type of reward is not constant but waxes and wanes, as does the pleasure from that reward. One piece of chocolate, for instance, can be quite tasty and rewarding. But even a chocolate connoisseur will probably only experience disgust if he or she is forced to eat two pounds of chocolate at once!
Recently, scientists trying to understand addiction have discovered something truly remarkable. That is, although pleasure is required to establish a behavior pattern, pleasure is not required to maintain that behavior pattern. Wanting related behaviors can occur in the absence of pleasure and are called compulsions. The bottom line is that wanting to do something and liking to do that something are not the same.
Cues from the environment become associated with pleasure in the early stages of establishing a motivated behavior. Later, these cues trigger wanting to do the behavior even in the absence of pleasure obtained by that behavior. Addiction is the best model for understanding this aspect of motivated behavior. Long after the addict has stopped feeling pleasure from the addictive substance, things that remind him of using trigger drug cravings and the compulsion to use. The brain pathways that are active in craving, wanting and pursuing addictive drugs are the same ones involved in all motivated behavior. This is why addiction affects all motivated behavior.
Motivation and healing from a relationship with a sociopath
Where am I going with all this psychology? I am trying to convince you that your compulsion to be with a sociopath can continue even after the relationship has stopped giving you pleasure. The sociopath knows instinctively that all he/she has to do is hook you in the initial pleasure phase, and you will continue to feel a compulsion to be with him/her. Sociopaths typically change in their relationships once they sense the other person is hooked or attached.
Just as cues trigger craving in addicts, reminders of the sociopath can trigger a longing for that initial relationship. Furthermore, just as complete abstinence is the only hope for recovery from addiction, staying away from the sociopath is the beginning of recovery.
Even though the maintenance of addiction and attachment to an undesirable person are the same, I do not believe that attachment to a sociopath is a sign there is something wrong with you. The sociopath and the substances of abuse hijack a brain pathway meant to serve survival. Once hijacked, the survival system becomes a path to destruction.
If a sociopath has hijacked your attachment pathway, start to break the compulsion today. Use your conscious mind and stay away from the person, don’t answer emails or phone calls. Remove from your life as much as possible reminders of the relationship. Distract yourself with other pleasures. Lastly, do not isolate yourself from other people. Since the sociopath has hijacked your attachment pathway, if you are “starved” for affection, your craving for him/her will only increase if you are lonely.
Next week we will discuss the brain pathways and hormones involved in the love bond.
Eyes. I have only been here three month’s, i dont remember sorrow but have read some of here past post. There have been comment’s from people all over the world. Sometime’s I think maybe I am just a poor loser and don’t like rejection and I am just trying to find a bad label for (him). But all the strait’s fit him to a T. So I have to reread trait’s of a sociopath, trait’s of Borderline. Coming here confirms my conclusion’s. Knowledge is Power…….and it’s better than wasting my time on Gay.com, talk about predator’s!!!!!!!
Henry
I know what you mean; there’s a lot of crossover and we’re not professional therapists and they are confusing. Sometimes, I think it’s just easier to call them a Cluster B…it saves a lot of time and trouble figuring it all out.
Hmmm. If it’s alright with you, may I point out that he lied, cheated, took financial advantage of you, hurt you and didn’t care and, lest we forget…he kicked sweet little Miss Puss to the curb. Besides, didn’t your sons not trust him or am I making that up?
I know you and your postings. You’re in no way a poor loser. You are a wonderful spirit who is loved by everyone here.
Oh, yes….we’re much healthier than Gay.com. No predators would dare jump on here…they’d be pummeled to pieces.
Speaking of predators, were you around when that predator SecretMonster was on here? He was one cool customer…or at least played one pretty well. He’d probably love knowing that I’m talking about him but I can’t resist. He had to take all his postings down awhile ago…I think his wife must have found out. If so, I’m thrilled. SecretMonster…are you out there?
I am still pondering your feeling’s of being addicted to this website. I will always remember this as a place of healing, ( My Life Lesson), there are screenames that will forever be part of my life. I often wonder how we would connect if we met in person. And in away the anonomity is safe. I think I will come here as long as I recognize screenames. We all have this connection of needed to be validated and understood and sharing our experience with disordered people. I think we will all leave this place in our own time frame. I can see that I am healing, growing and learning. No I won’t be here forever, but I am not ready to leave yet…….
secret monster? no I didnt know about him, tell me more
Well, SecretMonster ventured on to this site and engaged in dialog with some of us. His posts are still on here somewhere. He tried to come off very reasonable and I’m sure he thought he could finesse us all but he didn’t stand a chance.
He wrote what looked like a poem at one point until someone pointed out that she recognized it..they were words to a song she knew.
I thought he said he was posting from Saudi Arabia but his website said Jamaica.
His website was interesting…secretmonster.com…because it gave a little glimpse into a socio’s life. Of course, if he’s a socio, his whole blog could have been a lie.
I would check in on it every once in awhile – his wife was supposed to be wealthy and he was just stringing her on, he didn’t love her just her money and he was going to play one of his female friends who was attracted to him but he was going to do only because it would give him power and everything was infused with drama and near-misses…sort of like self-absorbed middle manager meets James Bond.
The last few of his postings on his blog and here indicated he was going to just leave his wife…and she’d cry…(we suggested he send her to our site for comfort and help) but he’d make her think it was all her fault.
Then…poof!…he’s gone. He pulled all his blog postings except for the last one claiming that the jig was up….talk about cliff-hanger 🙂
Sometimes people come here when they are down, but then the cycle repeats itself and they go back and then don’t come here for a while. I “met” Sorrow on another blog a while back, she is a sweet girl and in a great deal of pain. There is a thread on here about “you have to save yourself” that I think it was Donna did, can’t remember exactly who (please forgive my faulty short term memory) anyway, that is the way it is, YOU must heal yourself, work through your anger, work through the projection, the sadness, the malignant hope and save YOURSELF.
Sometimes people or animals even who are in great pain, strike out at the person who would help them. Cops know this about domestic violence disputes when they arrive and the husband is beating on the wife and they go to arrest him, the wife turns on them and starts defending her abuser. It’s just the way the cycle of abuse goes.
Most of us have brushed aside the red flags when we saw them, continued to try to “fix” the situation with our abusers. We wanted to have the pain stop, but we just couldn’t give up on the malignant hope of somehow regaining that “honeymoon” period when the abuser was sooooo SWEET and made us soooooo Happy.
Getting out of the FOG is not easy, because in order to do it we have to give up on a dream that we have held dear. My dream with my P son was that he would repent, get out of prison and live a law abiding life…NOT GONNA HAPPEN. I had other dreams with other Ps and they all were fruitless wastes of my energy to try to make them “come true.”
It was only when I finally started looking inward for my “savior” that I found I could SAVE MYSELF. I had to stop looking outward for something or someone else to make my dreams come true. Maybe the dream for my son wasn’t going to come “true” but it didn’t have to be the end of my life. Sure it would have been “nice” if my son had repented and really had found Jesus in prison, but it was only a hologram, not the real thing. When I started listening to REALITY it hurt. But only through reality, recognizing that we can give up that fantasy and still live, still be happy, heal from the pain and go on with a real life.
The common denominator in all my P relationships was that I did not set appropriate boundaries, because I was AFRAID to set those boundaries, because when you set a boundary you have to enforce it and IF someone crosses that boundary you have to get them out of your life—and I was so afraid I would have to do that. I couldn’t imagine life without my son.
And then my mother, and while she does not fit anything in the way of the Psychopathic check list to qualify as a psychopath, her behavior, and I now realize always has been, so enabling and so punishing if thwarted that it approximates psychopathic abuse. She isn’t physically dangerous like my son, but she would emotionally destroy me before she would let me cut him off. I have seen the same twisted visage of frustrated rage on her face that I have seen on my P-son’s.
Regardless if a psychiatrist would “label” her a psychopath or not, I had to cut her out of my life in order to heal. That thought was unthinkable a year ago, but now I realize I could never have healed if I had kept trying to appease her rage. It would have been like trying to throw enough meat to a two-headed dog to keep it from devouring you, body and soul.
The terrible anger we feel, the pain we feel, at being betrayed by the very person(s) we loved the most in the world makes us look outward for anything to alleviate that pain within our selves. We feel that we want to hurt the one that hurt us, to make them feel the pain they have inflicted on us. We feel tremendous sadness, so alone, and we want the one who hurt us to comfort us—yet they refuse and heap more pain upon our heads. We feel ashamed that we allowed anyone to continue to hurt us so long. They have no shame.
All these twisted, whirling emotions come and go by the second, never the same, always the same. The insanity of it all, the self doubt, and many times no one to validate our feelings. What if? Should I? Why can’t he/she? If ONLY!!! Physical and mental stress take their tolls. Physical illness, accidents because we can’t concentrate. Can’t think. I literally couldn’t write down a phone number in one try. Or dial it.
Then, now, I can look back at “that crazy woman” (me) and I wonder how she managed under all that load? I realize how strong she is to have survived. How gutsy she is to have done the things she did to get away when the situation was hopeless, when no one except the sheriff would listen to her.
And God, the awful SMIRKS on the face of the victorious psychopaths when they thought they had her were they wanted her.
In the end it was God and the psychopaths themselves who brought them down, none of my doing. All I had to do was survive, God fought the battle and won the war.
My battle now is to heal and to make myself wise enough to avoid the psychopaths in the future, to learn to set boundaries to protect myself from people who would harm me. To learn to spot the RED FLAGS and to NOT ignore them.
None of them had a right to do what they did to me, to hurt me, to gaslight me, to try to kill me, but they did. I allowed them to almost succeed though, because I didn’t set appropriate boundaries. I am learning to do so now, and as I do my strength to do so grows. I have taken back my power from those that would hurt me. Someone said here that “love is giving someone the power to break your heart, and trusting them not to do it.”
That’s true. But I guarantee the next person I trust not to break my heart will have boundaries on what kind of treatment I will allow. I may never again have a “true love” but I will be hanged if I ever accept anything less. Having a good life alone is a lot better than having a BAD LIFE with someone who hurts me.
BTW Henry, I want my next “true love” to be as sweet and caring as you are! And I want him to have as much spunk and be as honest and up front as Aloha, and I’d also like him to be a massage therapist or a physical therapist, and I’d prefer if he liked to live in the country, was a pilot, and it’d be nice if he was handsome and had “6 pack abs” and maybe about 30—and of course was rich, and just couldn’t live without a 61 year old red-neck woman! Know any candidates? LOL
Oh…and Henry…
My questioning is just all about my timing.
You’ll know when it’s your time, too.
Ok…now I’m starting to feel like Charlotte saying goodbye to Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web…but I’m not going anywhere yet….just thinking about it…and when.
I’ll still be around for awhile..
Have a good weekend!
Hmmm Sound’s like he was at least intertaining. I guess you have to make your own judgement if someone is real or looking just for attention. I have found some genuine people here. And beside I can’t leave until OxDrover does remember she and I are engaged. Eyes…any movie’s that you have been wanting to see??
It would be nice though, eyes, if people would tell you when they plan to leave and how they are doing.
Probably some go back to the Ps or get involved with another one that they think is the “prince charming” that is going to rescue them from their despair over the last P.
I know lots of people who seem to go from P to P, and others probably are just doing well and forget to check back in.
There are most likely a ton of reasons people “disappear” including healing enough to go on with their lives.
Hey Oxy I ain’t rich, I aint’ 30, I cain’t fly a plane. But I got the six pack abs and live in the country. But if I meet this guy you described he’s all mine………..!