Overcoming the hype to educate people about sociopaths

It’s important not to get upset or angry while conveying such information, because that would create the image that Eleanor is nothing but a scorned woman. People can’t listen to someone who is upset; they put up their defenses. And, presenting this information while upset could play right into the hands of the husband, who is probably saying that Eleanor is mentally unbalanced. So the best way to communicate this information is dispassionately.

This is absolutely sterling advice, and crucially important.

As for these counselors, spouses and partners of chronic abusers (who may be psychopaths or may have a different disorder) report very different experiences when they attempt couple counseling with the abuser. Joint counseling with an abuser is a crapshoot. The outcome may be better or it may be worse, depending on several factors. It depends very much on the skill and perceptiveness of the counselor. It depends on the character and bebavior of the abuser. But it also depends on the behavior of the partner.

When a partner does get benefits out of joint counseling with an abuser, these (off the top of my head) can take one of about four forms:

1. Once in a blue moon, an abuser has been persuaded to change or undergo treatment as a result of joint counseling. However, this is about as common as hitting the jackpot on a slot machine. Most of the abusers who do make a serious effort to change only do so when they’re jolted into it by the partner leaving (not just “threatening to”). They’re still a minority, and not the psychopathic types. Psychopaths just don’t change.

2. Now and again counseling can smooth over the worst conflicts in an abusive relationship and make it more tolerable, for a time. Unfortunately with an abuser any such improvements are likely to be both superficial and temporary, and don’t solve the fundamental problems making the relationship harmful to the partner and unsustainable in the long term.

3. More commonly, depending on the perceptiveness of the counselor (among other things), the benefit the partner gets out of counseling is much-needed validation that they’re being treated abusively. Sometimes after seeing the abuser, a counselor has been able to tell a spouse, in confidence, “I think your partner is a narcissist,” or “a chronic controller,” or whatever. Though that can’t fix the abuser, or the relationship, it does give the partner the confidence to work toward a necessary separation and breakup.

4. Often the benefit of joint counseling is a paradoxical one. Though it may be a frustrating experience in itself, with no improvement in the abuser’s behavior or in the relationship, at least a partner can now feel reassured that they’ve “tried everything” and nothing works. Then the partner doesn’t need to feel so guilty about leaving.

Unfortunately there can also be risks associated with counseling, of which I’ll mention two here.

1. When the partner makes disclosures to the counselor in front of an abuser, sometimes the abuser uses this information against the partner later. Or the abuser may be angered by the disclosure and prompted to retaliate against the partner afterwards. This can pose a danger if the relationship is physically violent.

2. The risk that’s most relevant to the present topic is that in the wrong conditions, “Benefit Number Three” above may be turned on its head. A counselor who fails to perceive what’s really going on between the couple can end up tagging the partner, not the abuser, as the “real” problem in the relationship. Instead of being validated, the partner is invalidated. Then the partner, already beaten down over the years by the abuser’s constant criticism and blame, ends up being revictimized all over again by the “authority figure” of a counselor. That only worsens the damage already done by the abuse itself.

This is a special risk to the many partners who are confused, don’t understand what’s going on in their relationship, and are already inclined to believe it’s something “wrong” with themselves. That’s the irony of many abusive relationships: that the partners actually agree!–despite both being wrong. The abuser yells “It’s all your fault!” and the partner thinks “Yes, I suppose it must be.”

So the first rule for anyone considering joint counseling with an abuser is that “forewarned is forearmed.” Counselors are not “always right”! One must be prepared to stand one’s ground and not buy into the consequence of an unwitting “collusion” between the counselor and the abuser. Unfortunately this can come about for several reasons.

Now and then a counselor may be biased in favor of an abuser. This is not necessarily dependent on the counselor’s sex. True, some counselors may be tempted to sympathize more with a partner of the same sex. But just as many counselors may be seduced by the “charm” of a partner of the opposite sex. If the abuser is psychopathic, “charm” is a trait they’re well noted for.

But a major problem is that most counselors are simply not trained in the pathology of abusers or the dynamics of abusive relationships. It’s perfectly possible to get a bachelor’s degree in psychology with ever taking a class on abnormal psychology! To me that’s as astounding as getting an engineering degree without ever discussing engineering faults and failures, but there it is. Most “marriage” counselors are trained to deal with the majority of more or less “ordinary” couples who just have conflicts or trouble relating to one another, not with the minority where a spouse has some personality disorder. If the counselor also lacks the insight to see what’s “really” going on between the couple, he or she can end up blaming an innocent partner for the problems in the relationship.

However, the way the couple present themselves to a counselor makes all the difference. If the abuser is a psychopath, that “superficial charm” and “gift of the gab” that many psychopaths are well known for can fool a counselor into believing this is a perfectly “nice” and “reasonable” person who surely is doing their best and couldn’t possibly be chronically abusive or some kind of control freak. But whether the abuser is psychopathic or not, one trait all abusers have in common is their habit of blameshifting. Whatever they’re accused of doing wrong just “has” to be made into somebody else’s fault!—usually their partner’s.

They may do this for more than one reason. It’s fair to say that the typical psychopath has a very loose relationship with Truth. Conversation to a psychopath is a means to an end. Psychopaths are prone to make statements to others, not because those statements reflect objective reality, or even reality as the psychopath mistakenly perceives it, but solely for the effect the statement has on others insofar as that serves the psychopath’s ends. If a psychopath denies being at fault for something, it’s not because the psychopath is unaware of being at fault, but because others may be persuaded by the denial to regard the psychopath more favorably or to refrain from penalizing him or her for wrongdoing. Now and again when it’s obvious to others that the psychopath did something very wrong, he or she may indeed “own up” and apologize profusely—but only because no other course of action is likely to regain other people’s favor.

Ordinary humans can also be somewhat guilty of doing these things from time to time. But with other kinds of abusers especially, who are not psychopathic, there can be a different reason. It’s not because they’re saying these things to fool others, but because, to one extent or another, they genuinely believe what they’re saying! Abusers, even if not psychopathic, have a remarkable capacity for twisting reality in their own minds, and for seeing themselves as the “victims” in a relationship.

I suspect all chronic abusers have a well-oiled mental mechanism for blameshifting that springs into action almost automatically out of long habit whenever any accusation is leveled against them. With the psychopath its purpose is to convince others that the psychopath is “not guilty,” or anyway “not a bad person” in spite of it. With other kinds of abusers a far more important purpose is to convince the abusers themselves that they’re “not guilty” or “not a bad person.” Unlike the psychopath, who is devoid of any “conscience,” many abusers do indeed have a conscience of sorts, however deeply it may be buried. Many abusers are exquisitely sensitive to shame—unlike the psychopath who is shameless. Some abusers can be so sensitive that they react defensively to harmless remarks that they even suspect might be “criticisms” of themselves, and respond by attacking (and abusing) the person who made the remark. To protect an already fragile and damaged ego, they rationalize their behavior and end up convincing themselves that they’re the real “victims” (as so many once were in childhood), and that everything is their partner’s fault.

So while the psychopath may be a polished actor in putting on the appearance of blamelessness, other kinds of abusers can be just as convincing because they sincerely believe (having convinced themselves) that they’ve done nothing “wrong.” In their minds, their criticisms and angry behavior at their innocent partners are justified by the partner’s supposed “faults.”

From one viewpoint it doesn’t matter what’s going on “underneath” in the abuser’s mind. Provided the abuser’s claims and behavior are convincing enough, a counselor can be taken in by them. But in addition, an abuser who sees everything as their partner’s “fault” goes into counseling with an “agenda” of their own: to get the counselor’s help in “fixing” whatever is supposedly “wrong” with their partner! That’s counterproductive when the real problem is with the abuser.

Apart from that, it’s the inconsistency of abusers’ behavior that so often takes people in, including counselors or anyone who fails to realize that “what you see is not always what you get.” I feel safe in saying that “inconsistency is the hallmark of any abuser.” Inconsistency between word and deed, inconsistency between claim and truth, inconsistency between appearance and reality: all these mark the psychopath especially, but can be just as true of abusers with disorders of another kind. On top of this, many abusers’ behavior is inconsistent from one person to another, and from one time to another, even with the same person.

It’s particularly problematic for an intimate partner when they are the only person being targeted for an abuser’s anger, criticism, rage and control tactics. Family, friends, and associates may never see that side of the abuser, and imagine he or she is an all-around “nice person.” Unfortunately it’s the nature of an “intimate partnership,” or what psychologists have called an “attachment relationship,” that invokes a whole different mental mechanism and potentially a whole different set of behaviors from those we practice with people at large. If that mechanism is unhealthy, an intimate relationship can bring out the worst of behaviors in an abuser, behaviors rarely or never seen with any other person. That can make it hard for an abused partner to get others to believe that the “nice person” they know could behave in outrageous ways they’ve never seen themselves. A counselor may find it hard to believe for the same reason.

Then many abusers really do seem to have two sides to their personality, Jekyll-and-Hyde style. This can result from mood swings (as in bipolar disorder) or the alternating mental states found in the “cyclothymia” associated with many borderline personalities. It’s hard for anyone who only sees the “Jekyll” personality to credit the hideous behavior this same person can be capable of at other times.

There’s also the well known “Cycle of Abuse, Type II.” I call it that to distinguish it from the other meaning of that same phrase, namely the way abusive behavior is passed down through families from one generation to the next. Rather, the “cycle of abuse” I’m talking about here is the one in which abusive behavior gets worse and worse, culminating in a huge blowup—after which the abuser, realizing the behavior has gone too far, expresses remorse, apologizes and promises “never to do it again.” The promise may be kept… for a while. But then the abuser’s behavior slowly deteriorates and the cycle is repeated over and over again, ad infinitum. This is not necessarily because the abuser’s apology is “insincere,” like that of a psychopath. It’s often that the abuser is unable to tolerate the shame of self-confrontation for very long, and in any case unable to “keep up” the good behavior.

My only reason for mentioning this “cycle of abuse” is what looks like an ambiguity in Eleanor’s e-mail. Eleanor said: “He’s started to call up my family, giving them a sob story about how broken he is…” [My emphasis.] Taken in context, I suspect what Eleanor meant was “how broken up he is” about the “problems” he claims to be experiencing with Eleanor, especially if he perceives that she does plan to leave him. But I didn’t write this to pick holes in Eleanor’s wording. It’s only because the guy might have been admitting that he himself is “broken”—that’s to say, confessing he has his own faults and issues too—and is looking for sympathy on those grounds. If so, that would also be typical behavior for many abusers. “Have mercy on me, a poor sinner.”

Regardless of all that, it certainly creates difficulties when abusers of any kind, psychopathic or otherwise, go around misleading people with their twisted perceptions (or alleged “perceptions”) of their partners’ “shortcomings.” They can mislead a counselor or anyone else.

The trouble is, as Donna pointed out (and Oxy too) that what the partner says, and how he or she says it, can unwittingly reinforce the impression the abuser is already making on others. A counselor—or anybody—can look from one to the other and think to themselves “It’s this person [the abuser] who looks and sounds sane to me. So calm, so reasonable, so sincerely sorrowful about this whole situation; so longsuffering and patient in struggling with these marital hardships. It’s their partner who looks bonkers, out of control, hysterical, overreacting, plainly exaggerating, and with ‘obvious’ anger problems!”

A contributory cause, too, can be that while psychopaths and other abusers are so practiced at shifting the blame onto their partners, partners by contrast are often too prone to self-doubt and inclined to accept blame that doesn’t belong to them. So a partner can be angry and frustrated on the one hand with the abuser’s behavior, but when the abuser responds with blameshifting, the partner may “back off” and admit “fault” of some kind. Then an onlooker may think “see, it was really the partner’s fault all along for being so hard to live with, just as they admitted!”

So one rule is to stand your ground and don’t let an abuser “change the subject” on you, in front of a counselor or anyone, from your own genuine grievances to their manufactured ones. But above all, when presenting your case to anyone else the first rule is exactly what Donna said: to ensure that you yourself appear calm, sane, reasonable, and as moderate as the events call for. A tone of sadness and regret is fine. It’s only natural in the circumstances. But overt anger and frustration, while a natural response to abusive treatment, can be misinterpreted as “your problem,” while excessive fear could be put down to “hysteria.” Be careful when describing outrageously abusive behavior that friends and assoiates may find hard to credit at the beginning. It could be advisable to proceed by stages to give them time to accept the unexpected reality you’re disclosing to them. It may be better to appear initially reluctant to expose the abuser’s worst behaviors rather than revealing them all at once. It’s best to avoid the appearance of wanting to “create a sensation,” acting out of spite, or anything of that kind.

Apart from that, keeping records is very important so that the abuser’s behavior can be accurately described, summarized, or even demonstrated to anyone else. Skylar’s suggestion of a digital recorder is an excellent one. Even when a tool like that isn’t or can’t be deployed, it’s still important to keep a journal of the abuser’s behaviors, noting them while they’re still as fresh in memory as possible, so that they’re not forgotten and can be quoted to others later.