Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
How can this be? Is it right, or possible to have compassion for a sociopath? Why should I consider this topic after all the pain that the sociopath has caused me? For some, the very idea may make you angry. If so, my hope is that you read more”¦
In the beginning, I looked at my father as a spiritual vampire with no soul. A person that lived off of others, consuming their money, emotions, kindness and love, then moving on to another. In my dad’s case, he even took their very lives. He deserved to die, I thought. I was OK with the idea of him being condemned to death and being sent to death row. Why not? He deserves it, right?
When I look at a sociopath what do I see?
The sociopath is someone that cannot experience real love, only mimics it. They treat children and relationships like possessions. My father treated me like he would his favorite car, as long as I was good. He killed people because he thought it would make him feel better. This last statement led me to an important question of my own.
How bad could a person possibly feel inside to believe that killing another person would make them feel better, and what does that say about what value they place on their own life?
Exactly what am I seeing when I look at this picture? Another human being (yes they are human beings) that lives in darkness with no clue as to what life really offers, or a monster? A little bit of both I suppose, but the suffering human existence is something that I had not recognized before, because of the hurt that my dad had caused me.
I am trying not to use so many questions in this post, but I am finding it impossible, because this issue raises so many of them. What happens to a person that causes them to live in darkness with no awareness of what love really is? Image a father not being able to understand the love of a child, but to view them as an expendable possession.
During the recovery process, I became friends with a beautiful spiritual woman who also happens to be a licensed clinical social worker with a PhD. I was not a client of hers, but she became one of my most important teachers just the same. One morning, while demonstrating a wonderful technique that she uses to help people heal past emotional deficits, she treated me to a miraculous gift that corrected years of misunderstanding about my father. Since it is something that must be experienced to be truly understood I will keep my description of it as brief as possible. Words just simply will not do justice to this type of deep work.
My friend helped me to settle into a calm and comfortable state and then she began asking me some questions about my family. She asked me to select items in the room that might represent them, and then she asked me to place them where I felt most comfortable.
First, we started with my father, I selected an object that was hard, rough and had no qualities that resembled a person. I then selected items that represented my mother and me as a small child—items that were soft, had character and appeared to be very inviting, almost cuddly. I placed the item for my father across the room from me, and I set my mother and me close by my side. As I sat with this scene a while and took it all in, I noticed how far away I had placed the cold symbol of my father. It was on the other side of the room, as far from me as I could place it.
She then asked me if I could begin to imagine my father as a very small child, playing in the room in front of me. She asked me what that might look like. I imagined my father as a small little boy about two years old, wandering around the room and playing. I felt a since of warmth come over me. The tension left my body and I could feel my heart begin to soften. She asked me then to pick out an object that represented this image, and I found something soft and loveable that resembled the image I had chosen for me and my mom.
Finally, my friend asked me to create the perfect family for my father and to place them together somewhere in the room. I took the object that was my mother, found another soft object, and placed them right next to me on the couch with my father between the two, but touching. As I looked at this image, she asked me to think about what his life might have been like had he been given everything that he needed. I imagined that for a while, and I felt a sense of deep compassion come over me.
I must say that I have no idea what was lacking in my father’s childhood that made him what he became, but I do know this. I can no longer think of my father without the image of the little boy in that room, a little boy who somewhere along the line didn’t get what he needed either. The emotional deficiency regarding my father is no longer there because it has been replaced with compassion and understanding. The process of forgiveness has been completed for me.
This is a very short space to cover this topic, but this experience along with learning the process of letting go, has allowed me to look at all of my brothers and sisters with compassion. I do not know why some suffer more than others, but I cannot imagine a darker existence that one without God, love and fellowship.
I am not sure why we want to help people that are suffering up to a certain point, then decide they crossed some imaginary line that now justifies killing them?
There is no way to convince someone that has been deeply hurt by a sociopath to have compassion for them, but I found my own freedom in this very change in perspective. For me, it brought a sense of understanding that carries over into all of my relationships. I don’t judge people so much anymore. When I see someone acting out or being cruel, I now wonder “what happened to that person to make them feel that way”. (This does not mean I trust them or interact with them, but I do often pray for them. I find great peace (for myself) in praying for others)
I understand that many people believe that the sociopath is victim to a hopeless human condition. There may be no solution today, but I no longer believe in such a thing as a “hopeless human condition”. Until 1930 alcoholism was considered a hopeless human condition and a Miracle changed everything. They locked alcoholics in insane asylums until a miraculous solution was given to the world that now affects millions of lives.
Personally, I have witnessed too many Miracles to considering anything hopeless. I once thought my life’s situation was hopeless and I was wrong. Thank God! I no longer “think” that I am qualified to determine these things and I am much happier this way. A funny thing happens when each situation is approached with hope (not ignorance, but hope). Miracles Happen.
When I approach life with compassion, compassion is exactly what I find! To give IS the same as to receive.
I will continue to write weekly here, but for those that are interested and willing to go more deeply into the process of letting go, please join A Course In Forgiving (begins January 19, 2012). I did not come here to promote The Course, but to offer it to those that feel moved to do something more about the pain in their lives.
There is no fee of (optional donation of up to $25.00) for the six week online course. This Course is designed to guide participants through the Step by Step Spiritual Process of Letting Go with weekly lessons, readings and exercises that are intended to open the pathway to healing and Peace.
If interested, please visit www.victorythroughpeace.com and click the link in the left hand column titled “Six Week Course Online”. For those that participate, I will be available by phone and email to share experience in addition to this weekly blog on Lovefraud.
Peace.
Travis, this is a wonderful lesson in compassion. The spiritual work that I think we must ALL do in order to heal from the devastation of associating with psychopaths (whether they are murderers or “just” abusive spouses doesn’t make any difference).
I think I understand what your post is about, the compassion for anyone who can’t feel love, who has given their souls over to evil….yes, at one time they were children just like we were children, and some where along the line a mixture of genetics and environment and choice made them decide to do and be and think like they do today. THAT IS A SAD THING.
I can imagine my Psychopathic sperm donor as a child, I’ve heard lots of stories about him as a child from the woman who loved him the best, his nanny. Unfortunately, his mother was a psychopath herself, but the children had a loving woman who my grandfather hired before my sperm donor was born, and raised the 4 children through Highschool for the ones who stayed and went to school, but my Sperm donor left permanently at age 11.
My own son Patrick, was probably the most adorable child anyone could want, bright, fun, seemingly loving–adored by peers and teachers and other parents, until puberty when he “morphed” into what he is now. I still love that little boy, that child I had that is no longer with me except in my mind. But really, none of us can KEEP THOSE BABIES…at BEST they grow into adult friends, but we can never keep them as babies except in our minds.
I do have “compassion’ for psychopaths for lacking love and empathy and not having all the good feelings that are POSSIBLE for us to feel.
The Bible talks about a “reprobate mind” and just my interpretation is that is speaking about a psychopath who has given themselves into the choices for evil to the point that their minds have gone “over the hump” and they are not able to turn around now and “go back” and have empathy and love for others or maybe even for themselves. Yea, it is SAD when a person gives themselves over to EVIL, or ALCOHOL or DRUGS to the point that there is no “going back” and undoing the damage done either physically or spiritually.
By feeling compassion for these people, compassion for the EMPTY life they lead—what kind of life except EMPTY could you lead without love for others or love for self? LOVE is what makes life worth living. It is what connects us to the rest of the human race it is what connects us to God (in whatever form we believe in that Higher Power).
Thanks for posting on LoveFraud, Travis. Your deep wisdom and caring, your peace and compassion, and your ability to share it with us is very helpful to me. THANKS AGAIN!
Dear Travis,
I have been reading your articles and have always come away with something very positive. I too believe that to move forward in our recovery we have to learn the art of forgiveness.
I agree that a sociopath is a “human being that lives in darkness with no clue as to what life really offers” and I do believe they have a “suffering human existence”. Even though my sociopath daughter has caused our whole family and particularly her own young son an enormous amount of pain, I can still consider and actually do feel compassion for her. I view her as an empty shell of a human that could have been SO MUCH MORE and that is so sad.
This is where my understanding of this particular blog of your ends.
When first finding myself on Lovefraud and Aftermath, I was a mother filled with so much guilt. I, after all, was the one that raised this human that emits great amounts of evil, who takes pleasure in hurting innocent victims, that neglected and abused her own child. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do? Why did I not recognize this sooner? What should I have done differently? My husband and I showered our only little girl, the one we waited years and years for and finally adopted, with love, affection, attention, affirmation and material things. We gave her life structure, spiritual guidance, and strong moral values. We were good examples. We set boundaries, rules and non abusive punishments. We sought professional help for her, over and over and over again.
People that I met here on Lovefraud and on Aftermath helped me to understand and accept that IT WAS NOT MY FAULT. This was huge for me and I started to slowly heal. Now your post comes along and asks the questions – “What happens to a person that causes them to live in darkness with no awareness of what love really is?” You state that your friend asked you to think about “what his life might have been like had he been given everything that he needed” “I must say that I have no idea what was lacking in my father’s childhood that made him what he became” “a little boy who somewhere along the line didn’t get what he needed either” You go on to say that you don’t judge people so much anymore. “when I see someone acting out or being cruel, I now wonder ” what happened to that person to make them feel that way” ”
Travis, your post has just placed the responsibility, the blame for someone becoming a sociopath directly back on to NUTURING. The guilt that I have tried so hard to overcome has just been placed squarely back on my shoulders. What didn’t I GIVE to that child that she needed?
You see Travis, this is very hard for me because she like to tell everyone that she is the way she is BECAUSE she came from a dsyfunctional, abusive family. That is her lie, her claim. This hurts.
Travis,
I have enjoyed reading you. Your spiritual healing is very powerful.
I do have a concern with your post above in that too many people landing here for the first time will see your words and especially the word hope… Unfortunately – I know because for a long time that was me – I believed in the power of spiritual healing and had hope for the man I loved so deeply – a man who was a cipher.
Travis I am 20 years sober through the program of AA and yes it is a miraculous program but the deal is ONLY THE PERSON WHO WANTS SOBRIETY MORE THAN TO RELIEVE THE PAIN OF REALITY WITH A CHEMICAL can get and stay sober. The person who gets clean from drugs or alcohol at some point can see the damage they are doing to themselves. The vast majority of people in recovery recover out of self interest.
Self interest is key. The person who believes the benefits of behaving badly offer more reward than behaving charitably, lovingly, kindly is not going to ever choose in a consistent enough manner to “turn over a new leaf” to make a difference. In fact, one of the writers here – it may have been Steve – posted a topic regarding P/S/N’s who suffer what I would term “Shadow Syndrome” – that is actually the title of a book. The theory is that just like there is a bell curve with the middle being “normal” there is a section of that curve where people are between full blown P/S/N status and normal and those people are truthfully the most dangerous as they cause the same damage or more – particularly in long term relations – because they have the ability to plausibly express remorse – yet it is never deep enough to change the underlying behaviors. This is what keeps loving, gentle people tied to those people that are damaging to one’s psyche and soul, and even sometimes physically damaging.
As Oxy says above about her son, he changed at puberty. The mother of the man I loved also told me how he was as a child, the sweetest most fun and I know his family well – the environment in which this man was raised did not lack for anything that could account for his behavior. So I can look back and see what a delightful adorable boy he was and wish that he had flowered into a man with the same qualities as promised by his pre-puberty being but the truth is I have ZERO empathy – ZERO ability to make an excuse for him as it would to me be blaming others for failing him in some way and I can tell from the older brother and the younger sister – he was loved, he had food, clothing, shelter and an extended family that is generous and loving, aunts, uncles – people who embraced me….And hoped I would be what made him turn around (which they did not tell me until I was already so attached and brainwashed I could not detach for some time)….
There is a book by Lundy Bancroft, “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry Controlling Men”… Mr. Bancroft is a pioneer in working with abusive men – which he began out of a hope and effort to help battered women. What he writes about and found was that these men do not change. They might get better at hiding what they do – ie: it becomes more psychological than physical – but they do not change. The reason for this is they see no benefit in changing. When a man (or woman) has a batterer mentality they know through threat of force they can have another provide their food, wash their clothes, basically wait on them hand and foot and they do not have to do anything but give a look or throw a fist through a wall or slam a door or make threats of violence to someone else and that will keep their “slave” in line. My ex talked early in our relationship about “training me” and I laughed thinking it was a joke. It was no joke. Eventually he had me trained – it was my subconscious trying to keep me safe so I became compliant and trying to soothe him and keep him happy so he would show me the love he had in the beginning – aka “love bombing”…
Anyway – I hope you understand what I am saying. I have compassion for him – FROM A DISTANCE – but truthfully I have far more compassion for his mother who he has terrorized, the other women he has terrorized – and the loss to society as a whole that a brilliant funny man is evil.
I am not sure there is a cure for this kind of evil Travis.
I’m pretty sure there is not.
MILO – I see we posted very close together the same thoughts.
Travis – everyone – here was my moment of awakening.
Because so many people ask what woke you up?
I believed that like my recovery from alcoholism – which by the way I was born with – I blacked out the first time I drank and that is considered middle to late stages of alcoholism – and I had no idea it was abnormal…. I never even told anyone as I assumed it was the same for all…
Anyway – I was asked to go to a battered women’s class and I struggled to attend and finally I went. During that time Chris Brown (the music star) committed a terrible physical attack on his girlfriend Rihanna (another star) … I do not follow them but this was in the media. I decided to read up on what happened and the police report was posted on line. When I read the report and saw the words he had yelled at her it was like a punch to the gut. I knew – I KNEW – there is nothing I can do about this and this is not about me!
I am not being treated badly due to some failing in me!
I have to tell you that deep down inside I think I have believed always that if someone is hurtful to me then it must be because of something I have done and I need to change.
I was taught that by my parents unfortunately. I was taught to accept abuse although I am sure they never imagined it.
Anyway – that moment of clarity has helped me immensely in so many areas of my life. I tolerate less and less nonsense over time. It has freed me from any sense of guilt or responsibility. Because you see I felt responsible to help, to fix, to save.
Even Christ and His followers knew that when their audience did not have hearts and ears open to His message that they should shake the dust from their shoes and move on to people who were hungry for the message of Christ’s love for us.
While a agree with you on many things, especially miracles, some spaths simply don’t fit that mold. Some have absolutely zero in their backgrounds to cause them to be disfunctional, such as my X who nearly murdered me. Believe me, I would love to think something changed him, but it’s simply not true.
Spaths target those who are compassionate. We want to believe that they are “curable”, that in some way we can help them, even if just by praying. They are emotional chameleons, changing constantly to fit what we want to see in them. I think of them sort of human ecoli, a life threatening virus that may lie quiet while it adapts to a new antibiotic, but returns even stronger. So while I don’t hate X, I can’t say I have any compassion for him either. He is what he is. He’s perfectly happy about himself and sees himself a good person making the world a better place to live in just by his existence. Short of divine intervention he will stay that way.
Breckgirl, we could be clones, except that I got the codependence without, thank heavens, the alcoholism. While spaths show a lot of similarities to each other, so do the people they prey upon. I can’t change my past, but I can darn well change MY behaviors that allowed one abusive relationship after another and like the disciples, shake the dust off my sandals!
Thank you Travis. I found your article to be so similar to my sister’s experience in dealing with our biological father. She was going through light therapy as a way to heal from her experiences with him.
Just a quick overview. Our father was a true Sociopath/Psychopath. He raped my sister repeatedly, beat our mother horrible and ended up brutilly killing his girlfriend. I was kidnapped by him at gunpoint when I was a baby, but that is the only experience I had with him. I went into foster care at 13 months.
My sister had an epiphany during one of her sessions. She was asked to go back to a particular experience that involved our father. She said that when she went there, she saw the Arc Angel Gabriel. He led her to the bedroom where the rapes had happened and there she saw our father sitting on the bed with many, many angels around him. This really upset my sister and she became angry and asked Gabriel why in the world would a purely evil man deserve such love and compassion from the angels. Gabriel’s response to my sister was : Everyone deserves the love and grace of God. Even your father.
This really began the REAL healing for my sister. She was able to see him in a different, more compassionate light. Did this excuse anything my father did to her? Absolutely not. She has learned to discern the two from the truly lost, wounded human being from the abusive, evil father. Does she still wrestle with the pain at times? Yes she does. She is human and forgiveness and comapssion are a forever process.
No one in my father’s family understands why he turned out to be the way he was. By all accounts, he came from a loving family. I do not know. But I do get what you were saying about imagining him as a little boy and not getting what he needed. I think that kind of imagining was helpful for you and would be helpful for me and I never took it as something everyone should do to heal. Everyones circumstance is different.
Forgive me for interpreting your words, but I took away from your post that no matter what caused these people to be sociopathic, it is important to understand and have comapssion in general for they are also children of God deserving of his love and grace.
Thank you for your contributions.
IMHO . . there is a reason . . people don’t forgive being repeatedly abused. It is for protection. It is natural to be angry and NOT forgive. Through centuries of evolution, our instincts tell us NOT to forgive. I go with nature.
I don’t believe it is just up bringing. My ex was raised by the same parents his sibling had and they are just 2 years apart.
I do think it is extremely sad that a human lacks the ability to FEEL but I know for a fact that long after my divorce from the “amazing husband” I thought I had that he threw me under the bus 12 years BEFORE any of his gambling or womanizing became knowledge to me. I found out he had thrown me under the bus from his own father’s mouth. So my ex made a conscious decision to USE me while we were married and he was PRETENDING to LOVE for many years.
Do I feel sorry for him? NO!!!!
It was my compassion for the wounded child I saw in my husband that kept me trapped in years of abuse. For myself, it is not compassion that I needed in my relationship with an spath, it was Understanding. With understanding I concluded there was no relationship, never would be. And the only thing that remained was his access to abuse me.
As with my pedophile father, I turned over punishment to God at the same time I severed my relationship. I reclaimed personal responsibility for myself and I set the same standard on spaths in my life, that THEY NOT excused for their wrongs, they are responsible for who they CHOOSE to be.
Travis and everyone who posted above, I just got back in the house from being gone all day, and I read the other responses to Travis’s article. I can see BOTH sides of the issue, and as Milo said, it isn’t about ONLY what they “didn’t get” to make them fully functioning humans with a conscience, or that the parents didn’t “give them what they needed.”
I too am a parent of a psychopathic child, and one who is NOT a psychopath, but whom I am not proud of his moral compass and am essentially NC with him, but I do NOT BLAME MYSELF for either son’s behavior because they have CHOICES in how they behave. They both know right from wrong, and they choose to do what they do even though they were taught and modeled morals, responsibility–though I admit I was far from a perfect parent and I did not model properly setting boundaries, but I was a GOOD parent who worked hard at being a GOOD parent.
My sons have CHOICES in how they behave, and those choices were sometimes immoral, sometimes abusive, sometimes horrible, but they were things that my sons CHOSE to do. Patrick is a full-fledged psychopath without any conscience or moral compass, and who is both smart and very arrogant, and who thinks the world should bow down to his superior being, and if anyone crosses him, the deserve to die. I shake my head and wonder what if he had had a conscience….would he have been the next Einstein? Would he have discovered the cure for cancer? Or put a man on Mars? Would he have married and fathered children that he loved and nurtured? Instead he is in prison for a brutal and cold-blooded murder and he’s proud of what he did and it was HIS CHOICE. Do I think his life must be EMPTY? Yea, I do think that and I actually have compassion for him because he has NOT EXPERIENCED love and joy and bonding with another human being. He’s had sex a few times before he was locked up for the last 21 years, and maybe he’s had sex in prison I don’t know, but whatever he has done, he has never known the connection to another human being that comes from making LOVE, not just copulating. He has never held a child he made in his arms and had his heart fill with love until it over flowed into tears….what a shame that anyone has never experienced that special JOY of making love, of parenting a child. HOW SAD. Even though that is the case, and though I know that genetics are not 100% responsible for a person being or not being a psychopath, I do know that my son had a reasonable and consistent parent who loved him, did the best she could humanly do, and that I do NOT accept responsibility in any way for his choices as an adult.
I think about the little boy I loved….but he is GONE as all children grow up. He is As an adult though, NOT MY FRIEND, he is a stranger. I have fond memories and love for that little boy, but the man? Well I have nothing for him except sadness that he has no normal human feelings, but he needs to be caged because he is a danger to himself and society. That’s a shame. It is SAD, but it is not my choice, and not my fault….the only thing I am “responsible for ” is passing on a genetic flaw that I didn’t know I could pass on. My other biological son has at least chosen never to have a biological child and to potentially pass on that genetic material. I am happy about that.
I can see in the article where Travis is coming from I think, but I also see why a parent such as myself or Milo COULD interpret it as placing the blame on us for missing something when we were parenting them.
Since 90% of human communication is non-verbal, the written word can be difficult in expressing profound and deep concepts, such as compassion or forgiveness. I think each of us must decide for ourselves what our “interpretation” of those emotionally charged words such as “compassion” or “forgiveness”—-I’ve tried to make my own interpretation clear, but I understand that each person must decide for themselves how to interpret those and other words. No one here at LF is I think trying to lay blame onto a victim. We do have to accept responsibility for the things we did, for staying in a relationship long after there was abuse, but that is still not “blame.” Which is another of those emotionally charged words. Responsibility does not = blame in my “dictionary.”
(I((hugs))) to you all!