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.
EXCELLENT post Oxy.
I do not think my daughter spath, but she is difficult. And there is an irony. WHen I dated her father, one night he ranted about his terrible parents, that b/c they were “perfect” parents he was disadvantaged. At the time, b/c I grew up severly abused, starved, and neglected, I thought it silly that he was so angry at such a blessing. I eventually severed communications with him b/c he was so abusive at a time when I was working my A* off to support my daughter whom he contributed nothing (and I didn’t ask him to). Work and a toddler was all I could handle. LF helped me to conclude he is likely a narcissist.
Years later, even though he’d only seen my daughter one time when she was 9mo old, SHE said nearly the identical words, accusing me of perfect parenting and how that made it impossible for her to cope in life.
No, I was not the perfect parent but funny how doing our best can be as bad as being the worst; spaths in the petrie dish develop THEIR interpretation no matter what the stimulus. That’s my conclusion.
My apologies for this post. I did not intend to offer an “opinion”, but only to share My experience. Most importantly, it was not my intent to suggest that my grandparents were to blame. To the contrary, they had four boys and the other brothers are not like my father.
My point was, that I do not know what causes this condition, and that is one of the reasons that I do not judge it. It would be unfair to generalize a parents role in this. I have no authority to ever suggest such a thing. I do not know how God uses this either. Forgiveness and compassion never involve blame. Feeling compassion and enabling a sociopath are also two entirely different things. We can forgive someone and have compassion for them without trusting, liking or interacting with them. I can love someone and not like them or want to be around them.
When I write, I do so from personal experience. I do not give advice or ask others to believe what I believe. We are definitely dealing with a baffling human condition. Today, there is no known cure…I get that. By saying there is hope for a sociopath I did not mean to imply that someone should try to change them. The hope that I am referring to is from God, who has all power and can do all things.
I was concerned that this might be too controversial and should have trusted that instinct. My apologies if this posting is disturbing to some, but it is an accurate accounting of my experience.
I will try to be more thoughtful of lovefraud readers in the future. I am grateful to write here and want to always be helpful, not hurtful. Peace
Travis, thanks for your apology, I have NO doubt that your intention was not to offend, but I do not believe that anyone who is not “abusive” here owes anyone else an apology for voicing their opinions here on LoveFraud.
True, I can see how some could INTERPRET this article to be placing blame on the parents…but I did not interpret it that way, and I was in no way offended.
I do feel compassion for those people who have no conscience, no empathy, no love…theirs must be an empty life…and that is a sad thing, and I do believe that they have a CHOICE in what they are, in their emptiness, as it were. I do not believe psychopathy is 100% genetics, but neither is alcoholism. Though we know that people with certain genetics are much more apt to become alcoholics…but there is still a CHOICE of to drink or not to drink.
I think psychopaths are the same way, they have a TENDENCY toward psychopathy, but they have a CHOICE in how to behave. Most of the ones I have run across know right from wrong, but they choose, in spite of this to behave in an abusive manner.
It is my son’s CHOICE, not mine, that along with the genetics I passed on and that his father passed on, along with his CHOICES makes him what he is. Might he have made other choices if I had “raised him differently?” I don’t know and it doesn’t matter, there’s no way to tell…but none-the-less, his choices are HIS.
Each of us is responsible for their own choices, assuming we are not mentally challenged.
Travis ,
Milo has a good point about “if you could have provided the child everything he needed.” She did.
Milo, if I recall correctly, you said your daughter exhibited this neediness from early on as a baby? It’s possible that her genetics or her experience before you adopted her created such an overwhelming neediness in her that you could never fill it, no matter how much you sacrificed for her. I’ve read that several serial killers were actually spoiled as children.
And you know what? I provided my spath everything he needed too, as did his mother. That’s the point. That is what spaths are addicted to: providers, suppliers, protectors and responsible people that they can parasite on. Not all of them are looking for money – though many are – but all of them thirst for emotional displays which prove that they have the power to get what they need from us.
The nature of this Parasite Disorder is that it requires a host to manifest the sense of entitlement. They look for hosts who will give because they feel entitled to receive. Some of them murder as an ultimate act of demanding sacrifice. They all demand sacrifices of some type.
Yet their response to sacrifice is never gratitude, instead it’s disdain and focused greed that demands more sacrifice. This reaction has all the hallmarks of an addiction and any help we attempt to give them becomes enabling.
I think that when we try to put ourselves in the spaths shoes we risk falling through the looking glass. There is nothing normal about them, everything is reversed and shallow, except for their shame which is buried deep in their core and covered up with a grandiose facade.
That said, I agree Travis, that we need to make sure we maintain compassion or we risk becoming infected by them and taking on their traits. I know that there is nothing my spath would have liked better than to make me feel envy and emptiness. His every move was a calculated psychological warfare to create that in my life. He did his best, but I refuse to feel envious and part of that ability comes from having compassion for his empty soul. While I have compassion for him, I know that displaying it only enables him, so I don’t. Just as feeling bitterness toward others is like taking a poison and hoping someone else dies, compassion for him is medicine for me, not for him.
QUOTE SKY: “Just as feeling bitterness toward others is like taking a poison and hoping someone else dies, compassion for him is medicine for me, not for him.”
AMEN, Skylar, that is the point of the forgiveness and the compassion, it is medicine for us….but there is no way we can safely interact with them or allow them to abuse us any more (except for what MiLo and other co-parents do/es, because the law requires her to have “contact”)
We cannot allow them to make us bitter, hateful people. If we allow that, then they have “won.”
QUOTE OXY: “We cannot allow them to make us bitter, hateful people. If we allow that, then they have “won.” ”
AMEN, Sista Oxy!
😀
Even before I knew what my spath was, I sensed this. It was actually obvious what he was trying to seed in my brain: envy and despair. Because of this I knew I had to resist and OPPOSE everything he was trying to do. My solution was humility. With humility, they cannot shame you. They cannot make you envious and there is no despair.
Saint Michael the Archangel who defeated Lucifer is the angel you pray to for humility (if you’re Catholic). Who woulda guessed?
Ox Drover & Skylar – these are wonderful points. First, I agree that we do have a choice, even as children. The choice is Love or fear. The scripture is very clear on this. It is difficult (I think) to understand this in “human terms”, but it is in The Word and I believe it.
Also, the point about compassion…this IS what separates us from “them”. If we lose this, we respond in kind and suffer just as they do in darkness. When we are able to feel compassion with those that have harmed us the most, we overcome the darkness and bring healing not only to ourselves, but to the world.
Travis, I believe the commands and suggestions in the Bible are given , for OUR benefit, and by following those commands and suggestions (Paul’s letters are full of them) David’s writings are full of them also and Proverbs is as well. These wise statements, commands, and suggestions are so that if we follow them, we will lead a good life.
There are several suggestions about how to treat a “brother who offends you” by his sinful/hateful/bad behavior. You go to them and try to talk to them. If that doesn’t work, you get a couple of witnesses and go back and talk to him, if that doesn’t work, you go to the community of the church , if he fails to “hear” then, treat him like a heathen.
Now if that does not sound like NO CONTACT I don’t know what does. In fact, it used to be a policy for churches to practice “shunning” in this very manner—-why? To show the person their behavior and attitude was wrong and they needed to change their behavior and their attitude, and if not, they did not need to be around “decent” people. I don’t know a single church that practices that any more. Sure, Jesus came for the sinner, but if the sinner is going to continue in that sin and make no effort to reform, we are to SHUN that person. NC!
There is a prison ministry named Kairos that I contribute to and that I know some of the ministers. They go into the prisons and have weekly meetings and some weekend long meetings where family members can go and visit all day face to face with their family member who is an inmate.
Only 10% of the Kairos groups go back to prison, where in the rest of the prison only 40% even finish out their paroles before they commit new crimes. I think there are two things working here. One, is that the majority of the men and women inmates who participate in this program are the ones who are the lower percentage of P-trait inmates, however, my son participated….he has always known how to quote the Bible to his advantage and how to fake his “sincere christian” role when he wants to. The program does well, though, if measured by the low recidivism rate.
I have become quite good friends with one of the ministers in the last 7 years, and I have educated this man about psychopaths. He in turn is educating others So hopefully they can pick out the ones like my son Patrick and weed them out of their program.
The purpose of “shunning” an unrepentant “brother” (or anyone else) is to bring them to an awareness of their bad behavior, it is sort of an adult version of “time out” and the idea is that if they value your friendship, companionship or love, they will reform their behavior, see their wrong doing and repent. But if they don’t, then you don’t need them in your life. Of course we know a psychopath may pretend to “repent” but that is where we must use our good sense and realize that ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS….
The story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers and who recognized them when his 10 of 11 brothers came to buy grain in Egypt where he was now second only to the king himself. Joseph didn’t know what kind of men his brothers were since he had last seen them 10, 20, maybe 30 years before, so he TESTED them very strongly by setting them up and accusing them of having stolen some cups…then making them bring their youngest brother to verify what they had said. Then, when the youngest brother came and they were leaving again, again the cops rode up and accused them of strealing Joseph’s cup and it was found in the grain sack of the youngest brother. They were all take back and Benjamin, the only full brother to Joseph was going to be put in prison as a slave. The other brothers talked and knew that losing Benjamin would make their father so sad he would die, so they decided to have oone of the older brothers take Benjamin’s place as a slave.
So Joseph knew by that, that they had seen just how badly they had hurt their father by faking his death and sending him into slavery…and that they would NOT do that to him again, in fact, they were willing to take Benjamin’s punishment for the fake theft themselves. ONLY then, when he realized how they had changed did Joseph reveal to them who he was. He had TESTED before he TRUSTED. He SAW that his brothers had changed. Become mature and trustworthy men.
We know “why” the older brothers did what they did, they were insanely jealous of the younger brother who was from the favorite wife and was coddled by their father….given a coat of many colors and who was an arrogant little snot to them. It didn’t justify what they did, but it explained it. Aftger they saw the grief it brought on their father though, I think they repented of what they had done as the tests in Egypt showed.
Not all people who do even some pretty bad things are psychopaths, and all psychopaths though, do some pretty bad things, either emotionally abusing, financially, or physically or all the above.
I can feel badly/sadly, compassionately, that these people are missing the greatest thing in life…love and connectedness…but it doesn’t mean I am going to associate with them.
However, when a person does bad acts and shows that they either have no desire to repent or change their ways then I will “treat them like a heathen”—not be intimate with them—avoid them when I can, or total NC if it is bad enough.
If someone acts dishonest, mean, or irresponsible and is truly unrepentant, they have failed the “Ox Drover friend test”—doesn’t make any difference if they are a psychopath or not, I don’t need that person as a friend.
Just a thought.
Since there are children and adults that follow God or the light-there will be an opposing set that follow the dark and the devil.
I an an ex catholic and I follow the teachings of compassion and love and if you look at many religions this is their
e basic teaching too.
10 years ago–before I knew that my ex h was a spath–I left him with my children because he was abusive. He had a better childhood than me as he was quite spoiled. I came from a single parent who was an alcaholic.
I saw a counsellor and he convinced me to picture that little boy. I did and I was overwhelmed by compassion and I took him back on the understanding that he would get help.
He went to counselling and for the next six years we were happy. Abuse had stopped.
Then suddenly he attacked me-raped me and called me by my children’s names. He wanted to kill me.
I just can’t see him as that little boy anymore. It’s gone.
What I experienced was evil and destructive to goodness. This was not a child of God. I cannot at this point drum up any more compassion that I felt the last time.
He killed it stone dead and I stay true to myself and my feelings at this moment.
Hurting me was one thing–but my children never.
xxx
Do you know why I know he was true evil. He desecrated everything I held sacred-even my children to destabalise me.
He knew what he was doing and why.
I now save my compassion for those that deserve it.
He is my enemy. Did he once think of me and my children as abused once. NO. He thought only of himself and his sick pleasure at inflicting harm. HE LIKED IT.
xxx