By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
Psychopaths sometimes don’t know enough about how the rest of the world thinks to tell a “good” lie. I saw the following article about North Korea’s soccer team and how they had been apparently caught in a doping scandal, but were claiming that it was really an herbal medication that made them test positive for steroids.
The excuse given was that the team members had been struck by lightening and they had decided, heroically, to compete anyway. The steroids were accidentally taken with traditional Chinese medicines.
I have recently found other articles about the “stories” of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-II, that made me laugh out loud. In one article, he supposedly played his first round of golf and scored a 38, including five holes-in-one.
One of the things I have noticed about many psychopaths, and others who frequently lie, is that their lies are so “off the wall” that no one over three years old would believe a word of them. They will “lie when the truth will fit better” is a saying I’ve heard all my life. This seems to be especially true with pathological liars and psychopaths.
Dr. Robert Hare, well-known psychopathy researcher, says that psychopaths have difficulty realizing that their lies are unbelievable, even when the evidence that they are untrue is literally in front of them. In some way, the two sides of their brains can’t connect the evidence in front of their eyes.
An example of this are the lies told by Casey Anthony when she led the police to the place she supposedly worked, even going to a cubical, when she knew that she didn’t work for that company. She also lied about leaving her daughter with “Zanny the Nanny,” when such a person didn’t exist. Anthony even led the police to the door of the empty apartment with the police in tow.
Not all liars are psychopaths, but all psychopaths are liars. Liars signal that they are not to be trusted. But if you hear a lie that is so outrageous that it makes you laugh out loud, or have the feeling that the person telling it must be “crazy—”look out! You very well may be dealing with a psychopath.
A lie that may finally have done in my sister in the 90s when she was escalating absurdity in her stories to elicit ever greater sympathy was the one about having found a dead boy hanging from a tree in the woods behind her property with a pentagram carved on his chest a couple of years before all the fires, one of which was to burn down the house her husband had built on that property ”“ just after he’d retrieved all their possessions from storage to furnish it.
A Texas Ranger came to the scene to investigate the incident. He found zero evidence, and determined that the tree she said the child hung from could not have supported the body, even such a small one. Her explanation for not having reported it sooner was that she feared for her and her daughter’s lives (the daughter whom she was persistently causing injury & illness). She declined a lie-detector test, although, as a psychopath, she might well have passed it.
Ultimately she was arrested and pleaded guilty to the 7 counts of arson that she’d been accusing everyone but herself of committing (a neighbor, satanic cult, murderer in a separate high-profile case, you name it, her theories had no bounds, but were in line with her lifetime pattern).
Unfortunately, she so snowed the arresting officers that they let her go home with her young daughter on her own recognizance, and recommended merely probation & conditional release instead of the 10-year prison term. Now she uses the entire era to elicit further sympathy (desperate cry for help) and praise for how far she’s come since then (considering almost nobody knows of her subsequent dastardly deeds).
lies – well let’s see….hahaha i don’t have the time to write down all the lies the spath told me.
I might be better to write a few things that I suspect to be truth.
– she has traveled to x place and possibly to my country (where she supposedly was living)
– she does appear to like crows
– she does have dogs
– she is short
– she does know an ‘old couple’ who live in Illinois (but they are her and her husband!)
guess that’s it.
liar liar liar liar – it’s a wonder she hasn’t combusted from the flame of deceit.
OXY!
You don’t know! You weren’t there! While not LIKELY to have happened as they describe, IT MIGHT have happened! Poor FIVE in one Kim Jong-il and poor innocent Casey Xanax (don’t know why they keep spelling it Zanny the nanny when it’s Xanie the nanny).
That it “COULD be true” is NOT just the logic of spaths, but also of juries in murder trials and apparently, also the logic of current US legislature…
Not all liars are psychopaths, but all psychopaths are liars. Liars signal that they are not to be trusted. But if you hear a lie that is so outrageous that it makes you laugh out loud, or have the feeling that the person telling it must be “crazy—”look out! You very well may be dealing with a psychopath. ~ AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU ALL FOR THE WELL WISHES: BACK AT YA!
I am on my way to an EMDR therapy session.
Have a great day and I will read you all later on sometime.
xxoo
Duped
Duped;
Sometimes we do not know the person is lying at the time. I would say that any action that causes you to think WTF?? is reason to suspect you are dealing with a sociopath.
Again my best example: Two gay men, one 38 the other 35 on their third or forth date in a very fine restaurant. After a very pleasant evening, me, the 38 year-old says something complementary to my date, then I say “I have a very nice apartment, would you like to grab some beers and go back there after dinner?’
My date storms out of the restaurant. Outside, I see him nervously smoking a cigarette and make an attempt at damage repair.
“You offended my British reservedness.” I apologized and told him that it was not meant to be an advance, and that I do actually have a nice place with a very quite dining room and that we could go there instead of a bar. He said “lets just go to a bar.”
Now keep in mind that while he is creating all this drama, unknown to me at this time, he has a profile on a gay dating site with the following words:
“Hobbies include boys, beer, conversation, then a little fooling around.”
Yea, Katy, IT MIGHT BE TRUE—–in ANOTHER UNIVERSE! LOL
I have set new standards for HONESTY, and the standard for TOLERATION OF LIES=ZERO…..because even if the lie you catch them in today is “a small white lie” it is only because they didn’t feel the need at that time to TELL THE BIG ONE!
I also realized that in many ways, I HAVE BEEN DISHONEST in my own relationships with egg donor and told lies myself because I didn’t want to “upset” her with the truth. I didn’t want to face the CHAOS that would have ensued if I had been totally honest with her myself. So I am CORRECTING my own dishonesty in my relationships with others. I am being HONEST about what I expect in a relationship with others that are important to me.
If a clerk in a store is rude I don’t have to be “honest” with her and tell her all about her rudeness, I just walk away, or if it is bad enough I go see the store manager and complain honestly and calmly. That clerk is not PERSONALLY important to me.
People who are PERSONALLY IMPORTANT TO ME, I will be honest with them, and set HONEST BOUNDARIES….and if the relationship doesn’t survive them being told HONESTLY that they have violated my boundaries, then I know I have truly done the best I could in the situation. I’ve been honest, up front and kind, but I didn’t lay down and play door mat, because that would be being DIS-honest with MYSELF.
So spath has been contacting me for a week now after no response he decides to ask who i am like he doesnt know my number. Wth! Weird! Crazy!
Farwronged.
Interesting. Are you saying that he said, “who are you?”
That’s what my spath said to me right before I left him. He was angry because I hadn’t answered the phone all day. Then he says, “who ARE you? I don’t even KNOW YOU.”
I know now that it was projection and a tell. He was speaking exactly 180 degrees of the truth. The truth being that I didn’t know HIM or what he was.
Farwronged, I would guess that your spath is going through some very stressful time in his life right now and he’s going to try very hard to reach you for emotional supply. I’m guessing this from my own experience. Make a plan, stay safe, be boring, maintain NC.
Far – he asks who you are because he THINKS this will get him a response. Any response, to spath, is better than no response because it keeps his communication channel open with you. It’s his way of keeping you hooked.