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.
farwronged: they just keep coming back until they find another reason not to. But I don’t think they ever leave us alone. At least in my experience. They keep coming back because they expect us to be the same person we were before the ‘explosions’.
They come back in childish, twisted, ways…
having other people contact us; texting and just being a real STALKER and harasser because they don’t want us to forget them. It is up to US to resist the thoughts. We KNOW what we have been dealing with. We KNOW things are not ever going to be right. How can a person ever make some of the things we have been through ‘right’ with a simple, cheap, ‘I am sorry! THERE: does that make it better?!” Well, actually, no. It doesn’t.
The amount of disrespect and disregard for my life and well being and/or anyone elses is purely unacceptable. There are no explanations sufficient to support a forgiveness of any kind. The only regard it deserves is NOTHING. THAT is what it deserves.
IF YOU JUST REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE ANY LONGER IT WILL MOVE ON TO ITS NEXT VICTIM. YOU WILL BECOME BORING TO IT AS WE ALL HAVE BECOME AND THAT IS WHY WE ARE HERE.
We are being punished because we figured it out and it is using our affection and our caring as a tool and a weapon because it doesn’t have anything else at it’s disposal.
“IT” wasn’t the ‘trauma’….”IT” was the ‘trigger’ for the doors to open to myself. To grow and to learn and to jump those hurdles. Change is a very painful process. But change is necessary if we are ever going to survive this.
Stress kills. I have come back from the brink to definitively say: stress does kill. They don’t deserve our lives.
farwronged: I can so completely relate. My “IT” comes back every 3 months whether welcomed or not. Like clock work; I could set my watch or calendar by it. It comes back over and over to see if there is anything it can ‘glean’ from us, yet, still. In my case, my “IT” is hoping I will be swooned or threatened into dropping legal charges and I seriously doubt that is going to happen.
An attempted contact was made the day before yesterday. I still have NOT uttered a peep and don’t intend to. I said every word to “IT” that will ever be said and I meant every one. END OF THAT STORY.
Stay strong. Be true to yourself. Take care of yourself.
Refusing to participate any more has afforded me the much needed, HEALTHY, peace of mind I needed after my heart attack and “IT” STILL persists as much as I don’t want it to.
*HUGS TO ALL*
I was reading some posts on facebook regarding the arguement about raising the debt ceiling. This was one post(forgive their spelling!):
“agree with the analag of two married people that have to cut back and look at their spending. But, what I don’t agree with, is that that marriage is a happy one, or a healthy one.
If I was on your show, I would make this point.
You have one partner Jacking up credit cards, lying about you, telling their friends your a monster at the House and doing everything you can to cause a divorce. On the other hand you have the side that hasn’t got it yet, trying to compremise, fix things, talk, maybe enroll in a Dave Ramsey class together…
I could go on…..”
So if a duffus who can’t spell GETS it about what spaths do to their marriages, why did it take ME so long???!!!
I found this post validating…. Lies and it weren’t my fault. (now back to some semblence of literacy!)
KatyDid ~ It’s always easier to see dysfunction in a family when you’re on the outside, looking in. That’s where it sounds like Mr or Ms barely literate was coming from.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You DID figure it out dear lady, and you’re on the healing journey. ((((HUGS))))
h2h
Teacher123,
Yep, you got it….hadn’t thought of it that way, but you are RIGHT! That’s why.
KatyDid, I loved the article….and proves another point too, our educational system is shot to hades in a hand basket. Doesn’t sound like the person was dumb, just ILLITERATE.
And Hey, the thing that made me feel good at first at LF was there were people here who had more alphabet soup after their names than I did and they got DUPED TOO….Liane Leedom MD was one….so hey, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid or illiterate to get duped. Even VERY smart people get conned.
Yeah, wish I GOT it a lot sooner but in my defense, it was quite a bit more complicated. And yet….
OXY is absolutely on to something. It’s the lies that is the big red flag.
They don’t have to be spath. Lies is the sig that makes them TOXIC and toxic is enough. That has to be the standard. Telling yourself that there is an excuse, that they’re just gunshy from a previous relationship. Nope.
No matter what my husband did to me, it did not turn me into an immoral, lying, manipulative self absorbed jerk. Yet my husband is just that, and had NO bad gf’s EVER.
A person who is discovered to have lied (NOT a social lie like “i’ll call you”) has in essense told you that they are not trustworthy nor loyal nor considerate. Where is the future in a relationship without those values??
I remember when I caught my husband in his first REAL lie. It stunned me. Made me cry. Not b/c of the lie itself, but b/c I could NOT TELL HE WAS LYING, even as I KNEW what he said was a lie. I will admit I’ve lied, but I also know it was OBVIOUS. I told a lie rather than tell someone that the answer to their question was none of their business. I was afraid of offending them. Not any more. I have a NEW standard, thanks to a little extra enlightenment from OXY.
Yes, we do get conned. But in my case, once I learned he could lie without sending any signals, I should have ACCEPTED that I could not trust ANYTHING he said. That was ME trying to keep my white picket fence dream and finding years later, I am broken, broke, and starting anew as a woman older than her years in a bad economy, with few assets, and no support (yes you all are kind here but in reality, I am physically alone with NO one to go out with, associate with, work with, holiday with, etc. NO one to talk with or care what is happening to or with me.) I have to accept that I did a lot to myself. He was evil but I enabled him to do evil to me once I knew he could lie like that.
ps to you all: my puppy fell through, the owner had emergency surgury and his wife took the dogs and left. i now have a pound dog with pound dog problems…. still a rescuer HA! LOL! But al least a DOG has possibilities!!!
I agree with Ox, never feel inadequate or dumb. I felt thus way at first but just about everyone spath comes in contact with is fooled. They are great at concealing themselves and convincing their lies to be sincere truth. Feel smart and better than ever now that you know what they are and how to spot the next jerk. People take mental illness for a joke. Sociopathy doesn’t exist to some and is known as taboo. It is only out of people’s ignorance that they don’t get it. This puts them even more at risk for being duped and ending in our very same shoes.
Katy, EXCELLENT POST.
And that person is not a duffus. It’s very likely that they have run into a sociopath and they are still in the stage where their spelling has been impacted. (as mine has been, I have to try very hard to spell correctly these days!)
What I love about that post is that this person GETS it, that our government leaders are spaths, exactly like the ones we have run from. They are pulling all the same tricks, using the same lies, fear tactics, word salad and psychological warfare. They are using our emotions against us to pit people and groups against each other. Once you’ve seen one spath, you’ve seen them all!
Oxy,
I think some of the more blatent lies that a spath tells, are just a systems check. They are testing their dupes to see where the boundaries are and what they can get away with. Even Kim ILL-Jerk, is testing to see how many of his people will believe his lies and how many others will LEARN to believe his lies.
That’s very sound advice, and it applies even more broadly. Any action that causes you to think WTF??? is certainly a sign that a person is a weirdo of some kind, even if they’re not psychopathic. And nobody wants to end up with a flake like that, psychopath or not.
That’s the whole trouble with people who pull stunts like that. It doesn’t make any difference just what kind of crazy stuff is going on in their heads that makes them do it. It doesn’t make any difference either whether they’re male or female, gay or straight. The effect of their behavior is the same. “Inexplicable” outbursts of this kind can knock a person off balance, so you end up feeling bewildered, wondering what (if anything) you “did wrong.” Then you’re left “apologizing” to them, frantically trying to “mend matters” when in fact you did nothing wrong in the least. It’s entirely THEIR problem, not yours. But the end result is that you can end up feeling “obligated” to such a person, forever running around trying to please them, or anyway trying desperately not to “offend” them. You end up “oviputamenambulating” as I call it (that’s “walking on eggshells” in plain English). Meanwhile they end up “walking” all over you!
“Offended my British reservedness” my ARSE! What a load of BULLCRAP! If such a situation ever occurs again, you could retort that HE offended YOUR “American hospitality”! Though I suggest a more suitable response would be to tell the person to GET OVER IT and stop acting like a baby! If they react by having a hissy fit and storming off altogether, so much the better! They’re not the kind of person you’d want a relationship with anyway.
Who knows what was wrong with this guy? “Histrionic personality disorder” perhaps? Or he could have been another nutty borderline. There are quite a few of those around. Whatever it was, he sounded neurotic as hell. The point is that it doesn’t make any difference what mental condition he’s afflicted with. The rest of us don’t want to BE with a person like that if we can help it, because we don’t want to be “afflicted” with it ourselves!
They lie and insult everyone’s intelligence.
My spath lied so much about where he had been living until the bailiffs caught up with him!!
So in a court of law under oath (UK, hopeless system), he had tied himself up in knots, so the judge (di*k head still under oath) invited the spath to write down where he had been living for the past 3 years. We had even ‘living in his car’ (pity me ploy…).
So we all sat there (while he went through getting out a paper and pen, huffing and puffing away), and we waited, and waited and waited ..even the idiot realised …so after 10 minutes ..his response ‘I can’t remember’!!!!
The judge just gave him a withering look …he did his small boy, pity me look ..she then asked ‘do you have mental health issues’ ..idiot ‘I am stressed’, judge ‘but this is your application, we are all here because you have not paid child maintenance and you have brought an action against Mrs H’..the idiot ‘I didn’t mean it, it’s her fault …’. WTF goes on in their deluded heads I have no idea ..and care not to any longer.
A spath actually believes that they are superior and of course everyone should believe them …he lost his case!!
This is a somewhat amusing episode ..but that spath has done terrible things to my children and me, pure evil, they don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Take care everyone, and hugs to anyone who have met this sub human type, they don’t care, they never did and they ‘chose’ you because you are a lovely kind, generous person, empathy, all the things they aren’t.
xx
Movingon,
it’s nice to hear that you had the courts believing you.
Many of our spaths begin by putting all the law enforcement and judges in their pocket. That’s always the first step: brown nose authority. Then they move on to do their dirty deeds and know they’ll get away with it because the cops have already been compromised.