Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.
Have you ever seen a cat toy with a stunned, cornered mouse? How it will capture the mouse, dangle it in its mouth for a while, release it momentarily, allowing the mouse the pretense of an escape, only to recapture it, dangle it some more from its mouth, perhaps release it again briefly, now to watch the mouse, increasingly frantic, make another escape bid, only to recapture it, now letting the terrorized mouse (and, as if it’s fate) dangle yet some more, in dreadful uncertainty?
If the mouse could think, it might have thoughts like these: “What will this cat do with me? How long will it continue to toy with me? Will it kill me, or let me go? Strangely, this cat seems to be deriving a perverse pleasure in my predicament. My helplessness and suffering seem to be entertaining and amusing this cat. There is something cold and sadistic about this—that this cat could be using, and exploiting, my vulnerability in this way for its personal, shallow gratification?”
The mouse would think, “there is something wrong with this cat.”
In this analogy, the mouse’s imagined experience of the cat captures, I believe, the victim’s experience of the psychopath. Cats, of course, are not psychopaths, and mice, although traumatizable, are unlikely to experience their victimization in quite so thoughtful a way.
But to elaborate the analogy, let us imagine what’s taking place in the cat’s mind. The cat may be thinking, “This is fun. The mouse I’m terrorizing is pathetic. Look how scared and confused it is. It has no idea what’s in store for it. Even I haven’t decided what’s in store for it. I’m enjoying its helplessness, and my total control over it, too much to worry about my plans for this mouse. I find it amusing that its playing dead. Does this mouse think it can fool me? I, and only I, will determine whether the mouse lives or dies. Presently I’m going to release and taunt it again, with the illusion of escape. When I recapture it immediately, it will be trembling with fear, a prisoner to my designs. This is pretty funny. It’s not that I have anything personal against mice. As a matter of fact, they provide me with a great source of recreation.”
The cat in this analogy (and let me stress that I like cats, who don’t really think like this), captures with a chilling fidelity the perspective of psychopaths towards their victims. It is all there: the cat’s utter lack of empathy for the mouse; its view of the mouse as an “object” that exists to be exploited for its benefit; its amusement at having created the mouse’s predicament, now to watch and enjoy the mouse’s futile bids at escape; its contempt for the mouse’s helplessness and desperation, which the cat, of course, has opportunistically established for its own entertainment; its relish in its omnipotence to decide the mouse’s fate, but only when it is good and ready, and no sooner than the cat has mined the mouse’s helplessness for its full recreational value.
In sum, this is the essence of the psychopath: his joy of the hunt, his contempt for his prey, and his intention to take everything he can, and wants, from his victim.
When the psychopath takes you for a ride—that is, when he is victimizing people—it’s really not personal: You’re simply not enough of a person for it to be personal. In the psychopath’s eyes, you are an expedient, nothing more. When he crosses your path, the psychopath is assessing your expediency. He is asking himself, “Is there something this impending-sucker has for me? Is there something I can take from this fool that I want? Something I can take that will make me feel good?”
As part of his assessment, he is evaluating the kind of target you’ll be. If he decides to pass, it won’t be because he likes you, or feels something charitable; it will be because he’s decided that, either you have nothing, after all, worth taking, or that you’ll pose inconveniences and/or risks to his present self-interests that he prefers to avoid.
For the psychopath, you are like a sealed, vulnerable envelope he is constantly espying, with suspected money inside. He isn’t sure how much money, but he’s pretty sure there’s something in it. It might be a little, it might be a lot; it’s possible there’s too little (or nothing) of value worth his bothering with. Surely, though, he is scheming how best to glimpse what’s in the envelope, and how best to lift anything worth taking.
The psychopath is a high, and often imprudent, risk-taker; he’s in it for the catch, not to be caught. You, and all human beings, are mere commodities to him: maybe useful, maybe not. Certainly, once he’s expended your use, to the psychopath you’ll be as useless as a nagging headache.
Khatalyst,
Your very thoughtful post sums up, to me, what we all should gain from this terrible experience. I applaud you for your insight, your strength, and your hard won wisdom.
I’ve just re-read some of the stories in this thread, and I’m afraid my perspectives may sound disrespectful to people who are still in the trenches. It’s “easy for me” to be so philosophic three years later, when the worst thing I have to deal with is emotional flashbacks.
And surely not all of us “manifested” these characters to play a supporting role in some necessary therapeutic work.
Still, I think that there is something important about saying no. And meaning it at a lot of levels, including doing whatever you have to do the exclude this person from your life, heart and mind, and being a warrior in defending that decision, if necessary.
And it may be reassuring to hear from one more person that getting over these relationships can actually make us better than we were before.
OxDrover,
Thanks. You were writing, while I was writing my apology. I admire you deeply for your courage and good sense and persistence in getting through this. The soul warrior in me salutes the soul warrior you.
This is completely off-topic, but you might want to check into the possibility of gluten intolerance in your family. Both sides of my family are full of ADHD, depression, all kinds of addictions, etc., etc. It turned out that the psychological effect of celiac disease was at least part of it.
Thanks Khatalyst, for you salutation, my “warrior self” feel somewhat battle scarred and weary from time to time, but an “atta girl” from my peers in this journey of healing feels very good. Thank you.
As far as the diets, been there and done that…actually when my ADHD son was small, they wanted to put him on ritalin, at the time I was not in nursing, but tried it and it made him into a zombie. I instead put him on the Feingold diet, which believe it or not HELPED TREMENDOUSLY. I didn’t tell him it was for his behavior or ADHD, but told him instead that it was from the doctor for his “allergies” and continual snotty nose.
The behavior changes took up to 8 weeks, but when he was off the diet even for a moment, it would be apparent for up to 8 weeks. After a year or so if he accidently got off, he knew it immediately. He even at that age knew he felt better—and BTW it did clear up his snotty nose, and continual sinus allergies and thick mucus–turned out the culprit was COW milk. I actually bought goats and squeezed teats to get him milk as he was a big milk drinker and that was the only way to get a continual supply of goat milk in those days.
The diet was draconian, and in order for him to “eat normally” I had to process everything he age from peanut butter to pickles (couldn’t make them out of cucumbers, but out of squash) even make his own mayo, and there are so many items with color and flavor that have been “grandfathered” in to the lists of ingredients (like butter) that you can’t trust the labels even.
When he went away to sleep over camp for a week, I took frozen jars of goat milk, his home made bread, eggs, etc. and the cook very nicely worked with me, and he lived on fried egg sandwiches, goat milk, etc for the week, but had the time of his life!
Recent reasearch has shown that the Feingold diet doesn’t do any better than placebo, but I can testify that it DOES and it doesn’t cost a thing (except time) AND CAN’T HURT A THING so why not give it a try? Some kids seemed to respond poorly to refined sugar, although that didn’t seem to hurt my son any. I kept him supplied with plenty of sugared treats, applesause, and candies made with (oh, heck I can’t think of the name of it but you get it in health food stores as a substaqtute for chocolate) CRS!!Yehhhhh! Oh, yea, Carob.
Home made jelly too (Welch’s puts color in their jelly though it does not list it on the label) found that out the hard way, we were on the way to a camping trip and I fed him a sandwich of Welche’s Jelly and for the entire weekend he bounced off every tree in the Ozark national forest! Heck, he was swinging from the roll bar in the Jeep before we got out of town!
Some families that used the Feingold diet put everyone in the family on it so the child it was intended for wouldn’t feel that he was deprived. I chose NOT to do so because the world outside the family isn’t going to stay on the diet and he would be at school with other kids eating “forbidden” foods. I was very surprised that he was so ameniable to staying on the diet, bt I think he felt so much better on it that he was “rewarded” by feeling good.
Life is “not fair” to any of us, some people inherit various talents and others don”t, but we have to play the cards we are dealt and make the best of our hand, and not whine over the fact that we don’t have a royal flush.
As far as your previous post being disrespectful to others who are still in the traps with their Ps, I dont’ think it was…I can vividly remember when I was very recently “stark raving crazy” in the situation (and that is not so long ago) and the posts from those who were “out a while” and getting their sanity back helped me, did not make me feel “bad” for still being there, but were a guiding light, a star to reach for. Now I only hope that I can impart something that I have learned, and give back the support I received from those wonderful people on several forums.
I know that some people want me to stop ruminating. I trust in my spirit to balance myself in the way it wants to take. I trust that I have yet to discover more about myself and as Khatalyst says, when I have really got to the core of myself, I am sure I will naturally put this to rest.
My healing path is not a straight road, though, some days I advance with strength in myself that through this awful experience I have discovered truths in myself that would never have come to light. when I am feeling strong, I think that this experience was given to me to grow, to fast track me through realisations and that this could only have been done this way. I certainly have not been moved like this, through the library of self developoment books and courses I have undertaken. Some days I take steps backwards and really feel for people when they say that they miss their ex – I understand that. I have realised that once an issue is visited, it is not necessarily put to rest, it re-emerges, sometimes reshaping itself, sometimes with less energy than it had originally – like those bubbles you get in a lava lamp!
For me the big turning point in my time with the ex N, was that during our longest breakup, I spoke to his ex gf, I knew he wouldnt want me to do this and I realised that he had behaved very differently with her. He had been possessive and carnal and critical with her – in some ways I was jealous, at least he had shown he cared about her. With me, he said he cared but he showed by his actions the opposite. We compared notes, although she was very reticent about talking to me. With me he was very detached and withdrawn and often dismissed sex, saying it wasnt very important to him and he rarely criticised me in a critical sense.
He had obviously ‘modified’ his approach and when I realised that he had done this, I felt really affronted, because he was not being his real self (if he ever could), he was reorientating himself for a reason and not treating me in ‘real time’ if that makes sense. I was acting as though I was in a real relationship with someone who was playing some kind of charade – so I never stood a chance – and that hurt me greatly to think that he was not accepting me and reacting to me as being me. He was acting in parallel to some kind of script he had tested out on others and that was my first shocking realisation that all was not well. In the year or so we were together, it was a very intense relationship, he rushed things, I tried to hold back and I felt in this short time we had fast tracked through a 10 yr relationship – that is how it felt. I am pleased in some ways, that I fast tracked him through all his skewed behaviours, because in a year I came to see what his behaviour would have been had it have slowly been drawn out over a longer period of time.
I would hazard a guess that with his current target, who is 15 years younger, he is probably modifying himself again, keeping very low key, not making promises, keeping things even, learning to suppress himself with her, in reaction to his experience with me. The bottom line is that as soon as she starts asserting her needs, she will have the shocking realisation that he has had control of the relationship all along. Once the boat starts rocking, he will start on his deviant behaviour.
Khatalyst Is that why that particular name – was he a catalyst of sorts in your life? I think mine was, this time. Like you, I spent several years alone, figuring myself out, learning to just be alone and happy with myself. When he returned, knowing I still loved him I was willing to hear him out, give it a chance, but warned the minute you do something weird, say something completely bizarre, show signs of running…I’m gone. Not another word.
Naturally, I did not run at the moment. Or the moment after. Or even the moment after that one. But this time I was really aware how much better treatment people deserve when they’re loved. With my family history, that’s saying something! I got it, finally.
And, finally, I ran. Vacillated, had bad days, got back in touch, but ultimately we both knew his game with me was over.
There are days, like today, when it physically aches to think of the good parts of him, and how much he meant to my heart. But most of the time, I’m ok. I do get it that someone saying I love you to me and then abusing me is not acceptable. That we all deserve more than that.
Only took 40 years, and, frankly, I really knew that before he came back…just hadn’t been tested on it. Now I have. Am not grateful for his return, but I am grateful for the lesson, if that makes sense.
khatalyst: You said “I believe I had a vulnerability and that it has something to do with the fact that I grew up in a household where there was emotional, physical and sexual abuse of the children. One impact of my background is that my tolerance threshold for abusive behavior is out of whack. I dont recognize it as a reason not to love a person, and in fact, it may trigger a response in me to get involved, trying to heal the person or cure their problems so the real and good person can emerge again.”
I loved what you said here – it hit home. My childhood and younger adult years were so turbulent with a terribly emotionally unstable mother, my stepfather who basically raised me with her and also sexually abused me, committed suicide when I was 16 and a father who was selfish and uninterested in any details about me.
I never thought of it the way you said it, but my tolerance for abusive behavior got out of whack! As a kid you are forced to just deal with what’s been dealt to you – you have little choice… and I guess I see now how it truly has bled over into my adult relationships.
I keep trying and trying and giving these men chances, believing in promises and sacrificing and comprising myself every time. Only when I become so broken down in the victim stage that I see the light and get out.
My patterns seem to never change much. I think I’m changing them in the beginning but this last relationship with an S has really shown me more areas of weakness and most of all – my places for growth and improvement in my boundries and knowing when to say “no more”.
Findingmyselfagain. I agree with you. Being brought up in dysfunction predisposes me to engaging in dysfunctional relationships – like – I am trying to fill my own void through the other – in a sense using them like mirror (the way they use me). If I love them enough, they will mirror that back to me and I will ‘feel’ loved. If I am there or them, they will be there for me and not abandon me like my father.
I have read about codependency which states that the coD is controlling. Now I understand that, it is like giving to get back to fix the other person, to mold them in a way that feels safe and ensures we arent hurt again. In a sense, it is not allowing the other to be what they want to be. In an extreme sense, I have been taught the bare bones of this by someone who absolutely refused and couldnt play ‘MY’ game. As khatalyst said, it had to take someone like my ex N to lift the lid off my void, otherwise I wouldnt have seen myself in my truth without the mirror of the other that I was projecting. I am learning about the true value of unconditional love for another – harder still, I am learning about it for myself.
‘To Thine Own Self Be True’. But what if for some of us, that self was so distorted in early years, that that is the mirror of ourselves that we and others relate to.
What if I am a hybrid of all the troubles I have encountered. How do I get to my true sense of self, when that self seems to have weathered all sorts of dysfunction. I have a fantasy of what I would like a relationship to be – I know that in my mind, but I dont get anywhere near achieving that, because my mirror is attracting something else, infact the opposite of what I request.
I realise I have been out of balance. Like findingmyselfagain. I set no boundaries (I had red lines) and I let the other run right up to my red lines. I tried to fix them to keep myself safe. If I ever have another relationship, the test for me will be to do the opposite of what I have done. What I have to remember, even if it doesnt ‘feel’ true and natural is that I have to be there for myself first. In a way I have to learn to be a person who was unconditionally loved at the beginning o my life – even when I wasnt – for me that has been my true lifetimes work. I see now that many of the paths my life has taken has just been a ‘bandaid’ I have employed to stick over my hurts. Ouch.!!
Beverly, you have some powerful insights…much food for thought.
Interestingly though, while I think many of us share your feelings, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about her encounter with a P.
She was VP at a private “Ivy League” type college and there was a P who was also a VP there. He got drunk one night and really acted out “screaming at her I want to F**k you baby” and one of the other VPs had to drag him off to his room to pass out.
Fast forward a year, and he becomes the new president of the college…within 2 weeks, she gets a letter firing her, and ordering her and her personal possessions off the campus by 5 p.m.
She is a lady who sets appropriate boundaries and has no problems doing so–but this ONE encounter, this ONE stab in the back, this totally unjust slam, has haunted her for the past 7 or 8 years.
Actually, he did her a favor as she went on to bigger and better things. Yet, she still feels the utter humiliation of moving her stuff out of the office. I stayed with her while she raged against this man, and she knows what he is, and yet, even today, she has feelings of shame, humiliation and anger at this man. She did NOTHING to attract this man except be female and good looking, yet, he devestated and humiliated her.Where did she go “wrong”? Should she have made a big “stink” at the time he was drunk and filed a sexual harrassment suit? That would have killed her career right there.
She was in a no-win situation no matter what she did and he knew it.
Fortunately, this episode has not “ruined her life” but it is still a painful episode, thanks to a P.
I realize, too, Beverly, that I have NOT set appropriate boundaries, and I too have given love in the hopes of receiving love in return. Felt that if I “loved ENOUGH” it would come back to me…unfortunately, I “threw my pearls before swine.” For that, I have to acknowledge and take responsibility.