A new study out of Australia finds that people high in psychopathic traits did poorly when asked to identify common odors. Read:
Psychopaths have poor sense of smell, study finds, on CBSNews.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
Kim,
That’s the thing about being independent, it is equal to the same amount of RESPONSIBILITY.
You are right, you were DEPENDENT on your daughter for a whhile, BUT keep in mind that at the same time, you PAID YOUR WAY with baby sitting, cooking, etc. as a LIVE IN NANNY, so seems to me like you and she are “even” now.
NOW you are paying your own way, with your own home, your own job, etc. so as far as I can see, neither you nor she “owe” either one of you any favors to the other one.
THAT being the case, you are now equals….She is an adult, you are an adult. She has her responsibilities, you have yours.
IF you CHOOSE to help her out with some of her responsibilities, then it is your CHOICE, but if you CHOOSE NOT to do so, that is your RIGHT too choose that option.
She has NO RIGHT to expect you to assume her responsibilities because you two share some DNA.
As for Dickwad, well he has NO right to speak to you in that manner and I suggest that you show him that by NC–total NC, and if you two are together some where you give him the POTTED PLANT TREATMENT which is where you pretend he doesn’t exist at all, even if he speaks to you, he is INVISIBLE AND MAKES NO SOUND…you cannot either see or hear him.
TOTALLY ignore him. LOL
mine had an excellent sense of scent…. it was VERY important to him!
Well, I dont know about that statement about smell.
I do know that my ex psychopath almost burned the house down one night because he didnt smell the hot pad burning on the stove. I attributed his poor smell to being a smoker most of his life.
I think a psychopath has the most “predatory” traits. My ex looks for women to take care of him. He will give them what they want – attention, sex, “love”, and money. He lived with me for a few weeks and then we got married. I know I had to ask him to start contributing to the household expenses. ????? At any rate, to me the sociopath is much more verbally abusive and “in your face” with abuse. For me psychopaths fly under the radar most of the time making them very difficult to spot. I also think the checklist indicates a “range” of dysfunction. My ex had 17 of the 20 symptoms. Making him NOT a rapist or murderer. He was very Ted Bundy except for that trait – thank God!
I think it’s interesting that while we are with the sociopath we notice their “quirks” (to put it mildly) and because we are trying to find an explanation for them, we decide that:
He can’t “whatever” because he is:
He can’t smell because he is a smoker, he is easily bored because he has ADHD, he’s trying to make me jealous that is why he flirts with other women, he is an alcoholic, so that would explain A LOT of things, he is “blah, blah”, so that explains why he does “whatever weird thing he does”.
Today, I’m wondering as I go into my fourth month of NC, what the heck was wrong with me?!! As my brain slowly becomes unscrambled, why didn’t I stop, look at what was going on and call him on it in no uncertain terms, the way that I would have before. Well, we all have the answer to that, but of course, it may be a different answer for each of us. I may of posted this before, but the other day a woman said to me, “Don’t beat yourself up” ‘Why shouldnt’ I’, I answered. “Because it doesn’t change anything”. So, just like that I stop. Because I want things to change, for the better.
Kim, I just had an idea for you. For several years I used to get aura cleansings every week. There was a place that did them for free (they are walking distance from me nowadays). It sounds strange, but these healers are able to remove negative energies from your space or “aura” that come from other people. Often they will tell you what the energy is and what kind of person left it there (and often you can recognize the person from what they tell you). I did this for a number of years when my work environment was more negative. Though I have not felt the need for it for several years, while I was doing it, it probably was life-saving for me. I would leave feeling like a different person. If you have anything like this near you, you might enjoy it. The people at places like this are also very gentle and non-judgmental. I considered taking the training myself but it was something like $5k.
There does eventually come a time when you don’t absorb these negative energies any more – maybe when your boundaries get better. But until then, hey, whatever works, that’s how I look at it.
Kim,
((hugs back))
I’ve been thinking about your situation and the advice I gave you. Then I realized that what I advised you is not gray rock and will likely antogonize him. But that’s ok, because who the heck cares?
He will up the ante for a long while. Eventually, when he sees that he can’t get to you, he’ll get bored. You can still be boring and gray rock, but setting emotional boundaries is not EXACTLY gray rock.
The reason it will aggravate him is because he will see you as being in control, authoratative and happy. It will drive him crazy.
Gray rock is a bit different, it shows you as being boring, dull, indecisive, dull witted etc…It takes all your emotional hooks and hides them.
Whatever you decide, just remember to not give him what he wants. Do everything and anything, but do not react to his machinations. EXPECT THEM.
Kim,
I loved your description of the sensation after a spath attack on us. That’s exactly how it feels for me: as if someone suddenly commits an onslaught on all of your system. It feels like someone just speared all their malice into you, like a rape, but energetically.
I remember one time when I realized this feeling after I was attacked on a forum for totems after I explained the unorthodox meditation technique my friends and I used. We meditate by physically connecting with one another: we lie in a circle and connect our feet, with one foot as a receiver, the other as a giver. This creates a pool of energy multiplied by the number of persons involved, but it is at the same time shared with everyone full circle. In many meditation schoolings to be in physical contact with someone else is forbidden, because someone can then abuse the energy of the other and drain them of energy. It’s seen as a way to vampirize someone energetically. We don’t vampirize each other of course, because we share the energy with each other; it’s flowing freely in the circle, and all with respect to starting with grounding, then going through the other chakra levels and coming down again. And nobody is allowed to break contact before everybody is grounded again (meaning: everybody gets his personal energy back). Anyway, this moderator of the totem forum became extremely vicious to me and well treated me as if I was some demon to be ousted. And that’s when I felt as if she had tried to penetrate all her malicious energy into me. I responded calmly, wishing peace and goodbye for all its members, envisioning love in my heart for them as well as myself.
I had the same energy-rape feeling after the phonecall from the colleague past summer about his maps and such.
In any case, I treat this penetration of another one’s malicious energy as if it were a demon: by shrouding myself in an energy of love and telling it to return whence it came from. When I do that, it shrinks to baby-size levels and recedes. If we respond in anger or rage or in fear to this type of energy within us, it usually just gets bigger. This type of malicious energy hurled at you feeds on anger and fear.
Note: I’m just talking about the sensation you described of suddenly having someone else’s energy and malice (the ‘slime’) running amock within your system. I’m not saying that there isn’t a time and place for anger and fear. There very much is. But our anger and fear should be ours alone, and not feed the malicious energy implanted in us by another being. Because ultimately the energy they shoved into our system is still theirs and connected to them like an octopussy’s tentacle.
Oxy, Sky, Star and Darsmom, Thanks, so much. I got something out of what each one of you said.
Ox, do you remember Eric Berne, and the 60’s TA movement?
Well, I think the rebellious child in me gets triggered by the authoritarian adult in other folks.
For instance, when I managed to get Daughters car around SIL’s deliberate attempt to cut me off at the knees, out of spite, we were both acting as children. But he was cloaking his childish behavior in the authoritarian parent role. When I thought better of taking the car, I responded from the adult role. ie, I texted him that I had the car and would return it before work. 2:00.
He then, reinforces himself as dominant parent by texting back, “You better have that car in the driveway by 4:00, or else.”
When I calmly returned the car, and made no furthar attempt to contact him, I was acting from the role of adult.
And Dar, your talk of introjected bad energy plays out here as well. And Sky, your talk about emotional boundry’s, too. Changing the buttons on the typwriter key board is like not responding to the authoritarian parent who is simply trying to manipulate me by relating to me as if I was a reb ellious child, while he is, in fact acting out his sence of himself as a rebellious child. It is trying always to stay in the adult mode.
Exactly Kim!
It’s like Timothy Leary’s behaviour rose (you probably know a derived kiddies version of a circle with animals – lion in the right top, a turtle in the bottom left and so on). Without going too much into detail about it, the basic premisse is that a certain type of behaviour evokes an instinctive reaction. If someone acts in a dominating way, the other person will automatically take on a more ‘following’ or ‘submissive’ role. If someone takes on a following/submissive role, then the other will instinctively become more dominant (take initiative). And if someone acts against you, it provokes an against response within you. If someone shows behavour to work along or help you or wants to be helped, then it evokes an ‘us together’ response.
You can never truly help the instinctive response or reaction within you. For example, when someone starts shouting at you and towers above you, for at least one tiny moment you’ll feel small and probably flinch. It’s not a sign of weakness and nothing to feel guilty about. It’s not something we have control over much for the initial second.
However, you can become aware enough that these are interaction laws and recognize it, and you can then choose to ignore the instinctive response and choose to respond differently.
So yeah, if someone acts like the dominating, but aggressive parent (top-against), it will make you feel like a rebellious child (bottom-against). While you can never can provoke an ‘us’ response in a spath, you can at least choose to respond in a different way that makes you feel much better about yourself than if you follow the instinctive urge: for instance, a leading person who has no issues with anyone (top-us).
Darwinsmom,
I don’t know anything about the TA movement but what you said is exactly right: we can never truly help the instinctive response or reaction within you. It’s because we have empathy. It may also have to do with “mirror neurons” in our brains, which help us to put ourselves in another person’s shoes.
The other day, I was sitting in my truck and the crazy-husband stealing spath neighbor walked up and knocked on my window. She was wearing an expression meant to elicit some kind of bonding, and she said, “Skylar, I know you probably don’t like me very much, but I just want you to know that I have no hard feelings.”
I felt my body respond to her pity ploy. I felt an automatic something such as you would feel for a contrite human being. If I had been approached by her 3 years ago, before I knew that there walk among us people who habitually fake emotions with the express intent on feeding on my emotions, I would have responded according to my nature and said, “It’s ok, don’t worry about it. I have no hard feelings either.”
I realized though that she wants emotions. So I said, “I have no feelings for you at all.” Her face contorted into the evil that she is. The pity ploy disappeared because it wasn’t working, or at least she couldn’t see that it worked. I responded from a place of knowledge rather than emotions.
Because appearances are SO OFTEN deceiving, it’s best to “check your emotions at the door, before they exit you.”
I know it isn’t easy, especially if they don’t give up or if you are confused about what they are trying to achieve with their tactics. But one thing my friend reminds me to do is “don’t take other people’s behavior personally.” Their behavior is about them, not about you.