By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Most of you know I have spent a good portion of my life training animals of various kinds dogs for obedience and to work livestock, horses, donkeys and cattle (oxen).
When we train animals, we “condition” them to do X and they receive Y reward. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, conditioned dogs to expect to be fed by ringing a bell every time they got fed. Eventually when a bell was rung, even though there was no food in sight, the animals expected to be fed, and their bodies reacted by making them “slobber” at the mouth, just as they would if food were present.
B.F. Skinner, and American psychologist, observed that animals who had intermittent rewards, rather than continual rewards, would continue a behavior longer than animals who got rewarded every time they did an act. For example, a rat that pushed a lever and got a grain of food every time, would quickly stop pushing it if the food didn’t com. But a rat that sometimes got a food pellet when he pushed the lever would continue to pound on the lever for a very long time, or even never stop pushing it, even though he did not get a food pellet.
In humans, this “intermittent” rewards works in a slot machine, or in gambling games, because every once in a while you get rewarded. Therefore, you keep hoping that next time will be THE TIME.
Psychopaths and intermittent rewards
You may ask what this training technique has to do with psychopaths. Well, just as Las Vegas was built on intermittent rewards for gamblers, relationships with psychopaths are built on the intermittent rewards they give us.
At the first part of the relationship, the psychopath “love bombs” us by giving us the good things we enjoy compliments, doing things for us, great sex. WOW! We think we have found nirvana. Just as a dog I am beginning to train gets a treat every time he “sits,” then only sometimes when he “sits,” the psychopath only gives us the “loving” some of the time. Also, just as I eventually no longer give the dog a food treat any time he “sits,” and the most he will get is a “good dog” verbal compliment, or a scolding if he doesn’t sit fast enough, the psychopath quits giving us treats and gives us “scoldings.”
We have been conditioned by the psychopath to be and do what they want, because we still desire that initial “love bombing,” and we dread the “scolding” they will give us if we don’t “jump” when they say “frog.” We keep on hoping against hope that we will be able to please them again. We do whatever we can to keep the scoldings to a minimum and get them to reward us with “love” again.
Running for bread
It doesn’t make any kind of difference if the animal we are training is a dog, a parrot, a donkey, an steer, a horse ”¦ the conditioning works the same. Intermittent rewards cause the desired behavior to continue. If we give continual rewards every time they perform the behavior, it wouldn’t take long for the behavior to be extinguished when we stopped rewarding it.
My mammoth jack donkeys, Fat Ass and Hairy Ass, haven’t had a piece of bread (their preferred treat) in a year or more. But any time I go to the hangar and open the freezer, they come running up to the fence on the never dying hope that I will get bread out of the freezer and give them a piece. They are totally “conditioned” to that treat, and they know that the opening and closing of the freezer is what always preceded them getting a slice of bread.
The psychopath we have had relationships with know what “rings our chimes,” what makes us happy and what makes us sad, or what makes us angry. It is like a panel of buttons on the front of our chest. They know just the exact words to say, or the thing to do, that will press our “buttons” and get the reaction they want from us.
No Contact is the answer
No Contact keeps those buttons covered. That is why it works.
Psychopaths know that in the past, if they pressed “button A,” you would do B. So they will keep on trying because IT ALWAYS WORKED IN THE PAST. They just know if they keep doing it, it will EVENTUALLY work again. So they will press it harder and faster and longer. Just like some old lady sitting at a slot machine, plugging in quarters, she just “knows” that the very next quarter will get her a reward. Just like my donkeys running up to the fence when I open the freezer, they still hope to get a slice of bread, a reward.
Expect when you go No Contact that the psychopath will up the ante and will work harder and longer to get a reaction. If it takes 30 times for them to eventually get a reaction, THEY LEARN THAT it takes 30 TIMES TO GET A REACTION. If next time it takes 40 times, they learn that they must work a bit harder to get a reaction, so they keep on and on and never stop.
So hang in there. Once you make up your mind to go NO CONTACT, then STAY no contact, because if you give them ANY reward of ANY kind, even a well deserved “cussing,” it is still a reward. It is ATTENTION, and even negative attention is attention. Not being noticed at all is the worst punishment they can have.
If you are required by law to have contact with them, like if you share children, do it only by e-mail, so that you have a record of it. Discuss ONLY the children. Do not respond to any nasty comments they make. Refuse to discuss the other person with your children, and Gray Rock them entirely. NO emotional responses at all. If possible, get someone else to pick up and drop off the kids, so you do not have to see him/her. Or do it in a public place, a police department parking lot if necessary.
We can stop them only by not responding. So when your ex is trying to push your buttons, just think about Joyce’s donkeys Fat Ass and Hairy Ass running up to the fence for a slice of bread. Visualize your psychopath with long ears, standing there trying to get a reaction from you, and then DON’T GIVE IT. Take control and refuse to allow the psychopath to make you respond to his/her button pushing!
God bless.
Louise, they didn’t “change on us”… the d&d is who they always were. It’s the ‘loving’, the flattering that is fake.
darwinsmom:
You are right. They deceived us that is all. Total deceit.
Louise, I’m sorry that you’re having some insomnia. It creates even MORE anxiety! Take an objective look at what you’ve dealt with over the past few days, and cut yourself some slack, here.
Darwinsmom is 100% spot-on. When that “feeling” of having “Done Something” to earn their disapproval rears its ugly head, even if you don’t “feel” it, try to keep in mind that he was using a tried, true, and trusted technique: lovebombing. For millenia, “bad” people have used this technique to put their targets off-guard – false flattery, instant and impetuous love, and all of the rest have been employed by the most base of spaths to the most notorious of dictators.
Separate the emotion from the facts, Louise. FEEL the emotions, and acknowledge them as being “real,” but then set them aside and look hard and long at the facts. What I used to “feel” was NEVER based upon facts, and this remains a constant challenge for me.
(((Hugs))) and brightest blessings
TeaLight, that IS some creepy stuff!
Being an artist, the exspath used to pretend to have an interest in art and artists. As my money evaporated, so did his interest in my field until, at one point, the words that came out of his mouth said it all, “That’s YOUR thing.”
So, with ALL people, anyone that goes over the top about my interests and talents is suspect!
“Slap-dash!” ROTFLMAO!!!!! I haven’t seen or heard THAT term in a couple of years! LOLOLOL
Brightest blessings
I had two weeks of school hell… pfffff. By Friday night I felt like I was run over by a truck or something. I really had to dig deep for the grey rock.
I think you would call those grades the sophomores and juniors? (the last 3 grades, except the eldest). Sophomores imo tend to be the roughest: they seem to think they’re seniors now (that the rules can bend for them), but without taking responsibility, often trying to blame teachers, feeling entitled to whatever… You could say that teens of the sophomore age act the most spathic of all teens.
There’s one class with 3 girls (two of them a year older than the rest of the grade) who basically terrorize the class and female teachers. They will talk incessantly, they will give undermining comments, start discussions (pretty much using word salad). One is coldn harsh and tough. She’s the most silent one of the three, but she holds all the cards, and she leads in the undermining comments. The third has the features of Paris Hilton (though dresses in skinny jeans), looks at you with the eyes of a crocodile and a stupid grin (she looks at you as if she’s gonna eat you); she’s also not the smartest of the three. The second one is in the middle… if the harsh one is absent, she’ll be leading their team and be the underminer… if miss crocodile is absent, she’ll take her role of being silly and be a noise-source.
I already teach this class 1 hour a week of physics. But 1.5 week ago, I took on extra teaching hours for a temp period of 2 weeks. While I couldn’t take the full roster on, at least half of the kids math and physics hours would be taught and used for exercises, instead of idling time away in the study room. So, I had that class 2 hours more than normal for math as well (I taught them math for 4 months last schoolyear when they were freshmen).
Since the rest of class expressed not understanding the theory of functions yet (graphics), and they requested for a repeat explanation, I tried to do that at the blackboard. But basically these 3 made it impossible for me to do that. I went out of line that day, by losing my cool and telling them they acted like bitches. I did apologize for that personally to them at the end of the lesson…of course they thought they had me in their pocket, that they were all powerful over me. But I came up with a plan. Next lesson I had the whole class surrender their school diary to me before entering the classroom. I had them on my desk the whole math hour. That way, if anyone did something in class they shouldn’t be doing, there wouldn’t be a power fight anymore over surrendering it. Next, I had already written out on the blackboard what they were meant to do: make exercises, and hand it in at the end of the lesson for grades. Only the end portion of the exercises needed to be handed in for grades, but I refused to help and explain any of these as long as the easier ones weren’t made by them. This liberated me, to give explanations to a table, rather than the whole class. Of course the 3 witches didn’t do a thing; the harsh one complained and muttered all the time this was ‘not teaching’. But I didn’t mind. I totally allowed them to chat and mumble and complain, because I knew that from now on, it couldn’t disturb me and would only help them dig their own grade grave. They were solely disturbing themselves. And by not doing their work, they’d get bad grades. It isolated them from the rest of the class, because everybody else of course was asking for my help, doing the work, wanting grades. At one point I passed their table, and I saw the crocodile being busy on her cellphone. She saw I saw and she started her, “Sorry, miss, but I had…” I said nothing, completely ignored her, turned around and started to walk to my desk with all the school diaries. I even heard her mumble, “shit, she already has our diaries.” I smiled to myself when I heard it, and I wrote a behaviour sanction note on the use of the cellphone in class.
I used the same tactic for physics and the last hour of math they had with me. With the physics hour, they tried to cheat by copying another one’s exercises. But I took those away and wrote on all these papers, including the one they tried to copy, that they had to make the exercises themselves. During the last math hour, the harsh one tried to be louder in her protests on how I was teaching. When I arrived at her desk, I told her she wasn’t in a restaurant with a menu where she could choose the methods used for teaching a la carte. That what I was doing was called “diversifying teaching techniques” and that teachers are being motivated into teaching like that as much as they can. Then she started to complain that she didn’t understand, that the other teacher I was temping mumbled to himself in front of the blackboard (she once accused me of that as well several months ago) and now I was not even explaining it anymore to them. I said, “All you need to do is ask for the easier exercises and I will give you a private table explanation that suits all of your wishes right here and now.” She kept up her muttering and complaining. I then gave her her choices: either you can keep complaining about not understanding, or you can open your ears and listen to an explanation. She chose the latter. And of course, when she works, miss crocodile wakes up and follows her example.
There’s another girl in that class. Her mother teaches Catholic religion at our school. Any ‘official’ type of religion and non-religious humanism can be taught in our education system… From elementary until senior year in HS, every child must follow 2 hours of religion or humanism class a week… What you follow as a religion is chosen by the parents and child… So, some kids get the non religious humanism; others get Catholic religion, others may get Protestant or Anglican religion, some follow Islam or Jewish. And if there cannot be a teacher begotten for the religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikh, Jehovah, …) kids can get a course from home or their religious local leader which they then have to study by themselves in the study room. Most parents though will then opt for the non-religious humanism. Anyway, last year when I taught this girl math, she was in the front row, raving about me to her mom how she finally understood math. This year she truly got into her puberty years, and she has been starting to follow the example of the 3 witches. I took her aside right before I took on the extra temp hours for the last two weeks for a private conversation, where she agreed to try and watch her behaviour, and I would try to be understanding. But the same lesson that the 3 witches pushed my buttons, she acted up as well, showing her enjoyment of it. I said, “What did you promise me only yesterday?” To this she replied haughtily, “Do you have that on paper?” I admit I was floored and shocked by her statement. I said, “promises do not have to be on paper.”
The next day, her mother asked me how everything was going: particularly about her younger son, who received a behaviour note from me, for walking around in class. She said that he had tried to tell her that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but she replied to him she knew I was not a teacher who’d write a note over nothing. She then asked how thing were going with the daughter. I did end up telling her I had been shocked by her reply to me about her promise not being on paper. So, last Thursday, she had her friend braid her hair in class, she wasn’t doing the last exercises (because she had worked the hardest of the class she assumed the previous lesson before that), and she wanted to talk to me about something. I told her to wait at the end of class, which she didn’t. Her mother had confronted her about her “not on paper” reaction to me, and now she started to tell me that she had not said what I had heard. Basically, she tried to gaslight me. And of course the 3 withces picked up on that and started to go the “undermine/support route”, telling her “that since I had no power over her, of course I’d tell on her on her mom.” I ignored it completely, but I was deeply disturbed by this… and I have lost ALL trust in that girl now.
And I don’t know what the other classes had to drink the past week, but they were all loud and just generally behaving as if school was a party or something. I ended up being a drill master in junior year the last hour of Friday afternoon, just before Carnival holiday started. They were rowdy in the hallway. I’d had to wait for 5 mins there before they became silent enough for me to tell them to go inside quietly and remain quiet inside. The last didn’t work, so I told them to all go outside again, repeated the process, made a note in the school diary of one of the boys for drinking right there and then, and made the same request: walk in silently, remain silent in class. This is the class with the spathic boy that I totally grey rock. As he entered he muttered – “it’s like the Hitler 30s again all of a sudden.” or something in that order. I silently retracted him from the row going in (easy, since he’ll be last anyway) and told him he could remain outside in the hallways for all I care that hour. He was excluded from school the week before for 2 days for this behaviour… at least, for a moment he recognized the gravity of this isolation, became completely docile (he hates isolation, because then he doesn’t have a class of fellow teens to manipulate into acting up). However, I couldn’t let him enter, since the rest of the class were jeering and cheering as they looked at us in the hallway. So I ordered everyone out again for the 3rd time to repeat the whole process. Some asked me why… and I said… if people of your age act like kids who just start kindergarten and do not know basic behaviour rules yet, then I will start teaching with the lesson how to be quiet in the hallway and remain quiet in class, before I teach anything more difficult than that.
Pfffff, sorry for hte long post. But I was totally knackered by Friday evening. LOL.
DARWINSMOM!!!!!!!!! PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, indeed!!!!
Omigosh, it reminds me of “To Sir, With Love!” God bless you, and I mean that to every teacher who is trying to make “A Difference.” I had to teach college people and they were just as bad.
Right – no trust for the teacher’s daughter. She broke that trust and she’s on her own, now.
Wow……..God bless you…..now, have some tea: (_)?
Brightest blessings!
Well in the end, it propelled me to be creative and find ways to organize my lesson and class so it’s easier to remain grey rock when and where I need to be, save my energy, and become a better teacher that way.
I will expect that class, or at least the 3 witches, to create a battle over handing over the diaries before entering class in the near future, but because I ask them to in order to be allowed to enter, there is little they can do about that. The good thing about it: the majority sigh but ultimately don’t mind – they know they won’t be getting behaviour notes (if you get 5 you have to do detention). When the majority of the class hands their diary over, it becomes nearly impossible for them not to do it and exclude (expose) themselves in such a way: although miss crocodile has tried to slip past me through the door with that grin. She didn’t get away with it though, and I made no drama about it. And with everyone else in class and her isolated on the hallway, as I waited in the door for her to give her school diary to me, she gave it without further ado.
And it makes me smile inwardly when they spout, cajole and complain about the organisation of the lesson and the school diary – they hate it, because it gives them little or no room to get away with misbehaviour and the consequences are solely for themselves. Miss crocodile complained loudly to the rest of the group over the behaviour note of the cellphone when she picked up her diary at the end of the lesson, before going out. Now she had a 9th note, and if she got another one she’d have to do a second detention for even more hours on a Wednesday afternoon. I ignored this outwardly (act stone deaf) and thought – well perhaps you should not do the stuff that gets you notes then… her complaint I think made her ridiculous even imo to her own fellow pupils. And I don’t care one way or another.
They are basically rendered powerless for the lesson. That’s why they hate it.
Darwinsmom, that’s the core of the whole challenge to educate, these days. In the U.S., it is, anyway. These kids coming up maintain the “power” because they’re allowed to. A teacher cannot say, “Shut up, and sit down,” or the parents of the child will file a formal complaint. A teacher cannot put their hands on a student to restrain them or give a hug for a job, well-done. Students are “allowed” to do whatever they wish with little consequences. If they behave badly enough, they may be suspended which simply translates into a 3-day vacation from school. EUGH!!!!
When I was in school, a group of us acted like idiots and we were required to clean the school cafeteria’s kitchen from top to bottom on a Saturday. Today, a lawsuit would be filed if such a demand were made.
Seriously, it takes intense creativity to manage a classroom, and I really enjoy reading your challenges and solutions, VERY much. Although you’re talking about classroom environments, your experiences could easily be applied to ANY situation where “bad behavior” is creating issues. A SUPERB example of maintaining the same boundaries and finding new and creative ways to ENFORCE them.
TOWANDA
Darwinsmom I feel your pain!! Am burnt out with teaching. Many are lovely kids (18-21 mostly) but the apathy and sluggishness..the refusal to buy or read books..the ‘learned helplessness’ instilled by an exam driven education system that spoon feeds them stock answers to expected exam questions. Their breakfasts are bags of crisps and coke or sprite. They are constantly ill, sneezing and coughing and emailing me about ‘tummy bugs’ ie hangovers. Some self harm, cutting mainly. I had a student hallucinate loudly in class (laughing, conversing with the voices in her head) she self neglected, smelled very bad, tried to light a cigarette in class, said ‘f*ck’ all the time. She had stopped taking her anti psychotic meds, student advisors didn’t tell us – who taught her and tutored her one to one- that she was psychotic because that would breach her confidentiality lol! A male student made life hell one term. He had shark eyes, predatory and dead. Psychological warfare as he contaminated the group with his aggression and hostility. Came up behind me and sang “your sex is on fire” I refused to teach him, but got a lot of pressure to continue to do so. He was psychopathic, no doubt. I was really afraid of him. He was just 18. Hang in there!!
Truthy you would ROTF if you saw the pictures they are so crappy!! 🙂 Louise my love just go with it if you can’t sleep, I have the classical music station tinkling away at low volume at night, so if I wake the music is there and at times I light a tea light and stare at that till I want to sleep. I think you are dealing with a lot of loss Lou? Am here for you xx
With us “suspension” means having to come to school, getting exercises, tests, and tasks… but you’re in a separete class and can’t even see your fellow pupils during recess of break times.
But yeah, there is a similar trend here too for parents to side with their teens, instead of siding with school. Meanwhile those same parents almost beg us and the school to forbid them stuff, because they don’t like to forbid their kids anything in their own name… they want to be “friends” with their kids. But kids and parents aren’t friends, though they can have a very mutual loving relationship. I can share with my parents and they with me as if we are friends, but we’re not “friends”. Even though I’m nearly 40, they’re still my parents and I’m still their child. They don’t need to treat me as a child or a teen anymore. I’m a grown woman. But it’s just a different sort of relationship – albeit a friendly, cordial, mutual helpful and adult one. And they never based their decision about me when I was a minor, or even later, based on the fact that they’d win or lose my friendship. It’s silly even to expect it from a child. A child will choose their friends amongst their peers, not their parents.
I’m not saying that every teacher is always right. I certainly was not behaving right myself when I told the witches they were acting like bitches. I felt very bad about it as soon as it happened (even though they do act like ones). I’m the adult and it’s my responsibility to find and remain in my grey rock. Namecalling is not the answer, nor the solution, which is why I apologized. But I’m also very human and I forgave myself for my mistake. I actually told them during that apology that I did not expect nor asked their forgivance, nor even a clean slate. Instead I told them that I wished it would give us both an opportunity to work together more constructively and to strive to act better in the future. They agreed to that, though I did not and do not count on it at all that they would alter their behavioiur. But I said it as a promise to myself… I’ll make sure and do what needs to be done, so they cannot push my buttons anymore. And that’s exactly what I did.
Funny, miss crocodile piped the following as I passed their desk as they had to do physics exercises for me – I found a great acronym translation for the word “bitch”… beautiful, intelligent, (don’t remember the t anymore), charming and hot. I smiled politely back at her and gave her no answer. I thought, beauty can be shallow, intelligent you are not, charming is a red flag and whether you’re hot depends on the beholder.