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.
Sky,
You are correct. And I by no means intended to imply that one has to have an average IQ to become a plumber, or a hair stylist. I’ve worked in the pub myself for financial reasons, and I enjoyed it very much, more than my office work. What a person enjoys from a career is not always directly linked to IQ (though there are indirect links).
What I do know though is that people with a higher than average IQ need challenges. They get easily bored, certainly when a performance becomes a routine. I suffered from this when I first worked in private industry… one business could never give me enough creative and mental challenges a year. Which is pretty logical: a business does not invent new totally different products 5 times a year. It’s more like one every few years. The solution would have been to become independent and be a consultant for many industries: but I’m not the best administrator and I shy away from daily active client searching. Besides, I’m just happier when I have to work with people and for people in group settings. I became a teacher, exactly because the challenges are on a social level, rather than an intellectual level. I have to be socioally creative, and meanwhile my mind is free to take up any intellectual interest it wants to. I also want to learn constantly… I like learning. So, after 10 years of not having to study at all, the physics studies do me very much good.
MY seniors asked me a few weeks ago, why I wouldn’t want to become an engineer or work at CERN if I finish the physics master… I’d earn more money. And I simply answered: because money is not what fulfills me on a daily basis, nor my purpose in life. I’d die emotionally in a lab. I teach because that makes me the happiest; it also gives me a sense of pride – I feel I’m doing somethign worthwhile for society, rather than earning money for a business owner. The saying goes that those who teach are those who can’t do their speciality with success. It’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t,
My career life, the problems I encountered fit the profile of both my personality combined with high IQ. So, yup, for sure people with high IQ can actively choose a career that steers away from labs and eningeering desks. It may even be that their personality in combination with their IQ drove them to choose such a career. What I tried to say was that there are jobs that people tend to look down on, while it may be a career that is actually very much needed and valuable in a less obvious way. Careers should be a positive choice, never a negative one. But it’s also true that you should’t lie to a person and tell them they can become a civil engineer if they only try harder, when they clearly lack the required abilities to see success in their efforts.
Skylar & Darwinsmom, some of the past spaths used to refer to their intelligence quotient as some sort of validation. One female NPD (at the very least) actually said, “I have an IQ of 139,” YET, this person never held a full-time employment position nor did she finish university. When I suggested that she join MENSA, she responded that she wouldn’t have anything in common with “those people.” YET…..yet, she would refer to her IQ about twice a month. I would LOVE to sit around and listen to quantum physics discussion or astrophysics!!!!!! I may not understand all of the terminology, but I could pick up the gist!!!!
From what I’ve experienced in learning and teaching, IQ might be a scale of measurement, but it’s no guarantee that someone’s going to be successful. Some of my BEST and most creative students were the ones who really and truly believed that they didn’t “know anything” or have any amount of “creativity” – they were open to learning and, through them, I learned as much as I taught.
I don’t have a clue what my IQ is, and I’m too old to give a fart in a windstorm, today. I know that I’m open to learning (even being long in the tooth), and that everyone that I come into contact with has something to teach me.
Darwinsmom, your IQ doesn’t interfere with your humanity! LOL!!! 😀
Brightest and most sincere blessings
Just being “smart” doesn’t mean you have to be a rich rocket scientist to be a success, but it usually means you will be GOOD AT whatever you do. Yea, my son Patrick is a real SUCCESS if you imagine that becoming a convict and out smarting the guards most of the time is being “successful” but that is how HE MEASURES SUCCESS. 🙂 He’s the smartest convict in the place. He’s an HONOR STUDENT AT THE STATE PEN! LOL And I joke about that, but I honestly believe that’s the way he measures himself as a “success”–talk about arrogant, narcissistic etc. he does NOT get how other people (outside other convicts) view him as a complete FAILURE.
So how others view our over all “success” or “failures” in life and how we view our own success and failure may be totally different. Mother Theresa wasn’t rich, but I think you would say she was a “success” and I know lots of very rich people who have everything except “happiness” and I consider them failures, but they may consider themselves successful for all I know. Jerry Sandusky was a “big success” until he fell from grace when the truth was known. Bernie Madoff likewise.
Hiitler and Stalin and Chairman Mao and Fidel Castro…etc.
Success and failure are relative to what we are trying to do as well, and what we WANT out of life….and how others view us and how much that means to us. Personally, I think how we view ourselves as either successes or failures is ALL that really matters.
How smart we are just gives us more OPTIONS in what we can do educationally…but if we don’t want to be a rocket scientist when we had enough IQ to be one, so what? Doesn’t mean we failed.
heheh, Thruthspeak… IQ can have an impact on personality, but it’s just a part of it, not the whole of the personality; just like my creativity is part of my personality, but not everything. It’s the same for other people.
I tested when I had a burnout from work at 27 (burnout from boredrom, and sense of life crisis). My mom (who was just a retired lector for social workers) saw some signs and advied me to get tested for IQ. As a kid I scored high, but not the 130 mark… partly because the whole peer social thing occupied my mind mostly and I underachieved on the IQ test (I was called the dork of the class). And throughout my school career I was never bored by what I learned, but always very much interested. I didn’t have to work myself to death, but I still had to work. It was on the job that the rather typical signs of it revealed itself: basically I was not put into situations enough that were “learning” or “finding stuff out”… After 3 months I knew my job in and out, and after another 3 months more I was bored with it, and then I tried to search for stuff to challenge me. Unfortunately, many bosses don’t like that at all in an employee and they put me on even more routinous stuff, which of course just got me totally demotivated, and since I could do it in 2 hours instead of a whole day, I started to fill my time with other stuff, which I found much more interesting. Of course, that wasn’t the right answer and action. I never have to “fill up my work time” when I teach, and how challenging my subjects and lessons are, are absolutely my own responsibility. If I’m bored with what I teach, then I have solely myself to blame, and I’m the sole one who can do anything abut it. That satisfies me perfectly.
So in a way, I feel like I’m independent, my own boss, but within an administrative structure and hierarchy that I can cope with administratively.
I think I am pretty smart, but I wouldnt want to know what my IQ actually is. oh my……thats one diagnosis I can live without.
Moondancer
I can’t estimate your IQ but this I know, I am attracted to highly intelligent witty people and I am very drawn to you. I have several friend who have not graduated high school so they thought themselves dumb. But I know how the way they process logic and reasoning puts them in the very high intel category. I have also worked with cardiologists and some of them made me wonder how the hell they ever passed their boards.
Katy, not with a diagnosis but certain about about MoonDancers high intelligence and hilarious wit!
That was the thing that attracted me to LF in the first place is the level of intelligence of the bloggers here (regardless of any degrees or not) Some of the smartest people I know are literally unable to sign their names because they grew up so poor after the depression that they never went to school a day in their liives but they can look at a hog r a cow and tell you wiith 5# what it will weigh and to the tenth of a cent what it will bring per pound and tell you what it is worth, all calculated in their heads because they can’t write.
How much education you ave in a school room doesn’t make you smart it just gives you some more information, but if you want to learn you can learn even outside the school room.
LF is a great school room and has some wonderful teachers, and not just the people who wriite the articles.
Thank you for this article. The experience with female spaths ganging for a hoped financial payoff ended with lots of emotional damage and no reward in the big picture for them! 2 of them continue to seek “national attention” with media…so disgusting that they continue to have such needs for the limelight…and have no feelings for the damage their “stories” create(d). Sure love to see them get “attention” they deserve: limelight to prevent continued victims. Forgive, yes; forget no!
In 8 days, this SIXTH round of NC will mark ten months. One month longer than the last. I still have been NC however some rather unusual occurrences are happening and I really need someone to talk to about this…
I am still in the process of making plans to move and in between my bouts of feeling ill and being in bed, I manage to get up, from time to time, to pack a box or sort through something needing it. Just PREPARING for the eventual move.
I am happy that a few months ago, I put a LOCKING DOOR on my hallway door – too many threats of lighted propane tanks in my hallway prompted that. I also have LIMITLESS police protection.
HOWEVER: “IT” is STILL getting through and LEAVING THINGS ON MY PORCH and DOOR STEP. What is that about? I just don’t understand this and I know that if there is anyone out here, who understands STALKING, please: TALK TO ME.
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP: I don’t speak to him nor encourage
him AT ALL…for all intents and purposes, I AM DEAD TO “IT”.
However, ‘gifts’ upon ‘gifts’ are left at my door step and I am just fed up with this terrorism he is purporting on me, STILL.
Has anyone out there ever had a stalker like this?
This is marking thirteen years of this crap and I am fed up with it. I read a story about a woman (you can google it) who had been stalked like this for FIFTY YEARS! Only, in her case, she used to fall for it, over and over again, and each time she did, he would beat her and harm her and leave her for dead and take off and a year or so later, she would let him back again.
THAT scenario is NOT happening with me.
I can promise you THAT.
If there is anyone here who can help me understand this,
I would so greatly appreciate what you have to say.
I can’t WAIT to get away from MY HOME.
Imagine saying that. MY HOME: I have to give it up and move on because of A STALKER.
It has NOTHING to do with ‘love’ nor ‘remorse’…
I know “IT” well enough to say that, with COMPLETE certainty.
One of the wonders of the world, is this?
I SAW HIM PULL UP IN FRONT OF MY APARTMENT LAST WEEK, ONE DAY and another neighbor seen him too!
Have a good day everyone –
My thoughts and prayers are with you all.
Dupey
Dupey, I am SO glad to “see” you – you’ve been on my mind for a while.
I am very, VERY sorry to hear that he’s still continuing the stalking. I can’t remember whether you had a RO on this guy, or not, so forgive my memory lapses. If you DO have RO, call the police to see if any action can be taken – real action, not 10 days in the county jail.
There has GOT to be some sort of consequences for this guy. Perhaps, ErinBrock has some better insight, or others who have dealt with this. If you have unlimited police protection and they clearly understand this, they may be able to help. My feeling is that this guy’s actions have gone beyond the bid for attention. Whether or not he gets attention is not his motive, anymore. He means to cause harm, and the police need to understand this.
And, your home, sweetie, is wherever you are. We can make ANY place a “home.”
STRONG, strong (((((HUGS))))), Dupey, and my most sincere and protective blessings