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.
Love the tip about training dogs,lol! 🙂 My puppy is easily distracted;we’ll work on that!
I’m realizing what kept me so confused about the spath that used to be in my life….it was the ‘toxic concoction’ of charm,pity and rage-what a personality disorder!
He could be ‘civil’ and we could have good conversations that I genuinely enjoyed.He could even compliment me.(once upon a rare time)When he was REALLY ‘full of of hot air his compliment would ring true, but the way it was said would leave my mouth hanging open!
He was so hypocritical with his pity play.If I were to complain,he ‘jumped down my throat’….he didn’t want to hear about my pain or suffering.But he wanted me and everyone else to know what HE went through!
As for his rage,he tried to control it.Did a fair job until I walked out on him!His rage enabled him to get out of his bed and get in his wheelchair and go down the hallway,knocking on apts,looking for me!
Caring aunt, thank you, glad you enjoyed the article. I read your post and you sound 180 degrees DIFFERENT from when you first came here so upset about your niece. Now you have learned what you need to know to calm yourself and to ACT rather than RE-ACT with your SIL and Bro.
That right there is what YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER and is ALL you have control over. That’s difficult to accept, but at least you are SEEING that you CAN have a positive influence over your niece even just a few minutes here and there. As she gets older your influence will be more too I think.
My advice for what it is worth is to just keep telling her you love her and I think the backwards name is a GREAT idea.
While her mother controls her pretty much totally at home, the child is going to school and that will give her something to compare with “mommy dearest’s” ways of doing things. Don’t give up hope and just keep on keeping your mask on around the P SIL so she doesn’t get “on to” you and keep you away completely. Erin Brock calls it backspathing them.
wow! caringaunt,I just read your post and I caught the words “thought blocking”….EXACTLY! Now I know how to explain to people what I’ve been through!Not knowing how to explain IT,I’ve simply said “a dense fog”.But yeah…my husband always kept me busy;I never had time to relax & catch my breath,to chew and digest my food or get the sleep I needed…..I felt like I was a prisoner in a concentration camp!
Thanks Spoon, for the link and advice. I saved it for those times when I feel “that way”. It’s hole I dug myself into and when I have emtionally hard times, like I did this Christmas, I don’t even have to dig the hole, I was in it again. I am much better now.
About a year ago, I found a great book How to Tell Yourself the Truth. My problem, and it fits the issue I referred to above, is that what someone does repeats the deepest core abuse done to me, I automatically think that a LF member CAN’T be spath, they MUST have a heart and care how their behavior hurts another. But then I realize that is illogical and I have made myself vulnerable b/c they then can respond back with ever more condemnation, which re-wounds. Why read/why not avoid you ask? B/c there’s this hope that they’d finally get it. Only my spath never did, no matter how much I told him the damage he was doing, he didn’t care. The opposite, it made him feel VICTORIOUS. And the same here, the person knows and Expresses her VICTORY.
What I’ve learned to do, at these sad times, is take the post and process it with telling myself the truth. It’s a form of critical reasoning processing. Not only am I able to see the attack for what it is, but I am able to see how it is linked to my core wound and then apply reasoning to heal it. For the most part, it no longer bothers me. I had such respect for one person and Now realize that she has a blind spot but that it has nothing to do with me. I did finally give up trying to be heard. It’s only when something happens out of left field that I get carried back into the hole. At least now I recognize I am blind b/c of the hole, not b/c I am incapable of seeing, and work towards the day when the hole no longer exists.
My goal for writing now is so that other vulnerable people don’t give up, don’t buy into thinking themselves wrong for reasonable understandable behaviors. It’s context, it’s not boom, if you do this, you are one of “THEM” (spath). It’s complex and I write to offer a different perspective, that people should give themselves grace and time to process and then MORE grace and processing.
Best, Katy
Caring aunt,
You sound like you know more about NLP than I do. Though I’ve read a little bit about it, I find that kind of manipulation so repulsive, that I tend to shut down and block out, even the information about it. I mean, who DOES that? Who WANTS to do that? ewwww… *shudders*.
You might be interested in mimetic theory (much less repulsive). It is the theory that human beings, especially young people, will mimic other people and their values. That is how and why normal people acquire their values, from their family and friends. Just your presence is going to inspire Sobrina to mimic you and your values. Always remember that you are being a role model.
I agree with Oxy, you do sound so much better. Knowledge is power.
Blossom,
thanks for that image of your exspath hopping into his wheel chair to look for you. You cracked me up! They are all afraid of abandonment and will go to great lengths to keep us from leaving. They’ll even kill us. It’s because they’re infantile.
MoonDancer
I want to correct myself. MOST times I avoid someone who is raging. But I know there is one exception. The first time I posted here on LF was b/c I was greatly wounded by the Other women my husband cheated with. ANd I was sincerely trying to understand why/what they were thinking. So, when I read someone’s post who had been the other woman, and how she wrote she was STRONG and HEALED, so I posted and asked her. Instead of enlightening me, she went into a rage. And I knew my mistake. She was not strong or healed, and my asking re-wounded her. I was INSTANTLY sorry but nothing I wrote mattered. Her rage did not make me want to avoid, it made me want to comfort her. I saw her rage as a core childhood hurt – a much DIFFERENT rage than the kind of rage done to me by my spath and his family (there’s was comply or be destroyed).
Just making a distinction b/c I think it important.
Best, Katy
Caringaunt,
About the cog/dis… The easiest way to explain it is with an everyday sales example… If someone is interested in getting a new cellphone, some sales man will give the potential buyer a sales pitch on all the bells and whistles of a product – most probably stuff you’ll never use it for, nor know how to operate or use. But the salesman still convinces you to buy the cell phone with all the whistles and bells (overpriced and for stuff he/she’ll never use).
Now despite the buyer of the cellphone never using those bells and whistles, or if they try but don’t manage to use those functions, they’ll do two things – a) copy the sales pitch to friends and family to impress them with the belief of what a great buy they did b) blame themselves for not using or not being able to operate those bells and whistle functions. What the buyer will not do is recognize the reality: they didn’t need that bells and whistles cellphone and it’s badly designed for users.
Why is that? The salesman convinced them with a belief this is a great phone. They made a buyer decision based on that belief and invested in it. It will hurt their mind more to accept they’ve made a bad buy than it hurts them to believe they’re too stupid to make the bells and whistles work.
Our brain is in an actual state of mental pain when reality opposes our beliefs. We naturally tend to avoid this pain by creating new false beliefs and false rationalisations on top of the false initial belief, rather than alter the initial belief.
It’s important to realize that experiencing cog/dis is unavoidable (from simple to complex decision situations), and when a belief does not match with reality, it is actually IMPORTANT to face cog/dis. We get into trouble when we AVOID cog/dis: because avoiding cog/dis means creating false beliefs in order to hold on to the initial belief.
teehee. the edit button isn’t working for me. so, i can’t FIX my mistakes! the irony of the timing! anyhoo. correction to above parentheis: (their rage was “comply or be destroyed”)
Darwin’s mom,
I just read a GREAT QUOTE and darned if I can remember where or exactly who (CRS!) but basically it said “we believe what we want to believe” and “we are the easiest people we can fool.”
The statements were made by a scientist, but can’t remember who. Darned if I had a brain I would take it out and play with it! LOL
CaringAunt
There are a couple of books out there about how to control people. They are VERY hard to get through b/c the EVIL seeps from the very page. But they are primers for me to understand what was done to me by my spath and frankly, was there to begin with b/c of my childhood. I read a page or two every once in a while, then the ick factor kicks in and I have to process. I don’t know about NPL books but to understand what spaths do, try The Power of Seduction, in VERY LITTLE bits and only when you are emotionally strong.
I thought when I left my childhood family, that I left behind all their craziness (I called it backwards thinking b/c it was SO ILLOGICAL). It NEVER occurred to me to look for it in my husband and his family, They are a prominent solid historical family. Yet their pedigree is a shield they hide behind, to invalidate ANYONE who objects to their tyranny.
When I read those horrid books, it was all the more painful to read how easily I have been manipulated b/c I fell for ALL the tricks. So much for thinking myself so MATURE and above it all. I AM A DUPE. BUT, I am capable of learning and changing. My spath and his family? They are the way they are until God claims them.