When I was a med student, I studied animal models for human stress and depression. The best animal model of what a psychopath does to others is that of the rodent resident-intruder paradigm. In this model, males are introduced into the home territory of other males, they experience social defeat and are removed before they are injured. Repeated exposure to this situation produces a defeated animal who is chronically submissive and gives up without a fight whenever he encounters other males. Below is the posture of a defeated mouse.
The physiology of this defeated rodent resembles human depression very closely. The defeat state can be reversed with antidepressants. Defeat is associated with elevated stress hormones, immune dysfunction and learned helplessness.
I think it is important to know that the potential to develop the defeat mentality exists within us. In humans this mentality takes on a more sophisticated form. When defeated many people become enveloped by what I call “the victim identity.”
Identity or self concept means how you think about yourself and how you think others perceive you. Identity and self concept always includes some component of how dominant or socially potent we consider ourselves to be. Social status is another related part of the self concept.
An encounter with a sociopath/psychopath often leaves a person defeated in every sphere of life. The status, reputation, career, finances that took a lifetime to build vanish. The victim is left in limbo, not knowing how to put the pieces together.
It is in this limbo that the victim identity develops. A person who used to be financially well off and productive having lost everything now adjusts to that loss by defining him/herself as “victim”. This victim identity is further supported by the constant pain and anxiety the person feels. Why do I hurt? Why have I lost? Why am I defeated? I experience all these things because I am a victim.
The minute I say, “I am a victim.” That word victim becomes part of my self definition. There is a certain comfort in the victim identity. It helps a person explain and cope with their external reality and internal symptoms.
The danger in the victim identity is that it will come to be the totality of a person’s self-definition. Once this happens, the victim stops living, and is like the defeated mouse, assuming the posture at every challenge.
I challenge you today to consider the place your identity as a victim has in terms of your total self-definition. Is the trauma the first thing you think of when you think of yourself? Are you being fair to yourself when you identify with your victim status? Perhaps you have a good deal more living to do than your victim identity will allow?
It is important to be whole. That means the part of you who is/was a victim gets integrated with the other parts. “Victim” has to become just a piece of the puzzle that is you.
I confess that I am aware of my victim identity most in the company I choose to keep. I feel most comfortable relating to other people who understand psychopaths and what they do. If that also describes you realize that is a sign of victim identity. It is important to acknowledge these tendencies and balance them by having friends who are not victims or family members of psychopaths/sociopaths.
It is especially important to spend time with functional families/couples who love and care for each other.
Try never to take pride in your status as a victim or use it as an excuse for dysfunction. If you experience symptoms of PTSD, that is a challenge to overcome not a curse you are condemned to live with.
Ask yourself today if you really want to be like that poor defeated mouse.
For another opinion and further discussion of the victim identity see The Line between Victims and Abusers (although I do not agree with all Dr. Stosny says here).
Happy Holidays, Kathy!
glad you stopped by and hope all is well with you! This article is a good one, and one of my ‘favorite” on LF. I am so glad to see that the new people here hve started to go back through the archives and bring up some of the “good old articles” and that is the name of the game, to read them all so that the ones that will speak to you TODAY are read, and then I try to go back and re-read some of them because the ones that might not have spoken to me a month or six months ago, DO speak to me today because I have grown in the meantime.
It is I think like reading a poem, your moods or place you are puts different meanings to the same words, depending of how you are feeling that day.
Have happy holidays and CELEBRATE our FREEDOM! (((hugs)))
WITSEND – thank you dear woman, you got me through the day. slowly but surely things unraveled a bit, and I got some of the crappy part of my work done.
I talked to a friend tonight – who is going through some heavy things this year, also. He is my closest friend in this town. He had been out with his daughter for dinner and had had some wine and their was a lightness in his voice that I hadn’t heard in a while – we played a bit. it was nice.
I did mention a couple of things about spath one and the Attorney General’s office lawyer who i spoke with – and within about 5 minutes i felt myself on planet pluto – just freaking gone…it was like i tripped off into another SH*TTY plane of existence.
not only do i not want to take my friends there – i don’t wanna go either.
call me baby steps!
One Step,
Baby steps are still steps in the right direction….That is what is important. Good for you!
Just remember to try and do things broken down like this when you become overwhelmed. It really does make it do-able when you think you can’t possibly put one foot in front of the other.
I hope that you can find something to do before you go to bed at night to de-stress yourself as much as possible. It is so hard to function at all during the day when we don’t sleep at night because we can’t “turn off” all those thoughts running through our heads.
Oh Henry….Are you out there? I want to know how it feels to be everyones hero? Are you blushing yet?
We love you henry.
I laughed at your dog story dragging in “his kill” on the other thread.
Oh Wit….Yes I am here and Yes I am blushing.
ICANSEECLEARLYNOW …THE RAIN HAS GONE…
beautiful song, thank-you.
In my childhood home Christmas music was Mahalia Jackson:
this is an old one, she takes me with her:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmR1YvfIGng&feature=related
About Compulsoin: i am reading the BETRAYAL BOND, i am sure the library won’t mind all my pencil marks. It is speaking to me. I used to be a smoker. When i gave up tobacco, i took up carbs – in a very serious way. I relate to what they say about addiction in the Betrayal Bond.
It took me many years – about 6 to get through my compulsive eating. I was okay for years. Great for some. Last three have been hard , and GIRL, I CNA’T TELL YOu WHAT THE LAST FEW MONTHS HAVE BEEN LIKE! WE-HOO, I am looking 7 months pregnant. (that’s the stress fat)
anyway – that was a tangent 😉 I see the anxiety i have had since a teen (which i squelched with drugs and tobacco) is very much in relation to the the betrayal bond (got a score of 14 out of 17 on the index). and that makes sense to how i am ‘coping’ now.
I swear, I am going to come out of this better. stronger. more grounded. and more knowing. I have tried to be a good person – beyond all belief, it seems like. And I have taken sh*t in the name of religious values. No f**king more. I need to stand for myself. I know it will take a while to learn (which means practicing) standing for myself but if I can believe in it, I can practice it.
Thank you for your care and sharing. I read your post over many times.
this really stuck me: ‘I try to picture him falling off the face of the earth.’ I immediately pictured the spath i tangled with disintegrating into dust. and it’s interesting, cause it was HER, not one of the pictures she sent me pretending to be someone she isn’t- but the picture of her. I am not a really visual person in terms of what i see in my head….but this image of her turning to smokey dust is a clear and strong image.
More about compulsion: (yah, wo has trouble staying on topic?
😉
I have been thinking about the hormonal and chemical reality of anxiety. I know my adrenal system is messsssed up. I want to protect my body now. and stress and anxiety are killers. literally. so, when i see my anxiety go up in relation to the spath, i am watching and paying attention. i don’t want the anxiety. so i can’t do the action.
I understand the looking. I am compulsive online. period. it is about the freaking trauma and betrayal bond. I work online – just what i need, another addiction that i can’t go cold turkey (ahem) on – like eating. Ahh, moderaton has never been my strong suit. But you are right, it is not good for you. And good for you for stepping back. Keep stepping, keep practicing moving away. The more we do it, the clearer our heads get- for me, the clearer my revulsion is, and I naturally don’t want to go there.
I like eileen’s suggestion – iused to use that for food during my first years of sobriety – but I would WRITE or call someone, and if I still wanted to eat I would. But i would do the life affirming thing first.
Wishing you much healing and a growing sense of possibility and probability that you regain what you have lost and more. We have to use these journeys to grow. we must. this is it. we don’t get more years once we figure it out.
i’ll be around a lot over xmas. hanging with the LF peeps. we’ll talk again.
bestest,
one step
Henry,
You deserve the title. I think you made it through alot of peoples worst nightmare of that “unexpected”, unprepared for visit.
And handled it so well….So blush away.
Hey Witsend!
ty ty for the support. I am a baby in that way – a bit of support for my lolling head goes a loooong way.
detressing is a bit hard at my place- my apt. is toxic – literally, and i have the bedroom window open to be able to breath well at night.. it is hard to relax here.
but i think i will go for a walk around the chilly block and have a hot bath.
or a bottle of gin.
just kidding.
gin is vile icky stuff.
scotch is MUCH better. 😉
baby step, whose, regardless of her silliness, not a drinker.
Ok If not opening a door to a crazy physcopath is heroic I will be hero of the day or week but let’s not get to carried away. It did end alot of emotional crapola I was hangin on to tho.
So maybe I need to trade my three weiner dogs for three pittbull dogs and next time he comes a knockin, I will open dat door~!
One Step,
I am going to bed real soon. But I’m glad you mentioned compulsive behavior and how you handled this when you quit drinking.
I think almost ALL of the AA principles can help when dealing with the aftermath of an S/P/N. It is an addiction. And dealing with it as an addiction is the best way to have a sucessful recovery. It is great that you are familiar with all of these tools.