Last week I picked my daughter up from the Agriscience High School she attends and was greeted with a sure sign of spring. There are dozens of new baby lambs who have all just been born. They are very cute but they also look exactly the same to me. My daughter tells me that they look alike because although there are many ewes there is only one ram, so all the babies have the same dad. Even though the babies look alike and to me they smell alike, each one is unique and special to its mother.
Sheep live in herds and unlike some other mammals they do not care for each other’s babies. A mother sheep must bond to and learn to identify her baby among the vast herd of lambs who are born at the same time. When you consider that sheep are not very smart, this feat is truly one of nature’s miracles.
But why am I discussing sheep on this blog? The reason is FAQ #1. “Why is this so hard for us mentally?” Men and women who have been involved with sociopaths want to know why recovery is so difficult. Sheep, believe it or not, teach us a lot about that.
Farmers have known for centuries that mother sheep are selective and will reject strange lambs but lovingly care for their own. A ewe can be fooled into accepting a strange lamb if she receives stimulation to her cervix and vagina. (Please don’t ask me how the farmers accomplish that one.) Stimulation of the cervix and vagina, as happens during birth are part of what produces the love bond a ewe feels toward her baby.
Vaginal and cervical stimulation induces bonding in the mother. Blocking the sensory impulses from the pelvic region with spinal anesthesia blocks the bonding mechanism. The failure to bond after spinal anesthesia can be reversed by oxytocin injection. In fact, oxytocin injection alone can induce acceptance of an unfamiliar lamb even in a non-pregnant ewe. Acceptance/bonding is also disrupted by oxytocin blocking drugs. There is therefore strong evidence that oxytocin mediates bonding in sheep.
It appears that in mammals, the hormone oxytocin not only helps in labor by inducing uterine contractions and facilitates nursing by causing milk ejection, it is also a bonding hormone. Those women who have experienced motherhood and birth can attest to the fact that for many falling in love with a newborn is similar to falling in love with one’s mate. Men are not off the hook when it comes to bonding. They too have oxytocin, and it is important in normal male sexual function.
Scientists are in the process of unraveling the mystery of how oxytocin induces a love bond between a ewe and her lamb. What has been discovered so far has pretty scary implications for humans. Oxytocin induces plasticity in the sheep smell cortex. That means that the cells that respond to smell become very sensitive such that those which are stimulated by the odor of the newborn develop strong connections. By this mechanism, the smell of the baby is imprinted on the mother’s brain.
Another group of researchers studying rodents have actually pinpointed the molecular mechanism responsible for oxytocin’s action in another area of the brain responsible for memory, the hippocampus. Oxytocin binding to its receptor induces production of another protein pCREB. This protein acts to enhance plasticity and long term memory. The long and the short of it is that oxytocin produces a rewiring of the brain! When you love someone, your love changes the wiring in your brain. Since undoing the wiring takes time, recovery takes time.
In our book, Women Who Love Psychopaths (available April 24) Sandra Brown, M.A. makes the observation that many of the women recovering from relationships with psychopaths seem to be exceptionally trusting of others. I have to admit that that description probably fits me. Well, blame that one on oxytocin too.
Paul J. Zak, PhD, is founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont. Has done a series of experiments in which he has shown that oxytocin is also responsible for trust in humans. Oxytocin and oxytocin receptors are found in both men and women.
What about sociopaths? They are not particularly trusting and we know they do not bond. Could the problem be oxytocin? In preliminary studies Dr. Zak and colleagues found that sociopaths may have abnormally high levels of oxytocin. This could happen if there is something wrong with their oxytocin receptors such that they are “immune” to oxytocin. Here is a great talk on oxytocin by Dr. Zak. Just fast forward to 3 minutes and 30 seconds to get past the longwinded introduction.
The oxytocin news isn’t all bad for us humans. Remember that a ewe has more than one lamb over the course of her life, so oxytocin is able to rewire the brain more than once in a lifetime. Many people instinctively know that getting into another relationship will help to erase the memory of a bad relationship. Be careful though, if you are recovering from a relationship with a sociopath, you are especially vulnerable to being victimized again by another sociopath.
The other lesson to be learned is that to heal you must get away from the sociopath. Every time you have any intimacy with a sociopath, oxytocin is released and the bond is strengthened. Any intimacy, including talking and hugging, will stimulate oxytocin release. If oxytocin is released in the presence of the sociopath you will trust and feel bonded to him/her.
Oxdrover,
“You might as well tell SATAN that the fire is too hot as to tell a P that what they are doing is hurting you, they, like Satan, will only SHOVEL ON MORE COAL.”
Hahaha I love all your metaphors, but this one is just great!
It’s so true, they couldn’t care less that they are destroying you emotionally. You also get the response, “You are the one who’s condemning me!(projection) I just want to help and you never listen to anything I say.”
Once, after a hard day’s gaslighting, my S stepmom cried crocodile tears to my dad saying, “They (us kids) don’t respect me! Boo hoo” I was just a kid but I felt like laughing out loud. It was so ridiculous. The projection part is difficult to deal with because you are so busy defending yourself that you forget all about the complaint you had. I don’t bother defending myself anymore with her. When she says crazy stuff like that I seriously do laugh now. I finally get the joke.
Good Morning, Ariadne,
I’m looking out the window at weather that must have been sent to me from the Ps no longer in my life–rain, wind, with tornado warnings, and wishing the weather would let up so I could get outside and do something, so here I am!
Glad you like my little analogies and metaphors–even my mixed metaphors! I sort of have a twisted sense of humor I have been told! I think though at some time you have to, in order to survive the insanity of what you have been through, LAUGH ABOUT IT.
I have a dear friend, also an only child, whose “Jewish Mother” (they are not Jewish but she got a Jewish mother) drives her to the edge of sanity. I personally just love her mother, who doesn’t bother me at all with her “advice” because I see “through” her and I just laugh with and at her, so some of it just depends not so much on the behavior as on our reaction to it from our own past experience with this person.
If your best friend came up and playfully with no ill-intent slapped you on your back and accidentally broke your arm, your arm would still be broken, but you would not be angry with them.
If your,, in your case, say your step mother did the same thing, you would feel entirely differently.
The behavior was the same, the result was the same, but YOUR FEELINGS would be entirely different toward the person.
It’s good that you can laugh when your stepmother says things. I’m getting there most days. My P-by-proxy mother, which I have to from time to time talk to, can still once in a while “get to me”—the level of it is decreasing and 9 out of 10 days it is 0, but some days it is above 0—yesterday when I had to talk to her regarding some business it raised above 0 for a little while, not a lot, but some. That being the case, I will have to go back to having my son C deal with her if possible for a while.
As my healing has progressed their ability to hurt me has decreased. So I know that my healing is progressing. A person’s ability to hurt you is directly proportional to how much you care for them. (The “caring for” can be either love OR hate)
In my case, I have to have a little bit of contact with my mother because of mutual financial interests, and have to keep an eye on the other Ps because I know that given half a chance they would take another shot at killing me if they could.
Yesterday I contacted the governor’s office in my state, and the parole board, and the sexual offender risk assessment chief, the local state-wide newspaper also got a copy of my letter to these officials, and so hopefully instead of spending 45 days in prison for each year of sentence received, they will keep him there his entire term.
In his previous state he was given the highest ranking of “violent, habitual criminal, high risk” in my state he got a level 2 of possible 4 which means that he is “unlikely” to be violent or reoffend.
Taking one of the standard guide books for assessing these inmates the way I read it, he is VERY high risk, and VERY dangerous. It is possible all his paper work from his previous state didn’t get here, but it is also possible that our agency which has a back log of 5000+ unclassified pedophiles and other sexual offenders just didn’t have the “time” to properly review his case.
Whatever the reasons, I hope that I was able to shed some light on the subject and that the government people will understand that they have a “wild crazy bitch who will go to the media and make a spectacle” if necessary—the kind they give the grease to to SHUT THEM UP. LOL I hope my letter convinced them that if they try to “free up” another prison bed by letting someone out after doing about 10% of their time and he DOES reoffend that it will be ME on the 6 o’clock news screaming THEIR NAMES, and saying “I warned our public officials and they didn’t listen, now look what happened!”
Our previous governor let out a rapist, pardoned him yet, and within a month he had raped and killed another victim, so that “hot rock” policy is still I hope in force and will work for my case.
Have a great day!
Ariadne and OxD:
That’s where they get you – their fake sincerity. You are sincere, trying to deal with someone who appears sincere, who pretends sincere, but the entire thing is RIGGED from the word “go” because they aren’t sincere in the slightest.
So all the efforts you make to explain, to plead, to try and get them to empathize, to set boundaries with them…all of it is pointless. Because it is falling on deaf, hard ears and a cold, stiff heart.
That’s what always gets us in the end, whether it is with romantic relationships with Ps or any other kind: we’re making good faith efforts.
They wouldn’t know good faith if it hauled-up and kicked them in the ass. (And frankly, I often wish something would.)
That’s why No Contact. That’s why we’re forced to do the unthinkable (to us, unthinkable, because we have hearts and consciences) and cut them out of our lives forever. We now have Life Scalpels to wield on the new S’s and P’s that crop up in our lives. Mine is as precise as any surgeon’s. Because we dealt with someone we really loved who was like this and suffered the pain of having to extricate them from our lives forever, it’s much easier to do to someone new the first time they raise the red flags of lying or abuse or any P/S/N behaviors.
I’ve hardened in that way. Not entirely ashamed of it, either.
Like most of us when I initiated NO contact, almost against my will, it was so painful and even thinking about her (emotional contact) would send me into tears and a rage and then rage and tears for DAYS!
Now it is nothing much more than a severe irritation that lasts a few hours. More a reinforcement of what I already know. I can’t trust her. She has no repentance for what she has done. Isn’t going to change and I can never again pretend that I have a mother that loves me.
It was ONLY after I went NO contact with her entirely for several months that I actually really started to heal, to adjust to reality. Ditto with the P XBF, but he doesn’t bother me at all now, fortunately I didn’t have a life time invested with him or children. With my son, (shakes head here) I’ve come to acceptance of what he is and to me my “son” is dead–gone–no longer exists except as a memory of a wonderful little boy who left me. Or was stolen away by trolls. Sometimes I feel like his 4th grade picture should be on a milk carton with the sign “Have you Seen this Missing child, call 1-800-findhim.”
I used to say I couldn’t imagine how a parent whose child was kidnapped would feel, NOT knowing if their child was alive or dead. Now, I think I do know how that parent would feel, but at least I have some closure in that I know my child is DEAD. There is NO hope he will ever show up again. I imagine they must have to come to some form of closure too after so many years of wondering about their child, hoping for their child, praying for their child.
Yes, we are making good faith efforts, and they aren’t. Yea, my boundaries are pretty firm as well and I am NOT any ashamed of it. That’s not “hardened,” it is simply good healthy self preservation and GOOD SENSE.
OxD:
Not sure how you managed to handle cutting contact with family members. That part is tough. I believe my brother is a total and complete P, but for as long as my parents are around, feel obligated to maintain a very superficial cordial relationship. Very, very superficial. After they are gone, I intend never to see him again.
But if it were my child…well, that has to be tough.
Did you used to find yourself thinking of your child as often as you did of the ex S/P romantic relationship?
One of the hardest lessons of disconnecting from this person was learning that some days are easy and others were extremely painful. By the time a few years had passed, last time, it wasn’t bad most of the time.
This time around, I feel like it’s much faster, the healing process. Knowing what their problem is, knowing it’s like a spiritual death sentence, somehow that helped shut the door.
Orphan,
I’m not sure whether the cutting ties with a child is any different from cutting ties with a man you love, it is still a love, hope, caring relationship with a fantasy “future” and that is difficult regardless of the relationship. Of course I had a fantasy for my son, what he would do, be, etc when he was an adult, and memories of what a great kid he was when he was little and I wanted to “find” that in him as an adult. I just couldn’t turn loose, but I suspect if he had been a husband I would have done the same thing except I would not have tolerated physical abuse from a man, but did from my son. DUH–what’s the difference WHO hits you?
Actually emotional PAIN is like Dr. Frankl says “it occupies all the space available for it” a “little” pain or a “big” pain doesn’t matter IT FILLS YOUR ENTIRE BEING from top to bottom.
Sure it was a disappointment that my son turned out to be a monster, but it hurt just as much to think the man I thought might be my next “soul mate” turned out to be a monster as well…and it hurt like hell when I realized my mother was a P-by-proxy, doing the bidding of my P-son without remorse, and justifying her behavior toward me by her own twisted religious logic. If anything cutting the ties with my mother were the hardest, because I really didn’t think about her as a psychopath, until I realized she was one by PROXY, falling under the spell of the P-son so completely. I realized too that the “relationship” we had, while not perfect, was JUST AS PAINFUL and JUST AS TOXIC as the one with my P-son.
It was only after I went NC with her that I had enough peace to start to heal, that the stress level went down. That I quit trying to please her unreasonable requests and demands. Only by letting go of ALL the Ps and their proxies could I start to heal. Each one contributed to the pain in their own unique way, but they are ALL THE SAME as well. TOXIC. POISON. Like a cancer of the soul. You have to cut them out (NC), and then take the treatment which itself is like chemo, it is painful, but in the end, will “cure”you of the disease, cleanse your system, make you healthy again, and heal your soul that has been emotionally raped.
I still have my adopted son D who has been my support all though this chaos, and have my son C returned to me since he is no longer under the control and FOG of his X-wife. Having the good relationship with these two good men has been wonderful and makes me appreciate them for the wonderful men that they are. My step dad and my husband are gone, but even though they are deceased, I can look back on the relationships and draw from their strength even with them gone. If I have a question about something I can say to myself “what would daddy do?” or “how would M see this?” and if I just wait a while, the answer will come to me. And, I know it is what they would have suggested. So even though our “support” net work is gone from us in some ways, we can still draw on past relationships and the wisdom of people we loved.
Sometimes I will even dream about my husband or my step dad and they will “tell me” in the dream what they would have done. I know of course this is my subconscious working and not some ghostly visit, but it underscores and builds my confidence in myself and my own strength, as well as keeps my bond with these two amazing and wonderful men with me daily.
Draw on whatever sources of strength and wisdom you have within you from whatever source. Hold firm to it when you feel that you cannot stand that day. Be good to yourself, and the healing will come–a step here, a step there, two steps another day, one back and so on, but as long as the progress is in a positive direction you will “get there.”
Thanks, OxD.
Hate knowing that periodically he will reenter my mind and be a source of anything at all, even bad memories.
Never felt that way about any former relationship, really. It’s sad. There are times I like to just pretend he passed away. Because, well, you know, the person I thought he was? Already dead, long ago.
Very enlightening blog was concerning the chemical bonding in both animals and human being. Being a person whose interests involve both spiritually and scientific studies I find this discussion very interesting. We as a group of people as per say being both a mental and emotional creature which works on a somewhat predicable action/reaction set in both a mentally and emotionally chemical base forum. In short, we feel then we react, we think then we react. This theory is based on the cause and effect reaction. We all know that a sociopath lacks some emotions like let’s say empathy. Since the act/react i.e. cause and effect is lacking, this may be to some lack of chemical balance or chemical exchange in the brain of the “sociopath”. Knowing full well that sociopath come to be due to many factors, which includes but not limited to environment, DNA and social expectations. So that the “chemical imbalance” and or defect would not cure a sociopath, it would in fact help us understand just one of the many factors involved in explaining why a sociopath act/reacts the way they do. I, having lost a partner due to this “personality disorder” maintain some hope that we can and will find a way to treat, cure and or assist these people who may or may not be a victims themselves. Knowing full well the many dangers that a “sociopath” displays, have discover that the “no contact” method work the best when one has the ability to do so. Sadly this is not a possibility for all of us. So thru studies and research, to be well inform is to be well warned. I being a person of compassion, in effect would like to “keep” some hope alive myself. That we as a compassion and caring society can find, research and discover a way to protect ourselves but still help the sociopath and or the future personality disorders that we may find in our children due to no fault of there own. Any information on this subject is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
I finially finished reading Dr. Anna Salter’s book, “Predators” (RE: Pyshopaths and other sexual offenders) and she, who has a great, I think, sense of humor said that sometimes people look at the psychopath with more compassion than she thinks they deserve. They DO know right from wrong, but choose to do what they know society thinks is wrong anyway.
Anyway, she made me laugh when she told about a cartoon, that showed a man horribly beaten, broken and injured, lying in a ditch, and two social workers were standing over him and one social worker said to the other, “The person who DID this, really needs help.”
My own personal favorite cartoon on a psychological bent is the mother squatted down taking to a little girl about 4 or 5, and in the back ground is the still smoking ashes of a house. The mother says to the little girl “Mommie and daddy are not mad at YOU, Marilyn, mommie and dad are upset with the naughty thing you have done.” ROTFL.
My personal belief is that since the psychopath knows right from wrong, even though he doesn’t “agree” that he is responsible for maintaining compliance with these laws established by society, I nevertheless believe that he should be held accountable for the behaviors.
A person who is depressed, or manic and does unlawful/immoral acts is held accountable by law for their behaviors UNLESS they are not in touch with reality (legally insane). Even a child under the age of 18 is held accountable as an adult if they are old enough and smart enough (and not legally insane) to know right from wrong.
Dr. Salter, in her book Predators talked about “blaming the victim” COMPLETELY for children who were molested by adult men—it was commonly accepted in the professional psychological community that these children were acting out sexually, even if they resisted, and that they had SEDUCED the adult male involved. In some porfessional circles it was still being preached to blame the victim as late ad 1990. DUH! How can an 18 month old chld “Seduce” an adult male.
Some of the 1930s rationale for this was that the child didn’t “resist and run away”—but this criteria was NOT also put on the back of the adult male “victim” who could also have “run away.” DUH! Even if the child DID resisit and run away, it was because they had seduced the strange man who kidnapped them at knifepoint, and then changed their minds.
While I try to have compassion for every living thing, when adult people choose to behave in cruel ways toward others, unless they are out of touch with reality (legally insane) I firmly believe that they are responsible for their behavior.
Alcoholics are born with a gene that makes them crave alcohol, but they have the right NOT to drink. Drinking alcohol should not enable them to escape responsibility for their behavior when drunk.
I too hope there will come a day when there is treatment or prevention for many of the personality disorders. In the meantime, though—I think all sane adults are responsible for their behaivors and the consequences there of.
Wow, this post is so great, Liane. I am resurrecting it so that all the newcomers (like me) can read and benefit from it.
SUCH GOOD INFO IN THE VIDEO!
I also found some NEW info in this short article – for the oldtimers here, but newcomers should see the video first in order to see the relevance better.
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/bps/article/S0006-3223(09)00762-8/abstract
Basically, it is relevant because narcissists ENVY EVERYONE.
This is the basis of their hell on earth. They simply cannot bear to see someone have anything – especially not happiness.
I’ve also read a theory that envy is a survival strategy that helps us learn to mimick what others do…Narcissists are natural born mirrors, we have all experienced that.
Maybe, some day we will find that this all ties in to oxytocin?