Editor’s note: This is the first post by Lovefraud’s newest blog author, Kathleen Hawk. She previously posted many thoughtful comments under the screen name “khatalyst.”
Last year, 2008, was a year in which we faced the cost of sociopathy in our economy. Huge financial firms were destroyed or deeply damaged by their own corporate cultures. Their employees were encouraged to pursue personal gain, without concern about the messes they left behind or the damage they did to other people’s lives. The results are loss and suffering, even for people who had nothing to do with these companies.
It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Sociopathy taken to a grand scale. But there are people and institutions that didn’t buy into the subprime mortgage debacle. There are people who turned down the opportunity to invest with Bernard Madoff. Likewise, there are people who don’t get involved with sociopaths. They don’t attract them, or if they do, they get rid of them before any damage is done.
This article is about my suggestions for New Years resolutions that will help make us like those people.
About 20 years ago, I was fortunate to attend a week-long training at Brain Technologies, a consulting firm founded by the authors of Strategy of the Dolphin.* This book — written for business managers but also useful for people wanting to better manage their own lives — divides the world into sharks and carps. Both act out their addictions. Sharks are addicted to winning. Carps are addicted to being loved.
There was a third type of character in the “pool.” That was the dolphin. The dolphin learned in action, adapting its behavior to what was required at any given moment. If threatened, it might act like a shark. At more comfortable times, it might act like a carp. One of my favorite dolphin strategies described in the book is “tit for tat.” That is, if a shark takes a bite out of a dolphin, the dolphin takes an equivalent bite out of the shark. Not to escalate the fight, but just let the shark know that it was not dealing with a carp.
You’ll notice the dolphin doesn’t cringe and say, “Please don’t bite me.” It doesn’t pat the shark on the head and say, “You must have had a difficult childhood and you clearly need more love.” It absolutely doesn’t lie down and say, “I can see you’re hungry, and I can spare a part or two.” What it does is communicate in concrete terms that a dolphin lunch is going to be very, very expensive for the shark.
Which brings me to the New Year’s resolutions we might consider to makes ourselves sociopath-proof.
1. Eliminate pity.
This may sound very strange to those of us who were taught that we are responsible to help the less fortunate. But pity is not what we were supposed to learn. Pity is an emotion that places us in a one-up position to someone we view as less than us. It is also dangerously linked to feeling sorry for ourselves. In acting on pity, we get into emotionally tangled situations of entitlement and debt, which leave us feeling unappreciated and resentful.
Empathy and compassion are much more functional and respectful emotions. Empathy is extending ourselves to understand another’s circumstances. (“That must be difficult for you.”) Compassion is extending ourselves to understand how they feel. (“That must be painful for you.”) Both of them can lead to bonding experiences. Neither of them requires us to take action to help. In fact, “dispassionate compassion” is the respectful recognition that other people are following their own paths, which have nothing to do with us. This doesn’t mean that we won’t help, but it keeps things in perspective.
As most people who have been involved with sociopaths know, the ability to elicit pity and then take advantage of our knee-jerk inclination to help is one of their greatest manipulative tools. It can be particularly seductive, because they seem so strong and confident, except for this one little weakness. If we practice offering empathy or compassion without offering to help, we can short-circuit the pity play, and gain control over where we place our helping efforts.
2. Demand reciprocity.
“Demand” doesn’t mean trying to make people do what is unnatural to them. It means making choices to pursue relationships in which reciprocity clearly exists. If we are generous to someone who seems to have an unlimited appetite for our generosity, but little inclination to give back, we cut that person out of our life.
In demanding reciprocity, we become clear about what we’re giving and what we want back. For example, if we are open about our feelings, then we may want the same in return. If we are willing to provide emotional support, we may want that back. If we are providing financial or material support, we may want something material or financial in return for it. (If we’re paying money for emotional support, this is a professional relationship, not a personal one.)
Reciprocity exists in real time. This is not like being good all our life, so that after we die, we go to heaven. This is being good and getting good back. Here and now. People act out of their characters and also out of their real objectives. If the other person’s real objectives don’t include being fair to us right now, then we are in an unfair situation. This is the year we abandon unfairness in our lives.
3. Trust conditionally.
It’s a basic human need to trust and be trusted. Like love, we want it to be perfect and forever. Like love, maintaining trust often takes shared effort, and it can lead to disappointment. Some of us hope that we if treat people as though they were trustworthy, they will rise to the occasion.
As those of us who have been involved with sociopaths know, treating them as though they can be trusted is equivalent to asking a burglar to watch our jewelry box while we make a pot of coffee. What we got back for treating them as though they could be trusted is loss.
But this isn’t just about sociopaths. In day-to-day living, we are continually learning new things about the people we know. Sometimes, we learn good things that make us trust someone more. Sometimes we learn troubling things that make us trust someone less. When we trust them less, it means that we are more guarded in sharing ourselves and our resources. When we trust them more, we are more relaxed.
Diminished trust is not the end of the world. There are ways that we can work with another person to rebuild trust, if that person is worthy of trust. And there are ways to deal with untrustworthy people if we can’t get rid of them, as in a work situation. However it plays out, the important thing is to be honest with ourselves about how trusting we really feel. It has everything to do with our survival and well-being.
4. Value what we have.
Other than pity, the sociopath’s best tool of manipulation is identifying our dissatisfactions with our own lives, magnifying them, and then claiming to have the solution. They set their hooks in the voids in our lives, the lacks that we worry over, dream over.
If we wonder what kind of person is invulnerable to sociopathic wiles, it is the kind who invests time and energy on what he or she has, rather than what’s missing. That doesn’t mean they aren’t working on improvements. But when they look at themselves and their lives, they see something they own, planned and built by they own efforts. It doesn’t mean they never made a mistake, but they survived it and learned from it.
That kind of attitude is fundamentally positive. It looks at what exists in the environment — internal and external — and says “What good thing can I do with this?” How can I use it to make me happier or my life more interesting? What can I do with it to make the world a better place for the people I care about?
For those of us who are still raw from a brutally exploitive relationship, it may be hard to focus on anything but what we’ve lost. We are wounded and we feel pain. But in healing, we learn that pain is one of our valued resources. It motivates us to learn. It can even keep us from learning the wrong thing. For example, deciding to never trust anyone again is a premature learning, and we feel pain whenever we go in that direction. Pain is one of the voices of our inner wisdom. It keeps us from settling for the wrong thing.
5. Self-validate.
In other words, care less about what other people think. Turn within for encouragement, approval, comfort, inspiration and kindness.
Sociopaths have been called “soul killers,” because they separate us from our inner wisdom. First they seduce us with our own dreams, then they cause us to question our ideas and our values, and finally they beat us down with disloyalty and denigration while telling us that we asked for it. The longer and deeper our involvement, the more we lose ourselves in self-questioning and ultimately self-hatred.
If there is one good thing about a relationship with a sociopath, it is the clarification that we are our own primary support. In dealing with someone who is dishonest, undependable, untrustworthy and viciously unkind, most of us discover that we know better. We know that we are not what they think of us. We are not even how we are behaving. There is something in us that knows better. Knows who we really are. Knows how we really want our life to be.
We also discover that no one else — not the sociopath, not our friends, not our advisors —knows us better than we do. It doesn’t mean that we know everything about the world. We still collect information. We still seek role models for things we don’t know how to do yet. We’re not proud or over-impressed with ourselves. We just know rationally that we’re our own best counsel, our only decider of what we think, feel, believe, want and choose to do.
When we learn how to self-validate, it changes our lives. For those of us who hear the denigrating voice of the sociopath in our thoughts, self-validating is a way to bypass it. To say, “Oh, shut up. You’re not me, you’re just a bad memory” while we move on to explore our thoughts and feelings. It takes practice to self-validate. We have to make a decision about wanting to be independent in creating our own lives. We have to train ourselves to find our inner wisdom and push aside anything that gets in the way of hearing it.
This year, 2009, is the year that all of us get better. Better friends with ourselves and others because we’re cultivating compassion and empathy. Better lovers because we’re learning to love out of choice, not need. Better partners of every sort, because we give and demand kindness and respect. Better members of our community because “dispassionate compassion” enables us to select our helpful efforts, rather than feeling forced into them.
Should a sociopath show up, we are learning the best way to be sociopath-proof. That is, to value ourselves and our lives. And to exercise our options — to be a ruthlessly determined shark or a sweetly generous carp — depending on what our circumstances require.
Namaste. The dolphin in me salutes the dolphin in you.
Kathy
* Strategy of the Dolphin, Dudley Lynch and Paul Kordis, 1989. Out of print, but available from sellers at Amazon. More information on additional books and personal assessment tests can be found at Brain Technologies.
That should be “forgot” not “gorgot”. I suppose I could call it creativity instead of an early morning goof! 🙂
Rune, I’m not sure I agree with you precisely. There are people in my life who have shared themselves with me in ways that I could never really reciprocate. At the same time — to speak to your point — there was never a feeling of debt involved. They had their own reasons for being involved with me, and the feelings of appreciation were mutual.
So, that said, I have to agree about the matter of debts. They are a drag on your soul, heart and pocketbook.
What OxDrover was talking about, however, were gifts with strings attached. Which is an oxymoron. Gifts are gifts. If I give you my mp3 player, it is now yours. You can use it, break it, give it to the next homeless person you meet. It’s not any concern of mine anymore, because it’s yours. I passed the title to you.
On the other hand, if I give it to you as part of a contract — that is, you will give something back in return — that’s different. Maybe I want $20 or maybe I want you to introduce me to that cute guy in your apartment building or maybe I want you to lend me your old Whole Earth Catalog for a month. In any case, we have a deal and we both have to hold up our ends.
What OxDrover was talking about was one of those dysfunctional, we-never-really-get-clear implied contracts that we find in certain types of families. What she thought was a gift turned out to be something else. The so-called gift-givers really thought they were buying something, i.e. acquiescence to their wishes and opinions in the future.
You can bet that this behavior wasn’t only related to the gift she mentioned. And most of us have done this sort of thing ourselves, until we wised up to the fact that it was not only controlling and manipulative behavior, but unlikely to get us what we want. In any contract, if you don’t explicitly arrange to get expected return before you hand over the goods, you have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t get what you silently expected. Sulking and guilt-tripping the other party or claiming that they’re not playing by your rules just creates a lot of useless resentments. The lesson here is that, if you want something, you have to speak up, and preferably when you have some leverage over the situation.
When I talked about reciprocity, this was a significant part of what I was talking about. You can’t create reciprocity in your relationships without getting clear, honest and verbal about what you want back. Demanding reciprocity requires us to do some work too.
On the other hand, if we’re in the zone of imagining that we “understand each other” or that we dealing in the accepted “social contract,” and then we discover that’s not true, what we have is a conflict of values or styles. For example, if you take for granted that a committed romantic relationship includes fidelity and it turns out that your partner doesn’t, you may get lost in painful feelings of betrayal for a while, but sooner or later, you have to get down to the rational facts. You two aren’t playing by the same playbook. And you’ve got to make some difficult choices about how much of your own values you’re willing to compromise.
You could look at Oxy’s problem in terms of values. It didn’t occur to her that the gift had strings attached, because that’s not how she defines gifts. When she gave these folks their Christmas presents, she didn’t imagine she was buying the ability to make them behave the way she wanted. So clearly, there were different definitions of gifts here, different assumptions on giving and accepting. None of this suggests that she had to adopt their assumptions long after the giving and receiving was done.
You may think I’m being cute here. What about the obligations of children to their parents? Well, that’s an interesting subject, and one that we could debate over. The bonds of family are visceral and, even with adults, can be important to survival. But in an ideal world, the obligations of kinship are based on shared history, affection, respect for individual strengths, and mutual concern for survival. If money, employment, inheritances are involved, the dynamics of power become complicated, as they do in any situation where one person is dependent on another for livelihood.
But to get back to the original situation — where the two parties are both capable of expressing the clear expectations in exchange for whatever their giving — failed “deals” are not just the fault of the offending party. We can claim that we assumed one thing or another, but the fact is that we didn’t probe carefully enough about the nature of the deal. We can claim that we bamboozled by someone who played us, knowing our assumptions. But as someone who spent a lot of time in high dudgeon, telling everyone who would listen “well, I assumed…”, I have to tell you that eventually I realized that I didn’t ask, didn’t demand reassurances, didn’t create any kind of insurance policies for myself. When he told me what I wanted to hear and said “you can trust me,” I figured God had sent me a shortcut to heaven and jumped right in.
What I think now is that I didn’t do the work necessary to get to that heaven I imagined. I didn’t take the time to develop a trusting relationship. I didn’t consider the potential risks, if it didn’t work out. I didn’t carefully weigh my own abilities and limitations in dealing with someone else’s values. I didn’t see the future at all except in terms of my rosy dreams.
While gifts may not involve obligation to the gift-givers, they do involve obligations to the integrate the gift properly into our lives. If someone today offered me a 4000 square foot house to live in for free, I’d turn it down. I don’t want to deal with that responsibility.
I’m not sure if I’m getting too far off the track here, but my point is that we are responsible for managing our resources — material, financial, emotional, health, etc. And a lot of these problems, including the one described by Oxy, come from failure to look into the future. That is really what trust is about — how we think the future is going to work out.
Forgive me, Oxy, for reading your mind. But I bet that you were annoyed more than surprised when these people started guilt-tripping you. And you dreaded the emotional noise you figured was probably going to go on for a while, and the fallout on your family relations. But the controlling behavior was nothing new, and you could “trust” that it was going to show up periodically. The fact that it was attached to the “gift” may have been a new gambit, but the pattern was well-established.
This story is not really about debt, except in the minds of the gift givers. Oxy had every reason to feel annoyed about the drama they were creating in her life, and attempts to strong-arm her and her family. The old rule about people having no more power in your life than you give them applies here. Clearly, if you recognize the gift is going to come with a lot of drama, you have to consider whether you want the gift enough to accept the drama that goes with it. That means you may have to watch someone else do their drama dance. It doesn’t mean you have to acquiesce to what they want.
I GorGot to ask who was going to get me somthing from the store?
Indi……..
ROTFL………..:-)….:-)….:-)
Eye, I don’t know your story. But if you’re dealing with escalating power plays, there may be something else going on than the kind of seductive, exploitative interaction I’ve been talking about.
In other words, if this guy regards you as a threat to his power or status in some venue, you’re in an entirely different game. He’s not after what you have. He’s trying to neutralize you or your influence.
I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t have enough information. But if that’s the case, tit for tat or any other competitive confrontation may not be the best strategy, unless you like fights or want to prove something.
If you feel threatened, you may want to seek help. It sounds like that’s what you’re doing.
Another one of my rules of the universe is not to engage with crazy people on their own terms. Because they’re better at being crazy than I am, and it’s a good way to make myself crazy. (“Crazy” being my politically incorrect term for people who are so caught up in their own internal dramas that they can’t deal rationally with me.)
Personally I don’t care who thinks they “won.” I care about the quality of my own life, and my ability to pursue the things that give me pleasure and a feeling that I’m contributing something.
If someone starts to interfere with that, I’ll do whatever I have to do to get them or myself out of the picture. But beyond that, they’re their own problem. I’m not a vigilante, except in my own defense. In my spare time, I teach other people how to actively manage their lives and, in the process, defend them what they care about. I figure that, over time, there will be fewer suckers and less rewards for being a predator.
I don’t know if any of this is relevant or helpful to you. But the net of it is, do what you have to do to protect your own life, but please be careful with yourself. And if you’re dealing with someone else’s power or status situation, in which you are a minor player who has become perceived as a threat, consider getting help in defending yourself. Even if you feel you don’t need it. And if you are making a point — like whistle-blowing at work — it is even more important that you get help, because in confronting power, you need to do whatever you can to even the odds.
From my own perspective, I would be more likely to disappear from the scene if possible and let the bully think he’d won. Or worst case, present myself as an ally and supporter, and then let him “fire” me. Which may sound (and is) a repulsive option, but I’m very goal-oriented. If that’s what it takes to put this creep behind me, that’s what I’ll do.
Good luck with it.
It took me 18 years to realize my ex was a sociopath (shark). He was definitely one of the more clever ones. His behavior was so extreme, his violations were so egregious, knowing now what he did makes is hard to believe he ever could have gotten away with all that he did. That he was able to convince so many for so long that he was a loyal, devoted, caring, compassionate husband and father is truly astonishing.
In his ongoing world, he is still able to do that. He has remarried now, to a woman much younger who, of course, has not the slightest clue that the man she thinks is a dream come true is in actuality her biggest nightmare. I met her once, and during that meeting, let drop a few subtle comments, clues for her to think back on, hopefully say “A-ha!” at some time down the line when she feels that little tickle at the back of her brain. I know if I tried to outright warn her, she would think I’m a lunatic. My ex, of course, has done a magnificent smear job.
And the point I am trying to get to is that, without knowing what it was called, since discovering what my ex is, I have initiated a tit for tat strategy. I initially got him to confess by telling him if he did not come clean I would expose him to his new gf (now his wife). He had been gaslighting me and lying and denying for so long, causing me far more torment than any amount of the horrible truth ever could.
And I’ve told him several times since, if he wants me to go away and leave him alone–which he does want now that he is firmly entrenched in his new life and replacement family–the recipe is simple. All he has to do is keep his agreements with me and not lie to me or about me, at least not in any way that will get back to me.
I followed through on this threat recently. I still have a connection with his family. I am close to his sister and have sporadic communication with his mom (who I recently realized–to my great shock–is a liar too; I had assumed my ex inherited his sociopathy from his father’s side o the family). His mother inadvertently revealed (which she later tried to lie about and deny, change the story, make me think I misunderstood) that he is trying to re-write history, so that he won’t look like a bastard. When I found this out I took immediate action, sending his mother a long email, detailing more of his offenses.
I have no influence on him other than my threat to expose. And I know he would kill me or have me killed if he thought he could get away with it. So I have a personal blog, in which I have things well-documented, and every time I have occasion to talk to him, which is becoming more and more rare, I remind him that if anything should happen to me, even if it looks like it couldn’t possibly be his fault, he will be totally exposed, that my family and friends will see to it.
I know he is a threat. I take that very seriously. But through a tit for tat strategy I think to a great extent I have demonstrated to him that if he violates me in any way, in any way I find out about, he will pay for it.
He is a cheat, through and through, and all those years I was the carp. I did not recognize him for the shark he was. I thought he was a carp too. But now I am a dolphin. Biting back in equitable amounts, taking control of my life.
Kathleen Hawk: Yes your statement …
“Or worst case, present myself as an ally and supporter, and then let him “fire” me. Which may sound (and is) a repulsive option, but I’m very goal-oriented. If that’s what it takes to put this creep behind me, that’s what I’ll do.” IS REPULSIVE … and costs people like me to loose everything because people like you play the anti-socials games until someone like me has the BALLS TO LOOSE EVERYTHING so that you can have a cushiony life because you are goal oriented.
Have a nice day!
KH, In your long lovely comment, you’ve detailed the trust-building, reciprocal behavior that helped me to get comfortable with this fellow carp or dolphin — a loving, responsible, talented man who was momentarily displaced from his life track, who was ready and qualified to build a new life with me.
Gillian says, “It took 18 years . . .”
I know — from my reading, research, talking with other professionals who evaluate S/Ps, etc. — that I was dealing with one of the worst of the worst of this breed. And he was so effective because he played by all your rules. Until he didn’t. Because his agenda was ALWAYS different. He can play tit for tat. Or not. Loving, caring . . . Or not. On and off like a light switch. And until “the room was suddenly dark,” I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “switch.”
Rune, I’m sorry you had to go through this. I know that you’re a smart and strong woman, and this kind of experience isn’t what you prepared yourself for in life.
All I can tell you is that the grief process will turn out well for you, as it has for those of us who’ve gone through it. It may be hard to imagine now, but I promise you it will.
Wini,
I gather that you feel that you’re in a difficult situation, because you stood up for what you believed was right. And that it cost you, because other people had more power.
It’s probably not much comfort to you right now, but I believe that acting courageously, especially acting on our principles, is always eventually a good thing. It may cost us in the short term, but even apparently failed attempts to right wrongs have their ripple effect on the world. And they also change us in important ways. Every time we stand up and speak our truth, we become better at it. Becoming better at it makes us less afraid, and that let’s us think more about how to be heard.
You sound like you’re in a grieving process for what you lost and the disappointment of how it worked out. But when you get through it, I think you’ll discover that the world is changed in some way because of what you did. And you are stronger and more confident in facing the future.
It may not feel like that now, but I think it will.