Downton Abbey was on TV last night, and Terry and I are among the millions of fans. Last night’s episode (Season 3, Episode 4) ended in tragedy because of behavior that looked so familiar to me.
(Spoiler Alert: The following description gives away the story.)
Lord Grantham’s daughter, Lady Sybil, is about to give birth. Rather than depend on the local country doctor, Dr. Clarkson, Lord Grantham has imported a more socially acceptable obstetrician, Sir Philip Tapsell, to deliver the baby. As the birth approaches, both doctors are in attendance at the estate.
Lady Sybil starts acting incoherently. Dr Clarkson fears that she may be toxemic. He recommends that they rush to the hospital so the baby can be delivered immediately by C-section. Sir Philip insists that nothing is wrong—Lady Sybil is experiencing a normal childbirth. The two doctors argue in front of the entire family and the nature of the argument is why I’m describing the show.
Dr. Clarkson worries that Lady Sybil may be in grave danger, but admits that he doesn’t know for sure. Sir Philip, on the other hand, is totally confident that nothing is wrong. He never wavers. He is pompous in his confidence. He practically sneers at the country bumpkin doctor for being an alarmist, and actually tells him to shut up.
Lord Grantham notes that Dr. Clarkson isn’t sure about the possible danger, whereas Sir Philip is 100% confident that everything is fine. He sides with Sir Philip, and they do not go to the hospital.
Lady Sybil goes into labor and the baby is born. But a short time later, she goes into convulsions and dies.
Argued like a sociopath
Dr. Clarkson was right all along. But Sir Philip spoke with unshakeable self-confidence, unwaveringly certain that he knew best. He argued like a sociopath.
I am not saying that the Sir Philip character is a sociopath. But I am saying that his extreme confidence, his self-righteousness and his hubris are all traits that sociopaths display when they are pushing to get their way.
I write about this in my book, Red Flags of Love Fraud:
How do they do it? How do sociopaths convince you to go along with their agendas, even to your own detriment?
They command it. This is a function of their charisma because they command unflinchingly, with complete self-confidence, they get results. Now, this doesn’t mean sociopaths are always barking orders. Often the commands are delivered on cushions of sweetness, or camouflaged as appeals for sympathy. But in their minds, whatever sociopaths want, they are totally entitled to have. Therefore, when they make their desires known, they show no doubt, only certainty. Compliance is demanded, and targets respond.
Those of us who are not disordered usually aren’t as adamant in expressing our views, opinions or desires. We may think we’re right, but recognize that we could be wrong. We may know what we want, but we’re willing to compromise. So when we come across people who communicate vociferously and forcefully well, we tend to be bowled over. Because of the sheer force of their words, we tell ourselves that they must know what they’re talking about, they’re telling the truth, and they’re right.
My ex-husband’s convincing lies
I’m soon going to be on another TV show I’ll tell you all more when I have details. The producer asked me if I had any more video or audio of my ex, James Montgomery. Well, I found some tapes that I had forgotten about recordings of voice mails, and a recording of our first telephone conversation when I arrived home after leaving him. The tapes illustrate the steamroller tactics with which he argued even when he was lying.
Let me set the scene. James Montgomery swept into my life, portraying himself as a successful entrepreneur. He invited me to be part of his business plans, which, if I could help him get started, were sure to make us fabulously wealthy. He pressured me to lease a car for him it was in my name, and I made all the payments. To feed his unending need for money, I drained my savings and loaded about $60,000 in debt to my previously zero-balance credit cards.
Montgomery also told me he was a member of the Australian military who had heroically served in Vietnam, and still acted as a consultant, particularly on terrorism. He often flew to Florida, telling me he was stopping by MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, home of the Special Operations Command. While there, he was able to get around by borrowing the cars of other military members that were parked at the base.
In December 1998, Montgomery dragged me to Florida, saying he had a contract to open a Titanic show in Orlando. We spent money we didn’t have to move down there. A few weeks later Montgomery admitted he never had a contract. Then, while he was flying to yet another business meeting, I discovered that he had fathered a child with another woman during our marriage. I left Florida, and took the car that he had been driving.
So, here’s part of my conversation with James Montgomery when I was back at my home in New Jersey. (Warning: Contains some profanity.)
Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know during the conversation. My entire marriage was a financial scam. James Montgomery was never in the military. When he travelled to Florida, he was visiting other women including, but not limited to, the mother of the child., who probably owned the car he drove.
Yet listen to how he argued about the car. I was wrong for taking the car back to New Jersey, which inconvenienced him. I was wrong about him using cars from the base. And I was stupidly ignorant about the policy for using military cars. Montgomery was adamant and self-righteous in his argument even though everything he said was a lie.
At the time, the conversation was terribly upsetting. He threw many more accusations and threats at me, which, because of the conviction of his words, made me wonder if he was right.
Later, I discovered that everything he said that day, and practically everything he said during our marriage, was a lie no matter how convincingly the words were stated.
I didn’t know someone could lie with such confidence and conviction. And that’s how I got into the entire mess.
Ha they are all so similar. My ex told me he was an US Navy Seal , the truth was he didn’t even graduate high school. It is so hard getting over the fact that I was so stupid and believed him.
Raggedy Ann: When I was growing up, there was a lot of emphasis on not being prejudiced and being willing to date all sorts of people, because you couldn’t judge them in advance, and maybe they would turn out to be your One True Love, etc.
If I had judged my ex more realistically from the beginning, I would never have gotten deeply involved with him. I now advise nieces, nephews, etc., to focus on dating people from their own social circle in their own home town, and to avoid people from different races & cultures. It may sound awful to some, but I think it is much harder to sort the wheat from the chaff when you are young and inexperienced, and the person you are seeing has a radically different background. It is too easy to say to yourself, as I did, “well, maybe that’s how things are done where he comes from,” and then to discount behavior that would have definitely be considered rude or selfish within your own social circle.
Somebody else asked why a sociopath would become a nun — I’m not Catholic, but I do know that back in the old days, going to a Catholic girls’ boarding school that funneled a big percentage of the students into a nunnery was very often the only respectable way that a working-class or middle-class girl could get away from a dysfunctional family. It was also often the only way that a girl from a huge family, especially a huge rural family could get a college education (by joining a teaching order). In the days when girls were under extreme pressure to get married, and unmarried girls were not allowed to move off and get their own apartment, even as they entered their 30s, girls who knew that they did NOT want to be married or have children found the convent to be the best solution. A lot of girls who were the eldest in their families had so much childcare responsibility thrust on them from such an early age that they never wanted anything more to do with household drudgery. If you were from a desperately poor family, with alcoholism and constant moving around, etc., the convent offered stability.
And as someone else already mentioned, the religious orders do have a real hierarchy, and an ambitious girl could gain enormous personal power if she rose to the level of Mother Superior of a convent, and considerable personal power if she rose to Mother Superior’s inner circle.
Skylar, a request to clarify would never offend me — I am always grateful when I get a request as opposed to something nastier.
It’s not clear if I had some sort of situation in youth connected to touch. My parents both were touchy enough, and my mother nurturing and hugging, but had a post partum depression after my birth, and expressed once that she wonders if she didn’t hold me enough when I was an infant. She wouldn’t have wondered if I were a better adjusted person. I was the second of four and she was occasionally hospitalized so that may be something. But I have also wondered if I was TOO USED to touching. I sort of “lost” my mother at 18 to schizophrenia, which is why I have a lot of knowledge of it. We got some version of her back 8-10 years later, but I have mostly thought of my own instincts or fantasies of love or romantic love as connected to my ultimate desire to be back in *a* mother’s arms — except it’s a slightly muscley firm mother who has a broad chest, flat boobs, and a penis. (sex is a different matter, my own skin hunger is disjointed).
trigger alert:
I had a long bit of text responsing to your empathy-related comments and just erased the whole thing. Again partly because I don’t fully trust this environment and it was too connected to the topic of that other thread. But I can say that I am not convinced that the bulk of the outraged folk are all that concerned with triggering others based on what I have seen from them elsewhere. I think delicacy in that regard has occasionally been trumped by some people’s investment in their own drama, including displays of empathy and emotion directed to the potentially triggered person, but also forms of attack. Lip service and practice/carefulness are two different things. And after a certain point this kind of cognitive dissonance just gives vague flashes of narcissism, and “you must despise what harmed me the way I do” (I couldn’t even address extermination of non-offenders in that conversation) does the same plus elements of borderline PD, which I can relate to but watch not to impose on others.
Clearly I tripped up on something, but I am not sure how much more carefully I could have expressed anything without setting off the same reactions. Once redward posted that perhaps not every last offender is a psychopath, I realized how much I had already been pandering to the “spirit of the forum.” I can only try to be more careful, but I do think many of the generalizations people repeat here can both impede progress in understanding and even cause harm (just imagine if someone’s boss read this thread and decided that their innocent but not perfect employee’s “word salads” — by boss’s amateur diagnosis — were indication of some sort of venal or dishonest personality and then played a factor in whom to see as credible in some he-said/she-said work situation. My own place of employment is already rife with ridiculous prejudices…)
I left that other thread truly suspecting that there are some posters here more invested in their own wrath or righteousness or disgust for the leper than in some future German or American child being spared this devastation. If we desire their protection, we are going to have to face and embrace what *works* even if it involves icky people who creep us out. I also think the ick factor results in people getting hysterical over the issue in the way they wouldn’t if I were to say “I feel sorry for the sociopaths” “That guy had a motorcycle accident after which he started regularly lying and being a con artist ponzi schemer/child-hitter/firestarter, imagine the tragedy for the parents who loved and raised a seeming good boy who changed like this. Imagine if the head injury was in turn somebody else’s wrong doing…” I can assure you that even on different forums the difference is considerable, even among people who are generally hardhearted toward others or have not known this abuse up close. The indignation triggered by speaking this way about psychopaths doesn’t rise to the level of anger at talking about this specific perversion — even just saying stuff about catholic priests like “I don’t know, back in the sixties so much less was known about recidivism, and Christianity is so much about redemption through penitence and God’s grace etc… I don’t know if I can see a bad decision back then the same way as a bad decision in 1999.” can spark more outrage than discussion of brain differences in serial killers.
Something specific has occurred to me as I answered you. My own exposure to mental illness probably also affects my reaction to things like school shootings and people being pushed onto subway tracks. Because of the humanity and nobility of my own family member, who became something completely different once sick, and about whom I could always say “It’s not her, it’s this tragic illness that *happened* to her, unattached to any choice she ever made in her life like partying too much or hanggliding or something else with risk or consequences. And it’s been truly like a demon possessing her and throwing her around the room, at the ceiling, now this wall, now that.”
The mentally ill are very neglected and disenfranchised. Medicine for them is still in its dark ages. I have some window into the devastation felt by Jared Loughner’s parents. which could some day be felt by him himself, not sure. His illness was like a slow motion bullet ravaging his brain, and yet we have this outpourring of romance only for Gabby Giffords. And get this: I didn’t even note this contrast, it took me reading a quote of one of the Kennedy family, whose most famous family member was assassinated with a bullet to his head, noting this for me to even notice this disconnect myself. It was remarkable to me that this Kennedy person could say this, and has me thinking they had some serious mental-health tragedy happen in their family.
When stories of mentally ill people causing evil or tragedy hit the news, I have a reaction far beyond “monster. evil.”. or very different, I should say. I myself when younger and fuct up, despite not hearing voices or having delusions, had such a skewed perspective because of the hell my family was in, and was so socially inexperienced in some ways, that I could have done harm. I certainly know what it is to bond with a guy, be obsessed with a guy, be heartbroken, and want to do violence to them. Or even an arrogant or devious rival. And what stopped me was not solely rooted in “I have no right to do that, that person does not deserve that from me, even though he/she did X”
Might this be because I am partly “borderline”? Victims of violence in childhood are said to be more likely to have BPD than average. I participated in a study on women who have experienced violence as children. I was disqualified because I didn’t show enough PTSD (this was pre-attack), but when I asked about borderline, I was told I didn’t have it but showed elements of it vaguely or something. So, some sort of clusterB spectrum? Are the other disordered “my people,” my kin? I sure can’t RELATE to classic antisocial personality disorder at all. Hate those people, fear them, despise them. have the most trouble forgiving them. And yet there are alleged sociopaths that I feel like I can see into. Jodi Arias? Wrathful obsessed immature messed up idiot and addict who needed bonding explained to her and counseling instead of Mormon religion. And who needs to be held responsible for what she did. Is this my morally blank area, my blind spot? Does my speaking this way increase the likelihood that someone future woman will shoot a guy?
So anyway I live with a tremendous amount of love for one kind person that in horrible circumstances gets called a monster, even though I get angry at her and also would not want to be killed by a mentally ill person or any person. (And love for the other parent who failed me and my siblings and inflicted a certain about of harm and damage as well.) Plenty of my own disorder.
We currently have a national conversation going about gun control but also about mental illness (because of a story involving small children). Much of it has the flavor of “what can we do public policy-wise to protect “us” from “them”? Forgetting that the “them” might be deserving of medical care because they are human and sick, not just because of how they might affect “real” people, especially pretty and small ones we call children. And of course “them” is “us”. The teacher with the guns in her house failed to notice that her son was a “them.” Precisely because she understood the humanity of her child, and experienced his goodness no doubt on occasion, and public shooting, school shootings, that’s what monsters somewhere out there do, monsters who maybe hatch out of eggs somewhere as fully-formed monsters. In demonizing *anything* — nazis/Hitler, perverts, mentally ill people or other specific outsiders — and losing sight of the fact that often sincerely decent people do harm and wrong and sometimes generally bad people do a good quite sincerely — we risk failing to see the trouble brewing next time around. After all, this politician is so passionate about eradicating social ill (Hitler was) and so genteel and he created a cancer foundation, and that guy is educated and volunteers at the suicide crisis hot line and cooks elegant dinners, this “stranger beside me”, and my son has some issues, but he is polite and loyal and an extension of *me* so clearly you are mistaken etc. etc.
Now if I say Adam Lanza was sick, or some doctor indicates that the signs were all there, is this suddenly excusing shootings and endangering more children? Or does understanding that Adam Lanza was medically sick offer us the potential to both protect school kids and deal with certain kinds of people’s suicidal episodes and other problems connected to mass shootings? Where does talk of Adam Lanza being biologically sick or suicidal or tormented belong?
Perhaps all of this has something to do with how I arrived at my thinking about a hypothetical person who has tested “positive” some version of pedophilia, while negative for sociopathy, and has struggled not to offend. Especially if he succeeded.
I did also once see a mug shot of a female teacher that evoked pity in me, partly because she had my first name, partly because she was crying, partly because she was tubby and likely neglected by her adult peers. I think in some cases being around this different crowd (kids, adolescence, teens) day after day after day, and wanting to treat them with respect — which can interfere with boundaries, or perhaps even gratitude for the one that is nice to you when so many others are hellions, could work on a lonely person. This may not have been what was going on for her, but that image/mug shot did push my buttons. I don’t want to get too much into this topic here though, especially when much of it would be a possibly triggering rehash of things already said elsewhere.
Ultimately this debate (about my kind of perspective) is very philosophical. About accountability, souls, theology, free will being real or an illusion and what is implied or not implied by the answer to that question. And what is implied or not implied by the instruction that we love the sinner and hate the sin, or the question of how we treat the least of Jesus’s brothers. And who are those, anyway? And what is implied or not implied by forgiveness. I’m not religious, but those concepts are popular in our culture and perhaps a good frame of reference — they at least imply that my thinking is not that new. But I was certainly disgusted by Helen Prejean’s imo misplaced concern over certain death row inmates, especially when she herself admitted that she had lost sight of the inmates’ victims.
And I guess it’s also about “blurting” things out. I guess I think my kind clumsiness is more prevalent here than you do.
This was so long I am just hitting submit, hopefully it’s clear enough.
Divorced from Gaslighter, I get exactly what you are saying. I feel kind of culturally stateless. Felt alienated from Americans in the midwest where I grew up, discovered as a young adult that I was not perfectly matched for the culture my parents had come from and I’d lived in for a period in my youth. I had also had my own stereotypes of middle eastern men, partly because of what I’d seen in college. I know that there is a protective element to bias and prejudice. I gave this guy a shot never dreaming of the scope or scale of what I was later put through. Which was still minor compared to many stories I read here.
The more recent person had a smidge of my “other” culture.
It is also possible that I do have some Asperger’s as someone here speculated. I sometimes read other people so well that I look borderline-psychic to someone else, but sometimes I am clueless and unprepared or just gamble really poorly. I don’t feel I can tell who in the end will betray or abandon me. I suspect it is ultimately everyone: I have little to offer that’s appealing at the moment matewise, at least to anyone appealing to me, and what appeals to me is part of the problem, even if only because what appeals to me is ‘out of my league’ as opposed to toxic or abusive. But social issues or disorder both in me and the other person are likely to be missed when you are also connecting from two different culutres.
I have some very serious things to attend to before I even bother with the idea of looking for intimacy or dating. I do have the potential to become much more confident in that area, but not until some other more pressing matters have been dealt with.
And this is why I so rarely post.
Im sorry… WTF is “skin hunger?”
LPMarie ~
Don’t worry I don’t know either. I just hope it doesn’t itch.
(((hugs to you & little one))) – how’s the job search going?
Is my skin hungry? Nope. Not at all anymore. My heart might be a little hungry, but not my skin. My skin has learned it’s lesson.
Lol, MiLo! (((Hugs))) right back at u. I havent heard back from the company I interviewed with on Friday. I was soooo sure about it, too. But I also do not have adequate childcare at the moment. I am torn between wanting to get away from these women and wanting to take advantage of the time I get to spend with the peanut. We’ve had the past almost 9 months together. I have her in two mornings a week of daycare and shes taken some time to adjust. Im loathe to put her back on the 50+ hours a week daycare regiment, plus commute. Im thinking long and hard about how to make graduate school happen this fall/next spring. Im pretty sure the one spathy housemate here is cooking her own goose. The case manager here told me that she cant disclose anything to me, but she observes more than she lets on. Lets hope that THIS is trulu the case. How r u? How is gran?
raggiedy ann,
Whoa, we are not against the mentally ill, we are for exposing psychopaths and sociopaths. I do not consider them to be mentally ill but more like creatures from the black lagoon. They are evil, not mentally ill. I am mentally ill because of being a victim/survivor of one or more of them.
Many victims of psychopaths test high in boarderline traits and it is because of the PTSD and reactions to having our minds twisted by evil. It takes a long time to fully grasp and recover from the abuse these people are able to inflict on our mind, body and spirit. It is sinister and unfathonable to the normal person who has not experienced it. We here have all experienced it and shre our reflections about it on this site to help us heal.
Some cultures are more psychopathic than others. I do not want anything to do with cultures that promote violence against women, children and have a desire to rule the world by thier barbaric law. Nuf said.
And I too am appalled by the connection of gun violence to mental illness and again, this is because I have separated mental illness and psychopathy. Mentally ill people need help, most are kind souls who have diseases. injuries or just cannot cope in the increasingly absurd and violent world in which we live. Most are harmless except thiose who are psychopathic.
Psychopaths cannot be helped. Psychopaths commit these horendous crimes and should be held accountable and apart from society and other menal illness. Will this ever happen? That is our goal but personally, I feel that the psychopaths are running the institution.
Wishing you healing…