By: Linda Hartoonian Almas, M.S. Ed
Last year, I re-connected via social media, with a childhood friend who I had not seen in years. As mothers with children of similar ages, we had a lot to catch up on. As we did, I learned that she has two children who are suffering from a misunderstood and often misdiagnosed disorder.
She is a wonderfully positive person, who freely discusses her children’s struggles, in hopes of educating others about the issue. She advocates fiercely for them, yet seems to successfully strike a balance between speaking on their behalf and encouraging their independence.
The same, only different
Over time, as I learned more, I found that I identified with her emotions regarding her family’s concerns. Her situation is riddled with various highs and lows. Some days bring serious hurdles to jump, along with grave disappointments, while others bring great pride and immense joy. She and her family see many great successes, but these successes are punctuated with frequent challenges.
While psychopathy is not on her radar and we are dealing with two very different issues, it occurred to me that we share some very similar feelings regarding the paths we are on. One day, while beaming with pride regarding her children’s recent achievements, she pointed out how they rose above their health concerns, accomplishing things that many other parents would simply take for granted.
She said that her children were thriving, in spite of the large number of days that their particular illness had “stolen” from them. I noted that this was not the first time that she had used such terminology. She realizes that no matter how well things go, she cannot change that her children have been “robbed” of certain normal life experiences.
My revelation
Her simple statement brought about a “light bulb moment” for me and really got me thinking. Isn’t that how most of us feel about our experiences with psychopathy or the individuals with psychopathic traits who have touched our lives?
They may have literally stolen many things from us, but most importantly, they did, effectively, “steal” portions of our lives. When we attach a unit of measure to what we endured, even if only in terms of thievery, it helps quantify our experiences.
It allows us to make sense of our lost time and gives us something tangible to take away from our experiences. It also gives us a reference point from which we are able to spring forward.
Prior to her statement, I had not thought in such terms. However, she was right. Again, I identified with what she was saying.
Wasted time
How many days, weeks, months, or years did we spend trying to work with the individuals in our lives with psychopathic features? The chances are good that now that we know what we were up against, our responses would be, “too many.” No actions on our parts could have increased our odds.
What I feel I lost from my brush with psychopathy is almost immeasurable. Yet, at the same time, so is what I gained.
Stolen time
In terms of stolen time, what exactly gets taken from us, as these relationships run their course? While there are numerous constants, some specifics may depend on the types of relationships we experienced.
A psychopathic parent will affect us differently than a psychopathic romantic partner. Nonetheless, the behaviors may be similar and just as abusive and devastating. Also, each carry the potential for long term harm. However, we tend to lose different pieces of our innocence, depending on the natures of our associations.
Regardless, we must accept that, while some forms of these relationships did exist, they were not the ones we thought we were having. Our involvements were based on love, caring, and genuine emotion. Little, if any, of that actually occurred on their ends, even if it appeared to for a time. For them, the associations were lies. Because of this, we were unable to take any meaningful actions. Nothing was real. Stolen time.
What about significant life events that we were shortchanged on in our experiences with psychopaths? In life, we encounter many emotionally charged moments, such as the births of children or the deaths of loved ones. We tend to experience a variety of feelings when something special or significant occurs.
Psychopathic individuals, however, do not experience these emotions in the same ways that we do. Therefore, their reactions tend to be quite different from ours. We may feel great joy or pain, they may feel next to nothing out of the ordinary. We may have tried to share our feelings, victories, or defeats, hoping that they could “feel” along with us. They could not. Rather, anger and rage at our attempts ensued.
In spite of our desires, we were forced to walk the emotional experiences alone. Their muted or non-existent affects left us feeling empty and disappointed. Their rages left us upset and confused. Stolen emotions. Stolen relationships.
Worse yet, often, the experiences we have with these individuals are so damaging that we try to eliminate them from our memories completely. Unfortunately, along with forgetting the bad they inflicted, we sometimes lose portions of the good we encountered with others who surrounded us. Stolen memories.
There are numerous other ways they violate us and take from us, as well. The above are only a few examples.
Truths acknowledged
Unfortunately, if we were involved with psychopathic individuals, the truth is that portions of our lives may have been stolen by the disorder. While we may be able to recover the financial or material losses psychopaths create, some of our losses are not tangible items that we can take back. To some extent, we may always have to live with the trappings of these experiences.
As a result, it is important to own the losses. No one likes feeling robbed of special or irreplaceable pieces of our lives. We deserved more than mechanical and insincere responses, if we got any at all.
However, again, our knowledge and understanding can set us free. We must acknowledge any pain, so that we can leave it behind. It is not worth hanging on to.
Rising and conquering
That is not to say that we can or should try to erase what we lived. We should, however, work to thrive. We can do this, not only in spite of our experiences, but because of them. Sometimes, I feel like it took such an experience for me to reach my potential. I know what I learned has caused me to push myself to attempt and achieve things I never otherwise would have.
We can find goodness amongst the setbacks, by using the wisdom that our experiences gave us.
We can surround ourselves with loving people, who truly share our values and treat us well, rather than embrace disordered imposters. In fact, we may come to the point of being able to thank our imposters for showing us what it was like to live “half alive.” Without that education, we may not have been able to recognize “full-on” living. We can come to know calm, regarldess of what they may do.
After taking hits and having pieces of our lives “stolen,” we can recover and have and be more than we ever imagined.
Like my friend, who will never be able to alter the realities surrounding her children’s challenges, we cannot change what was. We can, however, conquer what will be; each of us, in our own ways.
Athena:
Thank you for that validation and you know, it’s funny…my best friend has told me the same thing. She said that she thinks what he has done is haunting him. She said that people think they can do all these bad things to people without consequences, but it isn’t so. BUT…this is where I have cog/diss because if he is truly sociopathic like I believe he is, he does NOT care and I realize this. Sooooo, what to think?
He TOLD me he was different and that’s one thing I will never, ever forget. It haunts ME because I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t ask. I so wish I could turn back time and ask him to elaborate.
I think I could do the backspathing…just don’t know if it’s worth it.
Louise
I can only tell you what my spath told me.
That he’s evil.
That he knows he’s different.
He hides – literally – from people, because he is terrified of being noticed. He wears only plain bland clothing because he is terrified of being noticed. He doesn’t want people to see him and realize he’s a spath. He does all these things and TELLS me he does all these things. There is no love, no joy, just FEAR and SHAME.
What a way to live.
Athena
Athena:
Wow. Mine doesn’t hide. He’s pretty social actually, BUT…he does wear very plain, bland clothing…so interesting! He buys very expensive clothes, but they are very plain and he wears them to death! I saw him two years later somewhere and he was wearing the EXACT same thing he had on two years earlier! It’s the same blue dress shirt and navy dress pants and brown shoes. Or black dress pants. Or the same blue dress shirt and jeans. Wow, just wow. I think mine is extremely shameful. I think something really bad happened to him as a child.
Louise I remember talking to you about attire some time ago. My spath told me he choses his clothing carefully because he doesn’t want to stand out. Your spath probably does the same thing – it’s part of the mask.
Mine too, Louise and Athena.
Jeans and a teeshirt in white, blue, gray, tan or black with one pocket. A baseball cap. He doesn’t want to stand out but the cap serves another purpose. He has different ones with different logos. One, he had specially embroidered with a kitty face on it. It makes people think he’s a “nice” man. Pedophiles always use kittens and puppies to make kids think they are harmless.
another cap had the FAA logo on it. He got it from an FAA friend. People just assume he works for the FAA when he’s wearing it.
I was taking a flight to Chicago once, before 9/11. The spath took me to the airport but the flight was delayed. They wouldn’t say why. Nobody knew how long it would be. Spath had his FAA hat on. He went up to the clerk, and asked what the problem was. She immediately told him exactly which part had malfunctioned, what was being done and the estimated time to fix it. LOL! People are so gullible and spaths know this. It’s ALL about appearances.
Athena and skylar:
Mine obviously does it, too, but I wonder if mine does it more subconsciously?? This is so interesting.
Hahah, I know skylar, people are extremely gullible. People really ARE easy to dupe…truly. I can see it now. I think people in general are pretty stupid. That may sound bad and spathy, but in reality, it is true. That’s why spaths are so successful. They count on our stupidity. Or maybe not stupidity (maybe that is too strong of a word). Perhaps it’s more of an “unawareness.” I think there are very few people (and now we are among them…yay!) who are aware of these beings and what they are capable of.
Ick.
Louise,
they call us stupid, but we are really “trusting”. We trust that things are what they appear to be.
Spaths envy our ability to trust. They know that this is what makes us human. It connects us to the rest of humanity and allows the human race to flourish. They hate that. They can’t flourish. They sit and wallow in their envy and rage. The only thing left to do is to take away our ability to trust. They do this by deceiving us and then showing us how easily we were deceived. This leaves us feeling ashamed and unable to connect to the rest of humanity. Shame makes you want to hide from others, not connect. Shame leaves us isolated and powerless.
Thank God that I CAN trust after what I experienced. I can trust because I worked on learning the red flags and I can trust MYSELF to see them.
After I left him, the spath called me and said, “Are you sure you know who you can trust?” sicko.
The inability to act with anything other than they do
(their ugliness) is an outward flag of their inward hatred.
Not just for us. For all humans who can feel and
think and love. They hate everything about our
world because in their small minds, the world has
left them behind because we choose to not tolerate
their behaviors.
They refuse to accept that they need help because
according to them, there is nothing wrong with them.
The something ‘wrong’ is with us. It is their core belief
of ‘survival of the fittest’. Devour or be devoured.
THAT is truly the bottom line.
Dysfunctional people for some reason.
Either they weren’t born with the proper abilities
to make good and righteous and moral choices,
or they acquired their ugliness like a shark gets
to hunting for that smell of blood. Hm?
All the charm and bravado and proper-ness we
may have EVER seen from them was all a lie.
A manufactured hook to suck us in. All the
while, they were thinking themselves clever…
In the end, though, the LEAVER is the MOST clever.
They so hate being ignored.
No, skylar, we are not STUPID, at all.
A bit too trusting in the past but that is
all changing. I AM MAKING IT CHANGE.
I am happy you CAN ‘trust’.
That is something that will come very hard for me now.
I trust my family and closest of friends (the ones left,
after all this) but find it impossible to reach out to anyone
else. Yes, they ENVY us and that is the reason they harm us.
I have asked SEVERAL and NUMEROUS psychologists, criminal psychologists, etc.,
if they are completely aware of the things
they do or if they are doing them on an instant reaction kind
of basis. All the people I have asked have told me that they
DEFINITELY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. They are just
‘wired’ differently than we are. That is not an excuse, I don’t
believe that KNOWING you are a sick person and not subjecting
yourself to TREATMENT! It’s been offered more than numerous
times. But, you can’t force anyone into treatment, let alone a veteran.
He will openly ADMIT he is sick and that is his
‘get out of jail free card’ in all issues. Or tries
to make it so. But he will also or HAS ALSO
admitted to me, a few years ago, when we
were speaking, that he doesn’t feel he should
have to change. He is sick. With that smirk
on his face. I wash my hands of a person who
has NO MORAL responsibility about them. And,
they do not even seek to make themselves a
better person as we all should – growing all
the time. I have heard: “I have no time for
reflection; I am busy living.”
That is NOT the kind of person I want to
cuddle up with at night. Know what I mean?
I am finally at the point where I can TRUST MYSELF again.
Where I stopped the UNCONTROLLED SOBBING for years and years…
Where I accepted that “IT” is a psychopath and that I have been STALKED for going on 13 years.
And there is nothing I can do about all that but I CAN do something about myself. And what future I have left.
I made myself a hermit and hid out in my cave.
For way too long. I gave “IT” way too much
importance. I gave into the concern (I will never call it ‘fear’)
for my life and even though I did, “IT” STILL
almost took my life from me. With a smile on
it’s face.
Yes, very sick people.
I agree, skylar.
Sadly, all we can do is protect ourselves to
the very best of our ability and to forget them.
The very best we can. They just aren’t worth
the emotions nor thoughts.
Dupey
Duepy, the whole thing about “them” is that there’s no help for their condition. That’s what’s scary to me – no medication, no surgery, no spiritual epiphany, and no amount of psychotherapy will “cure” or even address the choices of a sociopath.
I agree 100^ that they arent’ worth the emotions or thoughts, but I think that we expend thoughts and emotions on them because it’s inconcievable that another human being does not (and, will not) have a conscience or an ability to feel remorse.
The DSM and all professionals in the psychiatric and psychological comunities really, REALLY need to stop referring to sociopathy and psychopathology as a “disorder.” It is a CONDITION – genetic or environmentally induced – that cannot be successfully “treated.” Once this leap is taken, the whole understanding of what these people do, why they do the things that they do, and the facts about “managing” their condition will spin out in the cycle to speak truthfully about it. It cannot be cured. It can barely be recognized by trained professionals!
Brightest blessings