I recently had clinical contact with a client who left me with the unusually strong, immediate impression of “schemer,” “slick,” “full of crap.” He was instantly, aggressively ingratiating—less, I felt, from insecurity, as from ulterior motives, as if he were angling, at the outset, for an edge.
I had the uncomfortable feeling I get around intrusive salesmen who leave you feeling like an “object” from whom to extract a sale and commission.
I should mention that he was glib. Glibness is a trait often associated with certain sociopaths. My client was so glib, as a matter of fact, that for the first time in a long while the word “glib” actually popped into my head.
When I say “glib,” I don’t mean just fast-talking, which he was. He was shallow, too. And for me, the combination of smooth, fast talking, underlain by shallowness, really captures “glib.”
He was something of a schemer, and it was fascinating to observe him deny or dismiss rife evidence of his historical deceptiveness, abusiveness and double-standards. And he did so with a striking lack of shame, and with much audacity, along with irritation (arrogantly conveyed) to have to even deign to respond to the history.
Now I’d like to shift gears (abruptly), and say something about the psychopath’s (or sociopath’s) alleged “look,” or “stare,” which has been described anecdotally in the literature. Its most obvious form is characterized by a certain crazed intensity (note some of the existing photos of Ted Bundy, and other serial killers).
There are also, I suggest, other, subtler forms of this look. In any case what this “look” transmits (in any of its forms) is something elementally predatory. It has an evaluatively predatory quality.
I suspect that many of you have had the experience of being watched in this way?
It’s more than a feeling of being scrutinized, because all of us scrutinize each other, and clients should be scrutinizing their therapists.
It is more, I think, the quality, or motive, of the scrutiny—again, a predatory aspect that engenders the experience of feeling invaded, and “sized up,” “measured” for ulterior purposes.
At bottom, this is a type of “look” that leaves one feeling watched, studied as an “object.” One experiences the “watcher” as if he or she is calculating, “How much can I have my way with this person? How susceptible is this person to my present interests in him or her?”
My client had this “look.”
He was a “watcher,” and as he watched me, I often had the disconcerting sense that he was less interested in what I had to say, or what I was saying, than in using the time I was speaking to further his evaluation of my vulnerability.
This feeling with, experience of someone, can be a signal. It can signal that something predatory is brewing, or occurring.
I’ve called this the “feel” of a sociopath, because sociopaths sometimes (not always) can stir-up this sensation in those whose paths they’ve crossed, or lives they’ve entered. To be sure, not all sociopaths evoke this experience; but some do, and it can be an uncomfortable, and not easily articulated experience. Depending on the circumstances, it can even feel flatteringly seductive (if still uncomfortable).
Take, for instance, a blind/first-date scenario, in which the exploitative-minded individual approvingly, hungrily, invasively and audaciously sizes-up his date, leaving her feeling flattered (hungrily desired) while at the same time uneasy?
This “sizing up,” “measuring” process too often belies not a hunger for love, and connection, but of acquisition, possession and/or conquest.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Dear New Life,
A Psychopath is ALWAYS A NARCISSIST, and yes, his behavior is psychopathic as well as Narcissistic.
If you want a laugh, here is one: The Trojan Horse Psychopath who was my mother’s live-in caregiver and having an affair with my X-DIL (they together stole $24,000 from my mother) the X-DIL gave him some of it and put the rest in her name. While he was in prison, and she had a power of attorney over his bank account, closed the account and took all of “his” money out (that she had stolen and given to him) After he got out of prison, he called my mother and wanted to BORROW some money because the X-DIL had closed out “his” account—–AND HE COULDN’T IMAGINE HER DOING SUCH A THING TO HIM AFTER ALL THEY HAD BEEN TO EACH OTHER AND THAT WAS THE REASON HE NEEDED TO BORROW MONEY FROM MY MOTHER!!!! ROTFLMAO “CHOKE” (that’s the sound of me choking from laughing and snorting and rolling on the floor!)
THEY HAVE NO SHAME, NO REMORSE, AND NO EMBARASSMENT AT ALL. THEY HAVE NO CONNECTION TO OTHERS, EVEN THEIR OFFSPRING. They may “own” others but they are “possessions” not emotional connections.
Your soon to be X is nothing more than a garden-variety psychopathic spawn of Satan…pure and simple. You might as well be a Jew trying to “get along” with Hitler. Recognizing and accepting that fact is painful, but it is the ONLY thing that will allow you to function at all. You cannot bargain with them, they will tell a lie when the truth would “fit better.”
Because YOU care about people, it is difficult to “get your head” around the fact that HE DOES NOT and CANNOT, and WILL NOT. He enjoys your discomfort and your poverty. That is also hard to accept, but now is a good time for you to quit feeling sorry for yourself and your kids and GET MADDER THAN HELL! The anger will help sustain you for a while. It isn’t something you want to hold on to for life, but FOR NOW, GET MAD!!! REALLY REALLY MAD and let that anger help you through this part of the divorce. Keep your wits about you, don’t let your anger make you “blind” to good sense, but let it motivate you to protect yourself, and to get JUSTICE (NOT REVENGE) for you and your kids. (((((hugs)))))
Newlife: See my post to you under “Guidebook for recovery.”
Your husband’s glee at the conference is sociopathic. He was enjoying the feeling of pulling off this giant con. Sociopaths are often highly narcissistic, and there is overlap in the diagnoses. Sociopaths, by my reading and experience, actually enjoy causing pain and delight in the grand scale of the damage. This probably rings true with what you saw.
rune,
I answered your financial questions on the other blog pf “REcovering”
Nothing to hide – ask anything you think will help me beat him at his game – if it is even possible
newlife: Did you see my response under “Recovery”? I’ll keep watching for you.
To Rune,
Yes- I saw it and posted back there so we would say on one thread with each other- please read there
Recovery…yup…its what I have to do. And i’m realizing that while your in recovery, you need to stay away from the person…keep them away from you…like a recovering alcoholic has to stay away from a drink. Like alcoholism is a baffling, cunning and powerful disease…these are the same things you feel while in contact with a sociopath. I started realizing that my man was a a sociopath, when he could stay sober (my evaluation of his problems was the drinking) but he was still invalidating my own experience as a feeling thinking person.
I started dating him about 19 months ago. I should have known to stay away from him, but his stories of misfortune got to me, so i excused his partying behavior, his drinking and even snorting cocaine use. He stopped using cocaine on his own, toned down the drinking, then moved in with me.
it took a while, to see underneath his drinking habbits. I am now also working on my co-dependency issues…
It got to the point, where I started questioning if he was not just an alcoholic, but a sociopath. He is extremely passive aggressive…but I have seen tiny tempermental outburst….or sulking when he doesnt get his way (Which is me not putting up with his drinking and partying, i have broke up with him many times.) I noticed how after any outburst, aurgument, disagreement….that he would be fine, like nothing ever happened at all….and I would be left feeling like nothing was resolved at all…at least not for me….EVER.
I also realized other things. How he talks about his mother…never tries to comfort her, though she cries alot because he never goes to visit her…he acts like her tears are just irritating and she is just overreacting. He says he never cried when his father died, but he proffesses to love him and miss him so much. I noticed that all of his buddies are worse off than he…and that this is his form of recreation, and he needs this….hanging out with obviously very sick people who are in need of alot of help. Some of them are even very easy to spot as outright sociopaths. But my boyfriend is incredibly intelligent. He stands out. they respect him….He once accidently left a cell phone message for me (he didnt shut off his phone after calling me and the answering machine picked this up). He was boasting to his druggy friends how he had been on the phone with me for hours the night before listening to my shit. i think He also said he had a girl waiting in his bedroom, but he denys this.
I have noticed that all of my crowds of friends now look differently at me. He will tell them things, that make them question my sanity and character, while acting like the poor victim who cares and is only is trying to love me.
The most daily disruptive thing about him in particular, is that he is completely unreliable. He cannot understand how this can effect a relationship at all….he has no clue…and acts like i am trying to control him. The worst, was that i got pregnant about three months ago. He started disappearing everyday to drink with his buddies…I felt like he had got me just where he wanted me. I did a horrible thing and got an abortion, because I couldnt do this on my own at my age and with my financial resources….I would be and felt extremely alone. He has no idea the effect this has had on me, since i have always been against abortion for myself and he refuses to talk about it at all….as if it never happened. I would be incredibly hurt and mad if someone got an abortion with my child with out consulting me about it. He was just worried about keeping me around and thats it.
When my family is around or talks to me on the phone, they hear a change in me…like I am submissive around him. I find myself doing things to please him around the house, that have never been so important to me. but they are to him, and i have to keep these rules…keeping the shower curtain closed, keeping the house very clean. If i dont, I feel his judgement, and he has called me and my children pigs, which we are not.
He cannot understand why my family despises him at all, and got mad at me, for not trying to convince them to feel otherwise. This made me realize, that all the apologies, and the begging to come back crap, and promsing things will be different…are never going to happen….they were things he said to keep me where he wanted me. I realized this, because he couldnt understand, why, just why, my family didnt like him at this point, which tells me, he thinks he has done nothing wrong to deserve such treatment. I started feeling as if i was between my family and him.
He once told my son, that i am not mad enough to leave him. He knows that he has been able to manipulate me to no end, and to the point that he is relaxed and confident about taking the time to weasle his way back in. He goes out on partying benders when i kick him out.
I know that feelings are the truest indicator of how you are being treated. And when I am with him, i slowly over time, start to feel invalidated. He can act very empathetic, but he always throw some sort of rationalization in…some other important view, that is never based on a feeling, but more like scientific evidence in his eyes. Things that are basically common sense about how to treat others are just not common sense to him. He yelled at me, and blamed me, for not telling him (Which i told him how i felt about it til i was blue in the face) that i should have called and asked him to come home, instead of out, galavanting at the bars when i was pregnant. I feel as if he wants me to miss him so badly, that i have to beg him to come home, to prove my devotion and love. he would always say “do you miss me?” ” Do you want me to come home?” Knowing full well, that I would be accused of being controlling if i asked him to come home from drinking.
He has done many questionable things, including treating me like an object in bed, at times. i wonder if all of it is a precursor of things to come.
So, a couple days ago, i broke up with him. He started to move out last night…but this is our cycle. i am trying to break it…so here i am now.
the problem, is that my tolerance is very high. He knows to get to me when i am at my lowest, and he knows where to find me also, and how to get to my friends. I dont feel like i can recover until i get him away from me. When I am away from him at all, i start feeling like myself again, until he gets under my skin.
It is so subtle too…it is very covert with him. But he seems to have this ability to turn on and off his feelings like a light bulb. he turns them on to get what he wants, and as soon as he gets what he wants, things start changing back. he will admit to something, to act like this honest person, and competely take it back later…then accuse me of accusing him, of something he didnt say.
Other traits i noticed about him, is that he gets very upset when others think he is a bad person. He has this need to prove to everyone that he is a good person…he cant tolerate someone thinking badly of him, it drives him nuts….and he blames me, for others thinking he is a loser. Blames me completely for this.
Writing this blog is kind of like starting my recovery. Because I know, he can hook me again, if I let him get too close, and i forget all the things that have gone wrong.
So here they are, for me to review….when i start to forget because thats when my emotions let him get the best of me.
i dont want my kids to think this is normal. they hate the way he treats me, and they have no respect for him. But he expects respect from them. he has also started making rules for them, and enforcing rules on them…and i dont like it, because he has not even earned their respect. So the other night, he started arguing with my teenage son…their first bad argument…i brought him into the bedroom…and broke it off with him. My heart was pounding in my chest as he escalated his voice at my son. He told me, see, you are letting your family win now…and your sons are just going to suck this right up. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WINNING OR LOSING. But in his eyes, it does. He called me today, asking if his giutar came in yet…but i know this is just one more excuse he will use to get his foot back into the door.
so what kind of man, gets bored, and uses it as an excuse to go out and drink. Or uses your feelings to leave for a while. Or takes back things he has said? Or has no concern for the fact that you need to take a test at college the next day, but he is going to blast the T.V. in your bedroom til 2 in the morning, or call all hours of the night, when you cant take it anymore? Or stalks you where he knows you love to go…or tells your friends your the insecure one? He has told me so much that I am insecure that sometimes, I am really starting to feel that way. What kind of man or any person for that matter, uses your hope for change, to get a one edge up on you? What kind of person tells you constantly to “stop it” and cuts you off…when there is something that matters to resovle or talk over? He has bragged about using this method “stop it” with his ex wife, and that it works so well…to shut her up, than he started using it on me, and i realized she wasn’t the bitch he made her out to be, she is fed up, and sick of him being inconsisten with picking his kids up, and lack of child support. GOD!!!! I can’t believe I have let myself feel sorry for him. Now he is trying to make me feel guilty for leaving him.
notagain,
As I was reading your post, I saw so many red flags about this man. Sociopaths are uncommonly bored at all times because they have no sense of themselves. They will lie and cheat with no concept that these behaviors are hurtful to others because they have no empathy. They have no real friends. So he is probably hanging out with these people who look up to him because he can control them, and they feed his ego. The passive aggressive stuff is him taking no responsibility for his actions. These kinds of behaviors will drive the other person crazy literally. Mine could not take responsibility for breaking up with me. So instead he just pulled a second “no show/no call”. He knew I would leave him if he did that. But he wouldn’t take responsibility for the break up. He just said “I wasn’t breaking up with you. I just thought you would never want to see me again. I don’t know why I did it.” These kinds of behaviors are very bizarre and not the types of things normal neurotic people do. This is very important for you to understand. Normal people do not do these things!
It will take a real act of will to stay away from him. The people here will help you. We all know what you are going through. And you can only start feeling better if you stay away. That means NO CONTACT. No by association, not by email…..you get the drift. No contact. He will realize he’s losing his grip on you and try all kinds of power plays to get you back. The thing to know about this is that it is NOT based on love–it is based on power. If you mistake power for love, you are in for another round. I wish it weren’t true. I wish I could say “maybe deep down he really loves you but….” We’ve ALL been through this, so I will save you the time. He is not capable of love, and he will not change. All sociopaths are the same in this way and NONE of them are fixable or worth a second chance. Cut your losses.
Dear Notagain, welcome! You are here on the right place to start the healing and recovery from an obviously very toxic X.
The problem is not you, but HIM! And for him ALL is about POWER and WINNING!
Fortunately your guards went up as he started to trespass the boundaries of your kids! Well done, you can be very proud of yourself!
Now it is very important to stay NC (= NO CONTACT!).
Whenever you feel the URGE to call or start missing him, hang in there to read or blog to remind you of GETTING BACK and KEEPING the power over your own life and the life of your children. He started to threaten your children and was about to alienate you from them or vice versa by making his rules (this and lots of other characteristics you described, the invalidation, the “scientific” approach, the one-upmanship, the being treated as an object in bed reminded me VERY much of “my” X. I could copy paste most of your article to describe X).
It does not matter what disorder he has, but it is definitely toxic for you, and you made the first big step by finding this place. If you read all the articles and then the blogs you get lots of informations, and do not hesitate to blog on. There is always somebody in the “fiberglass-wire” to listen and to respond.
AND DO NOT CONTACT HIM!!!!! VERY IMPORTANT!!!!! He knows your soft spots and he will use them to win. It is not about you it is about WINNING! He has no feelings, it is a competition, and as soon you have given in the devaluation takes place again. Even when he feigns to “have learned the lesson” or “has made progress” it is just to play the soft spots. He will mirror you to get you where he wants you to be. THIS IS WAR!!! You must not feel pity for him when he wants you to feel miserably. He is not your friend!
Congratulate yourself for the first day of a wonderful X-free life without embarassment, to feel the earth under your feet, breathe the crisp air without being told how to breathe correctly, to go to the grocery store without feeling like the biggest moron who does not know ONE thing about household chores. To feel free to talk to your chidren without embarassment being caught “between the lines” and having to “choose one side”. Not feel ashamed any more in front of your family for his incomprehensibly rude behaviour towards you and them.
This is the first day of a wonderful friendship with yourself. Welcome!
To all my LF buddies:
God doesn’t give you the people you want, He gives you the people you NEED – To help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you and to make you into the person you were meant to be.
Peace to all your hearts and souls as you heal.
WOW WINI – THATS POWERFUL STUFF! I LIKE LOOKING AT IT THAT WAY. THAT ONE IS GETTING PRINTED AND GOING ON MY MIRROR! THANKS