Pathologically self-centered individuals, such as sociopaths or narcissists, often project a level of self-confidence that is pathlogically tremendous. This can be a problem for others who, unlike the sociopath, will be prone to empathy and self-reflection, along with which come self-doubt and hence fluctuating, less dependable levels of confidence.
But the pathologically self-centered individual is often seemingly immune to self-doubt and can thus seem implacably, impressively confident. Why?
The answer is suprisingly simple: When your interest in others is principally, if not entirely, about what you can get, or take, from them; when you lack the capacity for, and/or inclination to, genuine, thoughtful self-reflection; and when the meaning, or purpose, of life is fundamentally reduced to the expectation, and pursuit, of continual gratification, you have a prescription not only for pathological self-centeredness, but its frequent concomitant—pathological self-confidence.
Think about it: for such an individual, it is mostly, and sometimes only, about what he wants. And if he knows what he wants, such an individual will feel entitled to it. And his sense of entitlement becomes self-validating—self-validating, that is, of whatever argument, rationalization, or manipulation brings him closer to his demand.
In other words, the pathologically self-centered individual has something very powerful in his favor—conviction. His is the conviction of his entitlement, of his right to have what he wants—whether it’s agreement, an apology, special attention, cooperation, sex, a favor, forgiveness, you name it.
And he wields his sense of conviction powerfully and persuasively—all the moreso if he’s also articulate and glib.
This explains how a sociopath can look you in the eye and blame you for something—even his victimization of you—and yet you struggle to fully disbelieve him. As I just noted, if he is intelligent and glib, he is in an even better position to erode your sense of reality. He can construct positions, however absurd and even confirming of his sociopathic orientation, that nevertheless have just enough superficial plausability to arrest your attention.
Once you’ve been disarmed, even slightly, his impregnably confident assertions, stemming from his pathological self-centeredness, can have a brainwashing influence.
You wonder if you’re not crazy? The “gaslighting effect” is in full throttle. It is disorienting, literally, to have someone present even a ridiculous proposition, demand, or accusation with unwavering confidence and certitude. And the disorienting effect is magnified exponentially when the assertion is simultaneously packaged in superficially intelligent, coherent, “rational”-sounding language. Confidence in one’s sense of reality can wane, and fail, under this combination assault.
This can explain why sometimes extremely intelligent, thoughtful and self-respecting individuals can actually be at greater risk of accepting and tolerating abuse. It can be a case of the exploiter’s pathologically inflated confidence overwhelming the more self-questioning, self-doubting individual’s reality.
(My use of “he” in this article was for convenience’s sake, and not to suggest that females are not capable of the behaviors described. This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
The person you most need to “warn” and “support” and “protect” and give closure to is yourself, from yourself. No contact. Try to even just set aside 30 minutes a day AT MOST that you even allow yourself to think of him. If you think of him at any other time, picture him with a long nose from all the lies, his head in a stockade, whatever reminds you he is BAD and not worth your time. Make a list of all the inexcusable things he has done to you. Reread it when you are weak. Tell yourself the WHOLE truth.
I had a hard time giving up warning other women. I did. And you know what….every single one of them already had his number. And then I realized if someone had warned me when I didn’t have his number, I would have not believed them.
Think of someone you really admire, and then think what that person would say about this person to you. Picture yourself feeling self-confident, happy….would you still want this person in your life? Start concentrating on becoming strong and confident….and pretty soon you will be!
All hard advice to follow until you are ready, but you have made really great strides!
I can’t thank you all enough for your posts!
I will now think of him as Pinnochio!!
Big group hug to all of you.
since i have moved to a new state and city– I have no real friends yet. I thank you all more than you know.
MATT– i FREAK out abou the exwife cuz I now remember signs of him hiding me and trying to get back with her. His sister also told me that the exwife still loved him (I understand that) and that the ex only divorced him to get him to go get help out of despertion of losing his beautiful Japanese wife and child. That she would take him back in a sex b/c his other side– the “man she married” was so sweet. exact words and God do I know what they mean. And imagine–
he has a 6 yr old little girl with this woman.
what a mess. If they truly knew what he was– they would know that he cannot change. He is more evil than they realize and I hate living with the truth on my own. /but maybe I am not. I have you guys and you seem to have seen the same ugly face/spirit.
love to allllll of you!
oh my gosh. look at my Fraudian slip/typo above!!!!
“she would take him back in a sex…”
I meant to type sec.
but I was remembering how good he was in bed and how that had a hold on me as I am sure it does her.
I have read this site for a long time but never posted before.
However, this post spoke to me in volumes and was truly brilliant. And so very timely.
It’s three years since I left the S (or was discarded and kicked to the curb moreso) in rather traumatic circumstances. Just last night I learned something that threw me right back to this time and had me in tears.
Throughout my relationship with the S, I fell for most things hook line and sinker. His confidence and sense of self was one of the attributes I loved about him.
Essentially he targeted me for my money. We were going to buy a house together. Except suddently my money got transferred into his business. I tried to get it back. He ended up getting violent. He then made threats about what I would lose if I told anyone. I made the decision to call a distant acquaintance because of his field of expertise. I was too ashamed to tell any family and was living in a foreign country so had no close friends around me. I rang the number, a child answered and I hung up and thought better of it. It occurred to me how would I explain how it all happened and still make any sense.
Unbeknownst to me the S used to check the numbers I rang. He contacted this person (he had heard of him) and charmed his way into repeated conversations with him. After establishing that I had not been in contact with him, he told him that our relationship had not worked out and I was a ‘fruit loop’ and had conned him. He said I had taken off and he didnt know where I was but I may go looking for him and end up knocking on his door because he didnt think I had any money. He said he had a very important job and he had all these highbrow functions to go to and I was an embarassment to him (um the football??) because i was such a nutter. He kept repeating the words, “Its Unbelievable”. He said lots more but I will not go into it as I am sure you get the idea. This guy thought he sounded a very nice man and ended up feeling sorry for him. The S even invited him and his family to his ‘big house’ where he would entertain him and see that he had a wonderful weekend. We were living in a 2 bedroom flat and I was still living with him for a further 14 months after this. But of course unbeknownst to me his wife lived in a house which he jointly owned. I had never left the flat.
This acquaintance said he had niggling doubts for a long time about what happened to me (we were not close contacts at all) and eventually he went online looking for me and found my daughters Facebook page and got in touch. And he ended up telling me all this.
It makes me wonder if the S was going to kill me (he did try and strangle me 13 months later after he had lost my money and my usefulness had gone) and whether he was laying the groundwork or he was scared I would tell this guy things and he wanted to get in first to make him think I was crazy. It threw me completely and and I am now wondering what else he did and said. The web is always way worse than we think.
Last night I was feeling like **** and wondering how anyone could be that evil. It’s hard for me to still try and reconcile how they can control people in such a way. AND THEY ARE SO GOD DAMN BELIEVABLE.
This scares me because I coud never afford legal help (it happened in the UK and I am elsewhere) and now finally, after all ths time, the police contact me how of the blue and are making enquiries about my fraud and assault. BUT, who will believe me or anyone over him. He is Mr Cool still running a business and bragging about his success. Two weeks after I left him to face bankruptcy he was remodelling his house and taking overseas trips (with his wife I thought was an ex wife). Confidence knows no bounds. And poor self esteem becomines our undoing.
I agree with Ox its a journey and I dont expect to get over it because there will always be things like this that pop up out of the blue.
Thanks Steve for such a timely post for me. Now I still have to totally get that it was nothing personal.
Thanks everyone for your wise post and comments – never took the opportunity to say it but its what keeps me coming back for another dose of the best medicine in the world. I need an overdose today.
kate_592
“BUT, who will believe me or anyone over him.”
I will. Others here will. Wondering about what he had planned? Well, it didn’t work, for him, and probably can’t be explained to a “real” person. You’re away from him and can find what YOU want. And on the journey, with time, more for you and less of him in your thoughts.
Glad you found this site and that it helps.
“In other words, the pathologically self-centered individual has something very powerful in his favor—conviction. His is the conviction of his entitlement, of his right to have what he wants—whether it’s agreement, an apology, special attention, cooperation, sex, a favor, forgiveness, you name it.
And he wields his sense of conviction powerfully and persuasively—all the moreso if he’s also articulate and glib. ”
Thanks Steve. This goes a long ways toward explaining something that still has me scratching my head from time to time: why is he so believable?
Dear Akita Meg,
Your ex S is a Drama Wh-re, and he will go away when people stop giving his performances air time.
1. When your friends stop picking up the phone, he’ll stop calling. If they don’t have the sense to do that,
Then –
2. When you stop responding emotionally to their reports that he’s calling, his ability to triangulate you through them will end. He’ll sense that it’s not working. This method is slower, but still effective.
As for the S’s ex wife, if she’s dumb enough to go a 2nd round, she’s not going to benefit from anything you say to her. Write her off.
Meg Sweetie, toughen up. This is life or death here. Your life. If this keeps up, you’re going to get very sick. Now quit paying attention to your ex S, and start giving yourself some of that attention. Meg deserves it, the ex S most assuredly does not.
Love,
Elizabeth
Dear Kate,
I TOO WILL BELIEVE YOU! Sometimes we are not able, unfortunately, to recover what they took from us (money and other physical things) but we CAN recover our dignity and our souls! Yes, recovery is a JOURNEY, not a destination, but YOU CAN BECOME WHOLE AGAIN. Even better than that, you can become YOU. I think most of us had “something” in our backgrounds or our genetics that made us willing to believe their lies, even when those things began to HURT.
No other species of predators that I know of tries to get their victims to love them and “volunteer” to be the victim, over and over and over….but the Ps do.
You talked about how you didn’t tell your family because you were ashamed! I KNOW THAT FEELING of shame, but the SHAME should be for HIM not you….you have done nothing wrong. Think about it. If a stranger pulled you off the street and raped you, would you likely feel SHAME? Well, the answer believe it or not, is YES YOU would feel the “shame”—but the shame TRULY BELONGS TO THEM….of course they don’t FEEL it, but we should NOT feel it, but we DO.
I too felt SHAME, for this and for that and for the other thing that the Ps in my life did to me…..yet that shame should NOT have been mine! Yet, I felt it. DE-shaming is a big part of what we have to do, to let go of that shame, and quit feeling it. Shame should be for a bad behavior that WE do, not feel the shame for something that is done TO us. Shame is not a bad thing, it along with guilt, helps to keep our moral compass on the right track. Since they have NO moral compass, and they have no shame and no guilty, they do whatever they damn well please to others and feel just fine about it.
I’m glad you have been lurking and learning here, but I am also glad that you now feel strong enough to post here!!! Your post is so welcome! Please hang around and continue to grow and learn. (((((hugs))))) and always my prayers.
Dear Meg,
My dear meg, you have gotten some excellent advice from the posts above, but I agree with Elizabeth that you MUST toughen up, you must get it! YOU must start taking care of YOU.
All the questions you asked about “should I call her” etc…..you know the answers we would give you on that.
The “he will find me”—-I think is the thing that has you so FEARFUL, and that is what I am finding in your post is the FEAR he will find you.
I too have CONCERNS that my son may send a killer to FIND me….but Meg, I have finally realized that the only thing that if that happens is that he can kill me. That’s all he can do.
This may sound dramatic but “the coward dies 1000 deaths, the brave man but one.” It is so true. As long as you are
“SCARED SHITLESS” YOU WILL LIVE IN FEAR like a mouse in a hole thinking there might be a cat outside so he sits in the hole and starves to death. Meg, you are sitting in your hole emotionally starving yourself because you think he MIGHT FIND YOU.
I lived in my own “hole” for quite some time….but I am back in my house now and my P son and his henchman know where that house is. But I no longer COWER in a hole or live in TERROR, I live with CAUTION, reasonable caution and I have made PLANS of how I will respond if a henchman does show up.
I would rather LIVE than to cower in my hole and starve. I made the decision that I will NOT live in terror, I would rather die first (literally if it came to that) I am NOT wanting to die, but what is “life” if I have to live it in a dark hole starving.
You have two choices in my opinion, you can continue to live in your HOLE and whine and tremble, or you can decide to LIVE. It is YOUR CHOICE, independent of who he is trying to call or what he is doing, or how much money he has or anything else.
I know that down deep there is the strength in you to do this, the AKITA strength…..think about it. What would an AKITA do? Would an AKITA cower inside a hole? NO!!!!! NO!!!!!! and neither should you. .Draw strength from that inner akita and stand up and be courageous…..bravery is not being UNAFRAID, it is being scared shitless and STILL DOING WHAT IS RIGHT!
Now, Meg, I love you, you know that, but if you keep cowering in that hole, I will get my skillet and my grappling hook and pull you out by the hair of your head!!!!! Now you stand up like the A. S. S. (assertive survivor of a sociopath) that I know you are, and take care of YOU!!!!!! (((((hugs))))) and all my prayers for your peace!
Dear Akita MEG…
WHAT OXY SAID!!! THATS WHAT I WOULD LOVINGLY SAY TO YOU!! The analogy of the Akita — WOW, WOW, WOW— how appropriate for YOU! You are so close AkitaMeg….by choosing to make no contact, by choosing to get on with your life and seeing where the unknown may take you.
Compare apples, if you need to. You and a new life with yourself and the unknown…Or you and the old life, the old ways with a bad man..who makes bad choices where you are concerned, except always sugarcoating it with what he knew you “needed to hear to stay”… to be abused…but nonetheless to stay … “Im sorry, I love you, I wont do it again, blah blah blah….ugh ugh ugh….nah nah nah!!!!!! Dont go back to the lie, the games, the abuse!!!
LET GO, MOVE ON! A better life awaits you without abuse – and with SELF LOVE, SELF RESPECT AND SELF TRUST. Time to implement all that into your life NOW – not him!!!! xoxo