The sociopath’s imperturbability has been widely noted. However, this is a generalization, not true of all sociopaths in all situations.
A sociopath around whom the net is closing, who recognizes that he’s played his last card and finds, alas, that the game is ending and that he faces inescapable consequences—sociopaths in this circumstance may feel forms of perturbability, like anxiety and worry.
But in situations where he perceives his security (however unrealistically) to be relatively unthreatened—especially where his grandiosity and sense of omnipotence remain relatively intact—the sociopath can be curiously imperturbable.
Imperturbable, that is, in the commission of his violating acts, as well as in the subsequent striking sangfroid with which he’ll brazenly perpetuate his deceit even when confronted with his flat guilt.
How do we explain this?
First, I pose a question: Have you ever played a really cruel practical joke or, if not, witnessed one (with enjoyment), that left its victim torturously duped, perhaps even mildly traumatized?
I’d suggest that the mindset involved in conceiving and executing such a prank, even the mindset (as a witness) involved in merely enjoying it, is temporarily rather sociopathic in several ways.
I stress temporarily because nonsociopaths will inhabit this state of mind only briefly and experimentally, and then, on the assumption that any suffering the prank causes its victim will be experienced as relatively fleeting and superficial.
But I use a “practical joke” analogy because I think it describes somewhat accurately the sociopath’s basic perspective in the world. Life, for the sociopath, is something like a big stage on which to perpetrate forms of ongoing deceit to suit his shifting agenda for comfort, convenience, tension discharge, and other gratifications.
After all, at the motivational heart of the “practical joker” is the driving question, Can I pull this off? This is a question, among others—a kind of perpetual carrot, if you will—that compels sociopathically-oriented personalities.
And the socopath’s response to this implicitly posed question is felt, if not implicitly answered, as, “Of course I can pull this off! I can pretty much pull anything off! Watch me do it! Watch me get away with this!”
In other words, the sociopath’s cocky faith in his powers of chicanery nicely captures his inflated grandiosity and sense of omnipotence. To put it even more basically, the sociopath thinks he is good, really good. And in inverse proportion to how smart he thinks he is, he thinks that you are just as stupid.
This is the sociopath’s signature contempt, and let us not underestimate it: You are as stupid as he is smart.
In the end, the sociopath ultimately takes neither you, nor anyone, seriously. And it’s not that he chooses not to respect people. It’s not that he’s unwilling to take others seriously. It’s that he can’t. And make no mistake: his inability to take people seriously, in an authentic way, is a core aspect of his disorder.
Does the nonpsychotic sociopath, intellectually, know right from wrong? This is a frequently posed question, to which the answer is yes. Intellectually, the nonpsychotic sociopath is usually well aware that his behaviors are exploitive and violate legal and interpersonal laws and boundaries.
But the point is, he just doesn’t care. The sociopath just doesn’t take these laws and interpersonal boundaries seriously, because he doesn’t take you, or others, seriously.
And so this is where his imperturbability enters. When you don’t take others seriously; when, on some level, others are a joke to you; when a malignant contempt pervades your view of others, then you can have your way with them, you can use them for whatever purposes suit your immediate agenda. Moreover, you can cause them pain and outrage as you seek your own ends unburdened by normal feelings of responsibility, accountability and guilt, because you don’t just don’t take them seriously.
So you’re caught in a lie? So you’ve been busted? Big deal. So your denials are preposterous? Big deal. Let’s remember, you are slick and smart enough to convince any stupid person to disbelieve the indisputable evidence of your guilt!
And even if you can’t persuade them to give you a pass this time; even if they’ve busted you cold this time, and your normally reliable glibness doesn’t spring you from the present trap, so what? After all, there’s no shame or embarrassment to be busted by someone you don’t take seriously.
And so the sociopath’s imperturbability, in this light, can be seen as a natural byproduct of his malignant disrespect of, and contempt towards, others. It is a pathological imperturbability, not an admirable, enviable one. His is not the imperturbability of a “cool cat,” or an enviably placid temperament, or the imperturbability that can derive from a certain hard-earned wisdom, confidence and perspective.
No, the sociopath’s imperturbability is that of an emotionally, interpersonally sick individual who, at bottom, has no true emotional stake in others.
And so finally, in his relationships with others, what he stands to lose, through his exploitation, is felt to be as superficial, and dismissable, as anything he stands to gain.
(My use of male gender pronouns in this article is for convenience’s sake and not to suggest females aren’t capable of the behaviors discussed. This article is copyrighted © 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Kathy – I hope your wrist is feeling better… You – cranky???? Havent seen that…. Opinionated?? Hope you never stop sharing your opinions! Hang in there! Preparing for another storm here, hope NY isnt getting as much as we are suppose to! Hope you come across a peak of less stress soon. Hang in there!
Dear Kathleen,
Just in my life time, the treatment of mental illnesses that in the past were considered totally untreatable have come SO FAR, that many people can and do live very happy and productive lives.
My sperm donor’s sister, “went crazy” at about age 23-4, by that time she was a gifted plastic surgeon and had “not been crazy” before suddenly becoming “crazy”–she was either forceably locked up, for years in some sort of “home” and in her later years, lived in an apartment connected to her brother’s house. I have no idea really what drove her “crazy” but my grandfather, her father, thought it was her step mother’s treatment of her—but from the descriptions of her behavior and the age of onset, my guess is she was either bi-polar and/or schizophrenic, as she apparently was at least at times out of touch with realityy. There was really no adequate treatment for her at that time (onset about 1940) and fortunately she was from a family who could at least house her and see that she didn’t become a homeless person or locked in a state mental institution.
Finding a correct diagnosis and treatment even today can sometimes be a challenge, but not one that has to be a losing fight! I’m glad that your son has you for a mentor, and have every confidence that you and he working together will solve whatever problems he or you have together.
My son C I think is clinically depressed and I think that has lead to a great many of his decisions that I think are poor decisions, but because he denies that diagnosis and refuses to take any medication for it, there is no way I could help him. The old “you can lead a horse to water” situation.
Just as the pain of a broken leg will generally motivate a person to go to a physician, sometimes people have to be “uncomfortable” enough with whatever emotional pain they are having in order to seek help. I know that as long as I was somehow managing to “get on” even though I was very much in emotional pain, I stayed in denial for decades before I realized, hey, I need to DO something about this besides a “band aid.”
As a health care provider both in family practice and in mental health settings, people tend to be more in denial I think with emotional pain or unhappiness and seem to think “oh, if I just cheer up everything will be okay” while their world melts around their feet, but the same people would not ignore the “broken leg”—although these new adds they are running about strokes where the guy comes up with an ARROW sticking out of his chest and says “Oh, it’s nothing, it will be okay” (he is having a stroke) does sum up some of my patients who ignored some SERIOUS and painful symptoms for months or years, heck when I had the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, I did the same thing for about two months before seeking treatment, blaming my feeling so weak I could hardly stand up on “stress.” LOL so I am not poking sticks at others, because I’ve done the same thing myself.
I think though until WE are ready to accept treatment no one can motivate us to do so. I tried to motivate my son C to seek treatment, tried multiple times to convince him, but he wasn’t buying it—wouldn’t buy it, and as long as he is Satisfied with his situation, I can’t make him see a need to do anything about it. Just as if he were drinking alcohol or taking drugs, until HE SEES IT IS HURTING HIS LIFE and feels pain from it, he is not likely to see a need to get help or help himself. I’ve offered help in the past,, and he has taken it on short term basis repeatedly, but soon went back to the denial and the problems, and resented me for “interfeering” in his life, so no more interference in his life. NO more enabling him to “survive” the crashes without paying the full price for the bad decisions. He will have to climb out of the holes he digs for himself from now on. I do love him, but I am no longer looking at his decisions and his past choices quite so “tolerantly” or blaming all his problems on him letting others “influence” him negatiavely. He’s a big boy (actually a middle aged man now) so whatever happens to him depends entirely on HIS choices, HIS decisions, and not on me. I am no longer feeling responsible for his “self caused” suffering from his own decisions. Plus, by essentially NC now, I am not being freshly wounded by anything he says or does now.
Nothing has really “changed” with him, he is still who he is, but I HAVE CHANGED THE WAY I LOOK AT IT. Therefore the pain is LESS for me than it was when I felt like there was some “hope I could influence” him, when obviously there wasn’t that hope.
I think we can ACCEPT ANYTHING as reality, but it is in that part where we are still “bargaining with the Universe” and praying that somehow it will all “go away” and we won’t have to accept it….but once you get to where you can accept something and KNOW FOR SURE IT ISN’T GONNA CHANGE, then it may be hard, but we can accept it and go on from there.
I used to have a sign in my office, but I gave it away (wish I hadn’t) that said I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER SINCE I GAVE UP HOPE.
I used to laugh about that sign, but you know, it is true, that HOPE that we can change things when we can’t, keeps us hanging on and trying to “fix” things and people that can’t be fixed.
Hoping for the things that are POSSIBLE and working to make those things better, that is more productive—and knowing which things ARE possible and accepting those that aren’t.
Essentially the serenity prayer. I need to keep reminding myself of that. OVER AND OVER AND OVER. (((HUGS))))
I’m still in the process of reading Dr. Peck’s “People of the Lie” and he writes that evil people live in a perpetual state of absolute terror.
I consider him a credible witness and he describes quite well the hidden anxieties these folks deal with on a daily basis, so, yeah, I do believe they feel fear. Totally. In ways that may be unfamiliar, foreign even for feeling, caring, conscientious people like us.
Think about it. Evil people, cluster Bs never experience real, pure joy, happiness and peace. They are on the constant make, completely enamoured with always seeking power over others, taking and taking and sucking the energy out of the people they predate upon.
As Kathleen wrote, they are always preoccupied with maintaining whatever mask of deception they have manufactured to seduce, manipulate and dominate their victims. They are hollow men and women. Nothing there of substance, meaning and value.
So, when the mask slips downwards and/or their current victim realizes the horrible monster exposed beneath all that flash and dazzle and decides to take necessary steps to rid herself/himself of such evil…well, that absolute terror that pervades their very essence strikes them and they must do all they can to preserve that mask of deceit and deception.
Supposedly, all sociopaths are narcissists. I’ve seen first hand (as we all have) how they scramble to backtrack, avoid, evade, distort reality to preserve their false selves. Not pretty to view, rather disturbing and pathetic if you ask me.
And Tami was correct is saying that cluster Bs are cowards. Evil people ARE cowards especially when they’ve pushed and pushed, terrorized a victim to their limits of tolerance and that person decides to push back.
For example, when an ex sociopathic lover stalked me for 2 years, banging on my doors and windows at all hours, begging and pleading for me to let him in because he “loves me” (huge eye roll) I tried every rational tactic under the sun and moon to just get rid of him and nothing worked.
He was deluded. He thought I was his possession, his sexual object to do with what he pleases just because I had a 3 month dalliance with him. And that’s all it was to me: sex. When he began to behave irrational, jealous and possessive I kicked him to the curb. But he resisted, of course.
So a brief fling for me became a 2 year nightmare of stalking and harassment. I swear, by the end of those 2 years I was exhausted from all the energy I had expended trying to be diplomatic, and the anger at his refusal to just f*ck off forever!
I bought a pistol. And the last time he boldly sauntered up to my apt door, I told him in a cold, monotone voice that I would fill his body with all six of these bullets if he bothered me again.
It worked better that I would have guessed because deep down, he was a yellow-bellied coward who abused and used women for his sick and evil pleasure.
A gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do to protect herself from horrible males in this world.
EDIT: I probably should mention that I had been divorced from my ex husband for a short period of time when I met the sociopath. I was totally enjoying my freedom and being very young, was just looking for fun, good times without all the drama.
Yeah, that didn’t work out quite the way I wanted. Polar opposite actually.
MArie France Hirigoyen writes in “Stalking the Soul”
“When this strategy (projection of hatred) works, with the hatres projected onto a target (that soon becomes prey, it calms inner tension; this allows the emotional abuser to act pleasantly in the outside world. This explains the astonishment, or even denial, of people who learn about the abusive actions of a close relation who had previously only shown their positive aspect. The evidence of the victims, seen in this light, hardly seems credible” (p.135)
“Victims use laser-like visions to detect the fragility and weaknesses of their abuser. Some also understand the pathological nature of the behaviour and shut themselves off when they detect signs of falseness in their partner.
The victims become dangerous adversaries when they begin to articulate what they have intuitively understood. They must be silenced by terror.” (p.147)
I am struggling with I guess what I might call anxiety – it is mild but all pervasive. I have all these things I want to do and when I think about them I sigh and can’t find any energy or any point to doing them. I am fiercely aware of the passing of time as I look at decaying blooms on the ground.
I feel he stole my youth and my energy and though he isn’t here anymore, he steals it still with the knowledge this experience of him gave me. I still dream about it. I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. I don’t actually know how to heal from this. I am reading and writing and thinking and trying to do the things I used to enjoy, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t want to take medication nor go for more therapy = both those avenues have not worked for me. I just want my vitality back and the knowledge that the world can be a good place. I just wonder if the body takes its own time to get over this, or am I stuck?
I teach people about abuse, personality disorders and psychopathy – I keep my personal experience in check and use theory and literature to back up what I say. I also talk about the physical effects of trauma on the body. There seems to be little guidance about how to heal from trauma like this around short of EMDR. Is this PTSD? This not being able to get over it? It’s so unlike any breakup I ever suffered before – this time I am just thinking about it lots, about how my life is so different, about how I shouldn’t be in this position, about how I am not happy. I have periods of happiness with friends, but it doesn’t last. Soon enough I am back to thinking about this again – it consumes my mind.
I think once we are over the worst of the painful emotion and can articulate clearly what we suffered we are very dangerous to the psychopath. I have one friend in the circle he is involved with who has not been won over by him – I have dropped hints to her about what happened to prime her for the full story which I will tell her when it is safe to do so. She will then infiltrate that circle and quietly spread the truth to his new woman. I feel sorry for her knowing what is coming. Will she make the right decision and leave him or will she cling to him and defend him? Who knows! It’s important that it isn;t me telling her – she would just think I am bitter and twisted at ‘losing’ him. No doubt he told everyone he dumped me when it is the other way around. I ended it = not because I wanted to but because there was no choice.
I am bitter about it – it naturally leaves a bitter taste in the mouth to be used so blatantly. I want revenge but there is no revenge that would hurt him as he has no feelings. Telling others is not revenge – it is speaking up for the truth and is more about giving his new woman what I never had – forewarning. I think honestly if someone had told me about him I would have at least listened and looked for corroborating signs, maybe getting out quicker. But then again depending on when I got the information I might have just defended him.
I have a sore wrist too! Too much mouse use I think – I am still reading extensively about personality disorders and I don’t actually know why! It’s an obsession. I know it will pass in time – I have had other traumatic obsessions and they faded with time too. So surely this one will as well.
I hope everyone is coping and getting through each day. It’s good for me to read that others are going through the same symptoms I am – makes me feel less abnormal! And very good to read that some people get much better as the experience fades with time. I hope it will for me as well. It’s been about eight months since I realised he was a P and only four months NC so I guess I am expecting miracles in getting rid of the memories of such a long relationship.
JaneSmith, thanks so much for acknowledging my post! I realize my concerns are kind of small compared with the really big problems posted here — but maybe signs of the bigger problems:
* That various degrees of sociopaths/psychopaths are everywhere, and we all have to deal with them even if we’re “healthy.” It’s just a poisoned landscape.
* That it’s hard to know indeed if you’re really healthy, over it, no longer sociopath-bait, especially when the signals coming at you are that you’re messed up and getting worse.
* And lastly, I am feeling really lonely lately — a passing thing, I’m sure, because I always seem to find a new “crowd” and have some loyal friends — but I’ve come to observe that I have lost a kind of intimacy I should have had.
The point is, behind all this weakness we decry is just wanting to be loved. And people who “fall for it” get that payoff, for a while anyway. At least the illusion of it.
Honesty exists somewhere, but in numbers too low. It’s as if narcissism has taken over our planet. Be a narcissist yourself if you don’t ever want to get hurt. I feel myself slipping away into a kind of narcissism myself, a pride, a defensiveness. Hardly time for tenderness or just letting my guard down.
Victimhood is, in the end, probably not much different than defensiveness. The problem and its negation are still the same problem, attracting the same flies.
I wish I could tell you, dear escapees from phony love, that there is a light at the end of this tunnel. I CAN tell you that you will definitely meet better people, even if you have to leave behind everyone you know. But I cannot attest to finding intimacy, love, romance and acceptance. It’s as if that kind of selfless, dangerous vulnerability is indeed the admission fee — especially for women.
Maybe we keep running a certain script until we’re run it enough times and our karma is satisfied. Then we stop, if only from boredom.
Thanks again, if only for listening!
I just read midlifecrisis and it’s just so well-written and devastating.
Hang in there. It sounds like a chemical imbalance, stress-related, the same obsessive thoughts burning the same grooves in your brain. I’ve been there, over other crises in my life.
Long-term stress can cause physical changes. It sounds as if you’re blaming this on thoughts, memories, all that — but it’s probably the habitual chemical reaction prompting the thoughts by this point.
My only advice is to just be very, very good to yourself, try new things, don’t try to predict if they’ll make you happy — and it’s OK if they don’t. Just random experience. Mix it up. Move somewhere sunny and warm. Find a good-looking, flaky young person for a meaningless fling (legal, of course). Learn something you “know” you can’t do (skiing works for me! bruises on my ass-bone to prove it . . .), learning thereby that you “know” nothing. Just drive your brain off-road, out of the grooves.
And, by the way, eat raw veggies and alkaline foods. It brings on mind-blowing clarity.
And, finally, comedy. Have you seen “Herman”? Absolutely the funniest comic strip around. Wait tables in a comedy club if there’s one nearby. . . .
It’s a big world. Live in it.
Thanks Sister sister – that was some good advice – glad to know someone else has been there and gotten out of it. I am meeting new people – forcing myself as I don’t feel like socialising. And like you I feel lonely but am sure it is a passing phase … I think my work isn’t helping me at the moment but I have to remain where I am till legal matters are sorted out – so I should try to unwind more in the evenings. Trying new things is a good idea – I think I will give that a go. Thanks for not mentioning drugs or therapy = have wasted thousands on both of those to little effect. I don’t want to be numbed to it – would rather just go through it and let what needs to come out come out.
Much love to you – you sound like you’re way down the track – great inspiration for someone at my stage!
Dear Midlife,
The chemical and even physical changes to our brains from long-term or high stress are REAL, we are NOT the same as we were “before”—yes, it can be PTSD, and EMDR does help some, but in the end it is a “do it yourself” project and not one that is QUICK either.
I’ve been at it quite some time (most of my life) in various relationships with Ps and their dupes, starting with my family and moving on to my P-son, along with their duped enablers who can actually be “psychopaths by proxy” by doing their bidding to terrorize and persecute me.
Most of the time now, I am pretty good, but sometimes something will trigger me, a new stressor, or something along that line and WOW! I go into a tail spin and melt down.
When that happens, I have to almost go back to “ground zero” and look at what I did to ALLOW this melt down to occur, and generally I find that I had ultimately been making poor choices on something, and so I had to adjust MY behavior toward another person. I can’t control others, but I can and MUST control myself.
I find it hard or almost impossible to be interested in much of anything, I don’t enjoy things like I used to, so have to push myself to get out and do things rather than isolate. I have weeded out my rolodex of most of my poor choices for friends, and that has helped, and I now have a very thin rolodex but the people left there are GREAT people.
I no longer deal with people who are liars, people who are unkind, people who are not trustworthy and no longer make excuses for people like that in my life.
I’m learning more about me, and accepting that sometimes Ii tend to see things and people through rose colored glasses because it is easier than seeing the TRUTH, but I am slowly learning that “the truth will set you free, but first it will pith you off” and so when I do have a melt down now, it is over much more quickly than in the past, and I move back to taking care of myself.
I tend and have always tended to be a perfectionist where I am concerned and not so much a perfectionist with other people, so I am having a time “retraining” my thinking that I do NOT have to be perfect to be OK. I’ve never expected others to be perfect, so why do I expect myself to be “perfect?” A lot of our emotions don’t make logical “sense” but we predicate our thinking on them anyway. Retraining ourselves takes time and a lot of EFFORT.
Learning to set reasonable boundaries for those we interact with in our closest “circles of trust” is important, and in the past, I didn’t have those and didn’t expect or demand that those people treat me well. NOW I DO, or “get out of my life!”
It doesn’t matter WHAT the relationship is, if you do not treat me well, GO AWAY.
I set boundaries that to me seem reasonable.
NO LIES is number one on my list. Not 2 or 3 lies then out, but ONE lie and OUT! I don’t need anyone like that in my life.
NO dishonesty of any kind with anyone. No criminal record, no DWIs, no infidellity with your first wife, no stealing from your employer, no cheating on your taxes, no cheating of any kind and no excessive drinking, drug use, etc. If that sounds too harsh, too bad.
By eliminating anyone who is not 100% honest, who keeps their word, and is kind, I may have a limited number of people in my “circles of trust” but those people I do love and trust will not use or abuse me, lie to me or steal from me, and belive me I have had people I loved and trusted who did just that, all of those things.
Being good to yourself is important too, and I do recommend that you consider seeing a mental health professional who is familiar with PTSD, there ARE medications that do help, and there is therapy that does help, but sometimes some therapists don’t get it, and some medications may not work for PTSD, and just as you would not decide (I hope) to set your own broken leg, you won’t give up on appropriate mental health intervention. Just because the first person didn’t get it right doesn’t mean that no one or no therapy will be helpful.
midlifecrisis, you wrote:
“Is this PTSD? This not being able to get over it? It’s so unlike any breakup I ever suffered before ”“ this time I am just thinking about it lots, about how my life is so different, about how I shouldn’t be in this position, about how I am not happy. I have periods of happiness with friends, but it doesn’t last. Soon enough I am back to thinking about this again ”“ it consumes my mind.”
And you also wrote that its about eight months since you realized he was a P and only four months NC.
So yes, you are expecting too much. Part of early-stage processing is just hating how we feel. We don’t want to feel this way. We think it’s something wrong with us that we’re not getting better faster. We are uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable with where we find ourselves, and a lot of us (me included) imagine that if we can just take the blame for being so stupid that we can get over it fast.
Unfortunately, what you’re getting over is not just a relationship that didn’t go well, but a long-term chronic trauma situation. You’ve been abused. Your relationship with yourself has been compromised. And your understanding of human relationships in general has been severely challenged.
In other words, this is a major deal. The fact that you know a lot about abuse and personality disorders isn’t the same as going through the recovery process. If you taught people about that, you’d know the drill. Therapists describe it as stabilization, recovering and reframing memories, integration of new learning (and disassociated “parts” that were created in the trauma). And then we’re better than we were before.
My theory is that, once we do this whole thing once, it’s a lot easier to do it again. But those of us who come from traumatic backgrounds (childhood), and didn’t have the adult support to resolve those issues though the whole integration sequence, are actually doing this for the first time ever. And I suspect that most people who get in long-term relationships with sociopaths come from that kind of background. Because people who are good at resolving trauma, or efficient at it, would have gotten mad and kicked them out of our lives long before we did.
Getting out of early stage processing involves getting angry. I know you think you’re angry, but you sound like you’re really more in pain right now.
If you want a nudge in the right direction, get your journal out and start writing all the large and small things that you resented. Just resented. I know you’ve probably done something like this already. But I suspect you haven’t done it enough or drawn yourself a clear enough picture of exactly what you were dealing with. This was your life. Your ex was what happened to your life. You need to recover your clear memories of exactly what he did. And how you felt about it.
This is a process of getting out of your head and into the wisdom of your emotional system. I’m saying that as a person who was a world-class intellectualizer. This feeling that he stole your life, that’s an abstraction, a way of not thinking about it. When you decide to look at exactly what happened, you’re going to be astounded by what you learn, and by what you missed at the time. And it will be very good for you to get mad about the right things, the specifics.
It will also help you start creating new rules for living, get more sensitive about interference and abuse, and refine your defenses and your assertiveness. That is the best cure for anxiety.
Don’t worry about the time involved. And ignore anyone who tells you that you should be over it by now. You’re halfway through changing your life. If they don’t understand, they’re just too shallow to be dealing with you right now.
Love —
Kathy