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.)
Rosa…you know, the SAME thought occured to me right after I posted that my ex S claims that he is afraid of me. Yes, I think it’s all an act for their friends and especially their new victims. Once again, it keeps their victims focused on the belief that it is the former victims who are bad and not the S/N/P! They are a piece of work!
Rosa, Tami,
I totally agree with you Rosa…I think projection is a major thing that S/P/N s do to us to keep us off balance on a regular basis. And often times when someone is projecting their “stuff” back onto you , it is difficult to put your finger on while it is taking place.
Its not until later sometimes after you really THINK about what happened that you can have the “ah hah” moment.
Tami for what is worth, I think projection was also a part of what you brought up in your earlier post as well. About him telling you that you had changed…..The truth is that they change in a relationship dramatically. First the love bombing…Then the relationship from hell. WHO’s changed?
Its just another way to keep the finger pointed at you, the blame on you, and the conversation on what your doing wrong.
rosa and tami – mine cried almost every time i talked to her – well, it’s an important part of the act when you are fake ill and fake dying.
and was always talking about being prey and others being predators. uh huh.
one of the sock puppets actually called me a predator. yah, uh huh, right. wish i knew what i was dealing with at the time. (not just sociopath, but one person impersonating many)
she dupes a lot of people with this prey/ crying fragile person scenario. these days a lot of it is online. i’d like to cut her hands off. that would slow down the typing a bit.
Yes, Tami, that’s exactly what’s going on.
Let’s not forget that it is fearLESSness that is one of the hallmark traits of a psychopath.
Page 55 of “Without Conscience” states, “For most of us, fear and apprehension are associated with a variety of unpleasant bodily sensations, such as sweating of the hands, a “pounding” heart, dry mouth, muscle tenseness or weakness, trembles, and “butterflies” in the stomach. Indeed, we often describe fear in terms of the bodily sensations that accompany them: “I was so terrified my heart leapt into my throat”;…..These bodily sensations do not form part of what psychopaths experience as fear. For them, fear – like most other emotions – is incomplete, shallow, largely cognitive in nature, and without the physiological turmoil or “coloring” that most of us find distinctly unpleasant and wish to avoid or reduce.”
Now that I think about it, it’s so ironic because psychopaths are known for their acting skills.
However, from what I have seen, the one time when their acting falls short is when they are trying to act afraid or fearful.
It’s just not authentic or believable.
hi witty – we posted right over each other! how are you today?
One Step,
I am hanging in there. I am finding that all my PTS intense anxiety/fears and all that goes along with it are back. It is something that I have lived with for many years, since the suicide of my husband. But I “thought” that I had learned to co-exist or “manage” it to a degree that was acceptable in my daily life. I feel “stuck” in the cycle of it all.
I hope that you are doing well. Or at least better than when we spoke last 🙂
Rosa and Tami, you’re probably right about the “appearance of fear” being used to control us. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not aware of the damage we can do to them.
What could possibly be more dangerous to a sociopath than someone who knows the truth about them? Who understands that they cannot love. Will not include anyone else’s wellbeing in their plans. Takes without giving. Lies and steals and betrays without compunction. And does whatever damage is necessary to get whatever they want.
Sociopaths perceive the world of people in terms of relative power. There are the “food people” who have less power, and on whom they can feed without concern for repercussions. And there are the people they have to suck up to, until they can climb over them to become more powerful. But all of this depends on their ability to move in the feeling world without being discovered as a predator.
Why do you think they work so hard to separate us from our own common sense? Or try to convince everyone else that we are crazy? All this devaluation has a purpose, to discredit anything we might think or say about them. So that we become powerless to impede them.
In Steve’s article above, he talked about their imperturbability when things are going well. He wrote: “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.”
But if it turns out that you are not that stupid, he feels a threat, and that imperturbability collapses. We get to observe a lot of acting out, whether it’s trying to convince us that we’re wrong and he’s really a nice guy, or trying to convince the rest of the world that we’re crazy and he’s really a nice guy.
To even recognize their fear, we have two problems. One of them is getting over the pain they caused us (and the reasons we were vulnerable to it, because we looked to them for love and acceptance), so that we can actually see their modus operandi as a lifelong pattern of behavior, and understand the dependencies in it — they can’t survive without victims. The other is figuring out whether we can warn other people about them, in the light of their concerted efforts to discredit us, and what we’re willing to risk to do that, because they will make it expensive.
In retrospect, I think one of the smartest things I did in dealing with my sociopath at the end was to tell him that he wasn’t going to like what happened, if I ever found him in my life, my county and my business area again. It’s also how I got him out of the cottage on my property, by telling him that things were going to get very uncomfortable for him, if he stayed. No details. Just cold-eyed commitment. I let his imagination fill in the blanks.
I did try to warn the next woman in his life, and later tried to help her several times. But she was afraid of me. Guess why. When I was struggling with my responsibility in this, my wonderful Buddhist friend said to me, “It’s dangerous to interfere with other people’s dreams.” And I interpreted that to me that we all find our own lessons in life, and she was choosing hers, as I did earlier with him. So I had to let it go and leave her to the future she was creating for herself.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t keep track of him. Not stalking. Not breaking NC in terms of contacting him. But watching to make sure I know where he is, and whether I need to take action. It’s not an obsessive concern, just some personal housekeeping.
Whether or not he knows that, he does know what I think of him. As far as I know, I’m the only woman in his past who grew through the relationship, and understands exactly what he is. And he has good reason to fear me. Not just because I will do whatever I have to do to keep him from harming me or anyone I care about. But because what I learned from him is not just about him, but about the whole group of them. Just as we all are doing. And I’m a teacher by nature, just as many of us are. What I’m doing with the aftermath of this relationship is making it harder for people like him to survive.
If we decide to become teachers, we face the challenge of how to talk about our experiences with people who are currently facing threats. How to support other people through getting free and holding onto themselves, in the face of a clever and determined predator.
From his perspective and the perspective of anyone like him, I fit into several categories. First, when they realize it, I’m not food anymore. But more than that, if I don’t buy into their false front, and I’m willing to actively sabotage their plans by telling the truth about what I see, I become a threat.
Believe me, sociopaths feel fear. They may not feel it in the things that we regard as high-risk activities. But their only means of survival is predation. They can’t do what we can do in terms of real collaboration, trust-based contracts, and long-term relationships. We can do everything they do, if we choose. But they can’t do anything we can do in terms of relationships. They can only pretend. And they have good reason to fear that our ability to network and share personal and feeling-based information can ruin a whole hunting ground for them.
If they didn’t think those techniques were so powerful, they wouldn’t make such use of them in their own attempts to discredit us. Fortunately, once we get our own emotional systems clear of pain, we realize that they’re not really very good at these things. Their selfishness and irresponsibility leaks through, especially for people who have eyes to see. The more and better we teach, the more people have those eyes.
As Donna keeps saying, information and education is the key here. And maybe as we heal through our personal stories, and come to see the threat as more systemic — a challenge that any feeling person will face one or more times in life — it will make it easier for us to share information in a way that other people won’t find so threatening.
And then, hopefully, it will turn out that they were afraid of the right thing. That we effectively can close them out with more and more of their future victims. Starting with us, and then moving on to the rest of the world.
Dear Kathy,
Having worked for quite a few years in physical rehabilitation for head injuries and severe spinal cord injuries, as well as in mental health, and with geri patients, I know about the stress imposed on the caregiver role.
When my step-fatheer was “down” with the cancer, I was the primary caretaker, but I recruited all the help I could get, from paid housekeepers, to hospice aids and nurses, the community fed our entire family for 9 weeks, etc. I know about caregiver “burn out” and it is an easy thing for those of us who have that “caregiver mentality” in any case. It is a good thing, but sometimes we put our selves so far on the BACK BURNER that none of our needs are met except maybe for air and water, and the rest all take a back seat.
I have seen parents and spouses totally undone trying to take care of a parapalegic son or daughter or spouse, and interestingly enough, in my years working with paras and quads, I never once saw a husband that took care of his wife if she was a quad, they, 100% of them, left the woman who would then end up in a nursing home. The wives tended to stay, especially if they were a long-term couple.
Parents of a child that was a quad tended to divorce unless they had enough money to hire some caregivers.
I met my best friend (the one I visited) when her son age 15 was rendered a quad in an accident. She and her husband both worked AND took care of their son without hired help. They were amazing. Plus, they treated him just like an ordinary teenager, not like “oh, my poor baby” and he grew up to be a great guy, who just happens to be in a wheel chair.
Fortunately, he got enough settlement for the accident he can have a hired caregiver part time and is living on his own now and married and doing wonderfully. At his high school graduation when he went to get his diploma in his WC 15,000 people stood up to cheer! He has almost completed college as well and can type 15 words a minute with a mouthstick and is as good with computers as anyone I know.
He goes places and does things, keeps himself healthy physically, which is NOT an easy thing, and in short, lives a good and active life! IT is important though, that the caregiver roles do not become the burden to ONE person when a person because of either physical or mental impairment requires a high level of care.
I think part of the worst part of the caregiver role for a person with mental impairment is the WORRY that comes with it. What happens to him when I am not around? What will happen to him when I am not here any longer? How will he be provided for financially?
When my P-son hit the “teenager from hell” stage but was still lving in my home, Those WORRIES about him “ruining” his life I think were the most hurtful thing I went through. Then when he did get arrested for his first felony as an adult, I sort of thought to myself,, “well, he can still over come this and have a good life” but of course, when he was arrested for the murder, I had a MAJOR MELT DOWN lasting three full months because I knew in my heart his life was beyond redeemable.
After he was convicted and I knew from his attorney that he WAS guilty though he denied, denied denied to me. I “agreed” to play the game of “let’s pretend you are not guilty” in order to keep up a relationship with him by letter and visits.
I’m not sure why I did this, I guess denial is “easier” at some times than to recognize the HORRIBLE TRUTH that my son IS A MONSTER capable of murder.
Eventually, we quit playing the “you didn’t do it” game and went to playing, the “well, you did kill her, but you are really sorry for doing it” game. He was playing the “I’ve found Jeezus and I’m gonna be a good boy when I get out of here, in the meantime, SEND MONEY.”
Sometimes though, I can literally hear in his voice his real feelings about things, though the words would be the opposite. AFter the fact, we told both him and his brother C about the Irrevokable Trust made to protect both mine and my husband’s and my parents’ estates and the farms from either of the boys being a “spend thrift” or their wives getting their clutches into any of it. C was married at that time to the P-DIL and we did not want her running through C’s inheritence or any woman that P-son would marry in the future so we set it up so that they could have the USE of the farm and any income from it, but NOT sell or mortgage it, and in the event they had children it woujld go to the children at their deaths. If no children, then to a charity orphanage near here.
When I told P-son about it during a visit, I could hear in his voice that this was NOT what he wanted to hear. Son C was not nearly as upset when I explained to him that none of us wanted the family farm that had been in the family for so long to go to his step-daughter or to his wife or her family upon his death, but that his wife would have a home here as long as she lived but not control of the land.
Son C has lived here on this farm quite a bit of his adult life, and does care about this land and the community. P-son was here some when he was a child, but most of his life has been lived away from this land and the only attachment he has is what he could get for selling it.
Typical of Ps, though, Son P feels that he is ENTITLED to everything the family has—one way or another—and somehow feels that HE IS THE LEADER of the family, and the most knowledgable of the family members in how it ought to run, that even though he has never lived successfully independently outside of prison in his adult life, in fact, never been out of prison a total of a year in his adult life, that HE IS AN EXPERT on how to manage money, how to manage his life, etc. and others as well. Talk about ARROGANCE! LOL
Somehow I “bought” into the “he is important to my life” even after he had been in prison for upwards of 10 years and I wrote him daily, long letters, telling him everything I was doing and thinking—which of course came to bite me in the butt big time!
I lived in this biG fantasy land of “my son is going to come home and live a good life” and the entire family will be happy he is home.” In spite of the truth that for the last 3 years he did live in our house he was the CENTER OF ATTENTION because he caused HAVOC AND CHAOS.
Even though he had no physical presence in my life, except for occasional visits to him in prison which required 8-16 hour drives, depending on which prison in texas he was housed, he was a BIG mental presence and I was his “caretaker” and I was responsible for seeing to his welfare by 1) sending money to him for extra things 2) making sure he got the medical care he needed and 3) that he was not treated illegally by the administration (and yes, they do violate the prisoners rights)
Even though he was 400-700 miles away, never the less I was a 24/7 caregiver to him, and at times I got burned out on the emotional, financial and time requirements to do that. The emotional investment was the most draining. The always waiting for something bad to happen to him, the worry that someone would hurt or kill him. Prison is NOT a “safe” environment, though if the administration knows that there are family members outside who will raise a stink if something illegal is done to a prisoner, they actually do get better treatment.
Shutting my P-son out of my life and my mind, and not worrying about what happens to him, truly NOT CARING, has released me to live a life of MY OWN. I gave up the fantasy that he was going to “reform” and by doing that, I gave up being his caregiver and all that entails in ENABLING.
When there is mental or physical illness in a person we love that is NOT something that they caused, we tend as family members to feel responsible for “taking care” of their needs, just as we did when they were babies, because they are NOT ABLE to adequately provide for themselves. The largest majority of people also do not have the financial resources necessary to pay other relief caregivers, even if such were available.
Sometimes insitutional care (like a nursing home) is the best available option, yet, never one that most people don’t feel guilty about using. In cases of even severe mental illness, the law says now that unless they are an IMMEDIATE danger to others or themselves they cannot be insitutionalized against their wills. MAny people living on the streets are mentally ill, and, frankly, living on the streets is in my opinion a DANGER to themselves if not too others, but the law doesn’t see it that way. I saw an interview with an official in NY talking about people freezing to death on the streets of NY every winter.
There are always situations in which we could give our energy to benefit others, from volunteering on up, but I think it behooves us to FIRST take care of our own needs, emotionally, physically, and financially, before we spend those things taking care of others and leaving ourselves bereft of the necessities of a healthy life.
There may come a time when my son C or even my egg donor will “see the light” and want a relationship with me, but the relationship will be on my terms within my boundaries, and they will have to prove to me that they understand how hurtful their behaviors have been to me, want to and make make amends and change their behavior and quit lying to me about it all….I really don’t see that happening, but, like The story of Joseph in the Bible, I won’t trust them until I see a decided change in attitude and behavior. We can forgive them (get the bitterness out of our hearts) but that doesn’t mean we TRUST them again not to repeat the past behavior.
Wow, Kathleen…you described EXACTLY what has happened with my ex S. I AM the only woman who figured out what he REALLY was and it took the good help of a therapist and you great people here at LF for me to fully comprehend it all. I, too, have tried to warn the next woman who is now married to him. I’m sure some of you remember Biddy, his new wife. He tells her that he is afraid of me and she thinks he’s silly. And, as I said earlier, he knows I am NOT a violent person. So, I suspect that he fears that someday I will HELP her to fully understand. I’ve already exposed him for what he is and it’s put him in the hot seat with her many times and as she as shared my warnings to her with others, they have agreed that I seem to have him nailed. I no longer contact Biddy but she writes me every day and has shared with me that she is experiencing a tremendous amount of depression and exhaustion due to his overwhelming neediness. I feel that she NOW sees what he is for herself but is afraid to go and afraid to stay. She seems to have some insecurity issues of her own due to her former marriage and now from her experience with my ex S. She’s now been in two marriages with disturbed individuals and the first began when she was 15. She went straight from one husband right to the next with no break for herself in between. I feel that she fears single life and has a difficult time letting go even when she knows she isn’t in a healthy marriage. She’ll come around in her own time…just as I did.
Thanks for the supportive and informative letter, Oxy. It is hard, and I do worry about his future. But we both have hope that with the right diagnosis and treatment, things will be much better for him.
I can’t really talk about this here, because I don’t want to violate his privacy. But I wanted to say something about the stress I’m under, because I know it affects my writing. So if I sound more cranky or opinionated than usual, that’s why.