Do psychopaths know what they are? Do they know that they are different from the rest of us? I believe the answer to both of these questions may be yes. As neuropsychiatry makes progress, science offers various thoughts and opinions on the matter. But while medicine is working hard to unlock the mind’s secrets, we may be able to draw valuable discussion from our own experiences.
Since psychopaths are not a particularly introspective group, I am not suggesting that they possess great insight regarding their pathology. However, I believe they do have some level of awareness. They may realize that they do not experience appropriate emotions and that they live their lives and view their worlds with the emotional mute buttons on.
“I figured it out…I know what you are”
When I realized that I had been touched by psychopathy, it took me quite some time to digest all that revelation brought with it. I knew I was not dealing with “normal,” but what was I dealing with?
Behaviors and solutions that would typically work under normal circumstances set us back when dealing with this population. Adjusting to the concept takes time. While I was still learning, I was still saying too much and also allowing the manipulations to bother me. I was in the process of trying to make sense of the nonsense and working to rectify issues that could never be solved. I tried, but trial and error prevailed and sometimes, I got it wrong. With my understanding too fresh to accurately process what was occurring, I allowed myself to become frustrated and exhausted from the underhanded tactics. On one occasion, when I could no longer take it, I emphatically blurted, “I figured it out…I know what you are.”
I am not sure what I expected might occur when I announced that “I knew,” but I was completely unprepared for what came next. The individual had been walking away from me, but then stopped dead in his tracks. He stood still with his back toward me for a moment. Then, turned and advanced toward me. His eyes met mine and I was on the receiving end of a deliberate, piercing stare. The eyes that could double as daggers were poised to intimidate. Glaring and angry, he replied, “I know you did. I know you know.”
What? The investigator in me wanted to continue the conversation very badly. I wanted to know what he knew about himself. I considered the possibility that he may not have heard me correctly. How did he know what I meant? But he did know. Chills quickly replaced my curiosity. I turned away and left. If he knew what he was, all the wrongs, all the evil were, without question, intentional. Pain, suffering, abuse, unhappiness, and shear destruction had been purposely inflicted with full awareness and for or with some degree pleasure.
Interestingly, I never said the word. Sociopath, psychopath, narcissist never crossed my lips. Shortly after this encounter, this individual ramped up the attacks and staunchly advertised his “normality,” while threatening and belittling me. Suddenly, I was “disturbed” and a “PhD,” in an attempt to discredit me and my assertions.
Previously, he merely blamed me for his actions, claiming that the behaviors were the consequences for my “insanity.” But this was different. I uncovered something he never thought I would. First hand, I witnessed the “I’ll get you before you get me” mentality – the smear campaign. Sticks and stones…for now I was armed with understanding.
Gray or color?
What must it be like not to feel genuine emotions or to feel them so completely differently than non-psychopaths? What must it be like to view the surroundings so differently than others? How must it be to know life in black and white, when we see color?
They may have great disdain for us as a result of the warmth in our souls, something they will never know or feel. They want revenge for our existence and throw temper tantrums mirroring those of toddlers if they do not succeed in their destructive and controlling efforts. But even when they do get their ways, they are often insatiable, looking for more. As a result, they can be dangerous to us.
When they claim to feel hurt, pain or other normal emotions we experience, their words may merely mask ulterior motives. They are able to behave ruthlessly without second thoughts, often hiding their agendas behind righteous causes. But the anger, jealousy, and rage that they direct toward us shows through as raw and primal. Knowing they know makes the behaviors easier to understand, but no more acceptable.
They are envious of our genuine connections and abilities to love, even if they laugh at us in their next breaths for being “weak” enough to feel. How would they be able to hold such contempt for us, if they had no awareness of our differences? It must be horrible living half alive. Wait…we already know. It was how we lived before we understood. The beauty is that we can recover.
Yes, it was me, the distance control. Some music from Norway and Ireland for encouragement today:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcCsmvNzneg&feature=related
Prayer
Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light
Hush, lay down your troubled mind
The day has vanished and left us behind
And the wind, whispering soft lullabies
Will soothe, so close your weary eyes
Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light
Sleep, angels will watch over you
And soon beautiful dreams will come true
Can you feel spirits embracing your soul
So dream while secrets of darkness unfold
Snowwhite: If you lack direction in your life someone else will come and control it. YOU are the one who need to take over the charge again.
Ok so right now he has some control, but unhook him. You do not have to live your life by someone else’s nasty hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5z_8qG0QY
My small contribution to this thread comes from my very brief experience with a sociopath from 2008. It lasted for 2-1/2 months and was the most bizarre relationship of my life. It is what brought me here. The guy was so kind a good to me in the beginning and when the no-shows and missed promises of phone calls started happening, I believed his excuse of a brain injury caused by an explosion in Iraq, and the army pretty much dictating his life while he was trying to get a medical discharge. (Though he WAS an Iraqi vet, the disability part of his story turned out to be fraud). In any event, in the beginning, as you can all relate to, I thought he was the most wonderful man on earth just going through a rough time. I usually date men who have it together, so I thought it would be good for me to be patient with this one because I thought he was a keeper. I told him several times that he was a good man. His response was always “No, I’m not.” or “No, really, I’m not.” I thought at the time he was just being humble. In retrospect, this was probably one of the few truthful things he said to me, and it was a tell. I only saw the pathological liar side of him, and this did not become apparent until the day I dumped him. I was lucky in that I never saw the mask slip, never experienced a smear campaign or even any harsh words about me. The “stalking” ended relatively quickly when he saw I wasn’t under his power anymore. So I’m not even convinced he was a full blown sociopath. The pathological lying was enough to send me running.
I also lived with and almost married a man many years ago who turned out to be selfish and disrespectful, eventually cheating on me while we were living together and still being intimate with one another. Though my bad judgment call kept me with him way longer than I should have, there was also a “tell” that I didn’t catch. When we first started dating, he warned me that he was sociopathic or had sociopathic tendencies or something like that. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I found out during the painful discard and thoughout the relationship with some of the very hurtful things he did, behaving at times as if I didn’t exist. I don’t think he was a full-blown sociopath, and this one was not a pathological liar. In fact, he was honest to the point of being blunt. But in retrospect, he had some anti-social tendencies. I think he was trying to warn me because he had some genuine affection for me at least in the first 3 months and throughout our troubled relationship.
I think they know they are different, and I think they know it’s not a good difference (by how society defines “good”). But I don’t think they care except in whether or not they can get what they want.
Hens, and Darsmom, and anyone else who was interested in the imaginary friend/lover motiff.
I kind of take a 180 on this.
Because I literally watched my husband check out, and inhabit Lahhhhhh-laaaaahhhh land, right before my very eyes, when he was obsessing about the girl, I have done some research on narcissists and their fantasies of having “ideal love”.
They can idealize, but they cannot love. They can idealize instantly….that is they can ‘decide you are the one” almost instantaneously”. Their emotions are very shallow, hense the hurry. They are infatuated with the idea that you are what they want. They love your surface….they don’t love you. What ever role they have cast you in, is what they “love” about you. Any effort you make to break out of this role, is a betrayal. It will be met with the dread, D and D.
You will have let them down….you were an illusion…you were not who you pretended to be….it’s opposites day, again.
Narcissists have delusions of grandeir. They really believe that the perfect prop is out there, and it will behave in perfect ways and will fulfill their perfect fantasies for perfect love…..anything short of that is a huge disappointment, and they are left with their narcissistic gaping wounded inner emptiness.
Here’s a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHimj-crMrA
Christine,
I’m sorry that you qualify for membership in our “club” and that you experienced the trauma that the psychopaths dish out.
Quantifying and qualifying such concepts as “empathy” I think is very difficult, sort of like trying to nail jello to a tree. I was amazed when I read his book, The Science of Evil and one thing I took away from it was that there are levels of empathy, empathy is not a “you have it or you don’t” concept.
Another concept I took away was that we can to an extent CONTROL how much empathy we feel or display.
For example, if you are driving to work and you pass a homeless man and keep on driving… how much empathy have you displayed toward his plight? How much have you felt? Of course if we had 100% total empathy we would never accomplish anything because we would give all our food away to the hungry, and open our home to the homeless and go sleep in the street ourselves.
I even recall an episode of I think total lack of empathy on my part, when after I had told her she must leave my farm where she had been staying in a motor home, a woman I firmly believe is a psychopath, stood there alternately crying in self pity and raging at me about how I had used and abused her.
I stood there that day in wonderment at the rapidly spinning and whirling display of the various tactics of a psychopath…the pity ploy, the rage, the treat, and back to the pity ploy…unfolded in rapid succession before my eyes. I realized as it unfolded in almost comic relief that I was not the least bit moved by this woman’s apparently emotional outbursts. I had no sympathy for her and no empathy.
My own feeling of lack of empathy made me wonder if that is how the PSYCHOPATH FEELS at the time we are begging them to stop hurting us, pleading with them to stop hurting us….if that is how they feel all the time. I still don’t know the answer to that, but I know that as I looked at the woman I was UNmoved. Nothing she COULD have done or said would have moved me.
In fact, that episode of “non feeling of empathy” sort of scared me and is one of those “i’ll always remember that feeling” instances.
Here’s another song to illustrate the cognitive dissonance of narcissistic “love”.
The lyrics are mind boggling:
This one goes out to the one I love.
This one goes out to the one I left behind.
A simple prop, to occupy my time.
This one goes out to the one I love.
Fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHimj-crMrA
I was the perfect, “imaginary lover” in a string of perfect imaginary lovers. My x has never loved a real lover.
He has loved props that he imagined were real.
My issues played into this very well. I had very little sence of myself. No boundrys. I had been emotionally left on my own for most of my life….didn’t have a clue who I was.
Perfect.
He could imagine me to be anything he wanted and presto!!! I would certainly give it my all….and I would by buy into the belief that I was supposed to be exactly what he wanted me to be, if not, I was lacking.
Of course, if I’m honest, I have to admit that my love for him was also imaginary. I loved the man who I thought he was. I did not love him…..I didn’t even know him. I loved his shell…what he presented to me as ideal.
Just something to ponder.
I’ve been thinking about some specific events that happened between me and my last spath. I remember I was crying, I was devastated over him lying to me again and no words go to him. I tried to explain to him how it had hurt me, that I couldn’t trust him. He ignored me, continued to play on his online computer games. I needed to talk about it with him, but he ignored me completely( he did this all the time, if I spoke he would turn on loud music or something something everytime, even during normal everyday conversations). I felt like nothing I ever said reached his ears, It was like banging my head to a brick wall. I got so frustrated that I sat down on the kitchen floor, crying my eyes out, I couldn’t take it anymore. Then he suddenly walks in the room, stares at me for a moment, suddenly starts crying and said I was so difficult to be with, HE couldn’t take it any more. Then he dissapears into the bathroom, sits down on the floor IN THE SHOWER and sobbed. I thought to my self WTF? It all ended up with my going after him to comfort him on his feeling, but my own got no attention. He had lied to me, about another girl and breaking a deal we had again if I remember correctly.
What was his strategy on this one? Was it pure mirroring to reflect the responsibility away from himself and blame it all on me? Or was it simple mirroring, to hook me, make me seem crazy or what? A pitty play to keep me in the relationship?
Sometimes when I think back on how our relationship ended I wonder if it was really him that left or in the end truly was me. I know he had found someone else, tried to make me leave so he wouldn’t have to take responsibility on that one eiter, but when I think of the text msg he tried to get me to argue with him, trying to hurt me as much as possible (he went from sweet: I hope you are doing fine, are you hurting?I’ll do my best to pay you back- to Who the h*ll do you think you are,you are so angry as usual, I will not give back your money text, was a lure back strategy? I didn’t give him anything on those texts, I was calm and collected, got someone else to write them for me so I wouldn’t jump back in his lap begging for forgivness.
Forgiveness part because one week prior I refused to take a job he had decided on- his mother as my boss, (he hadn’t discussed it with me, he just decided with his mom first)he had decided where we were going to live- I refused because I loved my apartment, but if we we’re going to move it would have been somewhere else in the country so I could go to the university and study (he work in a huge family firm and could have been moved), and that his job and career was the most important thing and should be in my life as well, and my life would have to wait for the next three yrs because of it. At the same time, after saying I got a job to you, you will take it he also said, I’m thinking about breaking up with you, in one moment and in the next let’s get married. I blew up in his face about it, but felt very guilty afterwards because he had only tried to “help” me. (Now I wonder what would have happened if I had been working with his mom:S) What right had he to decide over my life? We argued about it for three days and two days after that he he sexually assulted me. The day after: relationship over. He cried his eyes out infront of me, said he loved me but couldn’t take it anymore, I was too complicated. He left, sent me a text saying he hadn’t decided yet to do. I asked him if we were over? he wasn’t sure. He’d come by later and pick up his belongings. I said once more, since you are getting your stuff, it means we are over? I don’t know he replied, but I’m bringing all the guys with me. I thought to my self, h*ll no if they are going to take another step inside my house. I calmly answered, don’t bother I’ll drive it all back for you. So I did. Never saw him again, but the text as mentioned above came in. Mostly threats about not all his stuff we’re not there, he would send the cops on me if he didn’t get them. I said, give me back my money, he threatened with sending his job and uncle on me, they would send me bills I would have to pay ( I was the one who had used my credit card on stuff to his job, which his job was going to pay back to ME!) In the end I gave in, he won the argument, but when I gave in I never responded on the other texts, I never once took the iniative to send one text straight after I drove home his stuff. I was completely silent. He thought he had completely control over me didn’t he? And when I became silent he knew had started to pull his strings to hard and to soon for me to be totally submissive? Three weeks prior to all of this I told him that friends of mine thought he was a spath and refused to have anything to do with me as long as I was with him. I had agreed with my friend. Maybe he knew he was busted and started the I’ll get you before you get me campain?
What are your thoughts on this if I may ask?
Christine,
There are so many “disorders” of the brain….and soo many of them are geneticly linked, besides the environmental component, so many genes that can be turned off or on depending on the environment.
Here is a study report that I recently read that might interest you.
September 9, 2012 A new study strengthens the case for the rs1344706 variant in the gene ZNF804A having a role in schizophrenia.
This research builds on previous studies by showing a correlation between this specific risk allele and cortical white matter volume and symptom severity in individuals with schizophrenia.
Thomas H. Wassink, MD, and colleagues from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, studied 335 individuals with schizophrenia and 198 healthy volunteers, for whom they had extensive phenotypic information, including brain structure volume, cognitive assessments, and symptom severity.
They found that the rs1344706 variant was associated with a specific aspect of brain structure both in the patients with schizophrenia and in the control participants; within the schizophrenia group, it was associated with the severity of psychotic symptoms.
The study is published in the September issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“Puzzling” Finding
On the brain structure side, this variant was associated significantly and specifically with increased frontal lobe white matter volume in both groups.
“At first, this was a little surprising because we typically think of smaller brain structure volumes being worse,” Dr. Wassink explained in an interview on the journal’s Web site. “So when we have a risk variant that is associated with larger volumes that’s a bit puzzling.”
However, he noted that the same observation emerged in a previous study in a much smaller sample of patients with schizophrenia, and there are some disorders in which larger brains are associated with more severe symptoms or just with disease autism, for example.
Knowing this, Dr. Wassink said, “the other finding in the study that the risk allele was associated with more severe symptoms made sense. If there is going to be an association, that is what we would predict that the risk allele is associated with more severe symptoms, in this case, psychotic symptoms.”
Other studies, Dr. Wassink said, have suggested that patients with schizophrenia who had increased white matter volumes were more prone down the road to develop more severe psychotic symptoms.
He emphasized that the current findings do not yet have direct implications for clinicians and patients.
“For example, you aren’t going to have patients genotyped for this particular polymorphism as part of the clinical workup for schizophrenia. It does have an effect on certain manifestations of the disease in certain patients, but the magnitude of the effect is modest as most of these kinds of things are and we don’t yet know if it does have direct clinical relevance. We have not yet tested whether it affects longitudinal course of disease or if it has an impact on treatment response.”
Unexpected Effect
Reached for comment, Gary Donohoe, PhD, of the Neuropsychiatric Genetics Research Group at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, said it is “an interesting article from a respected group of authors.”
“The strength of this study,” he told Medscape Medical News, “is the large number of patients included. As such, the results build on earlier studies from our group and others in looking at the effects of this variant on brain volume and symptom severity.”
“The data suggest, as some previous studies have, that the ‘A’ risk allele is associated not with reduced brain volume but increased brain volume. This effect, while small, is unexpected for a psychosis risk variant,” Dr. Donohue said, echoing Dr. Wassink’s comments.
“This may be because ZNF804A is associated with a psychosis subtype in which brain volume and cognition are not as deleteriously affected as is seen in some other subtypes,” said Dr. Donohoe.
“This hypothesis, although speculative, is consistent with the evidence that this variant is also associated with bipolar disorder, in which cognitive deficits and reduced brain volume are less of a feature.”
The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors and Dr. Donohoe have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2012;69:885-892. Abstract
Sunflower
Your question:
What was his strategy on this one? Was it pure mirroring to reflect the responsibility away from himself and blame it all on me? Or was it simple mirroring, to hook me, make me seem crazy or what? A pitty play to keep me in the relationship?
My answer:
Yes, it was a pity ploy and a rage in order to shift responsibility to you for what HE had done.
Just as the woman I mentioned in my above post about me standing there after I told her she must leave. She tried to hook me in to feel sorry for her and let her stay, she tried to blame me for being “mean to her” (which I knew I had NOT been) and then swiftly changed back to seeking pity again.
As she SWIFTLY changed between pity seeking, attempts to hook guilt me for not doing more for her, and then to rage and back again,, like a “whirling dervish” it was so rapid my head spun! LOL
Because, though, I was NOT emotionally involved with this woman, and I had kept an emotional distance from her, she was not able to “hook” into my need to be a “people pleaser” or a “helper” and I felt no guilt, I looked at the situation RATIONALLY not emotionally. It did give me a look into myself though, that I withheld empathy for her “plight” and viewed her as the predator, mooch, parasite that she was/is.
She had presented herself to me as a “victim” of a psychopath, in fact the victim of several psychopaths and I did feel enough empathy for her supposed plight to give her a safe place to park her little motor home so she could get a job, find a stable life, etc. but she refused to even seek employment, and when I realized that she was trying to manipulate me, that her whole presentation as a “victim” was in itself a lie, I sent her on her way. Sure, she was indeed “down and out” but it was because she had failed in her manipulations of others, not because she was “abused.”
It is unfortunate that many times people who present themselves as legitimate “victims” are instead down and out psychopaths whose lives of mooching and manipulation have led them to poverty.
This kind of person gives the term “victim” a bad name. It makes people who see them view us as the same kind of loser manipulators. It is a shame, but I have found that I am much more willing to look at how a person BEHAVES rather than how they talk…we as true victims must help ourselves, we must save ourselves, we can’t depend on someone else to do it for us. People can give us the OPPORTUNITY to help ourselves, but we have to do it FOR ourselves. I can’t save you, you can’t save me. We can support and encourage each other, but the bottom line is that each of us must stand on our own two feet.
Psychopaths who are “losers” frequently smear the people that have escaped their clutches as the abuser.