There comes a time when nurture becomes nature.
This is the time when nurture and nature become inextricable, inseparable.
I suspect nobody knows precisely when this point arrives in the development of a given individual, but the immediate ramification is this: When you are involved specifically with a sociopath, or any exploitative personality, it is imperative that you stop asking how this person became who he is?
Sure, he likely endured—and was shaped by—some form of neglect or abuse growing up, and if this wasn’t obvious in the history, it was still likely there.
But here’s the point: it doesn’t matter. Not one bit.
Instead, you must relinquish your empathy, compassion and curiosity—in short, every emotion that supports your obsession to understand the genesis and evolution of your exploiter’s pathology—and confront the reality that you are dealing with (as I propose) a case of nurture becoming nature, about which there’s not a damned thing, at this point, to be done.
The damage, in other words, was baked into his character a long time ago. There is no ameliorating it now. Not all the love in the world—nothing that you have, or think you have, or thought you had to give him—will dent the petrification of his psychopathology.
His diseased personality disease is immutable, as good as etched in his DNA. Case closed.
And so what you do is this: You run for the hills, just as you’d run from a rabid dog that perhaps once was innocent and gentle. Now the dog is rabid: it no longer matters how it became rabid. And so you run, fast, and you don’t look back, because every second you allow false hope to delay you increases your risk of grievous harm.
You may have loved that dog; maybe loved it before it became rabid, or maybe it was rabid all along and you just didn’t know it. And maybe you even still love that rabid dog, or the persisting fantasy of it as unrabid.
But the dog is rabid, and a rabid dog doesn’t love you, and it was probably rabid going way back and never really loved you as you once imagined, but again”¦it makes no difference.
There are rabid animals, and there are rabid people, and neither loves you.
And so the time for analysis, of him, is up.
To be clear: I appreciate the need to make sense of trauma. But at some point, the analysis of exploiters can assume an obsessive desperation that subverts, rather than supports, the processing of trauma.
I speak here from the position of having worked with many victims of exploitive personalities who are very much like stunned deer caught, and as if suspended indefinitely, in the headlights.
One of the vital tasks is to unstun them.
And sometimes the dogged determination to “make sense” of, to “analyze” the exploitive traumatizer can be a disguised obsession with discovering something in the history (his or yours) that you insist on imagining would have made a difference”¦would have made him different?
We can search this angle interminably. And unless we call off the search, we will.
And it’s a search we’re wise to call off because it can effectively bring us to a standstill, forever.
(My use of “he” in this article was a convenience, not meant to imply that women aren’t capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed. This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Ox Drover
Oh, yes, the old “tears ploy”—psychopathic play book, page 49, paragraph 2.
USE OF TEARS
When confronting the victim who has caught you at a lie or inconsistency, turn on the tears and present yourself as a heart broken victim of someone else’s abuse, or some great heart breaking loss.
Turn on the tears, sob and cry, appear emotionally injured.
This tactic can also be used with great effectiveness when you are in the “you don’t love me if you don’t buy me X” routine.
This is an essential part of the PITY PLOY.
lostingrief
yikes. all the ‘they have no feelings’ talk made me forget all about the agregious manipulation! thanks everyone. really tough night last night. i have to stop watching hip-hop dancers and listening to R&B. makes me miss him every time. damn, i loathe him!
Ox Drover
Dear LIG,
Repeat after me: “They are the LIEs, and the truth is not in them” Recite that 500 times and say 5 five Hail Marys and you will be forgiven for “forgetting”—Yea, it is easy to “forget” sometimes, and MUSIC seems to ahve the ability to touch our hearts and emotions and make us remember the “good feelings” we had when we were with them—no matter how few and far between those good feelings were.
Spirit40
Hi to LIG… reading your post above… for me its called emotional eating, happy, sad, angry… I eat.. not sure I think its the stress hormones also cortisol? yeah I was just telling myself , no scratch that my clothes were telling me that hey we dont have enough room in here somethings gotta give… I wont buy anything new so I need to start walking, yoga etc.. I know what I need to do its just doing it ! thats hard .. I have not touched the mint choclate chip.. last time it was worth 3 lbs… so its only a form of self abuse .. like my procrastination…Good luck! we can do it , we know how its just when we are ready ..
lostingrief
ox: just finished the penance … took me a while to remember the ‘hail mary!’ no music for me for a while. problem: the good times far outweighted the bad. he didn’t show ‘that’ side of himself to me until the last year. but the bad was pretty BAD!
spirit: i won’t buy anything either. whose body IS this anyway? we CAN do it.
TOWANDA~!
Ox Drover
Dear LIG,
“Go ye and sin no more!” LOL Well, you know saying “the good times outweighed the bad” is sort of like saying “Other than that, mrs. Lincoln, HOW WAS THE PLAY?”
You know, it dosen’t take too many “bad” days to ruin a while life time of “good” days when it comes to abuse and that sort of thing.
Dear spirit, maybe we should start a Love Fraud Fat Farm! I’ll join!
Sarasims
Great article…..I’ve known for some time that there was no hope but like that stunned deer, just couldn’t move, couldn’t breath. I know his childhood was horrible, but I just wonder what it was that pushed him to be the way he is.
If I came across a serial killer, I would be terrified and there would be no question as to whether I would even speak to him. But this SP is really not much a frame of mind different and I gave him all of my love. How can we miss that??
hens
Oxy I will drink five bloody marys and repeat after me.
Ox Drover
Dear henry,
My problem is I want 5 Root beer floats! LOL How as your trip out of town?
Picked about a peck of green ter-maters today in anticipation of the frost killing them, found out that goats love ter-mater vines so they got a treat!
Sara, your question about “how can we miss that?” is one I’m not sure we can ever truly answer. How can we love “charlie Manson” The BTK killer, Ted Bundy? How can we love someone who would do horrible things? To others or to us?
I guess the closest we will come is an ADDICTION….they are so “sweet” and good at first, and hook us in.
My egg donor screamed after she was betrayed by my X- DIL and the Trojan Horse psychopath “BUT THEY WERE SO RESPECTFUL TO ME”
I told her, well, what did you expect, that they would say at first? “Look you old witch, give me your money cause I despise you.” LOL Of course “YOU GET MORE BEES WITH HONEY THAN VINEGAR” and the Ps figure this out, you START out nice and then become abusive, NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND! DUH! doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one!
But at some point, I think that love does die—a slow death by strangulation. Once I figured out that I didn’ thave to keep on doing CPR on that “love” and just give it a “death with dignity” it made it a lot easier. NC is stopping the CPR!
You’re doing fine, Sara, just hang on and keep on putting one fooot in front of the other. (((hugs))))
Liane Leedom, M.D.
Great points Steve!
Everyone should also be aware that therapists may try to advocate for a sociopath, encouraging family members to stick by him/her.
They do this because sociopaths do “better” when everyone else picks up after their messes. Better means less contact with criminal justice system, fewer mental health services, better job performance. Better does not mean they become loving contributing team players.