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.)
Yes, life can sure throw you some curve balls.
One minute, you think you’ve got the “Best In Show” at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
The next, your dog is running around, foaming at the mouth, biting everyone who comes within striking distance.
And, you are left with no other choice but to go No Contact on the dog you once considered to be a “prize”.
You sure as heck are not going to go up to the rabid dog, and start asking questions about its “puppyhood”.
~I’m running with the rabid dog analogy here.
Hopefully, you get the picture. I think the picture is NO CONTACT.
This is a very good article on letting go. Tough to do. I married two P’s and their early years were very much alike…….both had cruel, demanding, abusive fathers and doting mothers. In all this I have some understanding tho and it’s this; it’s up to the father to lead [also by example] these boys into manhood and when he fails to do that either by abuse or weakness [or absence] and the boy’s mother dotes on him…he seems to be stuck in a limbo of never growing up. Add that to genetics and a choice to remain stuck and I have my P’s. This is my understanding and beyond that I cannot go…and have had to face this….It’s NOT my job to fix everything and everyone- contrary to what I was raised to think. I was raised with pressure from a confused and troubled brother to think I was responsible to ‘keep the peace’ from the time I was little. So…I stepped into the same role as an adult for these males. Broken wing syndrome is not who I am any longer. Some things are broken and it’s not my job to fix them….I have accepted this fact and I am finally free. Ahhhhh, does it feel good!!!!
Rosa,
I just wanted to mention a book that a counselor borrowed me to read.
It does not represent your situation nor mine but some of the material within the book is very helpful and I think it might be even more helpful in your situation because your niece is so young. And you might see signs as she grows that you might counter act.
She gave it to me to read because it does explain what happens to children of trama and abuse.
The book title is: When a stranger calls you mom.
It is written for foster parents. Who foster (or adopt) children from tramatic enviornment. The author is a doctor and adoptive parent. She really zeros in on the childs behaviors and damaged child within.
Much of what I read has been very helpful to gain understanding of alot of things.
Witsend:
Thank you!
I just found it online.
I will get that book.
Rosa,
The more I read the more I think you will gain some very helpful information.
I wish I could read parts of it online to you….
Don’t worry about it, Witsend.
I’m getting that book.
I was gone a few days last weekend and since my return things had been pretty low key. I have been trying to remain VERY low key since the police incident. And just kind of in a “waiting” mode. Waiting until that 17th B-day.
The difference since my return after being gone for 2 days though is that my son also was pretty low key. Until yesterday…..He was suspended from school for not giving his i-pod to the asst. principal. This initself is not the issue. It was only a matter of time. He has “almost” been suspended a few times and has just been “walking” that fine line for awile.
The issue is of course is what comes out of his mouth not the actual suspension. And his distorted thinking. If he had given the i-pod to his teacher, (who promised to return it after class) he would have never been sent to the office. Once the principal gets involved a PARENT has to go to the school to get the i-pod returned. He could have avoided both getting sent to the office and getting suspended…..However HE doesn’t SEE it that way.
He came home ranting and raving how they can’t take his personal property away from him….He showed them. How dare they even try.
I allowed him to rant and rave and at some point asked him how he might have avoided all this? How HIS choices got him into this to begin with. JUST TRYING to point out the obvious.
1) shouldn’t bring i-pod to school. 2) if bring i-pod to school you are RISKING having it taken away because it is against the rules. 3) teacher asked for it and was willing to give it back after class, HIS choice to decline. 4) asst. principal gave him last chace of giving it up before facing suspension.
All of this was completely foreign to him. (as usual) That he did have CHOICES. But lead him into another rant…..And I don’t often get this insite. He was talking about how he himself was going to live a rule free life and how he was actually going to be the one who changes the rules in the world. And sounding so frikking delusional BUT CONVINCED that he is really something and is going to change the world.
His lack of being grounded in ANY situation, his lack of reality is really getting to be pretty scarey. The more insight I get from him of actually how he percieves things and how he thinks…….It is mind boggling.
I was in the living room with him a few hours after this and he was trying to push my buttons. I couldn’t help but think that I just do not know the depths of his anger. I felt like I was in the presence of a stranger.
Thank you, friends…Donna, NewLife, Cat, Amber, Matt, JustAboutHealed…others I may have missed…thanks so much for your appreciative words and your own insights. i know i sound like a broken record saying it, but it really does inspire me hugely to learn, through your generous feedback, that what I’m writing speaks to you.
Best!
Steve
Steve,
Excellent article. Analogys seem to really put a different light on things to really help us understand what we can’t see in our own “personal” situation.
I would like to know if you have have done any personal counseling with parents of a disordered child, such as myself.
If so I certainly would love to see an article that might be helpful in my own personal situation.
It might also bring to this board other parents that are struggling with this situation and even bring back some of the old posters that have posted in the past, and what has happened since they posted last.
Dear witsend,
Yes, our sons became “strangers” and they are pretty doggone strange in the way they SEE things differently than we do. It is almost like my color blind husband didn’t see the same world I did…and they seem to be RULE and LOGIC blind, to say nothing about how IMPORTANT they feel, so egocentric that they single handedly will CHANGE the world, RULE the world and are ALL POWERFUL.
I realize that all teenagers are pretty egocentric (Goodness knows I was one!) but their sense of entitlement goes so BEYOND what a “normal” teenager does that it is out of the universe of any kind of logic. At least normal teenagers do to soem extent accept that there are consequences.
With my P son there was no “stick” that scared him and no “carrot” that motivated him. It was such a helpless feeling when I was trying to find either a carrot or a stick that he cared about. If you held out a carrot that you knew he wanted, he would immediately devalue it and NOT WANT it, and if you held out a stick, oh, well, he wasn’t scared of it.
If no carrot and no stick works—unless you have a gun and are prepared to pull the trigger, there is nothing that can stop them except arrest and incarceration and even then, they thrive in a prison environment, like a psychopathic PhD program provided on a government scholarship! Frustrating as hell!