All of us who have been conned by sociopaths ask ourselves, why did I fall for it? How could I have been so stupid to trust him (or her)?
Well, it turns out that there’s a chemical reason—oxytocin. According to an article on Psychologytoday.com:
Social interactions engage a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown—even with strangers.
Read How to run a con, on Psychologytoday.com.
Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader.
Yea, Kim, you got that right, sometimes people know the words, but just can’t get the music right!
And I thought I sang badly. In fact, once at an event with my living history group to determine the WORST singer in camp (another guy had held the title for years!) I TIED WITH HIM for the “honor” —you should have heard us “singing” (and I swear to you we were SOBER!@.......) we sounded worse than Fat and Hairy in the mornings, braying their lungs out, at least they have some MELODY with their braying!
OR…..pretend to know the words and sing em wrong…..swearing they are singing the song right……
La, lalalalalalalalalalallllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
oooppss…..or was that
Chirp chirp chchchchiiiiiirrrppp!
Or they might be color blind but still know when to stop or go at a traffic light, just because they know the order of the lights, where as, I don’t even know the order of the lights, cause I don’t have to…I’m not color blind….does that make any sense?
Puts fingers in ears, and sings along with Oxy and EB, “LALALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
I think that part of what is helpful here on LF is that when describing the crazy making behavior and bizarre lies of the P, other here know exactly what you are talking about…I find that when I try to explain the insidious smoke and mirrors effect to people who have not experienced it, they have trouble understanding or believing both the behavior and its effect…Perhaps in dealing with trust I should just post here when something makes me uncomfortable and ask for a reality check-is it normal human fallibility or is it P behavior? like a back up alarm system…
That cracked me up….the colorblind comment.
After my strokes….I lost (well, so much)….but one thing that continually bugged me was I lost the ability to distinguish left and right….
So, I’d be dropping off kids and they’d say….my house is on the left….or turn rt. here…
I’d have to guess…..until I admitted it to my kids….I don’t know left from right anymore….it was pretty harsh for me…..
So….after a laugh and too many rt. turns as I should have gone left…..The kids showed me to put up both hands in front of my face and make the Loser sign….the hand that showed an L facing me was my LEFT hand…..
So for a bit they’d say turn left….and up went the hands….until I was trained to know which is which….
🙂
Dear EB!
Hey, that is great! I didn’t have any strokes to blame things on, just the PTSD, but one day I was on the way to one of my closest friend’s houses, and I FORGOT HOW TO GET THERE! It was really bad, but the most discomboobilating part was admitting to my self I didn’t know how. Your kids are great and your solution was great!
It is really odd what happens when our brains don’t work right for some reason! But some of mine h ave come back and for the rest that are still “DUH!” I just laugh at myself and say CRS!
Dear Philomela,
THAT’S A GREAT IDEA! Many of us do the same things, we talk about P stuff and even stupid stuff here on LF cause the people here GET IT! Just like ErinB and her “can’t remember left from right!” others would not get it, but WE DO cause we’ve had stranger things than that because of lapses in our memoiries or PTSD or just plain CRS! But WE GET it and we are okay with you not being perfect, cause WE AREN’T PERFECT. LOL Come here and ask questions, read and learn, and VENT IN ALL CAPP LETTERS IF YOU NEED TO! (((hugs))))
This reminded me of a friend I had a couple of years ago, for a couple of years before that. “Laura” placed an ad to start a women’s group, and a really great group of women in their 40s showed up. I was particularly impressed with Laura, who had an interesting career and seemed to have great insight into people. Laura even called me up one night to chat, and said she had some reservations about some of the people in the group, describing how they had acted irrationally to her. Well, I said, Craigslist doesn’t always turn up the highest class of people, even if they seem OK in the beginning.
Again and again, people disappointed Laura. Until finally, another girl in the group, whom we’ll call “Eliza,” got fed up with this. Laura called me as a pre-emptive strike against Eliza but said it was OK if I maintained a separate friendship with Eliza. This seemed to me a reasonable accommodation.
Then I heard from Eliza, who told a different story. Laura’s protest that Eliza was unreasonable, demanding, and had ruined Laura’s 50th birthday party was balanced by Eliza’s claim that Laura had started complaining to her about everyone else in the party, after we had all left. In fact, Laura said she hated my politics so was reconsidering our friendship — recall that later she had called me and, regardless of my politics, sought to enlist me against Eliza!
Eliza told me this was typical of Laura — to keep complaining about people, to create empathy for herself at the expense of others. Of course we listened! Of course we were angry at people who took advantage of Laura. Of course! No bastards, us. We were there for Laura.
The only problem is, it finally got around to me. And to Eliza.
And I noticed something else — this “short relationships” quality — Laura said she had been living in this city for two years when we met her. Yet where were her other, older friends? We did meet one or two people, but these seemed to be political acquaintances or coworkers. (For instance, one was a young man who was leaving on a trip to Afghanistan to teach journalism there; Laura threw him a party at a restaurant.)
It seems Laura starts groups, gradually gets rid of people, and then starts anew. All claiming that she is the injured party.
Eliza and I are now good friends, and while Eliza is far from a perfect person (as am I), I see no reason to fault her as a friend.
The “bastard” story reminds me that people with empathy can be taken advantage of quite easily by giving over their trust.