“Would somebody please tell me why he did this?” is one of the most common questions victims of sociopaths have. Three weeks ago I introduced the idea that the Inner Triangle can help each of us understand the individual sociopath that infected our lives. The Inner Triangle is formed by three qualities that develop in concert during childhood. These three qualities are Ability to Love, Impulse Control and Moral Reasoning. Last week I discussed the concept of Ability to Love. Lack of Ability to Love defines those with sociopathy. No less important however, is the lack of Impulse Control, also universally found in people with this disorder.
What is Impulse Control?
I’m sure many of you noticed that sociopaths have a lot of energy. Their minds come up with many plans and ideas. This energy would be a good thing if the sociopath could direct it toward positive goals. Sadly, however, the abundant energy sociopaths have leads them to pursue goals that damage others. The reason is poor impulse control. Sociopaths are unable to control the many impulses that come from their basic drives and emotions.
This poor impulse control causes sociopaths to be vulnerable to addictions of all kinds. Once these addictions are established, they are particularly resistant to treatment. Many have noted that the impulses sociopaths have are especially destructive. For example, sociopaths are often sexually driven. They may also be greedily driven to obtain possessions. However, the impulse to have power over others is the central defining impulse of sociopathy. Sociopaths expend most of their energy trying to gratify impulses related to having power and influence over others.
The desire for power
The desire for power has been very difficult for researchers to study. The reason is that unlike our other desires, there is no feeling associated with it. Think about it—when you want food, you are hungry. When you want affection, you are lonely. When you want entertainment, you are bored. When you want sex you’re”¦. The point is, how do you know when you want power? Researchers have established that this motive is completely beyond our conscious awareness!
Victims high in empathy do not recognize sociopaths
One of the main reasons why victims high in empathy do not recognize sociopaths is that the desire for power is non-conscious. People high in empathy make use of their knowledge of their own emotions to interpret the emotions of others. Can you see then why people who rely on empathy in interactions with others completely miss sociopaths? An empathetic person correctly observes that sociopaths enjoy the company of others. He/she then self-references his/her own feelings of affection with regard to enjoying other people. The victim is fooled into interpreting power motivations as affection-related motivations.
Power motivated people are high in testosterone
The power motive is directly related to testosterone levels in both men and women. This is likely also responsible for the hypersexual behavior seen in sociopaths. The relationship between testosterone and the desire for power is so strong that testosterone predicts dominance behavior better than psychological tests.
Many studies have shown that sociopaths do have higher testosterone levels both during adolescence and adulthood. This higher testosterone of male sociopaths may also make them more attractive to women. Women unconsciously sense male characteristics that indicate high testosterone and are attracted to these qualities.
Medications that “help” sociopaths
Medications that reduce overall energy and block driven behavior reduce problematic behavior in sociopaths. The medications that do this are called antipsychotic medications. They are also used to treat schizophrenia. The most commonly used anti-psychotic for adolescent and adult sociopaths is Risperdal. In the past, we used Thorazine for this purpose.
You may also wonder if castration works. Eliminating testosterone through either surgical or chemical castration does help some. However, removing testosterone does not restore Ability to Love and so does not really treat the underlying disorder.
Why me?
It is my hope that providing you with knowledge about this disorder will help you answer for yourself the “Why me?” question and will help you stop the self blame. We all can benefit from considering our own Ability to Love, Impulse Control and Moral Reasoning. The best thing for victims is to come out of this experience wiser and better.
Stolen Innocence,
you said,
“Oh but when does my heart believe what my head knows. Any answers”is there a time frame for this stuff?? When do I really start to believe he is a bad guy”not that I just wasn’t “the one”?”
I’ve asked this question so many times, but my therapist gave me the most substantial answer (one that my analytical mind could accept). She said, “It takes time for your brain chemistry to change for you to start un-loving someone.” She told me that, yes, our synapses develop certain patterns over time, & the patterns formed include those that ascertain our love for others (or foods or addictions or environments), & that, yes, it is a chemical process—-just like withdrawing from drugs.
I needed to hear this very analytical explanation. I hope it helps you, too. I wish I could just wave a wand over both of us & all of the women who’ve gone thru this suffering, but dangit, it’s just not possible. I wish I could be there to hug you while you cry & blame yourself & despise yourself (if you’re like me) for not being able to get out of bed & get back to yourself, but that’s not possible either, but I can send you virtual ((((hugs)))). Try to find peace.
Bella-I just about fell over when reading your post. My story is so similiar. My ex did so much of that same thing….running to our “friends” telling them how worried he was about me…after raging at me, yelling, setting me up and then me telling him to let me out of the car (at that point I was sick of his behavior but still didn’t know what was happening)…he lets me out and then drives in circles around me like a crazy man (this is a physician in a small town!! I wondered if anyone saw this…)he goes directly to our friends and then sets me up as crazy or sick or using drugs. I was NOT). The gaslighting…I am reading a book by that name. Very interesting. It has helped me realize how much I bought into his thinking about me. Instead of trusting my own truth and myself, knowing I was good, I believed what he set me up to think about myself, that there was something wrong with me. And how insidious it was. It happened slowly over time….like the story of the frog…if you pop him in a pan of boiling water he will try to jump out but if you put him in water and then turn up the heat, it slowly boils and he has no idea what is happening. That was my life with my ex spath.
I, too, am trying to figure out how to get out of this stuck place I am in. I am depressed off and on. Some days I feel empowered, some days I am depressed and hopeless. I have been on this site abouto a month and it has been extremely helpful. I listen and take advice. And try to heal and build my self esteem back up to pre xpath days. What happened to me? It baffles me. And on top of him, I also now have my brother spath and another guy I broke up with 2 years ago after realizing he was not who he said he was….and they are involved with my ex against me. I bet they feel all great talking together about me, making up lies,h urting me desperately with my daugther and father….and it makes me so angry. How people can do these things. I would NEVER do this to anyone. It is unconsciounable to me and to all of us here who have been through it. We don’t think like that. Our empathy has made us targets. So what I am doing is trying to learn from the past….although I wonder what lessons I am supposed to be learning (besides the ones about myself) and trying to stand up and fight but I am also exhausted. And afraid. I cannot believe a judge believed him completely. She didn’t even want to know me. And what I have done with my life. I look at my brothers life and this guy I broke up with. they have done NOTHING in their lives, both are ex addicts who aren’t in recovery. My brother hasn’t worked for 25 years, he was dishonorably discharged from the navy. I have a career, adopted my D from China, wokred h ard in my life and yet I am built up as the crazy one? It is so hard to take.
Bella, you will get a lot of support here. Just keep talking and processing. They say it will get better and i will trust in that. I have had glimpses of that since being a part of this blog. I just have to hold onto that and keep doing what I can. I have days I want to hole up and hide. I know myself. It is out of fear. But I can’t allow fear to take over. God wants us to stand up to this. I was looking just last night for scripture related to spaths and it was amazing to sign on to LF today and see it written above! What does THAT tell us??!!
WhyMe-thanks for posting that mantra…I hadn’t heard or read it and it does help….I need to realize that this is another part of my journey, one that will make me stronger and better. Much like my recovery from vicodin….I don’t regret that any more…I can help others with my deep understanding of addiction and it has now given me a purpose if that makes sense. I can only think that it will be the same for this….when I get to that healed place. It seems impossible right now for sure! But I have to hang onto what I know to be true. We WILL be stronger, better for this.
Hang on Chinagirl,
One day at a time. One step at a time. There will be those up and down days and that’s to be expected!
Keep that connection going with your daughter and taking care of yourself. It takes time to heal and we must give ourselves that time. Wrap yourself in our support and don’t beat yourself up! You’ve already got a connection going with your daughter and that will grow daily! (((hugs))))
OxD and Fearless…thanks for the above posts about my walk in memory of my mom who died in Feb of breast cancer.
I hadn’t been back on LF until today….but wanted to thank you so much for the support. I am so grateful. Someone, maybe Fearless, said that we have the ability to trust here on LF so that means quite a lot! i didn’t quite realize that and appreciate that insight. it means I have hope! Or, rather there is hope for me yet! LOL. I have felt I will never trust again. I almost hate men (sorry for the men here). Whenever i talk to a guy right now I am so cynical. My heart is hateful and I won’t let anyone in. That is ok, I know. I am absolutely not looking to date. For sure. But I don’t want to be cynical. I know I will trust myself again eventually but right now I think all men are going to want something from me. I know that my part in this is allowing it to happen. I get that. And I am learning about that part of me now. Why I allowed it, why I didn’t listen to my red flags…and there were plenty. I am beginning to be honest to myself about myself. My denial is lessening. but wow, I am ANGRY! going through the Kubler Ross stages! What comes after anger?! I hope it is acceptance and peace! LOL.
One more thing I was thinking about….I just realized when writing above that I am in the anger stage…and for me anger is scary. I learned early on in my childhood that anger was “bad” and I disowned anger was being bad. well, for me, anger went underground. In my early recovery I found out how much anger I had and I was SHOCKED! I would have said that I wasn’t an angry person before that. So, I did some work on it then…and have done a little more work on it over time. But I just realized by how I have been feeling the past few days…depressed and hopeless…that part of those feelings are because the anger is coming up. Dealing with spath and coming to an understanding of what my life has been the past 12 years is triggering a lot of these negative emotions. 12 years with this creep. 1/4 of my life! I am furious. I wrote a list of who I have resentments towards since I left my x five years ago….there are 50 people on it! My god….that’s a lot of freakin’ anger! I have some work to do obviously.
Being sort of “born to please” has really hurt me in my lifetime. I have been trying to understand it. How I got there, was it my mom’s fault? Was I just born that way? was it my brother’s fault, my cousin who molested me? WHOSE FAULT IS IT? It doesn’t really matter. I now see it and know it about myself and now it is my responsibility to change it. But for some reason I can’t quite acknowledge I need to know why. where it came from. Maybe I think it will help me let it go in a more “real” way. I don’t know. but thansk for eltting me vent this anger. I need to otherwise I’ll stay depressed.
KatyDid-I did go up and see your post to me. Thank you. I like the prayer about myself…and my D. I will try that first. Praying for x spath just doesn’t ring true in any way!
wow, I sure have posted a lot today!
Hi, Chinagirl, I sure can identify with the anger. I wasn’t allowed to express anger in my childhood either, and I’m a real people pleaser, too. Co-dependant through and through. I dislike conflict and try to avoid it, but eventually I blow up from carrying around the resentment. I’m trying hard to change that.
It’s totally Okay to be righteously angry about what has been done to you…in fact if you don’t give yourself permission to be angry, you’ll never move beyond it. Yes, I think the next stage is acceptance, but you can expect to cycle through the stages, back and forth for a while….eventually we get there.
I think I stayed in the angry stage longer than any of the other stages, except for denial. I stayed for 7 years, only because I was lying to myself to keep from having to make a change. But once I got out for good, I think I went straight to anger…and I was seething with it for a really long time. It’s a process. It takes it’s own time. To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…
(and God don’t wear no watch. LOL)
I think that most women in this culture are trained to be people pleasers from day 1…I think it is a real challenge to un-learn it, but it’s worth it!
Dear China girl,
The Kubler-ross stages go back and forth, up and down, left and right, and back again. So whatever stage you are in today (this hour) will change and that is to be expected.
I’m with Kimmie, I wasn’t allowed to be angry with anyone in my family because that meant I didn’t “forgive’ them their faults…I was the bad one. Now I know anger is okay, but I don’t want to live that way forever.
We will get through it, one step at a time. Express your anger, and your righteous anger is good.
Even Jesus was ANGRY! Anger is NOT a sin. He said “be ye angry and sin not”—so we can be angry and still not act badly because of it. He also said “let not the sun go down upon your WRATH”—and wrath is anger, but it is TERRIBLE, VENGEFUL, HATEFUL SEETHING ANGER not just “justifiable anger” at a wrong. It is anger that we CULTIVATE.
Feeling anger I don’t think is “cultivating” anger—-anger pushes us to ACTION!
Keep on coming back to LF China girl, and learn, vent, refresh yourself! Lett’er all hang out! We’re here for you! (((hugs))) and Prayers
Chinagirl…Thank you…..when you said ” I would never do this” I have said those same words so many times. I remember waking up the day after all this happened, alone in my bed and it felt like I was part of a Steven Spielberg movie! Everyone convinced your crazy,looking at the most horrendous teen porn on his computer, and not able to tell what is REALLY going on, alone and abandoned, and so sad! It was beginning to “dawn” on me that my HUSBAND did this TO me, and was setting it up for months!! How can someone you loved be so heartless and cruel.
My pain now is FOR MY CHILDREN… one year ago I was a newlywed….with 4 children and 2 Grand-daughters….SO CLOSE! We would “hang out” every Sunday at Mom’s house,that’s me 🙂 Throughout the week they would drop in and see what I was cooking. Yep! I would see to everything, no matter how tired I was!
…..Fast-forward to now, and my house is SILENT. It is like I died, and I no longer exist! Like I am 80 years old! I am only 49 and feel so old!!! So alone!! I text or call and they do not respond. These are CHRISTIAN children…and one is a Pastor’s wife!@.......!!!! We were a steller family in the community,Missionaries, Pastors wife…until my first husband was caught in a double-life. We walked a 5 year process that he ended. After 28 years I was divorced. But there had been so many lies, deceptions and abuse in that marriage.( i now see he was a sociopath too…but different, he never went public with anything about me,he still “loved me” in his way.)
So, I went into the future thinking it was “all new”. My eyes were open, I was well versed on abuse and watched for it. I asked many questions about my new soon-to be husband to those who knew him. So many people had so much good to say about him! he walked through Church like a king, and everyone hugging him and saying “You have a great guy here!”. …He had a wonderful name and “appeared” to have a great family….and treated his mom good. We married and on the drive home from the honeymoon my stomach was in knots….something was terribly wrong!! OOh NO! This can’t be happening, but what is it? I couldn’t put my finger on it but then the panic attacks started. then I experienced his rage like I didn’t know what hit me…. then then words and actions not matching up. Road rage, criticisms, disrespect…oh and he was NEVER wrong! He denied everything, and then began to tell me how broken I was, lived in another reality….I would catch him talking behind my back to my kids but I never knew about what. And here’s a strange one: He was very sexual but after we were married and newlyweds I felt so rejected in that area within a few months of our wedding!! I was sooo confused. I was losing myself, and I didn’t know to what?? I thought I was having “hot flashes” but they weren’t. They were my body reacting to the stress I was dealing with. Everyday it felt like a clamp on my stomach, and I would have to take deep breaths…..I should have listened and run for the hills!! Now, In one year I have no church, Pastor, Daughter, Grand-daughter, neighbor, that believes me. He was “working them”…. and I would catch a glimpse of it early on but hey I didn’t even know what a sociopath was or what I really saw happening!! I just KNEW something was wrong!!!!!!!
I was reading another post on this blog site about those that do not make it through it…that take their own life or are only existing….and I am ashamed to say I have thought of it! I toss-and-turn all night. Waking up in a sweat several times a night. Waking up in a fright, then crying for my children! They were my heart! I had no Mom or Dad, they were taken from me at 5 years old….. now on this side of raising my family I have no children??!! They were the “joy set before me to endure my cross” of raising them basically alone, and without any example. Now, Alone again!!!!!?? THEY have rejected me????? Do you know what I would have done for ONE DAY with my MOM???? It feels like I have been just surviving for so long….my whole life has been about caring for others. That is why I stayed in my first marriage for 28 years!!! I KNEW he couldn’t take care of himself and thought it was my “call” and obligatin as a Christian wife to lay my life down completely for him….and others. I was on the mission field in Chile while being abused in my own marriage!!!
Why do they hate me so? The same day my sociopath husband drugged me and I made some call that I have NO REMEBRANCE of making….. HE ALSO TOLD MY KIDS OF SOMETHING I ENTRUSTED TO ONLY HIM ABOUT MY LIFE…..THE ONE THING THAT I ONLY TOLD MY HUSBAND, THE ONE THING THAT HE KNEW WOULD GET THEM TO HATE ME. All WITHIN 24 HOURS, while he told everyone I was Losing it and Borderline etc…… it is such a nightmare!!!!!
I’m sorry…… I have cried day and night for the Lord to just take me home. There is nothing left here…… I am SO TIRED of thinking 100’s of things a day of how I can get my girls back. I am just sooooo tired.
Do I try to find ONE PERSON here to be an advocate for me? Someone with “flesh on” to talk to??
I tried 2 counselors….. both of them I ended up educating them on Sociopath/psychopaths. They just wanted to counsel me for relationship problems. I need someone who “gets it”!!! A real flesh and blood person who will meet with me….. but I can’t find one here.
It is sooo unbelievable that the person you loved wanted to destroy you…and now denies it all and messes with your mind that they LOVE YOU and don’t want you to divorce them, that “you will hear from eveyone how much I love you after I am gone”. And that “Satan is doing this because he doesn’t want us together Baby!” 🙁