“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.
bellaangel,
I love your name! Thanks for the scriptures, Psalms 18 and 143, being sure to read them today. I have some errands to run. I feel better today compared to yesterday. Right now, many of us are wrapped in sorrow, trying to get to higher ground. Take care.
kim frederick,
Your post is helpful to read, stepping back and letting God literally have ALL our concerns – the trick is DOING IT.
Hey all
I took a few days to try and process some of this and read many of the articles and comments here. I still struggle with accepting that he could REALLY be one of “them.”
I see everything that fits”I see how his actions in the end line up”I see the lies now”but I still want to believe in his heart”I still want to believe that he didn’t do it on purpose”that he isn’t that evil”just messed up. Actually I don’t want to believe that”I’d rather believe he is a MONSTER”that makes me feel fortunate to have gotten away”.but my heart is still ruling my head. My heart still wants to believ he is capable of the love he showed..and that hurts the most because if he is capable of it then what was so wrong with me that he chose to walk away from the great thing that I thought we had”the amazing love he said that we shared.
So here are a few questions”what about my story”about what I’ve told you makes you believe that he falls into one of the categories?? I guess I’m trying to get out of the denial stage”I want to hear from others that aren’t biased that what he did isn’t just poor choices..he didn’t “just cheat—that there is more to it and its not just me making everything “worst case scenario.”
Can someone tell me more about gaslighting. I’ve looked it up but am wondering if they can do that without intentionally trying to drive you crazy. I don’t think he wanted to make me crazy in the “put her in a padded cell” way”but can they use gaslighting just to defer the blame”to make me question my part/my motives. I really don’t think he hates like that. Is it possible that he could use and manipulate to further himself”without any intentional/calculated plan to hurt. In otherwords”maybe it wasnt I am going to do these things to hurt you but I am gaoing to do what I need to do for me”not even thinking that other people are being torn apart in the process”I guess I see him as completely unaware of others and how he affects them v sitting around intentionally planning out how to hurt them. Or”.am I still just projecting my values and feeling onto him??
Let me give an example of something he did that makes me think he actually has true feelings/ability to think of someone else. When I found out he had given me HPV (yes I know I am blessed that is all it was) I told him so that he would be aware of it. He told “her” that same day. Why would he have told her that if he was totally unable to think of anyone else..I can see no benefit to him by sharing that. But”it seems like a very upstanding and honorable thing to do”.but not something that makes him look good”It makes me think he has to really feel something for her”and if he can really feel for her then why didn’t he really feel for me???
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh”.soooooooooo much running through my head”.so much I still want to understand and figure out!!! Sooooo trying not to have a pity party!!!!
Katy- funny”he told me almost the same thing”.best thing that ever happened to him”can’t believe he hurt someone so beautiful and pure as me”it wasnt me it was him that was messed up”.I was his best friend and he will remember that until his dying day”.too bad he didn’t remember that when he was shackin up in vegas with her!!!
I hate that I still question so much”yall probably all want to shake me a little so that I will just accept it and get on with it. But I can’t help but to want to figure it out”figure him out!!
Hope you all have a blessed Sunday!!!
Hey Stolen Innocence!!been there, done that got the T shirt!Its nearly IMPOSSIBLE for us NONS[or non spaths} to get our heads a round the things they do, and likeyou, Oxy, and all of us have been Cleopatra, ie,The Queen of the Nile.”{denial, get it?!!}They ARE SO GOOD at what they do, such CONSUMMATE actors, but, trust me, when they find a better catch, they will discar d us like a used kneenex.!!Its always,always, all about THEM, never us.They line us up, bait the hook, wait fo us to bite it,{using good bait that disguises that nasty sharp hook!} then hey presto! they reel us in. Or they will keep us dangling on the line and give it a twitch from time to time, just to make sure we havent got away. They CANNOT really feel or empathise, they have no empathy, no consciense, no real compassion,they are expert liers,they feed us a good line,they are GOOD at what they do,very good ACTORS, UNTIL they have no further use for us for whatever reason, ie, they think they can get better money, power, sex, etc. somewhere else from someone else , then the DDDC begins.{Deny, drop, devalue and discard!}Then the exact same game play is used on the next unsuspecting victim.
Its all about POWER, sex, money, betrayal, lust,they get HIGH on all this!They lov e it!Its all a gam e to them!!
You will NEVER understand them,NEVER get any closure from them,NEVER get an apology from them,{unless they feel they can milk us some more!!Dont even try!I tried for years and years to get ONE apology from my spath daughter,wont ever happen. Our only power and hope lies in total NC, NO CONTACT, its very hard, like withdrawing from a drug,I imagine, but our ONLY hope and salvation. Take our power BACK. The Lord Buddha said,”Never give a way your power, its very hard to ge t it back again.”.”
They can be very convincing as actors, but believe me,its all a con.They can switch it off in a blink of an eye. Underneath, they are cold, hard, ruthless, pitiless.
Good Luck!! {{HUGS!!}} Mama gem.XXXMy 2 daughters were EXPERT at Gaslighting, and I didnt even know what it WAS or what they were doing till last June when I found Love fraud! Hallelujah!!and TOWANDA!!They ALMOST succeeded in making me believe I was crazy. gaslighting is taken from the old black and white Movie of that name starring Ingrid bergman and Charles Boyer. Her evil husband was determined to drive her crazy, so he turned the gas lights on the wall lower and lower each evening,and convinced her she was going blind/and or crazy. It wasnt till an old friend showed up, turned up th gaslights, and said”Why are you sitting in the half darK?that she realised hed been trying to make out she was mad and deranged. Thats why we use the term “Gaslighting”, or sometimes,”Word salad” for things they {the spaths} say to us that put our head in a spin as they dont make any sense.They can turn thingsa round,ie, suppose the spath is having an affair, and you find out. he will turn this around to try to make you believe it was YOUR fault,{too frumpy, dowdy, boring, sexless, ie, YOU made him do it!} Not his fault at all! hes off the hook! But, your still on i t!
Hope all this makes sense!.Love, Gem.Xx
Dear Stolen_innocence,
Your question about the gaslighting. It can be EITHER deliberate to make you crazy, or it can be to try to change reality so that you will believe what they are saying, which is many times so OBVIOUSLY A LIE….so it can be either way.
It is normal for you to question if you are wrong and maybe he does/can love you. The problem is that the WORDS are NOT= to the ACTIONS.
You are trying to make 2+2=5 and no matter how you do it, whether it is 1+3=5, or 3+1=5 or 2+2=5 it NEVER COMES OUT RIGHT! It can’t come out right, no matter how you jiggle the numbers.
The compulsive need that we (all) seem to have to make it “make sense” in terms that WE can understand is pretty normal and to be expected.
WE WANT the ” answer” to be FIVE, but we only have FOUR things to “add.”
Trying to understand WHY they do what they do is difficult until we realize THEY DO NOT THINK LIKE WE DO. THEY ARE NOT MOTIVATED LIKE WE ARE, therefore, THEY ARE NOT ON THE SAME PLAYING FIELD WE ARE.
Why would a cat play with a mouse before it kills it?
Why would a cow bird put its egg in another bird’s nest? Why would the baby cow bird push all the other bird’s hatchlings out of the nest to die.
Why would a buzzard land where a cow was giving birth and as she lay there struggling to give birth, peck the eyes out of the baby calf as it was being born while the mother cow was defenseless to stop the bird?
Why does a pack of wolves pick out the injured fawn to attack?
Why did Hitler hate the Jewish people with such a passion?
Why would ordinary people in Germany during WWII become guards at the prison camps and do the things they did?
Why did Bernie Madoff steal all those people’s money and not care?
Why do some people rape children?
Why is life not fair?
Why are psychopaths without functional empathy or conscience?
Why did I allow a psychopath to abuse me over and over?
None of us can really totally UNDERSTAND THE ANSWERS to all those questions. We can say WORDS that define what the answer is but do we really truly UNDERSTAND/FEEL THAT ANSWER? Not 100%—because we would never do any of those things, we couldn’t even imagine doing those things for any reason, and it is like that with a human predator the psychopath. They are predators. They take advantage of the weak or something in a weakened condition. They hate for the sake of hating, or for control. But those are just WORDS. It is the best we can do.
But we can protect ourselves and heal our wounds even if we don’t truly understand the WHYS of why they did what they did.
If the fawn gets away from the wolves, he doesn’t have to understand the wolves in order to heal. If the cow gives birth before the buzzards kill her calf, she doesn’t have to understand why the buzzard does what it does.
Sometimes the “psychopathic” cow bird baby is raised in our nest, and takes its toll on our family, our lives and our other children, but we don’t have to understand it completely. We just do the best we can with the knowledge we have.
NO CONTACT with the toxic predatory person is the safest way to heal and recover. This has been repeatedly proven over and over as the best protection.
It is only when we are away from the TOXIC CLOUD of their words playing on our emotions can we start to see through the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) to see the truth. They are a PREDATOR. How much more do we need to know? Like all predators they camo themselves to hide and make us think they are something else. But now that we know what they are, trying to deny that they are what they are doesn’t save us, it only keeps us in DANGER! God bless. (((Hugs))))
Dear Stolen Innocence,
I have struggled with this question myself. I truly believe in all parts of our relationshit the love, the gaslighting, the ups and the downs he was intent on doing these things: making himself look good, be in the right, and not have to work too hard in the process.
I love OxDrovers point because it is the only thing that makes sense in this shituation, “THEY DO NOT THINK LIKE WE DO. THEY ARE NOT MOTIVATED LIKE WE ARE, therefore, THEY ARE NOT ON THE SAME PLAYING FIELD WE ARE.”
Xpath PRETENDED to have the same goals and dreams as me but when he was handed it on a platter, he didn’t follow through. I can see now that to him I served a purpose to make him look a certain way: like a typical good guy, a successful homeowner, a three figure income, a father. I meant NOTHING to him. That became obvious when I was sick and there was ZERO empathy from him; whereas, when he stubbed a toe I’d have to drop everything because he was “sick.” When I tried everything I knew to help him, help us, it only got so much worse. I can’t really know if this was his plan from the start. I don’t think I want to know that just yet. I know what I know now and that is enough for me to look forward.
Stolen Innocence, He cheated on you. You deserve better than that xpath or no. He put you at risk. Did you ever think he told her so he could blame it on you? They are persistent manipulators. I know this is hard, but consider yourself lucky for getting out when you did with all that you have intact: your health, your intellect, and your hope for a better relationship. Best, FEARLESS!
Dear Innocence,
Keep in mind too that condoms (even if he used one!) are not 100% protection for STDS, he put your LIFE AND YOUR HEALTH AT RISK so he could have extra “sex”–without any concern for himself much less for YOU! Many people find out only too late that they have HIV or other STDs that they got from the lover they trusted.
Count your blessings!!!! (((Hugs))))
http://abcnews.go.com/2020
Friday night on 20/20. Story about a spath preying on military men. Check it out.
Stolen Innocence:
He told “her” about the HPV to scare the chit out of her. He was probably done with her and on to the next. So sorry what has happened to you. Mine encouraged me to get stoned with him knowing full well I had spent the majority of my life in religious communities and had never done that. Then when I was stoned had unprotected sex with me. I was STOOPID (as OXY would say) but not anymore. Read Martha Stout’s book “Sociopaths Next Door”. Wish I knew about it before the spath but I can only say better late than never. I am now praying everyday that I don’t end up with an STD that can ruin my life (some can’t go away with a pill).
I really, really hurt for you because it is so HARD to give up the illusion of the spath partner. I like the Oxy’s analogy here:
“If the fawn gets away from the wolves, he doesn’t have to understand the wolves in order to heal. If the cow gives birth before the buzzards kill her calf, she doesn’t have to understand why the buzzard does what it does”.
That whole post of hers is spot on as usual!! Listen to her. The guy you love CANNOT ever love another human no matter how young, beautiful, accomplished, rich etc. except to manipulate them for their own purpose. It is so sad to realize that the one we care for is not able to reciprocate EVER. IF they show they “care” beware-it is an act. Watch this 20/20 clip. It is Sociopath 101 on film. God Bless you and ((((HUGS))))).
Why you? Because (in part) by the letting go of “the hurt”, you are letting go of ALL the hurt within you. The hurt that you’ve held onto. The wounds that “they” did nothing but pour salt into and occasionally rub the salt in for good measure. That’s why it’s hard to let go. We are not only letting go of them. We are letting go of all the hurts from long ago.
Somehow I felt that “he” held the key to undoing all of the hurt. I thought I could undo his hurts by loving him, no matter what. I thought he could undo my hurt, by loving me. But my loving him was not enough to heal his hurts and he was so debilitated by his hurts to even KNOW how to love me at all.
And so now, like a witnessing a dam that is simply too pummeled to hold all the water back any longer, that is left with NO choice but to break and let ALL of the water (meaning: hurt) pour out. So the water pours out and it’s so overwhelming we don’t even know what to do, or if we’ll survive the massive flood. Then the water subsides and we take stock of the state of the destruction and set our thinking to restoring it all. How much will it cost? How much time will it take? Can I ever put it back to how it was before? Can make it better than it was before? Do I have the resources? Will anyone help me? Can I do this?
Right now I’m still in shock that the dam broke and I’m still watching the water powerfully gush out and I keep thinking that the waterline simply CANNOT get any higher and that SURELY soon it will subside.
But I know it will, so I am just hanging onto a tree. Because now that I know that I’m higher than the waterline can possibly get, I know I’m safe. But it was touch and go there for a while. The water sure came perilously close to my feet and shook my tree with unbelievable force. It’s amazing that I held on.
Peace Friends.
Adamsrib,
WOW!!! 5 parts!!! This woman was something else, had 9 kids by 9 men and gave them all away!
And she presents herself as a VICTIM?????
I can’t watch the videos on my internet connection and haven’t seen those 20/20 episodes, will have to see what I can find in print on the internet, and then watch for those 20/20 episodes! MY gosh, that woman is EVIL!!!! Poor guys! But she is a perfect example of a psychopath! thanks for the links.
DEar Callista,
Your analogy of the flood is so true! We can’t believe how high the water will rise!
Taking your analogy a bit further, sometimes when we are in this flood, we see an ALLIGATOR float by us and we let go of the tree and grab for the ALLIGATOR (alligator=another relationship with an even worse abuser!) So we must be careful in our pain and fear that we don’t “jump from the frying pan into the fire!”
Until we are SAFE and secure and “pretty well healed” we don’t need to seek out another relationship and think it will FIX US OR SAVE US because in the shape we are in, I think most, if not all, alligators look like life boats!