“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.
Re: telling secrets – i did this TWICE – told the ‘big’ one. the last one, I said, you are on your own with this one’. All the lies were about child abuse and incest. welcome to the game!
“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”
I don’t know that assuming everyone thinks the same way as you do is empathy. I always though of empathy more as reading others’ emotions and intentions. As someone with a past autism dx(and current ocd, but that is neither here nor there), I went through a few steps learning to interact with others:
1)(age 11 and under) Get treated poorly. Blame the other person without learning how to socialize or stand up for myself. Assume that if I want something, everyone else wants(or at least should want) it as well. Also assume that others can read my mind and know what I want without my having to communicate it. Quite painful and useless for everyone involved. I was also being victimized through my mom’s relationship with a P during the last few years of this time. General depression/helplessness.
2)(12-13) Look for behavioral signs of whether people are interested in you. Basically, why would they want to be nice to you? They won’t, unless they want something from you. I first learned to gain positive attention by offering something they wanted – copying homework for example. If someone acts nice without asking for something in return, be extremely suspicious. Started to stand up for myself, but had poorly controlled anger outbursts(threatening my brother with a steak knife over a minor argument, getting into mild physical fights at school, for example). I would feel very remorseful after the fact but little/nothing at the time. But, it got me further than allowing others to hurt me did – If I fought back, they stopped wanting to hurt me.
(14-17) Find other “weird” people who I can associate with without having to worry too much about their intentions. I still don’t get much from facial expressions, but I learn, through trial and error, how most people respond to a given situation(for example, people will be loyal if you fight for them, angry if you gossip about them, etc.). Better emotional control.
(18+) About standing up for myself mostly. Realizing that some family members maybe are not good social role models because they lack friends, even more than me, and may be a bit on the spectrum themselves. Develop and trust an inner gut feeling. To this day, most of my friends have some kind of dx(mostly add, ld, depression, and bipolar). Use the internet to run background checks on people when I’m bored and have some privacy.
I still don’t read faces that well. Do I have empathy? I can get by, hold down a job, etc. I do think that at this point in life I’m less vulnerable than most to P’s because a) I know about them by dealing with one very young and b) I tend to compensate for my difficulty in reading people’s facial expressions by observing their behavior. I don’t attempt to determine sincerity by nonverbal body language, but rather by considering whether the person has been honest in the past and by whether their statement is plausible/can be corroborated.
Dear Sweet cynic,
Empathy is different from “sympathy” I think in that if you are sympathetic to someone who has a loss, say the loss of a dear pet,, you feel FOR them, you know they feel bad and you are sorry that they feel badly. Empathy though I think is more KNOWING how it feels to lose something/someone very valuable and you can pretty well approximate their grief at losing their very beloved pet. You almost take on their sadness and sorrow.
You also, if you are empathetic, think that a person who ACTS sad really is sad. Psychopaths are from fair to excellent at ACTING sad or any other emotion like “loving” but they do not FEEL that emotion, they simply have learned how people who “love” act. Some Ps are better actors than others, but none of them can FEEL connectedness and love so they may say words that indicate “love” but then BEHIND your back say those same words to others, because their whole lives are really “stage plays” not authentic lives. They just don’t “get it” emotionally.
Reading faciall expressions can be helpful in determining what truth is in their words, or it may not be if the person is a pretty good liar. But putting together a combination of behavior (like saying “I love you” but then hitting you) shows that SOMETHING doesn’t mesh together—words vs actions.
WE get clues from everything in our environment and those clues will form a picture if we put them together and look honestly at the picture they form.
Past behavior and honesty in general are GOOD indicators of future behavior.
Learning these things about someone may be easy, or they may try to hide past patterns of behavior (lie about having been in jail etc) but my personal “dead line” is lying and dishonesty of ANY kind to ANY one that I know about and any past history of arrests, or ANY lie. By keeping myself to close friends who are NOT dishonest in any way, NOT liars or law breakers, not substance abusers, etc. I weed out most if not all of the TOXIC people from my life.
Interesting,
So, let’s say of 2 people: One has never been burglarized and the other has. Both would sympathize, but only one would empathize, with burglary victims? The other would have to do their best to approximate how it feels?
Also – Would a P’s empathy stage be approximately what I described in my 11 and under stage, only with the understanding that others do not read their minds and with a vastly superior ability to lie and con people?
this is a really good analogy of the P triangle and how it works. I can relate to it so much. I dont know if it has been posted here before but good reading.
http://www.sociopathicstyle.com/tools/triangle.htm
Thanks knowledgeempowers. I’ve read plenty, but supplements are always good…
Its only one page, so not long reading, just takes a few minutes and does explain a lot about how they work. I found this so long ago and knew this was happening, but still played the P’s sick game for so long. A year ago a friend told me he was a P and that is when I started researching, still took me a year to finally give up on it.
I think this topic also addresses “blame” of any kind for the spath’s “condition.” Whether it is genetic, or learned behavior, the spath’s choices are just that: their choices.
As far as choosing empathetic source targets, think about it for just a minute…pity is one of the strongest lures that the spath employs. Why pity? An empathetic source target actually feels the emotions of others, rather that simply acknowledging those emotions through the nod of sympathy. To cause another person to FEEL pity provides the spath with what they construe as a bona fide excuse for their choices.
Spath: My mom and dad went through a nasty divorce. The new step-parent didn’t understand me and tried to turn me against my parent. They forced me to get a job, and then kicked me out when they got tired of me. It was horrible.
Source target: You poor thing, that must have been terrible.
Spath: It was terrible and I’m so angry at my parent for ruining our family! My other parent never would have done that to me.
Source target: Well, that’s okay. I can be your family since you don’t have one of your own.
Spath: Really? Will you help me?
Source target: Of course, I’ll do whatever I can because I love you and care about you.
What this scenario says is that the empathetic source target has no reason to disbelieve what the spath is claiming. Because the source target literally FEELS the pain that the spath is describing, they endeavor to help ease that pain by trusting the spath and the door swings wide for the spath to wander into the source target’s emotional world and begin picking and choosing specific triggers to obtain whatever it is that they want, be it money, sex, power, control, etc.
There is nobody to “blame.” Bad divorce, dysfunctional childhood, bullying, etc., may be a factor in how a human being develops, but they cannot be used as excuses to deliberately lie, cheat, steal, and damage. Nearly every human being can point to some aspect of their childhood and define it as dysfunctional, but the larger majority of these people do not develop into spaths, BY CHOICE. Spath behavior is intentional, deliberate, and cunning. There is no remorse, no accountability, no conscience, and no way to force an spath to develop “normal” human attributes associated with cause/effect/consequences of personal choices. They merely point to their childhoods, ex-spouse, etc,. and say, “See that? That’s why I’m like I am!” And the empathetic source target buys it.
Just my two cents.
Buttons:
GREAT POST!!! SPot on!!
The spath always ‘asked’ for my help….this is the suckin…..
I kept cards from flowers etc….they always said things like….
To my pain in my ass~
Please help me get better……
NOw…tellme….what woman (aside from me at the time) would think that endearing and get drawn in?
MOI!
Oh….he was being cute.
BARF!!!
Again Buttons…..Great post….it was my velcro to the spath….
I”LL HELP, I”LL HELP!!!
I FELT his pain…..
I’m very cautious of FEELING others rather than offering the simple nod these days…..
Once I FEEL…..I turn it off.
NOD,NOD,NOD……