Sociopathy (Psychopathy)

7/25/2008 Current victim/survivor:

I can't agree enough with the author below. My former spouse was so sweet and kind and loving to me the first year or so...then all changed, he controlled every aspect, shut me out of his work life, spoke his own language, told me what where when to do things...We butted heads over a lot of issues for about 4 more years, I caught him in lie after lie about his work schedule/coworkers etc while he was out of town/country for weeks and months on end. He took advantage of my depression when I failed to conceive our child and when our dog had to be put to sleep. He emotionally mindf***ed me till I literally beat my head against the wall and wanted to die many times over. I reached out to my parents for help and support once and he cut me off all marital funds and credit. I had to come crawling home on his terms. That lasted about a year, and he then threatened to kill me when I exposed his infidelity and secret life. He shut all the money down again, and broke the restraining order to try to come back in the house to reason with me!!! The final order didn't stick, I lost to have the law protect me, and I paid huge for a lawyer. I left with what I could take and my animals, established my own apartment and thus began a very long and now psycho pathological divorce process with him. He found out each time I had a phone, cable, cell phone, PO box, new employer, new boyfriend, medical claims....he stalked the hell out of me for over 2 years, some of it I caught, some was not able to be proven. There is little that the women's crisis centers can do other than evacuate you out during a crisis, you can't get legal representation unless you are dirt poor and can prove it, and the law doesn't allow you to bring in past history if it has already been used in a trial and he was found innocent of the charge. Thus, trying to show that these abusers are historical in their pattern of abuse even while they don't live with you it next to impossible. Remember a psychopath will do ANYTHING to lie even if it involves a semi normal person to help him, but remember, he usually has equally deviant support people, so they are all crooked and evil. Consider it like breaking free from a mafia type mentality, it's consuming, scary, very difficult, tricky, unsafe and dangerous daily/hourly/minute to minute. You have to enlist a support system, if you can find one (not many want to get involved, even if they WERE your friends). Friends and family are sometimes just as stalked and threatened as you are by this same person. This process will wear you down to the bone as you will fatigue being so worried and consumed by fear, you eventually will crumble to bits and start to lose ground. I wish I had the formula to help the next victim out of similar situation, but there is no formula. It's a unique and unpredictable as a tornado, and hard to get out of the way most times and the casualty is usually the victim of abuse. It will take you many times to "recover", if you can, from the torture you endured at the will of the psychopath that will forever claim he loves you. DON'T turn back, DON't believe he loves you still....it's a trick to continue to control you in what ever way he can. It's dangerous and not worth it. Move on with your life. There is a process with the Social Security and victims services that you can petition to change name and SS#, but keep documents and records of the abuse, get letters from friends, lawyers, doctors as you go. Keep them in a safe and remote place. If you petition for a new name and SS#, you MUST do it at the same time, or it won't work, and he will find you any time by reverse look up. Place verbal security passwords on all your accounts so he can't access records. DON'T use your mother's maiden name, HE KNOWS IT WELL!!! That is the typical security password most use to identify you, just use your father's mother's maiden name or your first pet name, just make sure you remember it, keep a log book and hide it. Get new email accounts, and warn people to not respond to email from the old account, remember he knows all those email addresses they are on the home computer, right?

Most of all, you need to take care of yourself, mentally and physically. You probably have had to go back to work more than full time to self support. Do not deny your fear, it's real to you. You know the psychopath better than anyone, go with your gut instinct when it smells like trouble. Make sure you have a chain of communication in place with friend or family, check in every couple days. Read stuff on the internet about stalking/harassment/domestic violence, it will empower you to know more resources. Store the most important and valuable items away from your new home, those are the things you will worry about if he breaks in and steals stuff, it will emotionally cripple you into doing stupid reactions towards him. That's the way he can push your hot button and win. Prevent those things from happening, don't let him see that he has made you react. They thrive on hurting you and seeing you destroyed.

Good luck to all, from a STRONG LADY SURVIVOR!!!

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Personal experience advice (first, congratulations for recognizing the sociopath in him and for taking action -- IT'S VERY DIFFICULT AND OFTEN SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE): You must move away; staying where you are and changing your phone number every time he manages to get ahold of the new one won't work and he will know where you are to hassle/hurt/kill you (I MEAN IT). Go someplace he can't get at you (I went to my mother's gated, guarded retirement community. Even though he knew it and her number, I knew he couldn't get past the gate). Don't trust anyone, especially mutual friends; you must have a girlfriend he tried to keep you away from but knows what's up. Trust no one. Women's crisis centers are a joke; restraining orders are a joke. YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER EVEN IF YOU SIMPLY CAN'T IMAGINE THAT. Women die every day at the hands of sociopathic, abusive men and if I hadn't listened to one of the two girlfriends I managed to not let him isolate me from, I'd be one of them. GET OUT OF THERE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO CAMP OUT. It's not a matter of getting him out of your life -- you can't control him, only yourself -- it's a matter of you getting away from him because he won't leave you alone. Ever. After you leave, you can never have contact with again. Ever. To All Survivors! Please get a copy of "Be the Pack Leader" by Cesar Millan ("The Dog Whisperer") even if you don't have a dog: better than any therapist/support group. THIS IS FEMALE-CENTERED EMPOWERMENT! Sorry to yell, but IT'S THAT IMPORTANT.

A relationship with a sociopath will GUARANTEE serious problems in you life. I'm not talking about minor stuff, I'm talking about life altering, negative stuff that can possibly end your life. Sociopaths are unpredictable and generally dangerous. RUN! Move away and change your name if necessary.

ALSO:

Sociopaths are the way they are because, from birth onward, the brain of a sociopath stores learning information in a random, chaotic way instead of in the usual designated places in the cerebral cortex. Part of this involves lack of crucial neurotransmitters, but as of yet no one knows whether this lack is caused BY the brain abnormality or is the cause OF it. It's probably the former.

Since their information -- including emotional information -- is scattered all over both brain hemispheres, it takes too long for the brain to retrieve and process information, and the entire process of socialization becomes so ponderous that ultimately it fails. (See the book "Without Conscience" by Robert Hare, PhD.)

Since the entire cerebral cortex of a sociopath is almost never at a normal level of alertness (their waking brain waves resemble the waves of a normal person in a light sleep, alpha waves), this may be the crucial deficiency that cripples the developing child's ability to develop many aspects of the human mind. As the child grows, some of the basic mental and emotional skills the rest of the world takes so for granted never develop, and crucial among these is the thing called conscience. That one never develops at all.

Some people may envy the apparent calm of a sociopath, but their existence is misery. They cannot connect with other human beings, and as babies they are so uncomfortable being held that they fight to wriggle free of all but the most basic necessary contact. Their heartbroken parents often blame themselves or the child, never knowing that what is really wrong with the child is in his or her brain.

Under the almost somnolent calm sociopaths project is a constant sense of restlessness and unfulfillment that is nothing other than the basic need all people have to receive stimulation and support from others. But a sociopath has no way of receiving this even if it's offered. The endless frustration of this, and a discomfort that they are utterly incapable of articulating or even really understanding, is the source of much of their chronic anger and aggression.

Plus, since they grow up in constant conflict with authority, they are most often bitterly angry and sometimes violent adults, brittle and combatative under a thin veneer of charm. Offered friendship, they appear to respond, but quickly discover that they can get nothing from it; they see the obvious pleasure of other people in such contact with each other, and they often seek to "even it up" by stealing what they can -- material goods, or even human lives. They are constantly told how "bad" they are, and by adulthood, most of them believe it. And behave accordingly.

Sociopaths rarely feel true happiness. If they do, it is usually in the condition that some kind of intervention -- such as one of the small number of medications made for other conditions that may also help somewhat with theirs -- has taken place, and it will be fleeting. For all their frantic racing around, they are really very dead inside, and this is tragic beyond description. Imagine spending your entire life trying to get your brain to wake up! And failing. Thousands of times.

There are stories of people diagnosed as sociopaths who did improve to some degree, with the most ceaseless and diligent help. But since the vast majority of this huge body of people (there are more than three hundred million sociopaths on Earth) cannot get that kind of attention, they turn to abusing those they envy, and often to crime. It is certainly vengeance: "If I can't have any of this, why should you?" This is the real reason sociopaths lash out at strong and kind people. No matter what they say, they know that inside, they are always empty and damaged beyond repair.

Only in neuroscience is there hope for these incomplete people. The key lies in awakening the brain, which is risky because sociopaths are much more prone to seizures than the rest of the population, and that -- an uncontrolled blast of electrical discharge spreading through the brain and causing violent convulsions -- is likely to be the first response from brain pathways that, after years or even decades of silence, are suddenly flooded with impulses. But if the devices of neurosurgeons can be tweaked to avoid this shock, and all else related to this idea is workable, it's feasible that small electronic devices planted in the brain (these already exist, but are not yet being used for mental illness) could open up a closed connection.

That leaves us with the problem of whether a lifetime of scattered information can ever be set into order. Probably the best that could be hoped for would be a kind of retraining -- like what is now done with stroke survivors and head injury patients -- that would be both intensive and compensatory.

One of the things that would be necessary would be to try to socialize the person whose congenital birth defect made such a thing completely impossible before. Whatever intervention is used, be it drugs or computer chips or what have you, it would probably -- I'd say certainly -- be excruciating for the patient at first. With no knowledge of how to cope with the emotions the rest of the world has been dealing with all their lives, the recovering sociopath would be rendered as vulnerable as a baby. Which makes sense, because some of the most basic aspects of the human mind would be developing from the primordial stasis in which they had remained since birth!

A person thus treated would never be fully normal, but the human brain is amazing in the way it adapts and continues to develop all through life. And given the utterly joyless and meaningless existence a sociopath leads, any improvement is better than none.

The matter of missing neurotransmitters in a sociopath is, of course, another problem. Would "waking up" the cerebral cortex eventually stimulate production of these? Or would they have to be synthesized? Only time will tell. *** Hi, I have been through a relationship with a sociopath. I can tell you from experience it is a painful ride if you plan to help them or otherwise speaking-change them. One that requires hope, faith, preserverance and love. There are mainy risks involved to be a relationship with sociopaths as they are easily triggered by paranoia and other factors that can influence their behaviour. It is very difficult to help them but not impossible. As charming they may seem sociopaths will manipulate you, play mind games and hurt you in unimaginable ways. You will become a victim. A victim of turmoil that they can gain control over. For anyone who has the heart to put themself in vulnerability the best way to get close to them without getting hurt is to intellectually outsmart them. To be as unpredictable as possible and must not be easily taken advantage of. I can tell you they're not evil people. They are consumed by hate. They wish to eradicate "weak" humans, anyone who are considered less of importance in society. They also have high ambitions to pursue power to "rule" the world. Nevertheless, they're dangerous and are capable of anything. They need people who can withstand the harsh natures of them. People like me who are wiling to get hurt and yet still learn to get back up. As little remorse they appear to be, they do have a part of them that wants help. BUT I WARN YOU, the relationship can become a cycle. You would most likely find yourself confused. Please take this advice. I am a fifteen year old girl. Young as I am, I have learnt a lot. And from what i have told you, I hope you do too.

Only time will tell.

And some people have said that the only way to persuade a sociopath or psychopath to seek help is by threatening him/her with DEATH!!

One way -- or another...

And the main reason sociopaths don't usually seek helpfrom their fellow human beings is that they can'ttrust, rather than that they like being as they are. Plus, they canoften sense exactly what sort of a response any call for help on theirpart is most likely to elicit from professionals and lay folk alike.Sociopaths are not breezing along in paradise. It isn't all a game.It's a truly miserable existence. And it can be made better. It may notbe "curable" yet, but it most certainly isn't as hopeless as so manypeople say. There is therefore nothing to be gained and much to be lostwhen therapists and lay folk try to ostracize sociopaths from the humanrace entirely! Sensationalism and superstition will only preventprogress.

This was written on another question on the same essential topic as this one, by a self-confessed sociopath who was officially diagnosed (other than me!) --

• Sociopaths, though born that way, are people too. To avoid anentire group of people is absurd. That's like saying, "Since thesepeople have dark skin, everyone should completely avert themselves fromthem." I am a moderate sociopath, and though part of me doesn't want tochange, another does. Many times it is really entertaining to see howstupid people can be, especially when they're so gullible as to believeevery word that mellifluously flows from my lips. Yes, I am parasitic,but even so, there are some people I would like to stop hurting. Ican't find any websites that can provide a way to help my sociopathy.Maybe people like you should stop your self-victimisation and starttrying to actually help people like me! I knew I was a sociopath beforethe age of ten but have only recently had it officially diagnosed. I ameighteen years old now, and I have been lying and destroying others'sanity for a long time. So, please post some helpful tidbits that mighthelp sociopaths resist the sweet urges we get when we encounter weakhuman beings. When you cut us, do we not bleed? When you kill us, do wenot die? Do you honestly think that you're being lied to andmanipulated when we sincerely ask for help. Listen to yourselves! Thisis the internet; ergo, you're safe from our fortified mental grasp.

The essay that follows was written in another answer by anotherself-admitted sociopath, who actually might not be a sociopath. Stillanother person added the brief comment to that effect after her tragic essay.

• umm... i kindof am one... just so y'all know, it's not so muchfun being one either. i read that sentence up there, "Incapable of realhuman attachment to another." i don't even know what that is, i see it,i approximate it... it's like being outside a door looking through adirty window and watching re-runs of people I've seen in love or withchildren or with friends, and scratching, sometimes banging at theglass to get in and... nothing. I'm fond of people in every sense ofthe word, their little quirks and habits, the way they see life, exceptif they went away it wouldn't bother me much other than finding someoneelse to be fond of. i don't have friends, i only date military menbecause they're ok with only having a girlfriend for a couple monthsand i tell them in advance i won't wait for them... i don't know whatelse to do to limit the damage i inflict on others just as a result ofthem knowing me, short of moving to the mountains... but i still movebetween 2-5 times a year :( it's kindof hard walking around knowingi'll never have what i see making other people so happy and runningwhen i can tell someone is getting close just because i don't want tohurt them more later down the road... i'd like it alot to settle down,i WANT to be able to feel more with people, but it's hard to miss whatyou never had. i want what i THINK it would feel like... it'd be easyto give in and let someone stay because I'm so lonely... but hey, i'vewritten enough, just know i try to be a responsible little sociopath, iwon't ever get married or have kids, i practice safe sex, i won't stayin one city for long... everything you all take for granted i willnever let myself have just because i WANT to take it for granted. beinglike this won't go away so hopefully i can limit the amount of hatethrown my way by limiting my interaction with people, i don't know whatelse to do. and you all might not belive this, but i am sorry,hopefully i can speak for the other people who have damaged your lives.

Comment: The above testimony is clearly not indicative of asociopath because she seems to make efforts to keep from harmingothers, even if it doesn't benefit herself.