Love Cooperates. Fear Competes.

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People with personality disorders do not like to cooperate. They have a deep commitment to withholding truth, facts and promises. They do not like to empower others and do not like to give credit where credit is due. Lying comes very naturally and without remorse.

letting-goThey avoid honest and open communication. They are the ones who hang up on us because they do not allow others the freedom and right of expressing their own feelings and thoughts. They are deeply afraid and do not feel love authentically. Their love is shallow and conditional, which is not connected to all living beings. Typically, these types insult and shame us. They do not help us save face, especially when they want to have some form of control over us, or try to make us feel lesser than. If called upon as witness to truth that could exonerate someone, they may say something like, “I really don’t want to get involved.”

They lack integrity and grace and are filled with immense judgement and disregard for the well-being of other human beings. They love to triangulate. It makes them feel powerful to have that much self-imposed, artificial control over others. They may treat their animals better than family members.

After decades of studying and teaching, I see all antisocial personalities as being asleep in their own reality, which on some level gives them what they need to sustain themselves. Perhaps it makes them feel more alive, being that they are the archetype of either the walking dead or the vampires who feed on the Light of others.

From what I have witnessed throughout the years, and others have shared with me, they possess a low spiritual and/or emotional IQ. They tend to gravitate toward the fleeting satisfaction of materialism and plow their way through the hearts and lives of the people who are touched by them. They seem unable to control their impulses to destroy people’s good works, reputations, families and relationships. Very rarely do they have their own legs to stand on. They need others to prop them up, financially and otherwise.

We have all wanted to shake them to wake them up and show them that there is an easier and more fulfilling way to live. It seems like they don’t understand the meaning of the words: Love. Respect. Loyalty. Honor. It’s a lost cause. Leave it alone. Focus on building your own beautiful life and don’t confront them with their lies. People know. Or, they eventually figure it out. You don’t have to justify yourself. Give it to the Universe. One day,they may awaken through tremendous amounts of loss and pain, or their own voluntary spiritual development. Maybe it will take lifetimes, who knows? So, do yourself a favor. Don’t wait for it.

Nailed It!

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I just happened to scroll through my newsfeed on Facebook, and saw a post from Anne Rice. It’s an article that explains the Sociopathic Style in a different — yet also profound — way. It nails the relationship dynamic to a tee!  Read. Learn. Spread the information.

Empathic People Are Natural Targets For Sociopaths

The empathy trap: therapists and counselors almost by definition are empathic, to facilitate clients’ recovery – but this quality can mean those carers are targets for sociopaths, aided by what Dr Jane & Tim McGregor call “apaths”. The first UK article on this cruel sport shows how to identify and thus avoid it.

People targeted by a sociopath often respond with self-deprecating comments like “I was stupid”, “what was I thinking” of “I should’ve listened to my gut instinct”. But being involved with a sociopath is like being brainwashed. The sociopath’s superficial charm is usually the means by which s/he conditions people.

On initial contact, a sociopath will often test other people’s empathy, so questions geared towards discovering if you are highly empathic or not should ring alarm bells. People with a highly empathic disposition are often targeted. Those with lower levels of empathy are often passed over, though they can be drawn in and used by sociopaths as part of their cruel entertainment.

Sociopaths make up 25% of the prison population, committing over twice as many aggressive acts as other criminals. The reoffending rate of sociopaths is about double that of other offenders, and for violent crimes it is triple.

But not all sociopaths are found in prison. There is the less-visible burden of sociopath-induced emotional trauma which, if left unchecked, can lead to anxiety disorders, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Chronically traumatized people often exhibit hyper-vigilant, anxious and agitated behavior, symptoms such as tension headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, abdominal pain, back pain, tremors and nausea.

Exposure to and interaction with a sociopath in childhood can leave lifelong scars. This can apply to people in therapy – and for those who in recovery trained as therapists, re-exposure as an adult can trigger old emotions and PTSD.

This article is not about sociopaths per se but about surviving the harm they cause.

EVERYDAY SOCIOPATHS

Many sociopaths wreak havoc in a covert way, so that their underlying condition remains hidden for years. They can possess a superficial charm, and this diverts attention from disturbing aspects of their nature.

The following case history illustrates how people can be systematically targeted until they feel they can barely trust their own sense of reality – what we call “gaslighting”. Sociopathic abuse is targeted abuse. It can wreck lives. Victims can become survivors, but at huge cost.

At school, ‘James’ took a dislike to a classmate, ‘Sam’, who was sensitive and popular. He would mock him for auditioning for the school play or for getting upset over failing a test. The situation deteriorated when it became known that Sam’s parents were separating. Sam appeared to be taking it with fortitude, to the admiration of his peers. He also got attention and sympathy from the school staff, especially James’ favourite teacher: ie, the one he manipulated most easily.

James decided on a plan of covert bullying. He started a whispering campaign implying that Sam’s parents were not splitting up, that he had said they were in order to seek attention. Sadly, this was all too successful and over the next few days Sam was met with silence and verbal bullying from his hitherto-supportive classmates.

James continued his campaign, targeting Sam’s close friends over the next few days. They found themselves accused of misdemeanours such as sending offensive emails/texts. Then the ‘favourite’ teacher went on “leave with immediate effect” after accusations of assaulting a pupil. Where had the accusations come from? Guess.

This case shows how deliberately sociopaths, from a young age, can target others. Taking advantage of people’s credibility and goodwill, James exploited the situation. With a more perceptive head teacher, this sociopath might have been found out, but he knew who to manipulate and how far he could go.

MORE: http://www.sott.net/article/268449-Empathic-people-are-natural-targets-for-sociopaths-protect-yourself

Believing Psychopaths

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Believing Psychopaths“…almost all of us have, at least once, experienced a compelling idea or semi-dazzling person crawling in through our psychic windows at night and catching us off guard. Even though they’re wearing a ski mask, have a knife between their teeth, and a sack of money slung over their shoulder, we believe them when they tell us they’re in the banking business.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
p. 47 “Women Who Run With the Wolves.”

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil

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By M. Scott Peck, M.D.

confrontationThere can be a state of the soul against which Love itself is powerless because it has hardened itself against Love. Hell is essentially a state of being which we fashion for ourselves; a state of final separateness from God which is the result not of God’s repudiation of man, but of man’s repudiation of God, and a repudiation which is eternal precisely because it has become, in itself, immovable.

The varieties of people’s wickedness are manifold. As a result of their refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness, the evil ones become the uncorrectable grab bag of sin. They are, for instance, in my experience, remarkably greedy people. Thus, they are cheap- so cheap that their “gifts” may be murderous. In The Road Less Traveled, I suggested the most basic sin is laziness. In the next subsection I suggest it may be pride –because all sins are repairable except the sin of believing one is without sin. But perhaps the question of which sin is the greatest is, on a certain level, a moot issue. All sins betray – and isolate us from – both the divine and our fellow creatures. As one deep religious thinker put it, any sin “can harden into hell”:

There are analogies in human experience: the hate which is so blind, so dark, that Love only makes it the more violent; the pride which is so stony that humility only makes it more scornful; the inertia – last but not least the inertia – which has taken possession of the personality that no crisis, no appeal, no inducement whatsoever, can stir it into activity, but on the contrary makes it bury itself the more deeply in its immobility.

So with the soul and God; pride can become hardened into hell, hatred can become hardened into hell, any of the seven root forms of wrongdoing can harden into hell, and not least that sloth which is boredom with divine things, the inertia which cannot be troubled to repent, even though it sees the abyss into which the soul is falling, because for so long, in little ways perhaps, it has accustomed itself to refuse whatever might cost it an effort. May God in his mercy save us from that.*

A predominant characteristic, however, of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image to perfection. Take a simple example of a six-year-old boy who asks his father, “Daddy, why did you call Grandma a bitch?” “I told you to stop bothering me,” the father roars. “Now, you’re going to get it. I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap. Maybe that will teach you to clean up what you say and keep your mouth shut when you’re told.” Dragging the boy upstairs to the soap dish, the father inflicts this punishment on him. In the name of “proper discipline” evil has been committed.

Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection. Since the evil, deep down, feel themselves be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad.

In The Road Less Traveled I define evil “as the exercise of political power that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – in order to avoid…spiritual growth. (p.279)

Strangely enough, evil people are often destructive because they are attempting to destroy evil. The problem is that they misplace the locus of the evil. Instead of destroying others they should be destroying the sickness within themselves.

*Gerald Vann, The Pain of Christ and the Sorrow of God. (Temple Gate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois, copyright by Aquin Press, 1947, pp. 54-55).