Loving unloveable people

My sister told me that I should listen to the most recent episode of This American Life.

It's really interesting, particularly for people who often hear that they are unloveable, because the show really questions what it really means to love. The first half of the show is about a family who adopts a Romanian orphan. The mother believed strongly that people should do things that they're capable of, and she felt capable of adopting a child, even one with special needs. The son, Daniel, was ok for the first 6 months, then rapidly deteriorated when it finally became clear to him that his birth parents had abandoned him to spend his first 7 years living in a crib, and he misdirected his hatred to his adoptive parents.

Daniel was diagnosed with attachment disorder, characterized by a lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Daniel threatened his parents several times, including holding a knife to his mother's throat. His mom stopped teaching him how to read because, in an era of Columbine, she worried that he would independently research ways to hurt her or others. When asked how she could love someone who is homicidal, she responded "Because he was my son! I mean you have to love him or else there's no way out of it. . . . I don't think I ever questioned my love." His mom stayed with him even after the dad had to hire a bodyguard to protect the mom from the son's outbursts, even when an acquaintance of hers and a friend and mentor of Daniel's, also diagnosed with attachment disorder, committed cold-blooded murder.

Daniel started attachment therapy, including a period of 8 weeks in which he could not be more than three feet away from his mother. After that, he ceased to be violent but still stole. He then began "holding therapy", where for 20 minutes a night his parents would cradle their thirteen year old hulk of a son in their laps and feed him ice cream while looking in their eyes and trying to bond. Daniel began to transform, began to help around the house, made friends, and had his old furniture moved back into his room (previously removed as a throwing hazard). His parents raised him to be Jewish, hoping that the religious instruction would help him acquire something of a conscience. After years of being a very poor divinity student, to the extent that he would frequently be taken away from the temple in police cars, he was finally given an award for best student in his confirmation class. In his speech he thanks his parents, saying that he loved them very much. His mom says that it was the most spectacular moment of her life.

Despite all of this, his mother still thinks that it is not possible to teach love. "I don't think the goal was ever love, the goal was attachment . . . I think you can work really hard to create an environment where you can form attachment. You want to create these situations where it's more advantageous for them to attach than to keep doing things their own way and being in their own world, isolated." When asked if she feels loved by Daniel, "Yeah, I feel love . . . I don't think he wants to hurt me, I don't worry about that at all." Although this is not the type of "love" that most people think of as love, the narrator imagines that the mother's pragmatism is exactly what has made her so successful:

"If you're the kind of person who actually needs love, really needs love, chances are you're not the kind of person that's going to have the wherewithal to create it. Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business."

I liked the idea that a practical approach can really be effective in instilling a sense of attachment (love?) in someone who otherwise seemed incapable of attachment. You can't force someone to love you, but you can indirectly influence them, incentivize them to want to attach. I feel like there are a lot of interesting pieces of advice for parents of a sociopath.

Other interesting parts include the first 5-10 minute discussion about how it used to be a Truth in psychology that parental love was unnecessary and even unhealthy for children. It makes you realize how young and flawed a "science" psychology is.

Attached

From a reader:


I sometimes ponder the nature of the "masks" we're said to wear.  Each one of us would probably describe it differently.  You?  You say you "lie" to yourself until you believe it.  I find that funny.  I'd take the opposite track--that I'm able to get my way best when I find some essential emotional truth hidden deep in my core that matches the situation, and let it burst forth and control me for a period of time.  In that moment, there is no lie, there is no truth, there is only me as you see me.  Every facet is a truth when expressed, and a lie when not on display.  In other words, I don't think we're all that different from empaths.  I think, as in all things, it's the story that we tell ourselves.  There is no, "How could I do that?  I'm not THAT kind of person!"  Only an understanding that, without some sort of code or restrictions in place, we know we're really capable of anything.

So then where does that leave us?  I find I can assert and actually express an emotional "truth" or a persona for as long as I wish to maintain it, even when doing so becomes taxing and I really just don't want to.  It's even easier to do this when I pick a handful of roles or things to do--ways of taking up my time, and religiously apply myself to them.  In other words, I create an identity complete with hobbies, interests, and close friendships.  At first everything matters to me just because of its utility, but as time goes on, I find that distinction blurring, and I find myself almost able to actually care for them before I move on. The end result is kind of a constant high, that only occasionally gets pierced by annoyance and anger.  Is this what it feels like to be an empath?  Am I tricking myself into believing I'm of the herd?  Or is the constant assertion a legitimate transformation in the works?  I've never stuck with an identity long enough to know.  But I'm about to find out as I commit myself to a certain identity for an indefinite period of time.

We know that sociopathy can be learned.  But can empathy? Or will I just be  in "sleeper mode" for however long the upcoming period of my life lasts?  We shall see.

My response:

Do you think you're just becoming attached to the thing? Like when I buy something, let's say a particular pair of shoes that I like, I think of everyday that I wear them in terms of what I thought the initial bargain was going to be. If, when I bought them, I thought that I would get 100 days of wear out of them, then once I get to that 101st day, everything is surplus, and I'm extra pleased with the shoes because they have exceeded my initial expectations of their value. Is that what you feel? Or something different?

Reader:

I suppose it may be attachment, but it's still an attachment based upon the brain's basic potential to emote--to trigger the mechanisms that cause whatever combination of stimulation and narrative we call emotion. And those attachments or emotions allow me to forget for awhile, that ultimately these people, experiences, and things in my life could be discarded without care and I could find others to replace them. It allows me to indulge in the illusion that they matter to me in a way that I imagine non-socios enjoy and connect with their surroundings. But if it comes down to it, they can be discarded all the same. Hell, this life I'm assuming is one I've already discarded. Was this life objectively "better" or "more fulfilling" than any of the other lives I've lived so far or any of the lives I lived since I abandoned it the first time? No, just different. Our society prioritizes and rewards a certain level of consistency, and I found that the combination of stimulation and boundaries that came with this life allowed me to craft a believable narrative weaving together all of the lives I've lived so far, and even more importantly kept me from falling into the cliche bad habits of aggression, parasitism, and manipulation.


I honestly don't understand what the reader means. Anybody?

Sociopaths, loss, and fungibility

I have been thinking about loss recently. I have always thought that I treat people as being more fungible than they are used to being treated. I once warned a friend that i was likely to use her up like a paper napkin and dispose of her. I have always understood what a "friend of convenience" meant to me, and treated those people accordingly. I am unable to care for those people unconditionally. The kindness I show them is directly proportional to the value they have to me.

When I was younger, I was as quick to make "friends" with inanimate objects as they were real people. One particular "friend" has stuck with me through the years. He is as valuable to me as most actual friends, and perhaps even some family members. I lost him once and was able to reclaim him only through hard work, brilliant problem solving, and luck. Since then I have been very careful with him, until recently. I was scheduled for a long trip and wanted my friend to come along, but was worried for his safety. I started searching for a substitute on the internet and chanced upon his twin available for sale. When substitute friend came in the post, he looked different, and I still favored my old friend. Quickly, though, the two have become surprisingly interchangeable. Whatever my faults, I have always considered myself a rather loyal person by nature (Cancerian?), but here I was discarding a lifelong friend for someone who just fit nicely into the mold. But am I so different from empaths? One of the empaths in my life said the following about loss:

"One of the saddest things about death is that the world does go on, and you feel like that devalues the person that they were. Eventually even we move on, we fill the void that was left with other people. We have to, it's human nature."

However, she admits that void fillers won't ever be perfect. She remembers particularly her mother losing her parents, how painful that was, and how she was never able to find that type of relationship again, not like she expected to.

"People come in and out of our lives a lot. That's the nature of the beast. For some reason in our culture, only family sticks around, and even then certain family members will drift apart."

Death has never made me sad, maybe I because I've never cared that much about anyone who has died. I have lost people in other ways and been sad, but am I really sad for their loss? Or am I upset that they have left me? Angry at myself for failing to keep them around?