Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Meeting a sociopathic son halfway (part 2)

My response:

I've been thinking about this. First, can I publish this on the blog to see what others would suggest as well?

But I have a few suggestions.
  • It's very important that he trust you. You are essentially asking him to do a childlike abridged 12 step program in which he admits that he is powerless (or at least his power isn't endless) and to trust your judgment instead of his own. To do that, he has to believe 100% that you have his best interests at heart. 
  • To accomplish that (trust), plus provide him some good role models of people who hid their true nature sometimes, I would recommend reading to him books. I know he is old to be read to, but you could read something that is a little beyond his reading level and it would provide both bonding and instruction. One book series that I thought of immediately was Game of Thrones. There is a lot in there about duplicity. Another character I like is Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series, and how sneaky and effective he ends up being.
  • I would recommend involving him in activities in which secrecy and planning ahead are the whole aim, e.g. chess or poker or something similar. 
  • Maybe play mask like games with him, e.g. who can speak in a mock foreign accent at the grocery store the longest. Or pretend to be different people -- you're really tourists, or you're actually spies, or everyone is a pod person and you have avoid their detection by always looking them in the eye and responding directly to their questions, or whatever you decide to do. This will teach him to be creative and to focus on the image he is projecting. 
  • You're already doing this, but incentives are the key. You may like this program: http://www.accountablekids.com/ My nephew, who is a lot like your son, responded well to this. I would also, if he isn't already, enroll him in music lessons (I would recommend piano or strings, not an instrument he plays with his mouth, as it is more visual and probably easier for his brain to conceptualize). Pay him money to do his practicing and attending lessons. Learning the pleasure and value of money will be a great motivator for him in life. Music will also give him more of a clue to understanding emotions. It's been a while since I actually read about this, but the way our brain perceives music is related to the way that our brain perceives motion, which is also connected to the way that the brain perceives emotion. The theory goes that this is why the movement and motion of music is translated by our brain into something resembling an emotional response. Even if he is not able to register certain higher level emotional things, usually youngsters are still able to tap into the lower, more primitive emotional level of music. 
Another interesting question that was raised in this discussion was whether sociopathy as a diagnosis becomes a further rationalization to the sociopath of doing more and worse bad behavior. I feel like that is a very common worry that I hear expressed -- outside the sociopathic community. At least the way I experience my disorder, I don't care that much about any sort of justifications to tell myself, moral social or otherwise (now, justifications to tell other people or rationalizations based on my own values are a different story). And I don't look for reasons to believe that I can't control my behavior. When you hear bad people say that they do bad things because they're bad people, I don't think they're giving a justification for their behavior so much as just an explanation. In other words, in their minds they're going to keep doing the bad things not because of a belief that they can't help it but because of a belief that they like to do those things.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Meeting a sociopathic son halfway

From a reader:

I'm sure this is something you hear with relative frequency but I am fairly certain that my son is a sociopath. He is nine years old and he seems to have come upon a time in his life where he is beginning to sense that there is something different about him.

There has been something "off" about him for his entire life, from his epic tantrums to his insensitivity to cues like tone of voice and body language. He would go into episodes where his eyes went dead, for lack of a better word, and he would be absolutely uncontrollable. These same episodes now result in a child who just doesn't care what anyone is saying to him. He simply stands with that blank stare and absorbs nothing. What we were dealing with really hit me when I talked to him about his continued physical violence toward his younger brother. I was trying to get him to empathize with his brother and understand how he felt and my son simply could not do it. He was trying but when I asked about how he thought his brother felt, the only emotions he could manage to think of were "angry" or "happy". He also seemed completely unable to really understand the feelings of his brother, relying on physical cues from his brother rather than any real connection.

My concern is that he has been reacting violently to the tension he seems to be dealing with as a result of his peers advancing emotionally while he does not. He has been fighting with other students, arguing with teachers, stealing, lying, and manipulating. He's chokes his brother, physically fought with teachers and adults, delighted in feeding live lizards to the dog, convinced his teacher he was depressed, and threatened suicide to illicit a reaction. He's been suspended, put in detention, talked to by the school resource officer, had his grades drop, and any number of other consequences. He simply doesn't care and seems to not learn from experience. We've enacted an allowance method that gives direct correlation between his behavior and monetary reward. This seems to be effective, making good behavior more profitable than poor behavior but I don't know how effective it will be at curbing behavior when a strong impulse hits.

I am trying to understand how to help direct him toward a higher level of functionality. I know that he can't really be "cured" nor does he need to be. I just don't know how to help him understand why it is important to behave in accordance to society's rules. I have had conversations with him about it but the value of obeying rules is hard to impart to someone who genuinely doesn't care about the consequences and lacks the control to reign in his impulses. I'm scared that he will end up in jail or that he will really hurt someone someday if I can't direct him to a more productive path.

I suppose my question, after a bit of rambling, is this: Is there anything someone could have done at a young age to help you to understand the value of "the mask"? I hate that he has to put one on but there is no way for him to succeed in life without it. Is there any way someone could have helped you to develop the ability to live more easily in society? I know you did so on your own but might there have been a way for someone to help you to discover it earlier and save yourself some grief? I don't want to label him or make him something he's not. After all, there is a reason that sociopathy cannot be diagnosed until later in life but I want to help him because he is certainly on that path and I think waiting until he is an adult to address the likely cause of his difficulty would be a mistake.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Taming the sociopath sibling?

A reader asks for our help:

I read your book and absolutely loved it. I’m almost 100% sure my oldest sister is a sociopath and she’s rained some pretty nasty shit on my life over the past 10 years. I told her I was suicidal and she said she couldn’t care a less. [Other facts censored to preserve anonymity.]

I’m now trying to write her an email telling her what I think of her and wondered if you had any tips. What I’m writing will have to be quite damming. I’m actually thinking of doing this in public (on Facebook) to humiliate her but I really need some psychological insight about how best to go about this. I’m actually highly educated (I speak 8 languages) but know nothing about the mind of a sociopath. I’m not writing anything emotional at all because I know that won’t have any effect. Basically my whole family has been her marionettes for years. She’s got my dad under a complete spell and it’s really torturing him. I’ve decided that enough is enough, someone needs to tell her and it’s going to have to be me. Due to childhood problems, I believe she has the unconscious desire to psychologically torture men. I see she does it to my dad and anyone connected to him. Is there anyway you can help me? I’m desperate.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Legacy of a Narcissistic Parent

From the title of a recent post on GOOP.com. After telling of some of the difficulties that children of narcissistic parents face and how that affects their development and the behaviors and patterns that those children carry with them into adulthood, the article shares some advice on how to counteract some of those effects now:

First, you have to grieve the loss of the parent you never had. Really grieve the fact that you didn’t get the parent you needed, the one who put you and your needs first. Part of that requires releasing the fantasy that your narcissistic parent can change and eventually give you what you need. They can evolve and grow, but they may never evolve enough to meet your deepest needs. Therefore, managing expectations is key, particularly when you see glimpses of the healthy parent you wish you had had, but in fact those glimpses are often not sustainable. Accept that your parent was limited—and could not give you unconditional love or even deep empathy because she could not get past herself to truly see you. Allow yourself to feel your feelings, the anger and the sadness. Emotion has the word motion in it; allow your emotions to move through you. You might not have lost your parent to death, but you lost what could have been—you lost an opportunity to be truly mothered—and that is really a profound loss. Accepting this, rather than denying it, is the first step in opening your heart to healing.

You are going to need to discover boundaries—where you begin and your parents end—to free your authentic self. When you choose who you want to be, rather than who your parents wanted you to be, you break free from their narcissistic grip. Tolerate their discomfort, even if they make a lot of noise. 

You are not misbehaving, rebelling, or rejecting them. You are being you, the real you—maybe for the first time. This is the first part of breaking the cycle. Next, you don’t want to repeat/generalize the relationship that you had with your narcissistic parent to your coworkers, partner, or friends. Realize where you are meeting the needs of other narcissists in your life, real or imagined. Sometimes children of narcissists assume that every person they’re close to will need the same kind of hyper-attention and appeasement that their parent did—and unconsciously begin doing mental backbends to please others. At times you may be tapping into the expectations of a narcissistic boss or partner, and reflexively playing that familiar role. At other times you may be making erroneous assumptions about what someone important to you really needs—perhaps they don’t want you to mirror their opinions or they don’t need you to sugarcoat your real feelings or soften constructive criticism. Breathe, pause, give yourself some psychic space and then test it. Try just being frank, try not to rush in and take care of their feelings. If being different from your loved one feels uncomfortable—or if you feel you’re risking love with that stance—just notice it. Watch how much stronger your bond is than what you secretly imagined it to be. This is the gift of evolving past the scene of the original crime—your own childhood. Surviving childhood meant taking care of the narcissist and swallowing your feelings. But now as an adult you can begin to surround yourself with people that you feel safe and at home with—like soul mate girlfriends—who know and love the real you, and this can be deeply transformative.

Children of narcissistic parents often wonder if they are really loveable. You are! Start loving and caring for yourself in ways that you wished your mom or dad had loved and cared for you. Start paying attention to what really matters to you; what makes you feel alive and moments when you feel authentically you. Maybe you will need help mothering yourself. Maybe that means getting re-parented by a therapist, or maybe the healing comes from an emotionally reparative romantic partnership. Maybe you have a friend’s mother who is nurturing to you, or a mentor who celebrates the real you. All of these people can become part of your collective parent. No one person is ever capable of meeting all of your needs so start building your collective parenting community. And once you have learned to mother yourself, you will be able to mother your child.

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