With the release of Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s book, Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know
Now labeled under the DSM-IV as Antisocial Personality Disorder, lay people often assume that the term “Sociopath” refers only to people who kill.
True, many killers are sociopaths but not all sociopaths are killers.
I have some experience with this too because in my psyche 101 analysis, I believe that my mother was (and is) a sociopath. She possesses a complete lack of empathy or concern for others and only engages with people as far as it goes to get something from them. For one example, when I was in a serious car accident in 2006 in which I broke my neck in 2 places, my mother didn’t even pick up the phone to inquire about my well-being. It didn’t even cross her mind. That’s just her – and it is only one small example. I have many more examples that can (and hopefully will) fill a book one day (a funny one… don’t worry… tragedy=comedy). I understand this kind of behavior in the present but it sure did a number on me while I was growing up, as it is apt to do when people get involved with sociopaths.
Let’s get real. Most people know or encounter sociopaths in their daily lives. We can’t help it. They live among us. Our interactions with them often leave us baffled, hurt and wondering what happened. According to Dr. Martha Stout, a Harvard psychologist and author of “The Sociopath Next Door,” about 4 percent of the population (1 in 25) is someone who lives in this world without a conscience. They can’t help it either. They were born that way.
What this means to us is that he or she has no ability to feel “gut-checking” emotions that guide and censor behavior such as shame, guilt and remorse.
A sociopath cannot empathize, cannot feel anyone else’s feelings, including his or her own. This differentiates a sociopath from someone with narcissistic personality disorder as a narcissist can feel his or her own feelings deeply, but has an absolute inability to feel or have empathy for anyone else.
In the aftermath of encounters with such people, we are left only with the painful memories and the psychiatrist’s bills as we try and pull our lives back together.
After I read Dr. Stout’s book, every negative encounter I had with someone left me wondering, “are they a sociopath?” Sort of like when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Still, this didn’t prevent me from my next encounter with someone I am now sure is a sociopath.
I’m going to keep it brief and just give you the cliff-notes because this is an incredibly long story. This was someone I met when I had to go to rehab. Rehab relationships are completely frowned upon with good reason, but I thought it was “different” because A) it was me we were talking about and B) this person was an employee, not a fellow client. It was the insanity “perfect storm.” She was a counselor’s assistant who was studying to be an addiction counselor and I was in need of someone to make me feel like I wanted to live.
To say this woman had a “past” would be putting it mildly. Everywhere you looked at her life there was a problem. She was a former prostitute and drug addict; She had HIV; Hepatitis C; 2 children from 2 different fathers – one of the children’s fathers had been narrowed down to a long list of suspects but she wasn’t quite sure; her youngest daughter was developmentally disabled because she used drugs while pregnant; she owed a small fortune to the IRS because she never paid taxes; she had 8 brothers, and only 1 brother was speaking to her; her father had officially disowned her; she had one lung because a drug-dealer tried to kill her… and she was a self-centered sociopath. Basically, all she was missing was a peg-leg and an eye-patch as far as “baggage” is concerned.
But, as sociopaths usually are, she was incredibly charming and I had a great need for any sliver of “love” that I could find because I had no sense of self-worth, due partly I’m sure, to the trauma I endured from my sociopathic mother.
So when she violated her code of ethics and called me a month after I left treatment (the “leaving treatment ” story is a WHOLE other story and drama I’ll save for another day) and told me she wanted to be a lesbian and was coming to see me, I figured that fate had given me a break by sending me my “soul mate” and in turn I would “break her in.”
As I said, this is a REALLY long story so I want to cut it down here and just give you the synopsis. Plus, I hope to have it all in my book and/or one-woman show one day. Yes, this story is “comedy gold” as we comedians like to say whenever our hearts and lives are kicked down a flight of stairs, but the flip side of comedy is tragedy…. As you know… well, anyway….
What she did was this:
She called me on my birthday, no less, to tell me she “loved me” and that she was going in to the hospital because she had pneumonia but wasn’t responding to the medication. After a very lovely conversation where she mentioned, as I said, her love for me, I never heard from her again. After a few days of unreturned calls, I really started to worry. I left her messages and got progressively more anxious and concerned. Given that our even talking to each other was a big secret due to her job, I couldn’t outright call her work and ask if she was OK. Anyway, I figured she was alive because her phone was still on so I called every couple of days to cheer on her recovery. Given her crappy health and the fact that she was missing a lung, visions of her on a breathing machine reasonably explained in my mind why she wasn’t getting back to me.
I even sent her “get well” cards and gifts so she knew that I believed she was deathly ill.
When the truth was revealed I was floored. She wasn’t sick at all and had made up the whole story! Why? It made no sense. I felt that if she didn’t want to see me, she should have just told me rather than play such a cruel game. My hurt was multiplied by the fact what she did to me was just so completely unnecessary. The way she set me up to worry and her cruel indifference to my pain, not to mention the fool she made of me by allowing me to send get well cards and gifts, can only be explained by her complete lack of moral compass and utter inability to feel empathy and compassion.
There is some karmic justice, though. A series of “coincidences” eventually exposed her lies and she wound up losing her job at the rehab (ok…. I’ll tell you. It was the Caron Foundation – now known as Caron Treatment Centers – and cashed in my 401k and paid out of pocket a pretty penny to be emotionally traumatized by them coming and going. Is it too late to get my money back? )
Frankly, it was pretty fortuitous that she lost her job give her sociopathy and her close proximity to emotionally wounded people.
Still, never in my entire life had someone been so inexplicably heartless to me when they could have just as easily chose not to. I will never completely know why she did what she did but in retrospect I speculate that given I was a client at one of the most expensive rehabs in the country; she may have been under the impression that I was more well to do that I actually am. She mentioned wanting to move to New York and perhaps she thought I would be an easy dupe. She put her job on the line and called me. When she came to see me and got to know that I was basically a working stiff, her plans changed. I was no longer needed so that was it. It was on to the next sucka to target. This could possibly be why she could leave me sick with worry without regard. I’ll never really know, but whatever.
The truth is, I was so willing to disregard the signs. For instance, when she cried to me about how her father had disowned her, most of her brothers wanted nothing to do with her and how her family didn’t want her around during the holidays, she had me convinced that it was her family who were at fault. I thought they had no forgiveness in their hearts and that was a shame on them! Now, I can only imagine the pain and hurt she must have inflicted on her family over the years that no doubt left them as wounded and confused as I was. I now see her family’s desire to not have her around as an exercise in self-preservation. This, in fact, is the only thing one can do to protect oneself from the inexplicable, wounding behavior of a sociopath. The best way to win is not to play.
So, while we’re on it.., what are sociopath symptoms?
1. They have problems sustaining stable relationships, both personal and business.
2. They habitually manipulate others to achieve their own goals, without regard of how this affects the person being manipulated.
3. They have no qualms about lying.
4. Regardless of their true standing in society, they feel they are extremely important.
5. They lack any sense of shame, remorse or guilt.
6. They possess a superficial charm which can be switched on and off at will.
7. They demand constant stimulation.
8. They “play” at displaying human emotion.
9. They are reckless and impulsive.
10. They don’t take responsibility for their mistakes.
11. They often have a history of anti-authoritarian behavior as teenagers including, vandalism, truancy and stealing.
12. They have no shame about sponging off other people, as if everyone “owes” them something.
13. They are often hot-headed.
14. They are often sexually promiscuous.
15. Often, they are bullying and condescending to others.
16. They are unrealistic about their long-term goals.
17. They lack empathy for others.
18. Often other people regard them as irresponsible.
If you believe you know someone who has antisocial personality disorder, protect yourself at all costs. You can’t “change” them and you can never “love them enough” to make the stop hurting you. Their selfishness and lack of empathy is hard-wired in their brains. Don’t be sucked in by the charm, fake concern and elaborate stories.
You can never win with a sociopath because they are not playing the game with the same ground rules. The best way to win with them is not to play.
Be aware and take care.
