H.G. Beverly's Blog, page 4
November 27, 2015
June 7, 2015
Assuming No One is a Psychopath
April 15, 2015
Teens, Empathy, and Psychopaths
February 15, 2015
Psychopaths and Parental Alienation
February 7, 2015
The Cost of a Psychopath
January 15, 2015
No Remorse
Coming Back
September 4, 2014
If Psychopaths Were Identified
June 18, 2014
Devaluation and the Inability to Form Emotional Attachments
I’d like to start this post with a passage from the author Jesmyn Ward in Men We Reaped. Here, she talks about how she learned to undervalue herself when her dad left their family:
“I looked at myself and saw a walking embodiment of everything the world around me seemed to despise: an unattractive, poor, Black woman. Undervalued by her family, a perpetual workhouse. Undervalued by society regarding her labor and her beauty. This seed buried itself in my stomach and bore fruit. I hated myself. That seed bloomed in the way I walked, slumped over, eyes on the floor, in the way I didn’t even attempt to dress well, in the way I avoided the world, when I could, through reading, and in the way I took up as little space as possible and tried to attract as little notice as I could, because why should I? I was something to be left.”
Now, I’m not saying that Jesmyn Ward’s dad was a sociopath. All I want to talk about, really, is her last line:
“I was something to be left.”
Because this is a very real and human feeling of devaluation. Some of us experienced it as children. We were left and somehow decided that it must’ve been because we deserved it. Others didn’t feel this kind of loss until we were adults, at which point we encountered complete devaluation.
And we took it in.
Devaluation and Sociopathy
Anyone can devalue another person. What’s unique about sociopathy is that there’s often an agenda behind the process. Planned or unplanned, the results are the same.
You lose sense of your value.
In relatively functional sociopathic relationships, it can come through silence. A complete inability to hear or address your needs. A way of judging you for having needs in the first place. Your needs are ridiculous. If your feelings are hurt, it’s because you’re flawed. If you get angry with this person, it’s because you’re mean. Or because you have a temper. Or because you expect too much. Or because you’re just completely unenjoyable as a human being.
In relationships with people who lack empathy at mild or extreme levels, you will not be able to express your needs in a way that is acceptable. You’ll always be told that you need to find a new way to express your needs if you want them to be met. But you’ll never quite get it right, even if you twist yourself into a pretzel trying. You’ll never feel like it’s really ok to want a warm apology when you’ve been hurt, and you won’t find understanding when you talk about why it matters to you. You might find yourself talking and talking and talking too much as you try to inspire some understanding.
It won’t come.
And you’ll often start to feel lonely. To wonder if you’re selfish, or if you demand too much, or if you think too much of yourself.
So you may try harder to understand your partner. To focus less on your needs and to instead focus on how you could help this unempathetic person feel close to you.
A Person Lacking Empathy to Any Degree Will Not Become Close to You
Not in the ways that can help you experience your value through a relationship.
And feeling our value in relationship is a basic human need. Yes, it’s ideal to know your own value before you even enter into relationship. But considering that we’re born into relationships that either build us up or fail us from the start, there’s something very human about experiencing our value through our interactions with those around us. Wanting to know that we matter. Wanting to know that we matter enough that we won’t be left suddenly and without a trace.
But people do that to each other all the time. They do it to children. They come up with whatever reasons they need for going, and then they go. They leave on birthdays without a departing gift, and then they don’t even think or know to apologize. They can’t empathize with the way their actions are going to impact a child’s sense of value for the rest of his or her life. And if you try to tell them about it, they simply get mad that you’re trying to make them feel bad.
They don’t want you giving them a guilt trip.
And they’re not going to look back. What you’re left with is the sense that you weren’t worth it.
That you were something to be left.
Empathy is the Foundation of Intimacy and Lasting Bonds
Devaluation through abandonment can rock your sense of being. Realizing that the person who left is not going to care and is not going to make the process of leaving feel more acceptable. Realizing that a person you believed in could just walk away on Christmas with a new, more exciting plan. Realizing that you’re not allowed to say, “That really hurt. You shouldn’t have done it like that.” Waking up to the fact that if you do say it, you won’t be heard.
Waking up to the fact that you’ve been in relationship with someone who doesn’t have a full capacity to empathize with how his or her actions impact you.
This person can be nice or mean. Quiet or loud. Proper or crude.
But without a full capacity for empathetic bonding, this person will always be able to walk away.
There are always more exciting places to be in the world, let’s face it. Better ways of living.
And without emotional attachment, empathy, and intimacy, there’s no real reason to stay. There’s no reason to feel like a commitment is an important thing. But there are a million ways to justify why it’s not.
You’re Not Something to be Left
Trying to prove that you’re worthy of a relationship with someone who can’t sustain one is an exercise in despair.
You can spend your whole life in relationships like that.
If you find yourself working daily to inspire your partner to invest in you and the dreams you hope to build together, then you might need to take a step back and consider what investment means. How do you build value? What are the things we value in life? If you value something, you put time and energy into it. You meet needs. You prioritize. You pour yourself in. You daydream and you make real plans, and then you work hard to make those plans happen. You invest yourself fully. You commit to doing this for the long haul, whether it feels fun or not.
And when you do this, you care.
The opposite is to live on the outskirts. Whether through defiance or sluggishness or deflection or withdrawal. Instead of sharing, you self-protect. Instead of getting excited about another person’s experience, you watch silently or even work to deflate it. Maybe you smile and secretly sabotage. The results are all the same.
These destructive tendencies may or may not be directly linked to sociopathy. But there’s some common thread when it comes to human empathy, emotional attachment, commitments that last, and a cultivated sense of self-worth.
For those who do not have those capacities, life may be lonely. For those who love them, life may hurt. But the thing to remember, in the end, is that it’s not about whether you’re good enough to be loved or not.
Their ability to leave so easily is about them.
Because we all have some things we could work on. But who you are is enough. For love, care, and commitment.
Jesmyn Ward is a famous author. She’s beautiful, insightful, and incredibly talented. She has clear value. But there were times in her life when she couldn’t see it. When she hated herself because her dad left.
Our attachments impact us deeply. But even when we doubt our own value, it’s there.
We just have to work to see it. Recover it. Cherish it. And spend time with people who know its worth. Who have the capacity for empathetic attachments. And who know how to commit.
May 24, 2014
The Sociopath and His Dog
I’ll start by saying that the “his” in my title comes from the fact that this story is about my sociopathic male ex. That being said, I’m sure many of you can think of women who fit this unique description of an “animal lover.”
So let’s begin.
My ex loves to tell people how much he loves dogs. He’ll also say he loves horses and sheep and cows and chickens and all other sorts of farm and wild animals, but dogs are tops.
And there’s something really unique about the way a sociopath “loves” a vulnerable creature. It’s confusing, wonderful, horrifying, and most often blindsiding. Sometimes, it’s even used to shame others. Like me.
You see, a couple years ago, I had a little Frenchie-bulldog who was so gentle she wouldn’t chase our house rabbit but so aggressive that she often tried to bite our neighbors. I lived in a row-house of sorts with a shared yard, and she never quite got used to any of the people who lived around us. We tried all kinds of techniques with her, but she still chased our neighbors and bit their clothes.
They were scared to death of her.
She would also try to attack any dog of any size that came within 50 feet of us. I was a single mom of three in grad school with no money for a fenced yard even if I was allowed to have one, so I started to think that maybe our beloved Sadie would be happier or at least better off in a home with a yard and a bit more privacy.
So after much thought and heartache, I placed her with a group of trainers who specialized in rehabilitating little dogs and placing them in ideal environments for their needs. They’d work diligently to do the things I didn’t know how to do, and then they’d find her a yard with a fence.
These trainers were mad at me for having Sadie in the first place, given that I was busy with grad school. She wasn’t trained well enough. I felt ashamed and worthless and terrible. My kids cried and sobbed and yelled at me for placing her.
Our house felt empty.
I still miss her today. I still wonder whether it was a mistake, and it always makes me cry.
Like right now.
But then in comes my ex. Always one to capitalize on any opportunity to make me look even worse, he joined my kids in their crying even though he hadn’t been with me for years and never knew Sadie at all.
He’d tell people that I must be “heartless,” and that he couldn’t understand people like me who would just “throw away their family pet like that.”
At our son’s game, he asked publicly (as a self-appointed representative for our children) how I could do such a thing. He told me that “dogs are kind of like a member of the family.”
Everyone thought I was heartless.
He’d talk endlessly about how much he loves dogs.
And he “loves” dogs.
So let’s talk about what that love looks like.
A Sociopath Expects No Expectations
Most dogs I know will love you no matter what. Even more, dogs that are abused seem to show a pattern of trauma bonding that may be similar to people—something that looks like submission and adoration and begging and delight all at once.
So my ex rescued a dog long ago, before we were even together. He and his girlfriend-before-me went to a shelter and found a shiny black lab with scars all over her face and a sweetheart nature. No one knew much about her, but he took her everywhere and loved to tell the story about how he saved her from “the pound.” He’d say, “I saved her life.”
“She looks pretty good now, but you should’ve seen her. She was covered with scars—all over her face. I don’t know who could treat such a sweetheart like that. Such a sweetheart. Now sit, Rosie. Watch this, watch her sit up. It’s hilarious.”
And he’d tell her to sit up, and she’d be so excited to please him that she’d throw her front paws so high in the air that she’d fall over backward or sideways every time. She never tried to catch herself—she’d be so focused on watching his eyes.
She was a wonderful dog. Long after he split with his girlfriend-before-me and long after we got together and married, that sweet-hearted dog would flop in the kiddie pool with our tiny children and never step on their feet.
I loved her. She’s lay so close to me while I stood at the kitchen sink that I often tripped backward over her. She loved her people.
But sometimes she would pee on the rug.
And that would mean a beating from my ex. If he caught her. With fists and feet and all.
Because rules are rules, and dogs don’t pee on the rug. Not in his house.
If I was there, I’d stop him. I’d yell at him. We’d fight. And then he’d love on Rosie all over again, calling her to him as he lectured and yelled at me for stopping him. He’d rub her ears. She would lay at his feet. He would start gushing about how she was a sweetheart. The one-sided, unconditional dedication seemed to thrill him.
And he demanded it.
He had another dog, too, when we got together. Because he “loves” dogs so much. And this one liked to chase buzzards in the sky, so sometimes he would wander away. This was unacceptable, sure, but I watched my ex hold him by the collar and kick him repeatedly in the stomach and ribs when he finally got him back. Which I didn’t think was an ok way of teaching him that lesson.
So I’d run out to them and ask him to stop.
Tell him to stop.
And then he would. And he’d flip right into loving on that poor, limping dog. I’d often wonder what would happen if I hadn’t made it out there to help.
The Sociopath Loves to Make You Do Tricks
Both of those original dogs are long gone. One to a car and one to old age. And how a sociopath deals with old age is to turn you out into the snow because he doesn’t want to take the chance that you’ll throw up on his rug.
So when Rosie died, she died alone. Out on his deck in a January blizzard, begging at the back door to be let inside to lay by the fire she loved so much.
My daughter cried and cried over the loss. She was infuriated that her dad wouldn’t let Rosie in like normal. Her brothers had learned by then to sit silently and say nothing.
And then Rosie was gone.
I still cry over that one, too. I loved that girl, and I always wonder if I should’ve taken her with me when I left.
She was like a member of the family.
But then she was pretty easily replaced. He quickly got an American Bulldog who looks super scary when you pull in his driveway but who generally puts her belly to the ground and will do pretty much anything you ask of her.
Her name is Bailey.
And Bailey can sit, lay down, stay, and play dead if you act like you’re shooting her. My ex loves to show people this trick. Teaching dogs tricks is a joy to him. He loves to make them run through each one. He tells our children all the time that Bailey is the best dog in the world. That she is far smarter than my stupid dogs who in his opinion know nothing and are pretty much a waste of human time. He talks about these things. Incessantly. It’s critically important to him that our children love Bailey and think little of any pets we now have at our house.
Because he loves his dog so much. He loves Bailey to pieces. He shows her off, he takes her places, and he loves to make her play dead for people. He loves how much she loves him. He adores her unconditional affection. He claims she’s like one of his children.
And then he leaves her locked outside with no blanket during the coldest weather in fifty years.
He throws her out of second story windows if she happens to pee on the second floor.
He holds her by her collar and kicks her body repeatedly if she does wrong.
He beats her with his hands.
And then he rubs her all over.
He tells her she’s the best dog on earth.
And he does all this in front of our kids.
Which always makes me wonder:
What does he do when no one’s there?
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