What Is a Sociopath?

Oh. He’s a psychopath, a sociopath, an antisocial psychopath.
That’s what A psychotherapist friend of mine told me he was
while she casually munched her salad.
I didn’t know what that meant,
but I knew it was true.

Sociopath… Now there’s a big scary word. I remember the first time I heard it in connection to the man I was married to. It was a friend’s attempt to explain the nightmare “relationship” I was escaping. I recall my heightened senses and the hesitance with which I took that word in. Sociopath…psychopath…

The weirdness of the first time I held the idea of a sociopath…whatever that was because I certainly didn’t know, up next to the nutbag I was kicking out of my life is something I haven’t forgotten.

Sociopath, Psychopath…Thank Goodness I Got to Skip “Narcissist”

Sociopath in answer to the cause of the hell and terror I was untangling, came up in the most unexpected setting. At a dinner party. I haven’t forgotten the first time I was told that the nutter I’d married was …a sociopath… a psychopath, an antisocial psychopath, he’s a psychopath, a sociopath… by a friend who knows about this kind of thing as her profession, and while she casually ate her salad.

Suspended in time, my brain raced to see if the word, sociopath fit. The second my friend said it, I’m sure I blinked a few times, wondering if I’d heard what I heard… Then – in this frozen-in-time moment at dinner – I tried to compute and compare this horrific word with the far-beyond-a-hole I’d just kicked out.

Everyone around me at the table chattered, glasses and silver clinked and clattered… I was somewhere else in a nether region of space trying to think but with no luck…And aware I had to stay where I was in this social presence.

In a flash of trying to remain in my skin and at the party here at this restaurant in Beverly Hills, I absorbed her words deeply, and, I knew. Without knowing the full meaning of what a sociopath was by a hundred, thousand, zillion, million miles: I knew it fit him like a glove. Even still, it took a while before I could say it out loud to anyone.

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What Is a Sociopath? Step Outside Normal to See Them

Naturally, as we try to unwind and understand what went on in this thing we experienced as a relationship, we measure what happened up against what we know.

That is to say, we’re looking for answers about their behavior and things they said through the life experiences we’ve already had. Sifting through the things that we already have an awareness of to match them up with. This is how our minds are wired to think when we come across something new.

The human brain has a catalog of experiences, rules, social mores, and expectations, alongside hopes, dreams, fears, and everything else about our lives that we measure new things or something unfamiliar up against. This happens spontaneously. It’s involuntary.

So, measuring them up against normal is well.. normal. But in this case, it will get us absolutely nowhere. This kind of thinking is all we can do – or so we think. It is not, however. We have flexible minds that can go anywhere we allow them to.

Sociopath vs. Normal. vs. What the Heck Is This?

This sorting of a present moment through the catalog of previous moments to find where it belongs, to determine if it’s safe. All animals do. Imagine a dog meeting another unknown dog on a sidewalk. They measure each other up. Not that we’re dogs, but we’re wired to do the same thing.

There’s so much to know about this – in fact, everything we need to see and know about this heinous invasion of our lives – is not at all inside our realm of normal. To see it takes being willing to step outside what we know. This involves peeling away our assumptions about them as we realize we’re holding one.

Give yourself permission, open the door, and be willing to see something you’ve never known existed and have no ability to imagine – yet. ‘Cause these simplistic creatures live entirely in what to us is the “unknown” and the unimaginable.

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Measure Up From Outside Normal

Here’s the thing: to see what they are, we have to let go of our normal measuring up tools. We need to put aside everything we think of as normal when trying to fit them into a category in our minds.

This is really difficult because 1) We don’t even realize all the “normal” we think through and see the world through. 2) We’re under their effect which includes giving them the benefit of the doubt and doubting ourselves.

We’ve got to step into a zone, a space we’ve never been in before… To boldly go where no man has gone before… as Captain Kirk said, describing the mission of the Star Trek Enterprise. We have to follow that rabbit down the hole as Alice did. And we have to find our way to the clear side.

Assumptions Blind Us

Peel away every assumption you’ve made about them. For instance, do you hear yourself tell someone, he went to Penn State and then he started a business… Stop right there. Unless you have third-party uninterested verifiable proof they did no such thing. They lied. It’s the sociopath’s story and persona spun out of nonsense to fit into “normal” so they can make use of us.

Here are some other common stories we take to be true: the house they live in belongs to them, they paid for the car they drive, and the things they say such as, my parents were abusive. Or I have celiac disease (or some other chronic ailment that keeps them from obligations and your expectations). And a fantabulous whopper: you’re the first person I’ve ever done this with. – We aren’t their first anything. And we won’t be their last… But we can make it the end of their malarkey with us.

Keep going… It takes as long as it takes.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon

Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.

Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Recovery coaching unique to you

Trust Your Gut

Trust your gut over all else. Our minds will flip back and forth with, naahhh, he’s just an alcoholic. Or nooo waaayy, I’m just being paranoid. You’re not paranoid… You are though, overriding your gut with those thoughts. This is natural.

There may be friends or family or co-workers or therapists or neighbors or the mailman around you intimating that you’re thinking too much about this and you “just need to get over it”. If that’s the case (super-super common), here’s my advice: stop talking to them about it. They don’t know. Your trauma-vibe is freaking them out. They’re worried about you. But they have no clue.

You, on the other hand, do: trust your gut. You’re amazing and gorgeous inside and out! Keep going… This is yours to untangle, unwind and get to the root of. I can support and guide you along the way. You get to decide how fully you want to understand this and how deeply and completely you’d like to restore your life. After all, it’s yours. I hope you will take a stand for it.

Courage is the force that makes our lives brilliant.
Courage is the force that creates history.
~ Daisaku Ikeda

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.