A sociopath makes use of their children
and ruins them for their own gain.
Non-pathological narcissistic parents
bring harm or pain from colossal to mild.

Nothing matters more to most parents than their children. Watching our children be hurt, or disappointed, ignored or treated badly is beyond heartbreaking. A parent who is a pathological sociopath – or a pathological narcissist – is something no child ought to have to endure or be subject to. Unfortunately, they do and they are.

There’s so much to know
that we don’t know we need to know.
They aren’t what we think they are.
Knowing the real-deal will set you free.

Knowing The Difference Between a “Narcissist” and Sociopathy Is Critical

The problem is that the ideas floating around in the recovery community about what people are calling a “narcissist” are very often inaccurate. This is not purposeful, but in the spirit of attempting to understand and to heal.

The mix up comes in confusing the pathologically narcissistic person with the non-pathological. In other words, people can have what I call “narcissistic glitches”, but not be “pathological”. Pathological is the case when the person’s brain is the cause of their bad behavior rather than the bad behavior being due to a bad childhood or intimacy issues or a “narcissistic wound”.

A Narcissist is Not a Wounded Kid Who Had a Bad Childhood

It’s so important to know what we’re facing. In order to unwind the confusion and untangle the pain, it really helps to discern if the person you’re facing is pathological in their narcissism or are in fact, suffering from a really bad childhood and horrible parenting.

A sociopath, or a narcissistic parent and their children… This delineation that we can make between a narcissistic parent or a bona fide sociopath matters so, so much when it comes to the kids.

A Sociopath in Behavior is a Sociopath in Fact

My thinking is, anyone who behaves like a sociopath is best thought of as a sociopath for our safety and recovery. Thinking of a sociopath – and that person you call a narcissist – as a sociopath is more useful in terms of decoding what is happening in a confusing, painful relationship.

Non Pathological Narcissistic Glitches

Narcissistic people who are not pathological – people with narcissistic bits or glitches but not hijacking you for all you are – are a variation of normal. What I call “narcissistic people” aren’t in the realm of a sociopath in that they are not pathological. The narcissistic person has some narcissistic hick-ups and it can be painful interacting with them at times, but they are not invading our lives like a parasite.

Even the most narcissistic of narcissistic people is not trying to take us for all we have. They aren’t leaving all the bills for us to pay; they don’t have that black bottomless set of eyes. – If the person you’re facing uses you for money, for a place to live, disappears or is unavailable, says odd things, is moody and darkly grumbling – and most definitely if you’ve ever seen those black eyes, then best think of them as a sociopath.

Life With a Narcissistic Person: Under Their Thumb

With a non-pathological narcissistic person, we feel under their thumb. We can feel like we just can’t win with them or there’s no pleasing them. Some non-pathological narcissistic people are barely narcissistic at all! Time with them, friendships and families can work.

The intensity of their narcissistic bit varies from narcissistic person to narcissistic person. This is light years away from a pathological narcissist: the sociopath. One is narcissistic from some sad bit of childhood or as a personality glitch. The other is pathological, and is willfully, deceptively, and deliberately making use of you. If you feel “broken”, they are pathological and a sociopath.

Life With a Sociopath: Under Their Spell

Within the adult dynamic of sociopath and human – predator and prey – (that’s the sociopath and us) we know things are weird, but we can’t figure out exactly what it is. We feel like they lie yet there’s so much we can’t put our finger on. Things run more smoothly if we keep quiet.

As long as a sociopath, a pathological user (that some call a “narcissist”) gets to keep doing what they want to do without any challenge, expectation, argument or opposition for us, things stay safely calm. Weird but calm.

Factor Down the Crazy. Real Answers.

Life Is Different With A Sociopath

With a sociopath, we feel as if we’re under their spell. There’s a big difference between a narcissistic person who is not pathological and the pathological narcissist aka the sociopath in a relationship. If we can get that sorted, we can then go on to understanding what the kids go through. We want to understand what this parent in question truly feels about the kids.

Breaking Up with Evil

“He’d give me the lecture and then go give the same one to my son. My son was left with the feeling he’d done something wrong…”

“When I did tell him I was pregnant, his attitude was a little off. He was extremely proud of himself for getting me pregnant, but his demeanor towards me was more like I had done what I was expected to do – get pregnant.” ~ Breaking Up with Evil, Chapter One, Caryn S.

Five women’s stories, “Dirty John” tales from real-life.

Our House Is No Longer Home

At home with a pathological user (the sociopath and that one you might call a “narcissist”) there are typically two variations of home life. The first is that they aren’t physically present very often with additional behavior that’s typical of this type. The second is they are there, a lot and even help with kids and make dinner.

Not Really Home

The sociopath who’s often gone from the physical home is also very busy when he is at home. They’re online a lot. They call this time online “work”, but most of us discover what they’re doing is watching porn and hunting prey.

They take the phone to the bathroom. They don’t participate in a real way with family life. We’re doing all the work. None of it is as fun as we want it to be, or thought it would be. We start to prefer them to be gone rather than be at home.

The Homebody Errand Boy

The other case is the sociopath who’s involved with the kids. They might drive the kids to school, and pick them up, and make their lunches and help with homework. They might run our erands, make dinner, and clean the house.

This looks good on the surface. And can seem good… yet inevitably there’s a time period where we talk to ourslves in our heads thinking we need them because how would we do all this without them?! Naturally – forgetting because we’re stunned in the fog of coercive control – that we did it all and did it better loong before we knew them.

Both situations have an oddness too them. We feel uncomfortable in the back of our mind, or pit of our stomach essentially, all the time. There are many problems in the house in both cases. Both include their rampant porn, confusion, money issues, uneasiness, unhappiness, deception, and issues related to our sex life with them.

A Darkness Prevails

This difference between a narcissistic person and a sociopath matters significantly. It matters so much in terms of the kids. A sociopath loves no one. The dark and heavy mood the sociopath (narcissist) makes within the household seeps into everything.

This is the case eventually, with both the absent sociopath or the homebody sociopath. The effort we have to take to keep things on balance, to keep things smooth and looking normal for the kids – all of it – is exhausting. We find ourselves not being truly present for our kids.

Kids Are Objects Too: Using Children

To a sociopath, their kids are just another target. Another toy on the table. A little something to use to make themselves appear normal. Additionally, kids provide a gate-way back into former prey. When we’re a parent and the other parent is a sociopath, we’re extremely vulnerable to letting that sociopath back in.

Sociopaths Pretend As a Way Of Life

Pathological users aka predators pretend to love their children. The sociopath can go unrecognized by courts, attornies, and can fool professional mental health specialists and psychologists. In therapy sessions they can be mistakenly perceived as bipolar, or as having PTSD – or as the total good guy. (Yes, fooled by those people who use the DSM to diagnose people.)

The misconceptions of what they are can lead to diagnosis or conclusions that they’re borderline – and holy-moley – covert, overt, or malignant narcissists. Which hello!… drum roll: plays out as a patholgoical person of narcissism behaving as a sociopath in daily life. Therefore, please think of a “narcissist” as a sociopath.

Sociopaths Make Loads of Kids They Do Not Love

It can seem illogical that socioapths – who hate kids – would have children at all. They abandon them, use them, abuse them. The children are a tool. This tool serves the purpose of leading other adults and people within society to view the sociopath or narcissist as normal and respectable.

When, in fact, male sociopaths abandon their kids fairly easily. Many kids. Often a trail of kids from many women. Female sociopaths have kids in marriage to appear normal as all sociopaths do. But more so, for the female sociopath they can use the kids as a meal ticket and a paycheck via alimony, child maintenance, property rights and more.

Kids and More Kids

We may not even know the number of children the particular sociopath who ensnared us has. They abandon them like litters of unwanted kittens. Here, a woman tells her story of discovering as an adult that she’s just one of eight children of her sociopath father.

The nutter I married has been discovered to have 18 known children and more like 23 that aren’t proven as his. But here’s what he told me about himself and children: 1) that he had no children, and 2) that he had 100s of kids all over the world, and 3) that he had a 4-year old little boy “for a little while” that he “gave back”.

Parental Love with Narcissistic Snags

A nonpathologically narcissistic person has the capacity to love. This is a person who is not pathological but has a tweak of emotional self-absorption in some area or other of their lives.

Narcissistic people do love their kids. There are days that their love hurts like h-e-double-toothpicks. And this informs many things about our lives as we grow up and become adults. It can be painful-love and not at all the best of parenting, but it’s our mom or dad. In divorce, nonpathological narcissistic parents can and will and do hang around out of genuine love.

It’s case by case and an individual experience as to whether this narcissistic parent’s love is enough for the children to remain in their lives. Each child weighs their fits of narcissistic glitches against the tiems that are good. Some narcissistic parents are just too much; too many narcissitic glitches that effect aspects of life or hurt too much to remain involved with. Others are not so bad.

Resolve and Solve Our Experience Based on Our Experience

The DSM and mental health diagnostic categories aren’t written for us. It’s for medical coding, court codes, social services and benefits coding. The DSM has no information that is the voice of or insight into our experience.

The DSM is ongoing, changing with the very heavy and slow machine of research and a very conservative industry. It’s a collection of notes made by an outsider looking at the bug. The bug… not at our experience.

So, if the person in question in your life lies, causes confusion and chaos, cheats, uses our money, contributes little or nothing, or only after arguments consider them a sociopath. 

If they love bomb, blame, play victim, rage, insult, coerce, and in the end hoover us, consider them a sociopath for our purposes of escape and recovery.

A Few Differences: Narcissistic People vs. Sociopaths

Narcissistic people can have egos the size of elephants. Or not. People who are narcissistic can criticize and make hurtful “jokes”. Most especially this is hurtful to their families, but also to their employees, and other people in their lives. The non-pathological narcissistic person can sometimes – or regularly – say hurtful things in front of other people. The pathological narcissist (sociopath) will not, because they must seem like the good guy.

Narcissistic people are not pathological liars who are pretending to be people that they aren’t. Non pathological narcissistic people don’t live off of other people or make use of others as a way of life. This is what sociopaths do.

Sociopaths Use Others

Sociopaths – narcissists – only use others; they make use of others. Association with others who are neuro-normal, such as yourself leads other people to believe they’re respectable, authentic and genuine because you are.

Because you’re hanging out with the sociopath (narcissist) people believe they must also be a normal, and good person. For the predator, the narcissist aka sociopath, hanging with one person leads to access to another person to use. All the people around the sociopath (narcissist) are used as far and as much as the user can make this happen.

Sociopaths live in a false world built of lies. The lies paint a picture of a person that doesn’t exist. They deceptively and fraudulently misrepresent who they are and what they are in order to make use of others.

This is pathological in origin… meaning they do this because this is how they’re brains are wired. It’s not a choice: it’s what they are. It’s all they will ever be. It doesn’t change, it can’t be fixed. There is nothing about us that makes them do what they do.

This can be hard to observe, hard to take in, and is very hard to accept. Getting to this place of comprehension and a place of ease with this fact is where we go in recovery sessions. This takes us to a place where we see how the duding, deceiving, lying, cheating wasn’t about us as people but is wholly about them as people of complete and pathological narcissism.

People In Pain as Parents: Narcissistic People

Narcissistic people who are not pathological don’t have the abnormal brain that makes someone a sociopath. They do in fact, have feelings of like and love. Unfortunately, the parts of themselves that are unresolved pain and so then hung up in an emotional cycle of projection of this pain, can be painful to love.

No matter how nice or loving they may be in one moment the bottom-line is they want to be catered to regarding the elements that they are narcissistic about.

When they hurl criticism, some narcissistic parents know the extent of the pain they cause as their children’s hearts sink. Some kids remain unable to get out from under the parental grip of scanty affection peppered with dissapoinment, emotional neglect or emotional blackmail.

Narcissistic People as Parents

A narcissistic parent can cut kids to quick in a surprise attack. and are most of the time the genuinely loving. Or they may be so narcissistic that most of the time it’s painful and genuine love is rare.

When it’s our dad or our mom, we love them. We snuggle back into the parent-kid dynamic and then get punched again and again with hurtfulness. This can go on forever. Unless we step away.

Monsters in Human Skin: Sociopaths

A large percentage of sociopaths eventually abandon their children and most often abandon their children at a young age. Children are connected to a form of a paycheck or used to lend the monster the-look-of-normal.

Female sociopaths have kids as a paycheck. Many male sociopaths leave before the kid is born. Consider that a stroke of good fortune. For the ones who do stick around, love has nothing to do with it. Sociopaths (pathological narcissists) keep children in their lives only if they can make use of them.

Divorcing a Sociopath: Save the Children

In a divorce, a sociopath will claim they want custody of the children to make themselves appear normal. Male sociopaths will attempt to take the kids in order to get out of court orders child maintenance. Ironic since it’s much more of a financial demand to house, feed, and care for kids full time than to pay a monthly stipend. A monetary award by the way, that they do not payout.

If you’re going to court with a male sociopath and you have kids… that child maintenance money is what they’re trying to get out of.

They don’t want the kids, but they’ll fight you to take them in order to keep from being told by a Judge to pay money for the kids … that they don’t intend to pay. Because they don’t love or care about the kids. That is a sociopath. And this is something no one comes out of unharmed and no child deserves.

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