Tag: James Fallon Neuroscientist

The Truth Hits Home – A Psychopath’s Brain

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Sandra Brown. Women who love Psychopaths

Written back in Dec 2016.  Publishing now August 2018.

Today marks the third day of me reading this book.  It has been a long tiresome journey of one and a half years after discovering his disorder.  I feel like I have had to read and research a million books and sites to get this this part of my journey!  This book by Sandra Brown “Women Who Love Psychopaths” was known to me at the beginning of my suspicions but due to circumstances I could not get the book immediately.  I am glad that I didn’t because reading it now is the right time for me.

Sandra’s book is gut wrenching because it hits on ALL THE POINTS for why I was such a target .. The role of what and who I am plays such an important part of our relationship. How my personality traits allowed him to get so close to me and also take advantage of all my strengths to make them my weaknesses.  In this aspect, this is the only book that I have come across that maps out the characteristics that are similar between the Super Empathic victim and the Psychopathic abuser – why the relationship works so well for both parties in fulfilling their needs.  Despite hating myself for being conned by him all these years, I felt better having read why I was so inclined to do so due to the type of characteristics I had.  It made me realise why I did not give up on him when so many others might have abandoned a lost cause.  “Women Who Love Psychopaths” also high lights the relationship patterns that are so common in all the victim’s stories.

Sandra harps on the point that a Psychopath is unable to make permanent or lasting changes to their behaviour, resulting in ineffective relationships and eventual harm to the women to who love them.   She brings home the point when she asks if one would ask something of a mentally retarded or disabled person that they are so incapable of doing  –  the SAME applies to a Psychopath.  Well .. I imagined a person with no legs – asking them to run. Well they can’t and they never will be able to – they just don’t have that piece of equipment. Whilst all this while I had read that a Psychopaths brain was different, it took this imagery in my mind to truly understand that I, in a mental capacity was asking My Love to do things he would never be able capable of doing in the first place.

This book and numerous others, discuss the fact that due to the lack of physical development in a few areas of a Psychopath’s brain, he is emotionally unable to feel Empathy.  As a result, a Psychopath does not have the ability feel the hurt he causes, and that lack of feeling means that he is able to re-offend without much thought or care. If you put your hand in fire and you don’t get burnt like others, it is inconsequential to you if you put it in fire again.  However, if you want to fit in with the rest of the crowd, then you will pretend that upon touching fire, your facial expression should be of agony, you jump up and down waving your hand in the air and you cry from the pain.  

When a Psychopath realises at some stage of his life that he is different, he learns to cope and blend in with society using  a from of detached learning.  In this way, a Psychopath has to compensate by remembering what the outcomes  or reactions are from those around him, to different emotional situations created by him.  He learns to be very observant and is constantly studying reactions and body language.  Due to the Psychopath’s innate desire to be top dog,  it will always be a game of emotions to dominate as many women as he can lure throughout his life.

Generally, their level of emotional development age stays around a biological age of a teenager – perhaps fifteen, sixteen years of age.   He may look like a man, behave sexually like a man, have the bravado like a cave man BUT every other aspect of his character demonstrated irresponsibility and recklessness similar to the level of  teenager still figuring out life.

SO … to SANDRA BROWN – A BIG THANK YOU for helping me finally get over the line.  I GET IT FINALLY !! http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com

I have read and researched SO MUCH about the brain, psychopathy and spirituality all these 18 months.  It has been EXHAUSTING and I a very tired.  But every bit of information is starting to sink in, piece together and I am actually able to stand back and look at him in a different light. Weirdly, I am also finding him a “fascinating” subject because I can now predict his reactions and movements. I feel detached from him and he no longer feels like a mystery or a wonderful human being in my eyes anymore. Merely a subject for my analysis.  I watch him with caution and detachment.  And with resentment and hatred too.

In some ways, when I look at all the helpless blubbering messes women turn into at the hands of a Psychopath, I wonder why we allowed ourselves to get to that stage and what state are we left in at the end of the relationship?  It is embarrassing, it is ridiculous.  And yet, the victims, women who are strong, women who are kind, all sorts of women with traits that “match” the Psychopath’s needs – are left destroyed and confused.  I know that Sandra Brown’s book mentions that the women who love Psychopaths generally have high functioning, have self sufficient, with good careers and back grounds – but based on the contact I have had from readings and sites, it seems that there is just as large a population of women who do not necessarily have those characteristics.  I feel that as long as there is a benefit of some sort ie. free accommodation, some cash flow support, etc the Psychopath will use anyone as convenience.  However, yes it does make sense that a more well endowed victim would be preferred if there was a choice.

From Sandra Brown’s book and others that I have read, here are the messages that I truly believe every victim who has been through a destructive Psychopathic relationship should try to understand:-

  • Psychopaths can never change PERMANENTLY.  All changes are “short lived” due to the fact that their brains are built in a way that do not allow them to learn from their experiences.  Faulty wiring that CANNOT be fixed.  Any attempted changes to their ways generally they falter and they revert back to their “default” setting.   In this sense, I really saw how hard he wanted to start a fresh, be good and make something out of his life BUT he was never able to sustain it for longer than a month? two months? a week? Each woman he hooked up with offered a new promise to a normal life – but he always fucked it up. And within a period of time (generally 2 years)  the relationships were torn and tattered and he had to move  on.  Other failed lifestyle changes included – He tried to stop smoking – a billion times;  He said he was going to start saving, pay his fines on time and not live day to day – a million times;   He promised to stop getting so angry and using abusive language – a thousand times. He said he would not hurt me anymore – a hundred times.
  • There is a natural tendency for a Psychopath to want to have the upper hand, to manipulate and hurt.  As long as you stay with the Psychopath, you will always be a VICTIM.  He will always cheat on you and play with your emotions.
  • Unless you change the way you behave and think about the Psychopath, he will continue to lure you back in after each discard.  YOU have all the traits that make you compatible to the Psychopath.  Hence that is why YOU as an empathic person were targeted.  If the toy does not make a sound when the bully prods it, the bully will leave it alone.   The Psychopath needs you to preen HIS feathers!!!
  • STOP believing or trying to understand if he ever loved you.  It was always a one-way relationship.  Psychopaths ATTACH and you LOVE … When Sandra mentioned this in her book, it made me think hard about the concept.  If we are referring to attachment, we refer to objects such as a favorite pair of shoes or handbag.  From his perspective,  I was just another shoe, another coat.  I may have been one of his favorite ones, or maybe not.

I also found Ron Johnson’s book The Psychopath Test a very good read – being a journalist, he presented the topic in a very detached manner; comical and cynical –  his book explored the subject matter in a detached manner and I started with this book at beginning of my research as it approached psychopathy in a non personal manner.

In summary – once the penny dropped and I understood the true nature of psychopathy, I decided that all the effort that I had put into the relationship over the many years was for little to no gain.  The only gain was that I learnt about me as  hyper-empath because another type of personality could take advantage of me for who I was.   

If I didn’t want to be a current or future target anymore, I had to change some things :-

  • Establish some boundaries of in terms of how much I was willing to do in terms of helping others.
  • Keep my core essence of being empathetic but remember save myself before I saved others.
  • Not jump in too deeply and quickly when trying to help others.  Assess the person in a more critical light ie. be less trusting.

For all the women who ever loved Psychopaths – Do not underestimate the amount of time you needed to research the topic of Psychopathy,  the understanding required to comprehend what the disorder is all about,  the patience and acceptance of your situation to get to a calm stage in order to execute an exit plan and the strength and determination needed to survive the mind-fuck, abuse and PTSD.

I know there is the defense that due to the fact that the Psychopath has the inability to “help” himself due to brain limitations, “It is not their fault they were born this way”.  But neither is it your fault if you decide to give up and defend yourself from harm.  A Psychopath has to figure out how to survive with his disabilities and he will continue to use as many women and friends as he can to make it through this lifetime.  If you adopt a path of sympathetic reasoning, knowing full well that he is a Psychopath, you will never get yourself out of his loop of abuse.   Instead, go back to basics:  You cannot save him because he cannot be saved.    He does not need you to survive – but you will not survive if you stay.  SO SAVE YOU and DON’T STAY.

RESOURCES WORTH CHECKING OUT

https://www.rd.com/true-stories/neuroscientist-brain-psychopath/