Why Labeling Someone a Sociopath Can Be a Double-Edged Sword

Hi Dr. Jonice:
Thanks so much for this article! I read your articles on Psych Central and really find them helpful in understanding some of my family’s dysfunction as well as my own feelings. In fact, after just now getting off the phone with my mom and listening to her complaints (legitimate, but…) and obsessing over the same thing for the past several years I am sitting here wishing I could ship certain family members to you because none of them are willing to listen to me, change any of THEIR behaviors or get help yet they constantly turn to me and cry on my shoulder!! This was “getting old” two years ago but now it’s to the point where it is impacting me more than ever and I am tired of the chaos and drama. Yet when I tell my mom and my (half) brother, that they are so enmeshed it’s not healthy, that his alcoholism, anger, rage, false accusations, name calling, self harm, destroying property etc are HUGE red flags and puts her potentially at risk, she claims “oh, he’d never hurt anyone, he’s my son, what am I supposed to do? I can’t let him starve!”
She lives on very modest retirement income and is elderly with health conditions–at risk for Covid-19. Yet he calls her to say “mom I’m out of everything, and I also need cigarettes. I have nothing to drink, no food for my dog.. but it’s just me, I’m not important anyway.” She says “Don’t be silly, of course you are. You know I love you!” He will say with a sarcastic snort “Yeah right, YOU don’t love ME! You should have just drowned me when I was born or aborted me!” Or, she will say “okay if you are out of stuff we’ll drive down and take you to the store” and then drive 90 minutes each way. Only for him to buy very little when she gets here and THEN ask her to stop at another convenience store near him where he will buy cigarettes, beer (usually four 24 oz cans and drink them in one night) and/or vodka. THEN later, he will be at home, depressed, drunk, lonely and call our mother and tear her apart verbally–mock her for being hard of hearing, mock her tone of voice, accuse her of not loving him, only wanting to make herself happy (sooo NOT true), lying about stuff, cheating on his father (who sexually abused me for years and is now dead), calls her “Satan,” a “poor excuse of a mother,” “evil”, tells her “I’ll see you in hell B–CH!” or will scream at her and at times, tell her SHE MAKES him angry and he will tell her he’s cut himself because of her etc. We call the police and then when they talk to him, he is calm and says “oh, my family just worries a lot–they are worrywarts, I’m sorry Officer that they bothered you!” Then he tells her if she ever does that again he will be dead before they arrive–and when I called to get him some help, he physically threatened me.
So totally unlike who he used to be!! I am just so tired of this constant chaos. He goes from saying we are his “best friends” we “saved him from starvation” and has told me I am his “guardian angel” and his “hero and always have been” to being totally in a rage and not in control.
I guess I just needed to vent… Thanks.
Lori

“Sociopathic parents are not able to see or respond to, much less validate, their child’s feelings.”

Actually, from my own research, psycho/sociopaths *can* often trek what others are feeling, but as James Fallon (diagnosed and self-identifying “pro-social” psychopath) put it, the thing is that they just don’t care about it.

I think that’s probably the one of the biggest – if not THE biggest – misconceptions that we tend to make: that just because someone is aware of something means that they care about it, particularly where feelings are involved. With no disrespect intended, I honestly don’t understand why people make that conclusion. ^_^;

But honestly, think about it: for the ones that DO manipulate, how could they do so if they couldn’t tell what you were feeling? Or at least, I think it would put limits on *how* they could manipulate you.

Personally, I think the most important thing is whether someone – psycho/sociopath or otherwise – decides that people are important and deserve respect, and are aware of whether they treat them that way. (I have met people who go on about being nice to people, sincerely mean it, and then go against their own standards without being aware of it. o_o;; This might be more dangerous than whether or not they CARE.)

Once again, another great article. Thank you sincerely for your studies and hard work, all in the name of helping and healing others.

It wasn’t until I started therapy that I realized that my mother was sociopathic and that I suffered from CEN and depression. Even though I was in my fifties, being able to put a label to what I experienced my entire life helped in so many ways. My therapist recommended that I read your book, Running on Empty, which helped me to understand the importance of recovery and how it has helped me with my own adult children.

Because a parent may have themselves a CEN background (Dr. Webb has pointed out that CEN is a generational, and therefore cultural problem) even what seem to be overtly sociopathic behaviors may stem from their errors in belief about how to interact with offspring, and indeed, anyone they may decide needs “education” or mentoring.
this is more intractable, due to their accepted belief system – their culture.
An elder sibling imposing hierarchical and either cruel or insensitive relationships add to the child’s perception of “this is the way of the world”, likely contributing to the desperate seeking of relief in the form of seeking out either professional or peer differentiation from such a systematic social worldview. When seeking out more empathetic companions and groups, we ourselves bring either or both excessive emotional response, and excessively quick mistaken judgments of others behavioral signals.
The complexity of what is actually the mixing of essentially very foreign home cultures – incompatible presumptions and beliefs, makes escape from a CEN milieu difficult.

As many can see or intuit, this really quite sociopathic view easily bleeds into maltreatment of others, all others, including animals, domestic and wild (although domestics can become scapegoats, their very similar social need, – unconditional love, any organism, indeed, all with whom one interacts become victims of those generationally-imposed cognitive errors.

My mother, for example in every situation of abuse by father, grandfather, elder brother, counseled only stoicism – acceptance and participation in their demonstrably failed modeling of culture as sociopathy.
At age 31,I was astonished that a man interacted playfully with his father – it just did not compute, and gave me the impression of unreality – I denied what I actually SAW.
Additionally, it aroused a sense of immense absence, loss, yearning, for such a world.

Moat of the time, though,we fall bac into ur erroneous belief system. My own sister, foru years younger, understood teh cruelty of the parental abuse from an emotional standpoint. Being insulated somewhat herself, through her sex and her age, , while she certainly acted out against the attempt[s] to impose CEN culture, she finally seems to have succumbed. Since she is involved in the medical/helping profession, I believe the emotional “hardening” I see, may have been a result of the almost constant bombardment of ill and emotionally suffering, causing her to more easily imitate the self-protective response of CEN modeled constantly in her early life.
This note, then, is about the relative intractability that occurs when emotional neglect is so pervasive that it BECOMES culture.
I would say: “resist!”
No matter how close, how accepted as fact such anhedonic, unexpressive, the society you see around you, retain your innocence. It may limit your circle of acquaintance, but to involve yourself only in relationships with those worthy of trust, or at least to make sure you HAVE and prize most of all one or more relationships with any worthy of your trust.
Only from such an incipient famiy and culture can you have the capacity to assist any other from your early life.
I have for a couple years now slowly weaned my own mother from her stoicism and cynicism. One of the reasons why I thought Dr. Webb’s CEN books of value, was that they helped give a coherent basis for helping my now-aged mom out of a lifelong view of presumption of cynical mistrust.

I don’t live in the family or society in which I would prefer, but the only remedy is the creation of trust and consideration on however small a scale of love we can create. This, at least, allows us to rest , even if alone, in a more caring perception of the world.

My brother is a sociopath he is extremely difficult and likes to “attack” – nasty letters, emails. Tries to manipulate. I live in fear of him. I’ve cut all ties but he contacts me to start trouble. What do I do?