"This persisted several times until I would say, "Do you know how to do this or that?" first! He had to say no. Then I saw his uncle do the same thing to his wife- only she hadn't caught on."
Wow! That is a powerful technique and a great idea. I have seen some really great ideas for dealing with sociopaths, and that's the best we can do -- learn how to identify them and learn how to deal with them. You can never deal with them head-on. They will manipulate the truth and convince others that you are the jerk.
When my mother has a flash of reality and starts questioning the results, then my brother replies with an appeal for pity. Basically he says what she is saying makes him feel even worse and doesn't help.
If he finds a job and he's "depressed" and fails at his job, it will be even more of a setback (even his manipulated therapists agree, or so we are told). The reality is, during his last 18 months span of unemployment, a job would have gotten in the way of his gluttony and alcoholism. Yes, what helps is lots of money going down the black hole of consumption. And yes, anti-depressants have made this worse.
He's like a manic consumption machine. The sad truth is he sees therapists from one of the top universities in the nation, and they seem to just suck. They're terrible. They give him anti-depressants and don't assess whether he has mania or anti-social personality disorder.
Of course, he does his homework, and like any true sociopath, he tells people what they want to hear.
One of the key influences in his life, and what I feel is the turning point that turned him into a sociopath (anti-depressants sealed the deal), was the discovery of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". That is pretty much his handbook for manipulating people. It taught him that if you tell people what they want to hear, instead of the truth, you can get more out of people.
Dale Carnegie was some salesman/motivational speaker, and perhaps just another sociopath himself.
Anyway, please keep posting the great ideas on how to deal with these people. Unfortunately, for me, the notion of distancing myself can only work to some extent. With the situation of a family member who has manipulated other family members, this would mean distancing myself from my mother.
To a certain extent, I find her gullibility frustrating, but I have to realize the mother-son bond is quite strong. Even though I have pointed out the numerous lies, she continues to believe everything he says.
For example, she recently visited him, and he had her buying groceries, etc. even though he is now gainfully employed. (They're already asking him if he's interested in transferring to another department in another city after seven months, which he has taken as a compliment. Hmmm. Usually they want to keep good people.)
He has no intention of paying back all of the money he borrowed (of course he says he will). No -- now that he is employed (for now) he continues to get my mom to pick up the tab for lots of little things here and there that add up.
He's very clever about it too. He says he has to work late, then he goes to happy hour and loads up on booze and food. Then he tells my mother that since he's working late, and he'd appreciate it if she picks up groceries and wine for dinner. By the time he's had a few bottles of wine, he heads back, eats up the food she bought, and has a few more bottles of wine.
It only looks like he ate a large meal and only had two bottles of wine, but there was a pre-supper binge that was covered up as "working late". Oh, and it shows how hard he is working. My mom pays for dinner #2, which allows him to indulge during his "working late" dinner #1. It's not genius or clever, but just sad and pathetic.
I know this sounds terrible, but at least this will limit the time he has on this planet to exploit people. His greed and ability to manipulate himself are so profoundly strong, that he is self-destructing.
The really unfortunate thing is the collateral damage -- all the money my mom is losing and she will be devastated when he's killed himself with gluttony and alcoholism.
It's funny -- the last time I was in his company, he said he had work to do, and went into the den to "work" on his laptop.
I walked by 30 minutes later, and he was hard at work playing World of Warcraft, which I think is what fills up most of his hours at work. But my mom says how hard he works -- he wakes up early and gets into the office and stays late. But where are the results? They're already trying to wipe this booger off on some other department, and he hasn't been there a year!
He's lucky that the city/state he is in has laws that make it virtually impossible to fire someone, which is perhaps why his co-workers are suggesting he moves to another department.
It does take two to tango -- and my mom is gullible due to the maternal bond. She wants to believe the lies. However, this gullibility gives him a sense that he can get away with this with pretty much everyone. That's where he loses jobs. Managers and smart people can see through him, but my mom cannot.
That said, his sociopathy has become more finely honed, and now he has some very wealthy friends who wouldn't miss a $10,000 loan. He's so glib, charming, and fun to be around (for everyone but me, apparently. I have to try not to vomit in my mouth when he rattles off the same material over and over, like a bad stand up comedian who hasn't changed his act in five years.) However, he will end up abusing that and I already see some of these people distancing themselves.
In the end, mom will always believe it. My dad never believed it, but he passed on a few years ago. If he were alive today, he would not let this happen. He saw through the sociopathy and he really gave my brother a hard time about it, and he would never continually write blank checks to support a gluttonous alcoholic. For so many reasons, it's a shame my dad passed away. Things would have been so much different.
So what can we do? Sometimes we can distance ourselves, but this is not always realistic. I like the idea of ignoring the person. I did this officially for over a year, but he ended up slumming me -- he told everyone, including my friends and co-workers that I do not talk to him and that makes me a jerk.
So yeah, even if you ignore the person, the true sociopath has a strategy to make one look like a jerk. If you do avoid the person, it has to be done like a sociopath would do it. Tell the sociopath and his friends what they want to hear. Be charming and polite. Just draw the line at anything that will tax your resources.
Make up an excuse -- "oh, my money is tied up in investments right now". That's the same excuse my brother often uses to swindle my mom. I know he ate and drank up that money a long, long time ago. After all, the sociopath is so great, he's going to be a CEO some day, so he doesn't need to save money for a rainy day. He can just raid some other squirrel's acorns, which is what they do.
It really upsets me. I don't go out to fancy dinners three or four times a week. I maybe spend $10 on food and drink a day (I live in a place with an expensive cost of living). Then the sociopath who burned through all his money wants mine too! No, that money is for the real stuff that real people buy -- a home, retirement, a car. I'm not going to eat/drink it all up, and I sure as heck am not going to let someone else do that.
This strategy of "out sociopath in the sociopath" would drive my sociopath brother insane, and to a certain extent, this is what I do now. He shook me down for some money, and I told him yeah, but never followed up. I just ignored him from there on.
If I told him no, I would be the jerk, because it was for my mom (but really, it was a clever way of spending some credit card earnings he could only really use on my mom, and having me reimburse him in cash, so he would have more money for beef, wine, and pills).
Luckily for me, in my professional life, I do not run into that many sociopaths. Some careers are full of them -- investment banking and sales, to mention a few. No, I am a technical person, and for the most part, the sociopaths who are effective end up in management and the ones that are too short sighted find other professions.
In the end, technical people need to get the job done, and sociopaths who take credit for others' work tend to be painfully obvious. That said, I have met a few.
As much as one may say it is best to move on to a new job, if I had followed that advice, I would have missed out on some great opportunities. I have found that if it is one sociopath who is despised by the team, you can often get some momentum and get management involved. But it's often a pyrrhic victory.
The irony is that when you get rid of someone who is not a team player, the rest of the team can come across as dysfunctional. Also, there will be some cowards on the team who will not come forward. Sure, they'll whine about the sociopath at lunch, but they will defect when it comes down to any definitive and productive action.
It is probably best to move to a new department or find a new job, if the sociopath is that bad. But wait it out -- they can often self destruct. After all -- the inability to hold on to a job is a key characteristic of a sociopath. But if your manager is a sociopath, you usually must move on.
The sociopath is the hardest person to deal with, because they are so good at fooling others. It really is like stepping on quicksand -- the harder you fight, the more they make you out to be a jerk.
The best you can do is to out-sociopath the sociopath. Don't stick by your honorable code of conduct. No -- you have to tell them what they want to hear, and be flaky later when it comes to paying out. "Oh, I have a cash flow issue because I just bought a bunch of stocks in the recent down market".
Like a sociopath, you need lots of details. Sociopaths always have lots of details and a sad, pitiful story. Pity is another sign of the sociopath. My brother has myriad illnesses and problems that are tied to gluttony and alcoholism, yet he says they are genetic and have nothing to do with morbid obesity (even sleep apnea, he claims, is genetic. When he gets type 2 diabetes, it will also be genetic, even though he weighs 300 pounds). It's a pity story where nature is to blame, and then he guzzles down another 24 oz steak, a few pounds of bacon, and six bottles of wine.
The sociopath doesn't see this irony -- it's the mental gymnastics they do.
"Genetics" is a big one. He is convinced he has a chemical imbalance that causes severe depression, but anyone who drank six bottles of wine would wish they were dead the next day. He went from being a high school athlete to a sedentary glutton within a year, and that's when his problems developed. It's nice to think a pill can fix it all, but anti-depressants have made it even worse. I'm glad to see a lot of criticism of anti-depressants (no better than placebo, only good for very few people, but over-prescribe due to incentive programs and "ask your doctor about..." advertising).
I really think the advice about asking them -- "do you know how to do this" is very good, but it will work best in interpersonal relationships. Maybe you can get the workplace sociopath to admit this in a meeting, but chances are s/he will bullcrap their way through it.
Unfortunately, you can't always run away, and many times, if you want to spend time with the rest of your family, you have to learn to live with the sociopath. It literally makes my blood boil. I just want to scream, "don't you realize this guy is just full of lies?" That will only make you look bad. I found even if you quietly confront other relatives or friends about it, it will make you look bad. You have to shut up and put up with it, and be content in the fact that you know the truth. You can't get swindled too bad when you know the truth. If you want some satisfaction, you can try to mirror the sociopath's tactics -- suddenly you have no money to lend, as it is "tied up in investments" and you have a "cash flow issue", but you would really love to help out.
One anecdote that makes my blood boil (and this is a true sociopath at work) shows the pettiness and selfishness of a sociopath. No, it wasn't the worst thing that could happen, but it shows the mental gymnastics that they do. We went out for a night on the town with a mutual friend, and we went to dinner at a very fancy restaurant.
Since I had been to dinner at the friend's house several times, and never had him over, I paid for the bill without hesitation. However, the friend was in the bathroom at the time I paid the bill ($500 for 3 people). When he came back, my brother informed him that he worked something out with the bill. I had to speak up and said (very annoyed) "yeah, I paid for it". That made me look petty and bad, and my friend looked annoyed. On top of that, my brother had the lion's share of everything. We had a $100 steak dish that was to be shared amongst three people, and he wolfed down most of it. He asked if we could order another, but the wait staff said it would take 40 minutes. He drank most of the wine, and ordered bottle after bottle. Sure, I wasn't robbed or raped, and he has done much worse, but this is exactly what the sociopath will do. They don't pick their battles. Every little opportunity to be a sociopath is exercised. It's a way of life. It's not something they reserve for the big conflicts.
Sociopathy is in the minute details, from taking credit for someone else paying for a dinner, to acting like the guy who kept the Fortune 500 powerhouse company's CEO in line, when an attractive woman is sitting at the table. If you want to see a sociopath at work -- if you are in the company of an attractive woman, suddenly the morbidly obese unemployed guy is a sky-diving rock star who keeps CEOs of major companies in line. He'll say anything to get into those panties. It rarely works, but sociopaths don't care. I don't think they even realize it. It's automatic and not something they consciously do, which is something I just recently realized.
I could go on about the women he has manipulated. It just makes me more angry. I must say, however, that the research and the fact that I can't do much about this problem has resigned me to the notion that there is not much I can do. I have to let the disease run its course and if my mom is bankrupted, I have to take care of her. I just have to make sure I don't get swindled in a major way.
Sure, he'll take credit for things I do. He does this all the time. The last case of this was my mother's birthday party, where I did 80 percent of the work, and he spent four hours setting the table in an almost passive aggressive way (avoiding any dirty work like cleaning the house, cooking, shopping, which I had to do). He basically emailed people about the party and set the table, and he took credit for everything.
He's known for doing this at work. If there is a lot of work to be done, suddenly he has to fiddle with his PC for 15 hours, so someone else has to do the real work. I know some of his co-workers, and I hear the stories of him being reprimanded for playing video games, etc. Then I hear the side of it he presents to me and my mom: "I gave my life to that company, and they did this to me!" And yeah, it happens a lot. The world is just full of people who do the sociopath wrong, in their minds. They are the victim and they have a pitiful story they will tell you over an expensive dinner that you pay for.
In the end, I have to realize he pays a price for this; in the past 10 years he has been unemployed for five years. Most sociopaths do not hold on to jobs. He has not held on to a job longer than three years, but lately it has been less than one or two years. It's getting worse!
He fits 95 percent of the sociopath profile. The only things that don't fit is that he did well academically in high school (but nearly flunked out of college and conned a professor into letting him get into grad school with a < 2.0 GPA). OK, I think it's more like 99 percent fitting.
I am conflicted. There is a certain peace in knowing there is nothing I can do, and that engaging in conflict with a sociopath is like stepping into quicksand. That said, it frustrates me there is nothing I can do. As a technical person, I like to fix things. I cannot fix this. I don't like acting like a sociopath or fake in order to do damage control. But what are the alternatives? Look like a jerk to everyone he has manipulated? Cut myself off from my family?
In the end, I have to keep my distance and when the end game happens, I have to be the bigger man and say he was a great guy and how sad this all is (after all, who will keep that Fortune 500 CEO in line? he he he). I have to be prepared to take care of my mom after her savings are wiped out.
The best you can do is be a faux-sociopath vis-a-vis the sociopath and his sphere of influence. I can't convince my mom not to support him. I've tried and she says she can't just let him starve. Oh, there's not a chance of that. 300 pounds and growing... Again, where are the results? Look for results, and you won't find any. You'll just find a bankrupt, obese alcoholic who finds joy in manipulating people.
Talk about a million dollar baby -- he went to one of the best universities for undergrad and grad, which my parents paid for in tota. Then there have been the years and years of support during his bouts of unemployment. If my mom didn't have a sociopath for a son, she would be living the sweet life.
They are the worst of the mentally ill, because they do so much damage and they are nearly impossible to treat. If it really was depression and he was honest with his therapist about his habits, treatment for chemical dependency and depression would work wonders.
One thing I used to point out to my mom is that he's too depressed to work, but if his friend who lives 40 miles away puts on a dinner with wine, he's shaved, suited up and there in no time. Likewise, when I invited him to dinner at a fine restaurant for his birthday, he was cleaned up, suited up, and there on time. Wow -- the depression seems to be absent when it's time for gluttony. Again, pointing this out makes me the jerk. It's funny, because my mom got mad at me, and she saw a special on depression on PBS, and screamed at me, "this is a real problem and these people are so bad off they can't even get up to eat a meal". I mentioned that he will shower, shave, suit up, and drive 40+ miles for gluttony, so that doesn't sound like depression. No, depression is the pity story that allows him to get away with sucking my mom dry.
It makes me sick. It's not only a disservice to our family, but a mockery of people who are truly depressed. While he has been "depressed" he has never skipped a meal or the several bottles of wine, he goes to a rifle range (isn't that comforting -- a sociopath with a gun!), he plays video games all day. The sleeping in until noon is more about sleeping off a hangover than depression. He's not depressed. It's the sociopath's pity play.
