Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

[cassandra]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Maybe I'm a hard person in some ways, but I don't view these people as tragic. I don't believe they have the mental apparatus to feel lonely (from what I have read and observed).
Looking at how the world is with these folks in them, I certainly don't feel sorry for them, though they are sorry, empty characters.
I don't hate them either, because they can't help being what they are, and have little free will to choose otherwise.
I just want them out of power and exposed for what they are.
However, I have never been involved personally with such people (that I'm aware of), so I have never witnessed their charisma, persuasiveness and manipulations up close.

 

[anart]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I tend to agree - pity is not a word I would use regarding any pathological. I think it is very, very difficult for a normal human being to even fathom the depths of the mind-set of a pathological person. Anytime we wander into 'pity territory', we're simply become better prey.

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Argggh I know this (in my head) It's not a compassionate feeling that I'm feeling. Kind of like pity for something I want to turn my head away from. I did my "time" thinking I could fix/love/outlast them via patience. I guess letting go of those old "memes" I accepted as a nurse and someone who makes a living from taking care of people is a process.

 

[sandrabrownma]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Not sure 'doomed' to repeat themselves' is accurate. Doomed implies the ability to have insight. Insight (and impulse control) is what changes behavior. Pathology is the absence of insight therefore they aren't doomed in the sense that they continue to choose wrongly. It is much more primitive and hardwired than that. Pathology IS the manifestation of repeating self destructive behavior. (If you look in the DSM it is part of the enduring pattern of behavior).

 

[go2]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Not sure 'doomed' to repeat themselves' is accurate. Doomed implies the ability to have insight. Insight (and impulse control) is what changes behavior. Pathology is the absence of insight therefore they aren't doomed in the sense that they continue to choose wrongly. It is much more primitive and hardwired than that. Pathology IS the manifestation of repeating self destructive behavior. (If you look in the DSM it is part of the enduring pattern of behavior).

Doomed seems the inevitable end of one condemned to repeat a destructive behavior without insight or capacity for insight into the origin, pattern, and consequences of the behavior. Did you mean “doomed implies the lack of ability to have insight”?

Is empathy the automatic feeling of another’s pain? Why would feeling another’s suffering increase vulnerability to victimization by psychopaths? Is indiscriminate automatic behavioral response to empathic feeling what you mean by a risk factor for victimization by psychopaths? Could indiscriminate automatic empathy become a pathology?

Empathy is a result of several hundred million years of mammalian evolution. It is hard wired in the instinctive-motor function to facilitate parenting etc. essential for the perpetuation of species. Evolutionary time subjected species to pressure of predation.

Empathy must have entailed corresponding evolution of factors necessary to discriminate friend from foe when eliciting the nurturing behaviors associated with empathy, or the exhibiting individuals or species would have been extinguished.

What are the factor or factors which co- evolved with empathy in the healthy human being? The thinking brain comes to mind immediately, but I feel I am missing something. Do you or others have insight into factors contributing to healthy empathic response in human beings?

Is it possible men and women have different empathic responses based on differing evolutionary roles of men and women in the tribal environment? Is responsible empathy a learned modulation of a powerful and indiscriminate force designed to protect and nurture humanity as a species?

Anyway, thanks for stimulating a few neurons to explore the role of empathy in healthy and responsible humanity.

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Sorry for the language mistakes on previous post. I've been writing all day and getting tongue tied. I don't see a place where I can correct those for clarity so hope everyone can limp along and understand. Thanks.

After you have a certain number of posts, you can edit your posts. That is in place to prevent hit and run defamers from coming in, writing slanderous, sleazy posts, and then when they are exposed, coming in and erasing them and saying "oh, what are they talking about?"

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I've started thinking about pathology as just a "force of nature" kind of like a grindstone put in place for normal humans to polish themselves on.

You wouldn't have pity for a tornado, you wouldn't ask why it does what it does, etc. Pathologicals are the same. And with tornadoes, you keep your eye on the weather and when there is danger, you get out of the way. You can't fix tornadoes, change them, prevent them. But you can warn others about them and what they can do...

 

[sandrabrownma]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Pathology just is. It is doomed to the degree that it has an inability to change.

Without rewriting a book here, the issue of hyper empathy is what we are talking about which is inthe book Women Who Love Psychopaths. The trait elevations were significant which raises the question whether such elevations (not only in empathy but others as well) is part of a pool of risk factors or targets that psychopaths look for. It's all the in the book....

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Pathology just is. It is doomed to the degree that it has an inability to change.

Without rewriting a book here, the issue of hyper empathy is what we are talking about which is inthe book Women Who Love Psychopaths. The trait elevations were significant which raises the question whether such elevations (not only in empathy but others as well) is part of a pool of risk factors or targets that psychopaths look for. It's all the in the book....

I think that hyperempathy is just another term for being driven and controlled by emotions. As Gurdjieff would put it, the intellectual center usurping the energy of the emotional center.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Pathology just is. It is doomed to the degree that it has an inability to change.

Without rewriting a book here, the issue of hyper empathy is what we are talking about which is inthe book Women Who Love Psychopaths. The trait elevations were significant which raises the question whether such elevations (not only in empathy but others as well) is part of a pool of risk factors or targets that psychopaths look for. It's all the in the book....

I think that hyperempathy is just another term for being driven and controlled by emotions. As Gurdjieff would put it, the intellectual center usurping the energy of the emotional center.

From experience and reflection, as much as it hurts to say, I agree with you 100%.

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Pathology just is. It is doomed to the degree that it has an inability to change.

Without rewriting a book here, the issue of hyper empathy is what we are talking about which is inthe book Women Who Love Psychopaths. The trait elevations were significant which raises the question whether such elevations (not only in empathy but others as well) is part of a pool of risk factors or targets that psychopaths look for. It's all the in the book....

I think that hyperempathy is just another term for being driven and controlled by emotions. As Gurdjieff would put it, the intellectual center usurping the energy of the emotional center.

Another thought I had was that the people most likely to be "victimized" are those who practice some degree of what Lobaczewski referred to as "selection and substitution."

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient factors. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious elimination of data which are or appear to be inexpedient gradually turns to habit, then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. Any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of phenomena which should be viewed as psychopathological.

And:

Information selection and substitution: Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

Here he makes mention of the same thing Gurdjieff said, that emotional reasoning was "faster" that intellectual reasoning, kind of like the tortoise and the hare.

We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or disturbing. This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

Sounds like a pretty close description of what we victims of pathological people did during the "seduction" phase.

We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data. An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.

I suspect that this process continues in those victims who do not take charge of their recovery and seek to learn everything they can not only about the predator, but also what makes them such interesting prey...

The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious. Such substitutions are often effected collectively, in certain groups of people, through the use of verbal communication. That is why they best qualify for the moralizing epithet “hypocrisy” than either of the above-mentioned processes.

Well, it CAN be pretty much subconscious as we can learn from Pinker's "The Prehistory of the Mind," Stout's "The Myth of Sanity" and McRaney's "You are NOT so Smart". Some good brain science collected in these books that explain the dissociative capacities and how the mind can lie to itself. Also should mention Schumaker's "The Corruption of Reality" here.

The above examples of conversive phenomena do not exhaust a problem richly illustrated in psychoanalytical works. Our subconscious may carry the roots of human genius within, but its operation is not perfect; sometimes it is reminiscent of a blind computer, especially whenever we allow it to be cluttered with anxiously rejected material. This explains why conscious monitoring, even at the price of courageously accepting disintegrative states, is likewise necessary to our nature, not to mention our individual and social good.

And that's what victims who really learn from the experience and change their lives do: they go through a disintegration and reintegration on a new and more congruent and harmonious level. They also tend to emphasize the idea that they need to find out what their own blind spots are and work on that, rather than putting the blame on the pathological individual who just, for no reason, came along and took advantage of them.

Yes, they are likely wounded, even if only in the sense of their abyssal ignorance; but that's exactly the point that Lobaczewski makes: "in good times, the search for the truth" is not quite the thing... People who live comfortable lives are not much inclined to look deeply into human nature - their own or that of others.

 

[go2]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths


Thank you, Laura….for making clear the mechanism of our vulnerability to manipulation by pathological people is rooted in the intellect usurping emotional energy. The intellect cannot feel the pain of reality, so we preferred to live in a dream rather than feel, drop by drop, upon the heart the emotional knowing of the truth of reality with its real monsters…which intend to move in and take possession of body, mind, and soul.

Yes, we must forgive our debts, after all a tornado owes us nothing. It is the proper use of the emotional center to know the human heart, not to rage about the weather. The heartless psychopath may name the emotion, mimic the form, and create the caricature of a human being that can fool the intellect, by-pass the instinctive-motor predator sensor, but the fully functioning emotional center knows the pathological human form is empty of conscience, empathy, and love.

 

[Bresias]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Doomed seems the inevitable end of one condemned to repeat a destructive behavior without insight or capacity for insight into the origin, pattern, and consequences of the behavior. Did you mean “doomed implies the lack of ability to have insight”?

Is empathy the automatic feeling of another’s pain? Why would feeling another’s suffering increase vulnerability to victimization by psychopaths? Is indiscriminate automatic behavioral response to empathic feeling what you mean by a risk factor for victimization by psychopaths? Could indiscriminate automatic empathy become a pathology?

Empathy is a result of several hundred million years of mammalian evolution. It is hard wired in the instinctive-motor function to facilitate parenting etc. essential for the perpetuation of species. Evolutionary time subjected species to pressure of predation.

Empathy must have entailed corresponding evolution of factors necessary to discriminate friend from foe when eliciting the nurturing behaviors associated with empathy, or the exhibiting individuals or species would have been extinguished.

What are the factor or factors which co- evolved with empathy in the healthy human being? The thinking brain comes to mind immediately, but I feel I am missing something. Do you or others have insight into factors contributing to healthy empathic response in human beings?

Is it possible men and women have different empathic responses based on differing evolutionary roles of men and women in the tribal environment? Is responsible empathy a learned modulation of a powerful and indiscriminate force designed to protect and nurture humanity as a species?

Anyway, thanks for stimulating a few neurons to explore the role of empathy in healthy and responsible humanity.

If "empathy" means one has a clear perception of another person's internal experience, then discriminating friend from foe would be a snap.

Taking a peek into the inner experience of a psychopath, and seeing it clearly, without assumptions and filters, might send a person screaming into the sunset??

So, the evolutionary development of "empathy" seems to be more of a way we keep ourselves bonded together, protective of one another. With empathy, we experience a connection: You and I share experiences together. Perhaps empathy is neutral, just designed to promote "safety in numbers"; early humans were safer from predators in a group. And the group had to have cohesion so it would stay together (continue to stay safer), so empathy amongst the group members made a tidy feedback loop.

Because psychopaths only mimic normalcy, an empathic peek into one would be repulsive. Or maybe baffling enough to make you question your ability to perceive correctly at all. Here's this human being, who does everything expected. That they are only mimicking expected behavior and emotion wouldn't occur to the average person. So they're stuck in cognitive dissonance -- which I remember Sandra Brown saying is an indicator of the presence of a pathological.

I'm speculating from my personal experience here . . . I've often had a sudden, mysterious sense of revulsion upon meeting a person. It is like a gut feeling, and no more elaborate than that. Then, because I have been steeped my whole life long in being "nice" and tolerant and accepting and equality, I've ignored or even shamed myself for my gut feeling.

Up until I woke up a few years ago, when I felt that gut reaction, I took it to mean there was something wrong with ME. And in my personal version of mismanaging reality, I would try HARDER to please this person! Instead of running the other way . Long story there, my father is likely psychopathic and there was some conditioning that had me going in all the wrong directions.

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

Briseis:

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

The only thing that decreases vulnerability is knowledge. Due to narcissism and ponerization, most peoples boundaries are questionable. In a ponerized society that is growing more so by the day , how many empathic people are reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually percentage wise to you think?


Then, add in on top of that all of the false things we think- stand by your man, all people are good deep down, if I love him enough it will change , etc.


Or, the way I sum it up in how I was taught- Everyone is a bunny rabbit deep down in their heart, just like you. See those tigers and lions and bears? They're just pretending to not be bunny rabbits. When they do something bad or eat a bunny rabbit they just made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. You have to forgive them and love them, and then one day they too will be good fuzzy warm bunny rabbits.




Without both learning all you can about these creatures AND fixing your errors of perception with further knowledge about yourself and instrument tuning, the idea of empathy decreasing vulnerability is folly in my opinion. I can only speak for myself, but my empathy is what got played on the hardest both up front and each time I tried to leave.

 

[Laura]

Re: Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

I'm speculating from my personal experience here . . . I've often had a sudden, mysterious sense of revulsion upon meeting a person. It is like a gut feeling, and no more elaborate than that. Then, because I have been steeped my whole life long in being "nice" and tolerant and accepting and equality, I've ignored or even shamed myself for my gut feeling.

Up until I woke up a few years ago, when I felt that gut reaction, I took it to mean there was something wrong with ME. And in my personal version of mismanaging reality, I would try HARDER to please this person! Instead of running the other way . Long story there, my father is likely psychopathic and there was some conditioning that had me going in all the wrong directions.

So . . . I don't see that a heightened ability to empathize would increase vulnerability to psychopaths -- it actually should DECREASE it, as long as the empathic person is reasonably intact emotionally and intellectually.

I could write the same exact words. That "be nice" program is basically part of the shutting down of our true emotions and the result is that we think with that emotional energy that gets diverted.

I still struggle with it.