{"id":11045,"date":"2019-09-13T06:35:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T10:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=11045"},"modified":"2019-09-13T06:35:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T10:35:18","slug":"would-you-recognize-a-sociopath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/09\/would-you-recognize-a-sociopath.html","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing a Sociopath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-11048\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2019\/09\/face-1370958_1920-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"face-1370958_1920\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" \/>Some of you may remember Man of the Year, model citizen John Gacey. You can find a picture of him with then First Lady, Rosalynn Carter. He was well liked by his community. What people didn&#8217;t know about him was that he murdered 32 young men and buried most of them under the crawl space of his home. Charming on the outside, sick and disturbed on the inside, John Gacey was one of the most infamous sociopaths.<\/p>\n<p>Not all sociopaths are serial killers. Even so, you want to be able to spot such a person and not end up in a relationship. Usually a sociopath is someone who is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Basically, this means that they have little regard for others and ignore the concept of right and wrong. This leads to non-conformity to social norms. High functioning sociopaths can be charming like Gacey. They are highly calculating and manipulative and know how to con you. They operate in deceit with no regard for the feelings of others. Negative consequences for actions do not deter them.<\/p>\n<p>Because they can be charming and lie to make you think they are someone they are not, you have to pay attention to signs. One is, do they disregard your feelings? Another, do they have close friends or any brushes with the law? Do they have to win at all costs? Do you notice a lack of empathy for others? And if there is any vulnerability in you, are you being taken\u00a0advantage of?<\/p>\n<p>So if you find yourself feeling uncomfortable and suspect someone might have these tendencies,\u00a0cease contact if you can. If you engage at all, the sociopath\u00a0will manipulate and play you. You can&#8217;t reform them. They have to recognize how dysfunctional their behavior is and want to change. This is the challenge because they often do not see the need to change. And sociopaths don&#8217;t like therapists because they hold people accountable for their actions and treatment of others. Often sociopaths\u00a0use therapy to learn how to manipulate someone better.<\/p>\n<p>Change is tough and requires a transformation of the heart. Nothing is impossible with God. But short of a genuine\u00a0spiritual change, it is very difficult to help a sociopath. Medication doesn&#8217;t help because symptoms involve a searing of the conscience. Pray for a heart change and avoid contact. Eventually, the person might find themselves in legal trouble and be forced into help or prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of you may remember Man of the Year, model citizen John Gacey. You can find a picture of him with then First Lady, Rosalynn Carter. He was well liked by his community. What people didn&#8217;t know about him was that he murdered 32 young men and buried most of them under the crawl space&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[917],"tags":[4436,4491,4493,4492],"class_list":["post-11045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friend-relationships","tag-antisocial-personality-disorder","tag-sociopath","tag-sociopaths-and-relationships","tag-violate-social-norms"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Recognizing a Sociopath<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/09\/would-you-recognize-a-sociopath.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Recognizing a Sociopath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some of you may remember Man of the Year, model citizen John Gacey. You can find a picture of him with then First Lady, Rosalynn Carter. He was well liked by his community. What people didn&#8217;t know about him was that he murdered 32 young men and buried most of them under the crawl space&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/09\/would-you-recognize-a-sociopath.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doing Life Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-09-13T10:35:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2019\/09\/face-1370958_1920-1024x683.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda Mintle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@drlindamintle\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Recognizing a Sociopath","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2019\/09\/would-you-recognize-a-sociopath.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Recognizing a Sociopath","og_description":"Some of you may remember Man of the Year, model citizen John Gacey. 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11049,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11045\/revisions\/11049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}