Sociopaths tend to be products of their own environment. Mental health experts believe that sociopaths are not born with a mental predisposition in the same way that psychopaths are. Sociopaths become the way they are from the negative experiences they have in their environment. Perhaps they grew up in a household that was filled with physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or some other horrible childhood trauma. Sociopaths tend to have erratic or impulsive type behavior where they act without thinking. They also have difficulty forming attachments with other people and difficulty holding a steady long-term job. When sociopaths commit criminal behavior they often do it impulsively as well. Someone could agitate or anger them and they will retaliate with violent outbursts that will get them arrested.
Psychopaths are believed to be born with a genetic predisposition that they cannot help. There are underdeveloped components within their brain that cause many of their unusual personality traits. These undeveloped components of the brain are responsible for regulating their emotions and controlling their impulses. Without proper development, the person will not be able to control their impulses or show emotion for pain inflicted on others. Psychopaths will have a very hard time forming relationships with other people as a result. Instead, they will form shadow relationships in order to manipulate people in a way that is beneficial to them. It doesn’t matter how much these people get hurt from the actions of the psychopath because they won’t feel any guilt about hurting other people.
The strange thing about psychopaths is they are harder to recognize than sociopaths. Psychopaths can appear normal to the people around them because they act nice and charming to everyone they meet. They are also gainfully employed with a steady long-term job and often have loving families of their own. Most of all, they are well educated and have a great deal of confidence, which is something that would impress a lot of people. So if a psychopath were to engage in criminal activity, it would not be so impulsive. It would actually be planned carefully to ensure they don’t get caught. After all, they want to keep up their perfect reputation and will do anything to prevent that reputation from getting damaged.
Whether someone is a psychopath or sociopath, they will use the gaslighting technique to get what they want. They will not take any responsibility for their own actions and will almost always find someone else to shift the blame on. However, a psychopath who uses gaslighting will be more successful with it than a sociopath because they will do a better job of covering up their lies. Sociopaths are more impulsive with their gaslighting, which means they will get caught faster in one of their lies. That is why you don’t see too many sociopathic parents who have raised their children throughout their entire childhood. The sociopaths get caught in their criminal attempts to satisfy their own agenda, whereas psychopathic parents don’t usually get caught. But their children grow up eventually resenting their parents for the self centered behavior they showed throughout their lives. To everyone looking in on the outside, they will think the psychopath did a great job raising their children and will think nothing more of it. The only ones who truly know about the gaslighting are the children who got to experience it firsthand.
Source by Russell Robert Lee
