
My sociopathic father: Entry I
An Introduction
If I say I’m a victim of mental and physical abuse as a child, it wouldn’t be so hard to understand. Or, if I say I’m dealing with PTSD and anxiety disorders due to the experiences I had with my abusive father growing up.
Abuse and domestic violence are becoming part of mainstream discourse. But most of us are still tarnished by the judgment that comes with it.
I’m everything I said before; my childhood was exactly as I described. I will get into the details of that in the series of articles I’ll write on this topic. But my aim is not to reveal a bad abusive father to you through them. Or narrate the story of my nightmares with my sociopathic father. That isn’t the primary goal anyway.
I want to depict my experience living with someone with unchecked Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and Narcissism (however daunting that it was) to tell you how such a mind works. I want to share my understanding of such a flawed personality, which I developed not from hate or anger but with compassion and objectivity. Beyond the negativity I had towards them before, I write about them with a heartfelt need to help them get out of their own darkness.
The way we understand Antisocial Personality disorder is insufficient and biased. There’s a lot of prejudice against it that does more harm than good. One must understand their psyche, their motivations, and their incapabilities dispassionately. That is what I attempt to do through this series.
Now, let me get into some micro, personal details.
About my sociopathic father
Or, the picture of a dysfunctional violent family that consisted of a sociopath (or a narcopath), an overt narcissist and two enablers.
My father was a manipulator when my mother fell for him and married him. He had been charming, overly protective of her when they met. He went on to love-bomb her at the beginning of their life together. At the same time, he’d belittled her and her family, had doubts on her with random men, he had been wasteful of money, aggressive towards people at large, and pretty careless and risky to be around.
But none of these made her think there was anything unusual or dangerous about the relationship. She had poor boundaries herself, and she was a codependent (that I got from her). She had a jumpy shallow character. She was also a bit unhealthy physically.
In traditional Hindu families, it was customary that women expected controlling husbands, abusive in-laws and stressful married life. No one expected to be happy or peaceful from marriage. She had been taught from a young age that men had an upper hand on women, so they saw it as a right to hurt and abuse women. As I said, abusive relationships and men who were mean control freaks were the norms back then.
As life progressed and things got stressful, my father became physically abusive towards his family. To all skeptics, I agree that he was only trying to be a father in a way he thought fit; life was stressful after all. Also, every parent had the right to discipline and punish their children, even by beating them every now and then (in the third world countries at least!).
But, the bottom line is that he was irrational and very cruel. Also, his aggression knew no bounds.
When I was young, he expected that I and my sister would wake up at 5 am and do a reading of our textbooks, if only to get an upper hand from all the other students who only learned lessons by-heart and did homework at night. After that, we should read the newspaper when it arrived.
My sister had learning disabilities growing up. And every mistake she (or I) made in our reading was a personal trigger to my wired up father. We never knew when it happened, but at some point in the morning, he’d come at us with his closed fist to hit us right across the face. Or even a full-blown beating session for half an hour or more, with canes, waist belt, or worse, unused electric wires, that ended in shattered canes and multiple bruises on our bodies.
Sometimes, he’d take us for running in the morning, or exercising. We were taught karate lessons as children. All these were perfect scenarios to get beaten, scolded or reprimanded in the most irrational and cruel ways. That way, childhood was a scary experience of walking on (dangerous) eggshells all the time.
Then, there were special occasions, like Onam or Christmas, festivals, report card days, or cleaning days when an episode of violence was guaranteed. He’d randomly throw out our clothes, books, school bags in a rage (I still don’t know exactly why he did that), break utensils, chairs and other things around the house, again in rage. Besides his other cruel methods of punishment, once he burnt my sister’s arm on a boiling pressure cooker because he thought she didn’t know the definition of Energy in Physics.
I had everything to hate him, and fear him. In fact, I feared him until very recently. Maybe I still do. I was disgusted, guilty to ever look forward to life or happiness other than what he offered us. I was angry and spiteful to the point that it made me sick.
In the span of the abuse that lasted for 20 years, we filed a police complaint, went to a few psychologists and complained to some relatives. But nothing would change him. No one would understand what we went through.
It was because he had made an image of himself in the society that was completely different from this. He was naturally charming, intelligent and well-spoken. He could appeal to anyone he spoke to, adapting to their social standing almost instantly. Moreover, he had carefully developed an image of a good father and husband in society. Of a kind self-righteous philanthropic and a politically active man. It’d be unfathomable to a lot of people how much cruelty and irrational violence this man was capable of.
The whole picture
Now, let me come to the main point.
In a family counseling session in 2014, and repeatedly throughout his life, my father maintained that he was a good father who had dedicated his life to his family. That is, us.
He said he didn’t recollect any of his aggressive episodes or his irrational behavior. The abuse wasn’t something that ever crossed his mind entirely. In fact, he liked to speak out for women attacked by men. He opined that men were taking advantage of weak women and blamed them for enduring it. The irony of it is beyond words!
But it was outrageous to say that he, with his morality, poise, intelligence, and benevolence, would ever do such low and petty things! How can a father who did everything for his family and its well being be accused of being an abuser?
If he had punished us, it was appropriate, cruelty-free and to make us better individuals. It was a father’s right to discipline and guide his children. A husband’s right to correct and love his wife in the right way.
However revolting it sounded, I realized over time that beyond manipulation or dodging the accusations, he actually believed in his logic. He wasn’t just gaslighting; it was like he had hypnotized himself into believing that everything he was doing was for our own good.
He really did dedicate his life to us, it’s true. So was his claim that he didn’t recall any of the violent outbursts. The psychotic episodes faded away into his unconscious right after it happened. He had no conscious control over his actions that way.
No matter how hard it was to accept this for me, it made me understand the sociopath in him in great deal. It made me realize that this flawed personality had no ability to be a father. That the real, and perceived expectations of being a father were just aggravating and injuring him. He, in turn, was injuring his loved ones.
As I said, I hated him for a long time. I was angry at him for being such a bad father and a bad man. For making my life so miserable, no matter whether or not I deserved it.
But the truth was different. He was not a bad man, a realization that took a lot of compromises, ordeal and deep understanding of a person’s psyche.
He was not a bad man but a flawed hurt personality who was systematically molded into a sociopath. The mental, emotional and physical factors played an equal role in his personality and behavior, which made figuring out his condition even more difficult.
That is what I want to share and explore in this series. The How’s and Why’s of Antisocial Personality Disorder. His weaknesses, Shadow self and sense of identity and perception of the world that made him into a dangerous sociopath.
I aim to demystify a sociopath, make his personality simpler and more cognizable. More importantly, I want to make a sociopath mainstream and relevant to society and show him for what he is, a reflection and a functional cog of his social mechanism.
I don’t know what will work in dealing with a sociopath. But I can tell you what won’t. What all to avoid and how to heal oneself from the trauma of their abuse.
Will see you in the next post! Don’t forget to Give a clap or send a comment!
