Sadistic tendencies? How to stop them?

I didn't know where else to post this.

Question: How can I stop my sadistic tendencies? I get pleasure from hurting people in different ways, but it's not sexual (I don't know how that would feel).

Useful/Important information: Therapy is out of the question for now. I have a good reason, but I can't explain it here. The reason I want to stop hurting people (and deriving pleasure from doing it, which is the reason I'd hurt them in the first place) is I don't want to get in trouble. Simple as that. I've gotten in trouble before (nothing serious though - I stick to the laws), and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

Lately it's been difficult to hide it, I even lost a friend because of it. She thought I was scary and my behavior repulsive, so she didn't want to be with me. That's okay, I never really liked her anyway, but the problem is that there are people I don't want to lose. And I don't want to go too far.

I won't list the things I've done, because I'm afraid the people who know me could recognize me if I did. (I don't know if any of them are here, but still).

So... Help?

I know therapy is out of the option, but it sounds like you'll need something of the sort to me. These types of impulses are caused by something in your life in the past, and that sort of thing can only accurately be found by lots of in depth searching into your thought process and your past.

Okay. So, basically, I can't fix it. How do I hide it? Usually I make it look like I was just joking, or I try not to do anything, but it's getting difficult. I mean, when I was 10, it was okay because "oh silly kid", but that's a long time ago and it doesn't work anymore. I always have to pretend to be something I'm not, and it's so annoying and exhausting.

You can fix it, but that requires looking deep into your past and your thought process with someone else for a length of time to establish what is causing these thoughts and actions.

I can't do that without a therapist or something similar. That would be therapy and I can't do that.

I simply have to hide it, and see if it fixes itself. I doubt it, but right now it's the only option, I guess. I don't know exactly how to hide it though. Just one-two years and it wouldn't be a problem anymore.

Why not work on looking into things on your own? You said yourself you're tired of trying to hide it and such.

I've tried that, but I always end up with some idea of why things are the way they are - and then the next day, I have a new one, and the old one seems stupid. It's too much, I get confused. If there was some easier way to do it, I'd try that. (I kind of knew there wasn't, but I had to ask).

I'm very tired of hiding it, yes, but I can't let it show (more than it already does) and I don't know how to fix it (alone).

Try looking up a victim's awareness course. Possibly there might be some material online. Also, seek out some more sadistic sadists than yourself and see how it feels to be a victim. I know that sounds nuts; but, if you completely lack empathy (as I do), this will be the only way you will ever have any idea how your behavior affects other people. Once you have made this connection, you need to make a philisophical/idealogical decision: will you continue hurting other people? If so, under what circumstances? I made a commitmet long ago to stop hurting "innocent" people and to stop living a parasitic lifestyle. But I still have sadistic tendencies when I feel provoked. To be blunt, I restrict my sadism to bullies, predators, and other sadists, because I do not view them as innocent. But I don't consciously seek out the guilty either. If they fall in my lap, though, it is like a present from God. The problem I have is that I am always wondering whether I am luring or whether I am innocently crossing paths with other sadists. I can exhibit signs of a dependent or vulnerable personality around such people, which is not normally "me," and it attracts malignant people. I wonder sometimes if I have turned myself into a Venus Fly Trap in order to rationalize my own malignant sadism, or whether it is just pure serendipity. Part of me also knows that the one type of person that nobody can sympathize with (or miss) is a sadist, so they make excellent victims.

I can't experience feelings so I have to control my behavior on an ideological level. Like you, it is only to keep a pay check coming and to keep me out of a cage. Shame and guilt are not factors. I used to hurt everyone as if hurting was an auto-pilot program. I didn't even think about it: it just happened as naturally as breathing. Now I am a lot more conscious of it. And if I can be conscious of it, anyone can. You can. Your "loved" ones: you need them for your own reasons (perhaps they might come in handy when you need something, as my "loved" ones do), so look at it from a purely selfish perspective. If you hurt them, you cannot use them. Don't sabotage your own assets.

Hope that helps. Maybe you will not feel the need to hurt after victim awareness. The one danger of that awareness is that it can make you even more sadistic, as the lack of empathy prevented the knowledge of the impact of sadism in the first place; knowing the impact, it allows you to fine tune your sadism to precision infliction of harm. But if you couple that with a commitment to stop, or at least stop doing it to innocent people, then you will reduce the negative impact of your own sadism upon your own life. Also, bear in mind, sadism is a learned behavior. What you have learned, you can unlearn.

I don't really know what empathy is, to be honest. I do know how my actions affects other people. That's what makes it so great. I like seeing pain in general, it's okay even if it wasn't my fault, but it's better if it was.

It's difficult to see some people as "innocent". The really "bad" people usually don't affect me at all - they hurt other people, not me. The people you might see as innocent, they always annoy me somehow. They try to control me, they think they're better than me, they talk with food in their mouths. I know they're just humans, like me, and that they don't understand how pathetic and annoying they are - also probably like me. It's just... I have the power to destroy them. It would be easy and fun. The only people I really see as innocent is young children. Not always though, I've met bad children.

I can see why I shouldn't hurt the people I care about, and I try to avoid hurting them... but they are closest to me. I've hurt my friends so many times now, I try not to, but they annoy me so much and it feels so good. I don't hurt my family as much. I do hurt them, sometimes, but I've been getting really good at making it look like I'm just bored, and not thinking about what I'm doing.

I guess I'm not really committed to stop, but I'll keep what you said in mind, I will be more aware of what I'm doing. I'll have to figure out who it's "okay" to hurt and who it's not okay to hurt. I know many bad people, they don't do anything to me, but I could change that.

Thank you.

You, me, others. We learned how to be the way we are from someone else, someone who was mean, cruel, abusive, controlling, while we were young. We learned it from people who learned it from people. The people we learned it from were once innocent children. I would definitely put children in the innocent category. I was a rotten, cruel child myself, a child you wouldn't characterize as innocent. But I know where I learned it from; it is not a mystery to me.

I absolutely cannot currently relate to your ambition to hurt anyone who annoys you just because you can. I did kill some things when I was a child (under 10) and sent some people to the hospital; two cases were personal, the others were just to see what it would feel like, and I did not take any pleasure in hurting or killing things that did not do something to me to make me extremely angry. It was a learning lesson for me. Revenge felt good but unwarranted violence did not produce a pleasure for me. Picking on weak, defenseless, or innocent people does not give me any thrill.

I do not understand how it could be thrilling to anyone. For me, danger is thrilling. Challenge is thrilling. Revenge is thrilling. But I cannot get any of these things from women, children, or even men who are civilized and not aggressive. I could never understand rapists, child molestors, women-beaters, or male bullies, or male serial killers who kill women and children. Just don't get it. Are you in this category? Or are you just emotionally sadistic to other people?

I would come up with a definition of innocent, and run it past people here. Get some other opinions. If you think nobody is innocent, your definition of innocent is very narrow.

If it's very thrilling, it won't be real afterwards. I'll kind of dissociate. I don't know why, it just happens, and it's extremely annoying. If I hurt weak people, it will feel good, and it will be real. Then again, I only hurt people older than me, except some of my friends might be a few months younger than me. And I'm female, if that matters.

I'm not in that category because they all break the law. Even the bully. Okay, fine, I was a bully in elementary school, but I stopped because people saw it. I wanted people to think of me as that nice girl who could never hurt anyone. They don't anymore, but I still don't break the laws, at least not the big ones.

I like to both physically and emotionally hurt people. When it's physical, it's not so bad, I don't put them in the hospital or anything because that would be very obvious. When it's emotional, it's worse, because I can make them hurt themselves. That's what I like the most, when people hurt themselves because of me. I don't know what category that is.

I'll think about it. I'll come up with some definition later.

Thank you.

I see. I thought I was talking to a male sadist. Never met a female one before. So, it just so happens that I can relate to inflicting emotional abuse. Making other people feel bad about themselves. That was a diffiult process to change as I more or less see the faults and vulnerabilities in people and register them, not necessarily with the conscious intent of hurting...but then it just slips out. It especially slips out if the person has done or said something that offended me.

In terms of talking someone into self-harm, I have made those efforts too. I was locked up next to an old guy who had killed two people and he was banking on everyone being afraid of him in order to get away with having no consequences for the words that came out of his mouth. I asked him politely to stop, and he ignored the request; I asked a second time, and he ignored me again, trying to scare me and screw with my head. I then warned him that if he did not stop talking s**t, I was going to give him a taste of my own s***t and it would not smell good and would not be fun to clean up. He ignored my warning. I took a giant crap into a milk carton, peed in it, mixed it up, then poured it into a clean, empty shampoo bottle; I hawked up phlem, I picked bugers, I even masterbated, and added these ingedients to the bottle. Then I let it ferment for a week. The gas had to be burped every day and just those little whiffs of gas was enough to make me gag and come close to vomitting. I knew the impact would be unforgetable. I took off the shampoo cap and made a plug or the top. Then one morning I came out for my shower. After I showered, I stopped by his cell door, put the bottle under his cell door, with the plug pointing toward him, and I stomped on the bottle as hard as I could then kicked it into his cell as far as I could. I then ran back to my cell and the cell door closed behind me. A few seconds later, I heard him shouting like an angry gorilla. He was murderously mad and demanded to know who did that to him. I confessed. So he promised to kill me, and made numerous threats to kill me. And that was the invitation that I needed to start becoming REALLY MEAN. First I stripped away his pride by pointing out that both of his murders were cowardly acts against defenseless people (one being a woman). I laughed at him, mocked him, and laughed at him some more. Everybody else laughed at him too. He had no friends in there: his mouth alienated him from everybody, inmates as well as guards, but especially guards. They had mics in every cell for two-way communication with the guard station so the entire thing became entertainment for guards and inmates alike. After stripping away his pride, I began dissecting his psyche all the way back to his childhood. I had heard him mentioning a few things to other people, heard other people mention things about his cases and his history in general population, and the rest was statistical probabilities. I knew he was paranoid and thought everyone was talking about him; I knew his mother used to beat him; I knew he killed a woman then went to prison; I knew he stabbed a guy to death in prison...but it was a victim who was not expecting it nor would he have been prepared to fight back as the victim was set to go home the very next day; I knew that before the second killing, this scary "murderer" had something straight up taken from him in full view of all the other inmates (and at this time period, him not doing anything about it was an invitation for everyone else to take, take, take). I had surmised he didn't have an active father in his life, due to some facts and stats and him omitting any mention of him in his conversations with other inmates. I also knew that he verbally assaulted the guards daily and they hated his guts, and I could get away with doing whatever I wanted to do to him, so it was game-on.

After taking away his pride, the next thing I took away from him was his sense of safety, and took away control. I told him he had a whole lot of people who didn't like him, a massive amount, people who think he should pay for what he has done. I told him that I heard maintenance guards saying that we would experiencing electrical problems with the doors that night. Also, I asked him how he liked the fact that the guards watched me do what I did and didn't write me up. In fact, one guard had eventually came into the pod with a clean up kit and he was laughing, and when he got to the guy's cell, he said "Why would you do this to yourself?" Coincidentally, this guy had verbally abused that guard in the past too. And while I was warning him about the electrical issues, his door began to open with me right in front of it, then closed just as suddenly. The guards were playing right along with this. "Sweet dreams," I said. The next day, I asked him how he slept. I also asked him what his favorite color was, and he asked me why. I told him I was trying to decide what color to use for my next painting, and then I told him "I was thinking about using the color...RED." Little things like that. Kept him scared and tense. One day I returned from a visit, and I stopped by his celldoor and told him I had just finished reading his prison file and mental health file and I was disgusted with him, then I locked down (inmates aren't supposed to see their own files, much less any other inmates' files). This made him feel powerless and at my mercy. I hadn't read his file, but the guards did ask me if I wouldn't mind doing what I did to him a second time; they loved it that much. I actually did ask them if they could arrange for the doors to open, to have a mechanical glitch, an accident. The only reason they said no is because they didn't want me to be in his situation (knowing you are going to die in that cell due to a life sentence). After telling him about his file, that was a perfect segway to begin picking his life apart.

I told him to stop me when I was wrong. His father wasn't a part of his life. He always wondered if that was his fault and could not resist blaming himself. He could not receive love and affection from his father, so he sought it from his mother. But she was a mean woman. She yelled at him all the time and beat him, and did not meet his emotional needs, made him feel unsafe, made him feel rejected. He had no choice but to endure it, still clinging onto the hope that she would someday love him. But as he got older, he realized that would not happen. Feeling rejected by both his mothe and his father gave him poor self esteem, and poor self-worth, and he did not know how to cope with the weight of this reality and did not want anyone else to recognize him for being the mental wreck that he was, so he began to alienate everybody, to keep everyone at bay. He also did not want anyone else to get close to him because he could not endure being rejected again. Alienating everyone also fueled his own paranoia; he projected his own rage. But this need to be loved and accepted prompted him to take the risk of rejection anyways. I asked him, "why did you the kill the girl?" "Shut up! Shut up!" He killed the girl because she saw him for what he was, and he feared she would reject him. The girl then became an object of transferrence in which she represented his mother, and he killed her to maintain control, and in an attempt to cope with the rejection burning inside of him. So he gets life in prison. And he leaves behind relatives, even children. He swore to himself he would not be like his dad, that he would be a part of his peoples' lives, but it just did not work out that way. He was now doing time with some very dangeous people. He tried to fit in, to have some fun with homosexuals, but his paranoia was driving him insane. When a dangerous man took his prison girlfriend away from him, he lost what was left of his face, and he feared that he would lose everything that he had, and become some man's girlfriend too. The fear and paranoia was too much to bear. So he stabbed a man to death who was set to go home to the free world the next day, over a pair of "tennis shoes." Like it was really over a pair of tennis shoes. He was too proud to check in to protective custody, and his fear and paranoia would not permit him to endure a snitch label for the rest of his life. Thus, he accomished the same thing as checking into protective custody by killing a defenseless man: he put himself into solitary confinement (administrative segregation) to finish his life sentence in peace. And that's where he was when he crossed my path. I asked him, "Am I incorrect?" He was breaking down, asking me why I was doing this to him. He was too proud to ask me to stop picking on him, but the distress in his voice told me I was correct about everything.

That's when I started planting the seeds of suicide. I sank my teeth into his childhood self-blame, and I pointed out how he made the choice to abandon his family knowing full well how it felt to be abandoned. I also pointed out that the guilt of doing this did not stop him from leaching money from his relatives so he could baloon his fat belly with chocolate candy bars. If he loved his people, I suggested, he should let them go. I reminded him of the girl he killed, whose only crime was reminding him of his mother. He ended her life so he could enjoy this wonderful life of his behind bars. Then he ended another life so he could enjoy solitary confinement because he was nothing but a coward. And now, he is going to die in that cell. He is never getting out alive, will never have a life again: he gave it up. His life was over: he was just waiting to be put in a box and buried. I asked him what it was about his cell that he loved so much.

Another person kept telling him not to talk to me, not to tell me anything about himself. That person wrote letters to his own people to call the warden and get him moved away from me. That, of course, trickled down to me. And I stopped by his cell and told him, "A little bird told me that another little bird has been singing..." He said, "a little bird?" Then he realized what I was saying, and he shouted "Damn it!" "Damn it!" I mocked, then I told him that if he needed help or needed anything at all, he needed to come talk to me.
I wore him down. I told him if he would just pass a razor under my door, and put his hand under my door, I would hold his hand, and he would not feel a thing, that I would talk to him about the happiest time in his life, and then he would go there. "Why would I want to do that?" he asked. "I don't see anyone else beating down your door to help you," I replied. "HELP?" he said. "Yeah! Do you seriously want to die in that cell of old age another 10 years from now, and continue losing your mind?" I told him I knew about the voice in his head too. "The voice?" he asked. "Yeah! The mean voice that criticizes everything you do and say. Do you really want to live with that voice? Listen, if you come to me, it will be painless; but if I have to come to you, it will be very painful."

He was transferred away from me. And mental health staff accused me of being a malignant narcissist. Some people in the pod even thought I was too hard on him. He is still alive, still in solitary, and it has been over 20 years (he's been in solitary for 30 years).

I was not successful in talking him into self-harm, but I did try. So I can relate. But he was not innocent, by my definition of innocent. No, he was killer, and he got on my bad side.

That's the funniest thing I've read today. You sound great. You really put a lot of effort in it... You didn't make it, but at least you tried, and now you have a funny story to tell. That's great.

Please, if you have more stories to tell, I'd listen.

I am not sure my stories would be therapeutic for you.

I am having a difficult time pasting the link but if you google disociative and psychopathy you will see some studies, if you haven't already, one being from Standford. There is a notable amount of violent criminals who have amnesia about their crimes. Not malingering to beat a rap, but genuine black outs. So I believe you when you say you can't remember the worst things.

The worst things I have done, I cannot remember either. I know I have done them because of external evidence, but I can't remember doing them. Maybe a long time later, I might have a brief flash of a memory, but I treat the memories as though they were just dreams. I have some really twisted dreams. But some things, I know are not dreams.

I started blacking out around my dad. He was violent and explosive. I watched him beat my mother nearly to death when I was 4 or 5. He really hurt her bad, put holes in the wall with her head, broke dishes and objects over her head, and beat her like he was fighting a man. My memory was of the argument between my younger brother and I, which led to me spitting on him, then my mom told me to go up to my room, then my dad said no: I was to stay, and my brother was to go to our room (my dad favored me, and acted like my brother was someone else's kid, and my mom tried to overcompensate for this terrible disparity by favoring my little brother, but I was too young to understand it). This led to the two raising their voices in anger, which was something I had never heard before. I was scared. I got my brother and ran up the stairs to my room. But then my memory was of me floating down the stairs and still seeing the violence. My mother later told me that my father came up to the room and grabbed me and carried me downstairs and made me watch what he did to her. For the most part, I still can't remember.

Sadly that was not even my first black out. I seem to have a funny feeling that I was brought along on a mission of revenge once, in which I heard a loud noise outside the van and then we had some cargo in the back and I was told not to go back there. But I did. When my dad heard me talking and playing in back, he said "I told you not to go back there." "What's wrong with him, dad?" "He's sleepy. Come back up here." I think my dad found my imagination amusingly morbid under the circumstances. If this was not a dream, and it is possible it was, why would I have been brought along (for the same reason he made me watch him assault my mother?)? Was he teaching me how to deal with people problems, like a mother cat teaching her kittens how to hunt? Or did I have a sick imagination? I dunno. Another time, I had a funny feeling he had run over a guy who was begging for money and tried laying down in the road till he got some money. This was an area where you didn't want to slow down. Bump...bump! "Don't tell your mom: I hit a rabbit."

I blacked out again when I was 5 years old. I was being cornered by a bully that was maybe 13 or 14 years old. I had a dog friend that unofficially adopted. Other kids warned me not to ride down the street on my bike making noise or the dog would chase me down and bite me. What did I do? I got right on a bike and rode down that street yelling and hollering. The dog started chasing. I let him catch me. He started mauling my leg, like drawing blood and everything. But I only petted him affectionately while he was biting me. Eventually he stopped biting and started licking the blood from the wounds. After that, he was MY dog. I couldn't bring him home. But he was mine. So when that bully cornered me, I was only concerned because I had chained this dog to a nearby tree and I did not think he would be able to get off the leash. He growled loudly and viciously, enough to scare the bully. But the bully saw he was chained and decided to gamble. I looked at the dog in the eye, then looked at the bully, and the dog broke the chain! I blacked out then. Only vaguely remembered the guy's legs being bloody mincemeat, and he was screaming and crying and begging me to call the dog off. But I was giddy with delight and did not call off the dog. The next day my dad told me he had been contacted by the parents of this boy and the police. He said they said I sicked my dog on this boy for no reason at all, and the boy was hospitalized with 90 stitches. He said a man tried to intervene to help the boy but I threatened the man and warned him to mind his own business or he would be next. My dad wanted to know where the dog was. "I think you would know it if I had a dog, dad. I don't know where that dog is. Isn't my dog. I don't know where he is. And I didn't sick the dog on him. He broke his chain to help me." "He broke his CHAIN?" Only many years later did I remember the man who tried to intervene. The screaming drew him to us. I told him to stay back. He said he could not do that, that he had to help that kid. I said I would call him off soon enough. He said now. "It's too soon," I said. "He hasn't even gotten to his arms yet." The man took a step forward and I said the dog's name, and the dog looked at the man, and the man became rubbery with fear. "Last chance to go away. If you don't, you will be next." The man said he was going to get a gun and shoot the dog. I told him that if he was lucky enough to hit the dog, I would get my dad's 45 and kill him. But he would have to shoot me before he shot the dog, and if he shot me...my dad would kill him and bury him out in the woods. He backed off. I remember vaguely hiding the dog far away and feeding him, and after things settled down I took the dog for a walk back in the neighborhood where this happened. I made sure that man saw me, and the parents of that boy. My dad told me that boy did not deserve what happened to him. But I said, "I can't believe a bully picks on me and the only thing your concerned about is the bully. He got what he deserved."

I always wondered if I had disociative identity disorder. Because I have time periods which are blocked out, not just specific memories. On the other hand, it may just be that I am like all the others that black out their crimes. I am surprised at how mean I was at 5 years old. There was a girl who just loved me, no matter what when I was 5. I wondered if she would still love me if I shot her in the stomach with my dad's blow dart gun. She did. It did not make sense logically.

Those days are over. I treat people the way they treat me now, or the way I would like to be treated. The Golden Rule. You should think about that.

Think about where you learned it from. I was innocent once. So were you. We did not deserve what happened to us; and innocent people do not deserve what we do to them.

I will make you a deal. I will share a few more stories with you, in exchange for:

1. You share with me where you learned your behavior from, with the sort of specific details I shared with you.

2. You commit to me to establish your own code of personal ethics, which includes a definition of innocence and a criteria for how you will interact with others, and you share that with me.

After we have both upheld that end of the bargain, I always have more stories to tell. I might even tell you about the Head Hunter. We will go from there.

1. Not here. Private messages, maybe? It's kind of boring though, and I don't really know if that's where I learned it first.

2. I'm just worried I'd end up not having anyone to hurt. The people it seems you consider not innocent, are usually in prison. I follow the law because I don't want to end up there.

I don't really know if I want to stop, you know. I was pretty sure in the beginning, but I'm starting to think I should just go with it. See where it takes me.
I can't decide. I want to hurt people, I really do, but I also want to stop hurting people. Most people didn't do anything really bad, they just annoyed me. Not always even that. It's not fair, I guess. I just don't really know why I should care about that. I can easily see why I should pretend to care, but not why I should actually care.

You could base how you treat other people upon how you would like to be treated. That is a pretty common formula for guiding behavior. That doesn't mean you give up being mean: it means you are consistent with boundaries. If you don't know how you would like to be treated, then spending some time with some really sadistic people might be good for you, as strange as it sounds. I could hurt you if that would help but I have to get to know you first. But you said you know how your hurting affects other people: you just can't resist doing it. I am telling you: having it happen to you again, and again, and again is a real eye-opener. Changing the habit takes practice. It doesn't happen overnight.

If you lack reasons to change, think of selfish reasons.

Every time you find yourself wanting to do something sadistic, ask yourself why? There may be an underlying common trigger for your sadistic behavior. If it's a feeling or insecurity your supressing, then it's good to bring it into light so you can then start to solve the actual problem. Hope this helped.

Scratch that, for some reason I can't edit my post.

Find out what insecurities are causing you to act "sadistic" towards those you would otherwise care about, and address those insecurities.