Is it possible for sociopaths to feel genuine remorse for their actions or thoughts towards others, even if they are skilled at hiding it from others?
08.06.2025 23:37
I’ve had a couple sociopaths in my life who were extraordinarily forthcoming with me. Don’t get me wrong: they were still chronic liars with a ton of secrets. But they told me more than they told most people. And I think, for a time, it was a relief for them to do so without judgement.
I’m the daughter of two sociopaths: I have BPD (colloquially known as an empath) and I trauma bonded to quite a few sociopaths throughout my life and I have the near death experiences and restraining orders to prove it.
This is why I think the most famous quote from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is true: “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers too.” (And spoiler alert: the book ends in suicide…).
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For someone with compassion and the ability to feel guilt, it’s a confusing disorder to make sense of—-they’re both in horrific pain and…they cause a lot of pain, but really all their grief is severely repressed in order for them to survive.
And the thing is…that man is only not in prison at my mercy, and he knows that. Is he grateful?
Yes—again, I’ve only seen it in a collapse state.
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They DO know when they’ve done behavior that is wrong, however. They just don’t feel bad about it. Their disorder functions in a way to justify EVERYTHING, and they’ll go into delusion and cognitive distortions to do so.
Like two opposite charges of a magnet, every sociopath has some empaths who were important in their life. Ying and Yang. Light and dark. We’re mirrors to each other. And we smash the mirror… eventually.
But sociopaths not only don’t care about the pain of loving people, they envy that you’re loving and more logical and sane: they think you don’t deserve it and your life is better than theirs. Without empathy or the ability to grieve, they don’t understand your pain. They’re also really self centered in their own pain and victimhood. Sociopaths often read my work and then make malicious comments or send me cruel DMs. And they call ME cruel, when I’ve never done the kind of things that have been done to me and I really feel empathy for them. (Though I won’t lie: I do have pain, anger, and bitterness at times in my grief. I’m no saint. And I can be triggered in my BPD).
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And even as he drugged and raped me, I was kind to him. (Fawn is a trauma response). We had some genuine heart to hearts. He taught me a lot about sociopathy. I was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. The cognitive dissonance of that really messes with your head.
“Why don’t you lie to me? Why do you tell me the things you hide from others?”
I wrote a memoir (coming out next month!) and I detailed our trauma, while also including his crimes and even a personal letter he wrote me in prison. I was very honest, so I wasn’t sure how he’d react to it—I knew how he was about shame and these chapters detailed both of our worst traumas in life—but I gave him the chapters he appears in, and he read them. This was how that text conversation went down:
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I felt destroyed by these events, because I saw and experienced all the trauma that led him to that 11 year prison sentence, and I knew he had PTSD and addiction issues: it was very obvious. We’d known each other since 6th grade, and we were rebellious kids then, but there was still an innocence in that experience that made me always feel really tender towards him.
I’m sure my stalker tells himself the same thing he told me back then: I deserved it.
Not particularly.
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When my father collapsed and attempted suicide, he went to my sister’s room and was sobbing so hard it really spooked both of us, and he apologized to her.
I’ve never ever seen such agony and self hate as I did then. And I was really shocked that she used present tense, as if she was still a rapist.
“I’m just kind of surprised. How did you feel reading everything?”
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She was crying and screaming and shivering so hard that I couldn’t help but cry too. I kept telling her it wasn’t her fault how her brother turned out.
“I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ANYTHING YOU WROTE ANNE.”
“Are you sure? I can take out anything you aren’t comfortable with.”
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The men I wrote on death row were all murderers: one killed his pastor who was molesting him. (Many victims came forward after his death). He explained step by step what happened.
My friend confided in me that he’d shot his friend once—and had gotten away with it. Unlike other confessions, I was pretty shocked by this whole story. He seemed relieved just to tell it. I asked him after he told me:
The penpals I had, as well as my childhood friend, could easily—and chillingly frankly—talk about their crimes. But they never showed remorse in any way, though they could articulate that what they did was wrong.
“And….?”
A main reason they are violent towards innocent people is because they project their traumas. They re-enact them onto others, but they do so as the one in control rather than the one powerless.
“How did you feel when you did it?”
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A friend of mine collapsed when her brother went to prison for murder. A narcissist collapse is a pain like you’ve never seen and it’s especially jarring from typically emotionally cold people.
Not even a little.
The truth is that their grief is gnarly, and they’re only children emotionally, so they’re far too vulnerable to survive it without the narcissism protecting them as a trauma response.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
A narcissist’s entire identity and sense of self is pure fiction. It’s a FALSE SELF. It’s a MASK.
Not only did he not show remorse, but when I escaped, he upped the ante and had people gang stalk me and terrorize me for several months before he finally quit.
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“Do you think I got it right?”
This also can satisfy some revenge fantasies they have towards parents sometimes.
“No.”
Their accusations are projections. They’re confessions. Yesterday, a sociopath commented on a post bitterly, “This is pure fiction.”
Did he seem proud of his crimes?
No. It’s pretty rare for them to exhibit any emotions except anger, and if you ask them how they feel about anything, they’ll expertly dodge the question.
In their normal narcissistic baseline, they’re not only not remorseful, but they’re extremely selfish and entitled. No matter what they know they’ve done, they have a bottomless desire to have the best of the best in life, and they seem to genuinely think they deserve it.
It’s the best way they can protect you from themselves. Because they are triggered by love and extraordinarily dangerous when they feel it. They will seek to drive you away and make you hate them before you can trigger their abandonment/attachment wounds by unmasking their darkest secrets.
“They’re good.”
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They do that with the empaths in their lives they’ve pushed away. We had no romantic connection whatsoever, but honestly, I think that made our bond feel…stronger. It wasn’t about sex at all. I genuinely cared for him. And I feel that deep down, he did for me too: I know he knows my heart was genuine.
We don’t speak anymore, but he recently got out of another prison stint, and he wasn’t blocked. I see him check my stories now and again.
“Good? Do you have any problem with anything I wrote?”
“Did he?”
He would explain it like, “And then I lost control and I put my hands on her. I know, I shouldn’t have.” But it was very matter of fact. I grew up with violence, so it’s not really something that shocked me, and just the fact that he’d say, “I shouldn’t have,” was really enough for me. I saw no need to lecture or judge them. I saw it as a trauma response and hoped I could help them work on that. (Yes, I was naive. Part of having BPD).
“No.”
“I read your chapters.”
I said, “I think you were a very traumatized child.”
But after that collapse, I later brought up what she’d confided in me, and she looked at me in utter terror and snapped, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I was truly stunned. But I said what is true, “A child who molests is a child who was molested.”
She screamed, bitterly, “I molested my brothers!”
Did he know he was mentally ill?
“Yeah.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
Did he have any idea why he did them?
As a result, you almost never see emotion from them and they can’t emotionally connect to anyone. The false self is like a big monster they’ve created to protect them from ever feeling vulnerable and powerless again.
Do I think there’s a grief within them over losing the people who loved them?
She had no memory of telling me. And her brain had reverted back to the narcissistic state, which was denial.
My stalker and rapist who raped me for several weeks was pretty sadistic most the time, but one time, he cried and called me “mama.”
He sure f#%*ing did.
Not really. He was pretty stunned when I pointed out that all his worst crimes happened at the anniversaries of his brother’s death. When I connected his behavior to PTSD, he seemed like it was a revelation.
Nope. Nada. Not even a little. No empathy means no empathy.
But their anger can also be because my work has a lot of truth in it: I don’t have the benefit of delusion to protect me. And they get triggered by the truth. They hate for their worst shames, like rape or pedophilia, to be discussed. They’d rather their victims be gaslit that their abuses never happened.
Only then did he seem slightly irritated, “What’s done is done, Anne.”
He has also definitely read my work here, as he attempted to log into my account when I changed my password, having hacked my phone, and I wrote a whole book of poetry on the experience. He may not have read it, but I’m sure he knows it exists.
That way, they avoid any shame whatsoever over their criminal and immoral acts.
“No, because at the time, I thought he betrayed me.”
So I think that re-enacting their traumas is sometimes the only way they can momentarily grieve over what happened to them without feeling vulnerable over it.
They don’t live in reality: they can only handle the fantasy of the false self, who is not only perfect, but superior.
For example, when my friend got out of prison, there were times that he hit his wife or beat his golden child. He told me those things happened (but he’d deny them up and down to anyone wanting to give him consequences or judge him).
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe my story needs to be told. And I can’t tell it.”
Yes, he was diagnosed with NPD and ASPD in prison, and he found that very irritating.
She said, “I fucking know I was molested! But why did I have to become a fucking rapist?”
“Because you’re not judgemental and you’re genuinely not a rat. Which is rare. But, don’t think I won’t lie whenever I have to.”
But….did he eventually turn on me and abuse me despite all I’d done for him?
“Because it’s a crime, Anne. And I got away with it.”
Does he care at all how badly he traumatized me?
Do I think there’s guilt and remorse deep down?
After she discarded me and broke my heart, I put together her NPD in therapy a year later and I reached out to her exes to confirm, and, according to them, she was still a rapist and abuser.
Deep down, yes. But you’ll only see it if they go into a narcissistic collapse.
But did he ever show remorse after that?
“Really?” (I was shooketh, honestly).
But if a sociopath genuinely loves you deep down, which is rare, but I do believe they reserve for some people, they show you by leaving you alone.
“Turns out, no.”
“I felt like I shot my friend.” (Notice: no emotion).
From a young age, I felt disturbed by our prison system. The main reason why was because my first love, a sociopath, committed suicide at 15, then his brother, another sociopath, went to prison at 17 for beating someone with a lug wrench until they were mentally handicapped.
He didn’t seem the slightest bit proud of it, but it was not something he was emotional about either. It seemed like a fact of his life that just made him…weary.
I didn’t know what he was apologizing to her for, and why he didn’t come to me, because I genuinely loved him and my sister vocally hated him and always said I was blind to how sick he was. Turns out, I have good reason to believe he sexually assaulted my sister.
“It’s your life; it’s your story. You can tell it how you need to.”
After knowing some of the abuses he faced in prison, I became disturbed by our punitive justice system and how it exploits mental illness for cheap labor and profit. I joined abolition groups and I began writing people who’d gone to death row as teenagers. I hated the idea of anyone being cast off and unloved. I’ve been abandoned and traumatized a lot in my life, so I hate to see it happen to others. This is still true: my trauma hasn’t made me change my stance on our traumatic prisons.
“Why are you okay with me telling all those personal things?”
And that was that. I knew better than to keep pushing when he seemed irritated.
When he told me that, he seemed really agitated. But I was forthcoming about my mental illness, so, again, he seemed to feel safe not being judged and he told me. I asked if he agreed with the diagnosis, and he said, “Do you agree with it?”
“You don’t feel bad about that?”
He said, “That diagnosis I’ll agree with.”