Celiac Disease is an auto immune disease similar to diabetes. People are genetically predisposed to have it, however certain risk factors can contribute to the onset of symptoms if you are genetically predisposed to CD like trauma or stress, among other things. When I was growing up I was extremely healthy and strong. I can only remember maybe one time being sick of any kind. My physical body was very strong and I ate like a pig! I was in great shape because I danced competitively, racking up maybe 10-15 hours of training a week. About 6 months of being in a relationship with a sociopath, I slowly started to have these odd symptoms. The damage had already been done in the relationship and I was already on edge.
First Home Town Visit
We became serious in the Fall and in the Spring he wanted to go back to his home town in Central America to visit family. I was in college at the time so I told him I was able to go during Spring Break. He hadn’t gone back home since he came to the States, supposedly because he didn’t have time or whatever. The reasoning he gave me at the time surely wasn’t the REAL reason, which I found out later. He was a fugitive in his own country and his Mom had told him that he needed to pick Puerto Rico or the US to go and hide out for a while until things toned down. So he never wanted to leave and come to the States to build the “American Dream;” he was forced by his political family to do so.
I went with him for a week to visit. It was very weird. I saw some bizzare things. One time we went to the beach with his family and his brother was there with a woman. I asked the sociopath if that was his brother’s wife. He dismissed me and acted like it was weird that I asked. This was a red flag because clearly it was not his wife. His brother was vacationing from the States and was cheating on his wife with whoever that woman was and everyone in his family just accepted it as normal. Why I didn’t make a correlation, I don’t know. Quick Note: Several years later the same brother was sent to prison for sodomizing and kidnapping his step daughter. Anyway, when I was there I was given a very, large hand gun and told if anyone tried to come in my room to well, you know. I was 19 at the time; looking back at this I was in serious danger.
Well we finally were done with the trip and he was upset it was already over. He blamed me that we had to leave so soon. That was odd. I thought to myself, “well you knew I had school before we left, I could have just not gone and you could have stayed longer?”
Crazy Girl…or Crazy Sociopath?
About a week after we got back from Central America I was hanging out at his apartment. All of a sudden someone was banging heavily on his sliding glass window; it totally startled me. He jumped off the bed and ran to the front door. I didn’t know what to think so I just stayed put. I heard him open the door and him get in a confrontation with a woman. I started to stand up and walk to the threshold of the room that I was sitting in and she ran towards me and fell at my feet. Apparently she had scratched the sociopath’s arm and pushed her way through the door. She was calling out my name and crying and she was drunk. I had no clue who this girl was or how she knew my name. The sociopath just stood in the kitchen and shook his head like he was embarrassed of her. She finally picked herself off the ground and sat on the couch in the living room and she said that while I was at work she was sleeping with my boyfriend. I think I said something to her, nothing mean just something like, ok. I don’t remember. The sociopath didn’t say anything to her either. He didn’t defend himself he just stood in the kitchen, like he wasn’t even there.
Then she left and I sat there for a while. He tried to tell me that he had dated her before me and that she was obsessed with him and wanted to break us up. I was pretty worked up. But for some reason after all the story he gave me about it, I believed him. He asked me why I believed him. I didn’t know why I believed him. It was a very strange moment. He built his reputation with me that he was this innocent guy that was really nice and shy. So he used that for a basis for his story and I believed it. That was the day my anxiety started. That feeling of uneasiness, the hot flashes, calming your imagination, battling what you thought you saw with what you actually saw, what was real. The trust was gone from that moment. I mean she could have been a crazy girl like he said. He was a great manipulator. He would leave just enough shadow of a doubt to question your own sanity and your gut level feelings.
A week later he called me and asked me if I had seen Crazy Girl and talked to her at the grocery store. I told him no. I had not seen her at the grocery store, and if I had, I would not have talked to her. He was upset with me and asked me how she found out about details of our trip if I hadn’t talked to her. I don’t really know what his purpose was in that other than it gave him more ammunition to use to prove she was a crazy, obsessed ex girlfriend that was calling him just making up excuses to talk to him. Talk about drama!
I bought this story for a long time until I started thinking about it more. I recalled the timeline of everything and things just didn’t add up. Putting things together, he had to have broken up with her a year before she came barging in the door that day, so that didn’t make sense. The real story was probably a little more like this: He was dating both of us the entire year and she finally found out she wasn’t the only one. Surprise! That is why she went insane when she found out she was being cheated on the whole time. I was out with him in the social scene where she was for a couple years after that so I know they weren’t together then because she saw us out together. But then something else that was even more strange happened. Months before I divorced him, I found a picture of her on his phone. That’s a 10 year gap, like why? Then what was even more odd was I found another chatting site he was on, and she was one of his contacts. Her profile picture was a baby pick of a guy holding a baby, but the adult was cut out of the picture except for his arm. I thought that unusual. I tried to put away my thoughts, but for one, that arm looked liked the sociopath and two that baby looked liked him too. I didn’t want to delve into more details about that, but I wouldn’t doubt he has kids running around that are his and other families. I wouldn’t doubt it.
So All That To Say This
That story was the first major story to a lot of stories and upheaval, stress, chaos and confusion and trauma. 3 Years after I got married, and a lot of these kinds of stories after, I finally started to get really sick. I was throwing up randomly so bad that I felt like I was being asphyxiated and I had horrible, sharp pains in my stomach that I couldn’t even take breaths. My stomach hurt all the time with a distention feeling. This went on for almost 6 months until I finally got diagnosed. This didn’t sit well for the sex addict he was because I could hardly be intimate with all that going on. I was finally diagnosed in 2009 and went cold turkey on a gluten free diet. It didn’t get better after the diagnosis unfortunately, but much worse. The distention went away, but a lot of other things started to happen. Chronic nausea, vomiting, extreme fatigue, seizure like episodes, all kinds of stuff.
I think another level of anxiety was added on to the anxiety I already had from the infidelities in the relationship and I started coping with anxiety if that makes sense. Anxiety was my life on several different levels. I was afraid to eat anything because I was afraid to have a reaction and I figured the less I ate, the less of a reaction I would get if I had one. The sociopath didn’t make anything better, not only did he not care for me when I was ill, he did other hurtful things to add to it.
I would get sick at night a lot. One time we were out together at a concert and I started to get sick. He told me to drive home myself and he would get a cab later. I was so hurt that he didn’t want to go home with me and protested it. He gave in to going home with me, but he was mad at me. Like what is that? If I was running to the sink in the middle of the night to throw up he would call out to me from the bed to make sure I didn’t throw up in HIS sink. I mean really? And other times he would be out partying while I was at home having reactions and heat sweats and all kinds of stuff. I would just lay in the bed in the dark. On the last trip I took to his home town when I was still married we were out and I got sick. He took 45 minutes after knowing I was sick to leave where we were to drive me home. He dropped me off at the room and went back out with my lying there on the bed by myself.
The conclusion? Deep down inside, and for a long time, I have always had the notion that my predisposed Celiac was triggered by the stress and trauma from my relationship with a sociopath.
Peace in Chaos -omg. What a nightmare. It’s amazing how they hook us, and we fall for their stories, even when we see contradictory evidence right in front of us.
You may be right that the stress brought on your illness. Is it any better with him gone?
It has been a nightmare. My celiac has somewhat leveled out but I am more susceptible to infections and it takes my body a long time to heal if I get sick. Without the daily stresses of being with him I do believe I get ill much less.
Peace,
I never in my wildest dreams would’ve thought I’d encounter a story like yours! Thank you for sharing.
I am celiac as well and was diagnosed many years ago when I was married to a disordered man. I’ve never made this connection before but I think you’re onto something.
Only a few months into my relationship with him I started having stomach problems. Fast forward a decade and I became very sick like you. You may as well have been describing me! My symptoms seemed endless. My sickness was so severe I thought I was a goner. Turns out my sickness saved my life.
After I was diagnosed and began healing I put my foot down and started living for ME. Not long after I was discarded. It’s like he could sense his control over me wasn’t working anymore.
You will heal although it will take time. It took me 3 years for my body to heal which is common for adult celiacs. How long ago were you diagnosed?
When you were diagnosed did you just get off of gluten or did you do a detox diet as well? In order to reset your body you need to clear it of toxins first. Beware of dairy at first and avoid the temptation to eat too many corn products because it’s common for celiacs to overdo corn at first and become allergic.
I found going to both a western and eastern doctor was key. I got very sick those first few years. A common cold would take me down and out!
Hang in there. It’s rough. I know how difficult it is to go through a divorce with a man like this while trying to heal. Your heart and body will heal with time.
I’m here for you! This is just so close to home for me.
Peace and Keeping On,
Is it possible that your ex spaths may have been physically poisoning you?
Annette,
Anything is possible however I think the stress could’ve triggered my celiacs.
I did have other very strange symptoms. Vision problems, vaginal sores (stds ruled out) etc. The doctors were stumped. They were looking into very scary autoimmune disorders. Once I was diagnosed I figured celiac is autoimmune so any symptom is possible.
After I was diagnosed I sent a hair sample to a fancy doctor across the country. He put me on a diet with supplements that helped regulate me.
You did get me thinking about the poisoning so I’ve been looking for my hair test results to see if anything looked off. Although I think the Dr would’ve noticed poisoning.
Wow, that’s a good question, Annette PK.
I was going to comment that many victims of spaths get stress-related illnesses. I got CFS and fibromyalgia, which also included systemic candida, all of which I got over. I find that many victims also have CFS. As you may know, the main treatment for candida is the anti-candida diet — gluten-free and casein-free — which is the same as for celiac, for about 6 months. I do not have celiac as far as I know and I recovered after 2 years, while I was still married to my ex spath. But 3 years after divorce, and after also treating adrenal exhaustion and PTSD, and balancing hormones bio-identically, I am finally healthy physically and psychologically. The stress has recently greatly reduced as my ex has finally moved away and moved on, and co-parenting under our divorce agreement ended. As soon as that happened, my health got so much better!
But in the last year before I filed for divorce, and the second time while I was secretly moving things out of my house, I was mysteriously poisoned twice. I had to seek medical treatment the first time. I was sick for 3 weeks. I tried to get a lab to test the poison source, but for a variety of reasons I couldn’t. Later, I was so acutely sick I almost called 911, but I was too tired to get to the phone, then it cleared.
During my divorce, the judge ordered me back into the family home (because I think the judge was catching on how psychologically disturbed my ex was). I would not eat or drink anything he made for me, not even morning coffee he would bring. I would cook for myself or get takeout. I can’t prove he did it. But it was suspicious.
I think, looking back on it, that once I filed, I was safe. He wanted my money, not our kids, not really. After I filed, he was no longer entitled to half of my money (as he did not have any). So this may explain why the poisoning stopped even though I was living there. He changed over to abusing me through the court system and the kids.
I never made this link with my illnesses before. Chinese medicine and homeopathic medicine kept indicating medicines to mimic poison. They use the philosophy that the medicine should produce some of the same symptoms as the illness, I guess to encourage the body to fight back. Hello! I thought maybe I had toxic buildup, which maybe I did, but it could have also been saying poison. Standard hair tests would not necessarily pick this up.
I am a big believer that the state of our emotions can affect us physically. I have no doubt that your autoimmune disease was caused or at least triggered by the sociopath, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if, like Annette said, he was even poisoning you. This has happened to several people on the site. But the fact that it is an autoimmune illness sticks out in my mind because of something I read recently in a book called The Wisdom of Menopause. I relate it not just to women who are going through menopause (I’m not quite there yet myself) but to all of us. Menopause is a time that brings to the surface any issues we’ve repressed, and it can come out in the form of physical illnesses. To paraphrase, she says that women who are living alone are more prone to autoimmune illnesses like MS. I recall when I was reading this thinking that there might be a link to feelings of isolation and not being able to express oneself to autoimmune diseases. She also talks about the link to other illnesses like cancer and the emotional component that goes with that (for instance, she links cancer to not setting clear boundaries with toxic people). This is not the first time I’d heard that theory about cancer. I also think that very empathic people – and animals too – pick up stress from their environment and absorb stress from others and hold it in their bodies. I work in a emergency department at a hospital, and I notice a fair amount of nurses of all ages developing lupus or other autoimmune illnesses. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
So many people on this site have developed cancer, heart problems, and autoimmune illnesses after getting involved with sociopaths. All the more reason to get out as quickly and completely as you can – to save your life – literally – and to be 100% true to yourself and your deepest needs for respect and validation.
And the even more sinister explanation – that the sociopath could have been poisoning you – is really not very far fetched at all. I wonder if there is any way to check this out, if for no other reason, than to rule it out.
I am sending prayers for your speedy recovery from the physical turmoil and hope that you can bring out any rage, grief, and whatever you might be holding toward the sociopath into the light for its release so that you may be healthy again.
As an aside, I am gluten-free by choice, and I feel much healthier this way. But no one should have to be tormented by the food they eat the way you are.
Yes, see books and articles on Somatic Experiencing (S.E.), a theory that stress and trauma get caught in the body without being processed fully. S.E. is a therapy that can help with PTSD, either via bodywork or talk therapy. See also the book, “Your Body Keeps the Score”. Again saying that problems with high emotional content will be reflected in the body’s health. Many chronic illnesses are stress-related or triggered by stress.
Peace,
So sorry for what you’re going through. It’s given me so much to think about! When things started to spin out of control in the relationship with my sociopath, I was getting sick to my stomach for no reason. As I was reading your story, I was thinking… it’s the sociopath that’s the disease and your body is trying to get it out of your system! It’s like the sociopaths infect us with their toxins and even though we try to dismiss all the nastiness they do, our body knows better. I’m a firm believer that our emotions play a role in our physical well-being. I believe the longer you’re free of him, the better you will feel emotionally, and I would hope for you that it will also have a positive impact on your physical health.
Wishing you well!!
I agree that there is a connection between the severe emotional stress from being in a relationship with a sociopath. I developed a mass in my chest during my divorce which may or may not be sarcoid, with inconclusive biopsies (documented in my memoir “The Aftermath of Rock ‘n’ Roll), and have now been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The mind-body connection is real. Even though I believe I am stronger now as a result of my experience with the sociopath, and certainly more world-wise and less trusting, it is clear that dealing with these pathologic people clearly leaves deep scars, and damage the immune system.
22 years after getting very sick with what has been termed chronic fatigue immune dysfunction, my ppath implies that he could have poisoned me too.
I also am celiac. go to a functional medicine specialist, they are pros at dealing with the nutritional side of this issue. Getting off gluten is just a part of healing. depending on how long you have been sick, you may have leaky gut too. at any rate, your dysfunctional gut is allowing food particles to get into your blood stream. The body reacts by creating antibodies to these foods. You can check to find food sensitivities and you will need to stop consuming all of those things or you wont heal. An elimination diet will help but it doesn’t allow many people to imperatively know which food groups are sensitivities. I have 19 foods to avoid. I also did the elimination diet and the candida diet for a year to start healing, along with the stopping 19 food sensitivities. It takes a bit of concentration to not go nuts hating the new food choices, but honestly, i really like my new diet and i don’t crave sugar the way i did. I also did numerous supplements (21 i think) for a year. Its an expensive route but it can and will put you back on the road to health.
You also mentioned worsening symptoms. they could be associated to autoimmune illness, but more likely, they sound like the onset of some distinct disgust based PTSD, tremors/seizures and all. Oh, and I hear a hint of estrogen dominance and possibly subclinical thyroid issues. All of these are a constellation of things around both celiacs and PPaths… you choose.
back to the chronic fatigue and poisoning. My husband never said directly, but he would walk away with his pesticide guy best friend joking about what they could poison me with that would be effective. He had kicked off the brake pedal and didnt replace it completely, without mentioning it to me. It fell on the floor while I was driving 80 mph on the highway, twice. He had disabled my newly repaired car. Thats a long story, but I know it was his intention. I had Guillian Barre followed by serious fast growing cataracts, then all my teeth started falling out . . . I have some serious cortisol issues, with a slight tan and spots that come and go on my body. All of these things can be explained away to divert attention from him, after all how successful a ppath can he possibly be, hes not jim jones??!!
When I focused on a memory in the emergency room during the guillian barre, he asked how would one know which tube was the one checking for heavy metals? I explained how the coding system worked because I had worked in a hospital for years. He dashed out to the john right after the doctor left with the blood samples. The heavy metal test never made it to the lab. Despite my telling the doctor this, it was too late to re-draw the specimen when they discovered the loss.
This made me more weary and I started checking into poisoning. Basically, if you aren’t dead and if you have the faculties to get to a doctor, you will have to straddle them and threaten that you want testing done for poisons….. but you had better know exactly WHAT poison because there are different tests for each.
Most toxins/poisons are filtered out of your body within 2 days.
You could have ingested anything from ruffies to aerosols, many of which have no taste or odor. If he didn’t want to get caught, he might stick it in something so that you self-deliver. poisoning is a very underhanded covert act and it is virtually impossible to determine who did it and what was delivered, especially if done at low doses to maim and not kill.
There are forensic signs of some types of poisoning too. Hair was a possibility for me. I have tons of it, with a 3 foot braid. So, without insurance I can pay $500 (i think… it may have been $100) PER INCH of hair, in my case to seek arsenic residual. If it WAS arsenic. You have to do this test within 2 years of the poisoning or it too will be gone from the hair….. if you can find a toxicologist that knows enough and doesnt make horrible fun of you for thinking that your partner might have done this to you.
AFTER ALL WE ALL KNOW THAT ANYTHING WE SUPPOSE may be going on in our lives is THE indicator that we should leave. (the medical system doesnt have a framework to handle PPaths and their partners with civility or dignity. Nor do police.)
If you think you have been poisoned. get to a doctor and explain that you need testing within 2 days. If you believe that you have been poisoned, its time to leave the relationship. Even if he didnt do it, the trust is gone and the relationship IS over. Your life is not a testing ground for dysfunctional love. Life alone is FAR better.
A lot of very interesting information. Thank you.