Q-tip – Quit taking it personally

You can’t not take it personally if a sociopath has caused irreversible damage to your life and health . Bear in mind they are capable of controlling their actions. They are not mentally ill! I believe this attitude lets them get away with it and justifies their antics and criminal activities. They know exactly what they are doing and are doing it with premeditation!

I am being objective. He did it to me because he wanted to . He knew what he was doing. He carefully planned it and executed it . As I had said before, they are not mentally ill, their judgment is not impaired. They have a choice . I could perhaps understand if a person who is schizophrenic or psychotic committed such acts .

Yes, their brains are different. However,antisocial personality disorder is not even classified as a mental illness. They can’t enter insanity plea in court .
They don’t run around hacking people with an axe in public . They carefully plan their actions, they know that what they are doing is wrong and socially unacceptable. They can choose to stop at any time .
They don’t want to be cheated on but they cheat on their partners without blinking an eye .
Now imagine that a psychopath kills someone you know, someone close to you . Would you still not take it personally because his brain is different?

A spath will victimize anyone without regard to who they are – their parents, their children, their spouse, and/or perfect strangers – if he thinks he will benefit and if he thinks he won’t get caught. Spaths don’t bond to individual people, nor do they victimize someone because of who she is or because she deserves to be victimized in some way. It is impersonal to the spath whom he targets; therefore there is nothing wrong with the victim that ’caused’ her to be victimized.

The fact that they abuse others as well and that there were and will be more victims does not make the damage any less personal!
I also believe that if people were taking the abuse more personally the perpetrators would be exposed and punished more often.
Only because I had taken mine personally the Michigan con artist ended up in jail. Clearly no one before me did, as I was told by a lawyer linked to the case that ‘he misled a lot of people’…

Cloud, In what specific ways do you feel you take abuse more personally? Do you feel your abuser would not abuse other people as he abused you?

What specific actions did you do that were different than others that you believe led to the incarceration of your abuser?

In what ways do you feel that you are different than other victims of abuse?

I did not shrug it off and said ‘oh well, he did it to others as well, I just need to forget about it and move on ‘ .
So far he was getting away with it because his family , including his wife was covering up for him .
I provided evidence of his actions and pictures of forged documentation and thanks to that the case went public and he was sentenced . And now anyone can google his name and village name and find out that he is a con man who did time for forgery .

Thanks for explaining. I don’t think that not taking a spath’s behavior personally is the same as shrugging it off and forgetting about it. For most victims, it’s not possible to respond to profound betrayal, manipulation, exploitation in that way. Holding the abuser accountable and hopefully preventing harm to other victims when possible are responsible choices that can help bring closure for the victim. These are not mutually exclusive with what most
people on this site mean when we speak of not taking the abuse personally, which is an understanding that spaths don’t bond and that they choose to abuse anyone they can get away with it, not that there’s anything special about any particular victim. They just don’t care, one way or the other.

Forgery is a criminal offense, what a blessing that he did not ‘get away with it.’ Sadly, more often than not spaths do not get caught, and much of their abuse is subtle and not technically illegal or very difficult to prove.

I agree that in this case ‘taking personally’ can be understood in two different ways.
By all means I do not blame myself for what he had done to me .

When I was still embroiled with the sociopath, I took it very personally that he targeted me. When he lovebombed me, I thought it was because I was so special and had finally found the one man who could see my greatness. Then when he discarded me, I also took this very personally. I felt like I wasn’t good enough and that other women he was chatting up had something better than I did. When he tried to stalk me later on, I felt special because he had to drive an hour and a half to do it. As I began working on my own feelings of self-worth, I stopped taking men’s behaviors so personally and basing my self-worth on how they treat me. That is not to say that I don’t feel hurt by certain behaviors. It also doesn’t mean I shouldn’t set limits and take appropriate actions when possible. The feelings of hurt, anger, and betrayal are real. The rest is just a story our ego tells us to protect our most vulnerable feelings. Keeping it real, we can never really know what goes on in another person’s mind and heart. We can make a pretty good guess based on past behaviors. But at the end of the day, all we can do is own our own feelings and set limits with those who do not respect us. We can take action and exact justice when we can. But it is pointless to take others’ behaviors personally. I feel we cannot truly have healthy relationships without mastering that one.

I don’t really know or care if the sociopath I dated all those years ago went on to find someone else. I assume he did. I assume he also played games with all his subsequent victims as he did with me, but I don’t really know and don’t really care. I held him accountable for his actions with me to the full extent I was legally able. Then I let it go. My only concern was – and is – that I never hear from him again. Because I know he would be ever-present walking danger to me if he were a part of my life – not because of anything personal toward me but just because of what he is.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Stargazer.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Stargazer.

Star, I relate to your experience, and your analysis of how the way people treat us affects our self worth. I was widowed from marriage to a very wonderful, decent, loyal, family oriented man of good character who kept his word. He and his family treated me wonderfully. It contributed to my self worth immensely. I think that on a subconscious level I probably felt that they treated me well because I’m a wonderful person! (lol…) Ten years after my husband’s death, I met and married my ex psychopath. He and his family treated me terribly beyond words, of course. My self worth took a bit of a hit, but I did recognize that it couldn’t be me, since my first husband had been very happy with me. I recognized what is probably obvious to many people, but I’d never really thought about it, that how people treat others is based on their values and who they are, not on whether someone deserves respect or not. The way the spath and his family of manipulated minions treated me was a reflection of their lack of honesty, character, respect of other human beings, etc. etc. Seems obvious in retrospect, but the tactic of blaming the victim for the abuser’s bad behavior goes a long way to confuse the victim, and others.

Hello all,

As some may know I’ve requested to delete my profile so as not to burden others and to give me a chance to work on problems within myself that need addressing.

But while I’m still here, I thought I’d try to help out on this thread because the QTIP concept is one I’ve thought a lot about. What I believe:

The impact on the victim is truly personal and the victim has the right to their personal feelings. Experiencing sociopathic abuse is a personal experience of being abused (in short its valid for the victim to take it personally)

The actions of the SP are truly impersonal and (with rare exceptions) it is absolutely necessary to interpret their actions as impersonally directed against what they see as an object or objects. Without this basis of interpretation, one won’t understand their motives and one won’t be able to protect oneself and others.

Summary: The sociopath attacks impersonally and the attack lands personally on the victim.

Other thought:

The SP is responsible for their crimes.

I’m responsible for learning to be wiser and more sensible in my life, to grow and change as a person.