Editor’s note: The following is a review of “Love Fraud – How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan,” by Donna Andersen
By Matt
It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes just one woman to bring down a sociopath. And Donna Andersen became a one-woman wrecking crew when she set out to seek justice against her sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery. Ms. Andersen has written a riveting story of her simultaneous journeys seeking justice against Montgomery, and inner peace from the havoc he wreaked in her life.
Ms. Andersen was forced — by both internal and external facts and circumstances — to pursue two very separate yet intertwined paths. The first path was through the US and foreign court systems as she battled her ex-husband trying to collect her $1 million plus divorce judgment from him. As Ms. Andersen realized that the justice system had failed her and would continue to fail her, she took matters into her own hands. From an emotional standpoint Ms. Andersen had to adopt the policy that “to get rid of a sociopath, become a sociopath.” And boy did she.
Ms. Andersen turned her energy into getting back everything Montgomery had stolen from her and then some. Trying to find records of where Montgomery was hiding his money, Ms. Andersen showed pure resourcefulness in breaking into and clearing out a storage bin belonging to Montgomery and his new wife. Trying to shake money out of Montgomery, Ms. Andersen showed unadulterated moxie when she teamed up with another of Montgomery’s victims to convince Montgomery the other woman was pregnant and needed money. And to expose Montgomery to all of Australia and New Zealand as a fraudulent war hero, Ms. Andersen showed pure ruthlessness. Yes, Donna Andersen out sociopathed a sociopath.
The second path Ms. Andersen took was her spiritual journey to recovery and healing. Ms. Andersen makes a very convincing case that while none of us takes the same path to healing and recovery from a sociopath, we all ultimately have to find a path.
Ms. Andersen pursued her spiritual journey with the help of energy healers, psychics and past life regression. Being a hard-headed realist, I at first thought Ms. Andersen’s path to spiritual healing was a “bit out there.” But, as I read her story, I saw that her two-pronged approach to recovery — the factual and the spiritual — are both necessary components for recovery.
Ms. Andersen’s message for me was that in order to reclaim your life from a sociopath you must be proactive. Once you become proactive, the spiritual healing follows. When I looked at my recovery through the prism of Ms. Andersen’s, I realized that after I did everything I could legally do to the sociopath I had been involved with, I had come to a place of acceptance and could move on with my life. Or, to put it another way, once you expose the sociopath and putting him in a real or de facto prison, you will be freed from the prison that the sociopath has made of your life. Ms. Andersen’s powerful story is not only a gift to all survivors of sociopaths, but an inspiration.
ElizabethBennett,
Many of the things that get us into messes with these crazies are not “flaws” but attributes in normal life and relationships. May I suggest Sandra Brown’s book Women Who Love Psychopaths? She has an entire chapter on the attributes of fine women who attract these monsters. It is not because we are flawed, but because we are strong, trusting, loving, interesting, intelligent and they use all of that against us to purposely destroy us.
Just read the comments here and you will not see flaws, you will see intelligence, wisdom, strenght and committment to recovery and taking these predators down. Please focus on your strenght, let go of the idea of your flaws and see his evil. Become another proud survivor. We all have doubt and flounder at times but we have learned that we are not at fault and we are not flawed because this happened to us. If we happen to have a little flaw as everyone does, we just see it and work on fixing it.
Thanks for your caring and concern for me. Be aware it is a wonderful thing to have care and concern for others and the personality disordered person in your life probably used it against you. He has the flaws, not you.
Darwinsmom.
We agree and posted about the same book at the same time. LOL 😉
betsybugs,
Yes, we did. It was very empowering to read!!! And I read it the week after I was discarded and realized the ex was a psychopath.
I actually had a vision at the end of the temparement chapter: I had a vision of a bullet being shot at my reflection in a mirror, an assassination attempt upon my chore self, and me holding the gun (my temperament and personality being the gun). But I could also see that it had been the spath who had put the gun there in my hands and had pointed my hands in the direction of my reflection. And most importantly, as I heard and saw the glass of the mirror shatter into thousand pieces, I immediately also knew I had already survived it. The only thing that got destroyed was the mirror, but not me, not if I let him. And by trying to alter my temperament, I would let him really turn the gun against myself. I know this, since I had an id-crisis when I was 24. It’s how I learned what is fundamental, and what is changeable, and how altering the fundamental, the temperament, is futile, harmful and self-destructive. With the mirror assassination vision I realized that all that was required from me was to ensure that I would not give another person the power anymore to use me against myself like that anymore. I have a power, and I should keep it out of the wrong hands 🙂
Hugs to you bettybugs. You are going through very rough times!
Darwinsmom & Betsy. I believe I have read that book. I’ll have to dig out those to make sure. Right now I’m in a platonic thing that is bordering on romantic and I realize how bad I am at trusting people and I don’t want to screw things up. We’re good friends and I’ve loved her a long time and I finally feel like she is feeling the same. Even friendship with her was difficult for a long time because she doesn’t trust people either and she was very bad at reciprocating in friendship. After we had a huge fight where I pointed that out to her, she was mad at me for awhile but I think she took it to heart because she is reciprocating and becoming so much better at it the more she does it.
My issue has a little bit to do with that, but I realized that my last two relationships, with the N who brought me here, and the one before that, is that I have horribly low self esteem, and that along with my internal qualities stated by Darwinsmom, made me victim to them. But I have something else going on. I haven’t had a whole lot of relationships, but in every single one, I have been cheated on and lied to. The N who brought me here was different because he was married and I was the OW in that, which lowered myself esteem significantly more and I had to deal with the guilt from that. I think that I allowed myself in that situation because I felt like I was eventually going to be cheated on anyway, so I could just go ahead and accept a relationship with someone who was with me only part time and just get it over with.
The fact that I could think that way now just appalls me so much I can’t stand it but I’ve learned a lot about myself. I have been overweight for years-since my mid 20s and I’m now 40. I realize that I spent years using my weight as a defense mechanism to insulate myself to keep from being hurt. I was sexually harassed a ton when I was young because I had a really good body before I was sexually assaulted at 21. Even though I hate myself carrying all this weight, I feel like it protects me in a way. Because if I’m physically fit and height/weight proportionate that people will want to date me and then they will cheat on me. This is the most twisted thing ever and it bothers me so much but I don’t know what to do about it. My subconscious is telling me these things. That’s the only reason I can think of for hating the weight but not doing the work to change it.
The woman that I care about seems to be more concerned about who I am as a person and tells me how beautiful I am all the time but those thoughts start creeping in. Since she is a lot older and has never been with a woman, loving her isn’t easy because she gets scared sometimes and starts to pull back. I’ve had to learn to not have a panic attack over it and give her a few days because everytime it happens, things go right back to normal. At times I’ve felt like the relationship wasn’t good for me but it’s teaching me a lot. Because of what I’ve gone through with the cheating it’s given me a tremendous fear of abandonment so I tend to get too needy and clingy sometimes and I’m afraid it scares people away, and if it’s going to scare anyone it would be her. I feel like I tend to want to move things to fast and it’s helping me to slow down. But I do get afraid sometimes that my weight will eventually impact things with her because the closer we get it will somehow get in the way. I really want things to continue in the way that they’re going because we seem to be really good for each other. We have a lot in common and I can really notice a change in both our happiness levels since we started getting really close.
The whole using my weight as a defensive mechanism is really bothering me and I would love to figure out how to stop it because it doesn’t make any kind of sense.
ElizabethBennett:
“The whole using my weight as a defensive mechanism is really bothering me and I would love to figure out how to stop it because it doesn’t make any kind of sense. ”
EB, I might be wrong about this, but I believe underneath this mechanism there is shame and the ego’s identification of self. Take a look on that and you might resolve it.
EB,
As long as you don’t love yourself for the major chunk part, it will be hard to see clear and make any judgement. I would also be very careful of putting blame on yourself for being fearful and thereby sabotaging relationships. I’m not saying you don’t self-sabotage relationships. But it can also be used as a stick to blame yourself and not admit the responsibility of others that you are not trusting them.
I was clammed shut with several of my budding affairs before the spath, because of a giant broken heart once. I didn’t trust the men I fell for to fall in love with me, or even if they did to commit to me. So, I gave these men no emotional feedback whatsoever. There were three men in particular in the many years before the spath where this happened. One of them is someone I now regard as a slimeball jerk. Another is stalking, pathologically lying, cheating, financial user (in other words a spath): not to me, but to his gf after me. The third one also has several red flags of a spath: again not to me, but to his gf before and after me. I did chase all three of them away: they chose another target over me. And why did they do that? Because they didn’t get emotional feedback with me. And what is the one thing, a spath needs to hook their target? They need drama, emotions, and info on the target from the target itself. All three of them slithered out of my life because they couldn’t mirror a mask to me…. LOL, and I blamed myself and my commitment fear at the time.
Unwittingly, I actually saved myself from getting deeply involved with at least one more spath – most likely two – and a certified jerk… before I even knew the crucial key to chasing spaths away: don’t feed them emotions.
When I actually did solve my reactive commitment fear, I ended up with the ex-psycho. However, this time I was equipped with a basic foundation to learn the lessons from it, and to avoid the self-blame path for the most part in the relationshit. Had something similar happened with the other three, it would have been much harder for me to learn the lesson as I have done now boundary and blame wise, and actually might have broken my spirit. At the very least my commitment fear protected me from the spath lesson at the wrong timing in my life.
In short, yes you may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean there might be good reasons for you to be paranoid. Don’t force yourself and blame yourself over it. It does protect you from harm when you are very fragile and vulnerable inside. It just means that you are not ready yet and do not have the skills yet to size up a relationshit adequately. I would seek therapy if you can for the issues you are talking about.
There might also be two books that might help you with what you’re struggling. One is flylady’s declutter book. While her website is about decluttering the home, the book is about decluttering the mind and body and tackle the weight issue. She also uses the ‘inner child’. BTW Flylady is a survivor of an abusive relationshit with someone she herself regards as a sociopath.
The second book is about finding love in yourself: fearless loving: http://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Loving-simple-truths-change/dp/B000BTH5BW. The second book did help me get over my commitment fear, and helped me to start fully loving myself. In a way it finally made me ready and strong enough to get the most out of the spath lesson that was lying in wait on my lifepath for years by then.
Hi Darwinsmom and Betsybugs,
I wanted to let you know that the woman Sandra Brown was found out to be a fraud. She is not a reverend, her charity’s address is a vacant lot…she has a phd. from an online school that you can get in 48 hrs…etc…
This is the webpage if you want to check it out:
Sandra Brown MA is a Fraud
Betsybugs, I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing such emotional trauma. It’s almost too much to manage.
I would like to make a gentle suggestion that letting your grandchildren know that you love them, care about their well-being, and will be there for them is an imperative. But, asking your daughter when you’ll be able to see your grandchildren is giving her as much control as anything else, and your sister’s terminal condition gives your daughter some powerful jet-fuel to pour on this fire of madness.
What I mean by this is that tragedy is either a time when people draw together in a supportive unit, or it’s a time when people who are disordered manipulate to their best interests. When you ask your daughter about seeing the grandchildren, you’re making a sincere request, especially since you’re facing an iminent loss – you want to draw your grandchildren close for a variety of good reasons. But, the daughter is using this tragic, sad time to make you feel crazy because she’s not allowing contact with your grandchildren. The more you ask her about this or press the point with her, the better she’ll be able to manipulate your well-meant effots into, “See? Didn’t I tell you she was nuts?”
I’m not suggesting that you walk away or turn your back on your grandchildren by any stretch of the imagination. What I am suggesting is that you may want to consider disengaging your emotions about this mess, for the time being.
What has happened to me with regard to my neice and nephew was that I desperately wanted to cultivate a healthy relationship with them, but my brother’s wife would not allow it and actively discouraged it with extreme malice. My pleas to spend time with them were stonewalled and ignored, and it cut me to the bone. At some point in my early adulthood, I realized that this was never going to happen on a healthy level. And, I want to say that this was DECADES before I ever learned about sociopathy. But, on some gut level, I accepted the fact that the disordered SIL held all of the cards with regard to her children’s interests and interactions, and that I didn’t have any influence, whatsoever. I didn’t like this situation, but I recognized it for what it was, for whatever reason. As a complete aside, it’s odd how I wasn’t able to recognize OTHER spath entanglements, but that’s not a part of this discussion.
So, it may be that your continued efforts to see your grandchildren are going to be used against you, Betsybugs. Spaths have a keen and adept manner to make their targets feel and act in ways that they normally wouldn’t, and use the targets’ actions as “evidence” that the targets are to be shunned or avoided or institutionalized.
I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing all of this drama/trauma, Betsybugs, I really am.
Brightest comforting blessings to you
ElizabethBennett, I’m obese and have been so since the first abusive exspath. I’ve lost over 75 pounds in the last year, and I’m still losing. Of course, it’s for a variety of reasons with one being that I simply cannot afford to buy food. But, the main reason is that the split with the second exspath resulted in a whole lot of personal emotional work for me that began with my “inner child.”
Once I began to explore my “inner child’s” damages and experiences, I began to slowly, EVER-so-slowly, recover from a lifetime of shame-core beliefs. As I began to process the truths about my shame-core, I actually began to “feel” that I didn’t “deserve” any of the things that had been done to me – I was simply vulnerable and easily exploited. The more that I learned about myself and what made me so vulnerable, the more I am filling myself up with courage, fortitude, and resolve instead of food.
Food provided a false comfort for me because it physically filled me up, and subconsciously provided a barried (adipose tissue) against unwanted attention. At one time, prior to the first exspath, I was pretty, physically strong and active, and had a healthy sex-drive. Once I had experienced years of every abuse imaginable, I did not “feel” that I was attractive, worthy of love, or anything else positive with regard to ME.
It’s not an easy path, EB, because I have always had an eating disorder, and I always will. I still have “food issues” that cause me to want to hoarde food, but not consume it because I’m in such dire financial straights – who knows when I’ll be able to buy food, again? This is an issue that I’ll have to learn how to manage. But, I know what the core of these issues is, and I only wish that I weren’t trying to manage an auto-immune disorder so that I could get more active. That would melt more weight off of my body, without a doubt.
But, understanding why adipose tissue became an “insulation” for me and how food became my only source of comfort has been some help in recovering from the spath experiences. I don’t like it. I wish that I had a better metabolism and that I didn’t have such flawed core beliefs. The saying goes something like this: If wishes were fishes, nobody would starve. Well, I’m not starving, yet, and wishes come true in fairy tales. Since I’m not living in a fairy tale, I need to alter my system of beliefs and manage my personal issues to continue recovery.
Brightest, brightest blessings to you
Thanks for the info Ana… I’m trying to make some sense out of what I find with google… And what I find seems a big mess, of one nast big brawl. Almost all the links I find accusing Sandra Brown are pure vitriol, and seem to come from the same source or small group of people. And while there are claims and quotes, I find little oficial links to official documents that back up the quotes and claims.
Not saying the accusations may be wrong, but I would like to see some more independent peer reviews or official documentation on this as it is claimed there is.