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.
Hi Matt, I happened to check in today, which I do fairly infrequently these days, and caught your article. I happen to think it’s excellent. You may remember that I also turned my spath in to the army and got all my friends to give sworn statements. It was our sworn statements that ruined the spath’s scheme to defraud the army out of a phony medical discharge (they call it malingering). Then I gathered a coalition of internet friends who all watched for the spath’s reappearance on my internet forum where I met him. When he reappeared, my friends drove him off. I didn’t even have to say a word to him, thankfully. The whole drama took about a year. But once I accomplished what I set out to do – which was just to get him out of my life – I was able to let go and heal. All I wanted was to get him out of my life. I told him after we split up that if I ever so much as saw him on the internet forum again, I’d turn him into the army. I wasn’t planning on seeking justice purely for the sake of revenge. I just wanted him out of my life. He called my bluff, and backspathed him. He never saw it coming. The fact that he got punished by the army was just icing on the cake.
I had no idea Donna was so crafty in her backspath. Good on you, Donna. I think a lot of people stay stuck because they don’t know what to do with the anger constructively. It does take a lot of moxie to backspath a spath, and sometimes it is dangerous. A book that comes to mind that this story reminds me of is an old Carlos Casteneda book called The Ring of Fire. In this book, one of the shamans tells a story of how he was once enslaved by a very evil person. He called this person a “petty tyrant.” He told how he had to step up and rise to a certain level of power in defeating the petty tyrant. He had to become crafty and think like the petty tyrant to outsmart him. He goes further to say that if you don’t have a petty tyrant in your life, you should go out and find one, because they teach great lessons that are very empowering.
Regarding Donna’s spiritual path and healing approach, I am doing something very similar. I have gone through some hypnosis lately, which involves a lot of regression, and it really does help. Of all of the things I’ve done, I would say the regression is the most helpful. I also am a second degree Reiki practitioner. I use it on myself for emotional healing and it really does work. There is nothing I won’t try and no belief system I’m not open to, if it accelerates the healing process. I’ve had psychic healings, aura cleansings, trauma work, and good old fashioned talk therapy. It all has helped in its own way. The healing process for me is quite painful and sometimes feels like one insult after another to my ego. This is where Eckhart Tolle’s books have been so helpful to me to put this into perspective – that we all have a “pain body”. Some of us have a larger one than others do. But that is not all of who we are. It’s been really great amidst all the pain and struggle to take up a new challenging hobby (which also pushes all my buttons) and to see it through without sabotaging it. Also very empowering to know that I can accomplish something without my pain body getting in the way of it.
My kindest regards to everyone here.
Truthspeak and Darwinsmom-I think ya’ll are probably right. Due to being highly sensitive I was exploited a lot by people who were family. It sad when you can’t count on your own family not to treat you badly. I am working on things for myself. I read and write in my journal and I recently discovered St. John’s Wort and it has been a miracle for me because it controls my emotions so well. In addition to being over sensitive I am in early menopause at age 40 and the hot flashes and mood swings are crazy.
We don’t have any mental health resources where I am and it has become a critical situation. The system can’t even take care of the most extreme cases. All the facilities are being closed by our right wing governor in favor of balancing the budget and the few resources are overwhelmed. We have a lot of seriously mentally ill people that are dangerous walking around on the streets.
I just try to take things day by day and not worry one bit about tomorrow. Gradually as I come to know my lady friend better I am trusting her and she is trusting me. She is very sensitive as well but chose to deal with it in a different way than I have. I am learning about it and trying to work with it and accept it. For years she has been forcing it away. I tried to do that but bottling things up didn’t work for me. Once the emotions came out they were unable to control and flooded me. She made herself really hard and started to get to the point where I was afraid she was going to have a breakdown from the stress of it. We’ve started talking about things and she understands how I feel because she feels the same things. Since she started to trust me and talk to me it has really changed her personality a lot. I’m the only one she talks to like that. I just try to show her I love her and I don’t have to tell her. We’re just really there for each other and I don’t feel like I need to rush things.
Truthspeak, I feel like I need to force myself a little bit. I have a gym membership through work that is very cheap by payroll deduction and I hadn’t been going due to foot injuries. Now that those are resolved I have no excuse not to be there. I’m not in a situation where I can’t afford food but my grocery bill can’t support the things I need to be eating like natural unprocessed food. It’s amazing how expensive things are. I’m going to be starting a different job in my hospital soon where I’ll be going back to working dayshift, so I hope with better sleep that I’ll have more energy to exercise. I have a great outdoor area to be in too to take my dog with me. I think it will do him some good if we can get out and exercise together. He is a working dog and very active and I’m not getting him enough exercise.
BTW, animals are extremely therapeutic. I don’t know where I would be without my dog, my cat, and my St. John’s Wort.
Louise,
The fact that you even mentioned to him “maybe you think I’m playing games…” probably just made him feel sure in his conviction that you were playing one.
Why do spaths attempt to make other accomplices and join in amoral actions? Because they wish to prove that in the end everyone is like them – a spath. Ultimately they believe that deep down we are really like them. Just like empaths ultimately believe that everyone must be capable of having a heart.
If a spath were to tell you, “You probably just think I’m playing a game here, but I really am not,” big alarm bells would go DING-DING-DING in your head. Since spaths believe everybody else to be spathic deep down in the end, he would have regarded that as something he would say, a 180° lie and a tell. Plus the fact that you gave no info, were distrusting, and in that sense uncooperative. Their mask is the most important thing they have. If they can’t mirror another person, they can’t make an appropriate tailored mask, and the risk increases that the other can see their true mr Hyde and expose them.
darwinsmom:
Good point! Hmmmm, well here I thought I was making myself more believable, when in reality, I made him trust me even less by saying that! I obviously did not realize what I was saying. But it’s because I am NOT like him. When I said it, it’s the TRUTH. Coming from him it would be a lie so he thought I was lying, too. UGGHH.
Louise and Darwinsmom,
You are both right, I think that it just made him more paranoid when you texted your love message.
I think that their is nothing you can say to make him believe you, the only thing you could do is ACT. If you were to approach him with tears, sack cloth and ashes, ripping your hair out, showing EMOTION, then you could convince him.
They need symbols. To them, symbols make things real. They are obsessed with signs and symbols. That’s why they are so materialistic. They need the symbols of wealth and status. My spath needed people to buy things for him. That made him feel that they loved him.
Darwinsmom,
how do you make the “degree” circle? on the 180 degrees?
skylar:
Yep, I most likely just made him more paranoid. We already know how paranoid he is. I did all this without even realizing what he was doing. I feel kind of bad now. I hate this.
I wish I could ACT, but I can’t. I do agree that I could convince him. With what I know about him, I could convince him, but he is not available. And he would only hurt me again. Sigh.
Someone has a vendetta against Sandra Brown. I went to her retreat and it was very helpful to me. I saw no flags of any color including red. I have never heard her claim to be a Phd. or a Reverend. All information I have read of hers is very helpful.
http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com/
Euhm, Louise, from what you told us, I would say “thank your lucky starts you had him a) slither away b) unwittingly made him think you were plaing a game with him.
I also disagree with the idea that you could convince him. You could not. There is nothing to convince: no loving feelings. It’s not just that he’s practically unavailable… even if he was in every way available (morally, unattached, free) he would still be unavailable: he cannot love you the way you deserve to be loved.
Please read Sky’s imagery again: she’s painting the picture of a woman who practically throws herself at the feet of a man, in total desperation. It’s the image of a woman with no self esteem. If you were to do that, he would just enjoy the free victory and walk all over you without ever giving you a thing.
Skylar, euhm, the degree symbol is on my keyboard 😀 We have azerty keyboards in Belgium, and it’s right next to the typekey with 0. I hate it when I have to type on a querty… all my a’s turn into q’s, m’s become some symbol, etc…
On Sarah Brown, I noted that the blogs that seemed to be created by the same person over and over (same wording same arguments, same vitriol) at some point posted quotes of her words… It seems as if these quotes came from personal mail with her, etc… I actually found the forum where she had posted what was quoted. In the context of the forum, her posts read as being very reasonable, nor were they a personal attack.
There was one blog that claimed to distance themselves from her. The reason being that Sarah Brown had dissociated herself it seems from this organisation that has as a goal: exposing and promotion of exposing psychopaths by name legally.
Truthspeak and Ox Drover,
I think you are right and I just had to push it to prove it to myself that she is actually capable of pretending that everthing in getting better when she has the same attitude she has had for years. She confirmed it today so now I know. Tis better for me to know than get false hope. from her phoney kindness.
This knowledge will help me do what I have to do with my sister and cope with my daughter on an as little contact as possible basis. I will enjoy the grandchildren as much as I can under the circumstances and expect nothing from her and expect to have them taken away again just as I suspected would happen.
Suspicions are painful and involve hope. Knowing the worst is always better for me. It provoked her and she provoked me but now I get it. Thank you both for your support. I do believe she will be sorry someday but I am not waiting around for it.
She has done a dastardly thing when all I wanted was to help her and be on her side while she raised her children. Now it will be opposite sides and that is not good for any of us. My granddaughter who is 9 is already saying she will come over to my house as soon as she can drive. My poor daughter has written her own demise. I can wait, they can wait. She will be sorry…and I am sorry and the poor children are sorry. But she has clearly made her decision and even told me nothing I say now will change it.