UPDATED FOR 2023: Lovefraud received this note from a reader; we’ll call her Allison. She offers excellent advice for recovering from your entanglement with a sociopath: Don’t take it personally.
I want to thank everyone involved with the Lovefraud website. It is truly a gift. To the brave survivors, I wish you peace. I am a survivor myself. In fact, I’m divorcing mine as we speak. I will write my story another time because this time I only want to give a piece of advice that has helped me the most. When I was able to do this, the rest was easier to get through. I stopped taking it personally. It was not an easy task. I read everything I could get my hands on and while I learned his actions were mostly textbook, it was easier for me to let go. Once I convinced myself that I was not the first nor will I be the last, I shut my heart off and stopped taking it personally. This was my key to survival. I offered a silent apology to the women of the world for throwing this one back into the dating pool and went on with my life. I stopped taking it personally and I slept better, dreamed better, laughed more and found that I’ll be just fine. If this helps even one person, it will have made it worth it. Take care.
Simple, effective advice
Allison’s advice is very simple, but it goes directly to the core of the sociopath’s manipulation, betrayal and abuse. The sociopath never cared about us one way or the other. We were convenient targets. We had something the sociopath wanted. Or we presented an opportunity for the sociopath’s amusement.
Sociopaths do what they do, because that’s what they do. We just happened to be there.
Of course, that’s not what the sociopath told us. First, he or she proclaimed love and devotion, or a sterling opportunity to succeed together — whatever the promise was. Then, when the promise started falling apart, the sociopath told us it was all our fault.
We, as normal human beings, believed the original promise — how could anyone say those words and not mean them? So, when the blame started flying from the person who made the promise, we believed that as well.
As we say here on Lovefraud, the sociopath is the lie. And the sociopath lied because that’s what they do. They are missing the parts — emotional connections to other people and conscience — that make us human.
Opportunity for healing
Still, there is a reason that we went along with the sociopath’s program, and that is something we do need to take personally, for our own recovery and growth.
Read more: Seduced by a sociopath — It’s not love, it’s love fraud
This does not at all excuse the sociopath’s heartless behavior, nor is it meant to blame the victim. But most of us engaged because we wanted to believe the original promise.
We have to ask ourselves, what was missing within us that allowed us to believe? Did we have experiences in our pasts that made us susceptible to the manipulation? If so, it’s time to look at these issues and heal ourselves.
So as we extricate ourselves from the sociopath, understand that this is how they are, their behavior is not our fault, and don’t take it personally.
But we should take very personally the opportunity to excavate the old, erroneous tapes in our heads, and create wonderful new lives for ourselves.
Learn more: Comprehensive 7-part recovery series presented by Mandy Friedman, LPCC-S
Lovefraud originally posted this article on April 6, 2009.
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Hyper vigilance and PTSD
katy – i really think you have something there. i used to watch my N sib attack others – and she ALWAYS KNEW where people’s vulnerabilities lay and who she could take down and who she couldn’t.
learn something new every day. 🙂
Darwinsmom,
I found a differnt path to understand myself. I LIVED in the library but not all the books intrigued me. If a person is a reader, I’d bet looking at what makes them curious would give clues to what feeds their soul.
Like you, once I master certain aspects of a job/project, I struggle to find the motivation to continue the work. I do enjoy a project and seeing it through completion but to do a job, the same job, with no progression of learning…. would drive me NUTS. But when I FIRST start a new focus of interest, I practically live/eat/breath it. BUT opposite of you, while I enjoy sharing with other weirdos like me, I am NOT extroverted at all. I like my alone time, to think and ponder and just muse in the pleasure of what I’ve learned, and think on ideas and extrapolating what I’ve learned to problem solve.
Yet, while I know All these things about me, it just does not translate into any job. (maybe too ADD b/c I am also mildly OCD? Bad combo!!) But I bet if I were to take a job seeker into a library and see what they naturally gravitated to, I bet I could zero in on a job for them…
Katy, yeah I lived at the library too and ALL the books intrigued me.
Narcissist parents treat different kids differently because they are reliving some drama that they were in as kids. They get to switch roles around and make it come out different, using their kids as avatars.
The little spath sis was treated special and my mother would say over and over ad nauseum, how she was gonna be miss america. She got her a blanket with a queen and a king on the front. We were all encouraged to kiss her feet. GAG ME!
She was always dressed up pretty.
Most of my family is good looking, but ironically, even though I was treated as the ugly duckling, my hair was chopped off short of I was forced to wear it in unbecoming braids and I believed myself to be horribly ugly (I was), I blossomed as a teen and I’m envied by both my sister and my mom. Furthermore that skinny skeletal creature that my spath bro said looked like a starving refugee child (I did) with skinny extremities and a protuding stomach (from celiac disease), ended up with a perfect physique from constant exercise. Though I’m fat now, I still look better than my sister who is younger, and taller.
And of course now my mother sees how her two favorite children turned out: spaths.
My point is, that she didn’t get to turn us into what she thought. Spath sister is not a queen or a beauty queen, although she did enter the local beauty pagents. They look for brains and personality too so there was never any potential. But my mom ran out and bought her all the beauty queen gowns. This is while I was hitchhiking around town getting picked up by the green river killer… sorry started rambling…
One Joy,
The narc’s don’t have the same rules for themselves as for the rest. When raising children, you have to have values to instill in them. Without that, what do you get? No goals, no directions. My spath sister can only answer “money” when asked what’s important to her.
I have so many talents, just as you do, but no direction, other than to earn a living and exist. What’s important to me?
About the only thing that I have found of importance which has really focused me, is injustice. When I see it, I get focused. And angry. and focused. So spaths have been my focus for a while, I’m learning about them and I’m evangelical about them. It’s the only value I have at the moment.
I need direction. I need to have some fun!
This existing is turning into a real drag.
Maybe that’s it, I don’t feel any value for myself.
(((Hey Super Chic)))
Fun is a value!
Okay, Super chic! Get a life! Find something that is of interest to you. Lack of interest in things is a SIGN OF DEPRESSION….and so you have to find something that really does interest you and make it important to you.
Start with a medical check up and an mental health professional evaluation for depression…take medication if you need to.
Find joy in small things…. set some goals for yourself that are MEASURABLE…like “I will walk for 30 minutes 3 days a week.” You can see if you meet that goal.
I will read 100 pages of a good book per week…..
I will sign up to volunteer 10 hours a week at the pet shelter, hospital, library, nursing home.
I will call and speak to 2 old friends this next week.
Whatever your goals are, make them so you can see if you meet them or not, rather than just “I will take joy in small things” (which can’t easily be measured)
Today my son and a friend of his and I created a CAT-Quarium for our new kittens…we had to keep them confined for their own safety as they are still babies, but they were very unhappy in the even large dog crate…so we took an old chest freezer thatj no longer works…and we made them a SAFE HOME that they can’t get out of, (has a screened top to keep the tom cat and the raccoons from hurting them) and we put in tree limbs for them to climb, a litter box, a cardboard jungle gym, and little pieces of string and dowel hanging down from the top as toys and we stood and watched them play for about an hour and LAUGHED OURSELVES SILLY at the antics—I mean just how much joy can two kittens give to 3 adults? A bunch, that’s for sure.
We had a great time with the kitties—so if you can have a pet, get one. Even if it is simply a gold fish in a bowl, get a really ugly one with spots all over it and sit and watch it swim.
Or a hamster or a white mouse or a tiny bird…but get something living to be concerned about.
Interact with others, and count your blessings. Make a list of all the good things in your life,k starting with “I have enough clean water to drink, and enough to eat, a roof over my head, clothing to wear. I am not sick. I don’t have a tooth ache.
I realize that not being interested in things is tough, I’ve been there sugar, been there for sure, just sat and watched the dirt pile up on the floor and had no interest in cleaning it up or caring how deep it got. ((((hugs))))) and God bless.
I did my volunteer work this morning at a wildlife sanctuary.
The only thing I seem to be interested in lately is… eating, HA!
Funny, sad… but true! I have a cat, the the kitties sound like more fun to watch!
My cat is probably thinking the same thing about me… “why doesn’t she get up off her ass?”
sky – my mom had harsh rules for herself – i am sure that’s where i get a lot of my internal rules, that i have spent years changing. but i NEVER had direction. things i wanted to do and natural inclination, but no direction. my N sister did. i was too busy taking care of my mom and numbing myself with drugs. I don’t know if my sib had another adult mentor or not – hmmm, she probably did as she went away to a high end boarding school for 2 years and was exposed to people from a much higher economic bracket who were being groomed for business. ha, in fact she did her first degree in commerce. well, i have been wondering why she seemed to have direction and i didn’t, and now i think i understand. funny, i really like business and learning more in this area.
but my original question wasn’t about work – but about figuring out what is important to me. i have gone back and forth with myself on the spath focus – i didn’t want to go all in…i knew it would swallow me, and yet i felt like i abandoned a part of myself by not doing this. i admire how you use your intellect to work out lot about spaths – and i guess i am trying to find something to focus on too. i want that to be how to take care of myself and heal myself – figure out my vlaues, what’s important now. i drift. i still am eating way too much. i feel terrorized by the db upstairs, i muddle around in my head about my job and ….etc. if i can figure out what is important to me, then maybe i can get my actions and values aligned, and bring myself into the light again.
i am the same now about injustice. i just don’t know what to do with it. last year when i was so sick and broke and it was so horrifying – well that radicalized me, but i don’t know what to do with it. i talk about social inequity, access to sustainable healthy food, and i work for change via the garden. but something is missing. i need something more in this – to read more, to talk more to go deeper, to shift my attitude and see what i am doing that is positive?
with ptsd, and the toxin injuries, i am jumpy. it has stopped me from going deeper and shifter into a fundamentally one step understanding – a true connection from the core of my uterus into my belly, to my heart, intellect and words – i have been working on my words, but my heart is cut off, and my intellect is still sooo affected by the PTSD and toxins – and i haven’t felt grounded and connected to my centre in a very very long time. i want my mind back. i want to live in a life i am not afraid to feel. i want people i can share this journey with. i am too isolated to do what i want to do. but i need new skin, new abiity to handle people. i guess i have to work on that. and my health. and my patience.
i love ‘talking’ to you.
chic – the cat is thinking, ‘why is she watching me? is she going to try to eat me? can i move fast enough?’