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
Kim, I wanted to address your dream last night….sometimes I have had dreams like that where there was some symbolism in seeing how various people had treated me….and I think that it is our subconscious trying to sort out this stuff. I call mine “theme” dreams as there is a theme even if the dream itself is not identical.
In mine, I am trying to take care of something helpless (baby animals or elderly people) and while I am engaged in doing that, my life (as represented sometimes by a horse drawn wagon) will wander off and crash. Sometimes my egg donor is in the dream disapproving of me and what I am doing. Once I recognized the “enabling” theme in them I realized that I had many times let my life crash while I did some good deed for someone else, something or someone who was helpless, when I should have been minding my own issues and business.
I also was able to look back and see that I actually realized at least on a sub conscious level by the time I was 5-6 that my egg donor would not protect me. (another repeating dream I had as a kid that has stuck with me all these years in my memory) Now I can see what that dream was telling me.
As I have worked through the “meaning” of these dreams I no longer have them…maybe this is your way of working through the final realization of what was done to you and why you allowed some of it.
thanks onestep I’m glad. I had this dream last night and I don’t know what to make of it. I dreamt that I was with my whole dysfunctional family at the home where I grew up and my parents were still married. Us kids were all grown and neighborlady DK was with me at their home-like vacation together. I was out working during the day and she was at the house. I came home from work and didn’t see her with anyone else so I asked my brother-“Where’s DK?” and he said she was upstairs by herself. She was in bed in the room that my sister and I shared as child and later became my crazy sister’s room. I opened up the door and DK was in bed and she was crying-really crying and I had never seen her do that before. I knelt down next to the bed and got her attention and asked her what was wrong. She was beside herself and was trying to grab hold of me. I climbed into bed with her and pulled her up onto me and was hugging her really tight and I was trying to get her to tell me what was wrong. She wasn’t making any sense when she was trying to tell me. Suddenly I looked down and she was wearing a diaper and I was like WTF? I was trying to get her to make sense and she kept crying and I kept holding onto her and suddenly my N father bursts into the room and starts freaking out, yelling at me, telling that I can’t be with her in there. He started trying to pull her away from me and she was grabbing tighter to me and I was holding onto her tighter and then we were both crying and my dad was trying to pull me out the bed. This went on for a few minutes with both of us crying, and their was yelling and he managed to pull me out the bed and pull me out the door of the room. She was left in the bed alone crying and yelling my name and I was yelling for her and I couldn’t get back to her and suddenly I woke up. I woke up crying really hard-and I couldn’t stop crying. I cried for like an hour and I was worried about waking her up next door. I tried to stifle it cuz it was loud and I got up and went into the bathroom and I had started my cycle-early again.
After I calmed down I went back to bed and didn’t wake up til after 9:30. I am bothered by this dream and I don’t remember having a dream about her before. I don’t know why it happened. I just feel physically like crap today and emotionally tired. I don’t how I will be able to do the workout that I had planned today. I am usually bad off on the day I start my cycle.
It is hard not to take this personally, the things that happened.
I know that he has done these kinds of things to others in the past and will continue to do so. So there is nothing special about me. I was a source of supply to him–a conquest–one in a long line of many.
Somehow, none of that eases the feelings of anger I struggle with. And that anger keeps me stuck, and yes, somehow connected to him in a negative sort of way.
In my head, I understand all the reasons why I need to change this thinking. I ‘get’ it. And I have been trying to replace my negative thoughts with positive ones. But the anger remains. As well as a perverse need to get back at him.
I know, I know the response I will get to that statement…all very predictable. But I’m expressing a feeling here. We all know how ill-advised it is to get back at someone like this. That doesn’t alter the desire to do so, to have them experience even an iota of the suffering they have inflicted.
I continue to work back through The Betrayal Bond and to seek counsel from wise and kind friends. And to blog here when time allows.
There is some progress: I cry less and don’t miss him, which really used to make me angry…missing someone who brought such devastation to my life! WTF?!
Yeah, Ox. The night before last, I dreamed I was a counter person, somewhere, and this guy came in and he said he needed some nail-clippers; that he had a jagged finger nail that was driving him nuts.
Well, I looked all over behind the counter and on the shelves benieth it, and I found two nail clippers, but neither of them worked. I looked at my own nails and told him that I didn’t need to use nail clippers anymore, and hadn’t since I was about 23. At this point he told me that he knew where a pair was that he could use, and I said, “okay, good.”
A second dream that night: I let spath back into my life. He took off to visit his Sis and BIL, and I was out somewhere, but when I returned home, (to my little cabin/cottage) I went upstairs (no upstairs in it) to my bed room and found that he had taken apart my bed, laid the foot and headboard against the wall, laid out the box-spring and mattress seperately and had made them up like two beds and covered them with old military issue wool blankets.
At this point, I was furious, and headed on down the road to find him, but then I stopped and said, “oh HELL, NO!! I went home and put my bed back together and was determined to tell him to leave. I then celebrated with some friends, telling them to high five me, because this time it only took me 6 hours to figure it out. LOL
So, I think the first dream speaks to the fact that I bit my fingernails til I was 23, (the same year I left my home state and moved to California….away from my parents.
I think it speaks of an instinctive need to protect oneself, as in claws, and the learned need not to…to always be nice and never lash out.
I, now have a beautiful set of my own nail, and feel no need to clip them.
Second dream is more obvious, but it’s interesting that there is a theme between this dream and the first on I recounted….that of comfort zones and boundrys, someone else coming in and dimantling…yep. For sure.
Pinky is suffering from ear-mites. He has a gash torn behind his ear and is frantically scratching, and shaking his head. I have some medicine for him and will treat it when I get home this afternoon. HE HATES IT, and I think it hurts him a little, or at least makes the problem FEEL worse, at least at first.
I feel bad that he’ll have to deal with it all day because I didn’t have the time to treat him this AM. It’s hard to be good pet mom, especially when you have to do something your pet finds unpleasant. I need a pep talk from Nurse Oxy. 🙂
I have an interview tomorrow with the owner of the convenience store near my house, tomorrow. The job is only a couple of days a week, but it’s a foot in the door, and I will be able to work it at the same time that I finish out the school year with the toddlers. Older daughter agreed to take them on Weds afternoons for the next three weeks. I will work Weds and Sun. afternoons. Well, it’s something.
Hope your duckies and the two little girls are doing well. And you, too, of course.
Nolarn, I think your dream is jsut reaffirming that you are just now beginning to deal with a lot of painful issues tthat you tried to repress and ignore.
Jung says that sometimes a figure in our dreams is really just a part of ourselves. I think that the neighbor lady in your dream is just that…the hurt and vulnerable part of yourself that was not allowed to grow and develope.
Dreams bring to consciousness that which was hidden from our view. This dream is telling you that you are becoming aware of some things that you weren’t aware of before, and in that sense it is a very good dream. I do think though, that it is urging you to do some grief work, because you were really crying wwhen you woke up. It augers a new beginning for you.
Dear Kim, CONGRATULATIONS on the job, even a part time one will get your foot in the door and convenience stores are always having a hard time getting good help, so great!
Yea, being a good pet mama is just as difficult as being a good baby mama. I hate to do things to animals or infants that are unpleasant or hurt and you can’t EXPLAIN WHY you are doing this.
The last time one of my oxen (old by that time) had his 3rd operation for cancer eye (no shots will numb it) when we led him into the chute at the vets, he literally WHINED in anticipation of having something horribly painful done to him. I didn’t know cattle could make that sound, but it sounded like a dog that knew it was going to get a beating….I had to leave I couldn’t stand there and see him hurt. Usually I have NO problem doing it but not to my 2,000 pound baby. When the cancer eye returned a couple of years later, the second time in the second eye, son D and I made the decision to put them both down. They were 16+ years old which is ancient for a steer, and both had arthritis as well…so we had them butchered. (No sense wasting the meat and they didn’t know what was going to happen so weren’t scared.) and we saved the skulls and after the meat was rotted off it, I saw that the cancer had spread into his jaw bone, so it WAS TIME and I’m glad I made the decision when I did. The other steer was healthy but they were so bonded that he would have grieved himself to death. When steers have worked together as a yoke of oxen for their entire lives they live and die together…I still miss the old boys though!
I generally don’t remember my dreams any more since I stopped having the “theme dreams” but occasionally I will have one about my husband visiting me. or some other one that I remember but is not unpleasant…or frustrating. Or “theme” driven so I am hoping I have worked out some of that.
Trimama,
Your feelings of wanting revenge are normal, and they will pass as you heal….and you are right it may be something you’;d like to do but is NOT ADVISABLE to actually do.
The anger is normal too, so just accept that it is part of the healing and grief process along with sadness and bargaining. YOu will work through the stages and roller coaster back and forth, again, very normal and I am glad to hear that you are experiencing and noticing these emotions–it sounds to me that you are experiencing these in a healthy and to-be-expected manner.
Our logical mind is one thing (we know we need to be away from him) but our emotional hook/thinking isn’t in tune with it yet, so give it time. If you can get some counseling that may help as well. See what is available in your new area.
Congratulations on escaping to a far away place from him. I think that was a very smart move! Good for you!!! Keep on reading and learning here as well.. There is a whole network of folks here that really do care about you and are here for your support. (((hugs))))
Thanks Kim, Oxy, DancingNancies, Darwinsmom, Aussiegirl.
It’s wonderful to be free of the spath and not be poisoned anymore. There are lingering issues in my life due to the aftermath of spath (hey that rhymes! I think I just coined a new phrase!) But at least there is hope now. whereas before the future seemed uncertain, I know now that it was certainly doomed. Now my future still seems uncertain, but much more real.
Nola, yes, I think your dream is one where the neighbour lady functions as a stand in for an emotional part of yourself, a very young self who feels helpless and needs you to cuddle her and love her. What this dream is trying to make you do is to make you cuddle and love yourself.
Sometimes it is very hard to love yourself, certainly if you are full of shame and feelings of guilt.
I’ll tell you how this once manifested in my waking life, and it will make you understand why I said that when you cried in your bedroom that the god you believe in was there to witness it, to hear you and be there for you.
When Inspiring Soul broke up with me he was the sole thing in my life that seemed right, he was the buoy to keep me from drowning (and I cannot blame him at all for cutting me loose at the time). I was starting to enter a sense-of-life-crisis before I met him, he lighted the path for me, and I thought he was meant to be with me throughout. After he cut me loose, there was nothing but a deep abyss for me to fall into. In a way he was the catalysator of my crisis then. When I came back home, two days later I requested a year of absence. I was hurting every day. Just breathing hurt. It was emotional hurt, but it was hurting like a black hole in my stomach from which it seemed I was gutted and bleeding to death like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs. This pain went on for months. Add to that the deadlock between my brain telling me to just forget about him, and my heart telling me that he did love me like I loved him. On top of that I was angry at life in general. It was cruel to give me a glimpse of someone so inspiring and then take it away again. Mentally, emotionally and physically I was in a state of holding a strike against life.
And one night, I just couldn’t anymore. I said out loud, “If I wake up one more time with this pain, then I’d rather want to be dead.” It was the first and only time I’ve ever contemplated suicide. I was in a pre-suicidal stage of my reaction-depression at the time. I panicked and whailing from grief I went to my bedroom and cried to the ceiling, “Help me! Please someone help me now!”
And then something happened. I fell in some type of trance, and in my mind’s eye a male person appeared in my bedroom. I had never seen him before. He looked a bit like a dandy, bit mischievous too. And he picked me up into his lap and cradled me like a toddler, all the while softly speaking to me, crooning as well as giving me an explanation of why it had happened, and why only now he was allowed to appear to me. He even told me how he himself was tied to me. At some point he even started to make love to me. What happened afterwards is what my best friend called kundalini. I never even had heard of the term before my friend mentioned it. But my whole back column was on fire, in a blissful way. For at least an hour that fire raged from my sternum to my skull and back down again. The feeling was like 10x that of an orgasm.
For 2 weeks I hardly slept, because I was burning with energy all the time. I had a crappy sleeping pattern before the event, but felt exhausted then. I didn’t feel exhausted at all after that kundalini rising event. And it would at time spontaneously reoccur. Even outdoors, the cleaning fire would go up and down. At the end of those 2 weeks my depression was over. But I was so lucid. I understood everything so well. And I knew I was gonna be alright and what I would be required to do for myself for the coming year.
Before this event, and certainly during my life-strike I did not love myself. I even deliberately held off my mom. I hurt her immensely in that period. She could see I was a wreck and I was getting in deeper and deeper, but I just shut her out. I was keeping out any source of deep love out of my life then. But the moment I cried out for help, I opened myself for the first time again since months for love. Some may consider the dandy guy (I know the name he goes by) that came to me that night as my guardian. Personally I don’t. I think of him as a manifestation of the part within me that did love me. I was just unable to love myself as myself at the time. It was nevertheless a deeply spiritual event.
I also know that once you give that self-love to yourself it is a danger to your ego. Self-love will transform the ego, and that is why I think the N father figure in your dream pulled you away. I think that your ego-level with its own fears an worldview of shame and guilt is afraid what will happen to it, if your higher self starts to love your most intimate self.
darwinsom-your post made me cry. You’ll have to forgive me cuz I’m on day one of my cycle and feeling bad and everything emotional feels so much more intense. I am upset by this dream. I am upset because I don’t want her in my dreams-it feels too intimate a place for her to be. I don’t want to cry over her and I don’t want her to know that I’m crying. It’s a good thing that I never got in a relationship with her cuz I think it would be too much for me. I just don’t want her to be so important in my life and I don’t understand why she is and I can’t get her out. I have never had this kind of issue with anyone before. It’s even different than how I felt with exspath in my life. I don’t understand why she’s so important and I sure don’t understand why I cried so hard for an hour because when I woke I felt like someone was taking me away from her and I left her crying and I’m really freaked out by it. I just wanna go to bed but I’m afraid I’ll dream about her again.