Last week I posted two articles related to the Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia. Between 2001 and 2005, as many as a dozen teenage girls may have suffered sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse from a church youth director. This year, the youth director was long gone, but church leaders felt that the wounds had not be properly addressed and healed. So a few months ago, the pastor and church issued a public apology.
Lawyers for the church’s insurance company warned the church not to accept responsibility for the failings of the youth director. Doing so, the insurance company said, would jeopardize the church’s coverage in case a lawsuit was filed.
The Vienna Presbyterian Church ignored the demands of its insurance company. On March 27, Pastor Peter James preached a sermon that acknowledged the church’s failings.
“Let me speak for a moment to our survivors,” he said. “We, as church leaders, were part of the harm in failing to extend the compassion and mercy that you needed. Some of you felt uncared for, neglected and even blamed in this church. I am truly sorry ”¦ I regret the harm this neglect has caused you.”
Guess what—so far, none of the young women has filed a lawsuit.
Why not? The case would be a slam-dunk. The youth director pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The church accepted responsibility. Several of the now young women have trouble in relationships, because they are still seeking the fantasy that the youth director promised. If they filed suit, they’d win.
My guess is that the women don’t want money. They want to be heard. They want to be validated. And they want to be healed.
Invisible damage
The problem with sociopathic entanglements is that so much of the damage is invisible. Even in cases where we lose money, jobs, homes, and are subject to physical violence, the big wounds are not readily apparent. Before all those obvious injuries occurred, the sociopaths softened us up with emotional manipulation, psychological control and spiritual abuse. These internal wounds not only eat at us, but they make it difficult for us to respond to, and recover from, the obvious physical damage.
After the sociopath, we need to purge our emotional and mental pain. We need internal stability. But when we reach out for help on this level, many of the people around us simply don’t get it.
They don’t understand why we need to talk so much about what happened. They don’t understand how, when we suspected that we were being used, we allowed it to continue. They don’t understand why we are still confused in our thoughts and emotions about the sociopath.
Get over it, they tell us.
These are the people, of course, who are lucky enough to have avoided a direct assault from a sociopath in their own lives. We often understand why they don’t really understand what happened—after all, we were once as clueless as they are. Still, their ignorance of the depth of our pain seems to increase our pain. We feel like we are not being heard, and our suffering is being invalidated.
Debriefing
Karin Huffer, in her book, the Legal Abuse Syndrome, describes this situation in detail in her chapter on “Debriefing.”
Debriefing, she says, is the first step in recovery. In the debriefing process, we tell someone exactly what happened to us, in all the painful detail. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find what Huffer describes as “quality listeners.” These are people who have the ability to hear what we have to say, overriding their own protective filters. She writes:
Protective filters are always at work. If an individual begins to share with another and the data threatens the listener’s feelings of safety, they may try to divert the data or simply not hear it at all ”¦
The function of this protective filter is to maintain the equilibrium of the listener. Victims’ stories shake the foundations that we lean upon in order to feel safe. When it is impossible for friends or family to hear, due to their protective psychological filters shielding them from vicarious pain, the victim feels rejected and alone.
Huffer goes on to describe a formal debriefing process. It’s best done with a quality listener or support group, but an individual can do it alone if necessary.
Support at Lovefraud
I believe that we have many, many quality listeners on Lovefraud. I am always amazed at the thoughtful, comforting and patient comments posted in response to readers who are spilling their traumatized guts.
The reason Lovefraud readers can do this, of course, is because we’ve all been there. We know what it’s like to be deceived, betrayed and assaulted. We know what it’s like to sit amidst the wreckage of what was once our lives. We’re all on the path to recovery, and those of us who are further along help those of us who are just beginning.
Healing, in the end, is an individual journey. To fully recover, we must consciously excavate and examine our pain, and find a way to let it go. But the process is helped immensely when we are heard and validated. I am so glad that Lovefraud offers this to so many people.
Louise,
There is nothing wrong with making a profit from your experiences. I personally don’t see an issue with it. Donna’s written a book, another poster who use to post here, actually a couple, have written books on the subject. ALL make invaluable contributions to understanding spaths.
Next, try not to pull out the yard stick and compare yourself to others here whose situations might seem more “severe” than your own. It doesn’t matter how long you were in the relationshit or under what circumstances, NO ONE GETS OUT OF A RELATIONSHIT WITH A SPATH WITHOUT HAVING DAMAGE!
It’s different for everyone as to how long it takes to heal and what was lost, but the bottom line is still the same.
Validating your experience is very much a necessity in helping you heal. because you perceive your experience as not as severe as others here, is a mistake, chica, because your circumstances having been with a spath are no less painful than anyone else who has been slimed.
Manipulation, lies, control, …this is psychological abuse. It can be more damaging than straight out physical abuse. You were targeted by spaths and that’s reason enough to feel validated with the damage you feel you have. It takes awhile to get back on your feet again, but you’ll make it.
Your situation is damaging because it occurred in an office environment. But overall, even though spaths are pretty much anywhere, I think the chances that you’d run into something similar again, with all you now know, is probably close to nil. But again, it will take some time for you to regain some of what you’ve lost emotionally, before you get into the swing of things again to where these spaths will have been nothing more than lessons you’ve learned, acquired and take with you for the next round of life 🙂
Hang in there!
LL
Ox
There are many that are not licensed yet claim to be professionals about spaths. I often wonder if maybe the victims of spaths are not more professional than the professionals LOL!
i’ve done a bit of investigating as well of all involved. Not everyone has a pretty picture in any of it.
I think Sam also claims to have a PhD when he doesn’t have one.
Even so, it doesn’t make the information less valuable or less accurate.
I agree with you about professionals services, however. I think they are best had from a local source. Some seen face to face. DV groups are awesome too, having been apart of that. THe women in my group have ALL been spathed. They all knew what personality disorders are/were and it was tremendously helpful to hear their stories.
I have friends i can openly talk to about my experience as well as have been most invaluable in deprogramming my spath experience. I’m so much better than just a couple of months ago.
That’s what LF is for. Sharing of and validating others experiences as well as our own, even with the disagreements that happen on occasion.
LL
LL:
I understand there is nothing wrong with making a profit from what these people do. I just wouldn’t want to be exploited. Hey, we all gotta make money, right? 🙂
Thank you for your words of encouragement. I needed that. I agree that it would be a very slim chance I would run into this again in an office environment and if I did, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. But it goes beyond that. I shiver just thinking about even going back into that environment and not because I think I am going to be taken again. I don’t really know why. I guess it’s just the memories and all that goes along with the corporate environment because not only was all that going on, my job itself was really stressful; very demanding and always the push to perform and not make a mistake. So even removing the spath equation makes it hard for me to think about going back to something like that again. I know I will get better eventually, but I wish it would go away NOW. It has been over a year…I am so tired of dealing with it in my head.
Thanks again for your support.
Dear LL,
Yes, I agree with you, you are a BUNCH better than you were a couple of months ago….and your posts are “starting to sound sane” LOL
Sam V’s “PhD” is an on-line, send in your money and get your “certificate”—he is a total fake—and yes, some of the things he has supposedly “written” (I’m not sure how much he has actually written and how much he has taken from other’s writings) is valid, but there are parts of it that I think are pure BULL HOCKEY.
While I do agree that many victims of psychopaths have some insights that some degreed professionals don’t have, there are still some insights that having an education give one that just being a victim doesn’t. Sometimes we are “too close to the trees to see the forest” and vice versa.
Dr. Leedom is a psychiatrist and a good one I think, and yet, she was BLIND to what Barry (her x husband) was doing to her….I was also BLIND to what was going on and I HAD ENOUGH PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION THAT I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN….but it takes a mixture of knowledge and willingness to SEE in order to be able to realize what is going on. ANYONE can be “had” at least once….and unless we LEARN FROM the experience we can be HAD AGAIN AND AGAIN.
I remember an interesting thing once with a horse reaching over an electric wire fence that he did not know was there to get a drink of water out of a large barrel. Sure enough he got too close to the wire and touched it and got BADLY SHOCKED….but he did not know what “bit him” and he sort of “stampeeded” in all directions at once, up and down, left and right, back and forth. He did NOT learn anything from that experience because he never really realized what “bit him”—my old horse (now gone to that great barn in the sky) KNEW what an electric fence was and she would not come NEAR anything that looked like an electric fence. She had gotten “bitten” and LEARNED FROM IT….so we must LEARN from what “bit us” and figure out what it “looks like” so that in the event we come into close proximity with another one we can RECOGNIZE it for what it is and AVOID another “shock.”
Oxy:
Oh, so true!! We have to LEARN. I see so many making the same mistakes over and over. Sorry, I may seem arrogant, but you will not see me ever do that again. I have LEARNED.
I love your story about your horse. I grew up on a farm where we also had an electric fence for the cattle and I got shocked once that I can remember as a little girl, but never again.
Louise,
LOL! I think corporate america these days in general is rather spathy, wouldn’t you say? I completely understand your fear. Once I finish my degree its off to Administrative Office medical stuff. Oh joy. LOL! I’m actually excited to get back to school, providing I’m approved on appeal, but it’s the job market that freaks me out more than school. I’m very good at the particular area that I’ve chosen to pursue, but it’s the docs in my field that I’ll have to deal with that can be rather spathy! I’m working on that in therapy now, trying to overcome FEAR of meeting spaths elsewhere and my radar is pretty damned good now, having tested it out, BUT, what if I DO run into another spath within the realms of my employment setting? The thought makes me cringe. I could see all kinds of PTSD popping up. I have to learn to deal with that possibility because they ARE out there and even if they AREN”T full blown spaths, they could likely be of another sort of PD. UGH! But it’s reality! I’m far enough into my recovery now that I feel ready to strategize. I hate authority!!! LOL! It’s my biggest challenge for sure.
You WILL get past all of this, it just takes time. A year is awhile for sure, I’m only six months out right now, but who knows what I will be dealing with in another six months. this is such a process and so up and down, but i finally feel a little more stable than I was and that’s the good news.
You’ll get there. It does take a long time!
LL
Love your horse story Ox. Poor horsey. Yep, we have to learn.
Louise – I grew up on a farm too and we had electric fences. My uncle (wearing wellies) would touch the fence. I was amazed he did not get a shock. So he told me to come and hold his hand as ‘it didn’t hurt’. Well gullible old me held his hand and ZAP I got a shock. Took me a while to ‘learn the lesson’ but I got there eventually!
Ox,
I know Sam’s degree is “fake” LOL…And of course he exploits to make money. I think in any book one reads there is going to be a bit of bias given whoever is writing it, but it doesn’t make it less valuable or less true for me, in having dealt with spath.
As far as victims go, I think their experiences are those that professionals ought to seek out. They can tell more about a spath experience than an professional who studies it in grad school. BY the way, there isn’t a lot of studying about PD’s in grad school either, after having looked up a few Universities around here. Maybe that’s why even professionals get hooked too. I think there’s LOTS of spaths in psychiatry and as with anything else, one has to be very cautious in applying a certain altruism into one profession. I think a lot of helping professions are breeding grounds for a variety of PD’s as well as there are those in helping professions who are VICTIMIZED by pd’s. What a mess!
I think there are only a few in this profession that don’t have a name with a degree of tarnish attached to it. You can look up ANYONE on the internet and dig up dirt about them through a little “investigation”. It’s also a little gossipy. I hate that kind of stuff. It’s a lot of drama and after having studied up on and reading a lot about psychology in general, I don’t have the stomach for it.
I think I’ll just stick to having learned what I’ve learned, study a bit more about it on the side, and keep moving with my simple degree in a relatively simple job.
The less drama the BETTER!
LL
((((((((candy girl! )))))))))))))))
have you heard anything yet? I’ve been thinking about you waiting to hear what your results are! Thinking positive thoughts for you!
LL
LL Hi. Thanks for asking. I put the result on another thread a little while ago.
N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E