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.
candy:
You poor thing! Your uncle was a trickster!! This talk of us living on farms with electric fences is bringing back so many childhood memories to me…awwww.
The hot wire on the farm is a favorite trick to perpetrate against the trusting. Boys do it to their friends, esp the pee on the wire trick. Boys pee everywhere…
LL:
Corporate America is definitely spathy because the spaths make great leaders. I guess they need that personality to propel them to the top. Makes me sick. And good luck to you because doctors are seriously spathy! But you will be OK because you are aware of it now and will know how to deal with it.
I know I will get past it; I just wish it didn’t take so long. It’s been a year and a half since I first started seeing the spath so that part has been awhile, but I kept having contact when I shouldn’t have so it was pushing back my healing. So really I have only been away since the last text in March which is not a full three months yet. I was taking two steps forward and one step back. I still feel like that emotionally even though I am in NC. I will have good days and feel like I am making progress and then BOOM…I will regress again. I hate when that happens. I guess it’s normal, but it doesn’t help in this healing process.
Louise…
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh that makes more sense now. It’s true that contact prevents healing and that it doesn’t really start till there is a full reprieve. It sucks, huh? I understand how you feel. I’m so blessed and so thankful and SO GRATEFUL my spath is leaving me alone. I still have days where I ruminate, but I’m beginning to understand that when that is happening, something else is usually going on, another stressor in my life. Funny, stress, spath, well, you get the picture. 🙂
dealing with a lot of grieving over the loss and waste of time. That’s the hardest thing for me right now.
But the good thing is that I’m just so BOOOOOORED I can hardly stand it! I took winter term off, was denied aid for spring because of it, denied my appeal, so I did it all over again. I wasn’t ready to go back when I wrote the first appeal, still such a mess with the PTSD. It really is time that helps get you past all of this mess. The boredom is a good sign now. It means I’m getting ready to progress to doing the things I was doing before the break up/NC happened.
You will get there. It just takes time. If you get the opportunity to have the time to heal, it makes the process, in the end, so much more worthwhile. I’m learning to appreciate things that I did before, like school, to where I could not initially with NC. I’m looking forward to going back.
Everything you’re experiencing seems common to me as far as what one experiences during the healing process.
I’m confused though. How long were you with your spath?
LL
Candy
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LL
O.K.this was my experience with “the Institute” I shared with them how a PasTOR hooked up with my spath ….and their last line was “maybe you could get some help through a church” Hello? Did you even read that is what got me here???? So if you keep reading you will see my response. I loved her books but found her to be completely a dead-end for anything else. Hopefully others have received help that I did not. She made it sound like I was suicidal or contemplated killing someone!! I only expressed the night sweats, difficulty to work, crying etc…… alot of what others have also experienced here as well. Anyways read if your interested….. I had filled out the assessment and was willing to pay the $100’s of dollars for a “retreat”.
Hi Bella:
I apologize for not getting back with you sooner.( it took for contacts over several weeks) I have reviewed your assessment and your email. My concern is the serious symptoms that you seem to be dealing with as a result of your situation. Because our services are by phone we have to be very careful regarding your care.
I am recommending that you meet with a local counselor to help manage the anxiety and depression that you have mentioned. It might be helpful to meet with someone and develop some effective coping skills. The work of the Institute is learning based…not clinical in nature and therefore if symptoms appear to strong we must recommend that you address those first.
I know that understanding pathology is very important in the healing process but it is just one piece in the process. Please take some time to seek help from your local shelter…ask specifically for individual counseling. You may also be able to find affordable counseling through your local community mental health center or through a church.
Peace to you,
My RESPONSE:
Dear Sandra, I am forwarding to you the response I received from your assessment team. I am very disheartened, as I thought you were here to help people from the effects of a Psycopath. I was honest on my assessment….because I thought you understood the very real and serious physical and psycological aftermath from a Psycopath. I realize that I have many symptoms of PTSD….which seems to be common. Which I understand I may need to get professional help for here. HOWEVER, I made it clear to _____ that I have been in counseling with Safe Haven, SINCE APRIL, which is the Women’s Shelter here. ( actually becoming a friend of the Director) but she admits to not fully comprehending the ruthlessness of the Psycopath,and I am educating her…..I have also been to a counselor specifically for coping skills, again however, they want to just “overlook” the fact that you were with a Psycopath and begin as though it never happened! I also made it clear to her that my psycopathic husband used a female Pastor to “snowball” my family and friends into believing him, and turning from me. When I said I was “desperate” it is because so many here, where I live do not understand the sociopath/psycopath dynamics. It is MORE than abuse. He has turned every living person against me, except for my siblings (who live in another state) to totally isolate me. He lives in Ohio and just this past weekend I saw him on my street, at the neighbors, convincing them about me some more. That is a 10 hour drive for him to do RT! So, I am very unhappy with your assessment team. I was more than willing to pay for the phone counseling, or at the very least to become a part of a support group that understands these dynamics and destruction…… and had it been assessed that I needed a one-on-one or a retreat I would have saved up for it!….but, I guess ______ feels I am too far gone for that. I must add I wrote her 4 times before I got a response, hence her first line in every email is “sorry I did not get back with you sooner” and then the response was “we can’t help you”……not even contact us in 6 mos. or get help for PTSD then contact us,…….. nothing!????? And then seek help through a church? I wanted help from those that supposedly were the professionals on this subject.
If this is not for those that have serious results from a very skilled, very methodical Psycopath ….than I do not understand your purpose?
I was here to learn and grow and get SUPPORT from the PROFESSIONALS, but maybe, according to _____ a Pastor in some little church will actually be more equipped, and want to help.
Thank you.
Bella
_______________________________________________
SOOOOOOO I have taken the steps I can take alone. OxDover I contacted the YWCA today. I have read, and own all the books. Thank you, and KatyDid, hang in there. In the midst of all of this I found Lil’ Wayne music and “junk” on my son’s Ipod today and get to deal with that. My fairytale of a Godly home with a Father figure never materialized. The walls were blowing in for 28 years and I tried with all my might to hold them up, but then I just gave up and through in the towel….not able to fight the tornado anymore, and now It wasn’t the storm or the men that brought the storm to our family that are to blame…..it was MY FAULT (supposedly) to let it all fall in when I got to tired and abused to care anymore. I hear everyday from the first husband “you divorced me”…..never a word as to the abuse, porn, abandonment, financial devastation and lies he brought, and how I hung in there for 28 years before he broke me.
Yep OxDover I have ALWAYS put others needs before my own. ….thanks, and hope I don’t step on any toes about the Institute. THIS WAS MY EXPERIENCE ONLY., AND THEIR BOOKS DID HELP.
–
LL:
Yeah, so when I said it was over a year, I mean from the very beginning. Actually, he started contacting me in December 2009, but then our work closes down for the Christmas holiday and when we came back on January 4, 2010, he started in with a vengeance on our very first day back!!! I couldn’t believe it. See…he was making me BELIEVE that he really liked me by doing things like that. So anyway, we started talking in December and by March 7, it was all over. Like I said, short time, but it doesn’t mean the damage wasn’t done. Then beginning in March is when the OW started all her lies and manipulation with me while she was still chasing him. So it has been 19 months since I first started having contact with him. Then I left my job in August, but still had contact with him off and on until this March 2011, but no sex. So the last text I got from him was March 26 so it is almost three months now. He probably is wondering what happened to me, but I truly don’t care. I need this to heal. He doesn’t care so I am not either. I have given up.
One thing you said though that kind of scares me is when you thought it was a year with NC and I was still grieving and that maybe that was a bit too long. I guess I am scared because what if I do get to a year and I still feel this way? I know I shouldn’t think about things that way. I just know last year when I hadn’t heard from him in four whole months, I thought I was going to die. But I know what he is all about now and her, too. I didn’t know what either one was up to at that time.
I find I do the same thing…ruminate more when there are other stressors in my life. Interesting. Those other stressors bring everything flooding back. I hate the way that works! Hahaha.
LL do you ever go back and read our posts from 6 months ago? Wow! were we bonkers or what? I think sometimes we do not recognise how far we’ve come.
I know the people on here have helped me more than they will ever know.
Thank you LF for giving us Empaths a VOICE.
candy:
This place really does help…I know it has helped me!!
Candy,
ME TOO! I’m afraid to look at my past posts. UGH! I was such a huge, overwhelming MESS! Perhaps further down the road in my healing process I”ll be able to stomach it enough to read it again LOL
LL