A relationship with a sociopath is a traumatic experience. The definition of physical trauma is a serious injury or shock to the body, as with a car accident or major surgery. It requires healing.
On an emotional level, a trauma is wound or shock that causes lasting damage to the psychological development of a person. It also requires healing.
To some degree, we can depend on our natural ability to heal. But just as an untreated broken bone can mend crooked, our emotional systems may become “stuck” in an intermediate stage of healing. For example we may get stuck in anger, bitterness, or even earlier stages of healing, such as fear and confusion.
This article is about my personal ideas about the healing path for full recovery from the emotional trauma caused by a relationship with a sociopath. I am not a therapist, although I have training in some processes and theories of personal and organizational development. My ideas are also the result of years of research into personality disorders, creative and learning processes, family dynamics, childhood development, recovery from addictions and trauma, and neurological research.
After my five-year relationship with a man I now believe to be a sociopath, I was physically and emotionally broken down. I was also terrified about my condition for several reasons. In my mid-fifties, I was already seeing evidence of several age-related diseases. But more worrisome than the premature aging was my social incapacitation. I was unable to talk about myself without crying, unable to do the consultative work I lived on, desperately in need of comfort and reassurance, unable to trust my own instincts.
I had been in long-term relationships almost my entire life. My instinct was to find another one to help me rebuild myself. But I knew that there was no safe “relationship of equals” for me now. I was too messed up. No one would take on someone as physically debilitated and emotionally damaged as I was, without expecting to be paid for it. Likewise, I was afraid of my inclination to bond sexually. The only type of person I could imagine attracting was another predator who would “help” me while draining whatever was left of my material and financial resources.
My challenge
So, for the first time in my life, I made a decision to be alone. Knowing that the relationship with the sociopath had involved forces in my personality that were out of my control, I also decided that my best approach to this recovery was to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it. At the time, I did not understand my role in fostering this relationship, except that I couldn’t get out of it. But I knew that what happened to me with the sociopath wasn’t just about him. It was also about me.
I also made a decision to manage my own recovery. I made this decision for several reasons. One was that no one else really understood the mechanics of this relationship. My friends offered emotional support, but they were as confused as I was about his hold on me and why I could not extricate myself. Second, I found no meaningful assistance from therapists who seemed unable to grasp that this was a traumatic relationship. Third, everyone I knew wanted me to get over it and get on with my life, which was simply impossible to do.
So I was not only alone, but proceeding on a path that no one else supported. I’m not sure where I found the certainty that it was the right thing to do. But I was certain, and I held onto that certainty through the years it took. Today, when I’m essentially at the end of the process, except for the ongoing work on myself that has little to do with the sociopath anymore, I look back at it as the greatest gift I ever gave myself. It was the hardest thing I ever did. And in its own weird way, the most fun.
Here is where I started. I knew that I wanted to discover and neutralize the causes of my vulnerability. I knew that my vulnerabilities pre-dated the sociopath, although he had exploited them and made them worse. I felt like my battered state and particularly the sharp emotional pain gave me something to work with that was clear and concrete, and possibly the emergence from my subconscious of a lot buried garbage that had been affecting my entire life. Ultimately, I did engage a therapist to assist me in uncovering some childhood memories, and then went back to my own work alone.
My personal goal may have been more ambitious than others who come to this site. I not only wanted to heal myself from the damage of this relationship. I intended to accomplish a deep character transformation that would change the way I lived. Before I met him I was superficially successful, but I was also an over-committed workaholic with a history of relationship disasters. Except for a lot of unpublished poetry and half-written books, I had made no progress on lifelong desire to live as a creative writer. I wanted to come out of this as a strong, independent person who could visualize major goals and manage my resources to achieve them.
Because I had no model for what I was trying to do, I did things that felt very risky at the time. For example, I consciously allowed myself to become bitter, an emotion I never allowed myself to feel before, because I was afraid of getting stuck there. I’ll talk about some of these risks in future pieces — what I did and how it came out. I learned techniques that I hear other people talking about here on Lovefraud, things that really helped to process the pain and loss. Some of them I adapted from reading about other subjects. Some of them I just stumbled upon, and later learned about them from books, after I’d begun practicing them.
Though not all of us may think about our recovery as deep transformation work, I think all of us recognize that our beliefs, our life strategies and our emotional capacities have been profoundly challenged. We are people who are characteristically strong and caring. Personal characteristics that seemed “good” to us brought us loss and pain. After the relationship, our challenge is to make sense of ourselves and our world again, when what we learned goes against everything we believed in.
What I write here is not a model for going through this recovery alone. I say I did this alone, but I recruited a therapist when I needed help. I encourage anyone who is recovering from one of these relationships to find a therapist who understands the trauma of abusive relationships, and that recommendation is doubled if, like me, you have other PSTD issues.
The healing path
Given all that, this article is the first of a series about the process of healing fully. I believe that Lovefraud readers who are far down their own recovery paths will recognize the stages. Those who are just recently out of their relationships may not be able to relate to the later stages. But from my experience, my observations of other people’s recovery, and from reading the personal writings on Lovefraud, I think that all of our recovery experiences have similarities.
Since my own intention in healing was to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, this recovery path is about self-healing, rather than doing anything to or about the sociopath. However there is a stage when we do want that. We want to understand who we were dealing with. We may want recognition of our victimization, revenge or just fair resolution. There is nothing wrong with feeling that way. It is a stage of recovery, and an important one.
My ideas owe a lot to the Kubler-Ross grief model, as well as to recovery processes related to childhood trauma, codependency and addiction. I also owe a great deal to the writing of Stephen M. Johnson, whose Humanizing the Narcissistic Affect and Characterological Transformation: the Hard Work Miracle provided invaluable insights and encouragement.
Here is the path as I see it.
1. Painful shock
2. Negotiation with pain
3. Recognition with the sociopath
4. Anger
5. Measurement of damage
6. Surrender to reality of damage
7. Review of identity after damage
8. Rebuilding life strategies
9. Practice
The words here are very dry, and I apologize for that. The experience, as we all know, is more emotional than intellectual, though it taxes our thinking heavily.
From what I’ve experienced and seen, some of these stages may occur simultaneously. We may feel like we’re in all of them, but working particularly in one stage more than the others. In my case, I often found that I was “going around and around the same mountain,” returning to a previous stage but at a higher level than before.
There is no specific mention of depression in this list. This is because I regard it as a kind of brown-out of our emotional system, when we are simply too overwhelmed by facts and feelings that conflict with our beliefs and identities. Depression can happen at any time in this path, but feelings of depression are most likely to occur in Stage 6. Terrible as depression may feel, I believe it is evidence of a deep learning process, where our conscious minds are resisting new awareness that is developing at a deeper level.
This path is a model of adult learning. It would be equally valid in facing and surmounting any major life change. If you are familiar with the Kubler-Ross grief model which was developed to describe the challenges involved with bereavement, this model will look familiar. It is essentially an extension of Kubler-Ross into a post-traumatic learning model. The trauma may be the loss of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss or change, or any of the major stressors of life.
This is all about learning and evolving. If the path is traveled to its end, we emerge changed but improved and empowered. We have given up something to gain something more. The fact that this change is triggered by trauma may cause us to think that it’s a bad thing for a while, but ultimately we come to realize that we have not only recovered from a painful blow, we have truly become more than we were before.
What drives us to heal
The future articles in this series will explore the stages, their value to us and how we “graduate” from one to the next.
Our struggle to get over this experience involves facing our pain, which is the flip side of our intuitive knowledge of we need and want in our lives. Those needs draw us through the recovery process, like beacons on a far shore guide a ship on a stormy sea. To the extent that we can bring these needs up into conscious awareness, we can move through the path more directly, because it programs our thinking to recognize what helps and what does not.
Here are a few ideas about where we think we’re going. I hope they will stimulate some discussion here, and that you will add your own objectives to the list.
1. To relieve the pain
2. To release our unhealthy attachment to the sociopath
3. To recover our ability to love and trust
4. To recover confidence that we can take care of ourselves
5. To recover joy and creativity in our lives
6. To gain perspective about what happened
7. To recover the capacity to imagine our own futures
Finally, I want to say again how grateful I am to be writing here on Lovefraud. As you all know, it is not easy to find anyone who understands our experience or what it takes to get over it.
I have been working on a book about this recovery path for several years. The ideas I’m presenting here have been developed in solitude, and “tested” to a certain extent in coaching other victims of sociopathic relationships who entered my life while I was working on my own recovery. But I’ve never had the opportunity before to share them with a group of people who really know and understand what I am talking about.
I respect every stage of the recovery path — the attitudes and voices of those stages, their perspectives and the value they provide to us. So if you find me more philosophic, idealistic or intellectual than you feel right now, believe me that I have been through every bit of it. If you had met at different places on the path, you would have found a stunned, weepy, embittered, distraught, outraged or depressed person. I was in the angry phase for a very long time. I had reason to feel that way, and it was the right way for me to be at the time.
I believe the stages are a developmental process that builds, one stage to the next, to make us whole. I also believe that this healing process is natural to us, and what I’m doing here is describing something that has been described by many people before me, but not necessarily in this context.
Your thoughts and feedback are very important to me.
Namaste. The healing wisdom in me salutes the healing wisdom in you.
Kathy
Thank you so very much for this article! Most of my friends really DO NOT understand why I am having such a difficult time “letting go” and “moving on”. To some extent it has been a mystery to me as well. There have been times I would’ve rather been physically abused then to go through this mental anguish. We were together 10 years and he walked right into another woman’s life almost immediately. I never realized that he was a sociopath until all this happened and I started researching. He matches ALL the criteria. I don’t know why I couldn’t end it before this. I am currently in therapy using the Love is a Choice workbook, making a vow not to EVER have this happen to me again. I look forward to your next article as I am still very much grieving.
Elizabeth,
Glad to see your back! I read your writing constantly.
And…you know you love the fantastic company here on LF as much as I do, doncha?….haha.
Bigdude,
I had to think about what you wrote. And I’ve been indirectly responding to it in other posts, without really saying what I wanted to say. I think I’m going to just say it.
With all due respect, I don’t see how you can forgive first, and then process your losses. Who are you blaming? Yourself? God? In my mind, a crucial part of the recovery process is the angry phase, and anger has to be targeted.
I know I blamed myself a lot for what happened to me. But it was secondary. It was the sociopath’s character that created need for me to deal with so much loss, and the fact that he targeted me. The only possible other person to blame was the mother who abandoned him as an infant or the society that created the environment in which she did that.
I’ve had my own experiments with forgiveness. In my late teens, I forgave my father for incesting me. I had two objectives. One was to help me pretend to be someone to whom nothing bad had ever happened, so I would be “attractive” in a social sense. The other was to preserve my access to my family, because my father had blamed me and my mother believed him. “Getting over it” was the only way I was ever going to be able to connect with my parents again, and that was important to me.
Later, I realized that it was premature to forgive anyone if I was still suffering pain because of their behavior. Not forgiving didn’t mean that I felt compelled to get in anyone’s face. Though it did result in my telling both my parents when I was 40 that I was no longer going to take the rap for this, because I was a child and he was my father. And if that meant that I lost my parents because I wouldn’t collaborate with this lie, so be it.
When I went through my recovery process from the relationship with the sociopath, my intention was that eventually the pain would resolve and I would move on. But before that happened, I had some work to do. And one of the first parts was assigning blame for this mess, and looking at what could have been different, if we had both been acting more like functional human beings.
That sounds like a pretty rational statement, but that calm affect comes after a lengthy encounter with outrage, after my denial finally broke down. I didn’t stop being angry, because I got worn out or I got over it. At some level, I’m still angry and will always be, because it’s a reasonable response to being gaslighted and ripped off by someone who didn’t care about me. But eventually, I got less interested in giving him so much energy, and more interested in figuring what was left of me and my life, and whether I had the resources to go on.
Through all this, I was in pain. Serious, basically constant emotional pain. I tried to manage the overwhelming nature of it with some pills (anti-depressants, later nutritional supplements), but I held onto that pain until I felt like I had a real handle on its causes. I didn’t want it to go away, until I was confident that I understood what was going on with me, and with the situation.
Then I was done with it. At that point, I started looking for tools for “mop up.” I wasn’t finished with the process. I still had work to do on figuring out who I was now, and how I was going to conduct my life differently. But the direct linkage of my pain to his presence in my life was no longer particularly important. Feelings that kept him present in my mind were getting in the way, and I looked for tools to minimize or eliminate them.
That was when I explored forgiveness. Strictly as a tool for emotional clean-up and recovering more control over my life.
At different levels of my emotional life, I don’t care about him and I do. I don’t care about him, because he’s not relevant anymore to who I am. I remember why I fell in love with him, but it’s work to put myself in that woman’s shoes. I don’t want a relationship like that anymore. If he showed up in my life again, I can’t imagine how I’d deal with his posturing, his neediness and his calculation. But the thought of it makes me slightly nauseous, because I remember that I was once vulnerable to him, and the only possible response I can think of is to tell him to go away. (That’s the socially acceptable response. My preference would be to do a “Grand Torino” scene and stand on my porch with a gun and tell him to get the hell off my property.)
I do care about him, because he’s a damaged human being and I mourn the man he might have been. It’s a dream, but I believed in it for a long time. And I figure that poor stunted baby in his center can use a little love, even projected over great distance by someone who doesn’t want him around. I know all that sounds silly and sentimental, but what can I say? If I could wave a magic wand and fix him, I would. He’s a miserable human being and he spreads his misery like a contagion. I can’t fix him or get near him, but I feel for him.
And that dichotomy — caring and not caring — is the foundation of my forgiveness. I can afford to not care about him, because I can take care of myself now. I can afford to care about him, because I’m not letting him anywhere near me. And I can afford all of it, because I did the hard work of turning a personal disaster into a personal triumph.
I know that sounds unbelievably self-satisfied and grandiose, but I’m writing my own story here, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. It took a lot of work on myself to turn this disaster into a win.
It’s not that I didn’t want to forgive him at the beginning. I did, because it looked like a way to derail the pain. When I first started healing, I was looking for any means I could find to stop hurting. And I have a whole lifetime of taking the high road, and forgiving people because they couldn’t help it or they had bad parents or whatever.
In this case, I found that my emotional system simply wouldn’t go for it. I felt like I’d been left bleeding on the floor, while this guy drove away with his SUV and his BMW sportscar, his skis and scuba gear, his excellent wardrobe and his excellent sound system, and his new girlfriend — all of which were acquired with money from my bank account.
It was like something inside was asking “Well, is this enough yet? Are you finally going to give up being Goody Two Shoes and get mad for what he did to you?”
So I had to deal with that, before I even considered forgiving him.
I hope you can forgive me for this blunt attempt to suggest that you might have missed a step in your grief processing. Your processing is your business, and I’m meddling. But I wanted to say it.
However you are managing your recovery, I wish you well.
Kathy
DEar Meredith,
My story is long and complex and over the months (year+) I have been on here, but in a nutshell. I have a P son who is in prison, he strung me along for 20 years, but I finally saw he was a P, and unremorseful for the murder he did, so cut him off financially and disinherited him. Then he sent a ringer in to rent a small house I had, to infiltrate the family as a Trojan HOrse psychopath and hopefully kill me. My mother (I’m her only child) is a toxic enabler and though she knows all this she is in denial. The Trojan HOrse, had an affair with my other son’s cyber-bride Borderline Personality disorder, when he caught them, she and the BF tried to kill the son.
Sounds like a bad novel….huh? In the meantime, since we all lived in separate houses on the same farm and the TH was living in as my mother’s live in caregiver and sucking money off her, and stalking me, I sneaked away, bought a travel trailer and hid out for about 6 months until after the attempted murder the XDIL and her TH BF went to jail/prison.
Now mommie is sending my P son money again and arranging her estate to leave him a considerable chunk. I am NC with her, and so are my other 2 sons, though we still live on the same farm. It is bizzare yep and when I went to a new therapist for my PTSD he actually had me bring in court documents and a witness to tell him I was not a paranoid freak of some kind—THEY REALLY ARE ALL OUT TO KILL ME! LOL so Yes, I can definitely RELATE. I can laugh about it now but it IS serious business and for so many months I was in a fetal position sucking my thumb and mumbling incoheriently, but am much much MUCH better now. I’m a tough old bird and I firmly believe that God has been there for me when no one else was, but when God is all you have, God is all you need.
As for prison being “enough structure” to keep them harmless, NOT ON YOUR TIN TYPE!! IN a way, prison is the ultimate playground for the psychopath, there are just SO MANY RULES FOR THEM TO BREAK AND CHUCKLE ABOUT IT, and my P-son is a good example. In 19 years he got 19 big “hits” for rules violation including a smuggled in cell phone and a knife. He LOVES to break rules and get away with it, it is what he lives for. Even though he has been “busted” and put into solitary so many times, transferred to other prisons and put in maximum security for years at a time becuse of his rules infractions, he still keeps on doing them. It is what he lives for. The risk taking adrenaline rush of doing something forbidden. He is the perpetual rebellious teenager, frozen in time.
Kathleen H.
I cannot imagine anyone not wanting to heal! I simply cannot imagine it!
I mean look at this fabulous group of people! There are scientists, writers, teachers, medical doctors, lawyers, beautiful mothers doing the hardest job in the world, psychologists, social workers, tradesmen, artists, entrepreneurs, and others facing the demands of their calling and doing so with grace and skill. People like that are not going to allow an N/S/P to stomp out their great spirit and and destroy their chances for a meaningful and fulfilling life. I can’t imagine people like that not wanting to get back on track and go forward with renewed strength and courage.
Some books I found helpful…………….
—->anything written by Marsha Sinetar, Ph.D.
Google her name, also look her up on Amazon.
A quote from Marsha Sinetar……..
“To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business, for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it life will be valueless. “
Eye, I’m confused. Are you responding to my comment about BigDude’s post? There was nothing there about not healing, just sequencing of processes. I was suggesting that it makes sense to heal first, then forgive, not vice versa.
I love Marsha Sinetar too. In another incarnation, I was a partner in a New Age bookstore in the late 80s. I’ve still got a few of her books in my library. That’s a good reminder. Maybe I’ll pull one out and take another look.
We alll seem to be on this thread at the same time.
Kathy, my forgiveness didn’t diminish my justifiable anger, if that makes any sense, it just meant that I didn’t BROOD and RUMINATE in an angry, bitter and vengeful state of mind. If that makes any sense.
I had been told all my life that I had to FORGIVE (which meant pretend it didn’t happen) but that never felt right to me. How could I trust that person again and just pretend that none of this had happened? Of course this was my enabling mother’s view of forgiveness, for ME–she of course NEVER FORGOT any “wrongdoing on your part” LOL “Ye Ole double standard!”
I had to redefine what for ME forgiveness was, and I came up with the belief that I had to get the BITTERNESS out of my own heart. Didn’t mean I pretended it didn’t happen, or that I trusted them, or didn’t fear them, or wasn’t disgusted by them and teir behavior but I didn’t DWELL on it to my own detriment.
The next big hurdle for me was FORGIVING MYSELF for doing things I knew were not right, for allowing the years and decades of abuse after I was an adult, for sweeping the cat crap of my life under the rug instead of getting rid of the darned cat! I knew my life stunk, but I didn’t even admit to having a cat much less sweeping the crap under the rug. By the time I realized my rug wasn’t going to cover the pile, I had to admit I had a cat, which had had kittens in the meantime and I had a hundred cats there, I had to rid myself of the cats to get the crap out of my life. And I did.
(this is no slam against cat lovers, I have several and love them dearly)
The continual bashing of myself though, the not forgiving myself or being human and making mistakes and poor judgments was also stiffling my healing progress.
Now, I can accept myself, and value myself and realize I can make mistakes, bad judgments and errors, but I am still OK. I don’t hve to be perfect to be good enough, and I don’t deserve what has happened to me (I too was an incest survivor (beaten and raped by bio-father) ) and I have no reason to be ashamed of what was done TO me.
I am a competent, smart, gutsy lady with many accomplishments under my belt, and more to come. I am a kind and caring and compassionate person. In short, I am a worthwhile person. I deserve to be treated with RESPECT, especially by MYSELF.
I guess one of my biggest take home lessons was that I never treated myself with respect or insisted that others do so. (especially those close to me) I’m finding that the “why I did this” is not as important now as it was when I was first figuring all this out. What matters more in this stage of the journey is how I learn to treat myself with respect and insist that others do as well.
Oh, Tood……
I won’t even patronize you, or trivialize your worst nightmare situation by saying I understand. Quite frankly, I don’t and can’t.
But I can sympathize with the tremendous pain, the horror, the shock you were subjected to you and still confronting.
I just can’t imagine….blows my mind to the point where I wish I didn’t know.
But it’s your reality: a shameful, revolting, disgusting, evil incarnate reality.
Bless you, Tood, for being so strong and so brave to share with the LF community.
OX,
Help me to understand because you said something very imprtant here. You said you had to redefine what forgiveness was. I too want to get the bitterness and sometimes feeling of vengefulness out of my heart and I think it may help me to stop obsessing over some of the bad memories and lies.
I don’t really want to forgive in my “learned christian way” you know, turning the other cheek….. treating with kindness……. trying to be understanding of their hurt toward us…… don’t think I can go there. Maybe I am not as far along in the process of healing but I am at the point of forgiving myself. I take my portion of the blame and I am strong enough to protect myself. I can even go to the gym and not flinch when he continues to walk past me. I made a mistake, bad choice . He intentionally hurts people. Not sure I want to forgive. I know I will never forget, but I KNOW I DON”T WANT TO BE BITTER. Can you help me understand?
Kathleen, sorry about the confusion. I was not respondng to your post to BigDude.
Somewhere on this thread I thought I had read something along the line of asking why we wanted to put out the effort to heal. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote my post. I just meant it as a thought about what appears to me to be a natural inclination to restore ourselves to all that we know we are even though the level of pain suffering and grief can blur that knowledge. Does that make sense? the compass can spin and we can lose our way, our sense of direction, but ultimately who we are cannot be held down and our Towanda moment puts us in touch with our power once again and a renewed focus on our capacity to change.