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
Stunned, you may have lost “friends,” but here you can find friends who will truly choose to know you.
Thank you, JS.
Stunned, welcome to Lovefraud. We’re glad you found us.
You’re clearly having a terrible time in emotional and material terms. There are some people here who might have some suggestions for you, but I suspect they are things you’ve already thought of. After four years, you must be pretty knowledgeable about your resources.
You happened to come in on a thread about emotional healing, and we do have some relatively happy endings here. None of us got back what we lost. Many of us lost of a lot. Not as much as you in most cases, but we are dealing with emotional pain and financial damage.
I’m the one who wrote the initial post on this thread, which is about my after-the-fact understanding of how I got my head together. It took me more than three years, but I didn’t have the challenges you’re facing.
I can hear that you can’t imagine getting any emotional relief. You started the post by saying that some people don’t get over things. I know that’s true, although I’ve seen some surprising recoveries after a long time of being lost in pain. But I know other people who have died without ever recovering from bad things that happened to them.
Most of the people here on Lovefraud are trying to get through it, and recover something of their previous trust, optimism and ability to love. It’s definitely part of what goes on here.
But we support each other in any stage of healing, including feeling like you’re not healing at all. We know what sociopaths do, and you have all our compassion.
I’d like to clarify that we’re not working on “cognitive distortions” or we don’t think we are. In my case, I came to recognize that I had a role in my victimization, and I wanted to correct that aspect of my character. I also wanted to recover a few other things, like my ability to laugh and my spiritual feelings. So I went to work on myself.
I think I”m better off now than when I met the sociopath, so I’m terming it a win. I’m still out the money my business, and my last years of sexual attractiveness. (I just turned 60.) But I have a level of emotional independence that I wish I had a lot sooner, and I intend to make the most of it.
Not everyone here thinks the same way I do. There are people in all sorts of personal conditions and all sorts of attitudes toward their experiences.
I’m sorry your life is so hard now. I really hope your SSI comes through, and that you find other help. In the meantime, I hope you keep coming back and that you find something you can use here.
Kathy
Fleeced,
I don’t have a blanket answer. But I can tell you what has helped me a little. I think I used to be very resilient. I am the one always telling my kids, “It’s not about the mistakes you make it’s about how well you recover.” Now I understand how difficult a task that is….. I understand where you are coming from. I don’t know how you get more resiliency except to care for yourself first and find some reliability in the people or a person who also cares for you. I have learned, through this pain to REALLY appreciate the TRUE friendships I have. Sleep more, eat healthier, drown the pain in a nice hot bath instead of alcoholic beverages (which I did for a time but not to the extreme). Some nights I go to bed after dinner. That is unheard of for me….or used to be. I think that energy will come back in time. At least I hope it will.
I laugh sometimes about some of what has happened. Or at least I try to find humor in the S/P excentricities and some of the bizarre lies. My friends laugh at him. it sounds immature but it helps. I don’t take on anything extra…..meetings, extracurriculars, unless I WANT TO and only when it fits my schedule. It has to be flexible. i won’t join anything with strict schedules because I may not feel like it. I have two teenagers and they keep me busy enough. I don’t let myself feel bad if I miss a soccer game or two. I sleep later than usual. My dishes aren’t washed every night before I go to bed. I actually picked a pair of jeans out of the laundry pile and wore them. I’m easier on myself.
Sometimes it’s my competitive nature to not want him to win. To get back all that I had and felt spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, (with more caution)…. I don’t want him to win and if their nasty miserable life stays the same and ours gets worse then they wins. We have to make it work with whatever circumstances we are given. I know it sounds idealistic but I don’t know any other way.
Maybe we need to find peace in the simple things, the basics first.
Dear Stunned,
About the SSD, as strange as it sounds, you are more likely to get it for your DEPRESSION (and I bet you can get someone to make that diagnosis “official”) than for your MS. I am a retired Registered Nurse Practitioner and have helped MANY PATIENTS get diability when they were denied and denied.
It almost ALWAYS takes an ATTORNEY, and they get up to $5000 of your back payments. I suggest that you see a psychiatrist and get a diagnosis of depression, PTSD or whatever is appropriate and REAPPLY as fast as possible.
That is the only practical advice I can give you. I had a patient one time whose diabetes was so bad, and he was almost blind and couldn’t walk without assistance because his feet were so numb he coldn’t know where they were, and his blood sugar went from 40 to500 on a daily basis (both numbers in the dangerous range) and he got it for SHORT TERM MEMORY problems because in my report to the SSD board I said he sometimes forgets to take his insulin. GO FIGURE!
That is about the only practical information I have for you. Along with the posters above me, I too, hold out my hand in support for you. You have come to a healing place.
One other thing I would suggest is a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning” written by Dr. Viktor Frankl after spending about 4 years in a Nazi prison camp in which he lost everything but his life. He was able to still find MEANING in the life he had left. Many of us here at LoveFRaud have felt the despair of losing so much that we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel as I can only imagine that you must be feeling something along that line. I can’t know for sure how you feel, but can only guess at your depth of pain from my own psychopathic experience. Your losses have been pretty complete I would say, but you are alive and you are worthy of some peace, happiness and joy in your life. ((((hugs))) and my prayers for your peace.
I was married to a sociopath; he was the husband from hell and he is still the father from hell. While I was in the hospital giving birth to our third child, he sexually molested our daughter. He sees nothing wrong with incest and has never taken responsibility for his actions. No one would help us. For three decades my daughter has had a life of hell. She is an emotional wreck. My blog can be viewed at
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=82670192
Dear Kathy,
I love a good arm wrestle!! LOL
I almost get the feeling that we are saying the same thing just framing it in different words. The “bitterness” I am talking about was such a prevailing, overpowering, nasty, hateful, spiteful, vengeful feeling that I was no longer ME. I was becoming one of THEM in my thoughts! I don’t like feeling like that. I can understand that anger fuels our energy, but what I was feeling was SAPPING my energy. It was side tracking my healing because I DIDN’T LIKE THINKING LIKE THAT.
I have never had any problem becoming angry, and it sounds like you did not have permission to “be angry” whereas I did (at least in some circumstances).
I was not afraid of what would happen if I became angry, I KNEW what would happen if I became angry, I’d had enough practice.
To me at least the “bitterness,” or that horrible feeling, (maybe it was something worse than bitterness, but I just don’t have a word for it) was so TOXIC to my soul, to my peace, to rest and repose, to healing, to stress reduction, I had to get rid of it or DIE! The Ps did me enough damage for a life time, but by my own attitude being so TOXIC in response they were still doing me damage with ME AS THEIR PROXY. I was also at a point that there was nothing it would accomplish except to exhaust me mentally and physically, and deprive me of sleep and rest.
I’m a “stand up” person, always have been in most situations, and a bit of a crusader even at times (When I was 12 I jumped in the middle of a strange man’s back as he was beating a horse that had fallen at a parade as it lay on the slick pavement unable to get up, though it was valiantly trying to, but it’s shoes kept slipping. I bit a chunk out of his neck, took the club away from him and as he stood, stunned, wondering what badger had gotten hold of him, I got the horse back on its feet and calmed down as the whelts started to rise on it from the beating.) But I was at a point where there was NOTHING I COULD DO TO CHANGE THE SITUATION at all. I had to retreat for my own physical safety, abandon trying to “save” my mother and my son C who were still in the FOG, and get out while the getting was good.
To sit and seethe in my impotence and frustration would only have harmed ME, not changed the situation. Anger is a great motivator to get us to move and take ACTION. Just like I was furious at the man beating the horse, and I knew that the horse was trying its best to get up, the man was mad and didn’t even stop to look the situation over. I took radical action, like most 12 year olds, but in that case, it worked. I was out of action when the bitterness set in, anger wasn’t helping me or the situation. I needed REST and to get rid of the bitter emotions, the wishes for revenge, all had to quiet down for me to get rest and healing.
Anyway, hope that makes sense. Your turn ((((hugs))))
Oxy, I think I understand.
I’m turning the pages of memory, but not finding an extended period when I felt that way. Maybe I did and I’ve just forgotten it. If I didn’t have all the writing I did when I was healing, I don’t think I’d remember a lot of it. That pain was really an altered state.
I do remember the feeling of being toxic, of feeling like I had to get the poison out of me. But with me it was different.
My self-esteem was always weak. I lived on nerve, pushing myself to get writing contracts and then talk to strangers for research, and then find the courage to analyze tons of material and write something in my own voice. Later when I went into marketing and PR, it was the same thing, only bigger stakes, more money, more responsibility. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback in my life. But the only part of it that really sunk in was what I got from my husbands and lovers. What I saw in their eyes I believed.
And when I had to depend on what was in the sociopath’s eyes, I just went through a long period of losing every ounce of courage and confidence I had. I have a really terrible memory of going to the grocery store with him, nearby where I live now. He was very good looking, and a young woman came up to talk with him at a refrigerator case. I just cringed back against the shelves across the aisle, hoping she would not notice me. It was half not wanting to embarrass him by raising questions about the older woman, and half not wanting to live through the humiliation of whatever he might do if she noticed me. I don’t know if I’m communicating how terrible this time was, but I was in a kind of permanent cringe.
Maybe the toxin, if we can call it that, gets us where we’re vulnerable. My self-esteem was fragile. That’s why my triumph is so much about becoming my own validator. Liking and supporting myself without needing a lot of external input.
Maybe your fragility was somewhere else. And that was where the toxin took hold. It sounds like you’ve been holding yourself together in the face of family dramas that you couldn’t escape. You had to be strong and sensible and kind, and even your career reflects that. I see it in all your posts.
Maybe the toxin affected that facet of your character. I’m only guessing, but that’s what makes sense from what you say. How could you be like that, if you felt all that viciousness taking over. That would be really scary.
There’s something about these experiences. It’s like a sickness that, if we survive it, gives us the power to change what we really need to change. Maybe you needed to find that power to forgive without compromising yourself. I know I needed to find the power to validate myself. Not for what it is, as much as for what it does for me. For the first time, I can look past something that has taken a huge amount of energy in my life, and get on to something else.
Hugs to you too, and thanks for the great conversation.
Kathy
DEar Balkovec,
Welcome to LF, sorry about posting over you and not stopping to say welcome, I think we sort of posted over each other.
You have found a healing place, I also suggest that you stay around and read and read and learn about th e Ps and about yourself as well…what makes us vulnerable.
I am so sorry that you “qualify” to join our “club”—but it is a healing and supportive place, I have found much support here! Welcome!
Thank you, so very much! Laura
This has been a really interesting thread.
Kathleen:
I have been able to relate to so much of what you’ve been writing. Like you, I have lacked self confidence. I always discountged the accomplishments in my life. I always looked for validation from others.
I saw so beaten down literally and figuratively growing up. By the time I went off to college I was suffering from a severe depression. Naturally my gpa looked something like a zip code in CT (ie 06652).
That was when my mother truly delivered the coup de grace. She said “Your father always said your brother’s good looks and athletic prowess came from his side of the family and your brains came from mine. Obviously he was wrong.”
So, I was ugly, stupid and a clutz. And she wonders why I tried to kill myself 2 days later.
Problem was/is I continued trying to be the original people pleaser. I shoved all the anger down. When S came into my life, I tolerated such outrageous behavior. But, after I drove him off, I realized, for the first time, I was justifiably angry.
And the anger has been volcanic. 50 years worth is pouring forth. I feel it coming out of the tips of my hair.
And it is so damned healthy.
I’m just starting to take a good hard look at my life and where I’ve ended up. I don’t like a lot of what I see. What I see is that I kept trading away pieces of myself until there was nothing left. Well, now I’m trying to discover who the new and improved model Matt is.
Oddly enough, the revenge fantasies are really helping. One in particular I enjoy. Of all the default judments against S, one stood out. S conned some poor guy out of 15 grand. The guy sued.
His victim’s attorney told me they couldn’t find any bank accounts for S. Hell, they couldn’t even find where he worked until because he as paid off the books.
Until now.
In my fantasy I drop a copy of the judgment the guy got and a copy of S’s business card in the mail to the attorney I spoke to. Hell, on some days I send a copy of S’s business card to every single judgment creditor. Like unleashing a pack of rabid dogs on him. Very emotionally satisfying.
As for forgiveness, that’s a long, long way down the turnpike for me.