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
Matt,
I don’t see those things that you described as “evil” or “revenge” but instead doing your job as a good citizen to help out some poor smuck that got conned by this guy.
I got a piece of evidence that my P-son might have access to a smuggled cell phone, which is a felony for a prisoner to have one, and I sent a copy of that evidence to my son’s warden. I know HE wouold think that was revenge or malice but I was doing my civic duty. I don’t think at all that is “revenge” and it was not done with a motive to “hurt my son, hee hee” but simply as a citizen. I would report YOUR son, so why should I not report MY son if I know of a possible or probable felony crime?
The fantasies I was entertaining were a lot “worse” and more “disordered” that what you are describing.
I can also relate to the 50 years of anger coming forth, because I was never allowed to set boundaries or be angry (even justifiably so) at members of the family.
I don’t know how many of you have read the “Impostor Syndrome” but it was a good book. I remember feeling that I “had em fooled” in 7th grade when I made a 100% on a test and the teacher complimented me. I remember thinking “Boy, I fooled her didn’t I?” NO, I ddin’t fool anyone, I EARNED that grade by study and applying myself, but I still felt like a “fake.”
Though I have an impressive resume, I never felt like it was legititmate, I felt like I had “fooled” people…though others told me how good I was at my job, and other things, I never truly believed them, but would think “Ah, they’re just being kind. They don’t mean that.” Or I would think “Boy, do I have them fooled.” Now, I am acknowledging myself, my skills, my abilities, and the things about me that make me ME. I am coming to where I can VALIDATE my own worth, and objectively appraise my talents and abilities.
It’s a good feeling, but I think I will have to work at it always just like an addict has to work at staying sober every day, it may get easier but I suspect it will never totally feel “natural.”
OxDrover:
Why, I never thought that if I outted him to his creditors I’d be doing my civic duty. But, now that I think of it, I like it. After all, every time a deadbeat like S doesn’t repay a loan, the rest of us who go to borrow pay higher costs.
What a pleasant way to put it to that pompous, pedantic, pious little prick.
Also, I’m going to check out the “Impostor Syndrome”. I’ve spent my entire life feeling like a fraud. I am extremely tired of feeling that way.
Matt and Oxy,
I had a conversation with a friend after leaving that last post, because I felt like I was learning something important, but it also made me question my model.
I knew my experience was personal to me, a lot of the details. But I thought the model might be universal. Maybe not as it is, but with some refinement.
Now I’m seeing that differences in character traits can make a major difference in how you go through the recovery process. My friend, for example, has a better connection with her anger. Her recovery process has a much different pattern than mine. She took steps immediately to minimize the emotional impact. It wasn’t exactly forgiveness, but it was similar in the sense of managing her reaction. Anger comes later in her process and more episodically, rather than through a phase period. She too has concerns about managing bitter and vengeful feelings. She didn’t grasp why I gave anger as much attention as I did in my process.
I’m like you, Matt. For me, the anger was a revelation of my own capability to feel and focus, and the vengeful feelings were great, creative and sort of fun. So maybe you and I are a type. And maybe our processing is similar. But it’s by no means a standard for everyone.
I wonder if the steps, if not the sequence, are common among us all. I’ll be really interested to see the feedback as I start to write through it.
Kathy,
I have not posted here in a while but your article really caught my attention. I too feel that I am on a path of self-healing and have gotten little benefit from friends/counselors. In addition, I cannot afford therapy and also do not trust most counselors anyway. So I have decided to heal on my own, with the help of this site and armed with my meditation practice and knowledge of all the healing techniques I’ve learned over the years, both as a client as as a grad student studying counseling.
I was strong enough to get away from the sociopath relatively quickly–after 2-1/2 months. For this I am proud of myself and of the healing I have already done to get me to the place where I could recognize the craziness when it finally hit me in the face and walk away. That does not mean it was any less painful. I was suicidal for nearly a month and hung on every post from this site for several more. Battling depression and knowing I have issues that are borderline in character, I decided to get to the bottom of all of it, just as you have. What I have found is that My issues seem to center around being alone and having no one to help me. If not one cares, I just keep stuff bottled up. I became bitter.
This came to a head recently when I begged my mortgage company, in my time of need, to please work with me to avoid a foreclosure. After the run-around for 2 months, I was told about a lender conference where they would be. I went, with every last shred of hope. The hope was dashed when they didn’t show up. At that point, 48 years of feeling neglected and alone and “not taken care of” came to a head. I had a complete meltdown on the spot, in front of 1000 people. I was crying and cussing. I was so angry I could not contain it. This got the attention of the convention managers who promised to put my lender in touch with me. Would you believe the very next day I got the call from someone that could help me at the mortgage company? I’m now working with the lender toward a solution. But look what it took!!! I had to scream out that I deserved to be helped, deserved to be taken care of, and deserved to be heard. It didn’t help to sit quietly and just take whatever I got, feeling bitter all the while.
Once again, I am going through another round of grief about being abandoned. It has been very painful, but also freeing. I have a little tiny snowman that lights up with outstretched arms. I have been cuddling it like a baby–I seem to be projecting my inner child onto it. I am learning that I have to take care of myself. No one is gonna take care of me. Most of my relationships with men have had some element of me wanting to be taken care of by them. And if they don’t take care of the me the way I want, I get very upset. This is the root of my issue, which is really the core of the borderline personality disorder. The sociopath came into my life with promises to take care of me. It was very seductive, but the actions did not match the words.
I used to argue with a friend of mine that you can’t heal in a vacuum; you need others. But I’m coming to realize just how much power we have to heal ourselves.
Stargazer, welcome back! Glad that things are working for you with the mortgage company, sorry it took such a melt down.
Getting the break trhough that there is NO ONE in this world obligated to take care of us (and to one degree or another I think all of us want to be “taken care of”) Star you can learn to take care of yourself—that is the ultimate adulthood. All children should be loved and nurtured so that they grow up to be independent and self reliant, SHARING with others, but not dependent…not everyone reaches that point. Some never do, but it sounds like you are reaching there. Good fo ryou!!! (((hugs)))))
Thanks, OxD. It only took 48 years. lol Any chance of getting a brief update on your situation?
Kathy,
I think the “material” of which each of us is made (our genetics and our environmental influences) makes our paths somewhat different in healing. The “grief process” contains all the same elements, but maybe not in the same degree or intensity and maybe not in the same “order.”
Each of us had some lack in ourselves that made us vulnerable to the Ps, but maybe not the same exact “missing link”–similar but not identical.
The path to healing has a “pattern” I think, but many twists and turns depending on where you start on the journey, how bad the injury, what your resources are, etc.
The lady that posted earlier about losing everything and has MS. Her resources are so depleted that it MIGHT make healing more difficult for her than for some others. She sounded very depressed, ill and discouraged. I hope she comes back here. I think she sees herself as “UNABLE” to heal, not having any resources at all.
The closest thing I could think of was the book by Dr. Viktor Frankl which was his emotional description of the concentration cams in Nazi Germany and how different people reacted differently to the same conditions, or nearly the same. How some it made bitter and hurtful, and others became more caring and compassionate. After release he mentioned that one man purposely walked through a crop of standing grain to destroy as much of it as he could, “because I have lost so much” the man told Frankl…so he wanted to strike out at others and hurt them.
I read tht book when I was in the deepest throes of bitterness wanting in my heart to strike out and HURT SOMEONE ELSE…when I actually looked at my mother and for the first time in my life realized I TRULY FELT HATE. She even looked back and said “You really hate me don’t you?” and I answered her “Yes, right now I do.” and I DID so hate her. I don’t want to have that emotion in my body, soul or mind. I don’t want to feel like I could kill without remorse for revenge.
I believe I would have no problem pulling the trigger on someone who was hurting me or about to, but to want to stalk someone down and harm them for revenge is what my Psychopathic son is all about, but not me. My anger was totally and completely justifiable, but my wrath was not, because it was toxic to ME. I was becoming infected with THEIR disease, their rage, that they feel is justified because of the “injury” we gave them. (The blame is always some one else’s never theirs.)
What’s that series of movies where Charlie Bronson goes around new York killing punks because some killed his wife and kid? We are a nation of “LAW” (or at least we are supposed to be) not of vigilante justice. I have no problem defending myself from the Trojan Horse Psychopath and if he ever comes around here he will find himself in a fire fight, but I can’t even imagine stalking him down to shoot him. Or burning his house, or vandalizing his car. Or the neighbor who sued me for the $50K because my husband’s plane crashed in his pasture, but I was so injured I wanted to seek revenge, but I strongly believe that revenge is wrong. Sure the man hurt me, but to go and in cold blood and beat him up, or burn his house, or whatever, is wrong, and the ideas of thinking about such things is WRONG and TOXIC for ME. No matter how “justified” I am, I couldn’t break the law, of both man and God to seek revenge….but oh, how I wanted to.
Seeking JUSTICE, on the other hand, is doing what is within the law and within reason to see that they suffer the consequences of their behavior, for example, Matt helping the people that have sued his X to find his x, or to turn someone in for IRS evasion. Or any other illegal activity they have engaged in that you have knowledge of. That, to me, is not wrong or “revenge” though I have no doubt that the P will think it is revenge.
Justice is the legal consequences for your behavior that is illegal or immoral or harmful to others, even if it isn’t necessarily a criminal offense. I don’t know if any of that makes any sense to anyone but me, but that was why I had to work so hard to get the bitterness out of my own heart. Not push it down or cover it up, but to get it out and keep it out. Sure, life ain’t fair, but no one promised us it would be.
I am hoping that this site can help me. I am unable to talk to my friends because they think I am a complete idiot because I have allowed myself to be fooled and used sexually by this person and he has done and said so many horrible things. I feel crazy. I feel warped. From the outside I know how it must look. I am three days into NC, I don’t want to break down. It is so hard to know that the only way closure could happen is if one of us dies. (and no I am neither suicidal nor homicidal) I am just so confused.
Dear eliza,
Hang on and read and read and reac. I suggest you go back through ALL the articles in the archives, just read the article and don’t even read the blogs until you have finished the articles, you can of course come here and post and we all encourage you to do so, it is healing.’
WE DO GET IT, and I think I speak for everyone here! There’s not a soul who posts here who hasn’t have the devestation that these monsters in human form bestow on us.
Good for you, NC is the only way to go and you are already 3 days into it!!!! GOOD JOB!!! ?Confused is okay, too, but as you read and learn about them, and about yourself, your knowledge will increase and so will your power!!! You will get closure, but you will have to make it yourself, they will nver give you closure, just the brush off. (((((BUG HUGS))))) you are safe here and supported.
Stargazer, I love your story!!!
Me too on the abandoned thing. I kept going into what I called my “lugubrious fugue stages” after the sociopath, when I was faced by a job or a load of personal tasks that intimidated me.
It took me a while to recognize. I thought I was obsessing on him. But I finally realized that he was an avatar for this feeling. Abandoned. No one to help me. (The thing, probably, I’ve been running from in my lifetime of serial monogamy, practically falling out of one bed into another.)
Making up my mind to do this alone was something I couldn’t avoid. I knew that, if I didn’t get myself well, the only thing I would attract was something worse than him.
But actually doing it, learning to live alone, was quite a trip. Fortunately I have a number of reasons to be really concerned about my eating. I’m pre-diabetic, celiac, and aging. So I had to maintain some food-prep structure in my life, even though I didn’t look forward to cooking for one.
But other than taking care of the food, I was a mess for a long time. The house went to hell, a situation exacerbated by my online shopping for clothes that would mask the fact that I was ugly, old and fat (hangover for the sociopath). So the boxes piled up and the closets got stuffs with outfits for a lifestyle I might have someday, if I ever decided I could face people again. And someplace else, because where I live, the fashion standard is casual clothes that are at least five years old.
There was no one to help me with the bills, the garbage, the shopping, the dishes, the housekeeping, the filing, the phones. When I met this guy, I had a personal assistant and a staff of seven. Now I was alone in this house in the mountains, and constantly freaking out about what I didn’t know how to do and couldn’t manage.
And every time I freaked out, I would start thinking “he done me bad” thoughts and go into a depressive nosedive.
I figured out a lot in getting better. One thing was that this pattern was related to my lifelong freefloating anxiety. Everyone else thinks I’m wildly competent, but I know I’m just on the run from becoming a bag lady, because I can’t figure out how to organize anything.
Oh forgive me, I’m going on and on. It’s late and I should be off the computer. I did finally figure out that this is my life, mess and all. Not the fault of that terrible man, or any else. And not even my fault, unless I wanted to get into a blaming mood. It just reflected what I’m interested in and willing to invest time in, and what I’m not. If I get interested enough in cleaning up, I do it. Otherwise, it’s clearly not important enough.
To get back to your wonderful story, hooray for you for throwing a fit at the convention. You may think it’s an awful story. But I think you did exactly the thing that solved your problem, and the only failure, if any, is that you seem not to appreciate what a good job you did of solving your problem.
Don’t like throwing a fit? Oh, get over it. This wasn’t histrionic or anything like. It was the normal human reaction of someone who had taken the path you took to solve the problem you had. You quit being a nice girl and made some noise. And you did it at exactly the right time with the right people who could help you. This is me standing at the sideline, waving pompoms and yelling, “Go, Stargazer.”
I think we don’t throw enough fits. Who cares what it looks like, if it works. I talked to a utility company other day, and told them I was canceling my account to go back to my old provider. They wanted to know why, and I told them my bill was higher with them. They started to argue with me, and I said, “I’m calling to cancel the account, not have a discussion about it.” And they canceled the account.
I’m like you in wanting my significant others to take care of me. But only the way I want. I’ve heard endless complaints through the years that I give people power, and then take it away from them by trying to control everything they’re supposedly doing for me.
I finally figured out that, surrounded by all this “big strong” people that attracted me, I’ve been the one pulling the strings. And if I wanted someone else to do it my way, it would probably be cleaner and more honest to hire them and pay them for their time. But probably it’s easier to do it myself.
I can see I’m turning into someone who is unlikely to settle easily into another live-in relationship. The relationships I have these days tend to be a lot less structured with fewer expectations, but with a lot more freedom.
I don’t know how I’d feel about this if I were still in childbearing years. But it seems exactly right for now.