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
Just found a great Leedom M.D. article including this testosterone information in archives – it’s now re-posted.
Thanks for the info, Rune. This is so helpful for me in processing this nightmare
HH: Have you read “Women Who Love Psychopaths”? Extraverted women tend to be attracted to extraverted men — you might read into that “high testosterone”: motorcycle riders, mountain climbers, hot-shot sales guys, race-car drivers, or charismatic church leaders?
Yes, women also have testosterone. I’ve marveled at the number of self-confident, powerful, amazing, self-sufficient — and also compassionate — women who appear here in the LF community. I think we are the ones who have our dominance drives held in check by our compassion, or “capacity to love.” I’ve spent quite some time musing on this. I look at the classic “golddigger” woman as someone who is driven, extraverted, and with a low capacity to love. That type may not always escalate to full-scale S/P/N, but it sure seems to have the elements, as I see it.
Yes, I’ve read it – great book, VERY helpful. I forgot the part about the testosterone – there was just so much in that book!. I could reread that book a dozen times – and should, and still get more out of it.
Yes…this is a remarkable group of women. I can just feel the positive, loving, vibrations when I am on the LF site. It ALWAYS lifts my moods. I very recently read in an article on Happiness that feeling like you are part of a community contributes greatly to happiness.
Since the devastation of the ex S, I feel like I lost my connection to my various communities. My friends, my family, even my colleagues. Not that I was completely lost at sea and disconnected, but I definitely didn’t feel as connected. I felt very detached and isolated and confused – why was it that every one else seemed to dismiss my pain and imply that it shouldn’t be so bad, and it was HUGE? And these communities, that had normally been sources of support, now felt more distant and even shaming.
Now, at LF, I am part of a community, and REALLY feel connected. It’s done wonders for me.
KF: With his ex-wife, consider just letting her have your phone number, and suggest that one day she might want to talk with you. You don’t know if she’s ready to talk, and she may not be ready to hear. If she calls you, you can listen. Feel your way gently.
I also recommend that you consider that you don’t know what the S/P is doing in relation to her. The less info you put out, the less can come back to bite you. (Except they’ll make up things anyway, but no sense in adding fuel to the fire!) So, if you let her set the pace, you won’t bring her harm. Trust your own gentle intuition as you decide what to say.
I realized when I spoke with the ex-wife that she had no clue how truly evil her ex-husband was, and she already knew he was really, really bad. She wasn’t ready to know some of what I knew, and I’m sure she needed to remain blind to some things so she could survive the interactions she was forced to have with him because of their shared custody situation.
Rune
I just read part of this article…
“Victims high in empathy do not recognize sociopaths
One of the main reasons why victims high in empathy do not recognize sociopaths is that the desire for power is non-conscious. People high in empathy make use of their knowledge of their own emotions to interpret the emotions of others. Can you see then why people who rely on empathy in interactions with others completely miss sociopaths? An empathetic person correctly observes that sociopaths enjoy the company of others. He/she then self-references his/her own feelings of affection with regard to enjoying other people. The victim is fooled into interpreting power motivations as affection-related motivations.
I’ve gotta say, that scares the daylights out of me.
My P-son was one of the brightest most entertaining young children I have ever been around. He was just such a good kid and wanted to please adults so much. Very neat and well behaved. Never defiant.
At age 11, he wanted a walkman radio which at the time cost $50 and there was no way I could afford it, so I told him, “I can’t afford it.”
A few days later he came home from school with a walkman radio and he walked around with it on his head all day every day. I asked him where he got it and he told me a kid at school had loaned it to him.
About a week went by when the mother of the kid called me. It seems that my son had taken a check out of my wallet (I hadn’t yet missed it) that was payable to me for $115, and $20 in cash an given them to her son for the radio.
She and her husband and son came over to my house and we confronted the two boys. Her son had the cash and check and mine had the radio, so we talked to the boys and I took back the check and the cash and gave them the radio.
My son was DEFINAT and DENIED DENIED DENIED that he had done it. DUH? (how P is that! even when caught red handed)
I spanked him for LYING and sent him to his room. That night he ran away from home. I had the whole county turned out and he was found about 7miles from my house. (Cold winter night) and he was STILL defiant and looked me in the eye and said “You can’t watch me 24/7 and I will run away again”
He was right, I couldn’t.
That was the first P-type behavior (the lying in the face of evidence) and the anger at being caught, that I witnessed.
He apparently did some small thefts etc after that but I don’t actually think more than most kids that age would do. A gold pen from my mom that he gave to another kid and the kid’s parents realized it was a REAL gold pen and returned it. But when he hit puberty, ALL BETS were off! He was totally sneaky and defiant when caught, and got into criminal behavior which until he was 17 I wasn’t aware of, but then the school cop (resource officer with a gun) showed up at my house and told me P had a gun at school. I found the gun on him and the “fight was on” from then on with his illegal behavior until at 18 he was in jail, then in prison at 18 1/2, out at 20, for 5 months, and then back for “murder” before he was 21.
When he was 17, my husband and I caught him with the “stolen goods” and called the cops. Since he was a juvy at that age, I thought it might teach him a lesson and not be a permanent mark on his record, I thought there was a chance he would be able to salvage his life. (head shaking here) But he was so determined to do whatever he wanted and accept no restraints; he “really showed” me! LOL
He highly admires my P-bio-father who managed to get extremely wealthy before he died, but as far as “success” even as a psychopath, he isn’t a pimple on my biio-father’s butt in any way. My son is just another intelligent thug. He doesn’t even get THAT much. He actually considers himself so smart and so “successful” that nothing can stand in the way of the world groveling at his “successful” feet. He considers his brothers “failures” and “dopes” because they have managed to not lead a life of (unsuccessful) crimes and spend more than half their lives in prison and all of their adult lives. He thinks they are not nearly as “smart” and “successful” as he is. That is one thing that is difficult for me to understand, how he can view himself as a “success.”
Rune, I am assuming from your post that your son, too, is a P of some level. I have never doubted the genetic part of the equation. Liane is trying to find some way that can be over come with environment at some age. I’m not sure it can be if the genetic component is as strong as it apparently is in my son’s case. Or, maybe there is some way, I just didn’t stumble upon it in my parenting.
But I can say one thing, my ADHD son who was a definite challenge to raise has as good a heart as any man I know. I do see that in someways he has “inherited” the “family curse” of enabling to some extent, but we are growing a “garlic garden” to prevent this curse in the future in our own behavior. LOL And I can say this, his and my relationship has been wonderful here of late, now that neither of us is either enabling or expecting to be enabled. We can talk about our feelings more and better, and we are both healing. He’s been living back with his good brother and me since early November, and I can see that things are moving forward on the healing road just since he has been home with us, in a low stress environment, etc. In some ways he is still “amazed” at his “new and improved” mother, and that our relationship is more of a “friends” now than parent-child. He still respects my “position” as his mother, and I respect his position as ADULT son, but the basis of our relationship now is mutual respect and love and TRUST.
He is also NC with my mother now since she continues to lie to us both and to support (financially) my P-son, which gives him more ammunition to plan another attack on us.
Our lives now are filled with love, peace, calm, and FUN and lots of hugs and laughs. I had forgotten how much I loved his impromptu HORRIBLE PUNS! With him and his brother, I have them in STEREO! And them “high fiving” when they pull off a REALLY good one! ROTFLMAO
Listening to them talk as they rebond and retell stories about my husband, “Remember when Dad did such-and-such?” Then they both roar with laughter and tell another one to top the first one. It’s been over 8 years (since son C married the cyber-bride) that they have spent such time together, or together with me. What LITTLE we saw of son C he was very stressed out and didn’t seem happy at all. (she isolated him from the family immediately after their marriage and especially from me) and until after her and the Trojan Horse’s arrest, I probably hadn’t spent 20 hours time with my son C in 8 years. After he left the state he came home to visit several times and we talked almost daily on the telephone and by e mail. Having him home again to rebond and heal here where he feels safe is a godsend for us all. He has smiled and SMILED since he has been home, and he just spontaneously hugs me or his brother D “100 times” a day.
We’ve been able too to discuss things that weren’t really possible by telephone or e mail, face to face…like if mom leaves son P a great deal of money (likely) and we can’t challenge it in court and stop it, we will have to sell the farm and move away from here to be safe from son P. But we have all come to accept that if that is what happens, then it happens, and this land is not sacred or essential to our lives. We intend to be happy no matter where we are—together and/or separately.
OxDrover
You are one hell of a strong woman, every hat I own is off to you.
oxy: It’s good to hear about your happiness. I think one challenge with a child who has P tendencies is that the typical authoritarian discipline DOES NOT WORK! It just sets up a power struggle, and they LOVE a power struggle.
I even see this when I look at the way the system tries to deal with “at-risk youth.” Judges throw kids in jail for not going to school. Guess what the kids learn there! Or they send them to wilderness “boot camps” that are all about authoritarian discipline and not at all about LOVE and TRUST. We don’t really have models for other ways to guide children — especially the power motivated — into civilized behavior.
The power/dominance motivation is also why I recommend NOT giving an S/P information, because it creates a tool for them to somehow use in an upcoming power struggle — which they eagerly anticipate while we do not!
Dr. Leedom is doing some marvelous work
Wow, Oxy, that’s so interesting. It really wasn’t apparent when he was a young child…it sounds like he was a very likable child. And he wanted to please. Hmmmm….what do you make of that?
My ex S had a young son and daughter. Before I met them he said, of his son “You are going to fall in love with him,” and predicted I would have a harder time with his daughter. The opposite happened. The little girl and I hit it off, and enjoyed each other’s company. We colored, talked about animals, enjoyed webkinz, etc, etc. His son and I always had an awkward relationship, like there was a tension between us. He wanted his dad very badly (there was so much going on there), and seemed to object to anything coming between he and his Dad. Including me. He didn’t welcome other kids into games with us on the playground. His sister, on the other hand, really loved other kids. But there was always this strange tension between he and I. And I’ve always done well with kids – boys and girls.
But, he was very charming in his own way. He was an entertainer. He did funny dances and did funny impersonations of characters on tv. He made us laugh. He loved being the comic, the center of attention.
And, though he didn’t act like a molested child, but he was somewhat strangely sexualized. Like he would dance in this real pelvis thrusting way that was not like the whacky dancing of my nephews (they’re adorable messes when they dance – just spastic, and their “dancing” quickly dissolves into kung fu moves), but danced like an adult would. He had rhythm, he could move, he looked like a little sexy man. It was weird. Not like the sexualized behaviors I’ve seen in molested children, just odd. He looked like a virile young man dancing in a sexy way.
Anyway – Since being on LF, I’ve reflected on my Ex’s kids and whether or not they inherited it. The girl is fine – very compassionate with animals and empathetic with children. I thought the little boy was fine because he was such a funny, bright spirit who loved his Dad so much. But now I’m less sure. He’s not my stepchild any longer (actually, for the first time I am relieved – I’m imagining what he might have introduced to all my nieces and nephews when they hit adolescence).
I’ve only heard of “torturing animals” as indicators of sociopathy in childhood, or outright oppositional behavior. But it sounds, based on the description of your child, much more complex.
HH & Oxy: I see “entertainment” as related to “charm.” It’s another way to manipulate the audience. My son was fascinated by magic tricks — notice how those allowed him to be “better than” his audience. I’m not saying that these activities are bad, per se, but taken in a context, they are something to look at as having a different motivation than what you might ordinarily think.
I’ve also seen a lot of activity between S/Ps where they use each other as confederates, and enroll others as “psychopaths-by-proxy.” I wonder if the son liked the power he got by working hand-in-glove with his father — and he understood that on a subliminal level?
I know this is armchair diagnosis, but if we can look at these stories as illustrating a more general principle, I think it helps.