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
Rune, Kathleen and others:
We’re all smart people and we’re all grappling with failure.
Last night I was bracing myself to go into work today and got more and more depressed. I’m in one of those situations where you KNOW you are being set-up to take the fall. Even though you have emails, files and everything else under the sun proving you are right, you know it doesn’t matter in the end. You hear the rifles being cocked and know you’re a goner.
About 2 in the morning I awoke suddenly and saw what I term the gargoyles of failure sitting at the foot of my bed. You know what I’m talking about — the my career is washed up, I’m never going to get hired again, what am I going to do about money etc, etc, etc.
While I was lying there staring at the gargoyles and feeling my panic and fear build, I suddenly remembered a book that I read about 20 years ago called “When Smart People Fail.” My copy is long gone and I realized I need to replace it. But, I think this book would be helpful to a lot of people on this site who, obviously, are smart people and are all grappling with failure.
The book was invaluably helpful to me 15 years ago. It explores the failures of people who, as the title implies, are smart. Who did everything right. And who still failed due to various circumstances ranging from drawing a wild-card (ie getting involved with a S) to bad bosses (ie working for an S), to having their business wrecked by an employee (ie hiring an S) to financial failures. The works.
The book is really good in helpful in that it discusses the emotional process we got through in grappling with a failure — or multiple failures at the same time. It also had some really good coping strategies for getting beyond the failure. Sort of a playbook for recovery.
One story I recall, for some reason, made me think of you, Rune. It’s about a woman who by a fluke found herself in the real estate business — in her case specializing in the conversion of apartment houses to condos.
She was in the middle of a big conversion when a huge plumbing problem surfaced. She went back to her investor group who said no more money. For them they were cutting their losses. For her, she was personally on the hook and went down in financial flames. In her eyes she had failed on every level.
The point of her story, and everybody else’s story in the book, was that she finally had to learn to forgive herself. She did, and filed for bankruptcy. Her priorities changed radically. I seem to recall that now (at the time of the book) she got involved with real estate projects that had some social good.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I guess what has stayed with me all these years from the book, which I am going to hunt down and reread, is that:(a) things happen to us which we couldn’t have foreseen — the sociopaths; (b) we have to go through a grieving process to get past the failure; and (c) we have to learn to forgive ourselves.
Oxy: Depression is anger turned inward.
Peace.
Rune: Pray (which is really talking to God) and ask God to guide you to see the window. This way, you are paying your respects to our creator that you love and respect him … and then the window will be clearly visable.
Keep the faith.
This is great article, Kathleen. Thank you!
Rune,
Wanting what you want for yourself is the simplest form of visioning. I want to be happy. I want to contribute and be paid for it. I want to live in a place where I’m comfortable.
Visioning and “futuring” are two difference things. I have a friend who, every time she interviews for a job, gets totally hung up in what she’ll do with the money when she gets it. (She needs the money.) It colors her interviews with desperation, and she comes across as false and manipulative.
Really caring for yourself involves living in real time. Does this feel right? Do I want to be here? What is it about this place that I like? Why do I want to be here? How will it fulfill me? How can I contribute?
I know it’s hard to think like this, as though you have choices, when your security issues are screaming at you. But sometimes you just have to tell yourself that you know what you’re doing. Build up your internal trust.
Everything I hear from you suggests that you are competent, compassionate and aware. This makes me believe that things will work out for you, and probably sooner rather than later.
Visioning specifics into the future — in the style of metaphysical prayer or “The Secret” — has to come with the caveat “if it is right for me.” I would not tell you stop looking and trying, but my spiritual belief is that the universe is working to give you what you really want and need. Your job is to get in the way of it, and be open to it when it shows up.
My largest client right now is a firm that other people had difficulties dealing with. When they showed up as an opportunity, I had qualms because of what I’d heard, but I gave them a chance. It turned out that we were enthusiastic about the same things, and that my skill set was exactly what they needed. It also turned out that they wanted me to take on a role that I swore I’d never do again, because of a previous bad experience. But I’m different than I used to be, and I can manage the role fine now.
A year ago, if anyone had suggested I would be doing this work with this company, I probably would have said “no way.” Today, I regard this professional relationship as one of the best of my life.
As Wini says, we never know the form it will take.
Wini, KH, Matt, Ox-D: Thank you for your loving words. I know that we amplify the power for manifestation as we share our thoughts: “Where two or more are gathered together in My name.” I know that as we wish the best for each other here in our LF community, we are acting in “prayer,” no matter what form we follow in our spiritual practice.
I’m going to wipe my eyes so I can be better able to see that window of opportunity.
Rune: One of my windows was finding the LF community.
I’ve never met more compassionate people gathered in one place in my life.
I said this to Donna months ago… that she was doing God’s work by putting this site together.
Peace.
Kathleen – this article is really terrific, and particularly helpful for me as I wonder “how” to heal. I threw my S out of the house in March, but didn’t start NC until the beginning of August. I think I’ve really only TRULY been on the healing trajectory since then.
And, the first part of my “healing” involved me declaring a Gloria Gaynor “I will survive” status, determined not to let him, and the relationship, cause one more bit of pain in my life. I wanted to close the book and move on. Buh-Bye.
But I’ve realized that you can’t walk away, you can’t close the book without doing the work. You can’t just declare yourself “done” and “better” and “it’s over,” you have to go through the pain. If you want to come out better for the process, and not worse, you need to feel all the pain, do all the grieving, do a great deal of painful reflection on your entire life, and heal, or soothe, the wounds of childhood.
God, I want just to walk away. But I see that there is a real opportunity for incredible growth here. Your article was great in conveying that, and giving hope as to a tremendous light at the end of the tunnel.
I look forward to getting there. I’m not loving where I am now – it hurts. And the fact that he is off right now – in the throes of “new love” is just so painful. It just feels incredibly unfair. Though I know in the long run, and in the big picture, I will be much, much, happier and fulfilled than he could ever be.
Amen, Wini!
I think the “entertaining angels unawares” has happened to me so many times in my life. Son D had not read a lot here on LF (though son C has) and today I had him read the new blog by Liane about the terms for psycho/socio-paths being used too frequently.
He read it all and then said “I now know why you are addicted to that site! They are sharp folks and able to express opinions on a subject in such a nice manner, disagree even, but sometimes even in their “disagreements” they are seeing two sides of the same coin.
We are sort of resting today after two days in a row of hard manual labor (even my hands were swollen this morning after my 12 hours of sleep and rest) so just doing laundry and a bit of housework that is non strenuous and spending lots of time here on LF. (my laundry is attached to my office so I can multi-task LOL)
I too found a comforting group of companions for my journey toward healing here at LF. I had previously been on another blog but some of the moderators were so unreasonable that if you even mentioned that you were a Christian they would threaten to toss you off “since some people have been religiously abused” but if you were Wicca and wanted to preach that philosophy to everyone as their salvation, that was OK…so I figured I needed to move on, I didn’t want to be in a place that was so “controlling” that only the ideas of the moderators could be expressed. There were frequent flames, and name calling, etc.
I did learn a great deal from articles on the site, but the interactions between the managers (which would be conflicting depending on who was on the site at a particular time) and the bloggers was one of One-up-man-ship and in my opinion just more “game playing” in the name of healing, but little real healing going on. It is a shame, as it is a popular site.
It is strange too, as I sit and post to a newbie who comes on here, giving the “basic advice” of “welcome, and come here and read and learn and get your power back” and at other times I am giving my answer to a question someone has asked, or a comment to someone, I GET THE AH HA MOMENTS that apply to me. I see something in myself I haven’t seen before. So by trying in my own way to support and help others, I think I am helping myself MORE than I have ever helped others here.
Jesus said that if you give a “cup of water” in His name you will receive your reward. I do think that when we give a “cup of water” or a compassionate hand to someone who comes here suffering we ARE DOING GOD’S will by helping someone who is suffering, AS WE SUFFERED. We are PASSING ON the blessings we have received, plus, we are receiving even more blessings by doing so. That’s why I am still here.
I am still here after over a year (I think over a year, can’t remember exactly when I came here) and after blogging probably a “million” words here and reading another several million, I still get blessings daily from this site and a day without LF is a “day without sunshine.”
I have seen other bloggers come and go, some probably well on their way to being healed, some probably back to the X or on to another new bad relationship, and everything in between I guess. It makes one wonder when people just “go away” without saying “bye.” Some have come back and said “I screwed up” and stayed around for another while.
But just as in the parable of the “Sower” that Jesus gave, you sow the truth, and sometimes it falls in the road, where birds eat it, sometimes on stony ground where it springs up quickly but doesn’t have enough root to sustain it and quickly withers, and other times among thorns which choke it out, and sometimes it falls on good, fertile soil and gives an abundant harvest of fruit.
I think our “sowing” here of the words of truth and compassion frequently fall on various soils, but I also think there is one other aspect I would add to Jesus’ teaching. Som3times the seed goes dormant if it doesn’t have proper conditions to sprout.
Crabgrass seed is one of those seeds that can lie dormant in the soil for up to 15 or more years, waiting until the proper amount of heat and moisture to sprout.
When people come here to read and learn the truth, it may not find the properly receptive so in in their hearts and minds, but I firmly believe that in many cases that seed is NOT LOST entirely, that it will lie dormant and await a better time.
Years ago, one of my closest friends gave me a little book entitled “When Lovers Are Friends” by Merle Shain. It’s a short book, only a little over 100 pages but packed with wisdom about life and relationships.
In the beginning of the book Merle Shain (MS) makes a powerful point that I would like to share with all of you. By way of background, she begins the book by telling about the year she spent pouring her heart out to her friend about the man she loved and how he was deceiving her. Long after he left her and they were divorced, MS learned the man who had been her love had been her friend’s lover too. She writes….”And while I know most would say she stole my man from me and took advantage of my trust, and that the sin was hers, not mine, still part of me knows you can be guilty even when you’re innocent, and that I am as much to blame.”
MS continues…….”and one never really knows when you start up with someone whether you should open your arms to them or shut them firmly out.”
I think this is the powerful part for many of us for it can be applied to many situations…..”Love is short, forgetting is long, and understanding takes longer still. And sometimes it is hard to know what someone has given us, or even what we have given them, until a long time after the event. But if I’m to tell you everything there is to tell, I have to tell you this — the friend who shared that man with me taught me about myself, and I have that today while neither of us has him. So who is there to say she was not my friend or that all friends must be safe? Maybe it’s only important that we love and learn.” Merle Shain
I will post more from Merle Shain when I can.